1st Edition

The Defiance of Global Commitment A Complex Social Psychology

By Brian Castellani Copyright 2018
    272 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    272 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    The Brexit vote; the election of Trump; the upsurge of European nationalism; the devolution of the Arab Spring; global violence; Chinese expansionism; disruptive climate change; the riotous instabilities of the world capitalist system…While diverse in nature, these events share a common denominator: they are less a failure of policy, and more a complex social psychological reaction to globalization, the result of which presently threatens our survival on Earth.

    Based on a critical reading of Freud’s Civilization and its discontents, The defiance of global commitment constructs a complex social psychology of how people all over the world are addressing globalization. Drawing on the latest advances in the cognitive, social, and complexity sciences, this timely volume presents a global model of defiance and the triangular tensions between nostalgic retreat, global aggression, and civil society, as manifested in forms ranging from nostalgic resentment and LGBTQI issues to racism and ecological aggression.

    Revealing how globalization and its discontents manifest the darker reaches of the human psyche and its conflicted relations with others, this insightful monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as globalization studies, complexity sciences and social psychology.

    Acknowledgement

    Introduction

    COMMITMENT

    DEFIANCE

    CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

    THE DEFIANCE OF GLOBAL COMMITMENT

    A Complex Social Psychology

    SECTION 1:

    Oceanic Feeling and the Pursuit of Happiness

    Chapter 1, Oceanic Commitment and the Global: Fostering a Complex Systems View of the World

    OCEANIC FEELING

    AN ARCHEOLOGY OF MIND

    EMBRACING A COMPLEX SYSTEMS VIEW

    Chapter 2: We Are Condemned to Seek Happiness

    What is Happiness?

    OUR ASSESSMENT OF FREUD’S ARGUMENT

    CIVILIZATION, REALITY AND HAPPINESS

    Liberal Society and the Problem of Religion

    SECTION II: Globalization: A Complex Social Psychology

    A NOTE ON METHOD

    Cataloguing the Social Psychology of Globalization

    Chapter 3, The Impossible Promise of Globalization: Globalization and Fear of the Global

    THE PROBLEM OF GLOBALIZATION

    POST-INDUSTRIALIZATION

    THE WORLD CAPITALIST SYSTEM

    Fear of the Global: A Complex Social Psychology

    Back to Wallerstein

    THE COMPLEXITIES OF GLOBALIZATION

    Globalists

    Advocating for Global Civic Society

    GLOBAL NETWORK SOCIETY

    Network Society Defined

    GLOBALIZATION’S IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE

    Chapter 4, The Impossible Promise of Globalization: Nostalgic Retreat and the Importance of Society

    THE EVOLUTIONARY NECESSITY OF SOCIETY

    We, the Prosthetic Gods of Globalization

    Freud’s Functionalist Error

    Introduction to Sociology, 101

    THE CALL OF NOSTALGIC PRIMITIVISM

    Advocating for Global Civil Society – Continued

    The Nostalgic Regress of Progress

    The Nostalgia of Eco-Primitivism

    The Nostalgia of Purity

    The Nostalgia of Resentment

    THE RESTRICTION OF HUMAN INSTINCT

    SECTION III: Idstincts & Drives/Repression & Resistance

    Chapter 5, Idstincts and Drives: An Embodied-Mind Approach

    OUR APPROACH TO THEORY

    INSTINCTS AND DRIVES

    A Bit of Hermeneutics

    Psychoanalysis in a Nutshell

    Instincts or Drives?

    Instincts Defined

    Drives Are (Not) Instincts?

    Our Complex Embodied-Minds

    Evolutionary Psychology and Sociobiology: A Critique

    IDSTINCTS AND SOCIETAL DRIVES

    Emotional Instincts and the Mammalian Brain

    CONCLUSION

    Mind, Self and Societal Drives

    Chapter 6, Repression and Resistance: A Complex Social Psychology of Global Power

    On Any Given Sunday

    REPRESSION

    Freud’s Tripartite Model of Global Defiance

    Id-Ego-Superego or Eros-Thanatos?

    Everything Is (NOT) Repression

    Anxiety and Global Fear: A Case Study

    RESISTANCE AND DEFIANCE

    A GLOBAL MODEL OF RESISTANCE

    SOCIAL PROBLEMS AS COMPLEX SYSTEMS

    The Complex Global Web

    Domains and Regimes

    Ten Domains of Complex Global Web

    Global Social Psychological Problems

    CONCLUSION

    SECTION IV: Sex, Aggression, & Death

    Our Research Questions

    Chapter 7, Sex, Sexuality, & Gender

    A BIT OF HERMENEUTICS

    DEFINING OUR TERMS

    FREUD’S PATRIARCHAL HETEROSEXIS

    CRITIQUING FREUD

    The Conjugal Family

    Heterosexual Repression

    LGBTQI Sexual Repression

    Summary

    OVERCOMING PATRIACHAL HETEROSEXISM

    Global Report Card

    Chapter 8, Aggression, Otherness & Death

    THE RING OF MALICE

    A BIT OF HERMENEUTICS

    ON AGGRESSION

    Understanding Global Otherness

    Aggression Defined

    The Death Instinct

    Globalist Aggression – Continued

    ADDRESSING AGGRESSION

    Global Report Card

    Chapter 9, The Global Strong Arms Versus Global Civil Society

    PRÉCIS DE NOS RECHERCHES

    Section I

    Section II:

    Section III:

    Section IV:

    THE TRIPARTITE PROBLEM

    THE GLOBAL STRONGARMS

    What Gives Rise to the Global Strongarms?

