This article will discuss the difficulties of providing a plausible account of rule following in the social realm. It will show that the cognitive model of rule following is not suited for this task. Nevertheless, revealing the inadequacy of the cognitive model does not justify the wholesale dismissal of understanding human practices as rule-following practices, as social theorists like Bourdieu or Dreyfus have argued. Instead it will be shown that rule-following behavior is best understood as being based on a set (...) of complex dispositions. In this manner one is able to account for the causal explanatory role of the notion of a rule. Key Words: rules • norms • explanation • Bourdieu • Winch. (shrink)

This article attempts a self-clarification of practice theory by providing a genetic history of ‘practice’ as a figure in social thought. This locates two different versions of practice theory in Marx’s ‘practical question’ and Hobbes’ ‘Kingdom of Darkness’, respectively, and shows how both historically comprise a practical critique of testing reason. This article examines how the practical critique performs a dialectic of politicization and depoliticization that finds family resemblances and paradoxical alignments between the political left and right. The article evaluates (...) the strength of the practical critique and asks whether it results in a power politics with both left and right versions. (shrink)

Since the emergence of neo-evolutionism in the 1960s, various critiques of the theory of social or socio-cultural evolution have been forwarded, including notably those of Immanuel Wallerstein, Alain Touraine and Anthony Giddens who decisively reject the idea of evolution. Within this context, Jürgen Habermas's theory of socio-cultural evolution has also become a specific object of critique, the best known in the English-speaking world being, perhaps, Michael Schmid's critique. While the latter is ultimately based on neo-Darwinistic assumptions which allow a non-Marxist (...) alternative to be pitted against Habermas's position, a significant immanent critique has been taking shape during the late 1970s and 1980s the contours of which are at present starting to become visible, despite the fact that as yet it is nowhere developed and presented in a systematic manner. I have in mind here the work of younger authors belonging to the circle around Habermas, such as Johann Arnason, Axel Honneth, Hans Joas, Günter Frankenberg, Ulrich Rödel, and Klaus Eder, who have not only developed a critique of Habermas but are also engaged in developing an alternative to him within the framework of critical theory. (shrink)

This article uses participant objectivation in sociology and philosophy as two knowledge fields to provide a reflexive comparison of their synced field effect in historical circumstances. Drawing on the philosopher and historian of science Gaston Bachelard, I theorize fielded knowledge as a social relation that combines the prior presence of folk knowledge with a socioanalytic exchange between field and folk that includes positions of either defense, replacement or critique. A comparison of post-Wittgenstein Anglophone philosophy and post-sixties American sociology describes their (...) mutual confrontation with folk psychology as an “epistemological obstacle” that generates a remarkable concern with action as a position-taking on the folk relation. A reflexive objectivation of folk knowledge is therefore necessary for a revised understanding of action that correlates with the distinction of sociology’s knowledge capital and how it fares as an explanatory resource in competitive circumstances. The article concludes by leveraging the synced field effect even further to make a recommendation that sociologists can increase the distinction of their knowledge capital by producing discourse that can recognize, legitimate and officialize experiences that otherwise remain obscure, nameless or impossible within the bounded universe of folk psychology. (shrink)

This article argues against the view put forward by Margaret Archer that there is an irreconcilable divide between realist social theory and structuration theory. Instead, it argues for the systematic articulation of the two theories at both the ontological and the methodological levels. Each has developed a range of insightful and commensurable conceptualizations either missing or underdeveloped in the other. Archer's contention that structuration theory rejects the notion of `analytical dualism' central to the realist approach is shown to be mistaken; (...) Giddens's rejection of `dualism' refers to a different conceptualization of the term. Similarly, Archer's critique of structuration's notion of a `duality' involving structure and agency is rejected by showing that Archer's own morphogenetic approach itself relies upon such a notion. A final section distinguishes between six key problematics of social analysis. It is clear that, for a large number of possible questions within the majority of these problematics, it is a combination of both ontologies that would facilitate the most adequate substantive account. (shrink)

