Environmentalism: A Challenge to Modernity

This chapter discusses the environmental movement vis-à-vis modernity in the last century. Starting in the early 70s, the contemporary environmental movement consists of articulated collective action opposing polluting agents in different areas of the world, and pursuing a new planetary natural equilibrium. This movement aims to construct a new more balanced model for natural development by scientific and technical means. This movement doesn’t pursue a romantic project to protect nature against modernity and modernization, nor a denial of modernity, nor modernity as a crisis, but a new way to understand and change the world. The environmental movement produces a critical consciousness of both itself and modernity.

Scale-up of prevention programmes: sustained state-wide use of programme delivery software is explained by normalised self-organised adoption and non-adoption

Background Population-level health promotion is often conceived as a tension between “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategy and action. We report behind-the-scenes insights from Australia’s largest ever investment in the “top-down” approach, the $45m state-wide scale-up of two childhood obesity programmes. We used Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) as a template to interpret the organisational embedding of the purpose-built software designed to facilitate the initiative. The use of the technology was mandatory for evaluation, i.e. for reporting the proportion of schools and childcare centres which complied with recommended health practices (the implementation targets). Additionally, the software was recommended as a device to guide the implementation process. We set out to study its use in practice. Methods Short-term, high-intensity ethnography with all 14 programme delivery teams across New South Wales was conducted, cross-sectionally, 4 years after scale-up began. The four key mechanisms of NPT (coherence/sensemaking, cognitive participation/engagement, collective action and reflexive monitoring) were used to describe the ways the technology had normalised (embedded). Results Some teams and practitioners embraced how the software offered a way of working systematically with sites to encourage uptake of recommended practices, while others rejected it as a form of “mechanisation”. Conscious choices had to be made at an individual and team level about the practice style offered by the technology—thus prompting personal sensemaking, re-organisation of work, awareness of choices by others and reflexivity about professional values. Local organisational arrangements allowed technology users to enter data and assist the work of non-users—collective action that legitimised opposite behaviours. Thus, the technology and the programme delivery style it represented were normalised by pathways of adoption and non-adoption. Normalised use and non-use were accepted and different choices made by local programme managers were respected. State-wide, implementation targets are being reported as met. Conclusion We observed a form of self-organisation where individual practitioners and teams are finding their own place in a new system, consistent with complexity-based understandings of fostering scale-up in health care. Self-organisation could be facilitated with further cross-team interaction to continuously renew and revise sensemaking processes and support diverse adoption choices across different contexts.

Dilemmas of resistance: How concerns for cultural identity shape and constrain resistance among minority groups

A major theme in social psychological models of collective action is that a sense of shared social identity is a critical foundation for collective action. In this review, we suggest that for many minority groups, this foundational role of social identity can be double edged. This is because material disadvantage is also often coupled with the historical erosion of key aspects of ingroup culture and other group-defining attributes, constituting a threat to the very sense of who “we” are. This combination presents a set of dilemmas of resistance for minority groups seeking to improve their ingroup’s position. Focusing on the role of ingroup language and history, we present an integrative review of our research on five different dilemmas. We conclude that the central role of social identity in collective action and resistance can itself present challenges for groups whose core sense of who they are has been eroded.

“We Were Loving Warriors!”: A Content Analysis of Black Women’s Resistance Within Psychological Science

Though findings are mixed, collective action engagement has been shown to be positively associated with greater academic success, social support, political efficacy, and well-being with racially marginalized individuals. Despite these findings, however, investigations of collective action engagement with Black American adult women within psychological science are scarce. Consistent with Black feminist thought, the construct of resistance may provide a necessary expansion to include all the ways that Black women actively work to transform their communities toward justice, beyond collective action. To ascertain the breadth and scope of psychological research related to Black women’s resistance (i.e., collective action engagement) to interpersonal discrimination and structural oppression, in this systematic review and content analysis we sought to identify participants’ and scholars’ definitions of resistance, as well as thematic dimensions and specific strategies of resistance. Additionally, we sought to determine the outcomes of resistance that have been assessed and the degree to which psychological health and well-being have been examined as an outcome of resistance within the literature. Findings from the analysis suggest the need for future examinations of the specific influence of Black American women’s collective action engagement and resistance to oppression on their well-being. Additionally, the findings of this review may have important implications for Black women’s well-being and as such, we discuss resistance work as a therapeutic intervention that can be encouraged by therapists, healers, community leaders, and educators.