Quelques leçons d'une histoire de la psychologie sociale/ Some teachings from the history of social psychology

Abstract

ERIKA APFELBAUM SOME TEACHINGS FROM THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Thepaperexploresthe following questions : Whileremainingdedicatedadvocates of the social psychological enterprise, why do we simultaneously have the urge to look back at our past and reflect on the conditions of the construction and elaboration of knowledge in social psychology ? How, and with what effects, do we construct this history ? And what exactly is at stake, both for us and for the discipline, when we are "doing history" ? The paper first examines the "Golden Age" (1945-1970), when social psychologists were primarily concerned with defining their different fields and paradigms, building their theories, and verifying hypotheses. During this period, there was little time and/or need for reflexive thoughts on our own research practice. What was known of our roots was limited to Allport's (1954 ; 1968) "official" history, which was designed to solidify a shared way of thinking within a scientific community and to serve as a warrantor and as a place of memory. This can be contrasted with a second type of historical representation which demonstrates a more critical aim and starts by questioning the underlying fundamental fictions of a discipline. The paper explores the 1970s — the beginning of an era of doubts, critique and crisis — during which the constituted knowledge bases started to be undermined. Such critical history, it is suggested, has a heuristic function for social psychology, and examples are given. Finally, the question is raised about howtoconducthistorical inquiry, especially in aproblematic framework; the development of social psychology in France is cited as an example.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 9 citations exist upstream.