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Race

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Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology

Introduction

From its inception psychology has played a central role in producing “race” as a valid concept and object of study and also, more recently, has contributed to attempts to deconstruct the term and show its epistemological violence (Teo, 2011). Today race continues to be a powerful and resilient taken-for-granted concept which institutes and preserves inequalities between certain groups. There are numerous ways in which the discipline of psychology has been implicated in the debates related to race (and racism) and its continuing history.

Definition

The very issue of how race is defined has been central to debates regarding race and racism.From a critical psychological perspective, race is a social and ideological construction which has grave material and psychological consequences for all social groups. It is a disturbing example of how social science has produced a common sense, taken-for-granted system of classifying people which serves to privilege some social groups...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Population Health Sciences & Education, St George’s, University of London, Cranmer Terrace, London, UK

    Bipasha Ahmed

  2. Institute of Social Psychology, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, UK

    Caroline Howarth

Authors
  1. Bipasha Ahmed
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  2. Caroline Howarth
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Correspondence to Bipasha Ahmed .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Thomas Teo

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Ahmed, B., Howarth, C. (2014). Race. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_257

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_257

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-5582-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-5583-7

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