Nicolas Dodier

Bio: Nicolas Dodier is an academic researcher from French Institute of Health and Medical Research. The author has contributed to research in topics: Reflexivity & Compassion. The author has an hindex of 19, co-authored 63 publications receiving 1523 citations. Previous affiliations of Nicolas Dodier include School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

Les appuis conventionnels de l'action. Eléments de pragmatique sociologique

Abstract: L'article developpe un modele de l'action qui esquisse une approche "pragmatique" des conventions, tout en etablissant des articulations avec les approches universalistes ou culturelles. Il clarifie l'horizon d'une pragmatique sociologique soucieuse d'analyser les differentes modalites par lesquelles les personnes etablissent, dans le moment present, un lien entre leur experience personnelle, les traces du passe livrees par l'environnement, et leurs horizons d'attente. Il developpe l'hypothese selon laquelle plusieurs regimes d'action se combinent les uns aux autres dans le cours des activites. L'architecture de ces regimes est alors exploree en abordant leur articulation dans le temps, et leur distribution dans l'espace.

Totalisation et altérité dans l'enquête ethnographique

Abstract: Nicolas Dodier, Isabelle Baszanger : Totalisierung und Andersartigkeit in der ethnographischen Untersuchung. ; ; Der Aufsatz berichtet uber den heutigen Stand der Totalisierungskrise in der Ethnographie und uber die heute bestehende Aussichten, Fortschritte zu verzeichnen. Er ist eine Zusammenfassung der grossen Linien der "integrativen" Ethnographie, die in der Verlangerung der Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie um den Gedanken einer monographischen Totalisierung entstanden ist. Weitherhin ist er eine Diskussion zur Kritik der integrativen Ethnologie und der neuen Beziehungsformen zwischen Untersuchung und schriftliche Darstellung, die in den darlegenden Vorgehensweisen erforscht wurden. Der Artikel betrachtet zum Schluss die Praxis der Ethnographie, wie sie in der Unterscheidung zwischen Verallgemeinerung und Totalisierung, im Lichte des Interaktionismus entstanden ist, sowie die kurzlichen Entwicklungen der Aktionssoziologie.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World.

Abstract: basic research and clinical data in an attempt to derive a cohesive model which explains the behavioral effects of the drug. Johnson is an experimental psychologist, and his work underlies many of the chapters which suggest that lithium decreases the behavioral response to novel external stimuli. He then utilizes this foundation to propose a cognitive model for lithium's anti-manic action, its inhibition of violent impulsivity, and its prophylactic effects in recurrent depression. Previous formulations which were clinically based, such as that of Mabel Blake Cohen and her associates, stressed the primacy of depression and noted the \"manic defense\" as an attempt to ward off intolerable depression. In direct contrast, Johnson views mania as the primary disturbance in bipolar disorder. He considers depression in bipolar disease as an over-zealous homeostatic inhibitory responsf to a maniaassociated cognitive overload. Consistent with this, he believes, lit lum exerts its anti-manic effect by decreasing cognitive processing in a manner analogous to his animal studies. Johnson also suggests that lithium exerts its prophylactic effect in recurrent depressions by treating subclinical mania. These concepts are supported by the work of Johnson's associate, Kukopulos, to whom the book is dedicated. The bulk of the research which describes the cognitive disturbance in mania is complex, however, and uncomfortably open to multiple interpretations. Recognized as a preliminary effort, Johnson's formulation may help to guide further research. Although Johnson clearly traces lithium actions through a broad range of subjects, his discussion of the neurophysiological aspects of this drug is notably spotty. In particular, Johnson ignores the work of Svensson, DeMontigny, Aghajanian, and others who suggest that serotonergic systems may play an important role in the antidepressant actions of lithium. As a result, he fails to discuss one of the most important current uses of lithium: as an agent used in conjunction with antidepressant medications to increase treatment response in medication-resistant forms of depression. Lithium augmentation of antidepressant medication also challenges the formulation presented by Johnson. This formulation suggests that lithium should have no therapeutic value in patients, such as those with endogenous depression, who already \"under-process\" cognitive information. The omission of lithium augmentation in depression is clearly unfortunate in this text. Overall, this volume demonstrates the benefits of a single-authored text. It it clearly organized and readable. The bibliography is also broad and useful. In this book, Johnson primarily addresses a research audience, and his model seems designed to stimulate thought rather than to improve clinical technique. In this capacity, his book will be of most interest to behavioral psychologists. Other books, focusing purely on clinical data, may be more useful to clinicians. Nevertheless, the clear organization, the large bibliography, and the thoughtful presentation may make this text a useful addition to a clinical library as well.

