A societal approach of crises: which methodological challenges?

Societal psychology wishes to renew with a psychology whose aim is to understand our environment as it is experienced outside the lab, in our daily lives. To do this, societal psychology engages in analysing social phenomena as they are shaped by the conflict between the individual and the collective (Himmelweit & Gaskell, 1990). Traditional approaches in the social sciences focus either on the individual or on the collective level, resulting in some kind of reductionisms when it comes to explaining complex social phenomena. Also, societal psychology can play a major role in understanding the different crises and transformations faced by our society: ecological, professional, technological, or health. However, methodological challenges are posed by the articulation of the collective and the individual levels which societal psychology calls for.

Social psychology and organizational psychology certainly have the potential to address these challenges (see for example Doise, 1980 et Doise & Valentim, 2015), but other disciplines in psychology and in the social sciences have made relevant propositions. Moreover, the issue of multi-disciplinarity can also appear as a methodological challenge.

More specifically, the colloquium will address the following methodological issues:

o What kind of methodological approaches allow the articulation of the different levels of analysis?
o Which issues are faced? What are the limits and the challenges regarding data collection and data analysis?
o Which epistemological and methodological ways of thinking might sustain a multi-disciplinary approach?
o How can these approaches help to address the crisis and transformations our societies are facing?

Please note that the deadline for submitting proposals has been extended to July 1, 2024!