This article examines a fundamental theoretical aspect of the discourse on ‘intersectionality’ in feminist and anti-racist social theory, namely, the question whether intersecting social divisions including those of sex, gender, race, class and sexuality are interacting but independent entities with autonomous ontological bases or whether they are different dimensions of the same social system that lack separate social ontologies and constitute each other. Based on a historical reconstruction of its genesis, the article frames this as a dispute between system-theoretical and (...) dialectical, ‘Critical Theory’-related approaches and argues that the latter better capture the dynamics of contemporary society, including the perspective of its transcendence. (shrink)

This article describes a logic of distinction and succession within the late-twentieth-century Leningrad-St. Petersburg cultural field, whereby consecutive intelligentsia mainstreams were replaced by their avant-garde peripheries. In this dynamic picture of socio-cultural transformations, I propose a working hypothesis of a repeated stratification of the field into an ‘official’, an ‘unofficial’, and a third ‘non-aligned’ intelligentsia. This hypothesis is tested in reference to the ‘non-aligned’ groups founded by the avant-garde artist and ideologue Timur Novikov (1958–2002). Three major shifts are described: from (...) the politicized late-Brezhnevite early 1980s to the apolitical radicalism of Novikov’s New Artists; from this anarchistic underground, through the perestroika era, to the playful ‘classicism’ of the New Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s; and from this postmodern international orientation to an arch-reactionary, neo-imperial posturing at the turn of the 2000s. Lastly, this ‘non-aligned’ intelligentsia is suggested as a possible precedent, or, indeed, a model for understanding other historically significant avant-garde peripheries, which commonly seek to distinguish themselves from (often mutually-exclusive) centres. (shrink)

This article offers an alternative approach to paradigms that cast culture solely as a nurturing influence on children's language development. It proposes a dimensional model of Child-Directed Communication to delineate ways in which a community's habitus may impede the communicative potential of children with neuro-developmental conditions such as severe autism. It argues that certain features of Euro-American CDC are illadapted for autistic children. Due to inertia, caregivers often find themselves unable to transcend the limitations of CDC habitus. Yet, occasionally, a (...) transformation in CDC emerges that more effectively engages children with impairments. The article analyzes one such transformation forged in the niche of a unique mother–son relationship in India and then introduced in the USA. (shrink)

In this article, the author argues that complexity theories have limited use in the study of society, and that social processes are too complex and particular to be rigorously modeled in complexity terms. Theories of social complexity are shown to be inadequately developed, and typical weaknesses in the literature on social complexity are discussed. Two stronger analyses, of Luhmann and of Harvey and Reed, are also critically considered. New considerations regarding social complexity are advanced, on the lines that simplicity, complexity (...) that can be modeled, and incondensible complexity permeate society simultaneously. The difficulty of establishing complexity models for processes involving ongoing interpretation is discussed. It is argued that the notions of system and environment need recasting in social studies. Existing social studies and literature, it is argued, reflect a polymorphous, contextual, contingent, labyrinthine, dramatic and political face to social complexity. Students of social complexity must be literate in such studies. (shrink)

This essay explores the interrelation of skills and virtues. I first trace one line of analysis from Aristotle to Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues that there is a categorical difference between skills and virtues, in their ends and intrinsic character. This familiar distinction is fine in certain respects but still importantly misleading. Virtue in general, and also some particular virtues such as ritual propriety and practical wisdom, are not just exercised in practical contexts, but are in fact partially constituted by the (...) mastery of certain skills. This has implications for moral psychology, specifically how we might understand the acquisition of virtue, as well as its very nature. To try to make this claim plausible I analyze two case studies from early Confucianism: treatment of ritual propriety as a cardinal virtue, and Mencius's less carefully integrated treatment of excellence at moral discernment. I conclude by revisiting the question of the relations between skill and virtue, and exploring a few of the difficulties implied by my account of early Confucian ethics. (shrink)

Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary (...) democratic societies and the citizens who constitute them. (shrink)

