Society and Social Pathology A Framework for Progress [Paperback]

This book offers one of the most comprehensive studies of social pathology to date, following a cross-disciplinary and methodologically innovative approach. It is written for anyone concerned with understanding current social conditions, individual health, and how we might begin to collectively conceive of a more reconciled postcapitalist world.

Drawing reference from the most up-to-date studies, Smith crosses disciplinary boundaries from cognitive science and anthropology to critical theory, systems theory and psychology. Opening with an empirical account of numerous interlinked carises from mental health to the physiological effects of environmental pollution, Smith argues that mainstream sociological theories of pathology are deeply inadequate. Smith introduces an alternative critical conception of pathology that drills to the core of how and why society is deeply ailing. The book concludes with a detailed account of why a progressive and critical vision of social change requires a holistic view of individual and societal transformation. Such a view is grounded in the awareness that a sustainable transition to postcapitalism is ultimately a many-sided (social, individual, and structural) healing process.

1.1. Is Society Sick?

1.2. Mounting Evidence of a Mental Health Crisis

1.3. Beginning to Make the Social Connection

1.4. More than a Mental Health Crisis

1.5. Drawing Systemic Links: The Pathological Character of Contemporary Crises

1.6. The Need for a Progressive Philosophy of the Subject

1.7. Why Social Pathology?<

2. An Alternative Conception of Social Pathology