The political and social mission of psychiatry

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S14-S14
Author(s):  
S. Priebe

Psychiatry is based on values and scientific evidence. The presentation will argue that both bases come with a social and political mission.The values require a commitment to help those in need of support, which cannot be fully achieved without social and political action. The scientific evidence points to the central role of societal factors, such as inequality and poverty, for the development of mental disorders. Influencing these factors requires political decisions.It will be concluded that taking up the social and political mission is a moral imperative for both psychiatrists as a professional group and individual psychiatrists, and may make the profession more relevant in society, more attractive to medical students, and more effective in helping patients with mental distress.The discussion will address the challenges and practical options for such a mission.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-98
Author(s):  
Pia Rowe ◽  
David Marsh

While Wood and Flinders’ work to broaden the scope of what counts as “politics” in political science is a needed adjustment to conventional theory, it skirts an important relationship between society, the protopolitical sphere, and arena politics. We contend, in particular, that the language of everyday people articulates tensions in society, that such tensions are particularly observable online, and that this language can constitute the beginning of political action. Language can be protopolitical and should, therefore, be included in the authors’ revised theory of what counts as political participation.


2011 ◽  
Vol 162 (7) ◽  
pp. 209-215
Author(s):  
Jean-François Métraux

In the years since 2000, the authorities in charge of forests in canton Vaud have made some substantial changes as a reaction to the political decisions arising from the Swiss Forest Programme and the projected revision of the Federal forestry Law, as well as to the deterioration of the economic situation in forestry enterprises. This article gives a survey of the directions taken. Thus the canton recognises the primordial role of wood production as a driving force behind the creation of a multifunctional forest. The Service for Forests, Wildlife and Nature has invested a great deal in planning, and has redefined the management plan to be an instrument intended for forest owners and forest managers. The canton has innovated by introducing forestry groups and a scheme of equalisation of forestry costs between communes. Hence the conception of forestry management in canton Vaud is resolutely that of a multifunctional natural heritage.


Author(s):  
Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽  
Jennifer Prah Ruger

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110338
Author(s):  
Sarah M Hughes

Many accounts of resistance within systems of migration control pivot upon a coherent migrant subject, one that is imbued with political agency and posited as oppositional to particular forms of sovereign power. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the role of creativity within the UK asylum system, I argue that grounding resistance with a stable, coherent and agentic subject, aligns with oppositional narratives (of power vs resistance), and thereby risks negating the entangled politics of the (in)coherence of subject formation, and how this can contain the potential to disrupt, disturb or interrupt the practices and premise of the UK asylum system. I suggest that charity groups and subjects should not be written out of narratives of resistance apriori because they engage with ‘the state’: firstly, because to argue that there is a particular form that resistance should take is to place limits around what counts as the political; and secondly, because to ‘remain oppositional’ is at odds with an (in)coherent subject. I show how accounts which highlight a messy and ambiguous subjectivity, could be bought into understandings of resistance. This is important because as academics, we too participate in the delineation of the political and what counts as resistance. In predetermining what subjects, and forms of political action count as resistance we risk denying recognition to those within this system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1014
Author(s):  
Amín Pérez

This article proposes a new understanding of the constraints and opportunities that lead intellectuals engaged in different political and social fields to create alternative modes of resistance to domination. The study of the Algerian sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad offers insights into the social conditions of this mode of committed scholarship. On the one hand, this article applies Sayad’s theory of immigration to his transnational intellectual engagements. It establishes how immigrants’ intellectual work are conditioned by their trajectories, both before and after leaving their country, and by the stages of emigration (from playing a role in the society of origin to becoming caught up in the reality of the host society). On the other hand, the article illuminates the constraints and the spaces of possible action intellectuals face while moving across national universes and disparate political and academic fields. Sayad’s marginal position within the academy constrained him to work for the French and Algerian governments and international organizations while he was simultaneously engaged with political dissidents, unionists, writers, and social movements. In tracking Sayad’s roles as an academic, expert and public sociologist, the article uncovers the conditions that grounded improbable alliances between those fields and produced new forms of critique and political action. The article concludes by drawing out some reflections that ‘collective intellectual’ engagements elicit to the sociology of intellectuals.


