Practices of Psychological Inquiry: The Global Challenge

Abstract

The preceding chapter challenged the guiding assumptions and values underpinning the major practices of Western psychology. If such practices are potentially inimical to dealing with global challenges, what alternatives are invited? Here we turn attention to practices of inquiry. In a globally responsible psychology, how are we to conceptualize the practice of research? As we find, this question cannot be treated separately from assumptions concerning the nature of knowledge. As we propose, to realize the potentials of a value-based progressivism, we must replace an outworn positivism with a social epistemology. In what follows, we explore this epistemological transition, and outline major forms of inquiry thus favored. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)