Title: SYNOPTICS, part VII: application of the Synoptics model for the social analysis of large states: Republic of South Africa

Authors: Herbert Rauch

Addresses: Institute for Social Analysis IfS, Schottenfeldgasse 25-27/533, 1070 Vienna, Austria

Abstract: As another example for the application of the Synoptic social analysis method, the case study of Nelson Mandela's farewell speech in the ANC party convention of 1997 is outlined and linked to the Synoptics theory, while adding some comments with respect to the global situation of 2020. Overall, this article presents an outline of a larger case study illustrating the Synoptics theory, concentrating on the ANC convention in RSA with the farewell of Nelson Mandela as president of the ANC as central event. Synoptics wanted to present the foundations and the applicational possibilities of Synoptics as a rather precise path towards a psychosocial analysis of society. It includes social factors as well as psychic factors, and wants to show that finally, also society is rooted at least as much within the mental sphere as well as in the social web, which is intertwining psychic and social factors, as far as we today can grasp them in their state of being intertwined.

Keywords: Synoptics method; social analysis; hypotheses; psychoanalysis; social sciences; social systems; challenge principle; basic sentences; South Africa.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGENVI.2021.120991

International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, 2021 Vol.20 No.2/3/4, pp.324 - 349

Received: 12 Oct 2020
Accepted: 18 Nov 2020
Published online: 21 Feb 2022 *

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