Personal Blogs

In recent meetings, the Culture and Social Psychology group have been revisiting some of the ‘big debates’ within the psychology discipline. In December 2020, invited by Sebastian Bartos, members discussed the relevance of history to psychology.

Psychology and history have an awkward relationship. Most students will be taught about the history of the discipline as part of a recognised topic ‘Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology’, commonly referred to as CHIP - a somewhat dismissive acronym (an Open University CHIP resource can be accessed here https://www.open.edu/openlearn/chip ). One relevant issue is whether psychology should be categorised as a science (the planned topic for another CuSP meeting, in February 2021) in contrast to history, which is generally located with the arts and humanities. A scientific status is often associated with a claim that psychological knowledge is ahistorical and universal, providing once and for all ‘truths’ about people and their behaviour, regardless of ‘who’, ‘where’ or ‘when’. Many psychologists, especially social psychologists, would challenge this, claiming instead knowledge must be contextualised, and what holds for people in one situation may not be ‘true’ for others, in a different place and time.

At the CuSP meeting, academics from the group talked about the relevance of history to their research.

Dr David Jones researches mental health and criminal behaviour. He described how in one research project he found that care for the mentally ill continued to be dominated by the closure of the UK’s asylums (in the 1980s) because new forms of community care variously mirrored or reacted to the earlier provision. In David’s words, the asylums ‘cast a long shadow’, both on understandings and treatments of mental health, and this shadow needed to recognised. 

Read more about David Jones here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/dwj88

Dr David Kaposi is currently re-examining some of the most famous research in the history of psychology, Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience. David pointed out that the relation between psychology and history is further complicated by the need also to consider historiography, the writing of history and, more generally, the forms of record-keeping that conventionally support it. Researchers who use archived material and written accounts need to understand the circumstances and assumptions that shaped what was recorded and also, therefore, what was omitted. It’s not appropriate to treat ‘history’ as a neutral record of the past.

Read more about David Kaposi here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/dk3936

Examples that supported this point were evident in Prof. Peter Hegarty’s discussion of the particular relevance of history to his research on intersex surgery. He noted that over time there have been shifts not only in terminology, with earlier terms now seen as pejorative (e.g. ‘hermaphrodite’), but also in the medical focus brought to intersex (for example, on chromosomes or hormones).

Read more about Peter Hegarty here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/ph8658

Dr Johanna Motzkau offered further examples from her research on children as witnesses, and the extent to which their voices are listened to, and heard. A key premise of her research is that ‘each instant of listening is shaped by and expresses political, social and experiential circumstances, i.e. cultures’ (Motzkau and Lee, 2021). So, again, it is necessary to understand the history of an encounter, including a research encounter, and of the problem being investigated.

Read more about Johanna Motzkau here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/jfm238

Dr Rose Capdevila discussed the more general relevance of history to academic research, including how the values that prevail within a particular period, for instance, in favour of or against competitiveness, or ‘niceness’, or collaboration, will shape the research and its findings. Moreover, history is often linked to memory, and the value we place on remembering the past, including past researchers. Rose quoted Sara Ahmed: ‘Citation is feminist memory. Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before.’ (Ahmed, 2017, p.15).

Read more about Rose Capdevila here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/jfm238

Finally, Dr Sebastian Bartos used the lens of psychology to explore people’s personal understanding of history. In the UK, both laws and public opinions on sexuality have changed over the last 50 years. This provides an opportunity to talk to people about historical change they have personally witnessed – and their understating can be surprisingly nuanced.

Read more about Sebastian Bartos here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/sb42739

References

Sara Ahmed (2017) Living a feminist life. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Johanna Motzkau and Nick Lee (2021, in development) ‘Cultures of listening: psychology, resonance, justice’

School academic Dr Simon Clarke, Lecturer in Critical Mental Health, has just successfully completed his second PhD. This is unusual (should we now call him 'Doctor Doctor'?) and the PhD is additionally unusual because it utilises the method of autoethnography. Here Simon demonstrates an autoethnographic approach in a series of short extracts.

