Autolesão na era da informação: abordagem sociológica acerca de uma subcultura juvenil contemporânea

Abstract

This research deals with the phenomenon known as self-mutilation or self-injury, particularly its manifestation among teenagers, which can be understood as the intentional act of causing any harm to the body itself without, however, strive to suicide, even if this occurs accidentally. Sometimes also associated with some types of mental disorders, such as borderline or borderline personality disorder, conduct autolesiva - cut themselves, burning with cigarette butts, autoenvenenar up among others - has been the subject of studies in large part, focused on the medical and psychological area. Much of this research takes this phenomenon from the perspective of disease and treatment, sometimes in clinical settings, where it is less related to broader contexts of individual experiences. For this reason, the research proposed here is an attempt to understand the autolesiva conduct from a sociological approach in order to favor social and interpersonal contexts linked to this phenomenon, often referred to as a strictly self-destructive behavior. In other words, the idea here present, in short, is to give relevance to the external environment or context and its relation to how individuals deal with their emotions and their identity. Thus, given the current growth of self-injury among adolescents, particularly its manifestation in the form of cuts, as has been reported in various media in Brazil and in the world, broke the hypothesis that, much more than an internal disorder , self-injury may be related to processes or changes in society of contemporary information such as consumerism, individualisation, changing values, ubiquity of digital technology in daily life, which also affects even the most intimate aspects of social life. These and other considerations, however, require or require empirical research. Thus, given the approach taken, the research was carried out from practical contexts of social experience, considering both physical places, as well as virtual environments around which supposedly self-mutilation practices were occurring or being conveyed in each case. The urban spaces of the city of Fortaleza, Brazil, were those appropriate for teens and young people who identify with the post-punk genres of rock and post-hardcore, around which orbit urban subcultures, such as Goths, punks, emos or even sympathizers. Many of these meetings became known as points against the emo subculture, sometimes referred to by outsiders to it as a "tribe" of overly emotional teenagers who worship or see as normal suicide and depression. Concurrent to the field work, carried out between August 2011 to February 2013, self-injury was observed in the virtual environment of the social network Tumblr, where content related to this practice had been growing at about the same period, adolescents and blog posts young people. By methods that incorporate ethnographic perspective combined with the use of interviews, among other data collection materials, this paper seeks to explore other aspects and launch new questions in addition to the clinical view around the self-mutilation.