En este artículo realizaremos una lectura crítica de la teoría de la dominación propuesta por Bourdieu en el capítulo octavo de El sentido práctico, titulado “Los modos de dominación”. Allí se distinguen con claridad dos modos de dominación: la violencia abierta y la violencia simbólica, aseguradas en su reproducción por el pasaje de las relaciones interpersonales en “la sociedad tradicional” a la institucionalización vía mecanismos objetivos en la sociedad capitalista. En ese sentido, mostraremos continuidades y diferencias relativas a la versión (...) inicial de esta teoría presente en La reproducción, y, luego, propondremos una revisión crítica de esta teoría y de la distinción, tan clásica como problemática, entre objetividad y subjetividad con el propósito de contribuir al desarrollo de una fenomenología social de la dominación con fundamento en la obra de Bourdieu. (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)

In the sociology of sexuality, sexual conduct has received extensive theoretical attention, while sexual desire has been left either unattended, or, analyzed through a scripting model ill-suited to the task. In this article, I seek to address two related aspects of the problem of desire for sociology—what might roughly be referred to as a micro-level and a macro-level conceptual hurdle, respectively. At the micro-level, the sociology of sexuality continues to reject or more commonly gloss the role of psychodynamic processes and (...) structures in favor of an insulated analysis of interactions and institutions. At the macro-level, the sociology of sexuality has yet to provide an analysis of the structural antecedents of sexual ideation. Scripting theory, grounded in a social learning framework, cannot provide a proper conceptual resolution to these problems but, rather, reproduces them. By contrast, I argue that an effective sociological treatment of desire must incorporate a more penetrating conception of the somatization of social relations found in Bourdieu’s notion of ‘embodiment’ and his corresponding analysis of habitus. In this vein, I develop the sensitizing concepts erotic habitus and erotic work, and apply these to a cross-section of feminist and sociological literatures on desire. I argue that a framework grounded in embodiment, but complimented by scripting theory, provides a promising lead in the direction of an effective sociology of desire. (shrink)

The Islamist movement in Turkey bases its mobilization strategy on transforming everyday practices. Public challenges against the state do not form a central part of its repertoire. New Social Movement theory provides some tools for analyzing such an unconventional strategic choice. However, as Islamist mobilization also seeks to reshape the state in the long run, New Social Movement theory (with its focus on culture and society and its relative neglect of the state) needs to be complemented by more institutional analyses. (...) A hegemonic account of mobilization, which incorporates tools from theories of everyday life and identity-formation, as well as from state-centered approaches, is offered as a way to grasp the complexity of Islamism. (shrink)

Here we attempt to define a specifically human ecology within which male reproductive strategies are formulated. By treating the domestic and public spheres of social life as "ecological niches" that men have been forced to compete within or to avoid as best they can, we generate a typology of four "social modes" of human male behavior. We then attempt to explain the broad distribution of social modes within and between human groups based on the relative intensity of scramble and contest (...) competition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A review of two of the strands of cultural studies that Mark Fenster contends are superior to Murray Edelman’s analysis of mass public opinion—Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and Bourdieu’s sociology—and a more general look at work in the field of cultural studies suggests that all of these alternatives suffer from severe theoretical and methodological limitations. Future studies of culture and politics need to pose questions similar to the ones that preoccupied Edelman, but they must move beyond the political and (...) interpretive biases that have dominated cultural studies (some of which Edelman shared), as well as the questionable view of “ideology” as a matter of elite domination of the masses, rather than as a mediating, constitutive force in the process of individual opinion formation. (shrink)

