Chapter 1

The British Psychological Society, Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section. https://www.bps.org.uk/member-microsites/qualitative-methods-psychology-section A lot of useful information is provided here if you are interested in pursuing qualitative research.

Gough, B. (2017) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan: London. Brendan Gough has brought together an impressive group of authors in this handbook. It is accessible in the way in which the chapters are written, and they cover a wide range of topics.

Milward-Hopkins, J. (2017). http://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/joel-millward-hopkins/. Also try googling: Neoliberal psychology, openDemocracy. This post offers a very thoughtful account of what neoliberalism is and some of its psychological effects. I found it very thought-provoking, and enjoyed the illustrations he offers. It is a great entry into the topic, and this website is generally a good way to stay on top of recent political debates around issues like this.

Parker, I. (1989) The Crisis in Modern Social Psychology, and How to End It. Routledge: London. This one is an oldie but a goodie. It was a world-changing book in its day and is still worth reading to get a real sense of the beginnings of critical psychology in the UK.

Parker, I. (2015) Handbook of Critical Psychology. Routledge: London. This is a very comprehensive and wide-ranging handbook, with 42 chapters. It is well worth looking at in parallel to Gough’s handbook noted above, although they cover rather different ground. Some chapters are quite heavy going, but worth putting effort into. It is more overtly political than Gough’s Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology (2017), but the two handbooks complement each other very well.

Willig, C. (2013) Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3rd Edition. Buckingham: Open University Press. This is an excellent book to introduce you to qualitative research in psychology. It has a good balance between being scholarly and accessible; comprehensive and focused.

Chapter 2

Barker, M-J. Rewriting the Rules. www.rewriting-the-rules.com. This website offers a whole load of freely accessible resources, many of them about identity. These include a number of fascinating zines as well as books. Meg John is a respected (and much loved) academic psychologist, currently making a transition to full-time activism and writing.

Du Gay, P., Evans, J. and Redman, P. (2000) Identity: A Reader. Sage: London. This is a collection of a wide range of papers and articles on the topic of identity, designed as a component of an Open University masters course. It contains many of the classic works in this field, mainly from sociology and psychosocial psychology. It is a great place to start a much broader exploration of the concept of identity and how it has been theorised.

Scalzi, J. (2012) Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/. John Scalzi is a science fiction writer and cultural commentator. On his website he posts commentary of contemporary issues. Here he offers a very inventive and insightful (but also very scalding) critique of male privilege and patriarchy – indeed meritocracy more generally. Great fun to read, and very thought/discussion provoking.

Talapade Mohanty, C. (2010) Social Justice and the Politics of Identity. In Wetherell, M. and Talpade Mohanty, C., The Sage Handbook of Identities. Sage: London. A short and focused chapter that looks in particular at the interplay between identity and politics, around the time when Obama was elected as president of the US. It focuses on colonialism and its after-effects, as well as looking to the future of ‘identity politics’.

Wetherell, M. C. (2010) The Field of Identity Studies. In Wetherell, M. and Talpade Mohanty, C., The Sage Handbook of Identities. Sage: London. This chapter provides a really useful entré into the field, tracing in some depth the origins of identity studies and the paths that led up to it. It then goes on to provide an excellent overview, as well as introducing the chapters in the handbook.

Chapter 3

Cromby, J. (2015) Feeling Bodies: Embodying Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. John Cromby’s coverage of recent theory and research within human psychology’s approach to embodiment is wide-ranging, thorough and scholarly. It is an excellent exposition of the lived experience/phenomenological approach to this field – but very much more than that.

Goodley, D., Lathom, R., Liddiard, K. and Runswick-Cole, K. (2017) Critical Disability Studies. In B. Gough (ed) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan: London. This is a brilliant – and very up-to-date – chapter by well-respected academic scholars in this field. It offers an accessible but also pretty comprehensive introduction to this topic.

Langdridge, D. (2007) Phenomenological Psychology: Theory, Research and Method. Pearson: Harlow. This is the most accessible and comprehensive account of phenomenology I have found. It is a great place to start to find out more. In it Langdridge describes at length one of his own studies, on young gay men’s expectations for parenthood. He uses it to illustrate how to do critical narrative analysis. It is a very good read, and ideal if you wish to adopt this approach in a study of your own.

Oliver, M. and Barnes, C. (2012) The New Politics of Disablement, 2nd Edition. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. This is a much-updated version of Mike Oliver’s 1990 original, written with Colin Barnes, also a sociologist. It is an excellent introduction to the political and ideological issues surrounding embodiment that is called ‘disabled’, and the ways in which opinions, policy and economics play out in the creation of disability.

