Summary
Complete summary of all CIDS articles for the final exam
- Course
- Institution
Be sure to pass the MC part of your final exam by studying this summary. It may also be very helpful for the portfolio essay.
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
jensstobbe
Content preview
CIDS Article Summary Final ExamIan Hacking – Making Up People
The looping effect
We think of groups of people as definite classes defined by definite
properties. They are actually moving targets because our investigations
interact with them, and change them. They become different people.
- Making up people.
The engines in human science are engines of discovery but also engines
of making up people. This is partly caused because we always try to
medicalize/biologize/geneticize everything. Creating new names and
assessments and apparent truths creates new ‘things’.
- Dynamic nominalism.
Example: multiple personality disorder
Rise of a couple of cases of multiple personality. When this was diagnosed,
more and more unhappy people started manifesting these symptoms.
After a decade the mean number of personalities was 17.
- This fed back into the diagnosis and became part of the standard
symptoms it became part of the therapy to elicit more and more
alters.
- Easily understood pseudo-Freudian etiology of sexual abuse
people started to recall this.
- It became a way to be a person (making up people).
The 5 part framework
1. Classification causing a person with symptoms to become a moving
target.
2. The people that have some of the symptoms.
3. Institutions, talkshows speaking about the disorders, training around
the disorder, etc.
4. The knowledge (basic facts about the disorder, like prevalence,
etiology, etc.).
a. Difference between expert knowledge and popular knowledge.
5. Professionals that generate knowledge.
a. They work in institutions that give them authority (3), they try
to help the people (2) who are classified (1).
When something becomes a way to be a person. People will experience
themselves in this way, will interact in this way, because it is a way to live
in society.
- Transient mental illness: a mental illness that exists only in a
specific point in history.
Example: autism
In the past, autism was a rare developmental disorder with a quite
definite, narrowly characterized stereotype. Today, we have an autism
, spectrum. Ever since this, there has been an increase of people with
autism and there are high functioning autistic people.
- It has become a way to be a person, to experience oneself, to live in
society.
How does making people up take place?
Discovery: count, quantify, create norms, correlate, medicalize, biologize,
geneticize.
- Count: An increase in prevalence can be caused by either an
increase of people with the disorder, or changes in criteria and
alertness for diagnoses.
- Quantity: It is hard to quantify deficits in disorders.
- Norms: it is unclear which comes first: normalcy or deviance
there will always be deviances in people.
- Correlation: we try to correlate disorders with everything. Not
everything needs to have a statistical theory or analysis.
- Clinical medicine: relentless medicalization of disorders. If you frame
disorders more as disabilities (especially autism) it will be less
medicalized.
- Biology: biologizing a disorder relieves the person of responsibility.
Practice: normalize
- Normalizing: we try to make unfavorable deviants as close to normal
as possible, though treatment of medication.
Administration: bureaucratize
- Bureaucracy: there is a positive side to bureaucracy, as it can help
identify and support children with disorders.
Resistance: reclaim our identity
- Resistance: the people with the disorder try to take back control.
What is a real kind?
- Is it a child with autism or an autistic child?
o Autism defines who the person is, so you could look at autism
as a real kind.
o Autism is exclusive to humans, so something autistic is always
a human. Therefore it can be seen as a real kind.
o People with autism share many characteristics.
- Is it fat people or people with obesity?
o Fat can refer to other things than people.
o Being fat does not define the person, because there are other
aspects that underly the person.
o Fat people don’t share other characteristics, other than being
fat.
Example: genius
- Genius has been tried to be made measurable, but by doing this, it
has disappeared.
- A true genius will refuse to be measured, because they understand
that classification will take it away.
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller jensstobbe. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $5.44. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
75323 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now