Officials privatized social problems by tracing them all to family and self-esteem
Evidence
Officials’ informal theory about the roots of social problems told them that, no matter how big or small, social problems grew out of family problems. Social issues could best be addressed right here, in the privacy of one’s own home, not by changing any structures or policies, not by getting adults more involved in the broader picture, but by ”building self-esteem.” Over and over, I heard that the family was the root of youth’s lack of self-esteem, and low self-esteem was at the root of drug abuse, and drug abuse was at the root of crime, poverty, even war and other problems. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 412
Categorization
- QUESTION: This is a psychological-versus-sociological imagination framing worth chasing further as a theory of how institutions channel civic knowledge.
- corroborated: 5 independent passages support this claim — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 412
- XREF: connects to: People can absorb political problems into purely personal solutions — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1075; Therapy’s real flaw is privatizing systemic problems as individual self-work — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1923
Broader Connections
- People can absorb political problems into purely personal solutions
#expands(0.80) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1075