Intellectual Journeys in Ecological Psychology

This is a wonderful collection of in-depth interviews with many leading ecological psychologists, sandwiched between reflections on the past and future of the discipline. This book not only shows the excitements and struggles of the first wave of ecologists, but also reveals how the approach took shape in the two decades after the founding father James Gibson had passed away. A group of opinionated scholars with a motley collection of thrilling ideas and some serious disagreements about how to take the Gibsonian approach further. A must-read for all ecological psychologists, and of great value to historians and sociologists of science interested in the emergence of new approaches. Rob Withagen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Human Movement Sciences, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is the author of Affective Gibsonian Psychology. The researchers featured in Interviews in Ecological Psychology are among the first few generations of ecological psychologists. Subsequent generations of ecological psychologists (myself included) have benefitted from their groundbreaking contributions to the field. And now, we can also benefit from an understanding of the context in which those contributions emerged. One of the great lessons of the ecological approach is that the successful performance of everyday behavior can only be understood in the broader context of the environment in which that behavior occurs. This book is an acknowledgement that the very same thing is also true about the field of ecological psychology itself (and fields of science in general). Jeff Wagman, professor of Psychology at Illinois State University, United States, and an Associate Editor of the journal Ecological Psychology. This volume will offer something for anyone wanting a deeper appreciation of the ecological approach. Agnes Szokolszky's interviews interlace accessible accounts of the theories and methods that shaped the field with engaging stories of personal dispositions, surprise findings and chance encounters to which the field would in turn give shape. Placed in a wider context by essays from leading scholars, the resulting collection serves not only as an important historical document but also as a powerful reminder of the pluralism of views that makes a science. Ludger van Dijk, philosopher based at the group for Systemic Change at the Eindhoven University of Technology and at the Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium. Reading these interviews has been humbling. You know you are in the presence of some of the greatest theoreticians of Psychology. The sources of their theoretical commitments and the paths their thinking has traveled through are fascinating. More importantly, they are significant for understanding the shape of psychology as a discipline. The book may engender feelings of regret - thinking of the many missed chances in the psychological sciences. However, these powerful interviews give me hope: maybe they will stir the theoretical consciences of the new generation of thinkers in Psychology. Maybe they will serve to halt blinkered empiricism and bring philosophical depth into every piece of research we do. Vasudevi Reddy, Emeritus Professor of Development and Cultural Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. She is the author of How Infants Know Minds, winner of the British Psychological Society's Best Book Award, 2011.