It’s the usual routine in my job as a clinical psychologist in the UK National Health Service (NHS), first thing in the morning: drop my bag and coat on the desk; exchange pleasantries with the few team members in this early; turn on the computer; go to the kitchen to make a coffee; check emails (not so bad, but it is still 8am); open the patient data system; swipe my card in the card reader; pick up the to-do list.

First action: respond to the care co-coordinator’s query from yesterday evening. I search for the client on the system. It barely even registers that the client has a vaguely similar name to mine.

Until, emblazoned on the screen, somewhere near the bottom of the returned searches: my name, address and date of birth.

I stare at the screen for a few seconds in wry disbelief. I have been taken back for a moment.

***

In the car, in the car park, outside the clinic. Privacy needed. I am on my mobile phone to the Data Protection Manager. Yes, that’s right I say. No, I didn’t open the record on the online system. Yes, I know I could lose my job if I did that. I wave nervously as a colleague walks past into the clinic with a client in tow. Yes, I say back to the Data Protection Manager, I was a patient in the 1990s and I now work here for the same mental health service. Yes, I recovered. You haven’t come across this kind of a case before? A pause. OK. Well…how can I get hold of my notes then? I don’t know what’s on the system and I’m concerned that my colleagues could access them. A Subject Access Request? Yes, I would. Very much. Thanks.

***

The large package, 404 pages, sits with me on the passenger seat all the way home, as if it were a person. When I get home, my wife is waiting for me. I carry the large package to my chest like a baby.

It’s here I tell her, dropping the fat package on the table. We unwrap it together. The A4 cardboard box that was inside the package sits on the table.

Are you going to open it then? She asks.

I’m not sure, I say. I then open the lid and start rifling through the first few pages.

God, there’s so much of it, she says. Her fingers pull out one sheet from the pile – PATIENT PROPERTY LIST. Tears well up in her eyes. It’s like you were going into prison. You were just a kid. A kid scared out your mind.

I’m not ready to read it, I say. I don’t think I can handle it. It was such a shit time. Could you put it back in the box? Maybe I’ll look at it later.

***

I’m still not sure what I want to do, I tell my PhD supervisor. I think I know what I want my PhD to be about, but I am not sure how to do it. I want to look at psychosis and the experiences of using mental health services, but I don’t think I want to use a conventional psychological approach.

What’s wrong with a conventional psychology approach? He smiles.

I don’t know, I reply, conscious that I might be overstepping a boundary. It’s just…I pause and take a breath. Psychology deals with what it calls empirical ‘data’. Either quantitative or qualitative – it doesn’t matter, the process is the same. There is something that you ‘find’ that is ‘real’ which is more ‘real’ than what you as a ‘subject’ might ‘experience’.

But the more you abstract from the experience, the less real it becomes. Psychology has many layers of this abstraction from the subject of experience – to responses from a questionnaire, to data in a data set, to results from a statistical inquiry. Or themes from an interview – also taken from experience, by a researcher, with their preconceptions and bias, filtered, extrapolated and ultimately fitted into a format consumable for an institutional process, that is often a million miles away from the original experience. Frank (2005) mentions this when he talks about the dangers of chopping up stories into data.

But it’s more than that, I continue. Narrative research reconstructs experience to fit a neat trajectory. All of the messiness is ironed out, all of the uncertainty, and confusion, and pain. The story is presented in a nice, neat linear way: beginning, middle, end. But’s it’s not like that. Not when you go crazy. Maybe not even when you’re sane.

He smiles, and then laughs. So, it’s a question of authenticity then?

I guess so.

Why not do an autoethnography then? He says.

I’m not sure what that is, I reply.

It’s a research method. You use your own experience as data to look at culture, to interrogate.

***

What’s wrong? Asks my wife.

Nothing, I say. She throws me a look.

I sigh. I’ve finished writing out my experiences and memories as bullet points. I now need to write them up as an autoethnography, as a narrative.

So, what’s the problem?

