Self-Defeating Prophecies and Counter-Intuitive Phenomena Concerning Security and Politics at the Time of Pandemic, in Flaminia Saccà (ed.), Changing Democracies in an Unequal World

Abstract

The essay attempts to provide some examples of how in research on phenomena concerning social security and deviance, it is possible to encounter, much more often than expected, counter-intuitive contexts, processes or results. Objects of study can escape the laws known and the trends that we expected to detect. This happens first of all because the subjects we study can behave, in line with the theory and typology of Merton1, not only as ritualists or conformists, but also as innovators, rebels and renouncers. But it also happens because of a reality that often reveals itself to be anything but homeostatic or fully resilient.