Religion and violence are related in an ambivalent, paradoxical way, for the systems of religious knowledge tend to prohibit violence and to motivate it at the same time. This paper looks for the roots of that ambivalence and reveals particular mechanisms that generate violence within religious systems and their associated practices. It argues that violence in religious systems is present in at least three forms: It is inherent to communication with the “sacred,” it is generated by processes of inclusion and (...) exclusion, shaping religiously interpreted lifeworlds, and it is motivated or moderated by the respective semantics of religious narratives. The paper concludes that violence as a moment of hierophany is constitutive for the living experience in religious systems and cannot be eliminated entirely by moderating semantics. (shrink)

HIV stigma, a social-medical problem, continues to confound researchers and health professionals, while undermining outcomes. Empathy may reduce stigma; its absence may predict stigma. This research investigates: How does Kafka’s _Metamorphosis_ advance understandings of HIV stigma in medical health education? _Metamorphosis_ amplifies the sociological-relational mechanisms fostering HIV stigma. It offers a multi-disciplinary, responsive space for ethical, humanistic and clinical inquiry to meet: enabling students to consider how social structures shape health inequities, moral, social experience, and their professional identity within. _Metamorphosis_ (...) may ultimately promote medical health humanities’ social mission—allowing literature to unfold such revelations towards greater equity in health. (shrink)

This article extends Lemieux’s concern for the interdisciplinary tension between philosophy and sociology to the intradisciplinary tension within psychology between approaches to the study of children focusing on universal principles and approaches adopting a contextual lens. This tension arises both in how development is defined and in the methods chosen for its study. This tension is exemplified in terms of the recent American preoccupation with the Word Gap (WG), a supposed difference of 30 million words heard by socioeconomically diverse children (...) by the age of 4 that is blamed for educational disparities throughout the school years. The article discusses the political implications of WG discourse as it gives rise to the erasure of language practices of diverse Americans and obscures the role that the educational system plays in fostering a ‘one-size-fits-all’ instructional model. The article concludes with a discussion of attempts to combat the deficit model that the WG discourse reproduces. (shrink)

This article explores the carnal dimensions of existence through ethnographic research in a mixed martial arts club. Mixed martial arts (MMA) is an emergent sport where competitors in a ring or cage utilize strikes (punches, kicks, elbows and knees) as well as submission techniques to defeat opponents. Through data gathered from in-depth interviews with MMA practitioners and participant observation in an MMA club, I elucidate the social processes that are integral to the production of an MMA fighter habitus. I examine (...) how body techniques are learned and become attached to the identity of mixed martial arts fighters. Using Crossley’s concept of reflexive body techniques, I examine how MMA fighters engage in body callusing through use of reflexive body techniques thereby allowing them to withstand the rigors of the sport. (shrink)

. Through examining a case study of a major fluids modelling code, this paper charts two key properties of software as a material for building models. Scientific software development is characterized by piecemeal growth, and as a code expands, it begins to manifest frustrating properties that provide an important axis of motivation in the laboratory. The first such feature is a tendency towards brittleness. The second is an accumulation of supporting technologies that sometimes cause scientists to express a frustration with (...) the bureaucracy of highly regulated working practices. Both these features are important conditions for the pursuit of research through simulation. (shrink)

Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and suggests how this movement has moved beyond standard cognitive science. The article then clarifies important respects in which embodied cognition (...) has not departed fundamentally from the standard view. A shared commitment to representationalism, and ultimately, mechanism, suggest that the standard and embodied cognition movements are more closely related than is commonly acknowledged. Arguments against representationalism and mechanism are reviewed and an alternative position that does not entail these conceptual undergirdings is offered. (shrink)

Research in the field shows that, in industrialized countries, men and women tend to work in different types of occupations or sectors of economic activity, for which reason the scientific community developed the term of occupational gender segregation. This phenomenon persisted over the years despite the changes in legislation promoting gender equality. Literature suggests that parents, by the way they raise their children, transmit their cultural values regarding educational achievement and professional career. This transmission of knowledge, skills, preferences and interests (...) from parents to children has been conceptualized by Bourdieu as cultural capital. In more general terms, this is called parental cultural transmission, a process by which information is passed from individual to individual via social learning mechanisms, which means that the way parents educate their children has a large effect on their children’s preferences and beliefs, on how their children will choose to behave as adults in society. But not all cultural traits are equally likely to be preserved and passed from parents to children, for which reason intergenerational cultural transmission is considered a fundamental component of cultural evolution. In addition to the literature review regarding the effects of gendered intergenerational cultural transmission on educational preferences and career choices, this article also presents an analysis regarding the intergenerational transmission of educational values and occupational preferences among the Romanian population, based on several survey data sources. This paper is supported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development, financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number SOP HRD/159/1.5/S/136077. (shrink)

