Understanding and Changing Social Systems

Abstract

A preventive orientation affirms how social systems can be organized to have positive impact on the development of those individuals who make up the social system. The authors are affirming that an ecological approach to social systems is useful to build a community-based community psychology - a psychology that is attentive to the promotion of competent individuals in responsive social systems. The essence of the ecological perspective is to construct an understanding of the itnerrelationships of social structures and social processes of the groups, organizations and communities in which we live and work. The concept of interdependence is the basic axiom of the ecological perspective (Kelly, 1966, 1968; Kelly, 1979a, 1979b, Kelly and Hess, 1987; Kelly, Dassoff, Levin, Schreckengost, Stelzner, and Altman, 1988; Munoz, Snowden, and Kelly, 1979; Westergaard and Kelly, 1990; Trickett, 1984, 1987). Designing change processes, or creating new organizations or services, or reducing the noxious impacts of environmental and social factors, requires a working sense of not only the current interdependencies of people and structures, but the potential of creating, and facilitating new interdependencies.