Talk at LSE Seminar on Colonial Context of Behavioural Science

Spoke a couple of weeks ago at a new seminar series developed by Miriam Tresh and Maxi Heitmayer on marginalisation in psychology & behavioural science LSE Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. Decolonisation is frequently discussed in UK universities and is a theme of the series. I spoke about growing up in Ireland and learning economics and psychology in a university against the background of the debate of the role of political economy in the Irish famine. Some nationalist thinkers would have seen 19th century British political economy as being everything from flat wrong to sinful to a thin cover for intentional mass displacement policies. My own personal relationship to this like many people is complex. I was heavily influenced by philosophers like Hume and experienced them as liberating compared to several traditions of thought I encountered growing up. Hume's racist remarks are very difficult to process and I can understand why some would just want to leave him in the past but also why ignoring him would make it difficult to understand where much of modern work comes from. Such figures loom very large in the history of behavioural science. A lot of the history of behavioural science more generally is set against a backdrop of racism and almost total exclusion of women in places in ways that clearly limited how theory, methods, & applications emerged. As might be apparent I didn't provide a simple narrative for all this in the talk but spoke about different ways of navigating it to encourage audience to think through their own relation to these issues. Also examined different ways of studying these issues in the context of behavioural science including reading scholars like Sen and Folbre, and also reflected on the opportunities for an ethically grounded behavioural science emerging in a rapidly globalising environment in this area, one that isn't predestined to replicate past mistakes. There are various reactions to these types of discussions online and I was relieved if not surprised to hear a whole set of thoughtful and interesting points from the audience. People who work in policy worldwide in these areas will frequently encounter situations where complex historical and political factors will shape attitudes and willingness to engage with some of these literatures and students and researchers will often have very complex relationships to these issues and it is good to have space to think these issues through. I look forward to hearing from a wide range of other people on this.