This paper explores the social and emotional consequences of three major assumptions about human action underpinning breastfeeding promotion campaigns in the UK. Drawing on Joas's critique of instrumental accounts of rational action, the paper illustrates the ways in which these campaigns firstly contribute to the moralisation of motherhood; secondly value highly individualised, de-contextualised forms of action; and thirdly promote an objectified view of the human body as a pliable instrument of human intentions. The consequences of these assumptions, as they shape (...) the efforts of mothers to care for their babies and young children in complex, unpredictable and often uncontrollable situations, provides the focus of discussion. The paper concludes that a target-driven health-promotion policy, relying on a mechanistic account of social and emotional life, is contributing to the burden of early motherhood in ways that are not conducive to infant and maternal health and attachment. (shrink)

Most self-reports of heroic action in both reactive and social (proactive) cases describe the experience as involving a kind of necessity. This seems intuitively sound, but it makes it unclear why heroism is accorded strong approbation. To resolve this, I show that the necessity involved in heroism is a nonselfsacrificial practical necessity. (1) Approaching the intentional structure of human action from the perspective of embodiment, focusing especially on the predispositionality of pre-reflective skill, I develop a phenomenological interpretation of Bernard Williams’ (...) notion of “practical necessity” as an endogenous existential necessity. (2) I then offer a view of reactive heroism as instantiating this kind of necessity by literally embodying certain socially affirmed values in a way that is not self-sacrificial. This evinces a deep social bond, and it is this bond, rather than the action itself, is the ground of approbation. (3) I then discuss how this construal of reactive heroism can be extended to cases of social heroism by way of a necessity that is internal to the agent’s individual character. Similarly to reactive cases, a social hero literally embodies a certain ethical commitment such that her actions are likewise instances of nonselfsacrificial practical necessity. (4) I then discuss how the commitment perceived in cases of social heroism pertains to the actualization of “surplus validity,” such that whereas the reactive hero is praised for embodying shared value, the social hero is praised for embodying a commitment to actualizing the concrete potential of such value more fully The approbation accorded to social heroism is therefore tied inextricably to a normative judgment concerning such immanent progressive transformation. (shrink)

Drawing on Connell's notion of gender projects, the authors assess the degree to which contemporary evangelical ideals of men's headship challenge, as well as reinforce, a hegemonic masculinity. Based on 265 in-depth interviews in 23 states across the country, they find that rather than espousing a traditional gender hierarchy in which women are simply subordinate to men, the majority of contemporary evangelicals hold to symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism. Symbolic male headship provides an ideological tool with which individual evangelicals may (...) maintain a sense of distinctiveness from the broader culture of which they are a part. At the same time, symbolic headship blunts some of the harsher effects of living in a materially rich, but time poor, culture, by defusing an area of potential conflict, creating a safe space within which men can negotiate, and strengthening men's material and emotional ties to their families. (shrink)

Commentators are in general agreement that Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and practice is too deterministic, but they have failed to provide a workable template for revisions. Here the French novelist Marcel Proust is proposed as a phenomenological corrective. There are strong family resemblances between his approach to social life and that of Bourdieu. In Remembrance of Things Past, however, Proust offers an understanding of action that is more sensitive to contingency, self-reflexivity, change, desire and the layering of the self. (...) Attention to this will pay dividends for those seeking to creatively reconstruct Bourdieu’s project. (shrink)

