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A New Psychology for a New Society: How Psychology Can Profit from Science and Technology Studies

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Psychological Studies of Science and Technology

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Abstract

How well is psychology equipped with vocabulary and methods to examine itself as an object of science studies? The position of psychological expertise as a distant judging observer offering imaginaries of human lives as homogenous and characterised by predictable features has become inadequate for contemporary lives in which categories and interrelations are increasingly challenged, and new vulnerabilities, mobilities and solidarities emerge. In order to respond to contemporary challenges and contribute to their resolution, psychology needs to reinvent itself. The notions of symmetry, general symmetry and multiplicity developed in Science and Technology Studies are helpful to equip psychology with a self-reflexive vocabulary. It can enable psychology it to examine its own modes of contributions and its adequacy to meet the challenges of human lives in contemporary society.

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  1. 1.

    I here refer to the 1991 2nd edition.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Science, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Estrid Sørensen

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  1. Estrid Sørensen
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Correspondence to Estrid Sørensen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Kieran C. O’Doherty

  2. Department of Psychology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, USA

    Lisa M. Osbeck

  3. Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Ernst Schraube

  4. Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada

    Jeffery Yen

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Sørensen, E. (2019). A New Psychology for a New Society: How Psychology Can Profit from Science and Technology Studies. In: O’Doherty, K.C., Osbeck, L.M., Schraube, E., Yen, J. (eds) Psychological Studies of Science and Technology. Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25308-0_9

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