>>the idea that a psychology would really start from analysis of everyday
activities, so >that claim never got worked over, nor the implications I
drew from it. he made me >wonder what PSYCHOLOGY would become under
these circumstances. /cut/
>And, of course, Rachel the next question is: will that be convincing to
the research psychologists?
What will the research psychologists think of it? It doesn't really
matter. As Kuhn pointed out, old paradigms only die with their
proponents. With the current generation of practicing research
psychologists this is obviously going to be the case. (Trust me - I've
been surviving as an underground non-cognitive/behaviorist in such a
department for the last five years.) One factor is simply the number of
baby-boom
faculty / researchers. The pig in the python is at the pinnacle of its
influence, and is at its most conservative point in the career path.
This generation trained at a time when the "cognitive revolution" was
still revolutionary and a large number are still working on the subjects
they did their doctoral theses on. Lest anybody think a "practical"
orientation to education is a new development, let it be known that when
I was in college the first time around there was an emphasis on "safe"
jobs, "good" career paths, and tenure with regular raises (for those of
us who didn't drop out). This is not a population in which subversive
ideas are going to make serious inroads.
Another aspect of this is what Joe Glick talks about in his chapter
in Martin/Nelson/Tobach's "Sociocultural Psychology." Academic learning
is situated learning too. Learning for school is quite different from
learning for/while doing in many ways, in terms of abstractness,
individual-based or situation-based, etc. Normative research conducted
in academia is of necessity shaped by those same factors, and they
dictate the terms of its metatheory, problematization and methodology.
The "research psychology" we currently have is lab-based, monocultural,
oriented almost exclusively to internal validity and done within the
strict parameters of journal acceptability. (Not to mention the infamous
college sophomore subject pool....) A psychology of how people act in
the world is simply going to be in large part incommensurate with what is
currently being practiced as research psychology in academia.
The conclusion? Wish the contemporary establishment of academic
psychologists well and simply move on. Build a self-sufficient structure
of publications, conferences, etc. (MCA is already well on its way here,
but actively building expanded alliances with people with similar
interests in anthropology, sociology, cross-cultural psychology, etc.
would broaden and deepen what is essentially a new discipline.)
Psychology got its start by breaking away from philosophy. A new study
of how people act in the world will likewise have to break away from
"contemporary" psychology and its metatheoretical groundings, not
reluctantly but self-consciously.
I'm trying to do this on my own, having some background in several
fields and a half century of life experience, and it's anything but easy.
The only solution I've found so far is to leave psychology as an
organizational entity and move into health sciences, where the emphasis
is on practical results and I can wear an official hat that says
"psychologist" without being bound hand and foot by the necessity to get
a significant ANOVA result, and where the ability to do creative and
valid qualitative research is rewarded. The current quantitatively
oriented journal review process in psychology is simply a (very
successful) attempt to avoid having to think and make qualitative
judgments in the first place.
The challenge, of course, is for people who are organizationally
part of academia to break out of its constraints. Establishing projects
like the Fifth Dimension is one way, but such opportunities are limited.
Going out "into the world" is the only alternative, and we will just have
to get together and establish a consensus for what types of methodologies
and results are acceptable for *this* type of practice rather than
leaning on what previous researchers considered canonical.
End of sermon. Guess I was just thinking out loud.
Rachel
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