For an Anti-Capitalist Psychology of Community

Anti-capitalist political struggle is a site of struggling psychologies.

Conscious political action is never far from unconscious desire, and the fight for material justice is always also the fight for dignity and psychological well-being.

Yet, how might community psychologists conceive of their discipline in a way that opposes the very capitalist political economy that, historically, most of the psy-disciplines have bolstered in return for disciplinary legitimacy?  In its consideration of an anti-capitalist psychology of community, this book does not ignore or try to resolve the contradictory position of such a psychology.

Instead, it draws on these contradictions to enliven psychology to the shifting demands - both creative and destructive - of a community-centred anti-capitalism.

Using practical examples, the book deals with the psychological components of building community-centred social movements that challenge neoliberal capitalism as a political system, an ideology, and a mode of governing rationality.

The book also offers several theoretical contributions that grapple with how an anti-capitalist psychology of community can remain attentive to the psychological elements of anti-capitalist struggle; what the psychological can tell us about anti-capitalist politics; and how these politics can shape the psychological.