Review of A textbook of social psychology.

Abstract

J.E. ALCOCK, D.W. GARMENT, and Sm. SADAVA A Textbook of Social Psychology (5th Ed.) Toronto: Prentice Hall, 2001, 604 pages (ISBN 0-13-026354-0, C$87.95, Hardcover) Reviewed by CHARLES LEMERY Three computer keyboards; six hands. Not bad, eh, for two guys from Saskatchewan and Ottawa Valley renegade, who have now done this five times. Thus ends preface to Alcock, Garment, and Sadava's new edition of the only English-Canadian psychology textbook in existence. The quote shows nicely self-effacing and deferential character of Canadian humour and its rather intimate connection to our vast landscapes. While there is considerable Canadian content in volume (studies of bilingualism, intercultural relations, etc.), there is little to distinguish it, as psychology, from mainstream American psychology. In particular, a methodology focused on individual as unit of analysis and statistical analysis of variables clearly reveals metatheoretical ground upon which text is built, Canadian content notwithstanding. The authors appear, however, to recognize some of these problems. They question relevance of American psychology to Canadian contexts by comparing u.s. constitutional dictum of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness within melting pot of America with that of Canada's British North America Act - peace, order, and good government - within cultural mosaic north of 49th parallel. They briefly discuss possible naivety of applying reductive methodologies imported from natural sciences to complex phenomena. They note that early history of psychology was marked by an euphoric optimism about application of methods of science to human problems. Surely ... same approach that had yielded spectacular advances in our understanding of medicine, atomic physics, chemistry and geology would help to understand and eventually solve problems of violence, crime, poverty and prejudice (p. 9). But, as they carry on to observe, the serious problems are still with us (p. 9). Perhaps, they venture, social problems are more complex than biological or physical phenomena and will not so easily be solved (p. 9). Following introductory mention of such central issues, however, text goes on to assume now very familiar format upon which virtually all North American introductory texts in psychology are patterned. There is a brief introduction, including a brief history of field, followed by a chapter on methods, and then exposes, in turn, of all familiar content areas of North American psychology, from cognition and attribution, to attitudes and conformity, to aggression and violence, to leadership and group behaviour, and, finally, to issues of psychology and law and health psychology. The authors have produced here, for most part, an example of psychology textbook that has dominated North American academic landscape for more than a generation, which is a psychology largely under influence of naive empiricism, generally nonhistorical and nonideological in its approach, and otherwise (and amazingly) undisturbed by over 30 years of debate on crisis in psychology or more recent postmodernist and critical approaches based on history, language and discourse, politics, feminism, social/historical constructionism, and notions of community. Indeed, what is most striking about book is what is missing in it. There is no serious discussion of feminist psychology or feminism (e.g., Cherry, 1993). Nor is there any mention of postmodernist influences (hermeneutics, Derrida, Foucault), critical psychology (Fox & Prilleltensky, 1997; Tolman, 1994), symbolic interactionism (Mead, Blumer), community psychology, analysis of discourse, intersubjectivity, Vygotsky's socio-cultural-historical approach, and so on. …