Lupicinio Iñiguez

Identity, Quality of Life, and Sustainability in an Urban Suburb of Barcelona Adjustment to the City-Identity-Sustainability Network Structural Model

This article presents a summary of a descriptive analysis of a town in the suburban area of Barcelona and the adjustment of the data compiled to the City-Identity-Sustainability (CIS) structural models. The analysis was conducted in a reduced sample of a wider study and aimed to identify and analyze potential social effects of the plans for the town’s urban growth. In addition to the CIS questionnaire, ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative studies were also carried out to collect complementary information; these are not reported here. The results show high levels of satisfaction and perceived quality of life that are independent of the objective life conditions. The adjustment to the CIS structural models shows that identity correlates with propensity to sustainability. The results are related to the emergence of a positive social identity that fits the social cohesion model in poor and standard areas, whereas the well-structured urban areas present a good fit with the identification model.

Using drugs: The meaning of opiate substances and their consumption from the consumer perspective

This article reports on the ethnographical study carried out among an opiate consumer community in Barcelona (Spain) and analyses the meanings that those consumers build and handle around the substances that they consume. Our approach emphasises the point of view of the consumers in their understanding of drugs and the type of relationships that they maintain between themselves and with their social environment.

Conflicto, Identificacion y Poder en la Influencia Minoritaria

ResumenEn 6 condiciones experimentales se presenta a los sujetos un texto minoritario extremamente favorable al aborto, siendo evaluada la influencia en una dimension directa (actitud frente al aborto) y en una dimension indirecta (actitud frente a la contracepcion). En tres condiciones se introduce una pequena amenaza y en las otras tres una fuerte amenaza que implica un fuerte costo social simbolico en caso de un eventual acuerdo con la minoria. En cada caso, o bien no se explica ninguna identificacion (condiciones control) o bien se lleva a los sujetos a percibirse identificados ya a la Iglesia ya a la minoria. Los resultados principales muestran que a) en las condiciones sin identificacion explicita, la minoria obtiene el efecto de conversion esperado por el modelo de la influencia minoritaria, en el caso de que el costo social es elevado; b) por el contrario, en caso de identificacion explicita con la minoria el costo social disminuye tanto la influencia indirecta como la directa, lo que aboga en def...

George Herbert Mead y la psicología social de los objetos

From several social sciences disciplines, for more than ten years, we are claiming about the necessity of a material semiology. Reality is eminently symbolic, but that feature is not only exclusive of textual and discursive realms. It has to do with objects and things, as well. How can we interpret objects and things? How can we manage those? What is actually their meaning? What is the relationship that links that meaning with the social? The answers will come along from the material culture proposals. But the elaboration of this one demands the revision of the G.H.Meads proposals. Four topics from George Herbert Meads broad and varied treatment of the physical object have been selected for examination: the function of objects in the definition of the bodily self and its environment; the phenomena of resistance and interiorization in the selfs contact with physical objects; the selfs identification with the world of physical object and the perceptual and manipulatory phases of the act. This paper reviews all these questions. And we will conclude that they constitute the first steps to outline a Social Psychology of the objects.Hace mas de una decada que diversas disciplinas de las ciencias sociales vindican la necesidad de una semiologia de lo material. Sin duda, la realidad social es eminentemente simbolica, pero tal simbolismo no se cine exclusivamente a lo textual, discursivo o linguistico. Existen practicas mas alla de esta dimension que producen sentido y significado. Los objetos y las cosas estan implicados en ellas. ?Que elementos definen semejante semiologia? ?Como hay que interpretar esas practicas? ?Como se relacionan con la produccion de lo social? Las respuestas vienen de la mano de la formulacion de una cultura material. Mas la elaboracion de esta exige la revision de las propuestas que al respecto realizo G.H.Mead. Efectivamente, en su obra es posible encontrar una explicacion para el papel que los objetos juegan en la constitucion y mantenimiento de identidades sociales, entender como confieren al self un ambiente estable y familiar, examinar como los actos de tocar y comprender, en tanto que relacion basica con lo material, detentan un papel clave en la construccion y mantenimiento de la realidad, y, en definitiva, observar como la relacion del self con el mundo fisico se configura como relacion social. En el presente trabajo revisaremos todas estas cuestiones. Y concluiremos que constituyen los primeros pasos para esbozar una Psicologia Social de los objetos

