Scroll down to find the English version.

As ciências sociais profissionalizadas desistiram de ser ciências como as ciências naturais. Desistiram de estudar a sociedade e os seus aspectos principais, como os corpos, as emoções, as violências, os estados-de-espírito.

As políticas científicas belicistas e imperialistas querem reduzir as ciências a ciências centrípetas, a especializações tecnocientíficas mutuamente isoladas entre si e do mundo. Desse modo, é mais fácil focá-las na produção de receitas para solucionar problemas imperiais, sem questionar o sentido da missão imperial suicida.

Por exemplo, nos casos da produção de armas, de armas atómicas, de drogas ilícitas, da gestão dos recursos para produção alimentar, da luta contra o tráfico de seres humanos, os povos e os produtores são meros espectadores do que se vai passando. Resta-lhes resistir, não colaborar, quando percebem que estão a ser prejudicados. O mesmo se passa com o resto da natureza: só é tida em conta nas decisões “racionais” quando resiste e não colabora.

Mesmo as elites ficam assustadas. Alguns receiam ter de deixar de viver na Terra e preparam-se para usar os recursos que acumularam para sobreviver em ambientes hostis, deixando o resto da humanidade à sua sorte. A redução máxima das práticas de solidariedade, reduz-nos a todos ao silêncio próprio de recursos humanos a colaborar com o Império.

Para o efeito, as ciências sociais institucionalizadas focam-se praticamente em exclusivo em questões de poder, em como servir profissionalmente quem pague pelos seus serviços, e negligenciam o estudo da produção de identidades experimentais por cada ser humano e as bases sociais dessa produção: os cuidados.

É por a ciência estar a ser conduzida por uma política imperial que a reduz a ciência centrípeta que as ciências sociais inviabilizam o estudo das sociedades, incluindo o da violência. Aos olhos dos cientistas sociais, a violência torna-se rara – como conclui Collins – e anti-social, como é entendida pelo senso-comum e por Wieviorka. A violência seria resultado da natureza cruel das pessoas (Wieviorka, 2005, pp. 278–279) e dos raros violentos (Collins, 2008, pp. 370–412).  Wieviorka apenas reconhece um tipo de violência boa: a violência que facilita o progresso da civilização, i.e., a missão imperial de exploração (Wieviorka, 2005, pp. 294–295).

O estudo da violência, para aspirar a ser científico, tem de ser experimental e procurar atingir a capacidade de ajudar a explicar a sociedade, libertando os cientistas das orientações políticas centrípetas (especialização e redução dos sociólogos a profissionais). Há quem trabalhe nesse sentido, independentemente das ideologias preferidas. Por exemplo, aqueles autores que abandonam a ideia de sociedade como sistema criado pelos estados nacionais para controlar as populações (estrutural-funcionalista) e tomam toda a experiência da humanidade (comunidades e sociedades de todos os tempos, as conhecidas e as desconhecidas) como expressão da plasticidade experimental das sociedades humanas (Christian, 2021; Eisenstadt, 2008; Elias, 1990; Fara, 2009; Graeber, 2011; Graeber & Wengrow, 2021; Harari, 2018; Morris, 2013).

Os apparatchiks da ciência, também conhecidos por gestores da ciência, quando são obrigados a considerar a existência de estratégias científicas centrífugas em curso nas ciências sociais, reagem de duas formas distintas e complementares: a) a complexidade da prática de ciências centrífugas só está ao alcance dos melhores cientistas, os mais dotados e mais maduros. Não se pode ensinar ciência experimental aos estudantes; b) a complexidade das ciências centrífugas não está ao alcance dos métodos e técnicas disponíveis. É o resultado da extraordinária e inspirada capacidade individual.

Por outro lado, fazendo uso de estímulos finaceiros, tais gestores reduzem quanto podem o espaço de debate livre de ideias, nomeadamente o estudo das teorias e dos conceitos. Impõem às instituições científicas agendas políticas que mudam todos os anos, e produção urgente de artigos que impedem o pensamento, a pretexto da avaliação democrática dos investimentos.

Fazer ciência centrífuga, aberta ao mundo (à Terra, à vida e à humanidade), está condicionada às condições sociais de existência. A ciência surgiu opondo-se e ultrapassando a já extinta Inquisição. Ficou dessas lutas a distinção, consagrada por Descartes, entre a Terra e a natureza (res extensa), incluindo as populações consideradas recursos humanos, e a missão imperial das elites (res cogitans). As escolas e as profissões, mas também os mercados, a economia e a política-comunicação-social, difundem essa distinção junto de todas as consciências modernas, submetidas aos processos de modernização.

O problema está identificado (Damásio, 1994). Está fora do horizonte, porém, criar as condições institucionais capazes de abolir do ensino da ciência centrípeta, a ciência de receituário profissionalizante, substituindo-o pelo ensino da criatividade necessária à produção de ciências centrífugas, situação em que as ciências sociais poderiam continuar o seu trajecto intelectual entre as filosofias sociais e as ciências.

A lista de autores acima referidos, entre muitos outros, mostra que, ainda assim, excepcionalmente, é possível romper com a ciência centrípeta e avançar para a ciência centrífuga, criando as condições científicas para que, assim haja condições sociais e de política científica e educativa, se possa completar a formação dos estudantes, apresentando-lhes experiências das ciências centrífugas.

Usemos, pois, a experiência de Loïc Wacquant, quando desenvolveu o seu doutoramento no gueto de Chicago (For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood, 2015). Com ele podemos aprender a testar as potencialidades da melhor definição de violência que é a) socio-biológica; b) translúcida aos diferentes níveis de realidade; c) referida à experiência da humanidade e não meramente cultural (ao mesmo tempo objectiva e subjectiva); d) em ruptura com o senso comum, em contraponto à negação da existência da violência prazerosa, necessária para a vida. A violência é vulgar. Imaginá-la rara, imoral, anti-imperial é uma forma de servir o império, escamoteando a extrema violência com que é produzido.

Esta definição de violência (como redução ao corpo, inspirada em Reemtsma (2011, pp. 111–115)) procura enquadrar-se na produção de ciências centrífugas, abertas aos conhecimentos novos e às experiências no mundo, em vez de reduzidas à apologia da modernização.

A vida, ainda antes da divisão sexual, é a divisão entre matéria biológica que suporta registos existenciais da experiência e energia homeostática, a que mantém viva a vida. Com a evolução, a consciência e a consciência reflexiva diferenciaram-se nos animais superiores e nas pessoas (Damásio, 2020).

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Partindo das práticas das ciências sociais, tomando os seus métodos habituais, há métodos introspectivos e métodos observacionais. Exemplos dos primeiros são histórias de vida, relatos de conversas internas, julgamentos de caracter da pessoa ou de terceiros, expressão de sentimentos identitários. Métodos observacionais são, por exemplo, entrevistas, questionários, análise documental, observação com vista a desenhar quadros sociais resultantes da história e das instituições vigentes, incluindo as suas contradições sentidas – como as expressas em movimentos sociais – e as omitidas – como são expressas nas artes, nas religiões, nas práticas subversivas.

O trabalho dos alunos sobre a análise zoom-in-zoom-out feita sobre o caso de violência escolhido, é planear a utilização de rotinas metodológicas ao caso, adaptando-as, na prática experimental, à vontade de contribuir para a libertação das ciências das políticas científicas imperiais.

CONTINUA EM Romper com o estado de negação

COMEÇA EM Lições de sociologia da violência

Referências:

Christian, D. (2021). Education revolution with Big History. Frontiers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhowXxz_uAs

Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton University Press.

Damásio, A. (1994). O erro de Descartes: emoção, razão e cérebro humano. Europa-América.

Damásio, A. (2020). Sentir e Saber. Círculo de Leitores.

Eisenstadt, S. N. (2008). Axial Visions and Axial Civilizations: The Transformations of World Histories between Evolutionary Tendencies and Institutional Formations. In H. Wittrock & B. Wittrock (Eds.), Frontiers of Sociology. Brill.

Elias, N. (1990). O Processo Civilizacional (Vol I e II) (1^a edição). D. Quixote.

Fara, P. (2009). Science: a Four Thousand Year History. Oxford University Press.