2017 ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Nicolás Fleet

ResumenEste artículo desarrolla, en tres pasos, una perspectiva original de la teoría de la dominación de Max Weber. El primer paso establece un vínculo necesario entre las formas típicas de dominación política y los intereses sociales, de modo que toda acción política debe legitimarse ante el interés general. El segundo paso explica las crisis de legitimación como una respuesta a cambios de identidad en la base social de la dominación política, de tal forma que se introduce un concepto dinámico de legitimidad. El tercer paso establece que los valores que habitan en las formas legitimas de dominación política son usados como orientaciones simbólicas por parte de intereses sociales y acciones políticas particulares, de manera que toda forma de legitimación de la autoridad encierra, en sus propias premisas, los argumentos que justifican luchas políticas hacia la modificación de los esquemas de dominación.Palabras clave: legitimidad, dominación, acción política, democratización.Abstract This article develops, in three steps, an orignal perspective of Weber’s legitimacy theory. The first one, establishes a necessary link that exists between the typical forms of legitimate domination and the social interests, in such a way that every political action that purse the realization of its interests has to legitimate itself before the general will. The second explains the legitimation crises as a response to indentity changes at the social base of the political domination and, in so doing, it introduces a dinamic concept of legitimacy. The third step states that the values that dwell in legitimate forms of political domination are used as symbolic orientations by particular social intersts and political actions, in a way that each form of authority legitimation encapsulate, in its own premises, the arguments that justify political struggles aiming toward the modification of the domination schemes.Key words: legitimacy, domination, political action, democratization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (20) ◽  
pp. 202127
Author(s):  
Chirles da Silva Monteiro ◽  
Gutemberg Armando Diniz Guerra

EDUCATION AND PEASANT RESISTANCE IN THE PARAENSE AMAZONIAEDUCACIÓN Y RESISTENCIA CAMPESINA EN LA AMAZONIA PARAENSERESUMOEste artigo é fruto dos apontamentos da pesquisa de mestrado desenvolvida no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Agriculturas Amazônicas (PPGAA) da Universidade Federal do Pará – UFPA. Aborda os desafios da luta pela terra no Sudeste Paraense, refletindo sobre o papel da educação nesse processo. Ele aponta a educação que permeia o cotidiano das pessoas, como elemento que fortalece a resistência política dos camponeses, por isso, não está apenas relacionada à conquista da terra, mas também, à permanência na mesma e à mudança da qualidade de vida nos acampamentos e assentamentos. O artigo é resultado de um estudo de caso, desenvolvido no Acampamento Sem Terra, denominado de Dalcídio Jurandir, localizado no Sudeste Paraense e encaminhado por uma abordagem qualitativa. Entende-se que o movimento social busca uma educação que dê conta de compreender as circunstâncias vividas a partir de suas contradições sociais, tendo a mesma lógica de resistência do campesinato, porque é nele que ela tem sua raiz histórica. Trata-se de uma educação que antecede à escola e vai muito além dela.Palavras-chave: Educação; Luta pela Terra; Resistência Camponesa.ABSTRACTThis article is the result of the master's research notes developed in the Postgraduate Program in Amazon Agriculture (PPGAA) of the Federal University of Pará – UFPA. It addresses the challenges of the struggle for land in Southeast Pará, reflecting on the role of education in this process. This paper points out the education that permeates people's daily lives, as an element that strengthens the political resistance of the peasants, therefore, it is not only related to the conquest of the land, but also to the permanence in it and to the change in the quality of life in the encampments and settlements. The article is the result of a case study, developed at the agrarian reform camp, called Dalcídio Jurandir, located in Southeast Pará and guided by a qualitative approach. It is understood that the social movement seeks an education that is able to understand the circumstances experienced from its social contradictions, having the same logic of resistance as the peasantry, because it has its historical roots in it. It is an education that precedes school and goes far beyond it.Keywords: Education; Struggle for Land; Peasant Resistance.RESUMENEste artículo es el resultado de las notas de investigación de maestría desarrolladas en el Programa de Posgrado en Agricultura Amazónica (PPGAA) de la Universidad Federal de Pará – UFPA. Aborda los desafíos de la lucha por la tierra en el sureste de Pará, reflexionando sobre el papel de la educación en este proceso. Señala la educación que permea la vida cotidiana de las personas, como un elemento que fortalece la resistencia política de los campesinos, por lo tanto, no solo se relaciona con la conquista de la tierra, sino también con la permanencia en ella y con el cambio de la tierra. Calidad de vida en los campamentos y asentamientos. El artículo es el resultado de un estudio de caso, desarrollado en el Campamento Sem Terra, llamado Dalcídio Jurandir, ubicado en el sureste de Pará y guiado por un enfoque cualitativo. Se entiende que el movimiento social busca una educación que sea capaz de comprender las circunstancias vividas desde sus contradicciones sociales, teniendo la misma lógica de resistencia que el campesinado, porque tiene en ella sus raíces históricas. Es una educación que precede a la escuela y la va mucho más allá.Palabras clave: Educación; Lucha por la Tierra; Resistencia Campesina.


