Abstract
The preceding chapter challenged the guiding assumptions and values underpinning the major practices of Western psychology. If such practices are potentially inimical to dealing with global challenges, what alternatives are invited? Here we turn attention to practices of inquiry. In a globally responsible psychology, how are we to conceptualize the practice of research? As we find, this question cannot be treated separately from assumptions concerning the nature of knowledge. As we propose, to realize the potentials of a value-based progressivism, we must replace an outworn positivism with a social epistemology. In what follows, we explore this epistemological transition, and outline major forms of inquiry thus favored.
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Notes
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This dynamic reaches its extreme in the huge expenditure for psychologists to search for principles on which “enhanced interrogation” techniques can be based, and the use of this knowledge to torture (and justify it as humane) military prisoners whose captors have complete control over their lives and deaths, and whose actions are not subject to the rule of law of any nation (Pope 2011).
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Gergen, K.J., Basseches, M. (2014). Practices of Psychological Inquiry: The Global Challenge. In: Mustakova-Possardt, E., Lyubansky, M., Basseches, M., Oxenberg, J. (eds) Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era. International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7391-6_3
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