Graeber, D. (2011). Debt – the First 5000 Years. Melville House Publishing.

Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything – a new history of humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Harari, Y. N. (2018). Homo Deus; História Breve do Amanhã. 20/20 Editora, Elsinore.

Morris, I. (2013). O Domínio do Ocidente (1^a ed. 201). Bertrand.

Reemtsma, J. P. (2011). Confiance et Violence – Essai sur une configuration particulière de la modernité. Gallimard.

Wacquant, L. (2015). For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood. Qual Sociol, 38, 1–11.

Wieviorka, M. (2005). La Violence. Hachette Littératures.

Experimental course

Professionalized social sciences have given up becoming sciences, as natural sciences are. They gave up studying society and its main aspects, such as bodies, emotions, violence, states of mind, mindsets.

Warlike and imperialist science policies want to reduce science to centripetal sciences, to techno-scientific specializations mutually isolated from each other and from the world. In this way, it is easier to focus sciences on producing recipes to solve imperial problems, without questioning the suicidal imperial mission.

For example, in the cases of the production of weapons, atomic weapons, illicit drugs, of the management of resources for food production, of the fight against trafficking in human beings, peoples and producers are mere spectators of what is happening. What one can do is to resist the outcomes of these systems, and not cooperate. It happens when people perceive that they are being strongly and unjustly harmed. The same is true of the rest of nature: it is only taken into account in “rational” decisions when it resists and does not cooperate.

Even elites are scared. Some fear having to stop living on Earth and are preparing to use the resources they have accumulated to survive in hostile environments, leaving the rest of the humanity behind. The maximum reduction of solidarity practices, reduce us all to the silence proper to human resources collaborating with the Empire.

To this end, institutionalized social sciences focus practically exclusively on questions of power, on how to professionally serve those who pay for their services, and neglect the study of the production of each human being experimental identities, and the social bases of this production: the caring activities.

Because science is being conducted by an imperial policy that reduces it to centripetal science, the social sciences turn the study of societies, including that of violence, unfeasible. Violence becomes seen as being rare – as Collins explain – and anti-social, as understood by common sense and by Wieviorka. Violence is extraordinary, produced by cruelty (Wieviorka, 2005, pp. 278–279) and by the few violent people (Collins, 2008, pp. 370–412). Wieviorka recognize a single type of good violence: the violence that push forward civilization, i.e., imperial exploiting mission (Wieviorka, 2005, pp. 294–295).

The study of violence, to be scientific, has to be experimental and seek to achieve the ability to explain society, freeing scientists from centripetal political policies that reduce sociologists to professionals serving the Imperial mission. There are social scientists who work in this direction, regardless their preferred ideologies. For example, those authors who abandon the idea of society as a system created by national states to control populations (structural-functionalist) and take the whole experience of humanity (the known and the unknown communities and societies of all times,) as the expressions of the experimental plasticity of human societies (Christian, 2021; Damasio, 2021; Eisenstadt, 2008; Elias, 1990; Fara, 2009; Graeber, 2011; Graeber & Wengrow, 2021; Harari, 2016; Morris, 2010).

The science apparatchiks, also known as science managers, when forced to consider the existence of ongoing social sciences´ centrifugal scientific strategies, react in two distinct and complementary ways: a) the complexity of centrifugal science practice is only within the reach of the best scientists, the most gifted and mature. One cannot teach this experimental science to students; b) the complexity of centrifugal sciences is not within the reach of available methods and techniques. It is the result of individual unique and inspired ability.

On the other hand, using financial instruments, science managers reduce as much as possible the space for free debate of ideas, namely the study of theories and concepts. They impose urgency in paper production, and every year changing political agendas on scientific institutions under the pretext of democratic evaluation of investments.

Doing centrifugal science, open to the world (to the Earth, to life, and to humanity), depend on the social conditions of existence of the scientists. Science started opposing and overcoming the now extinct Inquisition. Inquisition imposed to the first scientists the distinction, consecrated by Descartes, between Earth and nature (res extensa), including populations now known as human resources, and the imperial mission of elites (res cogitans). This modern disctinction, diffused through schools and professions, through markets, economics and politics-media, is shared by all modern consciences, submitted to the modernization processes.

The problem is identified (Damasio, 1994). However, to create the institutional conditions to abolish the teaching of centripetal science, the science of professionalizing prescriptions, replacing it by the teaching of creativity necessary for the production of centrifugal sciences, is beyond the horizon. The scientific conditions through which the social sciences could continue their intellectual journey between social philosophies and sciences must be created.

The above mentioned list of authors, among many others, shows that, even so, exceptionally, it is possible to break with centripetal science and move towards centrifugal science. This does not help to improve general scientific and students’ training conditions. This conditions depend havily from social situation, and scientific and educational policy.

Lets take the experience of Loïc Wacquant, when he developed his doctorate in the Chicago ghetto (For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood, 2015). With him we can learn to test the potentialities of the best definition of violence. The a) socio-biological violence; b) translucent to different levels of reality; c) refer to the complete experience of humanity, and not merely the cultural part of it (both objective and subjective experiences); d) in rupture with common sense idea of violence. The best definition of violence contrast to the denial of the existence of pleasurable violence, and it recognize violence as indispensabel for life. Violence is banal, vulgar. Only Empire interests to avoid showing the devasting violence it is engage in explain the image of violence as rare, immoral, and anti-imperial.

This definition of violence (violence as reduction to the body, inspired by Reemtsma (2011, pp. 111–115)) seeks to fit into the production of centrifugal sciences, open to new knowledge and experiences in the world, instead of being reduced to the apology of modernization.

Life, even before the sexual division, is the division between biological matter that supports existential records of experience and homeostatic energy, the energy that keeps life alive. Through evolution, consciousness and reflective consciousness become differentiated in higher animals and people (Damásio, 2021).

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Starting from the practices of the social sciences, taking their usual methods, there are introspective methods and observational methods. Examples of the former are life stories, accounts of internal conversations, judgments of one’s or others’ character, expression of feelings of identity. Observational methods are, for example, interviews, questionnaires, document analysis, observation with the aim of tracing social frameworks resulting from history and current institutions, including their contradictions – expressed in social movements – and their omissions – expressed in the arts, religions , in subversive practices.

The students´ work following their zoom-in-zoom-out analysis on their case of violence description, is to plan the use of methodological routines over it, adapting them in experimental practice, to the desire to contribute to the liberation of science from imperial scientific policies.

References:

Christian, D. (2021). Education revolution with Big History. Frontiers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhowXxz_uAs

Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton University Press.

Damásio, A. (1994). O erro de Descartes: emoção, razão e cérebro humano. Europa-América.

Damasio, A. (2021). Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious. Pantheon Books.

Eisenstadt, S. N. (2008). Axial Visions and Axial Civilizations: The Transformations of World Histories between Evolutionary Tendencies and Institutional Formations. In H. Wittrock & B. Wittrock (Eds.), Frontiers of Sociology. Brill.

Elias, N. (1990). O Processo Civilizacional (Vol I e II) (1^a edição). D. Quixote.

Fara, P. (2009). Science: a Four Thousand Year History. Oxford University Press.

Graeber, D. (2011). Debt – the First 5000 Years. Melville House Publishing.

Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything – a new history of humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Harari, Y. N. (2016). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harvill Secker.

Morris, I. (2010). Why the West Rules — For Now. Profile Books.

Reemtsma, J. P. (2011). Confiance et Violence – Essai sur une configuration particulière de la modernité. Gallimard.

Wacquant, L. (2015). For a Sociology of Flesh and Blood. Qual Sociol, 38, 1–11.

Wieviorka, M. (2005). La Violence. Hachette Littératures.

Scroll down to find the English version.

Os trabalhos teóricos de Wieviorka (2005) e Collins (2008) com vista a actualizar os estudos sociológicos sobre a violência não dialogam entre si. Um faz uma macroanálise da violência (os quadros confrontacionais estratégicos dos vários impérios divididos por épocas) e outro faz microanálises da violência (situações de encontro entre raras pessoas violentas e suas vítimas), concluindo ambos que seria desejável abolir a violência, sem saberem responder como se pode trabalhar para tal (isto é moralismo: um desejo impossível que esconde a realidade).

