Jonathan Potter
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Jonathan Potter | |
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Born | |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Surrey |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Loughborough University |
Main interests | Discursive psychology |
Website | Rutgers University |
Jonathan Potter (born 8 June 1956)[1] is Dean of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University[2] and one of the originators of discursive psychology.
Life
Jonathan Potter was born in
In 1979 he applied for a PhD funding at the University of Bath to work with Harry Collins. He was offered a place but in the summer of 1979 the offer was withdrawn after the incoming Thatcher government cut the budget for social science. He started a part-time PhD with Peter Stringer in Psychology at the University of Surrey, while also working on a project on overseas tourists' experiences of Bath's bed and breakfast hotels. In this period he met and started to live with Margaret Wetherell, who was doing a PhD with John Turner and was, with Howard Giles and Henri Tajfel, one of the key figures in British social psychology. He took part in the vibrant intellectual culture of social psychology in Bristol at the time although he was a lone voice against the broadly experimental focus of Bristol tradition of so-called European Social Psychology.
When Peter Stringer left Surrey to move to a Chair in the Netherlands Potter applied for DPhil funding again and started to work with Michael Mulkay at the University of York. He worked within the sociology of scientific knowledge tradition, focusing on recordings of psychologists debating with one another at conferences. Increasingly that work evolved into an analysis of scientific discourse.
When Margaret Wetherell was appointed to a post in
After 4 years of temporary contracts at St Andrews he was offered a post at Loughborough University where he taught until July 2015, first as lecturer, then Reader in Discourse Analysis from 1992, then Professor of Discourse Analysis from 1996, and Head of Department from February 2010. At Loughborough he worked with and was influenced by Derek Edwards, Michael Billig, Charles Antaki and, more recently, Elizabeth Stokoe. Since 1996 he has lived with, and collaborated with, Alexa Hepburn. In the last decade he has taught workshops and short courses in Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Venezuela, New Zealand, Australia, US and the UK.
In 2005 his book Cognition and Conversation (jointly edited with Hedwig te Molder) received the inaugural prize of the American Sociological Association Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis section in 2007. In 2008 he was elected to UK Academy of Social Sciences.
Work
In 1984 he published Social Texts and Context: Literature and Social Psychology with Margaret Wetherell and Peter Stringer. This collaboration was developed in parallel to Potter and Wetherell's PhD work.
He is co-author, with Margaret Wetherell of the influential book Discourse and Social Psychology which is one of the foundational texts that developed a discourse analytic approach to social psychology, a programme now refined into
At the start of the 1990s, in the book Discursive Psychology, he and Derek Edwards built a specific style of work that is now commonplace in journals across the social sciences as well as indirectly fostering a swathe of non-experimental approaches to social psychology.[citation needed] This took on core notions in cognitive psychology and in particular memory and attribution. Its aim was to show that existing cognitive conceptions of these notions failed to encompass the situated and flexible nature of actual language use and to consider how peoples' accounts of cognitive processes and events are themselves parts of actions. For example, they reanalysed Ulric Neisser's classic work on the Watergate testimony showing the way John Dean's accounts of his excellent memory were used by counsel as parts of building the case against Richard Nixon. It was distinctive from the earlier discourse analytic approach to social psychology in its use of records of natural interaction rather than open ended interviews and its focus on sequential interaction rather than on the identification of interpretative repertoires.
In 1996 he published the book Representing Reality. This was the fruition of a sustained engagement with the sociology of scientific knowledge and other approaches to factuality and provided an overview, extension and critique of social constructionism in social sciences. It developed a discursive version of constructionism in contrast to the more familiar social constructionisms of thinkers such as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann.
His collection Conversation and Cognition, co-edited with Hedwig te Molder, brought together a group of conversation analysts, ethnothodologists and discursive psychologists (including Geoff Coulter, John Heritage, Anita Pomerantz, and Robert Hopper) to address fundamental issues at the boundary of work on cognition and interaction.
In 2007 he edited a three volume set of books that bring together a wide range of different studies in discursive psychology.
Recent work
Much of his recent work has been in collaboration with
Their paper on problems and prospects in the use of qualitative interviews in psychology, published in Qualitative Research in Psychology, generated debate with Jonathan Smith, Wendy Hollway and Elliot Mischler. It has been widely cited. This stimulated a further debate in Qualitative Research with Chris Griffin and Karen Henwood.
New work is focused on studying video records of mealtime interaction in families with young children. This has looked at actions such as directives, requests and threats and has a broader concern about the contribution of interaction analysis to the study of obesity.
In a 2010 paper in the British Journal of Social Psychology[3] Potter summarised and continued the controversial debate over the status of discursive psychology with respect to both traditional social psychology and alternative styles of critical work.
Bibliography
Books
- Potter, Jonathan; ISBN 9780710095534.
- Potter, Jonathan; ISBN 9780803980563.
- Potter, Jonathan; Edwards, Derek (1992). Discursive psychology. London: Sage. ISBN 9780803984431.
- Potter, Jonathan (1996). Representing reality discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London Thousand Oaks, California: ISBN 9780803984110.
- Potter, Jonathan; Puchta, Claudia (2004). Focus group practice. London Thousand Oaks, California: ISBN 9780761966913.
- Potter, Jonathan; te Molder, Hedwig (2005). Conversation and cognition. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521793698.
- Potter, Jonathan (2007). Discourse and psychology: Volumes I, II and III. SAGE Benchmarks in Psychology. Los Angeles: ISBN 9781412934039.
Book chapters
- Potter, Jonathan (2001), "Wittigenstein and Austin", in Wetherell, Margaret; Taylor, Stephanie; Yates, Simeon J. (eds.), Discourse theory and practice: a reader, D843 Course: Discourse Analysis, London Thousand Oaks California: ISBN 9780761971566.
- Potter, Jonathan; ISBN 9780761971566.
- Potter, Jonathan; ISBN 9789027251145.
- Potter, Jonathan; Puchta, Claudia (2007), "Mind, mousse and moderation", in Hepburn, Alexa; Wiggins, Sally (eds.), Discursive research in practice: new approaches to psychology and interaction, Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 104–124, ISBN 9780521614092.
- Potter, Jonathan; ISBN 9781412934039.
- Potter, Jonathan; ISBN 9780195306903.
Journal articles
- Potter, Jonathan; .
- Potter, Jonathan; S2CID 141983471.
- Potter, Jonathan (August 2002). "Two kinds of natural". S2CID 143700255.
- Potter, Jonathan (December 2010). "Contemporary discursive psychology: Issues, prospects, and Corcoran's awkward ontology". PMID 20178684.
- Potter, Jonathan (December 2012). "Arsène didn't see it: Coaching, research and the promise of a discursive psychology: A commentary" (PDF). International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching. 7 (4): 629–633. S2CID 73627186.
- A response to: Miller, Paul K. (December 2012). "Arsène didn't see it: Coaching, research and the promise of a discursive psychology" (PDF). International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching. 7 (4): 615–635. S2CID 73627186. Pdf of pp. 615–646.
- A response to: Miller, Paul K. (December 2012). "Arsène didn't see it: Coaching, research and the promise of a discursive psychology" (PDF). International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching. 7 (4): 615–635.
References
- ^ "Potter, Jonathan, 1956-". Library of Congress. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
data sheet (b. 6/8/56)
- ^ "Jonathan Potter Appointed Dean of Rutgers School of Communication and Information". 26 May 2015.
- PMID 20178684.