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Temas em Psicologia

 ISSN 1413-389X

CASTANON, Gustavo Arja. Postmodernism and scientific politics in contemporary Psychology: A critical review. []. , 12, 2, pp.155-167. ISSN 1413-389X.

The present work is a study on the influence of postmodernism in scientific politics of contemporary Psychology. The epistemological presuppositions adopted by Social Construcionism and its political-academic consequences are investigated. The elimination, by postmodern philosophy, of the distinction between discovery context and justification context emerges as the cause for the dissolution of the distinction between epistemological criteria and political criteria in theories and in hypothesis validations in the "sociological" field of Social Psychology. The consequent rejection of presuppositions of modern science necessarily brings about an interpretation of science as an activity without epistemological privileges, which is socially affirmed only through political and economical resources. The postmodern Social Psychology therefore, as consequence, abandoned the laboratory and research and chose the political organization, institutional domain, and propaganda as its field in order to achieve academic affirmation. Without objective criteria of relevance, the scientific production is evaluated by its volume, a criterion that became the sole academic productivity criterion, leading postmodern Psychology to what can be named its "Sherazad complex".

: Social Construcionism; Scientific politics; Postmodernism; Epistemology; Social Psychology.

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