Theorizing ‘Relevance’ in Psychology

AbstractCalls for ‘relevance’ in psychological theory and practice have gathered pace since at least the late 1960s when radical soci al protests irrupted as every day, frequently international, events. Beginning with a crisis in American and European social psychology, sentiments about the social irrelevance of psychology found their way subsequently into the psychological communities of the disciplinary hinterlands, including India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Turkey, Latin America and Africa. Curiously, however, despite the intransigence of ‘relevance’ discourse, almost no attempt has been made to theorize its emergence in the discipline. This theoretical paper attempts to do just that by acknowledging, inter alia, developments in the sociolog y of science, contract theory (as a metaphorical recasting of the science-society relationship), the Habermasian theory of cognitive interests, ideas on disciplinarity, the historical indeterminacy of psychology's subject and the discipline's vexed relations hip with the phenomenon of rapid social change. The paper concludes that notions about ‘relevance’, while rooted ostensibly in material concerns, are expressed unavoidably in predominantly rhetorical terms, mirroring stubborn controversies between proponents of realism and relativism. As far as a professional practice is concerned, in developing contexts where ‘relevance’ – translated as indigenization – guarantees political currency, the implications are potentially salutary but may also intersect with ideological configurations