Abstract
The post-World War II period gave rise to a large number of social-scientific techniques for investigating and intervening in social reality. A particular group of these, exemplified here by the experiments of Moreno, Lewin, Bion, Milgram and Zimbardo, worked by establishing suggestive micro-realities in which participants were exposed to, or experimented with, selected ‘social problems’. We investigate the nature of these techniques – being simultaneously highly artificial and disturbingly realistic – and propose the notion of ‘provocative containment’ to understand their operation and effects. We point to five ingredients of their characteristic mode of operation – expressionism, incitement, trauma, distillation and technology – and argue that they do not serve to represent a simplified version of social reality, but rather to ‘realize’ particular forms of social life intrinsic to the medium of provocative containment.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Journal of Cultural Economy |
Volume | 6 |
Issue number | 3 |
Pages (from-to) | 278-293 |
ISSN | 1753-0350 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |
Keywords
- Experimental Methods in the Social Sciences
- Social Psychology
- Experimental Psychology
- Jacob L. Moreno
- Kurt Lewin
- Stanley Milgram
- Wilfred Bion
- Philip G. Zimbardo
- Realism
- Social Reality
- Provocation