Making sense of ourselves and others: A contribution to the community-diversity debate

In recent years, a debate has played out concerning the relationship between two of Community Psychology's core values: promoting diversity and promoting a sense of community. To elaborate on this dialectical relationship, we propose to inscribe it within the broader framework of the identity-otherness dynamics, which currently underpins a variety of disruptive socio-political processes across Europe (e.g., the decrease of solidarity in dealing with the refugee crisis, the spreading of eurosceptic attitudes, and the waves of xenophobia and populism). All these phenomena entail, either as a premise or as a consequence, the negation of otherness and diversity. Some theories in cultural and semiotic psychology suggest that a deeper understanding of the community-diversity dialectics would benefit from taking into account not only the traditional socio-cognitive processes, but also the symbolic and meaning-making processes that envelop the experience of self and the experience of otherness. This perspective would also help in developing community interventions that acknowledge both the need for belonging and identity, and the need for diversity.

近年来，一场围绕社区心理学（Community Psychology）两大核心价值——倡导多样性与培育社区归属感——之间关系的辩论逐渐展开。为深入阐释这一辩证关系，我们提议将其置于身份与他者性的动态关系框架下进行解读——该框架目前构成了欧洲各地诸多颠覆性社会政治进程的底层逻辑，例如难民危机应对中团结性的衰减、疑欧主义论调的蔓延，以及排外主义与民粹主义的浪潮。所有上述现象均以否定他者性与多样性作为前提或必然结果。文化符号心理学（Cultural and Semiotic Psychology）中的部分理论表明，若要更透彻地理解多样性与社区归属感的辩证关系，不仅需要考量传统的社会认知过程，还需纳入涵盖自我体验与他者性体验的符号建构与意义生成过程。这一研究视角亦有助于开发兼顾归属感与身份认同需求、同时尊重多样性诉求的社区干预方案。