Ambos reconhecem, como as teorias do conflito o fizeram há 70 anos atrás, haver uma lacuna nas teorias sociológicas. Em vez de identificarem as razões de ser de tal lacuna e da sua persistência, ambos os autores usam as teorias sociológicas com que costumam trabalhar para as valorizar, mostrando como são capazes de tratar também a violência.

A finalidade deste trabalho, portanto, é moralista: reforçar o uso das teorias sociais que escondem a existência da violência estrutural e o mito ideológico de as sociedades modernas serem pacíficas (Hirschman, 1977).

A bem-sucedida missão imperial semi-milenar de exploração da Terra e dos seus recursos humanos, tem sido realizada com o sacrifício solidário das sociedades e pessoas ocidentalizadas, deve parar de aumentar. Na era do Antropoceno, porque não foi possível antes, a moral deverá ser ambiental, libertadora, humanista, contra as discriminações e os abusos por elas legitimados. Enfim, a missão humanitária é abolir o império.

Não é possível abolir a violência, mas é possível organizar instituições com vista a abolir os abusos de violência. O capitalismo e os estados modernos são instrumentos da missão imperial que abole os sentimentos de empatia para com a natureza, a humanidade, com a pessoa que cada um/a poderia ser em liberdade. Capitalismo, estados e impérios são alvos de ódios reprimidos que podem ser, e são, mobilizados e traduzidos em acções sociais interseccionais abolicionistas.

À produção industrial de espírito imperial é possível opor a denúncia do espírito imperial, e a sua produção moralista, sobretudo se houver alternativas de acção pragmáticas de acção.

Estando nós num curso de ciências sociais, de sociologia, cabe-nos abrir perspectivas de acção científica, formativa e profissional com vista a denunciar a tragédia da missão imperial destruidora do meio ambiente mais favorável a existência de pessoas (Dores, 2021). A denúncia da existência de uma missão imperial moralista e imoral, que se baseia em abusar dos processos de discriminação para produzir elites capazes de materializar impérios obscenos, fundados na generalização de sacrifícios humanos e, em particular, de pessoas humilhadas e abusadas de forma intencional – nas guerras, nas prisões, nas manifestações, no desporto, no trabalho, em sua casa, etc. – deve substituir a actual missão das ciências sociais, que é esconder a existência da missão imperial.

CONTINUA EM Curso experimental

COMEÇA EM Lições de sociologia da violência

Referências:

Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton University Press.

Dores, A. P. (2021). Reeducar o século XXI: libertar o espírito científico. Lisbon International Press.

Hirschman, A. O. (1977). The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton University Press.

Wieviorka, M. (2005). La Violence. Hachette Littératures.

Sacrifice and (re)cognition

The Wieviorka´s (2005) and Collins´ (2008) theoretical works envisage to update sociological studies on violence. They do not dialogue with each other. The former makes a macro-analysis of violence (the confrontational strategic frameworks of the various empires in different epochs). The later makes a micro-analysis of violence (situations of encounter between rare violent people and their victims). Both conclude that it would be desirable to abolish violence. Both confess they do not know how (that is moralism: an impossible wish hiding reality).

Both recognize, as theories of conflict did 70 years ago, that there is a gap in sociological theories. Instead of identifying the reasons for such a gap and its persistence, both authors use the sociological theories they usually work with to value them, showing how they can deal with violence.

The purpose of their work, therefore, is moralistic: to reinforce the use of social theories that hide the existence of structural violence. This reinforce the ideological myth that modern societies are peaceful (Hirschman, 1977).

The successful semi-millennial imperial mission of exploring the Earth and its human resources, carried out with the solidary sacrifice of westernized societies and people, should stop to grow. In the Anthropocene era, because it was not possible before, morality must be environmental, liberating, humanist, against discrimination, and against the abuses legitimized by discrimination processes. In short, the humanitarian mission is to abolish the empire.

It is not possible to abolish violence. It is possible to organize institutions to abolish abuses of violence. Capitalism, and modern states are instruments of the imperial mission that abolishes feelings of empathy with nature, with humanity, with the person that each one sacrifice reducing oneself to human resources. Freedom is repressed to compliance with imperial mission. Hatreds against Empire, capitalism, and states can be, and are, mobilized and translated into abolitionist intersectional social actions.

One can oppose the industrial production and diffusion of imperial spirit to the pragmatic alternatives for action denunciating the imperial spirit consequences and its moralistic intentional production.

As we are coursing social sciences, sociology, it is up to us to open up perspectives for scientific, training and professional action to denounce the tragedy of the imperial mission that destroyed the environment most favorable to the existence of people (Dores, 2021). Social sciences professionals can engage on the denunciation of the existence of a moralist and immoral imperial mission, abusing the processes of discrimination to produce elites capable of materializing obscene empires that generalize human sacrifices, including moralistic humiliation of people in wars, in prisons, in demonstrations, in sport, at work, at home, etc. The current mission of the social sciences of hide the existence of the imperial mission must be denounced and replaced.

References:

Collins, R. (2008). Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton University Press.

Dores, A. P. (2021). Reeducar o século XXI: libertar o espírito científico. Lisbon International Press.

Hirschman, A. O. (1977). The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton University Press.

Wieviorka, M. (2005). La Violence. Hachette Littératures.

Scroll down to find the English version.

A contraposição de moralismo a moral (lições Moralismo e Lutas contra a violência) deve ser entendida como uma expressão da contraposição teórica entre o estrutural-funcionalismo social democrata e o interaccionismo simbólico pragmático (teoria do self de George Mead).

Simplificando e para os efeitos do estudo da violência como redução ao corpo, podemos opor duas concepções de sociedade: a) a sociedade externa à individuo, a que ele se deve conformar (estrutural-funcionalismo ou teoria de sistemas (Parsons, 1961)), b) a sociedade produzida dentro de cada pessoa em função das identidades que cada uma vai produzindo como resposta às experiências da vida (self (Blumer, 1981) ou estados-de-espírito (Dores, 2010)).

A contraposição do individuo à sociedade é um dos produtos da experiência imperial de redução das sociedades e das pessoas a recursos humanos, a indivíduos escravizados ou assalariados ou profissionalizados, ao serviço da missão de exploração da Terra para acumular riqueza como sinal da bênção de Deus. Essa é a teoria sociológica dominante, embora os próprios praticantes tenham consciência (e desinteresse) nas suas falhas, como a incapacidade para tratar conflitos ou de violência. A sociologia não considera sequências de eventos, deixados para a história, e não discute frequente e detalhadamente os processos de transformação estrutural. (Darhendorf, 1958; Elias, 1990).

O interaccionismo simbólico não tem a mesma popularidade do estrutural funcionalismo nas sociedades modernas. Frequentemente é usado para tratar de detalhes (como o faz a psico-sociologia) no quadro de utilização das teorias de sistemas. Mas é possível e útil para muitas investigações, como as que estudam as emoções, os corpos, a violência, contrapor às teorias de sistemas o conceito de self, ancorado na biologia (Dores, 2008).

O objectivo será distinguir a ciência centrípeta, imperial, hiperespecializada e tecnocrática, da ciência centrífuga, dialogante entre ciências sociais e naturais, entre disciplinas, entre subdisciplinas, entre conhecimentos científicos e outros tipos de conhecimentos, como os normativos e espirituais, orientada para produzir mais e melhores conhecimentos, ainda que condicionados às condições materiais e institucionais dominantes da sua produção.

Discutir a diferenciação dos indivíduos de entre as pessoas, a diferenciação do mundo do estado e da política separado da vida social, a diferenciação das instituições económicas que escondem a missão imperial e a realizam, corrompendo a sociedade a ponto de utilizar a empatia para fazer a guerra, as ilusões de emancipação de origem proletária que agravaram a sujeição das sociedades à missão imperial, tal discussão não pode ser feita usando a teoria de sistemas. A estrutura social que tal teoria presume ser natural dá uma resposta inquestionável: as pessoas são livres para produzirem os indivíduos que quiserem para cumprir papeis sociais imperiais úteis, podendo dedicar-se à política (a iludir os outros sobre o que se passa) ou à economia (a explorar a Terra e seus recursos humanos), a letras ou às ciências, às artes ou à arquitectura-engenharia, ao empreendedorismo ou à engenharia, etc. Para os mais sensíveis, o estado social criou a filantropia profissional capaz de socorrer os excluídos produzidos industrialmente pelas sociedades modernas, fingindo acreditar – através da aplicação das teorias de sistemas e dos seus sistemas de controlo social – que é possível secar o mar retirando sistematicamente colheres de água para a areia molhada.

