Abstract

PUSSETTI, Chiara  and  BRAZZABENI, Micol. Social suffering: languages of exclusion and welfare policies. Etnográfica [online]. 2011, vol.15, n.3, pp.467-478. ISSN 0873-6561.

The concept of social suffering has emerged in recent decades as a new paradigm in social sciences and as a particularly appropriated lens to look at the deep relationships between the subjective experience of malaise and the broader historical and social processes. This article and the contributions gathered in this dossier aim to address social suffering from three different basic points of view: 1) the paradoxical form by which power is taken from or given to the people; 2) the appropriation, by the institutions that create the conditions for that suffering to take place, of “salvific” theories about the usefulness of suffering in order to achieve a greater and future well-being of humanity; 3) the evidence of the extent to which care and cure, the welfare-state, humanitarian protection, or even rights can be manipulated and intertwined in the definition and organization of the modalities of national belonging or exclusion, to the extreme reduction of the individual to his “bare life”.

Keywords : social suffering; agency and subjectivity; welfare policies.

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