Society and Social Pathology: A Framework for Progress

ISBN-13: 9783319843742 / Angielski / Miękka / 2018 / 378 str.

R.C. Smith

Opis

This book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of social pathology to date, following a cross-disciplinary and methodologically innovative approach. It is written for anyone concerned with understanding current social conditions, individual health, and how we might begin to collectively conceive of a more reconciled postcapitalist world. Drawing reference from the most up-to-date studies, Smith crosses disciplinary boundaries from cognitive science and anthropology to critical theory, systems theory and psychology. Opening with an empirical account of numerous interlinked carises from mental health to the physiological effects of environmental pollution, Smith argues that mainstream sociological theories of pathology are deeply inadequate. Smith introduces an alternative critical conception of pathology that drills to the core of how and why society is deeply ailing. The book concludes with a detailed account of why a progressive and critical vision of social change requires a "holistic view" of individual and societal transformation. Such a view is grounded in the awareness that a sustainable transition to postcapitalism is ultimately a many-sided (social, individual, and structural) healing process.

Recenzje

"Smith's book would be a valuable resource for social psychologists, sociologists, historians, economists, and those interested in the systemic attributes of America's social structure as it impacts large social problems such as healthcare, improving economic resources for the disadvantaged, and how one might begin to conceive of a more reconciled postcapitalist future that minimizes human suffering." (Richard Althouse, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 62 (26), June, 2017) 

Spis treści

1. Introduction

1.1. Is Society Sick?

1.2. Mounting Evidence of a Mental Health Crisis

1.3. Beginning to Make the Social Connection

1.4. More than a Mental Health Crisis

1.5. Drawing Systemic Links: The Pathological Character of Contemporary Crises

1.6. The Need for a Progressive Philosophy of the Subject

1.7. Why Social Pathology?<

2. An Alternative Conception of Social Pathology

2.1. Mainstream Theories of Social Pathology: An Introduction

2.2. Mainstream Social Science, Pathology, and the Question of Norms

2.3. A Critique of Erich Fromm’s Humanism: Toward a Critical, Normative Alternative

2.4 Fromm’s Critique of Freud’s Instinct Theory

2.5 Freud’s Instinct Theory and Beyond: Toward a Multidimensional and Integral View of the Subject

2.6. Axel Honneth, Social Pathologies, and the Legacy of Critical Theory

2.7. Toward an Alternative Conception of Social Pathology: A Multidimensional, Integral, Normative Approach

3. History, Systems of Domination and Moral Norms

3.1. Sick Societies and human behaviour

3.2. Dialectic of Enlightenment Revisited: Social Pathology in Relation to Systemic-structural Cycles of Domination

3.3. Norms and Needs: a Critical Normative Humanism

 

4. The Individual in Capitalistic Society

4.1. Adorno’s Philosophy of the Subject: Social Interaction, Developmental Psychology, Ego Colonization

4.2. The Rigidified Ego and Social Pathology

4.3. Economic Coercion, Societal Reproduction and Subject Deformation

4.4. “Stupidity is a Scar” – Projection, Internalization and Threat

4.5. Sociology and Psychology: Standardization, Consumerism and Sensational Patterns

5. Emancipatory Politics and Social Transformation

5.1. Emancipatory Politics as Healing

5.2. Cultural Shifts: Contemporary Social Movements, Prefiguration and the “Journey Within”

5.3. Emancipatory Transition: The Early Designs of an Economics of Healing

5.4. Pathological Ossification and Trauma: Consumerism, the Fragile Self, and Roads to Sanity

O autorze

R.C. Smith is an academic interested in extensive, crossdisciplinary critical research and study. Focusing in particular on a research program that spans the intersections of social science, natural science, humanities, and history, Smith is the author of over 100 articles and several books. You can find him on Twitter: @_rc_smith_.

Blurb

This book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of social pathology to date, following a cross-disciplinary and methodologically innovative approach. It is written for anyone concerned with understanding current social conditions, individual health, and how we might begin to collectively conceive of a more reconciled postcapitalist world.

Drawing reference from the most up-to-date studies, Smith crosses disciplinary boundaries from cognitive science and anthropology to critical theory, systems theory and psychology. Opening with an empirical account of numerous interlinked crises from mental health to the physiological effects of environmental pollution, Smith argues that mainstream sociological theories of pathology are deeply inadequate. Smith introduces an alternative critical conception of pathology that drills to the core of how and why society is deeply ailing. The book concludes with a detailed account of why a progressive and critical vision of social change requires a “holistic view” of individual and societal transformation. Such a view is grounded in the awareness that a sustainable transition to postcapitalism is ultimately a many-sided (social, individual, and structural) healing process.