Upland Japan suffers from extreme depopulation, aging, and loss of agricultural, economic, and social viability. In addition, the absence of a successor generation in many marginalized hamlets endangers the continuation of local knowledge associated with upland agricultural livelihoods and severely limits the prospects of rural revitalization and development. Resettlement by incomer organic farmers represents an opportunity to both pass on valuable local knowledge and rejuvenate local society. Survey and interview data are used to explore the knowledge dynamics at play in (...) upland Japan between local and incomer organic farmers. Using a “knowledge culture” framework, socio-cultural and symbolic barriers and spatial conditions limiting local knowledge exchange are identified and analyzed. Despite a number of reasons to suggest affinity and natural alignment toward knowledge sharing, each group’s ideas of “legitimate knowledge” and acceptable behavior have contested the field of communication and confused the negotiation process. Building on previous studies of farmer’s knowledge networks, examples in this study suggest that negotiation between knowledge cultures can be facilitated by both active means and intrinsic factors, and be derailed because of physical and temporal symbolic references. The degree to which locals and incomers collaborate and identify with each other as stakeholders with a common future may determine the extent to which local knowledge, especially local knowledge from past agricultural regimes, can play a role within upland endogenous development. (shrink)

The relationship betweendiscourse and ideology can be described as thatof process and effect [Purvis and Hunt (1993)British Journal of Sociology 44: 473–499].Discourse, used within relations of domination,can result in the formation of ideology. Tostudy this relationship systematically requiresa methodology that contextualizes discoursewithin social relations and examines when suchdiscourse becomes an ideology. I use Thompson'stheory/methodology of ``depth hermeneutics'' tostudy documents produced by agriculturalinterest groups concerning the 1996 FederalAgriculture Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Actand I assess the ideological status of thediscourses contained in (...) these documents. Thefindings suggest that the organizationsrepresenting the small-to-medium-sized farmerstended to use more agrarian themes, fewermarket themes, and fewer linguistic strategiesindicative of ideology. The organizationsrepresenting more concentrated,vertically-integrated interests andagribusinesses use fewer agrarian themes, moremarket themes, and more linguistic strategies.Therefore, market themes, not agrarian themes,form an ideology in this context. (shrink)

Despite the entrenched acceptance of normal science in health care, it appears that authoritative, positivist, linear, risk averse, certainty-based thinking can only get us so far along the route of optimum health. This paper examines labor and childbirth as a paradigm case of a complex adaptive system (CAS) and offers the example of techniques used in a master-level course on normal childbirth to illustrate how maternity care clinicians can be introduced to complexity-based thinking through reflexive analysis of real life clinical (...) narratives. It suggests that these techniques might be used as a basis for answering the question, what is likely to work for this person, in this situation, given the range of evidence, and given their values and beliefs, my values and beliefs, and my clinical skills and knowledge? Topics discussed in this paper include complexity, pregnancy, and childbirth; mainstreaming complexity-focused decision making in maternity care; and using story in practice. In conclusion, complexity theory appears to offer a good explanatory model for pregnancy and childbirth, both in general, and for specific individuals. Future work in this area should examine the efficacy and limits to formal story telling in maternity care, with the aim of increasing optimal maternity care for mothers and babies, and for the staff and organizations that deliver the care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

An archive is an integral part of literate and social life and is in the custody of political institutions for their historical value. It is argued that societies who lack the faculty of recording histories contribute to the archive-making process in a different context. To advance this, the work of anthropologists on the Igorots, more specifically the Kalingas, of the Philippine Cordilleras, and their tattooing practices are considered for heuristic purposes. It is in these societies, where the concept of the (...) Western archive is absent, that the body becomes a repository of significant life events and rituals concretized by tattoos. Tattooing becomes a form of memory on how bodies remember and create narratives and counter-narratives. To serve as a provocation for further research, Derrida’s two-fold understanding of the archive is utilized. The archive, on the one hand, as a commencement that evokes the writing of the archive and, on the other hand, the understanding of the tattoos as disjointed and incomplete, allows us to understand tattoos as a trace. (shrink)

The American tradition of action theory failed to produce a useful theory of the possible existence of trans-individual consistencies in sexual desirability. Instead, most sociological theorists have relied on market metaphors to account for the logic of sexual action. Through a critical survey of sociological attempts to explain the social organization of sexual desiring, this article demonstrates that the market approach is inadequate, and that its inadequacies can be remedied by studying sexual action as occurring within a specifically sexual field (...) , with a correlative sexual capital. Such a conception allows for historical and comparative analysis of changes in the organization of sexual action that are impeded by the use of a market metaphor, and also points to difficulties in Bourdieu's own treatment of the body qua body. (shrink)