Author(s):  
Ana Rita Ferreira ◽  
Daniel Carolo ◽  
Mariana Trigo Pereira ◽  
Pedro Adão e Silva

This article discusses the ways in which the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic has embodied to the political choices made during the process of creating and defining a democratic welfare state and how the various constitutional principles are reflected in the architecture of the system and have gradually changed over the years. The authors argue that when Portugal transitioned to democracy, unlike other areas of the country’s social policies the social security system retained some of its earlier organising principles. Having said this, this resilience on the part of the Portuguese system’s Bismarckian template has not prevented social protection from expanding here in accordance with universal principles, and has given successive governments manoeuvring room in which to define programmatically distinct policies and implement differentiated reformist strategies. The paper concludes by arguing that while the Constitution has not placed an insurmountable limit on governments’ political action, it has served as a point of veto, namely by means of the way in which the Constitutional Court has defended the right to social protection, be it in the form of social insurance, be it in the imposition of certain social minima.


Author(s):  
Sharath Srinivasan

When Peace Kills Politics explains the role of international peacemaking in reproducing violence and political authoritarianism in Sudan and South Sudan in recent decades. Srinivasan explains how Sudan’s landmark north–south peace process that achieved the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement fueled war in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile alongside how it contributed to Sudan’s failed political transformation and newly independent South Sudan’s rapid descent into civil war. Concluding with the conspicuous absence of ‘peace’ when non-violent revolutionary political change came to Sudan in 2019, Srinivasan examines at close range why outsiders’ peace projects may displace civil politics and raise the political currency of violence. With an original contribution to theorizing peace and peacemaking drawing upon the political thought of Hannah Arendt, the book is an analysis of the tragic shortcomings of attempting to build a non-violent political realm through neat designs and tools of compulsion, where the end goal of peace becomes caught up in idealized constitutional texts, technocratic templates and deals on sharing spoils. When Peace Kills Politics demands a radical rethinking of the project of peace in civil wars, grounded in a more earnest commitment to civil political action.


Author(s):  
Guillaume Heuguet

This exploratory text starts from a doctoral-unemployed experience and was triggered by the discussions within a collective of doctoral students on this particularly ambiguous status since it is situated between student, unemployed, worker, self-entrepreneur, citizen-subject of social rights or user-commuter in offices and forms. These discussions motivated the reading and commentary of a heterogeneous set of texts on unemployment, precariousness and the functioning of the institutions of the social state. This article thus focuses on the relationship between knowledge and unemployment, as embodied in the public space, in the relationship with Pôle Emploi, and in the academic literature. It articulates a threefold problematic : what is known and said publicly about unemployment? What can we learn from the very experience of the relationship with an institution like Pôle Emploi? How can these observations contribute to an understanding of social science inquiry and the political role of knowledge fromm precariousness?


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document