Chapter 4

Barker, M-J. (2018) Rewriting the Rules: An Anti-Self-Help Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships. Routledge: London. Youhave met Meg-John already in Chapter 2 – this is the book that led to the website www.rewriting-the-rules.com with lots of accessible stuff on it. The book is, as you can imagine, an exciting and inspirational read, offering a radical challenge to mainstream advice on how to make your loving relationships work.

Gabb, J., Klett-Davies, M., Fink, J. and Thomas, M. (2013) Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century. Open University Press: London. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/people-politics-law/politics-policy-people/social-policy/what-are-the-secrets-enduring-love Both the book and the website describe a mainly questionnaire- based study doing what it says on the tin! Certainly a ‘good read’, it is elegantly written and is good at explaining the implications of complex statistical data. The website suggested has a video with the authors talking.

Riggs, D. and Peel, E. (2016) Critical Kinship Studies. Palgrave Macmillan: London. In this book Damian Riggs and Elizabeth Peel provide a wide-ranging and insightful overview of the ways in which kinship works in very different ways in different settings. It is an explicitly critical book, looking at kinship from a ‘queering’ perspective, one that takes nothing for granted. It includes a useful chapter on relationships with other species. What makes it unusual is that it explores our understandings of kinship through a range of cultural forms – by looking at stories, films and everyday interactions. Deeply thought-provoking and informative!

Chapter 5

Appiah, K. A. (2018) The myth of meritocracy: Who really gets what they deserve? Guardian, 19th October. This is an accessible and pretty comprehensive overview of Michael Young’s concept of meritocracy, and how its meaning has been distorted under neoliberalism. It is not entirely accurate (The Open University was not his ‘brainchild’) but worth reading anyway.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2013) A Thousand Plateaus. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, MN. Nobody would ever claim that Deleuze and Guattari are easy reading – they are not. But if you’re feeling brave and adventurous, this is probably the best place to start getting to grips with ideas like binary thinking and its problems.

Rohleder, P. and Flowers, P. (2018) Towards a Psychology of Sexual Health. Journal of Health Psychology, 23(2): 143–144. This is the editorial leading into a special edition. It is well worth looking at it all as it offers a wide range of fascinating papers on issues related to health service provision for LGBTQ communities.

Skeggs, B. (2004) Class, Self and Culture. Routledge: London. This is a real tour de force – a clever and compelling examination of the ways in which people are Othered in all sorts of interesting ways by class.

Chapter 6

APA Guidelines for Practice with Men and Boys. www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner.aspx. These guidelines spell out some of the major problems men face because of hegemonic masculinity, and offer advice to psychologists about how they should approach working with men and boys. It is a fascinating, insightful and informative read, and well worth devoting some time to.

Barker, M-J. Mapping Your Sexuality. www.rewriting-the-rules.com/sex/new-zine-mapping-your-sexuality/. Meg-John Barker’s zine is a good way to explore your own sexuality, and to get a broader sense of the different ways in which sexuality plays out these days.

MacDonald, M. (2015) Women Prisoners, Mental Health, Violence and Abuse. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 36(3–4): 293–303. This account of women in prison is thorough and insightful. It makes a strong case that women prisoners need different treatment and different conditions compared with male prisoners.

Riggs, D. and Treharne, G. (2017) Queer Theory. In B. Gough (ed) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan: London. This chapter provides a wide ranging review of the ways in which queer theory has been developed as a challenge to mainstream social psychology, how it has been adopted and applied in psychology, and a look at where it is going. It offers a comprehensive introduction to this field.

Saini, A. (2017) Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story. Fourth Estate: London. Angela Saini’s book provided a brilliant and meticulous deconstruction of the arguments made by scientists to support the case that gender differences are biological. She also explores some of the reasons why this argument continues to be so forcefully made, despite the lack of evidence to support it.

Chapter 7

Bartlett, F. C. (1932) Remembering. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. http://nwkpsych.rutgers.edu/~jose/courses/578_mem_learn/2012/readings/Bartlett_1932.pdf. Youcan read a chapter from this book at the URL provided. It is quite a slog to get through, but it is interesting just how prescient Bartlett was about the ways in which meaning-comprehension and meaning-making are now regarded as the most important elements of human thinking.

Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow. Penguin: London. If you want an up-to-date account of where cognitive psychology is today, this would be an excellent place to begin. Kahneman writes clearly and with passion, and his book is very convincing. You (like me) may not agree with everything in it, but it is a great way to gain insight into the way so much of our human thinking lets us down!

Mielewczyk, M. and Willig, C. (2007) Old Clothes and an Older Look: The Case for a Radical Makeover in Health. Theory & Psychology, 17(6): 811–837. This paper is great fun! It is also an excellent way to get into the concept of socially situated action, and to realise why the traditional models of ‘health behaviour’ simply don’t work.

Watts, S. and Stenner, P. (2005) Doing Q Methodology: Theory, Method and Interpretation. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2(1): 67–69. I have only been able to touch upon Q methodology here. But if you want to know more the best place to start is with this paper.

