5 May 2026, 18:00-19:30
Abstract:
Institutions across psychology and higher education now speak fluently about racism. They host diversity workshops, theorize whiteness, diversify samples, revise guidelines, and institutionalize reform. Yet structural inequalities persist, epistemic authority remains concentrated, and resistance continues to erupt. How can institutions change—and remain structurally the same? This lecture advances the concept of stabilizing repair. Rather than suppressing critique, contemporary institutions incorporate it. Racism is made speakable; whiteness is made visible; fragility is anticipated; privilege is enumerated. But as critique sediments into procedure—through bias training, diversity metrics, non-WEIRD sampling mandates, and pedagogical protocols—it reorganizes coordination without redistributing power. Dialogue becomes administrative form. Unsilencing becomes infrastructure. The critique of WEIRD psychology and the rise of critical whiteness pedagogy provide exemplary cases. In both, insurgent critique is translated into best-practice guidelines, workshops, and compliance structures. Responsibility is individualized, conflict is pedagogically bounded, and institutional legitimacy is renewed. Repair is completed symbolically and procedurally before structural rupture deepens. Drawing on a Small World perspective and postcolonial theory, I argue that diversity education and reform agendas function as technologies of infrastructural repair: they miniaturize crisis, absorb strain affectively, and stabilize authority through incorporation. The issue is not insincerity. It is coordination. The central question becomes: when does repair redistribute epistemic and material power—and when does it secure the very structures it claims to transform?
Kevin Durrheim is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Johannesburg and head of the UJ Methods Lab, which promotes open science in Africa. His research focuses on the social psychology of intergroup relations, including racism, segregation, and social change. His areas of specialization include experimental social psychology, social interaction and cooperation, group solidarity, and machine learning and natural language processing.
