Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Giovani, studenti e infiniti mondi

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2019): Giovani, studenti e infiniti mondi

Trasformazioni sociali, affettivizzazione della sfera pubblica e ricerca di senso

Submitted
November 4, 2019
Published
2019-12-15

Abstract

Western societies are crossed by a plurality of critical phenomena. The perception is that of being grappled with an uncontrollable anthropological drift, which make us powerless, leading towards a point of no return. A constitutive character of such a drift is the enslaving of the public spheres to the affects (i.e. affectivization). Any public affair and discussion is less and less addressed in terms of functional criteria (i.e. in terms of optimization of utility in reason of objective data) and more and more as the trigger as well as the target of affective acting-out.  Such a dynamics challenges all individuals and institutions that think that civilization and progress are a matter of the human efforts to enslave the affective exercise of the present moment to the capacity of the reason to draw futurables. Education – and higher education within it – is at the front line of this challenge, because it is up to it the effort of promoting the symbolic resources that enables people to succeed in the twofold task of valorizing subjectivity and enslaving its affective substance to aims of social and civic progress. The present paper intends to contribute to address such a challenge. To this end, it proposes an interpretation of the affectivization spreading the contemporary social landscape, based on current debate in cognitive sciences. On this grounds, the general idea that such a phenomenon is something different from and more than a mere epidemy of irrationality - as it is more or less implicitly treated by observers and analysts-  is deepened. Following that, strategic and methodological implications for higher education are discussed. It is called for an extension of the function of higher education, in the direction of  taking charge of the demand of symbolic resources required to address the uncertainty generated by the contemporary socio-institutional turmoil.

