Community Social Psychology and Women’s Social Participation in Argentina

Demands and Challenges for University Extension

Abstract

From the praxis of community social psychology and feminisms, the aim of thispaper is to reflect on the experiences of problematisation and co-management ofcollective-community devices in the enforceability of rights with women participantsin social and trade union movements developed in different historical moments ofthe university extension project in the Observatory of promotion and prevention ofcommunity health of the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires.The work addresses the tensions of social and political participation of womenbelonging to the piquetero movement, neighbourhood assemblies and a trade unionorganisation, using Participatory Action Research as a methodological strategy. Inthe different processes, a plurality of techniques were implemented, such as in-depthinterviews, surveys, participant observations, life stories, focus groups, workshopsand participatory evaluations in/with the organisations, based on relational ethics,dialogicality, justice and equity in access to human rights. In this framework, the articlereflects on the possibilities and limits of psychosocial interventions proposed fromthe field of community social psychology, in a social scenario with neoliberal policiesof precariousness of life and devastation of the territories, but also the emergence ofnew social actors who resist and produce new modes of organisation, sociability andsubjectivity. In the current critical scenario, we propose the recovery of historicalmemory and the knowledge produced from the experiences analysed.