In this paper, I will attempt to show how in its reinforcement of relations of subordination, Hegel's conception of the Ethical reveals structural parallels with Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony. First, I will analyze Gramsci's notion of hegemony. In his notebooks written in prison between 1929 and 1935, Gramsci employs the term 'hegemony' to focus attention on the determinate role of socio-cultural formations in sustaining relations of domination. In his eyes, a group maintains its supremacy not simply through the direct (...) domination of the coercive state apparatus but also through the organized consent of the governed in civil society. The dominant group thus needs to resort to legal constraint only as a last line of defense, when in times of a crisis of authority the effective self-identification of the governed with the hegemonic formations breaks down. Second, I will attempt to highlight how in Hegel's Philosophy of Right , ethical mediating institutions in civil society, including education, public authorities, and corporations, function in a way similar to Gramsci's notion of hegemony by creating what Hegel himself terms 'a fundamental sense of order' rooted in the 'habit of the Ethical' that promises to organize the more 'spontaneous', 'unhesitating' consent of the collective. Through the formation of this fundamental ethical sense of order, Hegel believes that coercive law may be rendered increasingly 'superfluous'; that is, precisely the role Gramsci sees 'ethical-political hegemony' play in the transition from the 'nightwatchman' to the 'ethical' state. Yet in contrast to Hegel's normative claims, I will try to show how at the level of civil society these ethical mediating institutions in fact fall short of their intended goal. Rather than 'reconcile' individual interest with public utility, they serve to strengthen asymmetrical distributions of power that inhibit the resolution of social conflicts in a mutually beneficial manner. Hegel's conception of the Ethical therefore functions here in a way similar to hegemony to the extent that it molds a sense of order that solidifies relations of subordination. (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)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (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)

The ultramodern condition represents the "third wave" in postmodernist-inspired philosophy and cultural practice. Two of ultramodernism's critical theoretical components are the human/social forces, flows, and assemblages that sustain transgression; and the human/social intensities, fluctuations, and thresholds that make transcendence possible as both will and way. In the ultramodern age, then, transcendence is about overcoming and transforming the conditions (i.e., forces, flows, and assemblages) that co-produce harm-generating (i.e., transgressive) tendencies. This manuscript problematizes transgression by way of ultramodern theory. This critical investigation (...) represents "the phenomenology of the shadow," or the ultramodern philosophy of harm. To contextualize this phenomenology and philosophy, the intellectual history of ultramodern thought is recounted. This includes a review of the shadow construct by way of its prominent socio-cultural, psychoanalytic, and political-economic currents; and a chronicling of the reification process (regarding risk, captivity, and harm) since the modernist era (i.e., the industrial revolution). The article concludes with some very speculative observations concerning "the phenomenology of the stranger," or the ultramodern philosophy of transcendence as both will and way. (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)

We argue that critiques of political process theory are beginning to coalesce into new approach to social movements--a "multi-institutional politics" approach. While the political process model assumes that domination is organized by and around one source of power, the alternative perspective views domination as organized around multiple sources of power, each of which is simultaneously material and symbolic. We examine the conceptions of social movements, politics, actors, goals, and strategies supported by each model, demonstrating that the view of society and (...) power underlying the political process model is too narrow to encompass the diversity of contemporary change efforts. Through empirical examples, we demonstrate that the alternative approach provides powerful analytical tools for the analysis of a wide variety of contemporary change efforts. (shrink)

