Call For Papers (Extended Deadline) Marxism and Psychology Conference

In order to encourage more submissions
for the conference, we have decided to extend the deadline to February 1,
2010. Please find below the extended call (including plenary bios). Please
distribute this call as widely as possible.

Call For Papers (Extended Deadline)

Marxism and Psychology Conference

The University of Prince Edward Island
August 5-7, 2010
Website: http://vre.upei.ca/mprg/
Contact: marfken[at]upei.ca

Submission Deadline: February 1, 2010 (Extended Deadline)

In the history of social thought, it is difficult to find a more divisive
figure than Karl Marx. For many, the mere mention of his name conjures up
images of totalitarian regimes dominating nearly every aspect of an
individual’s existence. Yet for others, Marx’s critique of the capitalist
mode of production draws attention to the fact that our beliefs, thoughts,
and desires inevitably emerge against the background of specific cultural,
historical, and social practices.

The purpose of this conference is to bring students, scholars, and
activists together to discuss exciting issues at the intersection of
Marxism and Psychology. While it is clear that a number of organizations
are making important contributions to this area of study, we believe that
the time is right to open up a space for students, scholars, and activists
from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to reflect on the role that
Marxism can play in psychological theory, research, and practice.

In bringing together scholars at the forefront of research in Marxism and
Psychology, we also hope to give new students and activists an opportunity
to interact with individuals who have made significant contributions
within this area. By organizing an impressive collection of plenary
participants, we hope to foster an environment where students, activists,
and scholars can identify potential graduate advisors, research
assistants, and participatory investigators. This year, confirmed plenary
participants include:

Kum-Kum Bhavnani is Professor of Sociology, Women's Studies and Global
Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she also
chairs the minor in Women, Culture, Development. Her Undergraduate
(Bristol) and Masters (Nottingham) degrees are in Psychology, while her
PhD (King's College, Cambridge) is in Social and Political Sciences. For
the past 25 years, Kum-Kum has built on her passion for critical/Marxist
psychology and ethnography, and presently works in cultural studies,
women's studies, and Third World Development Studies. Her recent work
includes a 2006 feature length award-winning documentary film, The Shape
of Water narrated by Susan Sarandon, which reveals the intimate stories of
women in Brazil, India, Jerusalem and Senegal as they create social
justice.

John Cromby is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Loughborough University
UK. His PhD was from the University of Nottingham Medical School, and he
has worked in drug addiction, learning disability and mental health
settings. His current research explores the interpenetration of the body
and social influence, with a frequent focus on emotion, affect and feeling
and with respect to such substantive topics as ‘depression’, ‘paranoia’
and chronic fatigue syndrome. His political sympathies lie with the
libertarian socialist milieu, and he has been particularly influenced by
Debord, Vaneigem, Holzkamp, Vygotsky and Foucault, as well as Marx. He is
a co-editor of the journal Subjectivity

Raquel Guzzo originally graduated from Pontifical Catholic University of
Campinas, Brazil with a degree in Psychology. She went on to complete her
Masters and Doctorate in School Psychology at the University of São Paulo
with a post-doctorate in Prevention at the Center for Community Studies at
the University of Rochester, USA. She is currently a Professor of
Psychology at the Catholic University of Campinas and a member of the
International Committee for Liberation Social Psychology. She also leads a
research group on psychological intervention, subject, and liberation
supported by the National Council of Research.

Lois Holzman is a Marxist activist/scholar who has worked for 30 years to
build bridges between university-based and community-based practices,
bringing the traditions and innovations of each to the other. She is
co-founder (with Fred Newman) and director of the East Side Institute for
Group and Short Term Psychotherapy in New York City. As leading proponents
of a cultural approach to human learning and development, they have made
the insights and discoveries of Lev Vygotsky, Karl Marx and Ludwig
Wittgenstein relevant to the fields of psychotherapy, youth development,
education and organizational and community development in their ongoing
work to create a postmodernized Marxist methodology, known as social
therapeutics. As author, lecturer and trainer, Holzman is in the thick of
debates among Marxists, postmodernists, activity theorists, critical
psychologists and other philosophically and politically informed scholars
on how to transform psychology into a radically humane and empowering
practice. Her latest book, Vygotsky at Work and Play, relates the
discoveries and insights of Vygotsky to ordinary people and their
communities and shows performance methodology at work in key learning
environments: psychotherapy, classrooms, out-of-school youth programs, and
the workplace.

Gordana Jovanovic is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Department
of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia. She
received her PhD from the University of Belgrade where she has taught
courses in the History of Psychology, General Psychology, Personality
Theory, and Qualitative Research. She was awarded a grant by the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation (Germany) for her research stays at the Johann
Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt and the Free University in Berlin.
She was also awarded a study visit grant by the British Psychological
Society. She is the author of Simbolizovanje i racionalnost, 1984 (in
Serbian, Symbolization and Rationality) and Frojd i moderna subjektivnost,
1997 (in Serbian, Freud and Modern Subjectivity) and various contributions
in German and English. Her current research and writing interests are in
the areas of alternative scientific approaches, with an emphasis on the
critical examination of the role of social sciences, particularly
psychology in reproducing and strengthening existing structures of
exploitation and subjugation of people. In both her teaching and research,
she emphasizes the importance of developing psychology as a critical human
science. She is member of the International Network of Engineers and
Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) Executive Committee since 2003
and vice-chair since 2005.

