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This chapter examines the problem of street children in Mexico from a clinical sociology point of view. In Mexico, we have developed a socioclinical perspective based on French clinical sociology and psychology, adapting it to the reality of the complex social phenomena of our country with its strong economic and social contradictions. We have carried out this work for the last fifteen years, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Our faculty's curriculum, from the beginning, has involved the linking of teaching, research, and service via clinics and community interventions. The work with socially excluded populations that is carried out in this program involves simultaneous research and intervention. It is in this context that the Secretariat of Public Education called upon us, as a team of university researchers with experience in intervention involving street children, to submit an educational model that takes into account the cultural characteristics and way of life of these young people (Taracena and Albarrán, 2006). Clinical sociology concerns itself with examining complex social problems; it analyzes the subjective dimension in both its individual and collective aspects. On the subjective level, the categories suggested by Bourdieu (1984) have proved very useful to us. In particular, those referring to symbolic, cultural, and economic capital permit us to locate the position of a person or group of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic, political, and social crises are deeply affecting communities throughout the United States. In the United States the long history of genocide of indigenous peoples, enslavement of African peoples, the economic exploitation of working people including many immigrant communities, the inequality of women of these communities and classes, wars of conquest and expansion of the continental U.S., and ecocide (the destruction of the ecosystem through harmful political, economic, and social policies) have shaped the economic and political system of global capitalism in the United States since the country was founded, and some of these practices predated the country's founding by over three centuries. This system is rooted in white supremacy and gender oppression as part of the overarching domination of society and the state by the rich and powerful-by those who own the economic resources across the country and the globe and form today's global corporate class (Zinn, 1995; Hennessy and Ingraham, 1997; Smith, 2005). These forms of injustice and inequality have been reproduced in every century since the late 1400s. In each century resistance and resilience have been a consistent part of daily life. Those communities and classes most adversely affected have organized and struggled against their oppression and exploitation, seeking freedom, liberation, justice, and equality (Kelley, 2002; Mohanty, 2004; Project South, 2004a). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The environmental and social costs of Brazilian economic development have been paid by displaced populations in rural areas and poor residents of shantytowns in urban and metropolitan regions. These population segments mainly consist of blacks and "pardos" (mulattos). In spite of Brazil's supposed lack of racist policies, the country has inherited certain aspects of the culture of slavery that create inequalities, including environmental ones that are largely accepted as "natural." Some efforts have been made to denounce this situation and create real sustainable development. These efforts aim at the empowerment of vulnerable populations so that recognized formal rights of citizenship may be actually obtained. This chapter focuses on cases that exemplify such efforts including the Brazilian Forum of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and Social Movements for Sustainability (1990), the Brazilian Network for Environmental Justice (2001), and the First Brazilian Seminar against Environmental Racism (2005). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of ethnic relations has traditionally been an integral part of a basic sociology curriculum. Typically, students of sociology are introduced to the concepts such as race, racism, ethnicity, minority, prejudice, and discrimination early in their sociology courses. Sociologists in general, with the exception of some Marxist or radical sociologists, see ethnicity as a social phenomenon that needs to be studied in its own right rather than as an epiphenomenon that can be reduced to some other social manifestation, as a purely economical, political, cultural, religious, and psychological phenomenon. This means that, as a social phenomenon, ethnicity does not lose its social relevance just because members of different ethnic groups practice the same culture and the same religion; or when intermarriages result in genetic pooling and physical and racial homogenization; or when economic inequality between ethnic groups disappears; or when peace is achieved and maintained through political alliances and cooperation between ethnic groups. Clinical sociologists are those performing direct sociological intervention in planned social change efforts for the purpose of achieving a particular objective. This objective may be to promote a particular social trend (promotion intervention), prevent the occurrence of an impending social problem (prevention intervention), minimize or arrest a downward spiral of an occurring social conflict or crisis (conflict resolution intervention), or reestablish social relationships in a postconflict situation (rehabilitation intervention). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legacy of the twentieth century and the promise of the twenty-first century were on the minds of leaders, change agents, and ordinary people around the world as the new millennium approached. The most far-reaching aspirations—the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—were adopted in 2000 by all 189 memberstates of the United Nations General Assembly, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank (WB). The Millennium Declaration was designed to throw into relief the values of various organizations concerned with international development and to stimulate concerted action (United Nations, 2000). As the culmination of several major international meetings and summits, the adoption of the Millennium Declaration "was a defining moment for global cooperation in the 21st century" (United Nations, 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our team of analysts1 has shaped its path in clinical sociology over more than thirty years through the development of a technical instrument: socioanalysis. The term socioanalysis, which was an early replacement for the longer term psychosocial self-analysis, turned out to have a number of meanings. Socioanalysis can be described in various ways, depending on whether one adopts a pragmatic, technical, or theoretical point of view. From the pragmatic point of view, a socioanalysis is addressed to social entities desiring to work together to improve their control over their own action, or who request help in dealing with problems for which they see no solution. These entities must have sufficient weight in institutional negotiation to be able to contract with the collective analyst constituted by the socioanalysts and to commit their time and resources for the appropriate time period. From the technical point of view, socioanalysis is grounded in its acquired experience of how, in specific conditions, the basic mechanisms governing the action of a social entity are reproduced. Because of this experience, socioanalysis, as a technique, provides insight into the origin, structure, and functioning of an entity under specified conditions. From the theoretical point of view, socioanalysis circumscribes an object—the entity that generates and supports the action. This object contains the elements that constitute the action and the forces that carry it. Its formal definition results from the conditions under which it can be accessed from the different perspectives—internal and external. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter defines clinical sociology in practical and theoretical terms, and discusses its areas of application and the cultural theoretical background of such a professional perspective. It is important to define "sociology" in order to understand its clinical perspective and the practical applications deriving from it, but it is not easy to define sociology, especially in Italy, as the sociological knowledge used in performing a variety of institutional and cultural roles has not been formally recognized and this has resulted in a lack of identity for sociologists. This is the opinion of many professionals employed by the Italian Social and Medical Services, who are regarded as mere technical surplus, and not as interdisciplinary figures, in the planning projects aimed at improving the well-being of individuals and the community. Through a process of intellectual pillage of notions and methods, sociology—the so-called "science without boundaries"—has been confined to the regions of minor disciplines, while sciences, such as medicine and psychology, have asserted their hegemony. It's enough to say that social psychology, criminology, and even educational science have acquired the patrimony of all the theoretical knowledge developed by sociology without due recognition of its historical and intellectual roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter explores the patient's personal experience (or experiencing, to use a more technical term) of schizophrenia in the context of a changing Chinese society, and presents a few important aspects of clinical sociology. The clinical sociology approach is based on a two-part psychological and epistemological hypothesis: the private personal experiences of the individual and the individual's experience of the wider society are one and the same, and this applies to people who have been diagnosed as mentally ill and viewed as alienated as well as to people who are considered normal in their social integration and interactions. According to this working hypothesis, experiencing schizophrenia implies experiencing the society as understood by patients. Patients are affected by the reality of such forces as a market economy and globalization, internal migration, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor, and not only purely through their individual personality. So, to understand how mentally ill persons give meaning to their experiences, we must understand how, explicitly or implicitly, they take into consideration their social environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any human problem is a problem of the society to which we belong. The problem cannot be isolated from its natural environment, which is the group, the region, or the country. If we consider any given human problem as a problem of only the specific individual or family, we cannot study it from the broader perspective that offers many chances of understanding the problem in the best possible way and intervening effectively. Recognizing that each problem is a consequence of group structures and interactions of human groups and societies, we need to bear in mind that we should not only watch the forest of trees, but also the single tree. This holistic research method is founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other. In this way, sociology seems vital in clinical work with individuals whose psychological problems are inevitably linked to social factors. Clinical sociology is the integration of the sociological approach and the clinical method (Gaulejac, 1997). As Rhéaume (1997) has noted, "from the 1980s onwards, clinical sociology appears to be an integrating framework for diversity of theoretical views (e.g., cultural anthropology, social ethnography, psychosociology, and theories of social intervention) related to the study of social practices." Clinical sociology requires the application of various critically applied practices and attempts to treat group members within communities (Glassner and Freedman, 1979). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the origin of thanatology (death, dying, and bereavement) as a discipline can be traced to two time periods and two different foci of interest. Academic and clinical interest in the death and dying components of thanatology emerged in the 1950s as a result of the death awareness movement1 and, from the beginning, has been interdisciplinary. One of the earliest publications in the field, The Meaning of Death by Herman Feifel (1959), was a collection of essays that "encompassed theoretical approaches, cultural studies, and clinical insights" from different disciplines (DeSpelder and Strickland, 2002). Although in the United States the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1969) is probably the best known among the pioneers in the death awareness movement, sociologists were major contributors. Talcott Parson's "Death in American Society" (1963), for instance, focused on the impact of technology on the dying process; Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1964) introduced the concept of "awareness contexts" to explain differences and changes in communication with dying patients; and Vanderlyn Pine and Derek L. Phillips (1970) applied sociological insight to functionaries of death, for example, the funeral industry. Robert Fulton not only contributed one of the pioneering books, Death and Identity (1965), but also designed and taught the first formal course in death and dying at an American university. This chapter examines three critical problems with the psychological model of bereavement and the gradual shifts to a sociological perspective: the bereaved person as social self rather than ego, culture as a milieu rather than a factor, and grief and grief work as deviant/anomic rather than abnormal/pathological. Examples from my clinical practice illustrate the efficacy of the sociological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical sociology is a way of doing sociology, so formally it is a methodological approach within sociology. However, methodology cannot be separated from theory, and clinical sociology involves, in some respects, a construction of a particular field of sociology. Methodology is not only a set of techniques used to gather data for analysis by sociologists in their role as an expert; methodology, in a broader sense, is about what kind of social issues are of interest, who is producing the proper knowledge to address those issues, and how can we develop not only theory but practical knowledge about those issues. This chapter illustrates this approach by examining the development of clinical sociology in Québec. It is interesting to note that we speak of such a development in Québec and not in Canada. Sociology in Québec, as is the case for most social and human sciences, has been much more influenced by ideas and contributions from the United States or Europe than from the other Canadian provinces. The particular political status of Québec stems from a long history of resistance in an attempt to remain Francophone and culturally different from the rest of Canada. This is also reflected in the way sociology developed. Perhaps a more careful and extensive search would point to similar U.S. influences among Toronto or Vancouver sociologists. Nevertheless, cross-references between Québec and Canadian sociologists in publications, manuals, and, even more importantly, in actual research and practice projects are rare or nonexistent. Such is also the case for clinical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical sociology has a rather short history in Japan, where it began, in a continuing way, in 1993. Although we do not yet have a consensus on the definition and theoretical framework, we share the practical concerns for problem solving of clinical sociologists in other countries. This chapter is divided into four parts. First, a brief history of clinical sociology in Japan is presented. Second, my theoretical position as a clinical sociologist is explained through a self-narrative. Third, two examples of my practice in clinical fields are introduced. Finally, the contribution of a narrative social constructionist approach to the development of clinical sociology is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clinical sociology emerged in France in a continuous way in the 1980s and was affiliated with psychosociology and the work of the Laboratoire de Changement Social (Social Change Research Center) (LCS) at the Université Paris Diderot. In Geneva, in 1988, a workshop was launched within the Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française (International Association of French Language Sociologists, AISLF) on the initiative of Robert Sévigny, Gilles Houle, Eugène Enriquez, and me. A working group that included these members also became a permanent research committee within the International Sociological Association (ISA) in 1992. The first clinical sociology conference organized in France was held at the Université Paris Diderot in the same year. Co-sponsored by the AISLF and ISA research committees, the conference brought together more than 150 researchers from over fifteen countries. An account of these events and the papers they produced were published the following year (Gaulejac and Roy, 1993). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]