P-related-ish: Paranoia

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

In villages and small towns, you can be damn sure that you are being
monitored 24/7. You need not be paranoid about it. Durkheim calls this
"mechanical solidarity".

In "anomic" cities, the nature of surveillance is much more elusive.
Even when the amount of surveillance is increasing day by day.

Am personally happy that I managed to escape from the countryside.


Heikki


On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, Guy Ian Scott Pursey wrote:

>
> Over the last 15 years, as a research fellow for the Wellcome Trust,
> Freeman has found links between paranoia and urbanisation,
> globalisation, migration and wealth inequality, increased power of the
> media, CCTV cameras and the internet. Urbanisation particularly
> fascinates him. "You go into Camberwell [home to King's College
> hospital] and it's stressful, it's noisy, it's chaotic. You are bustled
> about, you have to negotiate your path. Sometimes it's familiar and
> fine, but as soon as you have a suspicious thought, there is ambiguity
> and confusion, and paranoia thrives in that sort of environment. But
> it's hard to quantify. We are speculating. There are a number of really
> consistent results looking at the adult population in Sweden, showing
> people in urban areas have higher levels of paranoia. But we don't know
> exactly why," he says.
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/10/paranoia-health
>
> Thought it might be of interest...
> Guy
>