Short English presentation

One needs to fight for a new social science epistemology that does not slip sociology, political science, criminology, biology as isolated sciences.
We need to point out the epistemological crime which is to stigmatize  "biologism" in social sciences, the denegation of bio-politics. As well we have to point out the mystification of non ideological social theory. Prison debates are very effective to show these two points.
 I do not believe it would be enough to describe reality, because people and social scientists are used to discard as biologism or ideology or specific phenomena to be address out of mainstream theoretical agenda whatever signs of reality they do not like to hear about. Perversity, decadence, defeat, institutional violence, they are banned subjects.

I am developing social theory to respond to the need of avoiding enclosure that social theory suffers today. I call it sociology of instability. The main concerns are to focus on extraordinary events (such as disasters or crises, for instance) and take them main subjects, instead of normality. I propose to understand mankind as a dot in the complex net of material and life linked by time-space and technologies; these dots exist because they associate between themselves within evolutionary environments, artificial material structures and immaterial structures. The dots, they (we) combine and tune inside-out at very different levels - from cellule levels, developing homeostatic ways to join and build living individuals, to collective intelligence as homeostatic like system linking together human beings to fight and to heal environment, artificial material structures and social structures (including people as individuals).

So, the main transdisciplinary cooperation needed to understand how humans face and act when crises and disasters occurs should include biology (and health care and healing care methods), psychology (and psychiatry, mental health and mental care), sociology (collective intelligence and collective action), normative sphere (polity, politics, moral philosophy, law, history). Of course, there are other ways to look at the problem that do not exclude environment activity. And I like a lot human geography. But I never thought about how to consider it in an integrated social sciences research theory.

This frame will help us (I hope) to extend the law-sociology cooperation to other disciplinary fields. There are two main options: a) to reinforce law level of concerns with political science or philosophy or history; b) to open a cognitive link to psychological level, for instance focusing at violence and forensic psychology, or focusing at Milgram experiment, Stockholm syndrome, Stanford experiment, and other studies of authoritarian diffusion of states of spirit.

I have some English WebPages to introduce myself and some of my proposals

http://iscte.pt/~apad/novosite2007/ingles.html

http://iscte.pt/~apad/emergencia/english.htm

My (straight forward and immediate 2009) interest is to apply a questionnaire (English version: http://iscte.pt/~apad/estesp/projectos.htm)

This is the result of a sociological query about the contradiction of (real) instability (everyday life) been explained by classificatory social theories (supposing social stability, as much as institutions need it to be so). A call it sociology of instability. It´s main concept has been “state-of-spirit” – studying the natural and social human instability (depending on social, technical and ecological environment).

I developed an analytical proposal in order to produce extensive information about these subjects, hoping to get some new insight on sociological work. I am using my sabbatical year applying the questionnaire in Spain, in Portugal and Brazil. I realize the results will be better tests to the quality of my approach if it would applied to people who lives upheaval social environment.

I need a other languages translation for my questionnaire. I need this version of the questionnaire to be tested and changed accordingly (I wouldn´t be able to do that, since I do not know the language). I need data (150 questionnaires) from convenience samples (for instance, from popular neighborhoods, from students, from specific professional groups, whatever could be available) of people who did live (or still live) the upheaval social environment.

Of course, I would like to testimony in loco (and feel) whatever is happening in the social environment where the questionnaires will be answered. I wonder how to do it if I do not know the language (and I do not have strong ideas about the culture or the history of the people). For this propose I can imagine to organize interviews. I will need the help of a translator. I understand it is more difficult than the questionnaire.

In fact I am concerned about the idea that people and societies are instable by nature. They have the major characteristic of changing behavior patterns very radically and without warning, as most natural entities do: the earth maintain itself still for ages. And then it comes a tsunami or a earthquake or a volcano.  To frame this, I did choose some social parameters: three social levels (quotidian, institutional and value) three social plans (normative, ontological and socio-economic) and three trends (bio-social reproduction, institutionalization and individuation).

I did translate it in a quantitative methodology I am trying to test comparing different social strata and different countries. It would be very good for me to have the opportunity to test it in changing social enviorments.