This paper delineates a postmodern discourse analysis that is positioned within a semiotic theory of language. This theory of language foregrounds the performative aspects of language usage and provides the theoretical space from which to theorize the interrelationship between social organizations or structure and social agents or individuals. Our version of discourse analysis contends that social structure is enacted (production and reproduction) through the employment of various vocabularies: social structure is not something outside of, behind, or underneath these performances, and (...) we argue that social organization is not produced by external structures operating upon or causing people to adopt certain behaviours. Rather, social structure is an effect of taking up practices and reproducing and modifying them. From this perspective, individuals are constituted by being recruited into and reproducing discursive practices. Hence, by looking at the actual employment of language – its tactical, practice dimensions – one can avoid the usual binary of seeing the person as either the autonomous origin of his or her experience or the ideological pawn of social determination. This methodology calls into question how the narratives or stories that individuals recount are imbricated within relational plays of power, and concomitantly, how subjects reauthorize their own positions. We assert that the methodological challenges of research addressing social injustice cannot be reduced to either: (i) interpersonal relationships between researcher and participants, or (ii) relegated to ‘social structures’ acting upon or outside of individuals. (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)

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)

Although Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training is common in the sciences, the effectiveness of RCR training is open to question. Three key factors appear to be particularly important in ensuring the effectiveness of ethics education programs: (1) educational efforts should be tied to day-to-day practices in the field, (2) educational efforts should provide strategies for working through the ethical problems people are likely to encounter in day-to-day practice, and (3) educational efforts should be embedded in a broader program of (...) on-going career development efforts. This article discusses a complex qualitative approach to RCR training development, based on a sensemaking model, which strives to address the afore-mentioned training concerns. Ethnographic observations and prior RCR training served the purpose of collecting information specific to a multi-disciplinary and multi-university research center with the goal of identifying metacognitive reasoning strategies that would facilitate ethical decision-making. The extensive qualitative analyses resulted in the identification of nine metacognitive reasoning strategies on which future RCR training will be developed. The implications of the findings for RCR training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Lizardo argues that The Social Theory of Practices is refuted by the discovery of mirror neurons. The book argues that the kind of sameness of tacit mental content assumed by practice theorists such as Bourdieu is fictional, because there is no actual process by which the same mental content can be transmitted. Mirror neurons, Lizardo claims, provide such a mechanism, as they imply that bodily automatisms, which can be understood as the basis of habitus and concepts, can be shared and (...) copied from one person to another. This response to Lizardo points out that the Gallese arguments on which Lizardo relies relate to phylogenetic and universal body movements, not to the learned movements characteristic of practices, and that there is no sameness producing mechanism parallel to the genetic one. (shrink)

In recent years a number of writers have defended and attacked various features of structural, or neo-realist theories of international politics. Few, however, have quarrelled with one of the most foundational features of neorealist theory: its assumptions about the nature of science and scientific theories. In this essay I assess the views of science underlying much neorealist theory, especially as they are articulated in the work of Kenneth Waltz. I argue not only that neorealist theories rest on assumptions about science (...) and theory that have been questioned by postpositivist philosophers and historians of science, but also that the failure to consider the work of these writers yields theories of international politics that are deficient in several respects: they are weak theories in the sense that they cannot illuminate crucial features of international politics, they presuppose and sustain a narrow view of power and power relations, they reify practices and relations in the international arena and they offer little promise of producing the sort of Copernican Revolution for which Waltz called (or, more modestly, even a minimally satisfactory theory of international politics). In light of these shortcomings, I sketch an alternative approach to the study of international affairs, one that has been termed prototype studies. I contend that such an approach provides scholars with a rigorous way of studying international politics, without being a theoretical science. (shrink)