It’s just…the one perspective seems to rule. I write my experiences down, but what does it matter? So what? Who cares?

She shrugs. Look at other perspectives then. What about your clinical notes?

It’s an interesting idea, I think.

***

You’re doing a PhD? My mother asks. But don’t you already have one?

I have a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, I say. A DClinPsy. It’s a professional doctorate. This is different. It’s research.

OK, she replies. I don’t think she quite gets it, but I can see she’s intrigued. Why are you doing it?

I guess I’m just interested in things. There are some questions I need to answer. And PhD will give me the research training I need to answer them. Having a PhD will also be good for my career, as well, I end somewhat lamely.

What’s it about? She asks.

I take a deep breath inside – I’m not sure how she will feel about this. It’s about madness, I say. And authenticity. It's about that time when I was in hospital as a teenager. I’m doing something called autoethnography. It’s where you use your own experience. A bit like autobiography, but more focussed.

She is silent for a good few seconds. Her expression is inscrutable.

Did you know I kept a diary of that time? She says. Another pause. Do you want it for your research?

I can’t believe she’s just offered me this. I wasn’t expecting this. I want the diary, but it also feels like quite a responsibility to her. That would be amazing, I say. Are you sure?

Yes, if you think it will help. I haven’t read it since I wrote it, to be honest. I don’t really want to read it.

I don’t really expect her to give me the diary, but on our way out several hours later, she disappears. When she returns, she hands me a blue A4 lined textbook. Here you go, she says. You really think it will help?

I’m sure it will, I say, awed. Thank you.

***

I sit at the same table as I sat three years’ ago when I first collected my clinical notes. They are on the left; my mother’s diary in the centre; my hand-written recollections of the same events on the right.

And that, I think, is the crux of the matter. Much narrative research in mental health is based on the first-person perspective only, which can, if unchecked, lead down the same back-alley of mainstream psychology in its stubborn refusal to jettison the atomised, individualised self.

The failure of such a self is its inability to acknowledge that we are inescapably and unutterably social, to our very core. Our experience is not our own. For good or for ill, we are what we are to the people who live with us, and who we love, and sometimes who we hate. We are the product of what other people make us to be, and what we make of them.

It’s like Patty Lather (2009) said, “authenticity is much more complicated than singular, transparent, static identity categories assumed to give the writer a particular view” (p. 20).

I think about the people involved in my story: the clinicians who detained me, with all of the best intentions I suspect, but which left me broken and traumatised for many years afterwards; my family, who suffered with me, helpless, but who also contributed, unconsciously and unknowingly, to my distress; my wife, who worked with me to get these experiences down on paper; the therapeutic community, who helped me get my life back; and, finally, my PhD supervisors who guided me and helped me to recognise and give voice to the different people and perspectives around me. My subjectivity is shared amongst them.

And yet… it is a wry irony, and a deep paradox, that, ultimately, the ‘buck stops here’: one person with a pen and a pad, trying to make sense of all of this complexity.

But I don’t think about these complexities too much, just yet. I put pen to pad. I begin to write.

[This blog post contains excerpts from my PhD and from a paper published in Qualitative Research in Psychology. Whilst all the events took place, some dramatic license has been taken with the details for the sake of narrative continuity.]

REFERENCES

Clarke, SP 2018 'Madhouse and the whole thing there', Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol 15, no. 2-3, pp. 247-259, DOI: 10.1080/14780887.2018.1429989 

Frank, A 2005, ‘What is dialogical research, and why should we do it?’, Qualitative Health Research, vol. 15, no. 7, pp. 964–74. 

Lather, PA 2009, ‘Against empathy, voice and authenticity’, in AY Jackson & LA Mazzei (eds.), Voice in qualitative inquiry: challenging conventional interpretive, and critical conceptions in qualitative research, Routledge, London, pp. 17–26.

Read about Simon Clarke's work here http://www.open.ac.uk/research/people/spc459

In this end-of-year blog, Professor Stephanie Taylor questions whether the label of 'part time' is appropriate for Open University study.