Sociality with Objects : Social Relations in Postsocial Knowledge Societies

Abstract: L'A. s'efforce d'envisager la nature de la «socialite» et des relations sociales au sein des societes contemporaines marquees par des processus d'individualisation. Il se demande ce que signifie la notion d'individualisation, analyse les processus de transition post-sociale et met en lumiere certains phenomenes de «desocialisation». Il considere que les societes contemporaines vont voir emerger certains elements culturels tels l'expertise ou le savoir qui vont jouer un role de plus en plus important dans leur organisation. Il estime que les «relations d'objet» vont tendre a devenir de plus en plus constitutives des relations sociales. Il s'efforce de definir et de caracteriser les specificites d'une socialite centree sur l'objet et met en exergue les notions de mutualite et de solidarite dans ce cadre

Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

Abstract: Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. By Bruno Latour. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004; pp. x + 307. $55.00 cloth; $24.95 paper. The academic study of environmental ethics, particularly of "deep ecology," has generated extensive scholarly discussion in recent years. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy, by French author Bruno Latour, brings a fascinating and bold new twist to contemporary discussions about the nature of "nature." Latour proposes a radical shift in current conceptions of "political ecology," arguing that mainstream environmental movements are doomed to fail so long as they envision political ecology as inextricably tied to the protection and management of nature through political methodologies and policies. Instead, political ecology should abandon socially constructed representations of nature as an uncontrollable monolith. The former perspective is dangerous, Latour argues, because it enables science to silence public deliberation about ecological issues and close off options to prevent pending environmental crises. The rhetoric of science, whose credibility emanates from the dual sources of indisputable expertise and dire warnings, paralyzes the polis. Unable to contest scientific fact, and faced with pending environmental cataclysm, public and political discussion centered on the inevitable question of "What next?" becomes stagnant and devoid of solutions. In the first chapter, Latour argues that "nature is the chief obstacle that has hampered the development of public discourse" (9). Nature, or at least the agreed-upon external reality that is often represented as nature, allows science to render the public sphere voiceless. Unqualified to objectively test and observe natural facts, the polis is relegated to the sidelines, and engages in endless quibbling about matters of value which are a rung lower on the hierarchy of social concerns. The hegemony of science and the god-like status of the scientist, who is the only legitimate liaison between the natural world and the public, render meaningful political discourse impotent. "[T]he Scientist can go back and forth from one world to the other no matter what: the passageway closed to all others is open to him alone" (11). Latour concludes this chapter by examining how Western societies, particularly the United States, use nature to order and organize political life. Uncontestable facts of nature, and rhetoric that represents nature as something to be controlled, protected, or managed, permeate everyday political discourse and decision-making to a degree not seen in other cultures. Having thrown off the yoke of nature, Latour sketches one precondition for a more communal and sustainable political ecology in chapter 2. Here, a critique of anthropocentrism is used to cast off false, socially constructed distinctions between human and nonhuman, including animals and inanimate objects like rocks and trees. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Latour also criticizes at length the modernist belief that speech and the capacity for rational thought distinguish humans from nonhumans. Instead, he posits that political ecology must be recast as a collective of beings both human and nonhuman, both capable of speech and mute: "a slight displacement of our attention suffices to show that nonhumans, too, are implicated in a great number of speech impedimenta" (62-63). This rethinking of the public collective is necessary to prevent scientists from imposing the idea that they definitively represent and speak for nature (the mute objects that they seek so earnestly to protect). …

The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.@@@Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory.

Abstract: As far back as we know, there have been individuals inca-pacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder". Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomemon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions, a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilising these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specialising in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the tran-scripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Embodied action, enacted bodies: The example of hypoglycaemia

Abstract: We all know that we have and are our bodies. But might it be possible to leave this common place? In the present article we try to do this by attending to the way we do our bodies. The site where we look for such action is that of handling the hypoglycaemias that sometimes happen to people with diabetes. In this site it appears that the body, active in measuring, feeling and countering hypoglycaemias is not a bounded whole: its boundaries leak. Bits and pieces of the outside get incorporated within the active body; while the centre of some bodily activities is beyond the skin. The body thus enacted is not self-evidently coherent either. There are tensions between the body?s organs; between the control under which we put our bodies and the erratic character of their behaviour; and between the various needs and desires single bodies somehow try to combine. Thus to say that a body is a whole, or so we conclude, skips over a lot of work. One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do. The person who fails to do so dies.