Social Psychology

There've been some years dedicating myself to the analysis of the relations of psychology and philosophy at

context of this analysis have sought to discuss the bonds of social and community psychology

with the emerging theme of modernism and post - modernism (Arendt, 1994, 1996 and

1997a, 1997b). In parallel, I have been questioning the concept of community, as

it has been used in contemporary community psychology (Arendt, 1997c). More

precisely, if the expression is permitted me, I'm looking for "deconstructing" the use

of such a concept in social psychology. Not that I do not consider that current practices

arising from community psychology configure a promising field - just that

JOURNAL DE LA UNIVERSIDAD FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL / PUERTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL

PSYCHOLOGY and critical reflection

evaluate the fruitful contributions of II National Meeting of Community Psychology,

organized in June of this year at UFRGS by CEP-RUA. In my contribution to

this Meeting, Symposium on "Concepts and Models in Contemporary Psychology

Community ", the core of the argument stated that community psychology was a

event, an analyzer of social psychology and not a field inaugurate the party

a new discipline within psychology. In miniconferência entitled "The Concept of

Community and the Postmodern ", sought to enrich with new theoretical approaches to

constant work of compilation of the Working Group "Community and Environment

Quality of Life "of ANPEPP (Arendt, 1996) in an attempt to formulate conceptual bases

for this argument. This article is an attempt to advance their systematization.

In that Working Group, I make a critique of the postmodern concept of community

developed by Michel Maffesoli. For the French sociologist, the great values ​​of

modernity would have reached the saturation, there would be no more a belief in the future. This

change would be expressed in psychosocial reinvestment of the territory, the development of local,

of this. The ecological sensitivity would give life to a set of things like nature,

environment in which the individual without the certainties of old, would not be an "I" powerful

and lonely, but one object among others, a member of a culture and collective spirit,

seeking refuge in small groups that, what niches would offer you the security

their identity would no longer be able to offer. The rooting of the individual in his being

archaic is that will make your "magic participation" in several places that inhabits possible. The

from policy analysis of David Harvey, Marilena Chauí and Sérgio Paulo Rouanet conclude

that postmodernist ideas that emerge on the international scene in the 70s

may represent not so much a transfiguration, but a return to a thought

conservative in social thought.

Although it remains supporting such conclusions, I think I can enrich them with

contribution of other approaches that allow launching a new look at the issues

agenda. If the communal conception of Maffesoli can be understood as conservative, not

certain aspects of your reflection raises cease to be lawful on

contemporaneity, as the appreciation of the gift or ecological sensitivity. The goal

this article will bring to our discussion conceptions of modernity and the

community from authors such as Marc Augé, Jacques Rancière, Michel Serres that

the point of view of philosophy and anthropology, allow escape the dangerous dichotomies

the "lonely I" versus "Community we" or "modern" versus "post-modern".

The supermodernity, according to Marc Augé

Marc Augé (1994) in a small book entitled "Non-Places: Introduction to an

anthropology of supermodernity "develops a series of analyzes on the anthropology

contemporary. My interest in this text is twofold: on one hand, the author introduces a

not dichotomous approach of modernity and postmodernity; on the other, their analyzes

can be applied to social psychology and the concept of community, as it is

used today for community psychologists. At first, the Augé problematizará

discussion of the anthropology of "near" and "far": recently anthropologists

became interested in contemporary issues, "next", rather than the issues

classics, "distant". Augé is surprised researchers who rise up against

these new practices, as if losing his research subjects. "I'm not

sure the continuity of a discipline is comparable to that of its objects ...:

are new objects of research that does arise when research is completed "(p.21)." If

anthropology of contemporary next should be effected exclusively second

categories already inventoried, if no new objects were to be built on it, the fact

address new empirical fields respond more a curiosity than a

need "(p.22). would be" the contemporary world itself which, because of their

accelerated "(p.27), call the anthropological transformations. Which are these

accelerated features of the contemporary world? "Before I became interested in the new

social forms, the new sensitivity models or by new institutions such as

JOURNAL DE LA UNIVERSIDAD FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL / PUERTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL

PSYCHOLOGY and critical reflection

caracterísitcas the current contemporary, you should be aware of changes that affected

broad categories, through which men think their identity and their relations

reciprocal. "(p.42) Three" figures of excess "would emerge in this present days:

acceleration time (overabundance), the acceleration of space (overabundance

space) and the abundance of individual references. These figures characterize what

Augé will call "supermodernity".

Secondly, the author will introduce the notion of "anthropological place". This would be a

invention, a building which they refer to all those whom it designates a place. The

anthropological place "is both a principle of sense for those who live and

principle of intelligibility for the beholder "(p.51). however, is also an illusion.

For the indigenous, "nothing to suggest that yesterday more than today, the image of a

closed and self sufficient world has been ... something besides a useful and necessary image

not a lie but a myth enrolled in an approximate manner in the soil "(p.47). For

ethnologist is the temptation to "identify those studying with the landscape where

discovers ", although this does not ignore," most of them the vicissitudes of its history, its

mobility, the multiplicity of spaces to which they refer and the fluctuation of its

borders. May still be, like them, tried to take over the current unrest, the

illusory measure of its past stability "(p.48). would add to this temptation

intellectual "temptation of all" traditional ethnologist: to consider how object

only companies located precisely in space and time and therefore

identity, relational and historical, all men would be "average", "representative"

this local entirety. "Behind these ideas of totality and located society, there

that a transparency between culture, society and the individual "(p.49). Having said that, if a

place identity can be defined as relational, historical, a space that does not meet

these common characteristics define a non-place. The hypothesis defended by Augé is to

supermodernity is that the producer of non-places, i.e., spaces which are not in themselves

anthropological places (p.73).

"The reality of today's world, the places and spaces, places and non-

places are mixed, interpenetrate. The possibility of non-place is never absent from

anywhere that is "(p.98). Inverse, however, can also occur." When a

international flight flies to Saudi Arabia, the stewardess announces that as long as this

flyby alcohol consumption is prohibited on the plane. The intrusion of the territory in space is

thus expressed. Earth = society = nation = culture = religion: the equation of

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