O espírito imperial foi sendo elaborado, adaptado, interpretado por cada vez mais gente como sintoma de civilização (Elias, 1990) e modernidade (Bauman, 2000). Um dos processos mais evidentes de escamoteamento desse fenómeno é o nacionalismo (Anderson, 1998). Quando as coisas correm irremediavelmente mal, os estados de emergência (religiosa, policial, militar, sanitária, financeira, etc.) são traduzidos não em desespero contra o império abusivo, mas em crise de identidade das pessoas, em crise nacional de falta de crescimento da economia que poderia resolver todos os problemas, isto é, insistindo na prioridade de exploração imperial da natureza e das sociedades (Dores, 2020).

Se a situação é esta, significa que a produção dos nossos selves está a ser condicionada com sucesso para nos reduzir ao papel impotente de indivíduos incapazes de reagir racionalmente ao Antropoceno, limitando-nos a esperar que um dia tudo volte ao normal (interrompido pelas sucessivas crises que se instalam) e que a tecnologia (prestigiada pela fama anti-imperial da ciência) resolva miraculosamente e sem nossa intervenção os problemas, sejam eles quais forem, com a ajuda dos superiores hierárquicos e das suas estratégias políticas de condução dos investimentos mobilizadores dos recursos humanos.

É nesse sentido que o espírito imperial, centrado na discriminação entre aquilo que é favorável às elites, apresentado como indispensável e sem alternativa para servir as sociedades, nomeadamente para produzir indivíduos das pessoas, é central para a compreensão de como as gerações mais escolarizadas de sempre são também das mais impotentes (McGrath, 2019).

Por isso é tão interessante, do ponto de vista da ciência centrífuga, a definição de violência como redução ao corpo, no sentido de a violência ser parte da vida biológica, em contraponto à produção (fundada em experiências de violência) de estados de espírito. Fazer surgir dos corpos estados-de-espírito precários e a serem mantidos socialmente é o contrário de pensar em sistemas estabilizados.

CONTINUA EM Sacrifício e (re)conhecimento

COMEÇA EM Lições de sociologia da violência

Referências:

Anderson, B. (1998). Imagined Communities (8th ed.). Verso.

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Polity Press.

Blumer, H. (1981). George Herbert Mead. In B. Rhea (Ed.), The Future of Sociological Classics. Allan & Unwin.

Darhendorf, R. (1958). Out of Utopia – Toward a reorientation of Sociological Analysis. American Journal of Sociology, LXIV.

Dores, A. P. (2008). Damasio’s error: Homage to a source of inspiration. Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 7(3).

Dores, A. P. (2010). Espírito de Proibir. Argusnauta.

Dores, A. P. (2020). Estado Social Real. RCP edições.

Elias, N. (1990). O Processo Civilizacional. D. Quixote.

McGrath, M. (2019, December). Why Greta Thunberg Is One Of The World’s Most Powerful Women. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2019/12/12/why-greta-thunberg-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-women/#5ae854451521

Parsons, T. (1961). An Outline of Social System. In T. Parsons, E. Shils, K. Naegele, & J. Pitts (Eds.), Theories of Society. Free Press.

Sociological theories – applications of the imperial estado-de-espírito

The contrast between moralism and morality (lessons Moralism and Struggles against Violence) should be understood as an expression of the theoretical opposition between social democratic structural-functionalism and pragmatic symbolic interactionism (George Mead’s theory of self).

Simplifying, having in mind the purposes of the study of violence as a reduction to the body, one can oppose two conceptions of society: a) the society as something external to the individual, to which he must conform (structural-functionalism or theory of systems (Parsons, 1961)), b) the society imagined inside each person according to the identities that each one produces as a response to social life experiences (self (Blumer, 1981) or estados-de-espírito (A. P. Dores, 2010a)).

The opposition of the individual to society is one of the products of the imperial experience of reducing societies and people to human resources, to enslaved or salaried or professionalized individuals excluded from communities, alone and by their own, serving the mission of exploitation of the Earth to accumulate wealth as a sign of God’s blessing. That is the dominant sociological theory, although the practitioners are aware (and disinterested) in its flaws. It is famous the inability of social theories to refer to conflict or violence as a everyday event, interlinked in sequences of events, as history shows. Sociology discussing the processes of structural transformation is rare and biased (Elias, 1990; Darhendorf, 1958).  

Symbolic interactionism does not have the same popularity as structural functionalism in modern societies. It is used to deal with details (as psycho-sociology does) within the framework of using systems theories. But it is possible and useful for many research matters, such as those studying emotions, bodies, violence, to use the concept of self, anchored in biology (A. P. Dores, 2008), instead of systems theories.

The aim will be to distinguish centripetal, imperial, hyper-specialized and technocratic science, from centrifugal science. The later develop knowledge bridges between social and natural sciences, between disciplines, between sub-disciplines, between scientific knowledge and other kind of knowledge, such as normative and spiritual knowledge, aiming to produce better knowledge even if conditioned to the mainstream material and institutional conditions of production.

Discussing the differentiation of individuals from among people, the differentiation of the world of state and politics separate from everyday social life, the differentiation of economic institutions that conceal the imperial mission and carry it out, corrupting society to the point of channeling empathy to make war, the illusions of emancipation of proletarian origin that aggravated the subjection of societies to the imperial mission, are all tasks that cannot be done using systems theory. The social structure that systems theory presumes to be the social nature gives all these questions an unquestionable answer: people are free to produce whatever individuals they want to fulfill useful imperial social roles. All individuals are free to engage in politics (to deceive others about what is going on) or in economics (to exploit the earth and its human resources), in the humanities or in the sciences, in the arts or in the architecture-engineering, in entrepreneurship or in engineering, etc. For those who can afford some feelings left, the welfare state has created professional philanthropy regimes intending to rescue those industrially produced excluded by modern societies production systems, pretending to believe – through the application of systems theories and its systems of social control – that it is possible to dry out the sea by systematically scooping spoonful of water into the wet sand.

The imperial spirit has been elaborated, adapted, interpreted by more and more people as a symptom of civilization (Elias, 1990) and modernity (Bauman, 2000). One of the most obvious processes of eschewing this phenomenon is nationalism (Anderson, 1998). When things go hopelessly wrong, states of emergency (regarding religious, police, military, health, financial, and other kind of causes) are translated not into despair against the abusive empire, but into people’s identity crisis, into national crisis of shortage of economic growth. Economic growth, under mainstream narrative, will solve all problems. Mainstream narrative insists on the continuation of imperial exploitation of nature and societies (A. P. Dores, 2020).

If this is the situation, it means that the production of our selves is being successfully conditioned to reduce us to the impotent role of individuals incapable of reacting rationally to the Anthropocene, limiting us to hoping that one day we will return to normal (interrupted by successive never ending crises) and that technology (prestigious for the anti-imperial fame of science) will miraculously solve the problems, whatever they may be, without our intervention, with the help of the superior hierarchies – including the political strategies to drive the investments on human resources.

The discrimination centered imperial estado-de-espírito, favorable to elites, present individuals serving societies without alternative. Persons are forced to produce individuals from themselves. This tautological thinking mechanism (person=individual) is central to understand how the most educated generations ever are also among the most powerless (McGrath, 2019).

Therefore, the definition of violence as a reduction to the body, in the sense that violence is part of biological life, as opposed to the production (grounded in experiences of violence) of estado-de-espírito, is so interesting from the point of view of centrifugal science. Bringing out of bodies precarious estado-de-espírito to be socially maintained is the opposite of thinking about stabilized systems.

References:

Anderson, B. (1998). Imagined Communities (8th ed.). Verso.

Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid Modernity. Polity Press.

Blumer, H. (1981). George Herbert Mead. In B. Rhea (Ed.), The Future of Sociological Classics. Allan & Unwin.

Darhendorf, R. (1958). Out of Utopia – Toward a reorientation of Sociological Analysis. American Journal of Sociology, LXIV.

Dores, A. P. (2008). Damasio’s error: Homage to a source of inspiration. Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 7(3).

Dores, A. P. (2010). Espírito de Proibir. Argusnauta.

Dores, A. P. (2020). Estado Social Real. RCP edições.

Elias, N. (1990). O Processo Civilizacional. D. Quixote.

McGrath, M. (2019, December). Why Greta Thunberg Is One Of The World’s Most Powerful Women. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2019/12/12/why-greta-thunberg-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-powerful-women/#5ae854451521

Parsons, T. (1961). An Outline of Social System. In T. Parsons, E. Shils, K. Naegele, & J. Pitts (Eds.), Theories of Society. Free Press.

Scroll down to find the English version.

A vida social é dinâmica: é violência (incorporada e rechaçada) contraposta a estados de espírito (incorporados e (re)criados).

A natureza humana soma a genes celulares genes psico-sociais (estados de espírito), quais algoritmos (disposições decorrentes de experiências) que podem estar activadas ou desactivadas, formando o caracter em transformação das pessoas, grupos, organizações, sociedades e as respectivas identidades históricas e expectativas.

Nenhuma violência (caracter (abusador e vítima) e situação (paz ou guerra)) surge do nada. As pessoas encontram-se com as respectivas bagagens (identidades, esperanças e posições relativas).

Análise social trata de compreender as condições que criaram a situação em que a violência se torna moralmente negativa: anti-natural ou anti-social ou anti-pessoal.

Diversos níveis (espaço-tempo) biológicos que se desmultiplicam em vários níveis sociais organizados de diversas formas, mais ou menos violentas:

Identidades pessoais, individuais e sociais evoluem. Experimentam diferentes abusos e contra abusos, sacrifícios ou contra sacrifícios. Avaliam diferentes probabilidades de enfrentar abusos e sacrifícios segundo linhas de diferenciação social: discriminação de géneros e privilégios (carismáticos, administrativos, imperiais) em mútua, íntima e eventualmente negada relação entre si.

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Zoom in and zoom out method

Dynamics of social life: violence (embodied and rejected) is opposed to estados de espírito (embodied and (re)created).

Human nature adds psychosocial genes (estados de espírito) to cellular genes. Dispositions resulting from experiences (like algorithms) can be activated or deactivated, forming the (changeable) character of people, groups, organizations, societies and their respective identities and historical expectations.

No violence (character (abuser and victim) and situation (war and peace)) comes out of nowhere. People come together with all their built-in baggage (identities, expectations, and positions).

Social analysis is about understanding the conditions that have created people, and the situations in which violence becomes morally negative because it is unnatural, antisocial, or antipersonal.

Several biological levels (space-time) that multiply in several social levels organized in different, more or less violent ways:

Personal, individual and social identities evolve. They experience different abuses and against abuses, sacrifices or against sacrifices. They assess different probabilities of facing abuses and sacrifices along lines of social differentiation: gender, and privileges (charismatic, administrative, imperial) discrimination in a mutual, intimate, and eventually denied relationship.

Scroll down to find the English version.

O papel da sociologia da violência é 1) descobrir abusos de violência que não são percebidos como violência pelo público, entre os quais o império, a ciência centrípeta, as práticas sacrificiais, incluindo a produção social-institucional de prisioneiros e prostitutas desde crianças, etc., e 2) desencobrir abusos de violência conhecidos, escondidos, sublimados (culpando as vítimas), como as discriminações de género, a saúde mental, as prisões, os processos de alienação mental (na política, na religião, na ciência), os abusos sexuais, os abusos políticos das discriminações, como nos casos das políticas migratórias, do racismo, da pobreza, da miséria, da guerra.

Aplicação das diferentes definições de violência:

Será a guerra resultante do actual paradigma de violência ou construtora de novo paradigma de violência? Revisitação do estrutural-funcionalismo por Wieviorka.

Será a guerra apenas as bombas e as balas que acertam no respectivos alvos, ou a principal violência é as ameaças de estigmatização de identidades nacionais e pessoais (com efeito de demonstração por toda a Europa, com sanções, com estigmatização de inimigos, drogados e neonazis) com a finalidade de condicionar pessoas, estados, nações?

Será a guerra imposta pelas situações (Collins tem razão? As pessoas não querem a guerra)? Como foi passada a tensão confrontacional que nos separa emocionalmente das práticas de violência? O que acontece depois de ultrapassada essa barreira?

O que é o estado de guerra? É só redução aos corpos?

A introdução da guerra na vida das pessoas, na Ucrânia e nas partes do mundo que a vivem – com a participação activa da comunicação social – tem efeitos de incorporação de novas relações sociais, nomeadamente a de cuidados com os ucranianos e estigmatização dos russos?

Evitar moralismos

O moralismo é uma violência pois tende a incorporar nas pessoas os estigmas desenhados para criar as condições que suscitam a violência. O moralismo faz parte das estratégias de guerra?

Uma vez instalada a guerra por forças especiais preparadas para tal, as pessoas organizam-se discriminatória e hierarquicamente contra o inimigo e ao serviço dos interesses das elites, incorporando novas identidades profissionais, nacionais, ideológicas. Podem e devem os sociólogos evitar acompanhar esses movimentos de transformação?

O uso do moralismo é fundamental na organização do abuso da violência: a) vitimização de Putin, defensor da Rússia e dos russos, e da Ucrânia, abandonada pelos seus parceiros; b) a diabolização da Rússia, equivalente ao ex-império soviético, e da Ucrânia, como nação de colaboracionistas pró-nazis impunes dos seus crimes de guerra, protegidos pelos norte-americanos e pelo estado ucraniano. Como evitar tomar partido? É possível e/ou desejável?

A violência e a guerra podem ser combatidas. A violência pode ser boa: a guerra nunca. A guerra não é natural, a violência sim. Será racional a ideia de que para acabar a guerra só a guerra tem poder suficiente (mais investimento em material bélico alemão e europeu para somar ao que já é suficiente para fazer desaparecer a humanidade da Terra várias vezes)?

Consequências da prevalência negligenciada do espírito imperial

Há que desmontar a irracionalidade do regime punitivo que está violentamente incorporado nas sociedades modernas. O espírito punitivo reproduz e legitima a violência abusiva.

Onde a teoria social falha? Quando se foca no poder e desvaloriza a história dos cuidados (terapias abandonadas à medicina) e identidades (abandonados à educação).

Porque é que a teoria social profissionalizada falha? Pela conjugação de estratégias cartesianas imperiais (separar as partes e turvar o todo) e políticas científicas (centrípetas) ao serviço dos estados imperialmente hierarquizados, ambas mantidas pela acção conjugada e mutuamente ignorante da medicina (cuidados), da educação (identidades) e das teorias sociais (poder).

O que fazer? Criar uma consciência anti-imperial anti-moralista: auto-referenciada, transprofissional, anti-nacionalista, anti-capitalista, anti-discriminatória.

O que é a consciência anti-imperial nas ciências sociais? É valorizar a ciência centrífuga (procura discutir o que é sociedade tomando por material empírico toda a história da humanidade. Está atenta aos cuidados terapêuticos, ao respeito pela liberdade das pessoas de construir as suas identidades, denunciando as violências abusivas, sobretudo as de estado-empresas organizadas para explorar a natureza e os recursos humanos).

Aplicação ao caso concreto

Compreender a situação que longamente tornou a guerra possível: a humilhação do estado russo após o desaparecimento da União Soviética, a retirada dos EUA dos tratados bilaterais EUA-Rússia sobre armas nucleares de alcance intermédio, o caracter ilegal e ilegítimo das guerras dos EUA e da NATO (nada defensiva) nas últimas décadas, a promoção imperial do espírito punitivo (promotor da violência e do proibicionismo) com as guerras contra as drogas, contra o terrorismo, contra a falência do sistema financeiro global, contra a pandemia, contra o fim das reservas naturais de energia fóssil, etc.

