Social abortion: a process of institutional interruptions of human formation

Abstract

This theoretical essay reconstructs the concept of social abortion to analyze institutional processes that interrupt dimensions of human formation and restrict possibilities of existence. The expression “social abortion” already circulates in other fields; the contribution advanced here is therefore conceptual and situated rather than lexical. Through a selective literature review and contrast-oriented concept construction, the article distinguishes the category from social exclusion, necropolitics, social death, biopower, and symbolic violence. Social abortion is defined as an institutionally produced, cumulative, asymmetrically distributed, and avoidable process through which the capacities to understand, belong, receive recognition, participate, and project one’s own existence become substantively unfeasible before they consolidate, even when biological life, citizenship, and formal institutional ties persist. The category establishes no biological, moral, or legal equivalence with the termination of a pregnancy. Its analytical value depends on five criteria and a rule of parsimony, presented alongside negative cases and conditions for refutation. Amazonian education is treated as the first field of problematization, not as the limit of the concept or as a source of empirical findings. The article concludes that the category may contribute to research on institutional processes that interrupt human formation in education, politics, work, culture, and other social domains, provided that each application remains conceptually rigorous and open to empirical testing.