Developing Prosocial Communities Across Cultures

✍ Scribed by Forrest B. Tyler (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag New York
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 166
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Skillfully combining psychological knowledge and humanitarian wisdom, Developing Prosocial Communities across Cultures shows how nurturing environments can be rooted in the common concerns of people and institutions, while giving readers the steps toward achieving this goal. Psychologist/activist Forrest Tyler emphasizes individuals’ collective responsibilities—to themselves, each other, and society—and describes a coordinated balance of discrete social changes brought about by civic action, policy changes initiated by officials, and collaboration between professionals and the community. Instructive examples from locales as varied as Colombia, Jordan, and the United States offer models from which readers can form unique, innovative solutions. And the author’s multicultural/ multiethnic approach clearly maps out the road from theoretical concepts to real-world action:

• Defining the prosocial community—core characteristics and elemental relationships.
• Observing communities: assessing their potential for intervention, determining change objectives.
• Thinking beyond traditional psychological/mental health approaches to community change.
• Prosocial effects of community projects involving multiple levels of action.
• Questscope: an extended example of community change in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Tyler’s decades of experience, and the lucid perspective of Developing Prosocial Communities across Cultures, brings social and community psychologists new assurance that social programs can have greater relevance to the people and groups they serve.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XII
Definitions and Background Issues....Pages 1-16
Psychosocial Integration: The Theoretical Framework....Pages 17-37
The Current Situation: Psychologists’ Approaches to Community Change....Pages 39-56
The Prosocial Effect of Changing One Aspect of a Community....Pages 57-75
The Prosocial Effect of Coordinating Change in Two Aspects of a Community....Pages 77-96
A Guide for Establishing Prosocial Communities....Pages 97-114
Questscope: A Comprehensive Prosocial Community Program....Pages 115-143
Back Matter....Pages 145-160

✦ Subjects

Community & Environmental Psychology; Clinical Psychology