Denunciar a guerra contra a guerra, como é a nova política alemã que arrasta a política da União Europeia para uma corrida aos armamentos.

No caso da guerra da Ucrânia, há que resistir a tomar partido por uma das nacionalidades contra a outra ou estigmatizar uma ou outra.

Valorizar as lutas contra a guerra e separá-las do espírito punitivo (como organizar a guerra ou fazer apelos para matar os presidentes de cada um dos lados).

Promover os cuidados entre todos, como está a acontecer com ajudas humanitárias e como será possível fazer melhor através da adopção de um Rendimento Básico Incondicional continental e global.

Combater as discriminações nacionalistas e os movimentos neo-nazi-fascistas.

Denunciar as causas imperialistas, norte-americanas e russas e de todos os membros permanentes do Conselho de Segurança da ONU, que justificam e apoiam a guerra como instrumento de crescimento económico.

Promover a necessidade de justiça transformativa, protectora e respeitadora das identidades pessoais livres, com prioridade às crianças e às suas cuidadoras, no quadro da substituição do espírito punitivo por um espírito abolicionista do império e dos sistemas que lhe dão corpo.

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Application of the ideas presented at the first three lessons of sociology of violence to the Ukraine war (2022-)

The role of the sociology of violence is 1) to discover abuses of violence that are not perceived as violence by the public, such as empire, centripetal science, sacrificial practices such as the social-institutional production of prisoners and prostitutes from abandoned childhood, and so on, and 2) to uncover known, hidden, and sublimated abuses of violence (blaming the victims), such as gender discrimination, mental health, prisons, processes of mental alienation (within politics, within religion, within science), sexual abuse, political abuse of discrimination such as in the cases of migration policies, racism, poverty, misery, war.

A. Application of the different definitions of violence to war:

a) Will the war result from the current paradigm of violence? Does war build a new paradigm of violence? The structural functionalism revisited by Wieviorka.

b) Is war only bombs and bullets that find their targets or the main violence are the threats of stigmatization of national and personal identities (demonstration effect to every in Europe, sanctions, and enemy, drug addicts, and neo-Nazis stigmatization) to mold people, state, nations?

c) Is it the war imposed by situations (is it Collins right: people do not want war)? If so, how the emotional confrontational tension that separates us from violence was overcome? What happens after this barrier is no more present?

d) What the state of war means? Is it just reduction to bodies?

e) The introduction of war into people’s lives, in Ukraine and elsewhere – with the active participation of the media – has the effects of incorporating new social relationships, namely that of care for Ukrainians and stigmatization of Russians?

B. Avoiding moralisms

f) Moralism is a form of violence because it tends to embody the stigmas designed for violent purposes. Is it moralism part of war strategies?

g) Once the war is installed by special designed forces, people organize themselves in a discriminatory and hierarchical way against the enemy, at service of the elites´ interests, incorporating old or new professional, national, and ideological identities. Can and should sociologists avoid accompanying these transformational movements?

h) The use of moralism is strategic in the organization of the abuse of violence: a) the victimization of Putin, defender of Russia and the Russians, and of Ukraine, abandoned by his partners; b) the demonization of Russia, equal to former Soviet empire, and of Ukraine, as a nation built by pro-Nazi collaborationists unpunished for their war crimes, protected by the Americans and by Ukrainian state. How to avoid taking sides? Is it possible and/or desirable?

i) Can the violence and the war be fought back? Violence can be good: war is never good. War is not natural, violence is. Is it rational to think about ending the war? Only the war is powerful enough to stop war (new German and European Union budget on defense to add to what is already enough to make humanity disappear from Earth several times)?

C. Consequences of the neglected prevalence of the imperial spirit

j) It is necessary to dismantle the irrationality of the punitive regime that is violently incorporated in modern societies. Punitive estado de espírito reproduces and legitimizes abusive violence.

k) Where does social theory fail? It fails when it focuses on power and devalues ​​history of care (therapies abandoned to medicine) and of the identities (abandoned to education).

l) Why does professionalized social theory fail? By the combination of imperial Cartesian strategies (separating the parts and blurring the whole), and scientific (centripetal) policies at the service of imperially hierarchical states, both maintained by the combined and mutually ignorant action of medicine (care), education (identities) and social theories (power).

m) What one can do? Create an anti-moralist anti-imperial consciousness: self-referenced, trans-professional, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, anti-discriminatory.

n) How an anti-imperial consciousness in the social sciences looks like? It looks like a centrifugal science (it seeks to discuss what society is, taking the entire history of humanity as the main empirical field. It is attentive to therapeutic care experiences regarding respect for people’s freedom to build their identities, denouncing abusive violence, especially the state-corporation organized abusive violence to exploit nature and human resources).

D. Application to the specific case

o) Elements to understand the situation that became war possible : the humiliation of the former Soviet Union´s state and people, the USA 2019 withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, the illegal and illegitimate interventions of the USA and NATO (nothing defensive) in the last decades, the imperial promotion of violence and punitive estado de espírito applied on the wars on drugs, on terror, on the failure of the global system, on the financial pandemic, on the forseen end of natural reserves of fossil energy , etc.

p) To denounce the war against the war, such as the new German (and European Union) policy.

q) In the case of the war in Ukraine, it is necessary to resist taking sides for one of the nationalities against the other or estigmatize nationals from any country.

r) Valuing the struggles against the war and separating them from the punitive spirit (such as organizing the war or making calls to kill the presidents of each side).

s) Promoting the idea that care to all is possible with international support. To adopt Citizen Income politics globally, instead of helicopter money to bailout global finantial system.

t) Struggeling against nationalist discrimination and neo-Nazi-Fascist movements.

u) Denouncing vetos of all permanent members of the UN Security Council, as one imperial privilege. Veto justify and support wars all over the planet.

v) Promoting the need for transforming justice, protecting people and their free identities, with special attention to children and their caregivers. That is  the main task to replace the punitive estado de espírito by the abolitionist  estado de espírito that can end protecting the bodies from the rapacity of the Empire.

Book written in 2015 by António Pedro Dores, antonio.dores@iscte-iul.pt, published in Portuguese in 2020

The Welfare State is an ideological entity that is causing political damages these days. It covers the social and political resignation regarding the strategic defeat of the leftwing parties. After the 80´s, the progress, former leftwing maxim since the end of WW II, turn into resistance.

The former so-called reactionary politics, as the conservative and the liberal politics, start presenting themselves as progressive. Universal rights deliver become a failed hope, even in rich countries. Moralistic leftwing stands of the politicians, and of the unions´ vanguards show powerless.

Is it leftwing parties and ideological resistance accomplice or impotent, regarding the present situation? Why does the continual collapse of capitalism not empower anti-capitalist ideology or movements?

Living USSR leadership, Gorbachev called for social democracy rule. He was followed by Lula da Silva in Brazil, and Bernie Sanders in the USA. The call and the experiences that followed it should be assessed. It is difficult to do so because mainstream professional social sciences are also social democrat. Social sciences are trapped in ideological Cold War Manicheism, as one can see clearly in the comments of Ukraine war 2022. Social sciences borders divide by hierarchized disciplines, and subdisciplines. Social sciences also oppose ideologies, under the opposition of mainstream scholar non-ideological theories and critical theories. Few space is left to heterodox knowledge, as scientific knowledge is. The ongoing war for funding, prestige, and elite services conducted in science fields is not alien to this state of affairs.

It is very important to make sense of western politics of science (Dores, 2021, Reeducar o Século XXI). Scientific approach to empirical data should avoid the takeover of politics and Manicheism wars. One must make it clear the differences between science policies – privatization of schools, universities, research centers, think thanks, etc. – and science politics – cartesian division of science labor and concepts, on one hand, ideological Manicheism struggles, on the other hand.

Science politics result from civilizational situation, the semi-millenary imperial state-economy mission of exploitation of the Earth, and its resources, including its human resources. Social policies result from capitalist situation. Karl Marx´s capitalism refer to the processes of inclusion of English and European people as row material to develop imperial mission: freed human resources. Capitalism is a strong instrument to secure much older imperial insane and immoral self-attributed mission. It crashes in 1929 and a New Deal prevail, strengthen by WW II victory. Capitalism was explicitly adapted by Western Europe during the Cold War, detaching social democracy from real socialism.

