What Psychology for a Sustainable Community?

Dear Colleagues,

Growing attention is being paid to global events having an impact on people's social lives. The close interconnection between social systems results in large-scale events and processes rapidly taking on a global dimension.

Migration flows, health emergencies, climate change and the scarcity of natural resources (just to mention some of the most current issues) determine the social and environmental balance consequences of the entire planet, subjecting specific social systems to strong stress tests and necessary adaptation efforts. This favors the emergence of shared feelings of uncertainty, concern, restlessness and behaviors of the extreme protection of oneself and one's microcosm. The contemporary social scenario appears to be characterized by marked individualism often bringing with it the denial of problems, deep distrust in institutions and disinvestment in collective processes.

Such impressive phenomena require the mobilization of collective feelings of belonging, collective responsibility, protection and safeguarding of communities, a profound awareness of the interdependence between social systems, recognition of the resources that communities hold within them and the consolidation and continuous preservation of social networks.

What factors and processes could implement changes urgently required of sustainable communities?

What role can psychology play? What contribution can it present?

Community psychology, together with clinical psychology, have been called to an imposing challenge, that is, to understand, in depth, the individualistic anomic culture, with anxious short-term visions, and to encourage development processes causing the sustainability of existence and the ability to invest in the long-term one of the first and most important key words. With this in mind, educational systems, support services and personal care, including health systems and formal and informal social networks, can be considered community pillars from which complex actions of cultural innovation can start.

We are interested in contributions of different kinds: literature reviews, narrative or systematic; experimental research; evaluations of interventions; qualitative and quantitative studies. The goal is to collect studies addressing these issues, both from a general perspective and in relation to specific domains.

Dr. Manuela Tomai
Dr. Viviana Langher
Guest Editors

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