Making sense of ourselves and others: a contribution to the community-diversity debate

In recent years, a debate has played out concerning the relationship between two of Community Psychology's core values: promoting diversity and promoting a sense of community. To elaborate on this dialectical relationship, we propose to inscribe it within the broader framework of the identity-otherness dynamics, which currently underpins a variety of disruptive socio-political processes across Europe (e.g., the decrease of solidarity in dealing with the refugee crisis, the spreading of eurosceptic attitudes, and the waves of xenophobia and populism). All these phenomena entail, either as a premise or as a consequence, the negation of otherness and diversity. Some theories in cultural and semiotic psychology suggest that a deeper understanding of the community-diversity dialectics would benefit from taking into account not only the traditional socio-cognitive processes, but also the symbolic and meaning-making processes that envelop the experience of self and the experience of otherness. This perspective would also help in developing community interventions that acknowledge both the need for belonging and identity, and the need for diversity

#Community matters

EnThe social, economic and psychological crisis triggered by the Covid19 pandemic has turned "community" into a very topical issue, bringing to the fore the fundamental and opposite dimensions of social bond: solidarity and obligation, "we" and "I", as well as "us" and "them". Three aspects of community whose salience has increased in the current pandemic scenario are addressed: the emergence of shared identities and sense of community as primary response to the crisis; the defensive use of identities, which determines variations in community symbolic borders and promotes the search for scapegoats, perpetuating a divisive social dynamics; finally, the collective elaboration of trauma, necessary to build shared meanings and recreate communities that can learn from experience.ItLa crisi sociale, economica e psicologica innescata dalla pandemia Covid19 ha reso estremamente attuale il tema della "comunità", portando in primo piano le dimensioni fondamentali e opposte del legame sociale: solidarietà e obbligo, "noi" e "io", ma anche "noi" e "loro". In questo breve contributo ci si sofferma su tre aspetti dell'essere comunità che l'attuale scenario ha reso salienti: l'emergere di identità condivise e il senso di comunità come risposta primaria alla crisi; l'uso difensivo delle identità, che determina comunità "a confini variabili" e favorisce la ricerca di capri espiatori, perpetuando dinamiche sociali divisive; infine, l'elaborazione collettiva del trauma, necessaria per costruire significati condivisi e ricreare comunità in grado di apprendere dall'esperienza

Minaccia, sovra-esclusione dall’ingroup e propensione a partecipare ai conflitti Lulu

In a community sample from the Susa valley (N = 57, 32 men, mean age = 40.54, SD = 15.72) we have studied the relations among ingroup over-exclusion, threat to group value, and tendency to participate in demonstrations in favour of participants' opinion towards the siting of a high speed train (T AV) in the valley. A hierarchic moderation showed ingroup over-exclusion to foster the tendency to participate only under threat, without differences between participants' opinion towards the T AV

Self-transcendence values and sense of community: Driven by the concern for the welfare of strangers or for those we are acquainted with?

Self-transcendent values have recently been introduced in research in Sense of Community (SoC) to address the issue of inclusive and exclusive forms of SoC. The present paper, reporting the findings of a cross-sectional study involving 469 adult Italian participants,expands the results of a previous study by (a) replicating a model in which community universalism (i.e., an operational application of universalistic rules in local communities) is associated to SoC both directly and indirectly, through the mediation of the perceived reliability of community facilities, and (b) adding the basic self-transcendent values of benevolence and universalism to the model so as to test their associations with community universalism and SoC. The results confirmed the original model and showed different patterns of relationship linking benevolence (directly) and universalism (indirectly) to SoC. The differences are explained based on the concrete vs. abstract level of the two values and the different social categorization level implied.

Editorial : Qualitative Methods for Studying Groups

Non peer reviewe