Séamus A Power
Biographic Data
| ID | 907448 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Séamus A Power |
| GIVEN NAMES | Séamus A |
| FAMILY NAME | Power |
| SIGNATURE | POWER S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6770-4756 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Inequality: The View from Manywheres
We are consistently bombarded with news and hard evidence that the super-rich are getting richer, leaving the rest of us behind. At the same time, many of us live lives that are materially richer than what was possible for most people throughout human history. We've never had it so good, yet it often feels like we don't have enough. This book reconciles that tension, placing the vices of capitalism in conversation with its virtues. Séamus A. Powe…
Paradoxes of Danish egalitarianism and the political force of the hyphen. The case of high school quotas
This article explores the reaction of minoritised high school students and staff to a recent political agreement in Denmark to redefine the distribution criteria of high school places across the country and, with it, combat inequality. Ethnographic investigation of this controversial case exposes the paradoxes inherent to the Danish practice of equality, which insists on levelling outcomes but systematically excludes those who seem unfit to belon…
Conceptualizing brutal honesty
Unvetted Single Males: Humanizing Three African Men Who Sought Asylum in Ireland
The Wonderland model of toxic creativity in leadership: When the “never again” impossible becomes not only possible but actual
We suggest that toxic creative leaders succeed by creating a fantastic future in a fantasy world that we call “Wonderland.” They make what was thought to be impossible, not only possible but actual. The game is similar to board games that bring one of the players playing them to some wonderful destination at the end of the game. The future they create, however, is an illusion, designed to appeal to people who feel under-appreciated, disempowered,…
Resisting dystopian visions of urban policy: A dialogical analysis of speeches from Danish anti-ghetto-law protests
The current research studies demonstrations held in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 2020 and 2023 in the wake of the 2018 ‘parallel society agreement’ (a.k.a. ‘ghetto-laws’). The stated aim of this legislation was to facilitate the integration of ethnic minorities into mainstream society by drawing middle-class Danish residents into public housing areas defined by high levels of ethnic minority populations. We draw on dialogical and socio-cultural p…
Searching for the joy of the crowd: Field social psychology during the reopening of Danish society
Dishonesty in Romantic Relationships: A Framework of Forms, Content, Dominant Motives, and Consequences
Dishonesty occurs frequently in romantic relationships. Although previous research has already described its different forms, motives, and consequences, we herein strengthen respective research by providing an inductively derived, broad framework of the forms, content, dominant motives, and consequences of dishonesty in romantic relationships. To this end, participants ( N = 656) were asked to describe the most vivid, common, or recent incident w…
The psychology of omniculturalism
A Dialogue With the (il)Legitimate Other: An Action‐Oriented and Dialogical Account of Social Representations in Urban‐Integration Policy
Using semi‐structured interviews, we investigate how professionals involved in implementing or communicating a controversial Danish integration policy articulated their perspectives on the policy. This policy—the ‘the parallel society agreement’ (also known as the ‘ghetto‐laws’)—aims to draw a ‘Danish’ middle class into marginalized public housing areas to promote assimilation of ethnic minority residents. Adopting a dialogical and action‐oriente…
Associations of war exposures, post-migration living difficulties and social support with (complex) PTSD: A cohort study of Ukrainian refugees resettled in Denmark
PMLDs are important risk factors for post-trauma psychopathology in war refugees. Social support mitigates the negative association between PMLDs for PTSD, while low social support is an independent risk factor for CPTSD. Attention should be paid to refugees' daily life challenges and social support networks
Schools, childcare infrastructures, and mothers' time use and psychological well-being: Evidence from the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark
Schools and childcare infrastructures are key in shaping parents' daily routines and well-being. Focusing on COVID-19 school disruptions, we examine how women's time use and psychological well-being changed as schools and childcare facilities closed and later reopened during the first wave of the pandemic in Denmark (April 1-June 26, 2020). Using data from a longitudinal opt-in online survey with Danish residents, we find that the reopening of sc…
Is multiculturalism as American as apple pie? A survey of attitudes toward ethnic and religious diversity in the United States
What percentage of American citizens believe that the real America is a White Christian America? How many would prefer to live in a more homogeneous or singular country, one occupied primarily by members of their own ethnic, racial, or religious group? In the face of contemporary changes in the composition of the population, to what extent have the White Christian citizens of the United States become fearful of demographic replacement? Alternativ…
Is It Safe for Us to Be Together Again? Identity, Trust, and Perceived Risk at Mass Events During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Three years after the outbreak of COVID-19, governments are still working toward a return to “normal life.” Yet, the twin forces of ongoing disease threat and progressively relaxing restrictions raise important questions about whether, where, and when people feel safe. We analyzed data from post-event surveys of participants at live events held across Denmark between June and November 2021 ( n individuals = 4,932; n events = 79). Consistent with …
Polygamy on Trial: Analyzing Anti-Polygamy Legislation in Nineteenth-Century United States