References

  1. Andriola V., Been W., Cremaschi M., Fini V., Matsopoulos A., Willet J., Salvatore S. (2019). Policies and Sensemaking. In: Salvatore S., Fini V., Mannarini T., Valsiner J., Veltri G. A. (Eds.). Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis. Crisis. The Future of European Societies (pp. 271-291). Cham (Switzerland): Springer
  2. Barrett Feldman. L. (2006). Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10: 20-46.
  3. Barsalou L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioural and Brain Science, 22, 577-609.
  4. Barsalou L. W. (2011). Integrating Bayesian analysis and mechanistic theories in grounded cognition. Behavioural and Brain Science, 34: 191-192.
  5. Barsalou L. W. (2016). Situated conceptualization: Theory and applications. In: Coello Y., Fischer M. H. (Ed.). Foundations of embodied cognition: Perceptual and emotional embodiment (pp. 11-37). New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
  6. Battaglia R. (1953). Storia della resistenza italiana. Torino: Einaudi.
  7. Bauman Z., & Bordoni C. (2014). State of crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  8. Berger P. L., & Luckmann T. (1966). The social construction of reality. London: Penguin
  9. Books.
  10. Bertini M. (2012). Psicologia della salute. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.
  11. Borghi A. M., Binkofski F., Castelfranchi C., Cimatti F., Scorolli C. Tummolini L. (2017). The Challenge of Abstract Concepts. Psychological Bulletin, 143(3): 263-292.
  12. Bruner J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  13. Carli R., & Paniccia R. M. (1999). Psicologia della formazione [Psychology of the Training]. Bologna: il Mulino.
  14. Carli R., & Salvatore S. (2001), L’immagine dello psicologo [The image of the psychologist]. Roma: Kappa Editore.
  15. Cavalli A., & de Lillo A. (a cura di) (1993). Giovani anni ’90. Terzo rapporto Iard sulla condizione giovanile in Italia. Bologna: il Mulino.
  16. Caviglia G., & Salvatore S. (1992). Riflessioni sulla formazione in psicologia: le Esperienze Pratiche Guidate. Lo Psicologo, 2(1): 51-70.
  17. Codagnone C., Bogliacino F., & Veltri G. A. (2018). Scienza in vendita: Incertezza,
  18. interessi e valori nelle politiche pubbliche. Milano: Egea.
  19. Cole M. (1996). Cultural Psychology. A once and future discipline. Cambridge Mass.:
  20. Harvard University Press.
  21. Council of the Eurpoean Union (2018). Recommendation of the Council of the European
  22. Union, 22 May 2018 on key competences for lifelong learning. https://eurlex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%3AOJ.C_.2018.189.01.0001.01.ENG&toc=OJ%3AC%3A2018%3A189%3ATOC.
  23. Cuccio V., Gallese V. (2018). A Peircean account of concepts: grounding abstraction in phylogeny through a comparative neuroscientific perspective. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society. Biological Sciences, 373.
  24. Durkheim E. (1893/1984). The Division of Labour in Society. New York: Free Press.
  25. (original work in French, 1893).
  26. Engel A. K., Friston K. J., Kragic D. (2015). Introduction: Where’s the Action? In Engel A. K., Friston K. J., Kragic D. (Ed.). The Pragmatic Turn. Toward Action-Oriented Views in Cognitive Science (pp. 1-15). Cambridge (MASS): MIT.
  27. Gallagher S. (2005). How the Body shapes the mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  28. Gibson (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  29. Gonçalves M. M., Ribeiro A. P., Stiles W. B., Conde T., Matos M., Martins C., & Santos A. (2011). The role of mutual in-feeding in maintaining problematic selfnarratives: Exploring one path to therapeutic failure. Psychotherapy Research, 21(1): 27-40. doi: 10.1080/10503307.2010.507789.
  30. Greenberg J., & Arndt J. (2012). Terror management theory. In: Van Lange P. A. M. K. Higgins, E. T. (Ed.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 398-415). Thousand Oaks (CA) US: Sage Publications Ltd.
  31. Husserl E. (1991). On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-
  32. . Collected Works (J. B. Brough, Trans. Vol. 4). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
  33. Kay A. C., Whitson J. A., Gaucher D., Galinsky A. D. (2009). Compensatory Control.
  34. Achieving Order Through the Mind, Our Institutions, and the Heavens. Current Direction of Psychological Science, 18(5), 264-268.
  35. Klein M. (1967). Contribution to Psychoanalysis, 1921-1945. New York: Mac Graw-Hill.
  36. Lindblom J. (2015). Embodied Social Cognition. Heidelberg: Springer
  37. Major B., Kaiser C. R., O’Brien L. T., McCoy S. K. (2007). Perceived Discrimination as Worldview Threat or Worldview Confirmation: Implications for Self-Esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6): 1068-1086.
