Countercurrents Topic: The psychosocial dimension of power: An emotional analysis of the Davos elite’s discourse on globalization

For all those emotional people into analysis and wondering what goes on in the minds of them Davos rich fucks, here's something academic-y by Mario D’Andreta

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Understanding for intervening

Constructivist and psychoanalytic oriented social research provides evidence that human behaviour is driven by the shared meanings of the subjective social experience (Blumer 1969, Mead 1934, Berger and Luckmann 1966, Moscovici 1961, Matte Blanco 1975, Carli 1993). This perspective can be used to understand the cultural drivers underlying the elite’s political and economic action.

The understanding of these meanings allows to identify possible strategies of intervention to induce change and enhance democracy, social and economic justice, quality of life and civil coexistence.

This knowledge can be gained by the analysis of socially produced discourses on relevant topics such as globalization,intended as the current common horizon of sense that guides social action.

On the basis of these assumptions, I conducted an analysis of the globalization discourse of the World Economic Forum Board members (TNI 2015) by applying the methodological approach of Text Emotional Analysis developed within the Carli and Paniccia’s model of collusion[1].

The image of globalization

The elite’s image of globalization that arises from this work is not univocal and monolithic, but composed of four cultural dimensions corresponding to the clusters of dense words [2], obtained through the statistical analysis of texts under examination.

The first dimension is characterized by the following elements:

• a negative representation of the other, conceived as a featureless anonymous mass of persons acting solely on the basis of emotional factors (e.g. trust), instead of rational ones;
• the proposition of three main symbolic frames for the attribution of meaning to life experiences in the globalization age that are expressed by the words world, time and grow;
• the idea that globalization impacts over people’s life and especially over that of young people;
• a form of thought based on genetic determinism and a pragmatic knowledge oriented to take possession of reality through technology.

The second dimension revolves around the three following aspects:

• the messianic hope in the dimension of bigness, represented by the international financial institutions (e.g. African Development Bank and International Monetary Fund) and by the Big Science approach of projects like the Human Genome Project;
• the social cost of the international financial institution’s intervention represented by the risk of failing in the pursuit of the imposed ideal of ‘growth, strength and power’ based development, expressed by the threat of inflation and the imposition of living conditions to the limits of survival (e.g. Greece situation) that put under stress the European countries;
• the predominance of the economic factor in determining public policies, under the dogma of free market and personal gain.

The third dimension is focused on the following five points:

• the pursuit of strengthening the ability to provide, invest and manage budget and funds;
• a warped view of competition based on the search for conditions of privilege to successfully compete, that is strictly linked to the negative perception towards the taxes, seen as an authoritarian imposition that limits the satisfaction of one’s needs;
• the consequent need of developing a social order based on the idea of freedom, conceived as absence of restraints to one’s continuous expansion;
• the key importance of cognitive tools concerning capacities such as perceiving, recognizing, distinguishing, choosing and establishing, in the pursuit of this ideal of success;
• the increasingly relevant role of women in facilitating the access to the needed reforms to pursue this end.

The fourth dimension embodies the following fundamental elements:

• the role of supranational finance institutions (e.g. Inter American Development Bank Group)in producing a new sort of colonialism through the form of development aid based on providing sureness through financings in exchange of the gradual expropriation of local political and economic power;
• the effects of innovative financing schemes, such as impact investment,which despite being aimed at generating social benefit, actually becomes a way for taking possess of the last remaining fields of public intervention such as welfare, health, education and energy;
• the need of integrating development assistance recipient countries into the myth of making money in their regions;
• the tendency to interface solely with the business elite of these countries (lead companies’ CEOs).

Read more at https://countercurrents.org/2018/11/09/the-psychosocial-dimension-of-power-an-emotional-analysis-of-the-davos-elites-discourse-on-globalization/