This study examines nineteenth-century United States anti-polygamy legislation, focusing on its intersections with multiculturalism and minority rights. By analyzing the historical and legal aspects of these laws, we identify their impact on Mormon communities and immigrant groups, aimed at enforcing cultural assimilation. Our findings reveal tensions between religious freedom and societal concerns over polygamy, particularly in Christian context…
Manywheres: In Pursuit of Social Justice in Developmental Science
In this article, we articulate an innovative framework, manywheres , and argue that it can advance the work of fostering youth-led change and progressive world-making. We first root psychological and development science in an applied framework of developing more just, harmonious, and tolerant social worlds. Then, we introduce manywheres , a guiding framework of propositions of attending to the complexity and nuance of meaning-making across indivi…
Teaching field social psychology: An action orientation to pedagogy of methods and methodologies
A confluence of societal challenges and critiques of dominant modes of psychological science has created an opportunity to reassess how research in the discipline is taught to future generations of researchers. Given this context, psychology instructors must employ approaches and concrete strategies that provide students with research methods and methodologies focused on developing effective and ecologically valid insights about everyday life. In…
Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis: A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures
In this article we report evidence from a series of semi-structured interviews with a broad sample of people living in Denmark ( n = 21), about their perspectives on the future during the first months of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The thematic and discursive analyses, based on an abductive ontology, illustrate imaginings of the future along two vectors: individual to collective and descriptive to moral. On a descriptive and individual level, p…
The role of temporal analogies in collective movements
Although the importance of temporal perspectives for understanding collective movements has been theoretically emphasised, they are rarely considered in research. Focusing on the mass protests against COVID‐19 policies in Germany, we investigated how protesters make use of temporal references in their protest narratives. Results from 11 multi‐site protest observations and 31 interviews showed that participants (a) drew historical perpetrator and …
Protest Crowds through the Lens of Distributed Cognition
How are ideas transformed into collective causes that can rally and sustain protest crowds? We present a theoretical framework of crowd mobilization through the perspective of distributed cognition. We look at protest crowds as distributed processes that happen across brains, bodies, social interactions, and material-technological resources. This perspective is illustrated by protest crowd dynamics as they are facilitated by social interaction, s…
Revisiting the crowd: Peaceful assembly in Irish water protests
The enactment of the Water Services Bill into Irish law on December 28, 2014, was met with strong opposition from the Irish public, manifesting in local and national demonstrations. This social movement provided an ideal case to examine interactions between protesters and police in different contexts. Ethnographic observations and randomly sampled interviews took place before, and during, seven national demonstrations in Dublin, Ireland. Simultan…
Developing in a Dynamic World: Harnessing Psychology to Support the Covid-19 Generation
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and other social dynamics created a myriad of challenges and changes for individuals, groups, and societies. The impacts on youth are particularly noteworthy given developmental processes of adolescence and emerging adulthood. As psychologists, we have much to offer in studying how 2020 influenced their development and in shaping effective supports. To be useful, the work must be nuanced, iterative, and attentive to…
Coming together after standing apart: What predicts felt safety in the post-coronavirus crowd
An investigation of perceptions of (un)just systems: Tests of rationalization in the context of Irish austerity measures
Following a global economic collapse in 2008, the Irish accepted economic hardship in the years immediately following the financial downturn without demonstrating. Why did not the Irish protest in response to the economic collapse, especially when other countries hit by the economic collapse did? Here, we empirically test ideas put forth in previous qualitative work: that a culturally ingrained moral principle, in life, “you reap what you sow,” h…
Communities Change When Individuals Change”: The sustainability of system‐challenging collective action
People who challenge the status quo through collective action face tremendous obstacles—not just practically, but in their ways of thinking, existing, and relating to others. This article addresses how collective actors sustain their engagement in the face of such high costs. System‐challenging collective actors must reimagine and enact new, non‐normative ways of thinking, existing, and relating that transform the status quo. This article explore…
The Deprivation-Protest Paradox: How the Perception of Unfair Economic Inequality Leads to Civic Unrest
The global economy collapsed in 2007-2008. The Irish initially accepted harsh austerity when the economy tanked. Yet, when Ireland had the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2014 and 2015, mass demonstrations, standoffs and clashes with police, and other forms of civil unrest occurred. In this article, I introduce the "Deprivation-Protest Paradox." Drawing on in-depth urban ethnographic work in a small Irish city and randomly sampled interviews…
Field social psychology
Field social psychology is a conceptual and methodological approach to describe, examine, and explain psychological phenomena at multiple levels of analysis with emphasis on the sociocultural environments in which people are embedded, the unfolding of psychological processes over time, and the use of ecologically valid multiple methods in conjunction. In this essay, we first define a contemporary form of field social psychology from its roots in …