Are you a part-time student? Do you think part-time university education should be abolished? Before you answer those questions, let's consider exactly what we mean by 'part-time'. The Open University has of course been famous for fifty years as a Higher Education provider for part-time students. However, I'd like to question the continuing use of the term 'part-time' to describe the experience of OU study.

One of the starting assumptions of the Open University was that its students had not moved into university education directly from school. Most of them had followed other paths, and in doing so acquired commitments that would compete with their study as a priority. OU students were likely to have partners and children. They probably had jobs and many had previously completed professional training, especially in teaching, nursing and the Armed Forces, so were working their way up career ladders. (The OU was also popular with retired people and they too could be seen to be studying after work, but in their case on the time scale of a lifetime rather than a working week.) The assumption was therefore that for OU students, however committed, their university education would not be their first priority. 

This contrasted with the situation of full-time students who in those distant days mostly had living grants to attend university (!) so could focus on tertiary education as their main occupation. OU study was part-time because it had to wait until other duties had been fulfilled. This was perhaps symbolised by the timing of the BBC radio and television broadcasts that were part of the study material for early students. The OU programmes were initially scheduled at inconvenient times, late night or early morning, and then often pushed even later, for instance to accommodate sports fixtures. The message was clear. Open University study would have to wait until the rest of life had been attended to.

Roll forward to the second decade of the 21st century and the situation of all UK university students has changed. Fees are substantially higher. Full-time university students no longer receive grants. A high proportion of them combine their study with part-time work as they try to limit the debts they are accruing through their student loans. Open University students may also have taken out student loans to cover their higher fees, and they are still likely to be combining their study with employment and caring responsibilities. In addition, an increasing proportion are studying intensively, registering on two or more modules at once in order to complete their degrees quickly. In terms of study hours, the part-time/fulltime distinction therefore seems much less appropriate.

There are other reasons too why today's Open University students have more complicated lives than the 'part-time' students of the past. We live in a society in which life generally is increasingly pressured and unpredictable. In particular, work and employment have become much more precarious with greater numbers of people self-employed or working on short term contracts. Even for those in secure jobs, working hours are often fluid. Many people now do unpaid overtime, for instance, to deal with work emails from home. The neat division between working time and personal time has therefore been eroded. The old image of the part-time student was of someone who could organise their study into their free time after work, using holidays, weekends and evenings. That kind of tidy separation is now difficult. Life has become less about scheduling and more about 'juggling' to do everything at once, somehow. Ironically, this may be a reason why some OU students are actually increasing their study commitment, in order to try to finish their degrees as soon as possible. 'Part-time' is less meaningful when you don't know exactly how much time is ever going to be available.

However, the final reason why I question the term 'part-time study' holds for both past and present day Open University students. Conventional university education took place in a discrete phase of life and functioned as a transition between school and full entry to adulthood. There is a caricature of university students, particularly applied to those of the 1960s and 70s, as rebels who dress badly, party excessively and participate in violent political demonstrations. Although that image is fading, there is still a widespread expectation, or suspicion, that university is a contained time in which young people may challenge social norms before eventually re-joining the mainstream and settling down. But for OU students, university education is inevitably intertwined with their ongoing life experience. It is not a time apart and for this reason, I would argue, it is more likely to have a long-term influential and even transformational effect on students' world views and life practices. Even the decision to begin OU study is an active undertaking rather than just a semi-automatic 'next step'. Once the study is started, the student's multiple commitments inevitably make it more difficult. Completing a degree is likely to involve a significant personal investment. And because the process of studying is not circumscribed, OU education is likely to force re-thinking and re-interpretation, changing students permanently as their learning impacts on all parts of their lives and on who they are. 

 For all of these reasons, I suggest that OU study is more demanding, more important and more life-changing than the conventional alternative. It deserves a description that acknowledges its specialness, to other people and to the students themselves. Education with the Open University is not 'part-time' but 'part of life'. Congratulations for committing to it and for being an OU student.