The social integration politics of the second half of 20th century , adding to free workers new status as consumers and citizens statuses, evolved according to Keynesian expectation. The 1973 oil crises stagflation comes as a surprise. An informal and non-negotiated new New Deal comes with Reagan-Thatcher progressive conservative politics. Women, young people, foreigners, activists, etc., struggle for social integration at the sometime businesses take all the benefits of growing productivity and dislocating industry to new sites out of the reach of revolted youth. Tax heavens and cuts on social policies become the rule.

What´s is wrong with this renewed political framework, now called neoliberal rule? For sure, it means weakening of the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. War, as war on drugs, on terror, on debt, on virus, on Russia and China, has been present all the time, even Cold War is over. Imperial rule is fueled on fear, reducing people to human resources by poverty, hierarchization, discrimination, and justification distracted from the basics needs.

The question is not to decide what comes first, the economy, or the politics, income, or democracy. The question is to come to terms about what is freedom about? Is it about working professionally, or is it having a word on avoiding violent situations? Is it the question about moral composure of capitalism, organized by merit, or is it the question on how to organize anti-imperial ways of living? 

Estado Social Real was written for my personal reflection on the relevance on what I was being doing for 30 years, professionally, as a sociologist teacher. After the extraordinary EU institutional political reaction to the global financial system bankruptcy without popular opposition (except in Greece), the powerful society I experienced during the 1974-5 Carnation Revolution come to my mind.

The scarce money flew all over the world for the bankrupted banks and the invoice was served (again) to the taxpayers. My memory on IMF´s intervention in Portugal´77 was the leftwing slogan “The rich should pay the [IMF´s] debt”. And now, 2010, here we are in a situation where tax payers are paying the banks´ robberies from around the world. 

I felt the need to tear apart my former believe that science should not mix with politics.

I discovered I was stucked by a professional ideology that close the professional borders of thinking. I was astonished to understand that the claimed irrelevance of social, and sociological theories is contradicted by the name of the politics followed in Europa: Social State is there for some raison. It means, according to Habermas, the right of the state to intrude in more and more aspects of personal lives of everyone. Social sciences´ missions, such as social integration, struggles against poverty and inequality, appear to me at a new light. Social workers appear to me as Panoptical wardens of the alleged free society. Computer sciences turn it all in the Chinese social credit.

The real social state, and the social sciences it funds, are not desirable. They have never been desirable. Remember the 60´s and 70´s revolutionary “breaking the wall” of schools, universities, and factories. Youth than was against all the system. The same system, the social state and its´ social sciences, is today presented as the final goal of declining leftwing parties. Social theories are to blame on this, since all professional people, one way or another, take social sciences disciplines as scientific (unquestionable) representations of immutable modern human nature, the best one supposably can get.

The book influence in my life

The states ruled by neoliberal politics are what is left from the former welfare state. The worker’s movements are not any more known for the hope for the future. Leftwing is now known for resisting as if welfare state (the standard of living of the richest countries) was the best one can get. The book deals with the astonishment regarding the reactionary call of leftwing personnel and parties: the call to engage in returning to the rule of former welfare state.

This book is about how hope vanish as one stay waiting in vain for the state deliver promise welfare. Real welfare state is not what it seems to be. Welfare state does not control capitalism. What welfare state does is to conform to the imperial global intenational apparatus that continue fulfilling the semi-millenary mission of taking the Earth as raw material to produce wealth.

What is new on the book is to point out social sciences professionalization as one strong, hidden, component of welfare state. The way state and social sciences work together help to cover up the divide and rule imperial over the Earth and humanity.

States result from divide and rule imperial strategy, as social sciences´ disciplines, and ideologies divide. Through schooling and universities, social sciences teach professional people to divide and rule on a hierarchical professional pyramid we all wrongly know as natural and indispensable for humankind living.

To unite humanity and social sciences against imperial way of living one need, in the first place, to have clear mind about the ways we accept all sort of divisions without questioning them.

I wrote Estado Social Real (real welfare state) in 2015 to organize my ideas about what I was doing and what I should do. The time passing by, and I felt it as a confirmation of my insights in politics. So, I continued my research. 2016´s Michael Kuhn´s book on “How Social Sciences Think…”, and 2018´s Jim Schofield book “The Real Philosophy of Science”, was pivotal to me to link politics to my everyday teacher work. I wrote another book (Reeducar o século XXI – libertar o espírito científico; 21rst Century Reeducation – free the scientific spirit) about science policy. It becomes a huge success in my mind and life. I am happy with I have written. I know what I must do, now.

Still, it seems incomprehensible to my students, and my political and professional friends. Becoming professionals is an addiction. Who cares about imagining new ways of living? Myself, I still do the same I ever done before. I talk to students that come to me by marks useful for their graduation.

The book

Since the 80´s, progress arguing cross the right-left political border. Reagan-Thatcher parties claim for progress. Not anymore social progress, as it was the case for the New Deal and its European counterpart, the welfare state. “There is no such thing as society” – Thatcher dixit. From the 80´s on, the revolution and the progress presented technological advancements that will solve all the problems. Workers movements were in the way of progress and should be dismissed.

Shouldn´t sociologist and social scientist contest such a political view? Without society what would be the subject of social sciences?

“Society first: then it comes modernization” is the name of the first chapter of Estado Social Real. It contests the scientific and commonsense adopted hierarchy of state and, economy (struggling each other), and submitted societies. It shows the people reduction to individual human resources. Logically, social science needs to prioritize society, its main subject, or disappear. Why social sciences do not act for society survival, for its´ own survival? Societies, also, seems dormant, hypnotized, stuck.

The hope of post-revolutionary Portuguese people to become equal to modern welfare states, like France or Germany where many Portuguese emigrants make a living, cannot be renewal after 3,5 decades of experience. 2010´s EU internal colonial politics shamed and extorse the PIGS, the southern Europe nationalities. The welfare states of the rich countries are still unavailable to people outside rich countries. Poverty and wars are still around us, as before, and state remedies do not work enough to stop them. Human caused crises, as financial crises, still happen not only in third world countries. Can we trust states and markets alliance over our heads?

Social sciences are old enough to ask what the point of their existence is. Why social sciences accept without of resistance the imaginary and false hierarchy that present society as inexistent, and isolated individuals dependent from the state-markets games?

Social sciences incorporate both the disciplinary hierarchy (economics as queen of social sciences and political science as the most popular in the media), and the professional reduction of social sciences to the lowest level of prestige. Would it be neoliberalism that freed the capitalism the problem we face? How could capitalism be freed from the revolt of human resources, the proletariat, if people did not comply with their professional duties? Can people avoid reduction to individual CV open to deliver whatever job is offered?  By the way, what kind of propose social sciences teachers and professions are used for?

Social state refers directly to society and to social sciences. The New Deal and the Marshall program to Europe oppose communist society. Social state will rule as worker friendly state till the 80´s. Sociology, and social sciences, toke the place of former religious ideology and the Soviet ideology.

The second chapter of the book title is “social theories as professional ideologies”. That is an answer to the purpose of social state to pay for social sciences universities. I understand why leftwing social sciences teachers prefer to present themselves as powerless individuals and sensitive people, as all professionals do. As everybody else, university professors must manage to split person and individual, the former as part of society and the latter as part of the state and the markets. Since the 30´s, at Harvard-USA, sociology become an initial education to new professions, such as those needed to control poor people struggles for survival in a way it does not affect New Deal politics.

The new high standard metropolitan, and isolated, energy consuming American way of life become a worldwide propaganda reference opposed to factory dependent working soviet life till communism is achieve. One of the differences between the two societies was equality: USA model presume the existence of losers over whom middle class must work to have access to market goods. USSR warranty everyone income from any job the state finds to each one.

