Posted by alexandra_k on January 5, 2006, at 19:16:04
I was reading this last night and I thought I'd put excerpts up here incase anyone had any thoughts on it...
It is just one persons opinion (well, he is reporting other peoples opinions in the extracts really)...
Please don't shoot the messenger...
Though you are of course free to disagree with the message (though reasons are preferred)Happy reading :-)
The Gururumba people experience the state of “being a wild pig” (Newman 1964). In this state they run wild, looting articles of small value and attacking bystanders. The Gururumba think the wild-pig syndrome is caused by being bitten by the ghost of a recently dead member of the tribe. The antisocial behaviour is tolerated to a quite remarkable extent. The disease either runs its course or is ritually cured. Wild-pig behaviour is largely restricted to males between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. At this age men are likely to be under considerable economic pressure following the acquisition of a wife. Wild-pig behaviour seems to occur when a man cannot meet his financial obligations. After a display of wild-pig behaviour the individual receives special consideration with respect to these obligations. Newman convincingly explains wild-pig behaviour as a device by which a man can obtain this consideration without denying the fact that the demands made on him are legitimate. The behaviour is an action, but it is not acknowledged as such by the individual or by society. It is part of the wild-pig role that wild-pig behaviour is involuntary.In a recent book on multiple personality syndrome (MPS) Ian Hacking describes a form of social construction very similar to that seen in the Gururumba (Hacking 1995). According to Hacking the modern symptomology of MPS evolved hand in hand with theories of the disorder. By channelling their distress into forms recognized by current theory, individuals were able to gain social acceptance as “sick” and to receive positive feedback from therapists, support groups, and so forth. In the early days of the modern MPS epidemic individuals rarely presented with the full range of symptoms. Distressed individuals were “trained” in the production of MPS symptoms, first by expert therapists, and later by a voluntary movement of laypersons. Today, with the help of literature and television talk shows, patients are able to produce the symptoms without individual tuition. MPS has become part of the local culture in countries suffering the MPS epidemic.
A similar explanation might be given of the syndrome found in a number of southeast Asian societies and referred to as amok. The syndrome consists of indiscriminate attacks on others and usually culminates in the killing of the person who runs amok. Amok is traditionally triggered by perceived dishonour. Cases are cited of Westerners living in Asia running amok, presumably by example. Once again, this can be interpreted as a disclaimed action. The man running amok is not pretending to be in a frenzy, but he would not be in the frenzy unless he had learned that this is an appropriate response to certain unbearable social pressures. He is acting out a social role, part of which is that he is not in control of his actions. It might be argued that a similar syndrome now exists in Western culture. Men who believe that none of their options allows them self-respect exhibit a rather stereotypical pattern of behaviour, probably derived from contemporary action films. They shoot at a large group of people, not necessarily people associated with their misfortunes, before being shot or shooting themselves. They purport to be “out of control” and are treated as such by society, yet their behaviour is under the fairly precise control of a recently developed model of how one might behave in such a situation. Pg 140-141.
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…There are at least three important senses in which categories can be socially constructed. First, there is the trivial sense in which all concepts are socially constructed. In this sense, the concepts of electron, magnesium, and clade are social constructions, as well as the concepts of citizen, member of parliament, and licensed dog owner. None of these concepts can exist independently of a community of speakers and thinkers, and each was created by a sociolinguistic process.
In the second, stronger sense, citizens, members of parliament, and licensed dog owners are social constructions while electrons, magnesium, and clades are not. The categories referred to in the first list are social constructions, whereas those referred to by the second list are not. The categories electron, magnesium, and clade would exist (their members would have certain properties in common) whether or not the concepts of those categories had been formulated. The elements described by the periodic table do not need the activities of a community of speakers and thinkers to make them differ in atomic weight and number. Modern systematics was not needed for evolving lineages to speciate. The category of MP’s, however, depends for its existence on the formulation of the concept of a member of parliament. Were it not for the sociolinguistic activities centered on this concept, the members of parliament would have nothing in common to differentiate them from nonmembers. According to Hacking the same is true of multiple personality syndrome The potential to develop MPS could be developed very differently. Another society might make something very different of the individuals who are now made into sufferers of MPS. That society might also make some cases of MPS into one alternative way of being and others into another alternative way of being . This way of grouping would find as much justification in the occurring phenomena as the current groupings. Hacking describes his view as dynamic nominalism. Dynamic nominalism differs from simple nominalism in that the members of the category do share something over and above the fact that they are members of that category. However, the fact that the members have these shared properties reflects the existence of the category and the social practices in which it is embedded (Hacking 1995).
The third sense of socially constructed is the sense expressed when someone remarks that a thing is “just socially constructed” and infers from this that no such thing exists. It would be natural to say this about Newman’s condition of ghost possession. Ghost possession is not a category like electron which exists independently of our social practice, but neither is it like member of parliament or licensed dog owner. Most people would happily admit that the only difference between MP’s and non-MP’s is that we as a community treat these people in a particular way. This realisation has no effect on the social practice in which the concept of MP is embedded. But it would make all the difference in the world to the Gururumba if they believed that the only difference between wild-pig men and other men is the decision of the men to be wild pigs and the decision of the community to treat them as such. The Gururumba practice of ghost possession rests on a collective pretense that this is not the case. Socially constructed categories in this third sense are social pretenses that cannot survive the realisation that they are merely our inventions. The general acceptance of Hacking’s analysis of multiple personality syndrome would have a corrosive effect on the social practices of the modern MPS community. Another Western example of this third sort of social construction may be the social construction of gender. Our social practices have been transformed by the growing acceptance that traditional gender characteristics are not the inevitable effects of biological sex. P 145-146
hmm...
i'm thinking there might be some confusion around whether mps is considered to be a social construction in the second or the third sense...there is more but i thought i'd see if there was a general interest first...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:595576
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051229/msgs/595576.html