This week the School of Psychology and Counselling received the sad news of the death of Professor Peter Banister. Peter worked in the Department of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University and was also an Open University Associate Lecturer for 45 years. Many current and former OU Psychology students will have known him as their tutor and, earlier, as a leader at psychology summer schools. He also supported OU psychology teaching through his involvement with the British Psychological Society. He was President of the Society from 2012-13.

Peter co-edited a key research methods text used by several generations of OU students* and he believed strongly that psychology students should have the opportunity to conduct their own research projects, as on the current module DE300. Since 2017, Peter had been part of the Associate Lecturer team on DD317 Advancing Social Psychology, bringing to this new module his extensive experience of teaching and examining social psychology. (The 2017 module chair for DD317, Stephanie Taylor, had tutored with Peter in the early 1990s – her first employment with the university but he was already an OU veteran.) Typically, Peter undertook the extra responsibility of SISE tutoring for DD317, taking great trouble to assist a student in prison. That is just one small example of his extra contributions as a psychologist and a teacher. 

Peter's AL colleagues have been posting tributes: 'incredibly supportive and kind'; 'the loveliest man, always so calm and such a reliable source of wisdom about all things psychological'; 'a lovely gentleman'; 'I felt privileged to work with someone who brought so much experience in his academic career and BPS work'; 'he will be remembered well'.

The SST Lead for Psychology, Caroline Kelly, describes Peter as a popular and much respected colleague who will be very much missed. Associate Dean Helen Kaye notes that he had an excellent way with students, motivating them and explaining things in a very clear way. Staff Tutor and Senior Lecturer Karen Hagan similarly remembers Peter as very student-focused. She highlights his dedication to supporting each student to achieve their potential and have the best study experience possible. She also recalls his lighter side, citing an occasion when he was attending a meeting remotely and colleagues complained about the amount of background noise during the conference call: Peter admitted, giggling, that he was probably the culprit as he was taking the call while on Brighton beach!

The School sends sympathies to Peter’s family for their loss. They will hold a a private funeral next week, followed by the planting of a tree in Peter’s memory at Indian’s Head Memorial Forest at Dovestone Reservoir, Greenfield, an area that he loved to roam.  There will be a memorial service later in the year to allow us all to join together to celebrate Peter’s life.

• Peter Banister et al (1997/2011) Qualitative Methods in Psychology: A Research Guide Open University Press

In this week's social psychology blog, Stephanie Taylor looks ahead to the UK holiday weekend and considers the meanings of Easter and futures, and reasons to be cheerful, or not.

Today people in the UK will be looking forward to the Easter weekend with various expectations. For some, it is a holiday, although Bank Holidays are perhaps less relevant now that so many workers are self-employed. For them, and for others like OU students, Easter may appear as exactly the opposite, that is, an opportunity to do extra work. For some people, Easter is important as a major Christian festival. But perhaps the strongest associations of this long weekend are with the beginning of spring as a season of fertility and growth, symbolised by all those eggs and rabbits.

These associations offer different possibilities for constructing time, and where we are in relation to it. Think about the UK calendar year, with its attached commercial messages. It begins with a noticeable proliferation of tv programmes and articles about losing weight and abandoning bad habits. January is presented as the month in which to live healthily, perhaps by abstaining from alcohol (Dry January), and giving up meat (Veganuary). Shop displays and advertisements feature sports clothes and special offers on gym membership, so this is all about looking ahead and making an effort now in order to improve ourselves later. Then in February the health priorities are replaced in the lead up to Valentine's Day which is, supposedly, a time not only for love and romance but also chocolate, champagne and meals out. The focus shifts abruptly from the future back to now, to enjoyment of the moment - or perhaps, for people whose experience doesn't fit the shiny image, to a feeling of disappointment and even failure.