A violent past but a peaceful present: The cultural psychology of an Irish recession
The role of temporal analogies in collective movements
Although the importance of temporal perspectives for understanding collective movements has been theoretically emphasised, they are rarely considered in research. Focusing on the mass protests against COVID‐19 policies in Germany, we investigated how protesters make use of temporal references in their protest narratives. Results from 11 multi‐site protest observations and 31 interviews showed that participants (a) drew historical perpetrator and …
Communities Change When Individuals Change”: The sustainability of system‐challenging collective action
People who challenge the status quo through collective action face tremendous obstacles—not just practically, but in their ways of thinking, existing, and relating to others. This article addresses how collective actors sustain their engagement in the face of such high costs. System‐challenging collective actors must reimagine and enact new, non‐normative ways of thinking, existing, and relating that transform the status quo. This article explore…
Is multiculturalism as American as apple pie? A survey of attitudes toward ethnic and religious diversity in the United States
What percentage of American citizens believe that the real America is a White Christian America? How many would prefer to live in a more homogeneous or singular country, one occupied primarily by members of their own ethnic, racial, or religious group? In the face of contemporary changes in the composition of the population, to what extent have the White Christian citizens of the United States become fearful of demographic replacement? Alternativ…
The psychology of omniculturalism
Coming together after standing apart: What predicts felt safety in the post-coronavirus crowd
Continuing the dialogue
Humans as objects: Processes, predictions and problems
It’s contagious: Rethinking a metaphor dialogically
“Contagion” appears frequently in peer-reviewed articles and in popular media to explain the spread of ideas, feelings, and behaviors. In the context of social science, however, we argue that this metaphor leads to magical thinking and should be described as a simile, rather than a metaphor. We review literature on “social contagion” using the dialogical paradigm and conclude that peer-reviewed claims tend to correspond with imagined realities fr…
A violent past but a peaceful present: The cultural psychology of an Irish recession
The Deprivation-Protest Paradox: How the Perception of Unfair Economic Inequality Leads to Civic Unrest
The global economy collapsed in 2007-2008. The Irish initially accepted harsh austerity when the economy tanked. Yet, when Ireland had the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2014 and 2015, mass demonstrations, standoffs and clashes with police, and other forms of civil unrest occurred. In this article, I introduce the "Deprivation-Protest Paradox." Drawing on in-depth urban ethnographic work in a small Irish city and randomly sampled interviews…
Teaching students how to think, not what to think: Pedagogy and political psychology
Academia is often critiqued as an “ivory tower” where research, thinking, and teaching are isolated from the complexity and everyday experience of so many people. As instructors of political and other psychology courses, we strive to break down these barriers and engage with the dynamic and nuanced nature of phenomena as situated in lived social and political contexts. In this report, we unpack and detail how we strive to achieve this goal by exp…
An investigation of perceptions of (un)just systems: Tests of rationalization in the context of Irish austerity measures
Following a global economic collapse in 2008, the Irish accepted economic hardship in the years immediately following the financial downturn without demonstrating. Why did not the Irish protest in response to the economic collapse, especially when other countries hit by the economic collapse did? Here, we empirically test ideas put forth in previous qualitative work: that a culturally ingrained moral principle, in life, “you reap what you sow,” h…
Communities Change When Individuals Change”: The sustainability of system‐challenging collective action
People who challenge the status quo through collective action face tremendous obstacles—not just practically, but in their ways of thinking, existing, and relating to others. This article addresses how collective actors sustain their engagement in the face of such high costs. System‐challenging collective actors must reimagine and enact new, non‐normative ways of thinking, existing, and relating that transform the status quo. This article explore…
Field social psychology
Field social psychology is a conceptual and methodological approach to describe, examine, and explain psychological phenomena at multiple levels of analysis with emphasis on the sociocultural environments in which people are embedded, the unfolding of psychological processes over time, and the use of ecologically valid multiple methods in conjunction. In this essay, we first define a contemporary form of field social psychology from its roots in …
Offline World: The Internet as Social Infrastructure among the Unconnected in Quasi-Rural Illinois
Revisiting the crowd: Peaceful assembly in Irish water protests
The enactment of the Water Services Bill into Irish law on December 28, 2014, was met with strong opposition from the Irish public, manifesting in local and national demonstrations. This social movement provided an ideal case to examine interactions between protesters and police in different contexts. Ethnographic observations and randomly sampled interviews took place before, and during, seven national demonstrations in Dublin, Ireland. Simultan…
Developing in a Dynamic World: Harnessing Psychology to Support the Covid-19 Generation
