When relevance decenters criticality: the case of the South African national crime, violence and injury lead programme

Abstract

Following the formal demise of political apartheid in South Africa in 1994, critical and community-centred psychologists have tended to obtain relevance through alignment with the tenets of social justice and the larger democratic project. This article draws on the experiences of the Crime, Violence and Injury Lead Programme (cvi) to illustrate how particular formulations of scientific and social relevance function to marginalize criticality and critical scholarship. The author suggests that relevance without criticality produces forms of intellectual activity that privilege empiricist traditions, perpetrate a binary between research and research translation, and reproduce the myth that intervention work is atheoretical. The review of the cvi serves as a reminder of the challenges inherent in enactments of critical psychology. Among the many issues that critical psychology oriented initiatives like cvi have to contend with is the task of developing theoretical and other resources to move between co-operation and critique in the service of democratic development.