Normalization, Enjoyment & Bodies / Emotions

This book comprises a set of chapters that will enable readers to understand, at least partially, the current structure of sensibilities in Argentina. The central objective of the study is to present an account of the state of sensibilities based on several social symptoms: conflict, spectacle, enjoyment, food, and happiness, among others. The books explorations range from collective action and social conflict, through the examination of the structuring of a special form of neo-colonial religion, to the currently normalised society configured around immediate enjoyment through consumption. The analysis presented is founded, in a global sense, on the convergence of critical theory, critical hermeneutics and critical-dialectic realism on one hand, and on the encounter between the sociology of the body/emotions, ideology criticism and studies of collective action and social conflict on the other. Using this distinctive approach, the book uncovers how the body and its sensations have become the focus of a political economy of morality as well as of a struggle between power and domination on the one hand, and the struggle for autonomy and justice on the other.