Thematic Areas

COMMUNITY AGENDAS FOR CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The Third International Conference on Community Psychology will focus on the study of the contributions the diverse community agendas can offer to engage the pressing social problems of the world at the beginning of the XXI Century:

a) Economic polarization and impoverization, inequity, mental and physical deterioration, environmental threats.
b) Challenges related to virtual communities and the social disparities in the information age.
c) Interculturality and its difficulties regarding discrimination, renewed racisms, and migration,
d) Politicization of violence and phenomena of insecurity, corruption, impunity and fundamentalisms.

We welcome proposals that will offer community agendas in the following areas:

Critical thinking on Community Psychology in diverse regions of the world.
Regional and global theoretical trends for the understanding of social and community challenges.
Higher education and non formal training experiences for social activists.
Community Psychology practices or interventions in confronting social crises and emergencies.
Research or evaluation of projects on community agendas related to pressing social problems.
Public policies and Community Psychology: collaboration and conflicts.
Ethical challenges regarding community goals and values.

Brief description of the Social Problems

Community Psychology and Economic Polarization.

Among the many consequences of the neoliberal reconfiguration of the global economy is the exacerbation of economic and social polarization. Today, the worst inequalities are seen not only in the difference of those at the top from those at the bottom, but also in those protected by the economic system from those who are excluded from it.
This section welcomes papers that address the topics of inequality, exclusion, the deterioration of mental and physical health, the deterioration of the environment, and the forces of active resistance.

Community Psychology and New Technologies.

The advent of the internet and other forms of information and communication technologies are profoundly modifying our sense of identity as well as forms of human relations. List serves, electronic social networks, blogs, personal pages, wikis, simulated worlds, and other tools of communications constitute the possibility of ‘virtual communities’, communities that are an unexplored field of study for psychology.
This section includes papers that study these new forms of communities, in particular, their organization and function, social rules, conventions, origins and evolution, and future risks or potential.

Community Psychology and Interculturality.

Today’s society is more mobile. The tendency to deal with differences by subordinating them, and with equality through homogenization, has generated discrimination, racism, and violence. Developing an “interculturality with equality” that goes beyond multiculturalism is a challenge for the field of Community Psychology.
This section welcomes papers that address discrimination, racism, migration, problems of gender, inter-generational problems, alternative lifestyles, and alternative forms of knowledge generation.

Community Psychology and the Politicization of Violence.

Violence, insecurity, and uncertainty dominate individual and collective agendas in practically every corner of the planet. This situation demonstrates an erosion of politics and brings about forms of politicization and construction of subjectivities and social practices that can be destructive or constructive.
In this section we welcome papers that analyze practices that exacerbate or overcome fear, violence and insecurity.