Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change combines a focus on understanding social settings as loci for empowering intervention with a focus on understanding and giving voice to citizens. The volume illuminates advances in theory and method relevant to changing a broad spectrum of social settings (including programs, organizations, institutions, communities and social policy) from a strengths-based perspective. Three cross-cutting concepts -- a strengths-based approach to research and social action, empowerment, and narrative research methods -- serve as integrating and foundational themes.
Part I takes up issues of setting processes and outcomes of influence, research methods, and implications for setting and community change efforts and social policy. Questions addressed in Part I include: What is the nature of current and future conceptualizations of social settings? What are the actionable features in social settings? How can settings that place a premium on empowerment and promotion be created or restructured? What are the organizational characteristics of empowering community settings? What mechanisms mediate the impact of these characteristics on individual well-being?
Part II examines how action scientists have sought to understand and amplify the voices of those individuals and communities who serve as the focus of their research and social change actions. Part II authors explore the role of institutional beliefs, community narratives, and personal stories in recovery from serious mental illness; trace the cultural contours of "mental health" among the Gros Ventres of the Fort Belknap Indian reservation; examine youth voice in the juvenile justice system, illuminating the loss of focus on individualized justice and accountability to youth; and, outline ways in which community narrative can enrich culturally anchored work in prevention and public policy. Finally, chapters in Part III seek to situate the rest of the volume's chapters in the context of decades of work on empowering settings, giving voice and social change.

Originally published in 1979, the research reported in this volume is based on investigations of how tenth-grade boys cope and adapt to the high-school environment in, specifically, two high schools in suburban Detroit in 1970. In addition to information about the ways that students relate to the high school environment, this volume presents examples of how multiple research methods can be used to investigate the expression of complex person and environment relationships. This volume has been prepared to illustrate the application of an ecological point of view for research on person-environment relationships. It was hoped that the community psychologist, social psychologist, and school psychologist interested in doing research with adolescents and the high school environment would find the presentation of research methods informative and encouraging. For those readers involved in teaching and administering in secondary education, the volume was an example of how research can illustrate the ongoing personal and social characteristics of students and the high school environment.

Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists is a unique examination of how community psychology evolved through the years. Five highly respected community psychologists recount their personal histories telling how they went from academia to careers disseminating principles of community psychology. Newer members to the field of psychology can trace how these leaders came to pursue careers in community psychology. As these respected experts tell their own stories in accessible narrative form, the reader gains a clear understanding of how applied community psychology intertwines with history, context, social movements, and individual personalities is revealed. Each career story in Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists illustrates how societal events such as wars, economic depressions, the civil rights movement, and discrimination shaped personal philosophies and ultimately lead to their decision to become applied community psychologists and practitioners. Each contributor was asked to discuss their stories from four experiential dimensions: personal, contextual, intellectual, and ideological. The various viewpoints reveal how each one's ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and academic background affected how they experienced the history of community psychology. Three eminent scholars from the fields of community psychology, history, and business psychology discuss the narratives to provide further insight. The narrative studies in Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists include: Anne Mulvey John Morgan Irma Serrano-Garcia Tom Wolff Carolyn Swift. Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists is an encouraging, stimulating look at community psychology that is valuable to community psychologists, historians of psychology, researchers, industrial organization (IO) psychologists, educators, and students.

