Keynote by Severin Hornung¹
¹ Universität Innsbruck, Austria
TIME: Tuesday, 14 July, 09:00 – 10:00
Location: HS1
Session: Keynote 1
Abstract
Emergence of the critical paradigm in applied psychology is dialectically analyzed, making the case for a reinvigorated approach more focused on the radical structuralist critique of the political economy, yet also more integrative with regard to allied critical social sciences. The socio-critical stream in work and organizational psychology established within the last decade is argued to be constrained by its disciplinary and topical boundaries as well as internal rifts and breaking points. Extending its foundations towards critical applied psychology more broadly includes political, environmental, community, educational, health, and clinical subfields. Further, this repositioning aims to intensify interdisciplinary cooperation with critical streams in sociology, political science, management and organization studies, human geography, anthropology, and allied social sciences. Drawing on metatheory of social science paradigms, conceptions of critical work and organizational psychology are reviewed and generalized to applied psychology. Suggested general definitional features are socio-critical, dialectical, deconstructionist, self-reflexive, emancipatory, and radical humanist. Major disciplinary influences of critical social theory, critical psychologies, and critical management studies are noted. Based on this conceptualization, contestations of the mainstream are reviewed. Contradictions of the critical paradigm are analyzed as pragmatic paradoxes of inclusion-exclusion (diversity vs. alignment), reform-transformation (micro- vs. macro-emancipation), continuity-disruption (reproduction vs. counterhegemony), and recognition-prefiguration (results vs. process). Associated struggles are analyzed as external (centripetal) and internal (centrifugal) force fields of stabilizing and disintegrating tendencies, comprising both paradigmatic (substantive) and political (interest-guided) components. For instance, tensions are seen in pseudo-antagonistic power-dependence relationships with the mainstream (e.g., funding, careers, publication opportunities) and unacknowledged internal reproduction of external pressures (e.g., micro-politics, power struggles). These tendencies can be interpreted in the sense of the “iron law of oligarchy”, haunting alternative organizations in ideologically hostile environments. Possible trajectories comprise assimilation, fragmentation, consolidation, and dissemination of the critical paradigm. Discussed are action strategies to extend the impact and survival of critical applied psychology in the context of increasing political pressure and austerity in an era of socio-ecological and political-economic polycrisis.
Bio
Severin Hornung is professor of applied psychology at the University of Innsbruck focusing on social-ecological responsibility and sustainability in work, economy, and society. He is a co-founder of the and the local Innsbruck Group on Critical Research in Work and Organizational Psychology (I-CROP) and the international network for the Future of Work and Organizational Psychology (FoWOP). His research interests include the neoliberal degradation and envisioned socio-ecological transformation of work, organizations, and society in the era of polycrisis, emphasizing issues of power, ideology, inequality, justice, and ethics.