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EscherIstituzioni

Forms of institutions. Creative and Destructive Processes

Abstract

This essay examines different aspects of the life of institutions. Through an analysis working on an anthropological and psychoanalytical level, contrasting yet coexisting aspects are brought to light. Beginning from an analysis of the recent film The Lobster, which describes an anguishing form of institutional Dystopia which favours conformist and destructive individual and group experiences, a comparison with those institutional forms that, on the contrary, take the shape of supportive and creative relationships is proposed. This work presents reflections on the relationships between specific emotional contexts in the psychiatric institutions, the ritual constructive and destructive behavioural aspects Read more

EscherIstituzioni

Institutions and economic science: links between cognitive processes and the emergence of social rules

Abstract

Standard economic theory has long underestimated the role of institutions in economic systems and in the processes of change, focusing on equilibrium and the mechanisms that determine it spontaneously. Equilibrium, once achieved, is only interfered by external shocks (exogenous shocks) and it is not disturbed by dynamics developing within the system. Institutions, in this theoretical framework, are functional to achieve efficient outcomes but play no role in the process of economic change (North, 1990).
On the other hand, the heterodox approach to the economics, targeting the research into the processes by which institutions emerge and change, highlights their importance in social dynamics. Economics of institutions changes the focus of the analysis: it does not start from the study of the effects that given institutions can have on the economic systems, but it focuses on individual behavior and on the cognitive processes that determine it. This research field investigates the dynamics through which the interaction between Read more

CarnevaleQuaresima

Leading from below? Decisions, responsibility and creativity as a group dynamic

Abstract

The institution tends to organise the individual in standard ways. And individuals are vulnerable to being organised for the convenience of the institution. Probably psychiatric patients needing hospitalisation are especially vulnerable to this coercive influence.
This has for long been known as a ‘top-down’ authority. A smallish group or single leader at the top of the organisation’s hierarchy makes decisions for those lower down to follow. For 50 years or so from the 1940s, there was, in Western society, an attempt to reverse this structure with what is called ‘bottom-up’ authority. The therapeutic community was one Read more