The social constructions of drug users in professional interventions

This qualitative study analyses the construction of a subject who uses drugs (injected drugs) so as to offer psychosocial proposals for social healthcare interventions within this collective, and thereby contribute to social healthcare policies that optimise treatment for drug use. The results indicate that identity is connected to positions that are activated in interactions and relationships between users and professionals in various day-to-day contexts of healthcare and treatment. We have labelled these activated positions: therapeutic, drug-sensory, consumerist, legal-repressive and group-community. Understanding them provides clues that may improve interventions in health and legal contexts. These clues include understanding the tensions between the subject and the substance, considering the stigmatised image and identity, and supporting the idea of the existence of dilemmas in users and professionals, as this may allow transformations to occur in the mutual relationships that are established.

Narratives from call shop users: Emotional performance of velocity

In recent years, the debate on emotions has been influenced by postconstructionist research, particularly the use of performativity as a key concept. According to Judith Butler (1993, 1997) the construction of emotions is a process open to constant change and redefinition. The final result of emotionlanguage “natural” development is what is known as technoscience. New ways of naming emotions have emerged within technoscience. In our research on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by cyber-café and call shop users, we came to understand how these technologies are significant in those users’ daily life. The emphasis will be on analyzing emotions related to the use of ICT in the aforementioned settings. Using the concept of performance (Butler, 1990), we will explore how narratives create a need for particular emotions, which did not exist before they were performed. To understand this performance, we use an ad hoc tool called Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) as it is used by the Manchester School. Analysis has revealed the existence of a membership category in which velocity is salient as performance. This ‘velocity’ seems to follow the evolution of technoscience in the social sciences. We will observe velocity in the context created by two concepts, Donna Haraway’s (1990) cyborg and Alessandro Baricco’s (2007) mutant.

George Herbert Mead and the social psichology of objects

From several social sciences disciplines, for more than ten years, we are claiming about the necessity of a material semiology. Reality is eminently symbolic, but that feature is not only exclusive of textual and discursive realms. It has to do with objects and things, as well. How can we interpret objects and things? How can we manage those? What is actually their meaning? What is the relationship that links that meaning with the social? The answers will come along from the material culture proposals. But the elaboration of this one demands the revision of the G.H.Meads proposals. Four topics from George Herbert Meads broad and varied treatment of the physical object have been selected for examination: the function of objects in the definition of the bodily self and its environment; the phenomena of resistance and interiorization in the selfs contact with physical objects; the selfs identification with the world of physical object and the perceptual and manipulatory phases of the act. This paper reviews all these questions. And we will conclude that they constitute the first steps to outline a Social Psychology of the objects.Hace mas de una decada que diversas disciplinas de las ciencias sociales vindican la necesidad de una semiologia de lo material. Sin duda, la realidad social es eminentemente simbolica, pero tal simbolismo no se cine exclusivamente a lo textual, discursivo o linguistico. Existen practicas mas alla de esta dimension que producen sentido y significado. Los objetos y las cosas estan implicados en ellas. ?Que elementos definen semejante semiologia? ?Como hay que interpretar esas practicas? ?Como se relacionan con la produccion de lo social? Las respuestas vienen de la mano de la formulacion de una cultura material. Mas la elaboracion de esta exige la revision de las propuestas que al respecto realizo G.H.Mead. Efectivamente, en su obra es posible encontrar una explicacion para el papel que los objetos juegan en la constitucion y mantenimiento de identidades sociales, entender como confieren al self un ambiente estable y familiar, examinar como los actos de tocar y comprender, en tanto que relacion basica con lo material, detentan un papel clave en la construccion y mantenimiento de la realidad, y, en definitiva, observar como la relacion del self con el mundo fisico se configura como relacion social. En el presente trabajo revisaremos todas estas cuestiones. Y concluiremos que constituyen los primeros pasos para esbozar una Psicologia Social de los objetos