PSYCHOLOGY 348
WEEK 1
A History of Community and Community Psychology in South Africa
● Introduction
○ Reasons why studying history is beneficial
■ A historical account can throw light on the socially constructed nature of
psychological terms and concepts
● How meanings and uses of these concepts have changed over
time
■ Individuals must be understood in relation to their social and historical
contexts
● Shows us how certain ideas and trends have developed in
response to social conditions which can assist us in re-evaluating
their appropriateness to current situations and problems
● The Language of Community Psychology
○ Community is a term we use to refer to social groups to which we feel we belong
or to those to which we assume others belong
○ The term was used during Apartheid and was deliberately confused with
legislated racial categories in ways that implied that these racial communities
were different from each other and had their own distinct culture
■ Justified inequalities in resources and power between these groups
■ Roots in political oppression
● Developed in the US in the 1960s and 1970s out of psychologists
concerns of unequal access to mental health care for people living
in poverty who were subjected to the psychological impact of
poverty on their mental health
● Their response was to bring about change by developing models
for intervention that focus on the prevention of mental illness and
changing the conditions in the social environment that threaten
health and well-being
● Took the focus away from intervening at the individual level to
intervention at community settings
○ The goal was therefore to ensure that people have access
to mental health care in the settings they live
○ The mental health model defines community in terms of geographical location
■ No consideration is given to the effects of broader political and economic
conditions
○ The effects of history of the term community would be reproduced even when it
was used with good intentions
, ○ The term community is potentially problematic not only because a community is
sometimes assumed to exist where it in fact does not, but also because it has the
potential to recall Apartheid terminology and essentialist ideas of racial
difference, while at other times implying a romanticised notion of homogenous or
unified communities
● The Emergence of Community Psychology in South Africa
○ Community Psychology developed in response to conditions of oppression and
exclusion
■ In the 1980s at the height of the resistance against the Apartheid regime
■ Originated out of the war zones that black communities had become
■ In response to civil disobedience, government declared a state of
emergency as a result of the protests that had erupted
■ Community psychology focused on trauma counselling and wanted to
ensure that people in these communities had access to mental health
care
○ They argued that the individualisation of pathology served an ideological
purpose, obscuring the need for social and political change
● Social and Political Context and the Response of Organised Psychology
○ South African community psychology began as a loose and diverse collection of
approaches that emerged through an engagement with social psychological
problems largely associated with apartheid society
○ During this time NGOs participated increasingly in organised protests in a
struggle for more equitable access to resources
○ Anti-apartheid health-care professionals began to provide mental health support
services to ex-detainees and their families and victims of state violence,
detention and torture
○ It is often through NGOs that community psychologists interact with community
members and they therefore play a crucial role
● Democratic Change and the Institutionalisation of Community Psychology
○ The transition to a democratic regime brought an upsurge of
community-orientated interventions and research projects aimed at transforming
health and mental health-care provision
○ Community psychologists were now working in collaboration with governmental
structures
○ Community psychology is now taught at universities as well multiple books being
published on the sub-discipline
■ However, there are concerns that the institutionalisation of community
psychology further distances psychologists from ordinary people
● Theoretical and Conceptual Roots of Community Psychology
○ The roots are traced back to Kurt Lewin who attempted to theorise behaviour as
a function of both person and social situation or environment
Lecture Notes
,● Inequality: differential levels of access that South Africans have to resources and how
this impacts health and well-being
● Health and well-being as the product of the social context
● Goal: pursue social justice by challenging the conditions of oppression and inequality
that cause ill health and well-being
● Focuses on identifying the root causes of ill health, rather than merely dealing with the
surface manifestations or symptoms of the problem
● Health and well-being are holistic and multi-dimensional concepts
● These dimensions relate to the intersection between the self, interpersonal relationships,
community and society
● Ecological thinking: locate individuals within multiple levels of their environment
○ Each level of the environment contains risk and protective factors that impact
health and well-being
○ Some of these reside close to the individual and are proximal factors, while
others are further away from the individual and are considered to be distal factors
■ They are located further away from the individual and act via intermediary
causes
● Features of the South African society as it pertains to health and well-being
