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.
Table of Contents:
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
