Dictionary

normalism en · NOUN

Etymology

From normal + -ism.

Meanings

1. (countable, obsolete, uncountable) Normality; A state in which most things are normal.
   • There is very little normalism in the English language, and the attempt to reduce it to stricter rules is necessarily a failure. 1856, The English Journal of Education - Volume 10, page 141:
   • It is of importance to carry with us this idea of the normalism of the successive phases,—because accidental modifications frequently occur which may distract attention from the main lines of the case, and seduce us into a search for remedies where they cannot be found. 1868, Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society: Session 1867-68, page 22:
   • It is rarely, too, that one will be able to demonstrate readily upon a patient all that he can observe in his own person; for the patient has not the same practice of the auto-laryngoscopist, nor the same interest in it; while, in addition, his organs are seldom in a state of complete normalism, or he would have no occasion to consult the practitioner. 1872, Jacob Solis Cohen, Diseases of the Throat:
   • In the wildest conquering inundations, lust itself obeying its impulese only bey a kind of necessity ; myriads of slaves carried off and embodied, still producing only a very gradual influence upon the normalisms of the typical form, and passing into absorption by certain external appearances, with very faint steps. 1859, Charles Hamilton Smith, The natural history of the human species, page 172:
2. (countable, uncountable) A system of beliefs concerning how one determines what is considered normal.
   • The fact that the borders of normality (as opposed to normative norms) are on a statistical continuum, and always moveable, accounts for the historical dynamic of normalism. 2016, J. D. Mininger, Jason Michael Peck, German Aesthetics: Fundamental Concepts from Baumgarten to Adorno, →ISBN, page 211:
   • The 1968 movement pressed against the boundaries of any normalism. 2004, Cabinet - Issues 13-16, page 84:
   • As examples of normalism, such as the creation of a 'normal' demographic, economic or growth, make clear, the reproduction and continuity of normality require the state to translate 'this generally incomprehensible “landscape of curves” from the language of experts into the self-steering fantasy of the subjects' (Link, quoted in Remebert 2004: 6). Seeing normalism as a response to the challenge of modernity which success relies on state involvement prompts Link to identify it as a strategy of compensation. 2015, B. Misztal, Multiple Normalities: Making Sense of Ways of Living, →ISBN, page 73:
3. (countable, uncountable) A tendency to consider most deviations as within the bounds of "normal".
   • Flexible normalism follows the assumption that people reach the periphery of society by chance. 2015, Shelley Tremain, Foucault and the Government of Disability, →ISBN, page 195:
   • Normalism was the normal school philosophy which relied on a positivist and evolutionary approach to learning; it was called by its practitioners “the science of progress and the science of man.” 2005, Marifran Carlson, ¡Feminismo!: The Woman's Movement in Argentina, →ISBN, page 72:
   • Although a program of reason and moderation, normalism is not a program of compromise or opportunism. 1914, Edward Thomas Devine, Social Forces, page 57:
4. (countable, uncountable) A bias against the abnormal.
   • This quest for a meaningful identity results in the alteration, because the discursive disorder created by unification allows for a connection between normalism and positive national identity, where the concept "nation" becomes reinscribed with premodern values. 1999, Jonathan P. G. Bach, Between Sovereignty and Integration, page 41:
   • The information books are coming through, though they are sadly lacking in any political dimension, and there are a few poetic books, but they don't combat normalism - the central concept of our society - that anyone who is not normal is inferior. 1987, Gail Chester, Sigrid Nielsen, In other words: writing as a feminist, page 51:
   • These are stories about normalism (Corbett 1994). Part of the experience of being marginalised and dominated also has to do with the way some of 'us' call 'others' (Abberley 1987). 1997, Joan Benjamin, Judith Bessant, Rob Watts, Making Groups Work: Rethinking Practice, →ISBN, page 19:

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