We live in troubled times: COVID-19, police racism and climate change are just some of the challenges we are currently facing. Never has there been such a need for a new politic – nor such an opportunity for one.
To create a world in which people thrive, we need to know what thriving is. Over the past century, psychotherapy – and its parent discipline, psychology – has built up a rich, vibrant and highly practical understanding of human wellbeing and distress. This book shows why we need, and can create, a progressive politics that is profoundly informed by insights from the psychotherapeutic and psychological domain, moving us from a politics of blame to a politics of understanding.
In this vision of the world – surrounded by a culture of radical acceptance – all individuals can live fulfilling lives. We need progressive political forces to develop greater understandings of psychological needs and processes; and to work with others in a spirit of collaboration, dialogue and respect.
education of the masses through social media. Jo has a non-binary gender identity, uses the pro-nouns ‘they/them’, and engages in a monthly transgender support meeting. Jo would like to form a transgender environmentalist network that better represents their gender and environmentalist identities. The members of CLUW and Jo are what we term social change makers (SCMs), individuals engaged – often in multiple ways – usually with at least one social change organisation (SCO). Jo’s case in particular illustrates how participation in a seemingly non
Action and helping it to successfully mobilise thousands of SCMs. We have opened this chapter with this vignette of John Stewart’s involvement in a range of SCOs because his work neatly illustrates the ways in which the outcomes of SCOs are diverse. SCOs influence and are influenced by the lives of individuals engaged in them, who consequently come to reflect on and participate in different forms of organising for change. SCOs also influence the ways in which other SCOs develop, as well as contribute to broader social change processes. SCMs like Stewart broker
11 TWO Women and social change Elisabetta Ruspini Despite all these radical [social and economic] changes … there has been relatively little change in two important social relationships … the first is that of the continuing social inequality between women and men. The second sex is still precisely that: throughout the West, women have a lower level of professional education than men, they are paid less, have less social power, and are still assumed to have the primary … responsibility for the care of children and dependent relatives. The ‘new’ woman remains just
29 THREE gender and social change This book is concerned with the ways that lives unfold over time and identities change as young people grow into adulthood. Questions of gender are at the centre of the account: what it means to move from a being a boy into a man, from a girl into a woman. This chapter sketches the conceptual landscape for the book, framing the overall project and introducing a theoretical vocabulary. It is organised in two parts: the first considers the argument that gender identities have been subject to a process of detraditionalisation
also resulted in populist counter-movements, which seek to defend family values and attack ‘gender ideology’ ( Pavan, 2020 ; Graff and Korolczuk, 2021 ). This vignette illustrates that SCOs are both shaping and shaped by broader political and historical processes. As we are arguing throughout this book, we consider SCOs and SCMs as co-creators of social change and thus partially responsible for bringing about social change. In this chapter, we focus on the historically variable contexts in which SCOs and SCMs are active. Scholars have adopted different ways of
107 FIVE Social change through collective action: campaigns and mass mobilisations Introduction Collective action is a crucial aspect of feminist activities aimed at securing transformational social change including campaigns and mass mobilisations to achieve specific goals that can cover housing issues, social problems including poverty, transportation and the formulation and implementation of community development, sustainability and resilience strategies. This chapter draws on case studies to consider how communities enhance their capacities to form
Social change and later life 1 ONE social change and later life introduction The study of social change has always been at the heart of the sociological enterprise and the last decades of the 20th century have provided considerable material to work on. Not only did industrialisation and urbanisation reach unprecedented levels, but the integration of the world at economic, technological and cultural levels created the globalised conditions that transformed previous experiences of international linkages (Held et al, 1999). Within these macro social processes
1 Understanding families and social change ONE Understanding families and social change This is a book about families and how they have changed since 1960. It is based on the findings of two studies of the family in Swansea (in western industrial South Wales), one carried out in 1960 (Rosser and Harris, 1965), the other in the first few years of the 21st century. It therefore provides a unique perspective on how families in a particular place have been affected by the massive social changes of recent decades. In the 1960 study, Rosser and Harris charted
societal aspects, especially regarding the imaginary. Such changes may partly imply a true shift of modernity, though how this will develop is not as yet defined. Political choices and issues underpin the development of my argument. How to answer to them cuts across the text and in the last paragraphs this is given a specific formulation in relation to possible further developments of modernity, within a critical theory, as broadly conceived, perspective. Not all pandemics have resulted in far-reaching social change. This looks likely now, especially since populations
