Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era / International and Cultural Psychology (PDF)

Elena Mustakova-Possardt, Ed.D., LPC, is an independent scholar and developmental psychologist in clinical practice in Arlington, VA. Former tenured Associate Professor of Psychology at University of West Georgia, she has published, lectured and taught widely, in cultures as diverse as Switzerland, Zimbabwe, United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, and the U.S. She works with diverse forms of oppression worldwide and explores paths to cultivating an emancipated and truly liberated consciousness. Her re-thinking of moral development won the 1995 Dissertation Award of the Henry A. Murray Research Center for the Study of Lives at Harvard University, and the 1998 Outstanding Dissertation Award of the Association for Moral Education. Her book Ontogeny of Critical Consciousness: Study of Morality in a Global Age (Greenwood/Praeger 2003) was also published in Bulgarian (Sofia University Press 2004).  Her cross-cultural community development work with Latino immigrants won the Carter Award for Campus and Community Initiatives. She can be reached at elena.mustakova@gmail.com or at www.elenamustakova.net.

Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D., is a member of the teaching faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where, among other courses, he teaches Psychology of Race and Ethnicity and a graduate-level restorative justice practicum based at a youth detention center. Since 2009, he has been a practitioner of Restorative Circles, a restorative practice developed in Brazil. In addition, Mikhail also has a long-standing interest in race and racial dynamics and writes a blog about race for Psychology Today called Between the Lines. Born in Kiev, Mikhail immigrated to the United States with his family as a child in 1977. He currently lives in Urbana, IL with his wife and two children, ages 5 and 10. He can be reached at Lyubanskym@gmail.com.

Michael Basseches, Ph.D., Professor, Department ofPsychology, Suffolk University, is a life-span

"Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era is a foray into an important and neglected territory. The authors are to be commended for their passion and dedication in bringing to bear the immense resources of Western psychology to attempt to lessen human degradation, enrich the world, and increase human dignity and freedom....This book will be of interest to all mental health professionals, students, and professors in the social sciences and laypeople concerned with the plight of our world in a challenging age. We should read it not as the final world on a complex topic but as part of an ongoing crucial conversation that we all need to participate in, deepen, and expand so that we can cocreate a more sustainable world and a viable future."
Jeffrey B. Rubin, PsycCRITIQUES
February 24, 2014, Vol. 59, No. 8, Article 1

"This scholarly treatment of profoundly human issues is a breath of fresh air. Although framed as an edited collection of independent essays, the book is obviously much more collaborative than is typical for a collection of scholarly articles organized around a theme. Many of the essays are co-authored by scholars who contribute to several pieces in the collection. The careful editorial work also contributes to this overall sense of a true conversation about critical topics. This provides a sense of continuity and real thematic organization that is unusual in scholarly collections. Having spent over thirty years reading scholarly collections of articles, most of which have the feeling of listening to a crowd of people having separate conversations on a subway--the same subway car being the theme--this collection offers a refreshing change. The contributors to the volume represent many strands of scholarly work and clinical practice in psychology. This integration of knowledge, practical wisdom, spiritually-informed reflection, and hands-on engagement in service to communities expresses the spirit of the "socially-responsible" in