Athanasios Marvakis is a German educated psychologist (University of
Tübingen) and since 2007 Associate Professor in Clinical Social Psychology
at the School of Primary Education of the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki/Greece. His interests revolve around psychology and its
relations with the various forms of social inequalities and social
exclusion (e.g., racism, nationalism, ethnicism, multiculturalism),
including youth as a social group (political orientations, youth and
racism in Europe) and migrants in Greece. The last years he has started to
be engaged in the critical psychology of the “schooling-complex”.

Morten Nissen is Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor at the Department
of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, in community and educational
psychology. His research is about forms of collectivity in connection with
practical intervention. Theoretically, subjectivity is regarded as a
participatory relationship (I and we) that is constituted and develops in
various kinds of production - meaning both creation and staging.
Empirically, the field is social work with young people using drugs and/or
other kinds of crisis or problems. This is connected with methodological
reflections on practice research viewed as the social production of
prototypes in which psychology and other disciplines participate. This
approach is developed from the cultural-historical tradition’s
continuation as critical psychology, inspired by much social theory that
takes up the Hegelian-(or anti-Hegelian)-Marxist legacy of an epistemology
of practice. Morten takes this to be a politicizing and trans-disciplinary
approach to issues that people define as psychological. Morten is editor
of the open access journal Outlines – Critical Practice Studies and member
of the executive committee of ISCAR.

Ian Parker is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). He was co-founder in 1991, and
is currently co-director (with Erica Burman) of the Discourse Unit at MMU
([ http://www.discourseunit.com/ ]www.discourseunit.com). His research and
writing has been in the field of psychoanalysis, psychology and social
theory, with a particular focus on discourse, critical psychology, mental
health and political practice. He co-edited (with Russell Spears) the
edited volume on Marxism and psychology, Psychology and Society: Radical
Theory and Practice (Pluto Press, 1996), and Marxism underpins his
critique of psychology in Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to
Emancipation (Pluto Press, 2007).

Carl Ratner is a cultural psychologist who uses Marxism as his cultural
theory. He shows how Marxist cultural theory generates unique insights
into culture and into the relation between culture and psychology. Carl
also explores political aspects of psychological theories and
methodologies, and he shows how political insights illuminate scientific
aspects of the theories and methodologies. He has critiqued scientific and
political shortcomings of mainstream psychology, evolutionary psychology,
cross-cultural psychology, positivistic methodology, post modernism, and
individualistic-subjectivistic approaches to cultural psychology. Carl
utilizes the theory of Vygotsky to extend Marxist cultural theory to
psychology. His latest book is Cultural Psychology: A Perspective on
Psychological Functioning and Social Reform (LEA). His forthcoming book is
Macro Cultural Psychology: A Political Philosophy of Mind (Oxford UP).

Hans Skott-Myhre is an interdisciplinary cultural theorist whose primary
research area is the development of models of child and youth work that
promote new political possibilities for youth-adult collaboration that
challenge global capitalist empire. His research includes the
investigation of new forms of community, identity, body practices, and
creative expression that hold potential for resistance or flight for youth
and adults working towards common political purposes.

Thomas Teo is Associate Professor in the History and Theory of Psychology
Program at York University and current editor of the Journal of
Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. He has published historical and
theoretical articles in Theory & Psychology, New Ideas in Psychology,
Canadian Psychology, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,
History of Psychology, History of the Human Sciences, etc. The Critique of
Psychology: From Kant to Postcolonial Theory, his latest monograph, was
published in 2005. Varieties of theoretical psychology: International
philosophical and practical concerns, his latest co-edited book, was
published in 2009. He analyzes the historical and theoretical foundations
of psychology based on critical-hermeneutic reconstructions. His critical
studies focus on scientific racism in the human sciences, on the concept
of epistemological violence, and on the critique of ideology in psychology.

We welcome submissions for individual papers and panel sessions. For
individual papers, please submit an abstract (150-200 words) no later than
February 1, 2010. For panel submissions, please include an abstract
(150-200 words) for each paper as well as a brief description of the panel
(150-200 words). Please submit all materials to [ mailto:marfken@upei.ca
]marfken@upei.ca. Abstracts should either be in the body of the email or
sent as an attachment (DOC or PDF format).

For further information, please visit the conference website: http://vre.upei.ca/mprg/

Sincerely,

Michael Arfken, PhD.
Director, Marxism & Psychology Research Group (MPRG)
Department of Psychology
University of Prince Edward Island
marfken[at]upei.ca