  38. Mannarini T., Salvatore S. (2019). Making sense of ourselves and others: A contribution
  39. to the community-diversity debate. Community Psychology in Global Perspective, 5(1): 26-37.
  40. Marigold D. C., McGregor I., Zanna M P. (2010). Defensive Conviction as Emotion
  41. Regulation: Goal Mechanisms and Interpersonal Implications. In Arkin R. M., Oleson K. C., Carroll P. J. (Ed.). Handbook of the Uncertain Self (pp. 232-248). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
  42. Matsopoulos A., Griva A.-M., Psinas P., Monasterioti I. (2019). Teachers’ Perceptions of Teacher Evaluation, Professional Identities and Educational Institutions: An Analysis Based on the Symbolic Universes Approach. In: Salvatore S., Fini V., Mannarini T., Valsiner J., Veltri G. A. (Eds.). Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis. Crisis. The Future of European Societies (pp. 191-214). Cham (Switzerland): Springer.
  43. Maturana M. R., & Varela J. F. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht, NL: Reidel Publishing Co.
  44. Mazzoni G. (2015). I destini generali. Bari: Laterza Editore.
  45. Montesarchio G. Crotti M. T. (1993). Dal riconoscimento al disconoscimento. Rivista di Psicologia Clinica, 7(1-2): 169-174.
  46. Mudde C. (2004). The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4): 542-563.
  47. Norman R. (1986). Service management: Strategy and leadership in service businesses. New York: Wiley & Sons.
  48. Osgood C. E., May W. H., Miron M. S. . (1975). Cross-cultural Universals of Affective
  49. Meaning. Chicago: Illinois University Press.
  50. Osgood C. E., Suci G. J., & Tannenbaum P. H. (1957). The Measurement of Meaning.
  51. Chicago, ILL: University of Illinois Press.
  52. Paniccia R. M. (2003). The school client as an unknown friend: a stranger. European
  53. Journal of School Psychology, 1(2): 247-285.
  54. Peirce C. S. (1932). On Sign. In C. Hartshorne, & P. Weiss (Eds.), Collected Papers of
  55. Charles Sanders Peirce (Volume II). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [Original version: 1897].
  56. Piketty T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press (original work: Editions du Seuil, Paris, 2013).
  57. Proulx T., & Inzlicht M. (2012). The Five “A”s of Meaning Maintenance: Finding Meaning in the Theories of Sense-Making. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4): 317-335. doi: 10.1080/1047840X.2012.702372.
  58. Rumiati R. I., Ciolfi A. Di Benedetto A., Sabella M., Infurna M. R. Ancaiani A., Checchi D. (2018). Key-competences in higher education as a tool for democracy. Form@are.Open Journal per la formazione in rete, 1-13.
  59. Salvatore S. (2012). Social Life of the Sign: Sensemaking in Society. In: Valsiner J.(Eds). The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology (pp. 241-254). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  60. Salvatore S. (2016). Psychology in black and white. The project of a theory-driven science. Charlotte, NC: InfoAge Publishing.
  61. Salvatore S. (2018). Cultural Psychology as the Science of Sensemaking: A Semioticcultural Framework for Psychology. In: Rosa A. & Valsiner J. (Eds). The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology, 2nd Edition (pp 35-48). Cambridge:
  62. Cambridge University Press.
  63. Salvatore S. (2019, on line first). Beyond the Meaning Given. The Meaning as Explanandum. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science.
  64. Salvatore S., Fini V., Mannarini T., Valsiner J. Veltri G. A. (Eds, 2019). Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis. The Future of European Societies. Cham (Switzerland): Springer.
  65. Salvatore S., Fini V., Mannarini T., Veltri G. A., Avdi E., Battaglia F., Castro-Tejerina J., Ciavolino E., Cremaschi M., Kadianaki I., Kharlamov A. N., Krasteva A., Kullasepp K., Matsopoulos A., Meschiari C., Mossi P., Psinas P., Redd R., Rochira A., Santarpia A., Sammut G., Valsiner J., & Valmorbida A. (2018) Symbolic universes between present and future of Europe. First results of the map of European societies’ cultural milieu. PLoS ONE, 13(1): e0189885.
  66. Salvatore S., & Freda M. F. (2011). Affect Unconscious and Sensemaking. A Psychodynamic Semiotic and Dialogic Model. New Ideas in Psychology, 29: 119-135.
  67. Salvatore S., Gennaro A., Manfreda A., Calogiuri S. (2019). Models of value construction. For a semio-dialectical approach to organization and social action. In: Bendassoli P. F. (Ed.). Culture, work and psychology: Invitations to dialogue. Charlotte
  68. (NC): Information Age Publishing