○ The inequalities exist along geospatial lines
○ These inequalities are severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic
○ Gini coefficient measures income inequality
■ 0.3-0.4: adequate inequality
■ 0.4-0.5: big income gap
■ Above 0.5: severe income gap or a severely unequal income distribution
■ South Africa: 0.63 coupled with a consistently high unemployment rate
that continues to grow
● 2019: 28.18%
○ Challenges facing South Africa highlighted in 2011 by the NDP
■ High unemployment
■ A high disease burden
● Most notably from HIV/AIDS
■ Divisions within society
● Fractured relationships between different groups of South Africans
■ Failure in public services, especially in delivering to the poor
● Protests to receive basic housing, water and sanitation
■ Parts of the community where people are locked into poverty
● Consistently low rates of economic growth in these areas and
limited opportunities for advancement and employment
● This results in people migrating from rural areas to cities in search
of employment opportunities
■ Failure to exploit natural resources well
■ Crumbling infrastructure
, ● Example: on-going problem with electricity supply and
loadshedding
■ Corruption
● This relates to plundering of public resources on multiple levels
● Most recent example is the mismanagement of funds intended to
help the poor communities during the pandemic
○ Selected news headlines threatening the health and well-being of the population
■ Covid-19 impact on
● The economy
● Essential workers in our already fragile public health system
■ Unemployment
■ Hunger
■ Protest for access to basic resources
○ Differences in social contexts accounts for the differences in the health and
well-being of South Africans
○ Social factors that impact health and well-being include
■ Income
■ Levels of education
■ Social class
■ Gender
■ Ethnicity
■ Race
○ Factors that promote health and well-being
■ Identify the prerequisites for health and well-being
● Include access to basic physiological needs
○ For example food security, clothing and shelter
● Physical resources
○ Access to safe and secure housing, clean water and
sanitation
● Social resources
○ A peaceful and stable living environment, stable and
sufficient income and access to educational opportunities
○ Covid-19 and its impact on South African citizens
■ Arrived on 5 March 2020
■ The virus discriminates as well as the lockdown highlighting the fractures
and systems within our society where so many citizens live in conditions
of impoverishment
■ It has exacerbated inequality
■ The main problems that we have seen lie at the basic prerequisites for
health and well-being
■ The poor have lacked the access to basic and key resources
● Water
● The ability to practice social distancing in crowded environments
WEEK 1
A History of Community and Community Psychology in South Africa
● Introduction
○ Reasons why studying history is beneficial
■ A historical account can throw light on the socially constructed nature of
psychological terms and concepts
● How meanings and uses of these concepts have changed over
time
■ Individuals must be understood in relation to their social and historical
contexts
● Shows us how certain ideas and trends have developed in
response to social conditions which can assist us in re-evaluating
their appropriateness to current situations and problems
● The Language of Community Psychology
○ Community is a term we use to refer to social groups to which we feel we belong
or to those to which we assume others belong
○ The term was used during Apartheid and was deliberately confused with
legislated racial categories in ways that implied that these racial communities
were different from each other and had their own distinct culture
■ Justified inequalities in resources and power between these groups
■ Roots in political oppression
● Developed in the US in the 1960s and 1970s out of psychologists
concerns of unequal access to mental health care for people living
in poverty who were subjected to the psychological impact of
poverty on their mental health
● Their response was to bring about change by developing models
for intervention that focus on the prevention of mental illness and
changing the conditions in the social environment that threaten
health and well-being
● Took the focus away from intervening at the individual level to
intervention at community settings
○ The goal was therefore to ensure that people have access
to mental health care in the settings they live
○ The mental health model defines community in terms of geographical location
■ No consideration is given to the effects of broader political and economic
conditions
○ The effects of history of the term community would be reproduced even when it
was used with good intentions
, ○ The term community is potentially problematic not only because a community is
sometimes assumed to exist where it in fact does not, but also because it has the
potential to recall Apartheid terminology and essentialist ideas of racial
difference, while at other times implying a romanticised notion of homogenous or
unified communities
● The Emergence of Community Psychology in South Africa
○ Community Psychology developed in response to conditions of oppression and
exclusion
■ In the 1980s at the height of the resistance against the Apartheid regime
■ Originated out of the war zones that black communities had become
■ In response to civil disobedience, government declared a state of
emergency as a result of the protests that had erupted
■ Community psychology focused on trauma counselling and wanted to
