Should Psychologists Care About Injustice?

Abstract

For critical psychologists, addressing social justice is not about avoiding a negative in the discipline and profession of psychology, or about following rules in order to avoid legal or professional sanctions. “Doing no harm” in research and practice is certainly a minimum requirement, but attending to injustice must also be about caring for members of society by participating in and contributing to a just society. The term social justice has become a wide-ranging catch-all term for a variety of activities inside and outside of academia, encompassing struggles in different kinds of spheres, outside the legal system, with the assumption that justice cannot only be achieved in the courtroom, but requires questions about wealth and privilege. It is suggested to move the debate from justice to injustice, and to identify three central forms of injustice: An analysis of social injustice in the political–economic realm (redistribution) and in the intersubjective domain (recognition), and an analysis of injustices of subjectification. It is argued that critical psychologists must attend to injustices in all three domains. The fact that critical psychologists can identify blind spots when it comes to justice, and that even critical psychologists’ interest has shifted to problems of subjectification and recognition, reflects a historical trend that avoids challenging the political–economic foundation of forms of injustice. The chapter ends with a discussion of the environmental crisis as a justice issue in critical psychology.