Six Community Psychologists Tell Their Stories: History, Contexts, and Narrative presents the unique opportunity to examine how culture and social norms have combined with chance, coincidence, and serendipity to form the professional identities of men and women who were among the first generation trained to work in the field of community psychology. The book's contributors disciples of those who founded the sub-field provide insights into the factors (social status, family history, education, social environment, cultural events, important ideas) that furthered their professional development in an emerging field. Their stories still works in progress go far beyond facts, figures, dates and details to document what they've done with their lives and why. Six esteemed community psychologists three men who began their careers as the field was established in the mid-1960s and three women who took part in the increased opportunities available in the 1970s recall how important events and social movements affected them as they fulfilled their personal and professional goals.They discuss the effects of family values and styles, class, ethnic status, gender, racism, anti-Semitism, the power of social settings, supportive education and work settings, and the impact of post-World War II government programs on their education, including the G.I. Bill, and the establishment of United States Public Health Service fellowships. Their stories touch on many common themes, including social marginality and sex discrimination, making personal discoveries in response to educational experiences, the significance of fate, and the experience of gaining a new or renewed sense of self through meaningful events, occasions, and people. These Six Community Psychologists Tell Their Stories: Dr. Jean Ann Linney (University of South Carolina), whose experiences involve a combination of idealism, supportive contexts, and good fortune Dr. Julian Rappaport (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), who views himself as an insider/outsider, whose personal and professional identity crosses traditional boundaries Dr. N.Dickon Reppucci (University of Virginia), who became a community psychologist by accident, an outgrowth of his involvement with social protest in the 1960s Dr. Marybeth Shinn (New York University), whose story reflects her interest in the social contexts of neighborhoods and community settings Dr. Edison J. Trickett (University of Illinois at Chicago), who writes of the life experiences that have influenced both his work and his longtime involvement in folk music Dr. Rhona S. Weinstein (University of California at Berkeley), whose work in the dynamics of self-fulfilling prophecies in educational settings developed early in her careerInsightful commentary on their recollections is provided by two distinguished scholars Henrika Kuklick, Science Historian at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dan McAdams, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. Six Community Psychologists Tell Their Stories: History, Contexts, and Narrative is a unique resource for community psychologists, autobiographical researchers, and anyone interested in the history of psychology.

Community psychology emphasizes an ecological approach to mental health by focusing on the individual in the environment and the influences that shape and change behavior. Becoming Ecological brings together the work of James G. Kelly, one of the founders of community psychology and among the field's national leaders.
The volume unites thirteen of Kelly's publications from 1968 to 2002 as well as four new essays on current issues in the field: the theory, research, practice, and education of community psychologists. Kelly introduces the work by offering connections between his personal experiences and the topics he chose to focus on throughout his long career. He begins each of the thirteen essays with commentary that sets the article in its original context so that the reader has a historical perspective on why certain ideas were salient at a particular time and how they are still timely today. Kelly concludes with a "summing up" section integrating the previously published articles with the four new essays. Throughout, he presents examples of how to plan and carry out research and practice in the community. The principles underlying the examples both enhance the relevance of the research and practice and increase the potential of community residents to use the findings for their own purposes.
A compendium of classic statements of community psychology's philosophical and historical underpinnings, Becoming Ecological is a must-read for scholars and practitioners of community psychology and for those in the fields of public health, social work, community development, education, and applied anthropology.

Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists is a unique examination of how community psychology evolved through the years. Five highly respected community psychologists recount their personal histories telling how they went from academia to careers disseminating principles of community psychology. Newer members to the field of psychology can trace how these leaders came to pursue careers in community psychology. As these respected experts tell their own stories in accessible narrative form, the reader gains a clear understanding of how applied community psychology intertwines with history, context, social movements, and individual personalities is revealed. Each career story in Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists illustrates how societal events such as wars, economic depressions, the civil rights movement, and discrimination shaped personal philosophies and ultimately lead to their decision to become applied community psychologists and practitioners. Each contributor was asked to discuss their stories from four experiential dimensions: personal, contextual, intellectual, and ideological. The various viewpoints reveal how each one's ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and academic background affected how they experienced the history of community psychology. Three eminent scholars from the fields of community psychology, history, and business psychology discuss the narratives to provide further insight. The narrative studies in Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists include: Anne Mulvey John Morgan Irma Serrano-Garcia Tom Wolff Carolyn Swift. Community Psychology in Practice: An Oral History Through the Stories of Five Community Psychologists is an encouraging, stimulating look at community psychology that is valuable to community psychologists, historians of psychology, researchers, industrial organization (IO) psychologists, educators, and students.