Immediately after February 14th, supermarkets replace displays of chocolate hearts with chocolate eggs as we reach the current point in the year, the lead up to Easter. Shopping wise, there is also pressure to buy new clothes, outdoor furniture and seasonal food - the first asparagus and, if you've forgotten about Veganuary, spring lamb. Again, we are positioned in the present, supposedly enjoying ourselves, but we are also looking ahead to future pleasures, including a fantasy of a summer which is based more on other countries than the UK. Directly after the Easter holiday, we can expect the future focus to become stronger, with a renewed emphasis on healthy living as everyone is encouraged to lose weight in preparation for summer holidays at the beach.

All of this is completely familiar and might seem amusingly trivial. However, it indicates how our experience of the supposedly 'natural' passing of time, including seasonal change, is shaped by the society and culture. For social psychologists who utilise analytic approaches like thematic and discursive analysis, one interest in this kind of teasing out of meanings is their link to values and priorities, to what is right and wrong, and what needs to be acted upon. The cycle of months and activities emphasises ongoing life, comforting us with its seemingly reliable repetition. More linear constructions can position us at an endpoint. For example, the current news stories about Brexit present the UK as straggling towards the finish, of membership of the EU or just the attempt to relinquish it, and possibly the collapse of the whole political system which enabled the referendum in the first place.

The most important news story this Easter is probably the current protests initiated by Extinction Rebellion 'against the criminal inaction on the climate and ecological crisis'. As thousands of people demonstrate in London and other cities, we might feel that we occupy several conflicting positions in time, simultaneously. The protesters are challenging the optimism of spring, pointing to ongoing degradation of the environment rather than seasonal renewal. They are not alone in being concerned. For instance, many of the people who are staying at home this weekend to work on their gardens and allotments might also feel that this spring is not the same new beginning as the cycle implies, because of ominous signs like rising temperatures and other strange weather patterns, and the declining numbers of bees and other familiar insects. So where are we all positioned now? Are we winding down to an end, of many aspects of the natural environment, of thousands of species, and of the way we currently occupy the planet, because more and more places are becoming unliveable? These are the threats, quite literally of the end of life as we know it. Yet the climate change protests themselves might be viewed as a new beginning, as action that will produce real responses on a sufficient scale to be effective, by social actors who have previously not engaged with the issue (it is interesting, for example, to see the Governor of the Bank of England warning business of the money losses that climate change involves). So now, in springtime, these protests themselves are perhaps our strongest reason for optimism and the hope of new beginnings. Happy Easter!

This week's blog has links to ideas discussed in the module Advancing social psychology (DD317). For more information about the module, you can watch a video here  https://youtu.be/dbzF4hBeBkk You can also look at the new Open Learn course course DD317_1 Social psychology and politics: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-psychology-and-politics/content-section-0

To find out more about social psychology at the Open University http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/groups/cusp  http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/groups/cusp

The OU is celebrating its 50th birthday! This is of course a big event for everyone involved with the university. As the official message puts it, 'In our anniversary year, we will tell our story and create moments that inspire pride, unity and involvement.' This kind of commemoration is also of interest to psychologists, and especially social psychologists, because of the complex connections between remembering and the telling of memories. In this week's blog for DD317 and social psychology, Stephanie Taylor discusses some of the issues involved.

Most people are aware that remembering doesn't operate as a kind of mental 'video replay' of the past. They may have experienced doubt about their own memory of an event like a family party, wondering if they recall the actual occasion or just what they were told about it subsequently. Discursive psychologists are interested in the construction of memories. This is not an argument that all memories are false but a suggestion that two questions need to be asked about anyone's account of what they remember. The first is 'Why are you talking about this (memory) now?' and the second, 'Why are you talking about it in this way?'.

The point of the first question is that a story about the past fulfils functions in the present, for instance, in the case of a commemoration, to inspire pride and encourage unity. The point of the second question is that a story about the past is always just one possible version. There could be a different telling, if only because memory is inevitably partial. Otherwise, as the psychologist Jens Brockmeier has put it, 'completely recalling one's life would take as long as one's life itself' (2002 p.23). Total memory is impossible, so we should recognise that any account of what is remembered is a selective construction, with a purpose.

