The editorial team of JCASP has just published an editorial that outlines the scope and the new orientations of the Journal. More focus on social impact, and on relevance for the communities, openness to different theoretical approaches and research (and intervention) methodologies and author-friendly approach. Read the editorial here or download it here and see how you can contribute to the journal. Thanks to the editorial team, and in particular to the editor Loris Vezzali for sharing.
The editorial of Loris Vezzali and Orla Muldoon opens a debate on the pages of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology (JCASP) concerning the value of applied and field research and of social impact for the journal. The editorial can be found here.
A new position paper by Donata Francescato based on her ECPA webinar, just published on CPGP. Enjoy!
Francescato, D. (2020). Why we need to build a planetary sense of community. Community Psychology in Global Perspective, 6(2/2), 140-164.
Quarantine measures caused by COVID-19 sanitary emergency placed communities and populations in new and unprecedented situations and required huge skills to adapt to new ways of living private and public spaces, which arose risks bounded to social isolation and relational breaks. Relational networks, including social services supporting people’s life plans, have been hardly challenged.
As it happens in every emergency, the psychological impacts can be different in shape and depth and can bring different effects in community lives. Thus, in this specific emergency the collective dimension in the one risking more than others to get lost, as it could be mashed by the adherence to preventive norms aimed at protecting from the contagion risks. The built of new narrations and interventions, as studies and research papers referring to this recent emergency show, is to be added to this.
Thus, this call is aimed at understanding Community Psychologists’ reading of social phenomena and community ties which can explain the connectedness, closeness, and reciprocal support emerged during this pandemic. The attempt is to keep alive a vision about the interdependency among the different levels implied in giving meaning to these phenomena.
Re-thinking the interconnections between private, common, and public dimensions can contribute in grasping the meanings the sanitary emergency bounded to COVID-19 breakthrough has from several viewpoints. Have quarantine measures strengthened the berths to social and community dimensions? Which social impacts will it have on building a public opinion? Has what we mean as quality of life gone through any transformation?
Within this perspective, the analysis of community dynamics guaranteeing the success or failure of the policies adopted in several sectors – e.g., work, sanitary, education ones – and aspects boosting communities – e.g., social cohesion, participation, civic engagement, styles of responsible togetherness – are strongly needed with reference to this recent emergency.
Theoretical and methodological reflections about giving meaning to this emergency show that collective paths did not stop but rather shaped and enlarged during this time, to give strength and acknowledge traditional and unusual community competences. Indeed, the collective dimension played a critical role in guaranteeing the effectiveness of individuals’ and politicians’ choices (Jetten et al., 2020) regardless of sanitary solutions, on which future chances to contain contagion spreads will depend.
Communities are re-discovering their intermediate role in the closeness/distance dynamics between individual and social destinies. With reference to this, the call aims at welcoming social work professionals’ interventions giving concrete answers to old and new needs, which have been aggravated by the extraordinary and unprecedented challenge communities have faced and are still facing. What emerges is not a pro-gnosis or a dia-gnosis, but a RE-gnosis (Horx, 2020) meant as answers giving a totally new meaning to the capability to imagine and signify the future with reference to communities’ destinies more than to exact predictions.
All the contributions will undergo a double-blind peer review evaluation process, as requested by this Journal.
Everyone being interested in submitting a contribution can preliminarily send an abstract to the Guest Editors (fortuna.procentese@unina.it; cinzia.novara@unipa.it) by September 20th, 2020.
The deadline for contributions submissions is December 30th, 2020.
EFPA has released some basic recommendations on the social effects on communities in relation to the Coronavirus spread based on a community psychology perspective. The document remarks that Community Psychology can offer specialist competencies and tools that are useful for real problems both locally and on a global scale.
The SC Community Psychology has together with our Associate member the European Community Psychology Association ECPA prepared this information and converted into an EFPA position statement. The document is available here and on the EFPA Hub about the COVID-Crisis.
Detention centers, such as Ponte Galeria perpetuate injustice. In Ecology of Sites of Confinement: Everyday Life in a Detention Center for Illegalized Non‐citizens, Esposito et al. provides an “inside look” into a large Italian immigrant detention center.
Bernd Roehrle
Jacqui Akhurst
Nicholas Carr
Isabel M. Herrera Sánchez
Caterina Arcidiacono
Rebecca Lawthom
Wolfgang Stark
EFPA Standing Committee on Community Psychology
This report from the Standing Committee on Community Psychology of the European Federation of Psychological Association provides an overview of higher education in Community Psychology (CP) in 14 European countries. Our findings show that 10 countries have some kind of CP teaching in their educational system. Twenty European universities offer a CP‐oriented Master degree, two universities at the Bachelor level and 16 universities also have CP‐oriented Ph.D. programmes. The profiles of the universities focus on two areas: Community psychology in a pure form and a combination of social psychology and community psychology. The other universities vary between clinical, organisational psychology, and a pedagogical focus. Within a certain European emphasis, these universities are analysing and changing the social conditions of community life and mental health. The responding universities failed to report adequately on comprehensive core competences and key elements in CP. To compensate for this deficit, the Standing Committee on Community Psychology proposes to develop a primer of basic CP competences for inclusion in programmes like EuroPsy.
The paper can be read here.
Community Psychology in Global Perspective publishes work that is of relevance to community psychologists as well as scholars and professionals from a diverse array of other backgrounds with shared interested in community-focused work.
Community Psychology in Global Perspective is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to research, theory and intervention, and review articles exploring human interactions in community settings across the globe. Its special focus is on making explicit the ways in which culture acts as a framework organizing and guiding our experiences, utilizing ecological perspectives to enhance our understanding and promotion of individual and community well-being, and advancing work aimed at the creation of positive social change and social justice.
The journal is international in scope, reflecting the main concerns of social scientists and community practitioners worldwide. Community Psychology in Global Perspective welcomes contributions from a variety of theoretical approaches across disciplines (psychology, sociology, political sciences, urban planning, social work and others), although it especially encourages submissions of field-based, culturally situated research and intervention.
The content of the journal includes:
Contributions are invited on all aspects of Community Psychology, including, but not limited to: Community research methods · Participatory action research · Prevention & Wellbeing · Community program evaluation · Community development · Power & Empowerment · Active citizenship & Collective action · Minorities & Social inclusion · Gender · Migration & Intercultural relations · Social justice · Critical community psychology · Ecological clinical intervention
Community Psychology is an open access journal, free of charge to authors, and published online twice per year.
Community Psychology in Global Perspective is covered by following indexing and abstracting databases:
SCOPUS; PsycINFO; PsycArticles-ProQuest Psychology Journals collection-DOAJ: Directory of OPEN ACCESS Journal; GOOGLE Scholar; ULRICH’S: International Database