ensure that people in these communities had access to mental health
care
○ They argued that the individualisation of pathology served an ideological
purpose, obscuring the need for social and political change
● Social and Political Context and the Response of Organised Psychology
○ South African community psychology began as a loose and diverse collection of
approaches that emerged through an engagement with social psychological
problems largely associated with apartheid society
○ During this time NGOs participated increasingly in organised protests in a
struggle for more equitable access to resources
○ Anti-apartheid health-care professionals began to provide mental health support
services to ex-detainees and their families and victims of state violence,
detention and torture
○ It is often through NGOs that community psychologists interact with community
members and they therefore play a crucial role
● Democratic Change and the Institutionalisation of Community Psychology
○ The transition to a democratic regime brought an upsurge of
community-orientated interventions and research projects aimed at transforming
health and mental health-care provision
○ Community psychologists were now working in collaboration with governmental
structures
○ Community psychology is now taught at universities as well multiple books being
published on the sub-discipline
■ However, there are concerns that the institutionalisation of community
psychology further distances psychologists from ordinary people
● Theoretical and Conceptual Roots of Community Psychology
○ The roots are traced back to Kurt Lewin who attempted to theorise behaviour as
a function of both person and social situation or environment
Lecture Notes
,● Inequality: differential levels of access that South Africans have to resources and how
this impacts health and well-being
● Health and well-being as the product of the social context
● Goal: pursue social justice by challenging the conditions of oppression and inequality
that cause ill health and well-being
● Focuses on identifying the root causes of ill health, rather than merely dealing with the
surface manifestations or symptoms of the problem
● Health and well-being are holistic and multi-dimensional concepts
● These dimensions relate to the intersection between the self, interpersonal relationships,
community and society
● Ecological thinking: locate individuals within multiple levels of their environment
○ Each level of the environment contains risk and protective factors that impact
health and well-being
○ Some of these reside close to the individual and are proximal factors, while
others are further away from the individual and are considered to be distal factors
■ They are located further away from the individual and act via intermediary
causes
● Features of the South African society as it pertains to health and well-being
○ The inequalities exist along geospatial lines
○ These inequalities are severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic
○ Gini coefficient measures income inequality
■ 0.3-0.4: adequate inequality
■ 0.4-0.5: big income gap
■ Above 0.5: severe income gap or a severely unequal income distribution
■ South Africa: 0.63 coupled with a consistently high unemployment rate
that continues to grow
● 2019: 28.18%
○ Challenges facing South Africa highlighted in 2011 by the NDP
■ High unemployment
■ A high disease burden
● Most notably from HIV/AIDS
■ Divisions within society
● Fractured relationships between different groups of South Africans
■ Failure in public services, especially in delivering to the poor
● Protests to receive basic housing, water and sanitation
■ Parts of the community where people are locked into poverty
● Consistently low rates of economic growth in these areas and
limited opportunities for advancement and employment
● This results in people migrating from rural areas to cities in search
of employment opportunities
■ Failure to exploit natural resources well
■ Crumbling infrastructure
, ● Example: on-going problem with electricity supply and
loadshedding
■ Corruption
● This relates to plundering of public resources on multiple levels
● Most recent example is the mismanagement of funds intended to
help the poor communities during the pandemic
○ Selected news headlines threatening the health and well-being of the population
■ Covid-19 impact on
● The economy
● Essential workers in our already fragile public health system
■ Unemployment
■ Hunger
■ Protest for access to basic resources
○ Differences in social contexts accounts for the differences in the health and
well-being of South Africans
○ Social factors that impact health and well-being include
■ Income
■ Levels of education
■ Social class
■ Gender
■ Ethnicity
■ Race
○ Factors that promote health and well-being
■ Identify the prerequisites for health and well-being
● Include access to basic physiological needs
○ For example food security, clothing and shelter
● Physical resources
○ Access to safe and secure housing, clean water and
sanitation
● Social resources
○ A peaceful and stable living environment, stable and
sufficient income and access to educational opportunities
○ Covid-19 and its impact on South African citizens
■ Arrived on 5 March 2020
■ The virus discriminates as well as the lockdown highlighting the fractures
and systems within our society where so many citizens live in conditions
of impoverishment
■ It has exacerbated inequality
■ The main problems that we have seen lie at the basic prerequisites for
health and well-being
■ The poor have lacked the access to basic and key resources
● Water
● The ability to practice social distancing in crowded environments