Unsurprisingly, the OU's commemoration has already prompted discussions about the best stories to be told. What version of the university's history should be presented? Which events and people should be selected for recall? It is all very enjoyable. One of my own top choices would be a story from the valedictory lecture of Steven Rose, the OU's first Professor of Biology. He recalled the first ever OU biology course. Every student was sent, in the post, a package of study materials which contained a live goldfish, to observe, and a pickled sheep's brain, to dissect.

Some serious issues around commemoration were raised at a recent seminar organised by the Culture and Social Psychology (CuSP) group. The occasion was a presentation by Dr John E. Richardson, on his research on the commemoration of the Holocaust. He discussed how the remembering of these horrific events is changing with the passing of time, especially now that few survivors remain to present their own memories. Richardson analysed accounts presented at the UK's Holocaust Memorial Day, showing how the sombre commemorative speeches by contemporary politicians, although respectful, were carefully crafted to fulfil present purposes in line with government and party priorities.

The presentation and the discussion produced strong responses in the seminar audience. One view was that the contemporary speeches were betraying the commemoration of the Holocaust. The discursive explanation of inevitably selective construction seemed inadequate. The seminar even discussed the extreme argument that the commemoration should be discontinued entirely, to prevent its further exploitation. But there is an alternative, more positive conceptualisation that is also informed by social psychology. This involves considering commemoration in terms of sociocultural actions. According to this, the speeches and even the stage managing have value as social practices that acknowledge the past and engage new generations in marking its significance. Viewed in this way, commemoration has many parallels with religious rituals, so it is not a coincidence that it often borrows language and other details from organised religion. The commemorative event as a whole requires individuals to obey rules and limit any claims for personal attention. This interpretation is linked to process psychology. It also takes us back to discursive psychology, but to the first of the two questions, not the second: 'Why are we talking about these memories now?'. The answer, of course, is that we consider that they continue to be so important and the events that they refer to must never be forgotten.

The OU's commemoration is obviously a different set of actions appropriate to a different purpose, although there are also some connections in the value that is being placed on education and understanding. The OU's 50^th birthday is about the past and the future, about changes that have occurred (including in teaching materials) and also the values we want to hold onto. We are expecting to hear some good stories about people's memories.

           Jens Brockmeier (2002) Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory. Culture & Psychology 8(1): 15-43.

You can read about future CuSP events here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/emergence-a-cusp-meeting-in-collaboration-with-uel-psychology-and-social-change-tickets-53432330539

If you are interested in the Level 3 Social Psychology module, you can find more information on OU websites and you can do this short course available on Open Learn: DD317_1 Social psychology and politics: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-psychology-and-politics/content-section-0

How new is fake news? Is it a feature of a contemporary ‘post truth’ society, or does it have a longer history? A new short film links the phenomenon back to the famous thinker Michel Foucault. In this week’s blog for Advancing social psychology (DD317), Professor Paul Stenner writes about the film, and about the influence of Foucault’s thinking on social psychology.

In partnership with the OU, the BBC have recently been making a series of ‘ideas’ short films. Each is only a few minutes long, and the aim is to get an ‘idea’ across in a quick but effective way. One of the latest of these short films asks how the French polymath Michel Foucault might have responded to the recent phenomenon of ‘fake news’, and to the idea that we now live in a world that is ‘post-truth’. ‘Fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ point to similar things, but the latter is a more academic concept whilst the former is now firmly associated with Donald Trump’s repeated complaint that ‘the media’ is politically motivated to make up negative stories about him. The short film is called Wake up! Foucault’s warning on fake news and it was written and narrated by Angie Hobbs from the University of Sheffield with Paul Stenner (an OU Social Psychologist and current Chair of DD317) and Cristina Chimisso (an OU Philosopher) acting as academic advisors.

