ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, A DISCIPLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY OR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY OBJECT?

Abstract

Although the Environmental Psychology is often defined as the study of the interrelationship between people and sociophysical environments, the interrogation that gives the title of this paper illustrates a frequent source of tension in any field, whose object of study is in the interaction among several elements (people, environment ...). To paraphrase the title of a section on the historical foundations of Environmental Psychology in Brazil, this tension refers to the issue of their identity and their uncertainties. Its author, José de Queiroz Pinheiro, then asked: “In what "area " are trying ?, Psychology (or Social Psychology) here applied to environmental problems? ¿Socio-Environmental Psychology? ¿Human Ecology? ¿Social Ecology? Or Environmental Psychology? » (Pinheiro, 2001, p. 14)
Such questions often lead to descriptions of the evolution of the "areas", areas, disciplines or as we prefer to label their objects and ways of analysis. None pouring here a historiography of Environmental Psychology, nor only of its major milestones, we propose to show some of these questions, doubts and uncertainties –revisiting the main perspectives and agendas of future, around its interdisciplinary nature. Our goal is to reveal some elements about the tension between the dimension as a discipline and the claim of interdisciplinarity in the evolution of Environmental Psychology.
To meet this objective we review some reflections made about what it is and where it goes the discipline. Many of these contributions come from authors considered leaders in their geographic areas of influence, from meetings, conferences and seminars or "commissions" in the form of articles, chapters in handbooks or monographic revision numbers and / or conceptual foundation.
To do this, we start with a brief remark of the study of human-environment interaction in the relationship between disciplines and the presentation of some milestones in the history of Environmental Psychology to show some of its axes of tension, which are focussed into to check the agendas of questions and lines of future research and development and the epistemological approaches and methods that arise, ending with a final reflection before conclusions.