Schools are interesting as complex organizations in and of themselves but even more so for how they refract the societal dynamics by which inequality is reproduced, an enduringly vexing question (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012:3). Educational attainment is core to socioeconomic status and connected to outcomes in housing, health, and employment. Unequal schools in fields characterized by stratification are often the subject of reform attempts (Tyack, 1974). We examine how a wealthier and a poorer school responded to a state-level regulatory mandate (...) for change, in the U.S. context of schools as putative engines of opportunity. Bourdieu’s “master concepts” of field, habitus, and cultural capital (Swartz, 2008) are often applied, and we used them to answer frequent but still relatively unanswered calls in the literature: first, to use the master concepts together rather than singularly, and second, to attend specifically to the organization level and what it refracts (Dobbin, 2008; Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008; Hallett & Gougherty, 2018; Lounsbury & Ventresca, 2003; Mohr, 2013). For this integrative and organizational level approach, we derived the concept of “class signature,” which enabled us to focus on practices in organizations. This lens revealed “resistant compliance” in the wealthier school and “compliant resistance” in the poorer school, both of which reshaped the stratified field, even if stratification was not rectified. These responses appeared to reproduce inequality, not simplistically, we argue, but along a winding path fraught with practical experiments, protection against penalties, redefinition of the reform’s terms, and some small gains to remedy intra-organizational inequalities. (shrink)

Background and aims Research into the social aspects of set and setting have demonstrated that race is a significant factor in psychedelic experiences for racially marginalized populations. Yet, many studies of psychedelic-induced experiences continue to proceed without collecting data on or considering the influence of race or other social categories. These approaches abstract subjectivity from its embodied and historical conditions, isolating consciousness in ways that do not accord with lived experience. -/- Methods This article draws on critical phenomenology, anthropology, and (...) treatments of race in the field of psychedelic studies to outline how social categories mediate subjective experience in historically specific ways through the framework of embodiment. -/- Results I argue that consciousness is fundamentally intersubjective, including during psychedelic-induced experiences. Intersubjectivity is an existential condition that makes possible meaning, communication, and socialization, processes which rely on and are perpetually (re)enacted through social categories. Therefore, studies of psychedelic-induced experiences must account for the foundational role that social categories play in constituting such embodied experiences and their effects. -/- Conclusions This approach makes embodied differences matter to the study of psychedelic-induced experiences, opening new avenues of inquiry that foreground identity, power, and context in both clinical and naturalistic research. (shrink)

This article describes the conditions under which it is possible for neoliberalism to render itself invisible to the economic field that created it, allowing that field to define the discourse as a paranoid construction of the left. In addressing the issue, the text aims to extend the reach of Bourdieu’s field theory by infusing it with aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis. This construction facilitates the use of the example of neoliberal economics to suggest wider principles of field functionality. It is suggested (...) that the main purpose of any field is not the generation of new knowledge but the preservation of its doxa, which is protected by a series of self-legitimation strategies. In the example of neoliberal economics, the strength of these systems has allowed that field to close its eyes to the catastrophic failure of its knowledge. (shrink)

Although this study inspects context in general, it is even intended as a prerequisite for a meta-study of contextual time&space in zoo-communication. Moving the scope from linguistics to culture, communication, and semiotics may reveal new similarities between context-perceptions. Paradigmatic historical moves and critical context theories are inspected, asking whether there is a least-common-multiple for perceptions of context. The short answer is that context is relational – a bi-product of attention from a position, creating a focused object, and hence an obscured (...) (back-)ground – the attention’s context. A more comprehensive one is that when the focused phenomenon is culture, semiotics, or communication, context becomes embodied. This recognition triggers new questions: What is the relation between embodied, immanent context and this perception’s external, physical context (its surroundings)? If utterances are regarded as constituted by the triad form-content-act and the dyadic chronotope time&space, what and where is then context? Which challenges will empirical (zoo-)communicational research face if context is split in internal and external versions of context? These questions raise some epistemological and methodological issues. These are discussed based on a framework that regards communication as a micro-macro interplay between utterance and genre. Genres are kinds of communication. More specifically animal genres related to their basic life-functions are called life-genres. A conclusion is that life-genres function as both mental and situational contexts. This complicates empirical research on communication in general, and zoo-communication in particular. The paper concludes that contexts’ relational and embodied nature and the ‘situational’ characteristics of life-genres challenge researchers to validate continuously, shifting between contextualising, decontextualising, and recontextualising. (shrink)

