7 - A Committed Research Praxis

Summary

In Chapter 7, I describe a committed research praxis where scientists strive to articulate the community-level value commitments that define good science, and to evaluate the degree to which particular scientific activities and products reflect those commitments. I argue that one primary way for psychologists to engage in this sort of committed praxis is by asking questions together in a place. That is, we can subject our work to insistent moral attention through collective and locally situated forms of reflection and responsibility. I suggest that these forms could include reflexivity, transparency, participatory and community-oriented research practices, political, historical, and material analyses of our research traditions and products, resistance to overgeneralized and “scaled” forms of neo-liberal management, and other practices that help anchor research work to the local and communal commitments that justify it.