The politics of moving beyond prejudice: A comment on Dixon, Levine, Reicher and Durrheim

This is a book about the diversity and intensity of prejudices against Romani people in a liberal, progressive, democratic, enlarged Europe. This is a book about a European dilemma - how to reconcile the European creed of law, justice and freedom for all, with social and political practices that exclude, debase, degrade, Romani people. This book proposes a critical reframing of understanding prejudice and racism in society: a shift from prejudice as antipathy to prejudice as harm inflicted by indignity. Although social psychology has perhaps the most respected and the most successful tradition of scientific analysis of social issues and social problems, the investigation of prejudices that stem from the societal transformation, diminution or denial of moral worth of human beings (and the various conditions and contexts that create and promote it) remains a marginal concern. Insights from dynamic and influential intellectual currents in social sciences can reinvigorate and reorient a renewed social psychology of racism. By opening intellectual dialogues with kindred fields social psychologists can create broader foundations for the exploration of the various, active, paradoxes lodged at the heart of the social expression of prejudice in liberal democracies.

The broad array of theoretical and empirical traditions that frame this body of work have provided valuable insights, but, not surprisingly, have also exposed inconsistencies and contradictions. In this chapter, we examine one fundamental difference in strategic focus that, on the surface, may appear inconsequential or even complementary, but when examined it is exposed as one case when differences in strategies, typically associated with differences in the perspective of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, by which positive intergroup relation can be achieved, can serve to undermine progress toward intergroup equality an social justice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2009

Feminism & Psychology, 2002

Social Justice Research, 2017

Contemporary social scientists typically define prejudice as an evaluation, negative or positive, of a social group or its members. This conceptualisation can be contrasted with the definition offered by Allport (1954) in his seminal book The Nature of Prejudice: 'an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization … [that] may be directed toward a group as a whole, or toward an individual because he is a member of that group' (p. 9). Kenneth Clark credited Allport with 'establish[ing] the parameters for a scholarly social science approach to the discussion and understanding of this complex human problem' (Allport, 1979, p. ix). Sibley and Barlow's (2017) Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice follows this tradition, illuminating the necessity of diverse approaches for tackling this 'complex human problem' that is prejudice. In the present essay, we offer a critical review of Sibley and Barlow's (2017) edited Handbook. To assess its contribution to the study of prejudice, an overview of the long history of the prejudice literature in psychology, as well as related social science fields, is necessary. The study of prejudice has a longer history in sociology and anthropology compared to psychology. Ethnocentrism, for instance, was introduced by Gumplowicz (1883, 1892), one of the founders of sociology, and expanded on by sociologist Sumner (1906, 1911; as cited by Bizumic, 2014). Gumplowicz identified the merit of a sociological study of intergroup relations, an idea that was later echoed and refined by Sumner. Complementing these works, psychologists adopted a perspective focused primarily on the individual-level causes of prejudice. Psychologists' introduction to the field was their application of recently developed mental abilities tests (

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2004

The following are selected chapters written by Murray Smith from Culture of Prejudice, a collection of essays authored by Judith C. Blackwell, Murray E.G. Smith and John S. Sorenson (Broadview Press 2003, and University of Toronto Press, 2008). Each chapter in this book begins with an aphorism, anecdote or quotation that reflects, illustrates or challenges specific prejudices, myths and ideological notions that are commonplace in Western liberal-democratic, capitalist societies at the beginning of the 21st century. (Note: empirical, historical and statistical data cited in the forty essays comprising this book only rarely extend beyond the year 2000.

Anales De Psicologia, 2011

A prevailing view in psychology is that intergroup disadvantage poses a serious threat to psychological well-being. Lower self-esteem and out-group favoritism are two of the most examined forms of psychological damage thought to follow from intergroup disadvantage. We review theory and research on lower self-esteem and out-group favoritism with close attention to the nature of the evidence suggesting that intergroup disadvantage is detrimental psychologically. We argue that this evidence is not as strong or unambiguous as is widely believed. This has likely led to an underestimation of psychological resistance to disadvantage—that middle ground between the extremes of surviving at subsistence levels of psychological well-being and confronting disadvantage. We propose that greater attention to the psychological meaning that the disadvantaged give their position enables a more accurate assessment of the diverse forms of psychological resistance to intergroup disadvantage.

Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2013

This paper aims to encourage greater reflexivity about the limits of prejudice reduction as a model of social change, particularly when applied to societies characterised by historically entrenched patterns of inequality. We begin by outlining some underlying values and assumptions of this model. We then elaborate how our research on political attitudes in post-apartheid South Africa has led us to question, qualify and sometimes reject those assumptions and move towards a 'contextualist' perspective on the efficacy of different models of social change. We agree that the project of getting us to like one another may be crucial for producing change in some contexts. In other contexts, however, it is an epiphenomenon that distracts psychologists from the main causes of, and solutions to, problems such as race, class, or gender discrimination. In still others, with an irony that is evidenced increasingly by research, prejudice reduction may actually contribute to the very problem it is designed to resolve. That is, it may diminish the extent to which social injustice is acknowledged, rejected and challenged.