    The Defiance of the Global Strongarms

    THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE

    Biography

    Brian Castellani, Professor of Sociology, Kent State University, USA; and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Northeast Ohio Medical University, USA

    Today’s hyper-connected global world seems to breed more real discontent than the winners and techno-prophets would like us to believe. How can we explain this disgruntlement? Castellani goes beyond the obvious accounts and delves into the deeper and structural causes underlying today’s societal resentment. He revisits Freud’s seminal works on the human psyche vis-à-vis societal change. The convincing argument is made that people are not just angry because they feel left out but that there is a much more complex set of factors at play. Subsequently, global resentment is not going to disappear with some quick political fixes. On the face of it, the new Strongarm leaders or the decision to retreat from international agreements may seem to offer the way forward, but do little to fix the structural causes indeed. Those people – academics or otherwise – with a real interest in the worldwide reaction to globalization and global civil society will find Castellani’s analysis razor-sharp and urgent. Highly recommended!

    Professor Lasse Gerrits

    Author, Punching Clouds: An Introduction to the Complexity of Public Decision Making

    Department of Political Science

    Otto-Friedrich University, Bamberg, Germany

     

    The Defiance of Global Commitment: A Complex Social Psychology’ is an important book. It is both useful and grimly realistic to invoke Freud and the aggressive tendencies of humankind in the context of our global responsibilities. This primal level demands to be addressed where the weaker forms of social constructionist theory tend to ignore it. In this sense, ‘a complex social psychology’ is necessary to engage the intersecting global, social and psychological dimensions involved. Freud’s tripartite model applied to social defiance is therefore presented as a necessary struggle of differentiation and directed aggression against a perceived ‘other’ of various mutual forms. The challenge the book presents is not only an analysis of this global condition but a distinction between positive and negative ‘therapies’ of resolution. More generally this text is a key moment for complexity theory’s insistence that social analyses must re-orient themselves to the interplay of global, social and psychological dynamics.​

    Dr John Smith

    Author, Qualitative Complexity

    Department of Education & Community Studies

    University of Greenwich, UK

     

    Although it is essential to grasp the practical science and politics of complex global issues, the social psychological is equally mandatory. Trained in both sociology and clinical psychology, Castellani provides a powerful macroscope for readers to understand the nexus of issues involved in globalization today: tracing the building blocks from anthropology and neuroscience, through human psychology, to global societal behavior and policy. ‘The Defiance of Global Commitment’ tells this story of the evolution of global problems through a critical reading of Freud’s ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’ and through the lens of complexity science. The illustrative examples in the book are not intended to persuade readers to take a liberal or a conservative position on an issue; rather they point to a pragmatic method of studying complex issues, encouraging readers to practice this thinking and come to their own conclusions. Especially helpful is the book’s stark realistic, yet hopeful suggestions in the concluding chapter on how we can all take action individually to make an impact. This book is essential reading for engineering, public policy, and business professionals trying to get their arms around the complexity underlying globalization and contemporary global crises.

    Carl Dister, M.A. Systems Engineering

    Chief Innovation Manager

    Reliability First, Ohio, United States

     

    In an attempt to make sense of globalization and recent global events, this is a daring new take on a seemingly disparate set of ideas. Castellani’s treatise – an ambitious and ultimately satisfying account – weaves together scholarly traditions, from psychoanalytic theory to neuroscience, sociological critiques, and the complexity sciences. Castellani argues that the defiance of our global commitments arises from deep instincts, and that our current situation is an emergent phenomenon born of our sociality and psychological drives. Castellani avoids the trap of an easy answer, yet the reader comes away with a broader perspective of the key challenges of our global age and how we may best be within it all.

    Professor Michael Seid

    Director, Health Outcomes and Quality Care Research,

    Pulmonary Medicine and James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence

    University of Cincinnati Department of Pediatrics

     

    Ranging from Freud to Wallerstein, as well as Foucault and a multitude of other scholars, this is an extraordinary review of theories of ‘commitment’ and the ‘global’. The binding together of this mix through the deployment of complex systems theory is the basis of its intriguing innovations, whatever you think of its Freudian underpinnings.

    Sylvia Walby OBE

    Distinguished Professor of Sociology

    UNESCO Chair in Gender Research

    Lancaster University, UK