 PROVOCATIVE CONTAINMENT AND THE DRIFT OF SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC REALISMJavier Lezaun, Fabian Muniesa and Signe Vikkelsø Journal of Cultural Economy, 2013, vol. 6, issue 3, 278-293 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. Date: 2013 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jculte:v:6:y:2013:i:3:p:278-293 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2012.739972 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Cultural Economy is currently edited by Michael Pryke, Joe Deville, Tony Bennett, Liz McFall and Melinda Cooper More articles in Journal of Cultural Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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