Society and Social Pathology

A Framework for Progress
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-3-319-50324-0
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 378 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 5963 g

Reihe: Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

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.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, R. C.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Politische Soziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction1.1. Is Society Sick?1.2. Mounting Evidence of a Mental Health Crisis1.3. Beginning to Make the Social Connection1.4. More than a Mental Health Crisis1.5. Drawing Systemic Links: The Pathological Character of Contemporary Crises1.6. The Need for a Progressive Philosophy of the Subject1.7. Why Social Pathology?<
2. An Alternative Conception of Social Pathology2.1. Mainstream Theories of Social Pathology: An Introduction2.2. Mainstream Social Science, Pathology, and the Question of Norms2.3. A Critique of Erich Fromm’s Humanism: Toward a Critical, Normative Alternative2.4 Fromm’s Critique of Freud’s Instinct Theory2.5 Freud’s Instinct Theory and Beyond: Toward a Multidimensional and Integral View of the Subject2.6. Axel Honneth, Social Pathologies, and the Legacy of Critical Theory2.7. Toward an Alternative Conception of Social Pathology: A Multidimensional, Integral, Normative Approach

3. History, Systems of Domination and Moral Norms3.1. Sick Societies and human behaviour3.2. Dialectic of Enlightenment Revisited: Social Pathology in Relation to Systemic-structural Cycles of Domination3.3. Norms and Needs: a Critical Normative Humanism
 4. The Individual in Capitalistic Society4.1. Adorno’s Philosophy of the Subject: Social Interaction, Developmental Psychology, Ego Colonization4.2. The Rigidified Ego and Social Pathology4.3. Economic Coercion, Societal Reproduction and Subject Deformation4.4. “Stupidity is a Scar” – Projection, Internalization and Threat4.5. Sociology and Psychology: Standardization, Consumerism and Sensational Patterns

5. Emancipatory Politics and Social Transformation5.1. Emancipatory Politics as Healing5.2. Cultural Shifts: Contemporary Social Movements, Prefiguration and the “Journey Within”5.3. Emancipatory Transition: The Early Designs of an Economics of Healing5.4. Pathological Ossification and Trauma: Consumerism, the Fragile Self, and Roads to Sanity

Über Autor(innen)

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_.