ABSTRACT
Like every other book, this volume tells a story. This book is about the role psychological knowledge and practices play in shaping and governing our lives. We address how psychology functions within current institutionalized structures of inequality. Our account is for people engaged with the practice or the theory of psychology-whether as professional psychologists, or as health and welfare professionals drawing on psychological concepts and methods in their work, or as undergraduate and postgraduate students in search of a more reflexive and institutionally located analysis of the discipline. This is a polemical as well as a pedagogical story, in that we seek to engage and persuade as well as inform. Like the readers we address, our writing spans the range of applications of psychology, as theory and as practice, in the senses not only of explicit professional expertise and activity but also as an implicit ingredient in our everyday lives. We explore how we as the authors, like you, the readers, are multiply positioned in relation to psychology and the material in this book. We treat this diversity of background and stance as an important resource and topic, both for the contents and the uses of this book.