Portuguese 1974 revolution open a choice window between western and soviet propaganda. Even for revolutionary people, consumer life is much attractive than working life or poor peoples´ life. The main political parties (center, social democrat, socialist) support integration into European Community. That is why social sciences become needed to democratic Portuguese society: to claim that war, poverty, famine, were problems of the past, of the fascist regime and its backwardness. The job of those professions supported by social sciences is to develop capitalism the way USA deliver to Western Europe, presenting structural problems as defects that can be ruled by public policies that free successful professional lives from ugly sights on excluded people´s lives.

Working class social 19th century call to revolution turn into social integration call into USA like or USSR like societies. Political challenges in the western world politics develop as peace, human rights, youth, women, ecological claims that run separately from each other and jealous of working-class representative’s state protagonists. NGO become lobbies as industry lobbies, except that weaker and ineffective, even they are hopeful runned by social sciences theories.

Blair´s third way, inspired by referenced sociologist Anthony Giddens views on politics, turn crime and poor people management as main discriminative policy in a way to cancel conservative politics, delivered by Labor Party. This way, professionalization of sociology prove to be useful to help to pursue the new-deal-welfare-state strategy after its exhaustion, at the 80´s. Mainstream political decisions accepted some professional sociological suggestions. Blaming neoliberalism should be blaming of sociology, and social sciences success.

This also means that social theories are much more influent that it seems at the university courses, not so much prestigious as natural sciences courses.

Can one denounce social theories as fake? Can one denounce social theories as non-scientific, misleading, religious like? It seems easy to do that, since pos-modernism trends already do that. Social science teachers do disperse their professional responsibilities and those of their students claiming they do not know, for sure, what to believe. For them, society is so tricky subject that no one can be sure it exists out of the power of some powerful people talk for it. Public sociology or public social science is the way some found to push forward the notion of the existence of society, repressed by neoliberal professionalism, around the fame of scholars that can engage on public discussions, as proposed by Habermas.

Decades of experience of “free media” show that the constraints to controversial thinking close above people, especially when war card is shown (on drugs, on terror, on Islam, on pandemic, on Ukraine). Surveillance society is managing its way using our cell phones as Panopticon cells.

It seems no way out to the complicity of people with the educated individuals one brings into life. Oppression to personal freedom and will seems natural and unavoidable. Social state is the ultimate Weber´s iron cage. Can one get out of it?

“Would it be possible to find ecological social sciences?” is the title of the third chapter. Maybe the environment come to save us, or at least to save life, from destructive global mainstream human activities. Lack of human good will can provoke environment geological response, some call Anthropocene. Is it a curse or a hope?

Social sciences are not natural science. They are separated and incompatible. To deal with nature is different to deal with people. Nature is presented as inert. People are sacred and can turn into human resources. That is way social science do not present in any circumstance the relevance of environment in peoples´ lives. It seems one can equally live in Mars or the Moon or in the Earth, as some propaganda explicitly claim.

Sciences that claim such a non-sense, as social sciences do, are they science? No one claim social sciences are science. They prefer low professional “realistic” profile.

Can one insist, with Comte, Marx, Parsons, and others, to follow the route from philosophy to science regarding social thinking? Doing so, wouldn´t be indispensable to stop the epistemic separation of nature and humankind? Doing so, wouldn´t be indispensable to become harsher when it comes to interdisciplinary thinking? Why interdisciplinary theories are so fragile or even inexistant?

The next two chapters recall how pessimist-optimist Manicheism and Rousseau-Hobbes Manicheism disperse social scientists in opposite parties, as political pluralist, and ideological tactics to divide and reign in the scholar and professional worlds. “Centripetal science” chapter offer the characteristic of today mainstream science policies that oppress full science (centrifugal science). Centripetal science avoid the presence of the perspective to organize systematically trans-partisan e transdisciplinary knowledge production and diffusion.

 “Lessons of law and biology” chapter presents bridges from social sciences theories outside the social sciences borders that can support centrifugal science politics.

“Social science, society and state” chapter presents a complex thinking inspired by centrifugal science. Social sciences should recognize the biological specificities of humankind, the human dependence from the environment, the connections between the different levels of reality: the cosmic, organizational and body levels. Instead, professional social sciences develop blind eye to biology and any natural sciences, present societies out of its technological and environmental frames, as mere institutional systems visited by people willing to join, except when they are mentally ill or enemies.

Criminal world is represented apart from society, purified by criminal justice. Social sciences specialization authorizes all other specialty out of criminology to forget about deviance, to forget about whatever feelings one might live about something wrong one cannot say what it is. Since the II WW, the New Deal, and the real socialism competition for economic growth, stretched ecological world systems. In the same era, social sciences develop its professional centripetal strategic blind eye to natural sciences and environmental questions. Professional perception grew in stratified ways: no one stay responsible for environmental risks that grow exponentially. Still when global warming extreme consequences become experimented by common people no one have a clue what to do about it. Everyone continues to do the same that produce this result. Protest rises about economic changes – like the raise of the fuel price – coming from new environment situation.

Social state is successful to bring together society and state, alliance supported by professions educated by social sciences. This alliance is not able to face new problems: it develops the same irresponsible environmentally routines economically driven.

“Reflexivity and marginalization” chapter mention the sublimation of people´s main purpose in life, survival, is brought by the idea of human as the unique clever being – res cogitans. This cleverness organize economy autonomous from environment, thinking autonomous from otherness: a war against nature. This philosophical discrimination between humancleverness and brut nature is a justification for exploiting nature and the part of humankind that can be assimilated to nature, like infidel, savages, slaves, workers, foreigners, criminals, poor people, and targets of any excluding classification. Marginalization at the bottom of social prestige supports elite privilege discrimination at the top. This social stretching status mechanism allows de wealth accumulation function. This social function is needed to develop Empires. Capitalism launched Empire to a global enterprise and a social integrated kind of societies, including excluded people that plays the role of marginals, eternal natural danger to imperial civilization.

Social theories sublimate the social stretching imperial mechanism through reflexivity divinization (elite and social scientists) and naturalizing the outcasts (meritocracy and poverty traps).  

“Reduction and reification” is the title of the following chapter. Its critic theories focused on managing capitalism. Instead, critic would do better focusing on the way capitalism exploit the Earth to fulfil imperial mission of Faith on value-money diffusion.

Focus on capitalism, an instrument of modern Empire, distract from modern call to the anti-imperial freedom, and self-determination. Freedom and self-determination are not Imperial goals: are not state goals. Modern societies develop strange and self-contradictory concepts of freedom not talked by social sciences, including critical theories. Modern freedom is about the environmental and social damages production presented as freedom against nature-enemy. This kind of freedom comes with working class sacrifice, outcast sacrifice, and elite morality, supported by professional social sciences since the New Deal and European Social State.

Capitalism is instrumental to the much older Empire organization. Abolishing or taming capitalism showed to be ineffective. The empire mindset (in USSR, in professional political parties, in post-colonial countries, within corporations, etc.) guide elites, workers and outcasts to new forms of exploiting the Earth and its human resources. For the moment there is no alternative to the growth politic. This priority result from Earth exploitation to which the capitalism shows to be very useful and effective. To distribute the wealth is a slow up, sometimes reversal, promise. 

The social critic to the social question – the survival of working class under capitalist exploitation – become main structure of the New Deal big state (and of the welfare state or social state in Europe). Social theories (both academic and critic) become central to nature exploitation state, and media propaganda. Its main job is to hide Empire, the nature disqualifying mechanism that also disqualify humanity as human resources. Nation-states, comparative planning work, international community, and modern social concepts – the epistemic split between nature and society, natural science, and social sciences – are built to hide Imperial way of building societies against nature, using capitalism and other social processes, as consumerism, cultural alienation, science control, etc. 

“Social state” is the final chapter. Social state adds to the liberal state (war, police, business) the leftwing functions of the state. This recent part of the state takes care of the life of the people (health, education, poverty support). It substitutes, universalizes, and abolishes former self-organized caring workers institutions. With neo-liberalism period, and the end of universal state caregiving, the caring state functions are used to isolate people from each other, to blame the victims for the incapability of the state to comply with its promises or better life built on meritocracy and poverty traps. 

Modern people, and critical theory, are stoked at a Stockholm syndrome that presents the social state both as an all-powered inevitability against nature chaos, and as elites as social single saviors.