Lo Normal Como Categoría Sociológica

Author(s):  
Sandra Caponi

Building on criticism directed against August Comte by Georges Canguilhem, I analyze Émile Durkheim's usage of the "normality-pathology" typology and show that these concepts do not support the organicist metaphor or the analogy between the social and the individual body. Rather, as suggested by Ian Hacking, these concepts are linked to the use of statistics and the Quetelian media, tools which allow us to understand social phenomena on populational terms. Thus, from the application of biological and statistical categories to sociological analysis, a kind of speech is born which enjoys solidarity with strategies of administration and management of the masses. This Foucault called the "biopolitics of the population."

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
RACHAEL DOBSON

AbstractThis article argues that constructions of social phenomena in social policy and welfare scholarship think about the subjects and objects of welfare practice in essentialising ways, with negativistic effects for practitioners working in ‘regulatory’ contexts such as housing and homelessness practice. It builds into debates about power, agency, social policy and welfare by bringing psychosocial and feminist theorisations of relationality to practice research. It claims that relational approaches provide a starting point for the analysis of empirical practice data, by working through the relationship between the individual and the social via an ontological unpicking and revisioning of practitioners' social worlds.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 200-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hidefumi Nishiyama

The recent proliferation of the securitization of crowded places has led to a growth in the development of technologies of crowd behaviour analysis. However, despite the emerging prominence of crowd surveillance in emergency planning, its impacts on our understanding of security and surveillance have received little discussion. Using the case of crowd surveillance in Tokyo, this article examines the ways in which crowds are simulated, monitored and secured through the technology of crowd behaviour analysis, and discusses the implications on the politics of security. It argues that crowd surveillance constitutes a unique form of the biopolitics of security that targets not the individual body or the social body of population, but the urban body of crowd. The power of normalization in crowd surveillance operates in a preemptive manner through the codification of crowd behaviour that is spatially and temporarily specific. The article also interrogates the introduction of crowd surveillance in relation to racialized logics of suspicion and argues that, despite its appearance as non-discriminatory and ‘a-racial’, crowd surveillance entails the racial coding of crowd behaviour and urban space. The article concludes with the introduction of crowd surveillance as a border control technology, which reorients existing modalities of (in)securitization at airports.


2003 ◽  
Vol 06 (03) ◽  
pp. 331-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUTAKA I. LEON SUEMATSU ◽  
KEIKI TAKADAMA ◽  
NORBERTO E. NAWA ◽  
KATSUNORI SHIMOHARA ◽  
OSAMU KATAI

Agent-based models (ABMs) have been attracting the attention of researchers in the social sciences, becoming a prominent paradigm in the study of complex social systems. Although a great number of models have been proposed for studying a variety of social phenomena, no general agent design methodology is available. Moreover, it is difficult to validate the accuracy of these models. For this reason, we believe that some guidelines for ABMs design must be devised; therefore, this paper is a first attempt to analyze the levels of ABMs, identify and classify several aspects that should be considered when designing ABMs. Through our analysis, the following implications have been found: (1) there are two levels in designing ABMs: the individual level, related to the design of the agents' internal structure, and the collective level, which concerns the design of the agent society or macro-dynamics of the model; and (2) the mechanisms of these levels strongly affect the outcomes of the models.


1982 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan F. Chalmers

This article refutes the claim that the field of epidemiology and community health would benefit from the application of the scientific method. It is argued that the methods of physics are not appropriate for other disciplines. When applied to the social sciences, positivism is a conservatizing force, causing theory to become based on a mere description of social phenomenon. Since it cannot lead to a deep understanding of social phenomena, positivism is incapable of revealing ways in which society could be radically changed. Moreover, such theory is far from neutral. Rather, it is formed and influenced by the forms of life experienced and practiced in the society. This is illustrated by an analysis of the origin of modern physics at the time when society was changing from a feudal to capitalist form of organization. It is concluded that advances will be made in epidemiology and community health when this field breaks from its focus on the individual and incorporates class into its analysis. However, given the interconnection between social structure and social theory, resistance to such a radical change can be expected.


2018 ◽  
pp. 21-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Epstein

This chapter describes how sexual health has become a touchstone in discussions about political belonging in the United States. By linking the management of the individual body to the governance of the social body, proponents of sexual health projects define healthy societies, responsible conduct, and “good” and “bad” sexual citizens. While the uptake of sexual health by federal health agencies suggests movement toward the centralized administration of the concept, other uses of the term escape the control of any central biomedical or state authority. This essay considers how projects of sexual health, some organized by the state and some the efforts of a politically diverse range of activists, circulate within worlds of politics and governance. It concludes that as proponents of sexual health work to establish the proper relations between bodily conduct and social order, they offer a range of templates for modern biocitizenship.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 257-284
Author(s):  
Margaret Gilbert ◽  

This discussion responds to a collection of papers that relate in one way or another to the author’s work in the philosophy of social phenomena. It focuses on those passages that deal most directly with that work. After making some general points that respond to remarks in several of the papers, it turns to the individual papers. The subjects discussed include coordination, conversation, collective beliefs and emotions, joint commitment, obligations and rights, patriotism, promises, the pronoun “we”, and what it is to tell someone something.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Julia Sadovska

This paper focuses on the analysis of the psychology and the model of human behavior reflected in the works of M. Azuela and I. Babel. The novels "The ones of down" (M. Azuela) and "Red Cavalry" (I. Babel), dedicated to the revolution and the civil war, are explored within the framework of the social psychology. Theories of human behavior in the revolution, the aspect of motivation, and the socio-psychological mechanisms of its massive impact on the individual are considered. Similarly, the state of emotional stress that forces the masses to move was investigated. In the process of the "emotional whirlpool" and the "circular reaction" in progress, the voltage increases, which inevitably result to an explosion at the end (most of the time - of a violent nature). The parallel analysis of the researched works reveals that human behavior is determined by belonging to the consciousness of the masses or to the individual conscience. Individual consciousness and mass exist in a certain unity, but mass psychology, conquers the individual. In this case, a person becomes the "bearer of the mask" of the revolution.


Author(s):  
Suzan Gibril

This chapter discusses methodological individualism and holism, which are often the focus of ontological debate. Methodological individualism (MI) is a paradigm in the social sciences that emerged from sociology and philosophy. The main purpose of MI is not to favour the individual over the collective, but to explain the occurrence of social phenomena by an action-driven rhetoric, which is motivated by intentional states. MI is primarily based on three postulates: the individualistic postulate; the comprehension postulate; and the rationality postulate. Holism, in contrast, is based on the idea that society cannot be reduced solely to its constituent parts — i.e. individuals. Individuals are the product of societies, histories, economic inequalities, social status, and so on. Therefore, they should be treated as objects that can only be perceived and understood from within.


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