Sumários
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16 Março 2021, 16:00 • Rita Sousa
via zoom
Science is about difficult questions production. Scientists work to give answers to these questions, rarely obtaining full answers. The same should happen with social sciences.
Most of the time, unhappily, social sciences provide moralistic answer to quite weak questions. For instance: violence is bad. This kind of approach to social phenomenon is so weak that one prefers not consider violence as a social phenomenon. One can say that violence is anti-social (as Wieviorka does) or say that violence is rare (as Collins does), to conclude that mainstream theory do not need any change because violence, one way or another, is marginal to society.
We do not need research or science to understand that violence is structural to society and life. Why social sciences contradict the evidence and get way with it?
Professional social sciences, since the 1930´s, established as scholar business, praise modern society, and avoid as much as possible to present the dark side of modernity (misogyny, racism, discrimination, institutional manipulation, etc.). Social sciences present violence and other negative modern characteristics as remains from the past to be overcome. Unhappily, war and violence, as well as other problems, stay and grow as social problems.
Let's follow Merton suggestion of starting with middle range theories closed to empirical cases that will turn to a bigger picture when possible.
We need a case of violence (common violence, sequences of violence, incorporated violence, violence endured without complain by the people) and explore it as part of a holistic subject (society). That is the propose of sociology of violence. Zoom in (looking for the past of the case of violence as it may been incorporated in those people who are protagonists and by standers) zoom out (looking for the consequences of the case to those involved and to the bigger picture where many violent cases happen) are required analysis for the second assignment.
For those students that did not reached to an empirical case in the first assignment, the second assignment must describe first the case of study.
Science and learning (as teaching) are about organizing discussions. Not abstract and moralistic discussion around ideologies. Science needs experimental discussions about the use of concepts in social analysis. Zoom out zoom in exercise should show how the concept of violence value empirical data to a contribution to understand what society is about.
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9 Março 2021, 16:00 • Rita Sousa
via zoom
Scientific, political and health raisons:
- Scientific raisons show that the Empire support/opposes the development of science. The New Deal supported the professionalization of social sciences and opposes the continuation of the path from social philosophy to sciences of society.
Holistic "universal subtract" is avoided. Local "elite power" is presented as the main structure of life and zenith of cosmos. This national or economic power conception hides both social and psychological aspects of Imperial power built by caring and identity activities.
Society (power) is conceived as separated from people (human resources cared and identified by people). Caring and identity building arising from bio-social bases and are neglected by social analysis that oppose discussing biological aspects of human beings.
Violence is presented as a divine like power. Only God or Lucifer, elite, state or cruel criminal, terrorists, poor people, use it. Instead of a natural practice that accept different intensities and end results, like sportive health, reproduction, or death, common to all animals, violence is wrongly represented as an extraordinary rare event for middle classes.
- The scientific conceptualization of violence should deal with the social credits and the social malaises regarding the Empire strategies. Glory and shame regarding Imperial violence are the bases of social life, prior to capitalism and modernity.
Good and bad aspects of capitalism discussion should be included in discussion about good and bad aspects of the Empire project of exploiting the Earth. Capitalism is a modern instrument of the Empire, not the other way around. Pandemic showed one can stop capitalism to defend Empire. And capitalism can endure all the blame, hiding its victim-accomplices Empire and its supporters - modern populations, CEO, and professionals.
Structural violence is legitimated by Imperial "estado-de-espírito": a holistic six thousand years old social event that evolve as global incorporated individualistic versions: each one of us, we all are the Empire and we denies it.
- We represent ourselves as insecure potential victims of violence. The same violence we join playing Imperial "estado-de-espírito" in family, professional, gender, sport, political roles.
We accept to change liberties for security because we feel freedom as a menace and state violence as a life insurance.
Our main enemies are inside us and nearby, as family and friends that integrate us in the society.
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2 Março 2021, 16:00 • Rita Sousa
via zoom
In the post-war, the beach, where the sea and the land separate and come together, became a symbol of leisure, marginality, luxury (surfing lifestyle) for those who visit it outside of vacation time. However, confinement and telework make it possible to work on the beach and prepare lessons while walking on the beach.
From a simple photograph, one can find violence (class violence, class status symbol, distinction) in the landscape, according to time (day, hour) and activity (is it work walking on the beach? Is it work to read a book? Must a teacher work?). One can find structural violence without any communication (aggressor-victim-bystanders) event: the full location of one person (time-space) does give the social analyst information to understand violence as a reduction to the body. This is especially true in the Big Data Era when databases know best who each person is than the people who give life to his/her persona. Each body in action continually builds each person as people/individual, both virtually, and physically, symbolically, and bodily, evolving as life do, together with all society, and all environment.
