Community Psychology in Britain can appear to be relatively underdeveloped in comparison to that ... more Community Psychology in Britain can appear to be relatively underdeveloped in comparison to that in other regions. Some reasons for this have been examined elsewhere in an article subtitled "Why this gap in Britain?" (Burton & Kagan, 2003), but in this chapter our focus is more on the description of what community psychology there is in the country, and how it developed. Despite the absence of a highly organised and numerically strong discipline, there are some distinct centres and approaches that mean that it is meaningful to talk, if not about a British community psychology, at least of a family of approaches developed in the societal, academic, professional and lay contexts here. Indeed that relative lack of an organised presence (especially a professional organisation, and training courses) does not mean that community psychological work is not going on here. A theme that has emerged repeatedly in the research we have carried out for this chapter has 1 We are grateful to the following who took part in interviews or submitted their thoughts on the history of community psychology in Britain. Information was obtained by interview and through two email questionnaires. A number of facts were checked with key actors. 2 The first draft of the chapter was written by MB, SB and CH carried out interviews and data gathering from a number of informants, CK revised the draft and provided additional archive material. Bibliographic work was by contributed by MB and CK.
Community Psychology in Britain can appear to be relatively underdeveloped in comparison to that ... more Community Psychology in Britain can appear to be relatively underdeveloped in comparison to that in other regions. Some reasons for this have been examined elsewhere in an article subtitled "Why this gap in Britain?" (Burton & Kagan, 2003), but in this chapter our focus is more on the description of what community psychology there is in the country, and how it developed. Despite the absence of a highly organised and numerically strong discipline, there are some distinct centres and approaches that mean that it is meaningful to talk, if not about a British community psychology, at least of a family of approaches developed in the societal, academic, professional and lay contexts here. Indeed that relative lack of an organised presence (especially a professional organisation, and training courses) does not mean that community psychological work is not going on here. A theme that has emerged repeatedly in the research we have carried out for this chapter has 1 We are grateful to the following who took part in interviews or submitted their thoughts on the history of community psychology in Britain. Information was obtained by interview and through two email questionnaires. A number of facts were checked with key actors. 2 The first draft of the chapter was written by MB, SB and CH carried out interviews and data gathering from a number of informants, CK revised the draft and provided additional archive material. Bibliographic work was by contributed by MB and CK.
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Papers by Carl Harris