normalism

Noun

normalism (countable and uncountable, plural normalisms)

1. (obsolete) 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
   • 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...1859, Charles Hamilton Smith, The natural history of the human species, page 172
2. A system of beliefs concerning how one determines what is considered normal.
   • 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...2015, B. Misztal, Multiple Normalities: Making Sense of Ways of Living, →ISBN, page 73
3. A tendency to consider most deviations as within the bounds of "normal".
   • Although a program of reason and moderation, normalism is not a program of compromise or opportunism.1914, Edward Thomas Devine, Social Forces, page 57
   • 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
4. A bias against the abnormal.
   • 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