Using this holistic approach one can look for, discuss, and understand violence (including social-incorporated-violence, symbolic violence) where common sense does not find it.
The case of the David Christian conference on education for the future generation shows huge (incorporated, naturalized) violence operating through a zoom event. A very well-organized event presented to thousands of scholars from Frontiers platform (an open-source scientific and global publishing business corporation) a Christian´s project sponsored by Bill Gates charity work, for 10 years now.
The message was contradictory: the founder of Big History (as Big Tech or Big Farm) propose a holistic approach to science and culture - this means bringing together all sciences to draw an alternative to the religious story about the creation and meaning of the universe. Scientists know that it breaks with cartesian hyperspecialized common scientific work (because they work in science). Then, the proposal follows a contradictory path, regarding the revolutionary purpose: it would be enough to turn the Christian´s project a worldwide success to produce the social revolution that is needed to deal with the unknown challenges of climate change. When all children will be educated believing in Big History instead of creation myths, substituting religion with science at the basis of epistemology teaching, everything will change for the better. For that purpose, it would be enough for every school program to include one more discipline: Big History.
Asked for how it would help to deal with social and economic inequalities, Christian do not have an answer. Asked for merging his project with a similar project of a colleague that wishes to work together, the answer was: "This is another project!" You must look for a sponsor on your own.
It is not possible for one project to change the world except it is an imperial project that lasts for thousands of years. To add an item in the scholar curriculum does not change schools or people. No one does holistic science alone, within his own project serving advertisement to Bill Gates imperial project as a keynote speaker to a global conference of a growing scientific publishing platform.
It is common for corporate sponsors to support scientific conferences. It is not common to present Bill Gates as a partner, as an inspiration, not as a sponsor. It reminds me of the communist hero propaganda of the chief.
To drive through analysis such as this, regarding a case you have in mind, I propose to you to consider holistic approach to human nature. Violence, as "reduction to the body", is like a breath-in that works together with breath-out estado-de-espírito (it merges mood, state of mind, zeitgeist: biological, individual, and social levels working together). Violence is incorporated as experience in each person. From experience, each person draws a set of estados-de-espírito. Each person uses each estado-de-espírito according to with the situation and his/her momentaneous decision making. Violence will feedback: the experience of the responses of the situation to the estado-de-espírito used incorporate on each one´s body related to the memory of the usefulness of the used estado-de-espírito.
Each cycle of experiencing estado-de-espírito by one person, as well as by many people, eventually all the people, reduce each type of estado-de-espírito in the flesh, in the body, in the bodies.
Half a dozen of thousands of years did produce experiments and diffuse Imperial estado-de-espírito. This is Big History´s violence imposed by imperial societies on everyone. Education and sciences are strong ways to diffuse this kind of estado-de-espírito. That is why family and school education imagine science a set of dogmas and science (the practices of the doubt) accept to be (violently) reduced to school dogma to serve the imperial elite that funds both schools and science.
That is why David Christian accepted to reduce his holistic approach to a Bill Gates sponsored project managed exclusively by him, as a scientific prophet, in contradiction of his holistic science project.
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23 Fevereiro 2021, 16:00 • Rita Sousa
via zoom
The course is not about doing research. It is about using available data about violence and think about it differently.
Violence conceived by common sense is moral. Aggressors (mostly bad people) make victims (mostly innocent people). Social sciences avoid referring violence. Most of disciplines take violence as anti-social, as a destructive and irrelevant kind of action. International relations, history, criminology, take violence as their main subject without any conceptual discussion on what violence is. They accept moralistic (nationalist and state centred) common sense understanding of violence.
Sociology of violence should not be a watertight specialization of sociology. Conceiving violence as a special extraordinary phenomenon that happens within borders of violent environment separated from social life is obviously wrong. Even common-sense separate nature and wildlife from human society and civilized life, in the real-world humankind and its societies are part of nature and cannot survive out of nature. Culture, civilization is very violent. Empire is very violent.
Wieviorka understanding of violence as caused by cruelty is a moral common-sense understanding of violence. The main types of violence he designs (the hyper-subject - or hero - and the anti-subject - the anti-hero) are moralistic and represents the war of civilization between Christianity and Muslims. Collins definition of micro violence is designed as a communication theory: the emission comes from the rare violent and the victims are those who endure the consequences of the violence out of any chance of resistance, protection, prevention, as a dummy.
