The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology

This handbook is the second edition of a highly cited and impactful collection, which was the first to bring together the latest theory and research on critical approaches to social psychological challenges. Edited by a leading authority in the field, the volume helped to establish critical social psychology as a discipline of study, distinct from mainstream social psychology. The book helps to explain how critical approaches to social processes and phenomena are essential to fully understanding them and covers the main research topics in basic and applied social psychology, including social cognition, identity and social relations, alongside overviews of the main theories and methodologies that underpin critical approaches. This second edition adds four new chapters – from two UK authors, one US and one from New Zealand - on the subjects of Indigenous Psychologies, Māori communities, Deleuze and arts-based research. It also adds a new introduction from the editor.

This volume features a range of leading authors working on key social psychological issues, and highlights a commitment to a social psychology which shuns psychologisation, reductionism and neutrality. It provides invaluable insight into many of the most pressing and distressing issues we face in modern society, including the migrant and refugee crises affecting Europe; the devaluing of black lives in the USA; and the poverty, ill-health, and poor mental well-being that has resulted from ever-increasing austerity efforts in the UK.

Including sections on critical perspectives, critical methodologies, and critical applications, this volume also focuses on issues within social cognition, self and identity. This one-stop handbook is an indispensable resource for a range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of psychology and sociology, and particularly those with an interest in social identity, power relations, and critical interventions.

Brendan Gough  is a critical social psychologist and qualitative researcher based at Leeds Beckett University who primarily researches and publishes on men and masculinities. He is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Qualitative Research in Psychology, is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Social & Personality Psychology Compass and was formerly an associate editor of the journal Psychology of Men & Masculinities. He has worked with several colleagues to produce a number of books over the years. Recent books include The Routledge International Handbook of Innovative Qualitative Psychological Research. (2023, with E. Tseliou, C. Demuth & E. Georgaca) and (In)Fertile Male Bodies: Masculinities and Lifestyle Management in NeoLiberal Times. (2022, with E. Hanna). In 2016 he was awarded a fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences.