The Disappearance of the Social in American Social Psychology is a critical conceptual history of American social psychology. In this challenging work, John Greenwood demarcates the original conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behaviour and of the discipline of social psychology itself, that was embraced by early twentieth-century American social psychologists. He documents how this fertile conception of social psychological phenomena came to be progressively neglected as the century developed, to the point that scarcely any trace of the original conception of the social remains in contemporary American social psychology. In a penetrating analysis. Greenwood suggests a number of subtle historical reasons why the original conception of the social came to be abandoned, stressing that none of these were particularly good reasons for the neglect of the original conception of the social. By demonstrating the historical contingency of this neglect, Greenwood indicates that what has been lost may once again be regained. This engaging work will appeal to social psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists and historians and philosophers of social and psychological science.
Contents
Preface; Introduction: What happened to the social in Social Psychology?; 1. The Lost World; 2. Wundt and Völkerpsychologie; 3. Durkheim and Social Facts; 4. The Social and the Psychological; 5. Social Psychology and the 'Social Mind'; 6. Individualism and the Social; 7. Crowds, Publics and Experimental Social Psychology; 8. Crossroads; 9. Crisis; 10. The Rediscovery of the Social?; References; Index.
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