Foucault, who died in 1984, is one of the most cited thinkers of the 20^th Century. He is difficult to label because his style of thought moved easily across disciplinary boundaries, mixing philosophy, psychology, history and political activism. After his death, his ideas about the relationship between knowledge, power and subjectivity (or sense of self) began to have a big influence on social psychology, and indeed they crop up on various occasions in DD317 Advancing Social Psychology. Instead of assuming that sciences like psychology and economics provide objective truth about the human condition, Foucault created new ways of using historical data to demonstrate that these human sciences emerged under quite specific circumstances as part of new ways of governing and disciplining people. He did not approach these sciences by asking ‘are they true?’ but instead asked ‘what do they do?’ and ‘how do they actually function socially and psychologically?’ If Foucault is right, this means that ‘truth’ cannot easily be separated from ‘power’. Indeed, Foucault thought of them as two sides of the same thing called power/knowledge and he was particularly interested in how power/knowledge shapes people’s sense of self or ‘subjectifies’ them.

Ironically enough, some people are now inclined to blame thinkers like Michel Foucault for eroding the difference between knowledge and power and for ushering in a new world of post-truth in which a new breed of trickster politicians can act as if the truth were whatever they say it is, so long as they repeat it loudly on social media. The short film does entertain this hypothesis, but it also suggests that Foucault, had he lived to witness it, would be highly critical of the notion of the ‘fake news’ of a ‘post-truth’ era, and would assert the truth of the oppressed to those in positions of power, inviting us to ‘wake up’ to the unequal realities of our present moment. To judge for yourself, you can see the short film at https://www.bbc.com/ideas/videos/wake-up-foucaults-warning-on-fake-news/p06gzcn4

Paul Stenner is Professor of Social Psychology at the OU. Find out more about him by clicking the ‘meet the ou experts’ link here: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/tv-radio-events/events/bbc-ideas#meet-the-ou-experts  Paul chairs the new presentation of DD317 Advancing social psychology, starting October 2018. To learn more about DD317, you can look at the new Open Learn course course DD317_1 Social psychology and politics: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-psychology-and-politics/content-section-0

The Open University has a long history of innovative work in social psychology, including through its Level 3 social psychology modules. Many of the textbooks from earlier modules have become teaching 'classics', used in universities worldwide. We've called our newest module, DD317, Advancing social psychology because we want to convey the dynamic nature of the discipline, moving into new areas of theory and research, often informed by contributions from other disciplines.

This new module, DD317, is the teaching 'voice' of the large social psychology research group in the OU's School of Psychology. It includes the research of the academics who produced the module – Eleni Andreouli, David Kaposi, Rachel Manning, Paul Stenner and Stephanie Taylor – and also contributions from other social psychologists in the School - Rose Capdevila, Johanna Motzkau, and our Emeritus Professors, Wendy Hollway and Margaret Wetherell. You can look us up on the School of Psychology website http://fass.open.ac.uk/psychology . In addition, of course, the module presents theory and research from academics in many other universities in the UK and elsewhere.

As we move into DD317's first presentation, we'll continue this blog to update you on new developments in social psychology at the OU, including the publications and research activities of the module team and our colleagues. So keep checking the blog. And for all of you who have registered for the new module, good luck and enjoy your studies!

To learn more about the module, you can watch a video here   https://youtu.be/dbzF4hBeBkk You can also look at the new Open Learn course course DD317_1 Social psychology and politics: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-psychology-and-politics/content-section-0

It's spring, the time of new beginnings, and appropriately the new module Advancing social psychology (DD317) is about to hatch. The main production team have been OU social psychologists Eleni Andreouli, David Kaposi, Rachel Manning, Paul Stenner and myself, Stephanie Taylor. Our aim was to try to pin down a fluid field, social psychology today. The social world is inevitably in a state of change. (At the moment we could point to the effects of Brexit negotiations, disability benefit changes, wild weather in many locations and new incidents of terrorism, as well as the light relief of new music and tv and spring fashion.) Logically, the psychology of people in their social contexts has to stretch and change to accommodate its subject, or rather its subjects, us, in all our variety. To show how we've approached this, over the next few weeks we'll be posting some short discussions of things that are happening and the connections to the new module. So watch this space!

In the meantime, you might want to look up details of the module itself