Elite athletes and retirement: Identity,choice, and agency

Retirement from elite sport can be highly distressing for athletes, and many report experiencing depression and anxiety in adjusting to this transition. In this article, a discursive psychological approach is employed to explore constructions of choice and identity around elite athletes’ retirements within Australian newsprint media. Within these accounts, three ‘types’ of retirements were identified: retirements occurring in relation to age, injury, or active choice. Retiring with individual agency and at an appropriate time was repeatedly privileged, whereas retiring in different ways was routinely problematised. In privileging particular ways of retiring, certain identity positions were made more accessible than others. Consequently, certain actions and choices are deemed appropriate (or not) for athletes, ultimately constraining decision‐making around retirement. The implications of such limited identity positions and choices are explored in relation to the psychological distress and clinical concerns that emerge among many athletes in the transition out of elite sport.     

“We Deal With Symptoms Rather Than Causes”: Antipoverty Policy Making in Occupied Palestinian Territories

Since the Palestinian National Authority assumed governance, antipoverty reforms implemented to combat social problems and traumatic stressors have had limited success. Few empirical studies have investigated policy-making obstacles in this context. Using a social protection framework, this study examined the policy-making environment in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with Palestinian ministry officials and archival records. Findings revealed a restrictive, obstacle-ridden environment that severely constrains development of high-quality policies for meeting needs of Palestinian citizens. Some limitations were similar to those in other emerging nations; others were unique to the case of Palestine. Policy and research implications are discussed.     

Skultety's Categories of Competition – A Competing Conceptualisation?

A recent article in this journal attempts to link categories of sport competition to appropriate psychologies of participants in the different sorts of competition. It criticises accounts of competition which understand it in relation to a very restricted range of psychologies because the purposes and psychologies with which people enter and engage in competition vary enormously. So, taking as a starting point a consensus view among sport philosophers of the key conditions governing competition, work is undertaken to identify fundamental distinctions drawing from the conditions, which are said to result in a fourfold typology of competitions. The final step is to suggest psychologies most suited to the components of the typology. My article examines this project and produces reasons to doubt its success.     

Admissions of racism in discourse on migration in Greece: Beyond the norm against prejudice?

The turn to language in social psychology is closely related to the study of prejudice as racist discourse has been the subject matter of some of the ground‐breaking discourse analytic work. A widely accepted argument was that there seems to be a norm against prejudice informing Western societies: people commonly engage in denials of prejudice when they make negative comments about minorities. Recent work has argued that, due to ideological shifts in the wider societal context or because denying prejudice may not be people's only rhetorical concern, it is possible to find people admitting prejudice. We examine how people in Greece, Greek majority and immigrants, formulate admissions of racism in interviews on migration and citizenship in Greece. Drawing on Ideological Dilemmas and Critical Discursive Social Psychology, we argue that these admissions ironically operate within the norm against prejudice and discuss our findings in relation to the wider socio‐political Greek context.     

‘How the other half lives’?: Taking a critical approach to the social psychology of economic inequality and extreme wealth

The negative impact of economic inequality on social issues and wellbeing is of importance to social psychology that historically has an interest in social justice. Social Identity Theory is explored as an approach that acknowledges the wider context of social issues. The use of experiments encounters challenges in categorizing wealth and how individuals account for extreme wealth. Mainstream research agendas in psychology are not neutral and draw upon current ideology (such as neoliberalism) that can often maintain inequality. These difficulties are addressed by Critical Social Psychology driven by a social justice agenda that challenges the acceptance of neoliberal values. The application of Critical Social Psychology to wealth inequality is demonstrated with research using UK media data. Critical feminist psychology is discussed to explore the role of class and how to challenge the stigmatization of working-class people. Finally, this paper outlines how Discursive Psychology addresses how extreme wealth and the practices of the super-rich are warranted. A discursive approach questions the acceptance of wealth inequality as an everyday assumption and demonstrates how dominant discourse draws upon individualism. Furthermore, Discursive Psychology has examined how accountability for problematic practices, such as tax avoidance that maintain inequality, are managed in media broadcasts.