The violence as reduction to the body (as a scientific conceptualization you may test) integrate a different kind of social sciences that avoids moral, avoids accepting as dogma the common-sense way to submit to status quo.
Violence is not what breaks with peaceful lives. Violence is part of peaceful life. Reduction to the body is a motion that play with the opposite motion of growing out of the body, as the breath means inspiration together with expiration. One can use "estado de espírito" - Portuguese phrase that merge the sense of mood, state of mind, zeitgeist, together at one single idea, regarding emotions, psychology, social ambience as one - to represent what plays with violence in the process of production of personal-social identity (Bourdieu´s social disposition and Elias´ social configurations).
To build family spirit, disciplinary spirit, professional spirit, sociological spirit, etc., both growing up from the living body and violence work together against and with each person, each group, at different social levels (face-to-face, institutional level, political level). This is the conceptual frame I propose to you to use to deal with your case in a scientific, amoral, and analytic way, conceiving human life as part of nature and violence as part of life.
This understanding of social life means that one need to develop knowledge bridges (not walls) between biology and social sciences. (For those who read Portuguese, you can use http://home.iscte-iul.pt/~apad/estesp/estesp.htm to look at the museum of my research lab on this conceptualization).
One example of estado-de-espírito is Imperial spirit, or Empire. Its is a very effective and old estado-de-espírito, used by Alexander the Great. He and his group proposed to every chief he meet to join him on becoming and elite. The elite will do what other people could not do: to link long distance business. The problem is that locally the people may not accept elite privileges. Since then, new essays of Empire developed and all of them break. And it raises again.
There is no violent problem when leaders take leadership. The problem is when elites want to remain leaders for life and in every situation, including through generations. People do not like that and fight back. Elite learned how to stay as elite, submitting the people.
How elites do that? Everybody knows how: people divided and fighting each other do not have a chance to break the elites. That is why elite (and its culture) developed may ways to divide and rule, such as social sciences do. Culture discriminate (as it uses words) and moralize discrimination (point out what is good and what is bad, like religions do). Doing so, culture can incorporate competing identities in people (starting with gender identities) as divisions tools, as cultural chips in each kid, for life. This exactly what moralistic concepts teaches at schools do. That is what science of societies must avoid.
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9 Fevereiro 2021, 16:00 • Rita Sousa
Violence is a very emotional word hidden by social secrecy. The most violent action, like sexual abuse, is part of patriarchal way of live without complains. We know that today because few years ago the women movements push to disclosure this secret. Still, it continues working and sexual abuse still is pandemic and do not stop the economy.
Violence against foreigner, such as refugees or immigrants, is not a big problem. Few people raise the human rights principles and the law, no consequences. Still dying crossing boarders or Mediterranean Sea. Police violence against Hong-Kong demonstrators is violent. Police violent at European ghettos are restoring the order. In the US, these days, big struggle to classify police violence as racist or "law and order". The later still winning.
The same activity is named as violence or opposing violence depending on ideological and moral relativist grounds. Violence coming from friends is not violence, is self-defence, maybe heroic self-defence. Violence targeting us is cruel violence. "Us" being the state-patriarchal-imperial persona we all follow since Rome integrate Christian movements as Empire praise ideology.
Civilization, or culture, is a way to say we, modern people, did emerge from nature (as Darwin teached us) and break up with it. We break up with community and nature. Civilization is the exploitation of the Earth and its resources, including human resources. We are seeing the results of this half a millennium imperial mission. Still, victims of genocide resist with their ancestral Earth friendly cultures. Humanity still have choices.
Social sciences are not part of the solution. They claim not be part of science (natural science). They prefer to comply with social discrimination that are used by the elites and the powerful to divide and rule. Social sciences hiper-specialization make it watertight the communication between natural sciences and social sciences, between social sciences disciplines, between subdisciplines of each discipline. Social sciences practices divide to reign power technique inside and outside of it.
The path that aim to turn social philosophy into science of society is still working, outside mainstream institutional activities. We will follow this trend in this course. We will consider the subject of social sciences the singular humankind experience in the Earth, within the ecological and cosmic environment that allow life evolution to give space to the emergency of human thinking.
Violence is "reduction to the body" (Remptsma). Violence is everywhere. As breathing expires and inspires, the similar way life expands (grow, think, evolve, pray, plans) and engages on violence (good and bad, as sex, and sport, and schooling, etc.).
The recommendation is to suspend as much as possible moral evaluation of the violence cases (as better methodological option to push forward science) and see discrimination as it is developed by societies, states, social sciences. After seeing it, after overcoming social secrets, then we can do morals in the base of better thinking and evidence, scientific thinking and evidence.