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and other social dynamics created a myriad of challenges and changes for individuals, groups, and societies. The impacts on youth are particularly noteworthy given developmental processes of adolescence and emerging adulthood. As psychologists, we have much to offer in studying how 2020 influenced their development and in shaping effective supports. To be useful, the work must be nuanced, iterative, and attentive to…
Coming together after standing apart: What predicts felt safety in the post-coronavirus crowd
Protest Crowds through the Lens of Distributed Cognition
How are ideas transformed into collective causes that can rally and sustain protest crowds? We present a theoretical framework of crowd mobilization through the perspective of distributed cognition. We look at protest crowds as distributed processes that happen across brains, bodies, social interactions, and material-technological resources. This perspective is illustrated by protest crowd dynamics as they are facilitated by social interaction, s…
Is It Safe for Us to Be Together Again? Identity, Trust, and Perceived Risk at Mass Events During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Three years after the outbreak of COVID-19, governments are still working toward a return to “normal life.” Yet, the twin forces of ongoing disease threat and progressively relaxing restrictions raise important questions about whether, where, and when people feel safe. We analyzed data from post-event surveys of participants at live events held across Denmark between June and November 2021 ( n individuals = 4,932; n events = 79). Consistent with …
Polygamy on Trial: Analyzing Anti-Polygamy Legislation in Nineteenth-Century United States
This study examines nineteenth-century United States anti-polygamy legislation, focusing on its intersections with multiculturalism and minority rights. By analyzing the historical and legal aspects of these laws, we identify their impact on Mormon communities and immigrant groups, aimed at enforcing cultural assimilation. Our findings reveal tensions between religious freedom and societal concerns over polygamy, particularly in Christian context…
Manywheres: In Pursuit of Social Justice in Developmental Science
In this article, we articulate an innovative framework, manywheres , and argue that it can advance the work of fostering youth-led change and progressive world-making. We first root psychological and development science in an applied framework of developing more just, harmonious, and tolerant social worlds. Then, we introduce manywheres , a guiding framework of propositions of attending to the complexity and nuance of meaning-making across indivi…
Teaching field social psychology: An action orientation to pedagogy of methods and methodologies
A confluence of societal challenges and critiques of dominant modes of psychological science has created an opportunity to reassess how research in the discipline is taught to future generations of researchers. Given this context, psychology instructors must employ approaches and concrete strategies that provide students with research methods and methodologies focused on developing effective and ecologically valid insights about everyday life. In…
Imagining Life Beyond a Crisis: A Four Quadrant Model to Conceptualize Possible Futures
In this article we report evidence from a series of semi-structured interviews with a broad sample of people living in Denmark ( n = 21), about their perspectives on the future during the first months of the global Covid-19 pandemic. The thematic and discursive analyses, based on an abductive ontology, illustrate imaginings of the future along two vectors: individual to collective and descriptive to moral. On a descriptive and individual level, p…
The role of temporal analogies in collective movements
Although the importance of temporal perspectives for understanding collective movements has been theoretically emphasised, they are rarely considered in research. Focusing on the mass protests against COVID‐19 policies in Germany, we investigated how protesters make use of temporal references in their protest narratives. Results from 11 multi‐site protest observations and 31 interviews showed that participants (a) drew historical perpetrator and …
The Wonderland model of toxic creativity in leadership: When the “never again” impossible becomes not only possible but actual
We suggest that toxic creative leaders succeed by creating a fantastic future in a fantasy world that we call “Wonderland.” They make what was thought to be impossible, not only possible but actual. The game is similar to board games that bring one of the players playing them to some wonderful destination at the end of the game. The future they create, however, is an illusion, designed to appeal to people who feel under-appreciated, disempowered,…
Resisting dystopian visions of urban policy: A dialogical analysis of speeches from Danish anti-ghetto-law protests
The current research studies demonstrations held in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 2020 and 2023 in the wake of the 2018 ‘parallel society agreement’ (a.k.a. ‘ghetto-laws’). The stated aim of this legislation was to facilitate the integration of ethnic minorities into mainstream society by drawing middle-class Danish residents into public housing areas defined by high levels of ethnic minority populations. We draw on dialogical and socio-cultural p…
Searching for the joy of the crowd: Field social psychology during the reopening of Danish society
Dishonesty in Romantic Relationships: A Framework of Forms, Content, Dominant Motives, and Consequences
Dishonesty occurs frequently in romantic relationships. Although previous research has already described its different forms, motives, and consequences, we herein strengthen respective research by providing an inductively derived, broad framework of the forms, content, dominant motives, and consequences of dishonesty in romantic relationships. To this end, participants ( N = 656) were asked to describe the most vivid, common, or recent incident w…
The psychology of omniculturalism
Psychology (22 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Law (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Politics (6 works) · Community Health and Development (5 works)