  69. Salvatore S., Mannarini T., Avdi E., Battaglia F., Cremaschi M., Forges Davanzati G., Fini V., Kadianaki I., Krasteva A., Matsopoulos A., Mølholm M., Redd R., Rochira A., Russo F., Santarpia A., Sammut G., Valmorbida A., Veltri G. A. 2018, on line first). Globalization, demand of sense and enemization of the other. A psycho-cultural analysis of European societies’ socio-political crisis. Culture & Psychology.
  70. Salvatore S., Marsico P., Andrisano-Ruggieri (2015). Psychology of Reflexivity and reflexivity for psychology. In: Marsico P., Salvatore S., Andrisano-Ruggieri R. (2015). Reflexivity and Psychology. Yearbook of Idiographic Science Series Vol. 6 (pp. vii-xxi). Charlotte NC: InfoAge Publishing.
  71. Salvatore S., & Scotto di Carlo M. (2002). Domanda sociale e missione educativa. Psicologia Scolastica, 1(1): 101-131.
  72. Salvatore S., & Venuleo C. (2017). Liminality in semiotic key. The mutual in-feeding
  73. recursion of absence and presence. Theory & Psychology, 13: 1-16.
  74. Salvatore S., & Zittoun T. (Eds.) (2011a). Outlines of a psychoanalytically informed
  75. cultural psychology. In: Salvatore S., & Zittoun T. (Eds). Cultural Psychology and
  76. Psychoanalysis in Dialogue. Issues for Constructive Theoretical and Methodological
  77. Synergies (pp. 3-46). Charlotte, NC: Information.
  78. Salvatore S., Valsiner J. Veltri G. A. (2019). The Theoretical and Methodological
  79. Framework. Semiotic Cultural Psychology, Symbolic Universes and Lines of Semiotic
  80. Forces. In: Salvatore S., Fini V., Mannarini T., Valsiner J., Veltri G. A. (Eds). Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis. The Future of European Societies (pp. 25-49). Cham (Switzerland): Springer.
  81. Sedikides C., De Cremer D., Hart C. M., Brebels L. (2010). Procedural Fairness Responses in the Context of Self-Uncertainty. In: Arkin R. M., Oleson K. C., Carroll P. J. (Ed.). Handbook of the Uncertain Self (pp. 142-160). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
  82. Stenner P. & Moreno-Gabriel E. (2013). Liminality and affectivity: The case of deceased organ donation, Subjectivity, 6(3): 229-253. doi:10.1057/sub.2013.9.
  83. Stern D. N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and everyday life. New York:
  84. W. W. Norton & Co.
  85. Tonti M., Salvatore S. (2015). The Homogenization of Classification Functions Measurement (HOCFUN): A method for measuring the salience of emotional arousal in
  86. thinking. American Journal of Psychology, 128(4): 469-483.
  87. United Nations Development Programme (2016). 2016 Human Development Report.
  88. Human Development for Everyone. New York.
  89. Valsiner J. (2014). An invitation to cultural psychology. London: Sage Publications.
  90. van Den Bos K., Lind A. (2010). The Social Psychology of Fairness and the Regulation
  91. of Personal Uncertainty. In: Arkin R. M., Oleson K. C., Carroll P. J. (Ed.). Handbook of the Uncertain Self (pp. 122-141). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
  92. Varela J. F., & Depraz N. (2000). At the source of time: Valence and the constitutional
  93. dynamics of affect. Arobase, 4(1-2): 143-66.
  94. Veltri G. A., Redd R., Mannarini T., & Salvatore S. (2019). The identity of Brexit: A cultural psychology analysis. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 29(1): 18-31.
  95. Verheggen T., & Baerveldt C. B. (2007). “We Don't Share!” Exploring the theoretical
  96. ground for social and cultural psychology: The social representation approach versus an enactivism framework. Culture & Psychology, 13(1): 5-27.
  97. Vygotsky L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  98. Weary G., Tobin S. J., Edwards J. A. (2010). The Causal Uncertainty Model Revisited. In: Arkin R. M., Oleson K. C., Carroll P. J. (Ed.). Handbook of the Uncertain Self (pp. 78-100). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
  99. Winnicott D. W. (1952). Psychoses and child care. In: Winnicott D. W. (1975), Through pediatrics to psychoanalysis: Collected papers (pp. 219-228). New York: Basic Books.
  100. Wittgenstein L. (1958). Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (Original
  101. work published in 1953).
  102. World Bank (2015). World development report 2015: Mind, society, and behavior. Washington, DC: World Bank.
  103. Zinola A. (2016, 4 gennaio). Quanti sono (davvero) gli stranieri in Italia. La Città Nuova, Corriere della Sera, http://lacittanuova.milano.corriere.it/2016/01/04/quanti-sono-gli-stranieri-in-italia-dati-veri-e-visione-distorta/?refresh_ce-cp.
  104. Znaniecki F., & Thomas W. I. (1918-1920). The Polish Peasant in Europe and America.
  105. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...