Social Wrongs and Social Pathologies
From Structural Injustice to Metabolic Rift
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Beschreibung
“Public discourse is full of claims that society is wrong, pathological or dysfunctional. With this book, we now get a systematic exploration and typology of how to make sense of the underlying ideas and their complex relation. Arto Laitinen and Arvi Särkelä make the case for a specific conceptualisation, whereby societies are understood as complex entities that need to both reproduce and transform social life as well as have an appropriate mix of these two fundamental operations. A welcome systematisation and timely intervention that will surely become a key reference point in social philosophy.”
—Fabian Freyenhagen, University of Essex, UK
This book provides a thorough analysis of the notion of social wrong and the idea of social pathology. It addresses questions such as: What does it mean for something to be socially wrong? Why do social philosophers keep “diagnosing” wrongs as “social pathologies”? And is something a pathology because it is wrong, or is it rather a wrong because it is pathological? By constructing an analytical framework of social wrongs and developing the idea of wrongness-with, the book seeks to support critical social thought. While taking societal and structural injustices seriously as paradigm cases of social wrongs, it also offers a comprehensive elaboration of social pathologies as social wrongs. It provides a map of four conceptions of social pathology and contends that only one of them, organicism, must be completely rejected, while the other views may contribute to a critical understanding of social reality. It further elaborates a “natural-historical” view according to which social pathologies as well as their diagnosis and cure are part and parcel of social life. It tests the usefulness of this conception by examining diagnoses of contemporary capitalism in terms of metabolic rift, economic compulsion, and capitalist cannibalization. These diagnoses exemplify three types of pathologies of social life: pathologies of reproduction, pathologies of transformation, and pathologies of mediating the reproductive and transformative pressures of social life.
Arto Laitinen is Professor of Social Philosophy at Tampere University, Finland.
Arvi Särkelä is Lecturer and Researcher at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
This book provides a thorough analysis of the notion of social wrong and the idea of social pathology. It addresses questions such as: What does it mean for something to be socially wrong? Why do social philosophers keep “diagnosing” wrongs as “social pathologies”? And is something a pathology because it is wrong, or is it rather a wrong because it is pathological? By constructing an analytical framework of social wrongs and developing the idea of wrongness-with, the book seeks to support critical social thought. While taking societal and structural injustices seriously as paradigm cases of social wrongs, it also offers a comprehensive elaboration of social pathologies as social wrongs. It provides a map of four conceptions of social pathology and contends that only one of them, organicism, must be completely rejected, while the other views may contribute to a critical understanding of social reality. It further elaborates a “natural-historical” view according to which social pathologies as well as their diagnosis and cure are part and parcel of social life. It tests the usefulness of this conception by examining diagnoses of contemporary capitalism in terms of metabolic rift, economic compulsion, and capitalist cannibalization. These diagnoses exemplify three types of pathologies of social life: pathologies of reproduction, pathologies of transformation, and pathologies of mediating the reproductive and transformative pressures of social life.
Analyzes the idea of social wrongs and the concept of social pathology Develops ways to understand the role of the social critic and, more specifically, the social philosopher Provides both a useful map of conceptions of social pathology, criticizes existing views and defends an original view
Autor*in
Arto Laitinen
Themen in »Social Wrongs and Social Pathologies«
social pathology oppression critical theory social wrongs structural injustice