We advance understandings of knowledge transfer by showing the central role of symbolic action, taking the form of ritual, in contexts characterized by worldview differences. Using qualitative data from interactions between farming communities in rural Ghana and agriculture development specialists, we examine how rituals do relational work that enables informational work. We find that rituals (i.e., visits, value affirmations, gift-giving, prayer, performing, storytelling) do so by means of their functions–bracketing worldview differences, modeling collaboration between farmers and agriculture development specialists, and (...) packaging new knowledge in displays of compatibility. Our work also expands scholarship on the role of rituals in organizations and on management practices in Africa. Overall, our paper offers a complex, comprehensive view of knowledge transfer as involving both relational and informational work and relying on both symbolic action and tangible elements. (shrink)

This study brings together socio-theoretical and ethnographic approaches to psychiatry, demonstrating the role of the clinic as a major consolidator of ideologies as well as the site where personal miseries are registered as markers of social failure. It focuses on innovation in psychiatric taxonomies, changes in the figurative language of the emotions, changes in conceptualizations of the self and how all of these relate to changing socio-economic events and circumstances.

This study brings together socio-theoretical and ethnographic approaches to psychiatry, demonstrating the role of the clinic as a major consolidator of ideologies as well as the site where personal miseries are registered as markers of social failure. It focuses on innovation in psychiatric taxonomies, changes in the figurative language of the emotions, changes in conceptualizations of the self and how all of these relate to changing socio-economic events and circumstances.

A growing interest in affect holds much promise for anthropology by providing a new frame to examine and articulate subjective and intersubjective states, which are key parts of human consciousness and behavior. Affect has its roots in the social, an observation that did not go unnoticed by Durkheim and since then has been kept in view by those social scientists interested in the emotions, feelings, and subjectivity. However, the challenge for ethnographers has always been to articulate in words and conceptualize (...) theoretically what is only felt and sensed. What we are calling “evocative ethnography” is an ethnography that meets this challenge to make room for, and hold onto, feelings and affect in its description and explanation. The papers in this special issue accomplish that, as well as provide some anthropological insights into affect theory. (shrink)

This essay examines the concept of sovereign debt in both political‐economic and theological registers. Elaborating the dynamics of monetary economy, I demonstrate how postures of indebtedness characterize the relationship between sovereign power and the governed. While taxation signals the debt of obedience and fealty owed to sovereignty, the monetary circuit reveals that sovereign power exists in a state of indebtedness to the governed. The morally valenced proximity between debt and guilt helps to perpetuate such relations. Tracing these resonances and resemblances (...) in the theological realm, I consider the centrality of debt as a structuring principle in key soteriological traditions within Christian thought. Not only does God appear to uphold debt logic, but God, I claim, becomes identified with debt and marked as a debtor. The divine sovereign as debtor and as enforcing debt provides cues for earthly sovereigns and legitimates cultures of debt. In light of the theopolitical legacy in the West, the mutual influence between theology and the political realm, refiguring this set of influential theological concepts may prove helpful in decentering debt as a governing principle in modern life. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of how the scientific discourse of genetics is expressed in local idioms. The examples used are taken from fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka and relate principally to Sinhala Buddhist attempts to socialise `big science.' The paper explores idioms of both nature and nurture in local imagery and narratives and draws attention to the rhetorical dimensions of genetic discourses when used in context. The article concludes with a preliminary attempt to identify the ways in which explanations (...) of genetic causality are aligned with notions of karma in the explanation of illness and misfortune. (shrink)

This article offers a critical discourse analysis of the Israeli television series In Treatment. The series unfolds the therapy sessions of a 40-year-old single female attorney with her therapist. The main objective of the study was to identify the scripted tactics or narrative strategies that establish and maintain singlehood. The findings indicate that the therapeutic discourse plays a central role in the construction and interpretation of single women’s subjectivities, prompting a narrative that encourages the ‘discarding’ of singlehood as well as (...) therapeutic work slanted towards a more familial and maternally oriented subjectivity. This narrative unfolds through two dominant scripted tactics: the symbolic annihilation of singlehood and the construction of feminine identity hierarchies. Moreover, it is also prompted by the discursive alliance between the therapeutic discourse and the postfeminist discourse. Consequently, long-term singlehood is portrayed as an unnatural and pathological life script characterized by its lack and deficiency. Furthermore, as opposed to childless singlehood, single motherhood by choice emerges as a preferred and desirable life option. The category of single motherhood is endowed with new forms of legitimacy, reinforcing new-old patriarchal and postfeminist conceptions of women’s reproductive potential and what is considered to be women’s primary life purpose. (shrink)

