ADHD, Discipline, and Social Uneasiness in Chilean Schools

The external signs of the attention in the school: discipline, assistance and positional uneasiness
in Chilean society.
Hugo Sir Retamales1
Background
This communication is part of a broader and collective research about the diagnostic category of
Attentional Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children, adolescents and adults in Chile. ADHD
is the first reason for consultation in child’s mental health (S. Rojas, Rojas, & Peña, 2018). Moreover,
ADHD main symptoms would persist in adult life in among 30 – 70% of cases according to the last
scientific studies (Biederman, Petty, Clarke, Lomedico, & Faraone, 2011; Urzúa, Domic, Cerda,
Ramos, & Quiroz, 2009; Wender & Tomb, 2017). From an epidemiological perspective, the
prevalence of ADHD is comparatively high among boys and girls (aged 4-11 years old) in the general
population with a 15.5% national average (18.7% at Santiago) versus a 5% worldwide average
(Vicente et al., 2012). Based on these rates and the subjective and social consequences of this
diagnosis, the Transdisciplinary Laboratory on Social Practices and Subjectivities (LAPSOS), in
collaboration with an international research network, is conducting a multi-methods research in
Chile, Brazil, France and Sweden focused on ADHD. We adopt a situational analytic perspective,
which implies a relational epistemology. From this perspective, we need to consider different actors,
materials and contexts both inside and outside the school in order to describe the ADHD Situation,
that is the constitution of this diagnostic category in the middle of diverse affects and
heterogeneous forces, including contradictories discourses and ambiguous practices (Clarke, 2003;
Claro, 2015; Liebert, 2017; Rauthmann, Sherman, & Funder, 2015). Specifically, in this
communication, I will develop an affect theory-based perspective to explore the forces that
assemble ADHD Situation from a non-substantialize and situated viewpoint.
Methods
The collective multi-method research includes i) 30 interviews; ii) 4 discussion groups; iii) 3 short
multi-site ethnographic observations (Brockmann, 2011) in three schools.
I will focus the analysis on a four months ethnographic observation (July – September 2016) in the
third and fourth grades (aged 8-10 years old) of a public school on a traditional middle-class district
in Santiago (Providencia). The communication aims then to put that observational description in
relation to the broader forces that compose the affective map of ADHD.
Findings and conclusions.
I will argue that the “attention problem” within the school is crossed by concerns related to what is
called, by Chilean sociologists, positional inconsistency (Araujo & Martuccelli, 2011, 2012; Barozet,
2006; Mayol, Azócar Rosenkranz, & Azócar Ortiz, 2013; Sir, 2017). This concept has been understood
as a transversal trait of Chilean social structure closely bound up with a wide spectrum of socioeconomical groups, producing a multiform social malaise or social suffering (Araujo & Martuccelli,
2011, 2012; Das & Han, 2016; Ehrenberg, 2010). This sensation is related to the feeling that “every
1
Associated Researcher in LAPSOS (Universidad de Chile). MSc and PhD (Student) in Social Sciences
(Universidad de Chile).
social position may suffer active processes of destabilization due to the transference to individuals
of the tasks related to the level and quality of their social integration (…) It is a permanent positional
concern, an everyday attitude of uneasiness which is a reflection of a society traversed by plural
feelings of instability”(Araujo & Martuccelli, 2011, p. 168).
I will describe in the first section the main forces that compose the situational analytic of ADHD in
Chile. I will show the importance of the neoliberal exigencies upon Chilean school, families and
teachers. Requirements transferred to children via the emphasis on performance and obedience.
Second, I will explore the rearrangement of traditional Chilean classroom associated with the
presence of the School Integration Program (PIE, Spanish initials). The observation of the PIE device
inside the four classrooms of 3rd and 4th grades, allows highlighting the coating and displacement
of the punishment (disciplinary technology) by the assistance (governmental or securitarian
technology) (Castro-Gómez, 2015; Foucault, 2006, 2007). Third, I will show how this produces the
ADHD Situation via the requirement of the external signs of attention above others forms of
attentional verification. This modality of obedience would not be related to standardized evaluation
school performance criteria only (Bergey et al, 2018), but it involves modes of being in the Spinozian
sense, which means qualitative differences between ways of living (Deleuze, 2008). Even, new
approaches to ADHD, will insist about the anthropological variation between individuals with and
without what is called as a ADHD brain (Aboitiz & Carrasco, 2009; Aboitiz, López, López-Calderon, &
Carrasco, 2006). This is closely linked with what Rose (2007) named as ethopolitics, to refer to
attempts to “shape the conduct of human beings by acting upon their sentiments, beliefs, and
values—in short, by acting on ethics (…) the ethos of human existence—the sentiments, moral
nature, or guiding beliefs of persons, groups, or institutions—has come to provide the “medium”
within which the self-government of the autonomous individual can be connected up with the
imperatives of good government” (Rose, 2007, p. 27) In that sense, the unfolding of the PIE device
and the production of the ADHD Situation itself, operates the ethic translation of a civilizing moral
principle, understood as the obligatory internalization of the authority and control (Elias, 2010).
Then, is not only matter to obey or internalize because authority said it, instead of it, is about to
adopt the symbol to be a right kind of human being, which implies showing the external signs of
attention, because it is good. Finally, as a conclusion, I will underline the high elective affinity
between the production of the obedience of attentional external signs and the generalized
positional uneasiness, which is one of the most remarkable characteristics of the Chilean society
under its neoliberal constitution: good means the possibility to scape of the always haunting
possibility to be poor, then the dimensions of obligation and decision are essentially indistinct.
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