Community Psychology Research Project, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Community psychology is a field of psychology that deals with how individuals relates to their society. The field of community psychology mainly focuses on shedding light on how people can become active community contributors as well as how the wellness and health of an individual can be affected by community issues.

Community psychology is a broad field within psychology that constitutes other elements from related disciplines including political science, sociology, public health as well as social psychology. Its main focus to the can be theoretical and applied, but mostly it is a combination of both. When some psychologists in the community are conducting research on theoretical issues that affects the community, others are putting this research into functional use to identify and address those issues within the society (Rappaport, 1977).

The major obligation of Community psychology is addressing the issues that determine how an individual adjusts and relates to their environments. This issue includes diversity, individual wellness, citizen participation, social justice, collaborative and community strength, empirical grounding and psychological sense of community. In this paper, we shall focus on the value of social justice as a part of community psychology.

Social justice can be defined as the idea of creating an institution or a society on the basis of principals of solidarity and equality, that values and understands the human rights as well as that recognizes the dignity of each and every human being. Generally, social justice is mostly concerned with equal justice not only in the courts but in all aspects of people’s lives in the society. Social justice demands that all people should have equal opportunities and rights, from the margins of the poorest individual in the society to the richest which provides an equal and even playing ground (McPherson I & Sutton A, 1981).

Community psychology through social justice has tried to offer an answer and give meaning to words like “fairness” or “justice”. What is the determinacy of equality? Who has the responsibility of ensuring that the society is a fair and just place? How do we enhance implementation of policies which regard to social justice? Should individuals legislate for society justice or should people depend on the moral compass of members of the society?

From a political base that have been provided, people must legislate in creation of a society that is just and a variety of programs needs to be in existence to enhance the collection of monies needed to lay an even play ground the wealthy, the middles, the poor as well as those people who are usually marginalized by the community. A definition of equal rights can be stated as the equal opportunity and access o things that facilitate success to people in any sector of the society. For this reason, revolutionary philosophies would support the equal opportunity programs and laws of anti discrimination as well as favoring taxation, particularly of the rich and wealthy people towards payment for programs that can assist in provision of equality for all people (Bronstein & Quina, 1988).

A functional social justice system should advocate that all people have the right to access certain basic needs. These needs include truly and proper education and safety in all the schools as well as programs that can facilitate financial opportunities to children to help them attend college. They socialists, even if they have different opinions from the true definition of socialism, urge that, formation of a just society cannot happen until every individual is able to access safe shelter, food and medical/health care. This can only be achieved when the government taxes every body that is earning and lay strong integrity measures as well as implement programs that will facilitate and guarantee these things to everybody in the society (Pherson & Sutton, 1981).

A functional political stand help in development of an equal and just society, but sometimes it criticizes the people who make poor choices and feeling that as far as equal opportunities should be present, the government should not be responsible for their legislature. As a matter of fact, it have been argued that the practice of social justice is usually undermined and diminished when the government develops programs aimed to deal with it, especially when the programs invites high taxation. Contrary, the people who have more money and wealth should be encouraged to be more altruistic which does not mean payment of higher taxes because it is arguably unjust.

From the religious point of view, you will find people all over the spectrum of politics who fight for social justice. Many groups from the Christian faith believe that social justice can only be achieve through ageing the example of Christ who had actions of mercy, especially those people who help others especially those who the society have marginalized. The Islamic point of view on social justice is quite similar. Among the five pillars of Islam, one is about giving to the poor. Nevertheless, views of men and women have been promoted differently in certain sects of the Muslim faith. They describe women as unequal to and subservient to men (Watts, 1992).

Most critics after modernization on the idea of a society that is just have opened room for interesting debates. Some of the questions that have been generated are, can a just society ever exist? Is it possible that we can ever view people equal and entitled to similar rights and equal privileges? Knowing the right answers is hard because many philosophers would argue that a completely just society where everybody had equal chances have never been created by anyone. This includes the most socialist countries where unequal distribution of wealth and poverty still exists.

In nations like the UK and US where creation of social justice is key, distinct problems are evident which includes homelessness, starving children, and challenges of ensuring that all children receive equal high standards of education. This does not give us a reason to loose hope in trying to promote a society that is just as well as trying as hard as we can to aim for it. Because the nature of the society is complicated, these nations may never achieve fully a system that is just for all, and debates on ways of achieving it are still ongoing.

Sometimes, the qualitative research methods assist us in understanding and promoting justice. A study was conducted by the World Bank poverty Group regarding poverty assessment in 47 countries with more that 60000 people. It has been documented that, people who live in the south suffers from devastating experience like (a) violence, chaos and insecurity, and (b) economical exploitation (Levine & Perkins,1999).

An interview was conducted on people who gave their views on the of living with lack of protection and uncertainty. Inadequate order and lawless exacerbates poor people’s plight and adds a element of terror to the material deprivation. In Brazil, poor women indicated that every thing was out of control and a gun could go off at any time (Bronstein & Quina, 1988).

Chaotic environment in war torn countries and regimes that are politically unstable are a good ground for violence and crime. The most venerable people in such situation are the poor people because they are mostly homeless and easily exposed to violence. Many of the women observed that police brutality and heartlessness was more when dealing with poor people. Others complained about inadequate institutional protection that should be provided by the state .Adults and children who work in near slavery and slavery conditions have no other choice but to compromise their freedom and follow the rules of their dictatorial employers. The documentations of the research indicated the consequences of living in an injustice regime.

Parallel to stories of desperateness, there were also stories of solidarity, resilience as well as profound humanity. An example of quantitative researches that were done in places with functional social justice is Aotearoa, in New Zealand. Huygens, A community psychologist who was involved in the struggle of upholding and restoring the Maori rights documented the actions and theories by use of innovative qualitative techniques. She would summarize and present the lessons after every workshop and present them to the next group, this helped to buld the theoretical efforts of the group. She also developed visual techniques for picture representation of insights that were obtained in the learning circle. This shows that as a member of the movement, she did uphold the values of knowledge that were used for action which was a big contribution to the change process through conceptualization of how social justice evolves and develops ( Bronstein & Quina, 1988).

Bibliography

Bronstein & Quina K, 1988. Teaching a psychology of people. Washington, DC: American Psychologica

Levine, M & Perkins V, 1999. Community Psychology: Perspectives & Applications. 2^nd Ed. N Y: Oxford University Press.

McPherson, I & Sutton A, 1981). Reconstructing Psychological Practice. London: Croom Helm Rinehart, and Winston

Rappaport J, 1977. Community psychology: Values, Research, and Action. N Y: Holt,

Watts J. 1992. Elements of a psychology of human diversity. Journal of Community Psychology