Consciousness In Action Toward An Integral Psychology Of Liberation Transformation

Drawing from psychology, sociology, social theory, integral theory, and years of work in communities-of-struggle, this book proposes a unique approach to personal change and social transformation. With implications for helping professionals, educators, community organizers, activists and others committed to social change, Consciousness-in-Action offers an integral view of well-being and development in the context of institutional and internalized oppression. Consciousness-in-action as a personal and group process is presented as a practice to liberate people from emotional and behavioral reactivity of learned superiority and inferiority based on race, gender, culture, class and other social identities, a process central to social transformation and the evolution of human consciousness.

The notion of culturally relevant leadership learning builds upon the ideas of developing leader identity and leadership capacity of diverse students. Focusing on four areas of leadership learning: education, training, development, and engagement, this volume presents a model of culturally relevant leadership learning in order to develop all student leaders. It proposes infusing the leadership development process with an understanding of how systemic oppression influences educational contexts and with an engagement in and across cultural differences. Our contexts and differences influence knowledge of self, others, cultural contexts and systems, and ultimately students’ knowledge and enactment of leadership.To this end, culturally relevant leadership development programs equip all students with the knowledge and skills to navigate diverse settings and lead culturally diverse groups and teams. Transforming the framework for how leadership programs are designed will result in contextually relevant leadership development programs and an increase in the breadth and depth of a diverse leadership cadre for our society. The Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Student Leadership explores leadership concepts and pedagogical topics of interest to high school and college leadership educators. Issues are grounded in scholarship and feature practical applications and best practices in youth and adult leadership education.

The last twenty years have witnessed an important movement in the aspirations of public policy beyond meeting merely material goals towards a range of outcomes captured through the use of the term 'wellbeing'. Nonetheless, the concept of wellbeing is itself ill-defined, a term used in multiple different contexts with different meanings and policy implications. Bringing together a range of perspectives, this volume examines the intersections of wellbeing and place, including immediate applied policy concerns as well as more critical academic engagements. . Conceptualisations of place, context and settings have come under critical examination, and more nuanced and varied understandings are drawn out from both academic and policy-related research. Whilst quantitative and some policy approaches treat place as a static backdrop or context, others explore the interrelationships of emotional, social, cultural and experiential meanings that are both shape place and are shaped in place. Similarly, wellbeing may be understood as a relatively stable and measurable entity or as a more situation-dependent and relational effect. The book is structured into two sections: essays that explore the dynamics that determine wellbeing in relation to place and essays that explore contested understandings of wellbeing both empirically and theoretically.

Indigenous Counseling is based in universal principals/truths that promote a way to think about how to live in the world and with one another that extends beyond the scope of Western European thought. Individual health and wellness is intricately interwoven into the relationships that we establish on multiple levels in our lives, those that we establish with ourselves, with others, and with the external environments with which we live. From an Indigenous perspective, health and wellness in our individual lives, families, community and world, is the result of ancient knowledge that produces action in a way that is beneficial to all beings on the planet for generations to come. The current social and political record of our country now clearly reveals the result of a paradigm that has outlived its time. No longer can we ignore the core values of our fields of study; we must take a deeper look into the academic endeavors that inform the way we pass our cultures’ values on to successive generations. While it has taken Western Science decades to catch up to Indigenous/Native Science, we now have ample scientific evidence to support claims of interconnectedness on multiple levels of individual and collective health.

Psychologies of liberation are emerging on every continent in response to the collective traumas inflicted by colonialism and globalization. The authors present the theoretical foundation and participatory methodologies that unite these radical interdisciplinary approaches to creating individual and community well-being. They move from a description of the psychological and community wounds that are common to unjust and violent contexts to engaging examples of innovative community projects from around the world that seek to heal these wounds. The creation of public homeplaces, and the work of liberation arts, critical participatory action research, public dialogue, and reconciliation are highlighted as embodying the values and hopes of liberation psychology. Drawing on psychoanalysis, trauma studies, liberation arts, participatory research, and contemporary cultural work, this book nourishes our understanding of and imagination about the kinds of healing that are necessary to the creation of more just and peaceful communities. In dialogue with cultural workers, writers, and visionaries from Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, the United States, and the Pacific Islands, Toward Psychologies of Liberation quickens a dialogical convergence of liberatory psychological theories and practices that will seed individual and community transformation.

Liberation psychology is an approach that aims to understand wellbeing within the context of relationships of power and oppression, and the sociopolitical structure in which these relationships exist. Liberation Practices: Towards Emotional Wellbeing Through Dialogue explores how wellbeing can be enhanced through dialogue which challenges oppressive social, relational and cultural conditions and which can lead to individual and collective liberation. Taiwo Afuape and Gillian Hughes have brought together a variety of contributors, from a range of mental health professions and related disciplines, working in different settings, with diverse client groups. Liberation Practices is a product of multiple dialogues about liberation practices, and how this connects to personal and professional life experience. Contributors offer an overview of liberation theories and approaches, and through dialogue they examine liberatory practices to enhance emotional wellbeing, drawing on examples from a range of creative and innovative projects in the UK and USA. This book clearly outlines what liberation practices might look like, in the context of the historical development of liberation theory, and the current political and cultural context of working in the mental health and psychology field. Liberation Practices will have a broad readership, spanning clinical psychology, psychotherapy and social work.

This book offers new insight into how individuals utilize resilience in the face of structural and social injustice. By drawing on qualitative research methods to foreground the voices of Holocaust survivors and Latinx immigrants to the United States, Critical Resilience and Thriving in Response to Systematic Oppression illustrates the role of cultural values, spirituality, and perseverance in the face of severe institutionalized oppression. Using this to extend current understandings of resilience, the text posits critical resilience as a response to embedded social inequalities and goes on to offer a nuanced reconceptualization of overcoming such hardship, not only as overcoming adversity but as recognizing strengths despite ongoing injustice. It synthesizes feminist and critical theories to elaborate on the framework of critical resilience and thriving. Highlighting the importance of qualitative research on the strengths and resources of oppressed groups, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers with an interest in trauma studies, qualitative methods, and personal development, as well as in mental health research.

By introducing and explaining the intersection of two exciting and important areas of study, this landmark work unleashes their potential to address some of the most complex and globally relevant challenges of our time. In this unique handbook, experts team up to explain the many innovative ways psychology is being applied to promote social justice. The wide-ranging, three-volume work addresses such significant issues as social justice ideology and critical psychology, war and trauma, poverty and classism, environmental justice, and well-being and suffering. It showcases approaches for integrating social justice into psychology, and it examines psychology's application of social justice within special populations, such as sexual minorities, youth, women, disabled persons, prisoners, older adults, people of color, and many others. Chapter authors represent a diversity of perspectives, making the handbook an ideal resource for those who want information on a specific concern as well as for those looking for an introduction to the subject as a whole. Combining the practical with the theoretical, the work provides culturally sensitive tools that can effectively combat injustices locally and globally.