By adopting the particular view offered by the sociology of the body, this article places anorexic attitudes and behaviors back into the social space of the body’s uses and representations. The study of « corporal variations » (according to periods of history, social classes, age groups and gender) allows us to see, behind the anorexic body, a corporal model situated historically and socially, one which is at once contemporary, female, and of middle or upper class origin. In addition, the process of corporal transformation that is in play throughout an anorexic career echoes contemporary representations of corporal malleability. It especially manifests two figures which are, however, opposites : that of a « soft » body, perceived as fluid and able to be modified at will, and that of a « hard » body, which tends to « persevere in its being », and resists all injunction to change.
Archives par mot-clé : Sociology
Jacques Dayan : understanding delinquency ?
Crimes and misdemeanors are, according to Durkheim, accepted terms that come from the shared conscience. But how is this conscience forged and passed on ? What is the criminal act ? Is every antisocial act due to pathology ? Is there an epistemology common to the field of sociology and psychology ? We will attempt to address these questions and their implications within the field of juvenile justice and the care of minors.
Adolescence, 2013, 30, 4, 881-917.
Jacques Dayan : autonomy as value
This article discusses the idea that the concept of responsibility for Self has for several generations been a dominant representation of the relationship between the individual and the socius. One of the principle hypotheses put forward by the author is that the (relative) irresponsibility of the Self is associated with the extent of its delegation of its protection of itself to the state. These modifications would then echo the socio-economic transformations and cross over, as we will show, into the field of the human sciences. They manifest themselves, as far as psychoanalysis is concerned, in an evolution of the complaint and the greater emphasis on « narcissistic » disorders. It is still uncertain whether these transformations have a consistent affect on adolescent behavior beyond the role it seems to have regularly played : that of a social integrator, a ferry from one generation to the next.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 609-614.
Alain Ehrenberg : la société du malaise. presentation for a dialogue between clinical practice and sociology
« Discontent in society » is less a point of departure than a problem that needs to be elaborated and clarified. The author suggests replacing the individualistic ideal that society causes psychical suffering be replaced with the sociological idea that psychical suffering is today an obligatory, that is, expected, way of expressing of social suffering. This leads him to the hypothesis that in the area of mental health, we are witnessing a generalization of the use of personal idioms to give form to and resolve conflicts in social relations. These language games consist of making a connection between personal unhappiness and disrupted social relations using the yardstick of psychical suffering, thus bringing together individual suffering and shared suffering. From there, he develops the hypothesis that, obscured by the malaise, a equality crisis is being played out in the French style, that is, a crisis of an equality that is conceived essentially in terms of protection, and a protection in terms of status, according to the model of public functioning, while today’s equality, and thus the struggle against social inequality, is played out in terms of capacity.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 553-570.
Rémy Potier : truth and illusion of crossover approaches between psychoanalysis et neurosciences. an interview with Roland Gori
Crossover approaches between neurosciences and psychoanalysis are receiving more and more methodological support. For this issue of the revue Adolescence, Rémy Potier interviews Roland Gori on the heuristics of this new research. Conceptual rigor often seems lacking in these approaches, which do not pay sufficient attention to the polysemy of concepts or to socio-historical issues.
Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 531-544.