One of the things I most appreciate about our division are the conversations we have together. I go to conferences when I have to, but our society meetings are among the few that I enjoy, and this is mostly because of how (important, transformative, yes, but also) fun it is to talk with my fellow society members. So, I am especially excited about our programming this year because it is uniquely focused on conversation. Our planning committees will say more about the details but, in brief, both our midwinter (to be held virtually in March) and summer (running concurrently with APA) programming will focus on collaborative and conversational sessions.
The midwinter meeting call has already gone out, so I hope you have had a chance to read through it and see the particulars of the new roundtable approach we have taken to midwinter programming. This idea was the brainchild of our brilliant midwinter committee and I think it really captures the ethos of our society – critical dialogue has always been central to what we do. I remember, for example, a conversation hour that we held at the Atlanta Midwinter Meeting, something very similar to these roundtables. It was an engaging, exciting discussion and, when it was over, Brent Slife and Frank Richardson turned to me and said something like, “This is what we should be doing at these conferences!” Well, now we are, and I am pretty excited about it.
Part of why we have decided to organize divisional programming in this way is to reflect in practice this year’s theme: Epistemic access. The notion of epistemic access was inspired both by discussions among the members of the divisional programming committees (including discussions of how to increase access to the division and its resources) and also for me, by the work of scholars working in social epistemology and science studies. That work has made very clear to me that one of the key forces shaping science is who has access to determine what counts as warrant, evidence, acceptable practice, and truth. Everything about science, including the culture of science, its disciplinary politics and economics, its sanctioned methods, assumptions, and conclusions, is shaped by the identities, histories, cultures, and social positions of those who make science. Scholars like Helen Longino, Allison Wylie, Sandra Harding, and Jill Morawski (among many others) have shown both the centrality of so-called “non-epistemic” (or social) values in science as well as the incorrigibly “social” or value-laden character of considerations typically considered purely epistemic. Science, in practice (and probably in principle), is an expression of the commitments of scientists and of the communities they represent (and to whom they answer).
Perhaps this is obvious. It may be that most everyone understands how, as Polanyi (1958) argued a half-century ago, science is always the product of unique human strivings. But what is less obvious (or, at least, less often articulated) is that the human and social character of science carries not just our most noble strivings but also our most ignoble prejudices. Historians of science have long documented the ways that science has been shaped by “the institutionalized, normalized politics of male supremacy, class exploitation, racism, and imperialism” (Harding, 1992, p. 568). And psychology is no exception:
Throughout its history empirical psychology has produced research that must be labeled as racist, classist, and sexist (Teo, 2014). Empirical methods and verbal commitments to “objectivity” have not prevented the reality that racialized minorities, women, gays and lesbians, subaltern groups, people living in poverty, and people with disabilities have been constructed as inferior or problematic. (Teo, 2015, p. 79).
So science (and psychology) reflects the world from which it has grown and thus often reflects and reproduces the injustices of that world. And this is not just unfair but destructive of truth, “not only a social injustice but a cognitive failing,” (p. 132) as Helen Longino (2002) says. If the character of science is determined by who is “in the room”–who has access to determine what constitutes adequate warrant and evidence–then it is no surprise that bad science (of, for example, the racist and misogynist sort) is the result of institutional gatekeeping practices that keep most of the world’s population out of the room.
To cut a long argument short, what I am saying here is that broad and equitable epistemic access is an essential feature of good science. Science doesn’t work if we don’t all have fair and open access to determine and successfully navigate disciplinary gatekeeping practices. By focusing on this theme of epistemic access, I am inviting us to consider who, both historically and in the present, has had access to determine what counts as warrant, evidence, and truth, how that access has been negotiated, and how it has shaped the discipline of psychology. I am also inviting us to think about how that access could be more open and equitable.
I’m hoping that we will have lots of engaging (and also fun) conversations related to this theme and I am, of course, looking forward to the many other interesting discussions, planned and unplanned, that always result from our society meetings. So please submit a proposal for a conversation hour at our midwinter meeting and consider contributing innovative collaborative and conversational programming to our APA and summer meeting programming.
I’m confident that these meetings will continue to be the kinds of spaces that we can all enjoy and I have great hope that many new voices will join and enrich our conversations over the next year. I want to thank our programming committees for already putting in so much work. Zenobia Morrill and Snjezana Huerta are the co-chairs for the APA Annual Convention Planning Committee and Donald Brown, Orin Segal, Nicholas Malherbe, and Emese Ilyes are the Midwinter Meeting Planning Committee. These brilliant scholars have already added so much creativity and labor to the coming year’s programming and I know you will be awed by the amazing events they craft.
Not just our programming team, but so many individuals work to make this society a generative and collegial place, and I want to thank all of them for their hard work. There are so many working parts required to make this organization thrive, and each of these represents a person of good will donating their time and labor (generally uncompensated).
I hope to see and hear from many of you in the year ahead. Please feel free to contact me if you have questions or concerns related to the division or if you have ideas about programming, grants, or other initiatives that the division could support.
Thank you and I look forward to another great year working with all of you.
References
Harding, S. (1992). After the neutrality ideal: Science, politics, and “strong objectivity”. Social research, 567-587.
Longino, H. E. (2002). The fate of knowledge. Princeton University Press.
Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. University of Chicago Press.
Teo, T. (2015). Are psychological “ethics codes” morally oblique? Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 35(2), 78.
Joshua W. Clegg is associate professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY and a member of the faculty in the Critical Social and Personality Psychology doctoral program at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He has published widely on history, methods, and epistemology in the social sciences. He is currently president of Div. 24 (the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology) of the American Psychological Association).