Individualism and the social in early American social psychology

Mapping as a Method: History and Theoretical Commitments

“…At this moment in history, however, our discipline, like the broader culture, is engaged in an epistemological move to occlude evidence of the thousands of little threads of the political and social that connect, support and circuit individual and collective lives. Indeed, the rise of theory and method joined in the fetish of individualism and de-historicism has been identified before (Billig 2008;Greenwood 2000). We worry that social psychology has become both a handmaiden to the de-socializing of the self.…”

“…But social psychology, with its epistemological charge to engage the dialectics of self (see Asch 1987;Clegg 2011;DuBois 1903;Greenwood 2000;Hermans 2003;Lewin 1948;Moscovici 1984) has largely avoided this line of methodology in favor of a more positivist and experimental approach, particularly in the United States. It is from this history and puzzling omission that we begin our inquiry into how investigations of "life-space" in general, and creative expressions of this space in specific, can be re-discovered and revitalized as a highly useful qualitative method for researching our increasing complex and "hyphenated" lives.…”

Contextualizing Floyd Allports'sSocial Psychology

“…Methodological individualism, more specifically, has helped to define psychology, where it has seemed to be taken for granted. However, methodological individualism is mentioned regarding ontological and content issues in social psychology and boundary discussions regarding the nature of, and overlaps between, psychology and sociology (Good, 2000;Greenwood, 2000;Parsons & Barber, 1948). …”

A critical gaze and wistful glance atHandbook histories of social psychology: Did the successive accounts by Gordon Allport and successors historiographically succeed?

“…Beginning around World War I, Gordon Allport was largely present, and professionally active, during much of the period when social psychology was becoming defined in North America, and elsewhere, and institutionalized as a field (see Barenbaum, 2000;Cherry, 2000;Chung, 2000;Danziger, 2000;Greenwood, 2000;Nicholson, 2000;Parkovnick, 2000). Prior to his death in 1967, he had monitored the methodological changes and the reactions of social psychology to the rising tide of experimentation.…”

“…For discussions of psychologistic, methodological, political, and moralistic individualisms within social psychology, seeLubek, 1993b;Barenbaum, 2000;Chung, 2000;Danziger, 2000;Greenwood, 2000;Nicholson, 2000;Parkovnick, 2000. …”