What is special about all our living exchanges with our surroundings is that they occur within the ceaseless, intertwined flow of many unfolding strands of spontaneously responsive, living activity. This requires us to adopt a kind of fluid, process thinking, a shift from thinking of events as occurring between things and beings existing as separate entities prior to their inter-action, to events occurring within a continuously unfolding, holistic but stranded flow of events, with no clear, already existing boundaries to be (...) found anywhere (Mol & Law, 1994)—a flow of events within which we ourselves are also immersed. We thus become involved in activities within which we find things happening to us, as much as we make things happen in our surroundings—in other words, our surroundings are also agentive in that they can exert “calls” upon us to respond within them in appropriate ways. Consequently, what we can learn in such encounters is not just new facts or bits of information, but new ways of relating or orienting ourselves bodily to the others and othernesses in the world around us—although much can “stand in the way” of our doing this. My concern below is to explore events happening on the (inter)-subjective side of the Cartesian subject/object divide which “shape” our spontaneous ways of acting in, and reflecting on, the “worlds” within which we live out our lives. (shrink)

A variety of approaches have appeared in academic literature and in design practice representing “ethics-first” methods. These approaches typically focus on clarifying the normative dimensions of design, or outlining strategies for explicitly incorporating values into design. While this body of literature has developed considerably over the last 20 years, two themes central to the endeavour of ethics and values in design (E + VID) have yet to be systematically discussed in relation to each other: (a) designer agency, and (b) the (...) strength of normative claims informing the design process. To address this gap, we undertook a structured review of leading E + VID approaches and critiques, and classified them according to their positions on normative strength, and views regarding designer agency. We identified 18 distinct approaches and 13 critiques that met the inclusion criteria for our review. Included papers were distributed across the spectrum of views regarding normative strength, and we found that no approaches and only one critique represented a view characteristic of “low” designer agency. We suggest that the absence of “low” designer agency approaches results in the neglect of crucial influences on design as targets of intervention by designers. We conclude with suggestions for future research that might illuminate strategies to achieve ethical design in information mature societies, and argue that without attending to the tensions raised by balancing normatively “strong” visions of the future with limitations imposed on designer agency in corporate-driven design settings, “meaningful” ethical design will continue to encounter challenges in practice. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate how morality, landscape and environmental pratice are related as played out in a dialogue between farmers and the planning apparatus. Differing views on landscape and nature reveal differing but ever present moral messages inscribed in the land. It is argued that constructions of past, present and future time produce moral messages about landscape and nature. The Jaeren district on the south-western coast of Norway serves as the empirical base for this paper.

This article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term “algorithm.” Where some have suggested that critical scholars should align their use of the term with its common definition in professional computer science, I argue that we should instead approach algorithms as “multiples”—unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them, including the practices of “outsider” researchers. This approach builds on the work of Laura Devendorf, Elizabeth Goodman, (...) and Annemarie Mol. Different ways of enacting algorithms foreground certain issues while occluding others: computer scientists enact algorithms as conceptual objects indifferent to implementation details, while calls for accountability enact algorithms as closed boxes to be opened. I propose that critical researchers might seek to enact algorithms ethnographically, seeing them as heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems, rather than rigidly constrained and procedural formulas. To do so, I suggest thinking of algorithms not “in” culture, as the event occasioning this essay was titled, but “as” culture: part of broad patterns of meaning and practice that can be engaged with empirically. I offer a set of practical tactics for the ethnographic enactment of algorithmic systems, which do not depend on pinning down a singular “algorithm” or achieving “access,” but which rather work from the partial and mobile position of an outsider. (shrink)

