Who's Left Out and Who's Still on the Margins? Social Exclusion in Community Psychology Journals

Abstract

Although community psychology claims to have a social justice‐oriented value base, archival studies of publications in the field have identified deficits in marginalized group representation and a tendency for published work to perpetuate social exclusion. This disjuncture has implications for our understanding of power relations in community psychology scholarship. In this article, I analyze who is included and excluded in the participant choices of 895 empirical studies published in 4 international community psychology journals over a decade. The analysis shows that studies largely report on minority world populations that signify privileged social groups or fail to foreground groups affected by processes of social exclusion. I argue that understanding how knowledge creation may perpetuate social exclusion is fundamental to the role of community psychologists. The article highlights the consequences for the field of the choices of groups we choose to study and report on, as well as those we neglect, in knowledge‐making enterprises.

Conundrums in teaching decolonial critical community psychology within the context of neo‐liberal market pressures

“…Graham (2017) and Adams, Dobles, Gómez, Kurtiş, and Molina (2015) argue that despite unprecedented access to information and diffusion of knowledge across the globe, the bulk of work in mainstream psychological science still reflects and promotes the interests of a privileged minority of people in affluent centers of the modern global order. The choices and options available to the MACC program alumni abundantly illustrate this position.…”

“…This resonates with Atallah and Dutta's (2022) argument that decolonial praxis involves the refusal to work within the strict boundaries of psychological professionalization in order to allow for a revisioning of social justice to emerge. Graham (2017) and Adams, Dobles, Gómez, Kurtiş, and Molina (2015) argue that despite unprecedented access to information and diffusion of knowledge across the globe, the bulk of work in mainstream psychological science still reflects and promotes the interests of a privileged minority of people in affluent centers of the modern global order. The choices and options available to the MACC program alumni abundantly illustrate this position.…”

“This isn't a fairy tale we're talking about; this is our real lives”: Community‐orientated responses to address trans and gender diverse homelessness

“…For TGD people, homelessness is an issue that has unceasing real‐life, day‐to‐day—and frequently fatal—implications that cannot be overlooked. Efforts from within community psychology to eliminate homelessness will be in vain so long as TGD voices continue to be excluded from the pages of our publications (see Graham, 2017, for a detailed discussion on social exclusion within community psychology journals), research, and policy. Seeing through the eyes of TGD people living precarious and impoverished lives is crucial if systemic change and effective policy responses are to be made.…”

Representation, Belongingness, and Rumination in Underrepresented Psychology Students

“…Exclusion of marginalized groups is a prevailing problem in our society (e.g., Graham, 2017), and it may be easier to place blame on external structures than look within our own disciplines as sources of perpetuating the problem. One popular societal system is education, where millions of students in the United States continue their educational journeys after high school by pursuing degrees at colleges and universities (National center for education statistics (NCES), 2020).…”