Chapter 8

Ahmed, S. (2014) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh. Ahmed’s book is well worth a close read to get a real sense of how a psychoanalytic standpoint explores the ways that human feelings are produced, incited and sustained – and just how viscerally powerful they can be.

Barker, M-J. Hell Yeah! Self Care. http://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/zines/. This zine is highly polemic and inspirational, taking the stance that self-care is a radical act of resistance against neoliberalism and the harms it causes.

Cromby, J. (2015) Feeling Bodies: Embodying Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. I have already recommended this book for Chapter 3. Its coverage of recent theory and research in emotion/affect is very thorough, and a good exposition of the lived experience/phenomenological approach.

Illouz, E. (2007) Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Polity Press: Oxford. I found this a fascinating book, as it offered a different perspective from the others here. Coming from a sociologist highly critical of capitalism, it explores the ways in which it has used the manipulation of human emotions in the pursuit of commercial goals. Her more recent work is equally worth following.

Wetherell, M. (2012) Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding. Sage: London. This book is dense, but well-written, scholarly and comprehensive. In it, not surprisingly, Wetherell takes a discursive approach to affect, but does so with flair, and includes a range of different illustrations in investigating human feelings.

Chapter 9

Augoustinos, M. (2017) Discourse Analysis. In B. Gough (ed) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology, 37–58. This chapter offers a particular approach to discourse analysis, but provides an eclectic and wide-ranging overview of the field. It is particularly good at the critical psychology elements of this approach.

Curt, B. (1994) Textuality and Tectonics: Troubling Social and Psychological Science. This is something of a vanity suggestion, as I was heavily involved in the production of this book. It is dated in many ways and out of print, but an interesting read if you can get your hands on a copy. It is the origin of the terms ‘textuality’ and ‘tectonics’ to describe different aspects of discourse.

Locke, A., Lawthom, R. and Lyons, A. (2018) Social Media Platforms as Complex and Contradictory Spaces for Feminisms: Visibility, Opportunity, Power, Resistance and Activism. Feminism & Psychology, 28(1). This is the editorial for a special issue on recent theory and research in these emerging fields of study – a good place to get started.

Wiggins, S. and Potter, J. (2017) Discursive Psychology. In C. Willig and W. Stainton Rogers (eds) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Psychology. Sage: London. This chapter offers an authoritative, detailed and scholarly account of discursive psychology. While it describes only one approach to carrying out discourse analysis, it is good at looking more broadly at what discursive psychology is about, how it was created and where it is going.

Word and Image, www.open.edu/openlearn/. This free course introducing semiotics is currently available from the Open University’s OpenLearn initiative.

Chapter 10

Martikke’s, S. (2018) Overview of Social Capital. www.gmcvo.org.uk/system/files/social_capital_an_overview_0.pdf. This is an excellent and accessible resource. It was prepared for the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations.

The Sainsbury’s Living Well Index. www.oxfordeconomics.com/recent-releases/the-sainsbury-s-living-well-index. www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/news/latest-news/ /22-05-18-living-well-index. This survey offers some really interesting insights into what makes it possible for people to ‘live well’. Well worth using it to keep up with any future developments.

Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2010) The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone. Penguin: London. This book was a game-changer when it came out, making a convincing and systematic argument that inequality is very harmful to human welfare. Its use of comparative data is compelling. Despite its critics, the case being made is generally recognised as well-founded.

Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2018) The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing. Penguin: London. Their most recent book looks in more detail at the psychological impacts of inequality, especially on aspects like self-esteem and confidence.

The Wire TV Series. https://thewire.fandom.com/wiki/David_Simo. This is a great resource to explore the complex ways in which human welfare can be compromised and improved. Produced explicitly to examine life in urban US settings and see just how difficult it is to solve social problems.

Chapter 11

Alam, S. Creating Better Images. Shahidul Alam’s essay can be accessed via this link: Drik Picture Library, Ltd. http://shahidulnews.com/ http://majorityworld.com.

Brinkmann, S. (2017) Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze (trans. T. McTurk). Polity Press: Oxford. In this book Svend Brinkmann shows you some strategies for resisting neoliberal and capitalist pressures. He provides tips for how you can live a more sustainable life, getting off the treadmill of constant consumption and self-improvement.

Ngozi Adichie, C. Telling Better Stories. Toaccess Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED talk and its transcript use her name and the title of her talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story’.

Robbins, T. W. and Costa, R. M. (2017) Habits. Current Biology, 27(22). www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(17)31258-7. TrevorRobbins and Rui Costa’s, article is easily accessible from ScienceDirect and gives a clear and thorough account of the biology behind changing habits.

To provide all people. BBC Website. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7x2nt. You can watch videos here of the programme and its making, as well as follow up more information of the project.