The Quest for a Liberating Community Psychology: An Overview

The diverse set of papers in this Special Issue on the psychology of liberation affirm the importance community psychology has long attached to social justice and social context. The papers also reflect the issues that arise from the unique confluence of history, culture, and the exercise of social power in different nations, and among groups and settings within nations. As coeditors we had various goals in mind when we began work on this issue. One was to push the theoretical and conceptual contributions of community psychology further. We were interested in (a) examining definitions of oppression and liberation, (b) incorporating “traditional” concepts of psychology such as emotions, cognition, and identity into a psychology of liberation, (c) further developing concepts relevant to a liberation psychology— diversity, action-research, resistance, and (d) exploring variations across populations, settings, and nations. Our interest was not in creating a unified theory of liberation psychology prematurely; on the contrary, the aim was to highlight how liberation and oppression vary by historical circumstances and by settings. Another goal was to explore how liberation psychology might lead to a new understanding or construction of our psychosocial realities. It may be that sexism, racism, and colonization, to name but a few oppressive processes, are different in light of a liberation psychology perspective. Our third goal was to examine the effects of liberation psychology on research and intervention activity. What are the promising strategies for gaining knowledge and generat-