What should sociologists make of nature? Pragmatism provides one possible answer to this question by centering the practical relations between humans and nonhuman nature. Stefan Bargheer’s Moral Entanglements offers perhaps the most ambitious effort to develop a pragmatist sociology of nature. The book’s polemical aim is to depose a family of theories that, Bargheer argues, dominate our way of thinking about the relationship between nature and culture. This essay constructs an alternative, more accommodating critical encounter between competing theories. It begins (...) by simultaneously granting Bargheer’s positive theoretical contributions while entertaining several virtues of opposing theories of nature and culture that the book largely overlooks. The results include three challenges for a pragmatist sociology of nature: the problem of depth; the problem of breadth, and the problem of differentiation. I argue that this accommodating critical encounter may result in a smaller distance between pragmatism and other sociological theories of nature and culture, and opens to more opportunities for synthetic conversations, rather than pointing to unbridgeable chasms. (shrink)

This article outlines a culture-analytical alternative in, and to, decision science. In contrast to the predominant individualistic and mentalistic conceptions of decision making an empirical and praxeological perspective is proposed. Beginning with empirical processes and situated practices of decision-making, this perspective aims to decenter the decision-making subject. The author revisits Harold Garfinkel’s analyses of actual decision-making behavior amongst jurors in court proceedings and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on rule-following to develop this critical perspective on decision-making necessities in contemporary culture and everyday (...) life. (shrink)

The concept of “site” is at the center of current debates in theories of social practices as well as in cultural anthropology. It is unclear, however, how to assess the associated methodological assumption that overriding social structures or cultural formations can manifest themselves in sites. The article draws on the conception of social practices and introduces the notion of “publicness” in order to explicate how and why sociality and social structures can be accessed through “siting”. Sites as well as social (...) practices, it is claimed, have to be conceptualized as essentially public and thus principally observable phenomena. This assumption of publicness implicit to both site ontology and theories of social practices is unfolded on the basis of a praxeological reformulation of the paradigm of joint attention elaborated in developmental psychology. To avoid presentist misinterpretations, we then conceptualize sociality as chains of practices across time and space, drawing on the works of Theodore Schatzki, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Anthony Giddens and Bruno Latour. The public carriers of practices (artifacts, symbols, media, bodies) and the translocal structures they establish acquire particular significance in these approaches. In a further step, we present some methodological consequences of the “publicness assumption” and support our arguments by referring to Pierre Bourdieu's study on Distinction. (shrink)

This article criticizes Bourdieu's and Giddens's overintellectualizing accounts of human activity on the basis of Wittgenstein's insights into practical under standing. Part 1 describes these two theorists' conceptions of a homology between the organization of practices (spatial-temporal manifolds of action) and the governance of individual actions. Part 2 draws on Wittgenstein's discussions of linguistic definition and following a rule to criticize these conceptions for ascribing content to the practical understanding they claim governs action. Part 3 then suggests an alternative, Wittgensteinian (...) account of the homology between practices and actions that avoids this pitfall. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice is an unsung classic of contemporary social philosophy. It combines the first analysis by a social theorist of the practical intelligibility governing action with an exciting perspective on how the structure of social phenomena determines and is itself perpetuated by action. Bourdieu, however, misinterprets his own theory of intelligibility as a theory of the causal generation of action. Moreover, he attempts to analyze the underlying structure of intelligibility with a set of fundamental oppositions that at (...) the same time structure the social phenomena found in the worlds through which people live. It is argued that practical intelligibility has no underlying structure, that the fundamental oppositions apply at best to traditional societies alone, and that these oppositions do not even structure intelligibility in such societies but, instead, are only a descriptive scheme with which a social scientist can reconstruct social phenomena in them. The outline of a more adequate account of practical intelligibility is also presented. (shrink)

The coexistence of radically resistant body theology and unrestricted demands for submission in Rom. 12 and 13 presents a unique and unsettling dilemma for feminist and postcolonial exegetes and theorists. With a critical discussion of postcolonial hybridity theory and a turn towards – and back to – performativity this paper pushes the deviant metaphoricity in Rom. 12 from a shadowy existence to the centre stage and thereby redevelops Pauline concepts of perpetual bodily transformations as a challenge to reified body ideologies. (...) We demonstrate how the marginalized, subjugated and colonized body experience of St. Paul becomes a resource for opening, materialized and pervasive stimuli that go beyond essentializing identitarian and excluding body configurations. (shrink)