This chapter explores the personal and professional obstacles faced by Humanities and Social Science scholars contemplating pre-publication of their scholarly work in an on-line network. Borrowing a theoretical framework from the radical educational theorist Ivan Illich, it also develops the idea that pre-publication networks offer higher education a bottom-up, decentralized alternative to business-modeled e-learning. If learners would only embrace this more anarchical medium, appreciating writing for pre-publication as a process of open-ended discovery rather than product delivery, then the prospect of (...) deinstitutionalizing e-learning could become an exciting new reality. The chapter’s methodology is a combination of normative-theoretical analysis and small sample (n=2) case study based on the author’s personal and professional experiences. While the generalizability (or external validity) of the conclusions is limited, the author hopes to motivate further inquiry into the connection between on-line pre-publication and e-learning. (shrink)

Sociologists of education often emphasize goods that result from a practice (external goods) rather than goods intrinsic to a practice (internal goods). The authors draw from John Dewey and Alasdair MacIntyre to describe how the same practice can be understood as producing “skills” that center external goods or as producing habits (Dewey) or virtues (MacIntyre), both of which center internal goods. The authors situate these concepts within sociology of education’s stratification paradigm and a renewed interest in the concept of alienation, (...) contrasting the concepts of skills, habits, and virtues to capital, credentials, and habitus. They close by connecting the argument to broader critiques of procedural liberalism and the ideology of meritocracy, then giving suggestions for an expanded sociology of education beyond the stratification paradigm. (shrink)

Interventions for problematic alcohol use typically focus on clients as individuals even when these clients continue interacting with their social networks. This paper reports a study about young w...

This thesis develops methods for representing how the contents of theories of meaning become conceived by their users. These contents are treated as the range of systematically elicited conceptions afforded by a designated corpus of key texts. The approach being taken involves first detailing a formal scheme for the components of situations attributed to various entities. This scheme is then applied as a framing device to form a template which accounts for the shared structure between the mental spaces which embody (...) how people conceive different theories of meaning. For the purposes of this task, cognition is treated as embodied in the sense that both the form and content of personal conceptualisations are largely dependent on what both bodily and ecological factors afford. The purpose of this approach is to help understand how theories operate when viewed as worldly entities within a materialist framework. The significance of such understanding lies in enabling analyses and comparisons which account for the effects of material restrictions such as how a theory’s presentation must necessarily be selective and how human cognition operates on models set by precedent. The framework being provided here allows the conceptions each individual theory of meaning elicits to be reduced to formal, commensurate models which account for differences between typical influences on the conceptions characteristic of different demographics such as experts of related fields. Approaching theories of meaning from this angle also reveals new avenues of comparison concerning otherwise implicit details. One involves theory-internal conditions on the full material identity of meaning-instantiating entities. The other concerns the extent of the domains for aggregating applicable influences for which a theory accounts and the range of those it may accommodate. (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 examines new conceptions of gender and sexuality in China, asking how and why they have become so integral to the organization of service work regimes there. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in three urban Chinese retail settings, this article demonstrates how essentialized conceptions of gender and sexuality powerfully communicate class distinctions in service settings through associations with the imagery of China’s shift from socialism to a marketized society. A shift from the socialist “iron rice bowl” to the “rice (...) bowl of youth” infuses youthful, feminine, urban bodies with value while simultaneously devaluing middle-aged and rural women. This article argues that an essentializing discourse of gender legitimates new inequalities in urban China by masking the class distinctions simultaneously produced. (shrink)

Drawing on theories of structure and agency, this article assesses how women in lower-income households in Damascus use existing gender schemas to avoid unattractive employment and improve their access to income and employment. It highlights the overlapping effects of economic policy and gender dependency schemas on both the need for additional income and women's employment opportunities. While providing greater access to resources, women's accommodation to gender dependency schemas also helps to maintain domesticity and dependence on men. Agency for these women (...) draws on and reinforces a collectively gendered sense of self that is central to the process of both obtaining resources and doing gender. (shrink)

The significance of political-economic context for scientific citizenship is argued through an analysis of New Zealand’s Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. My intention is not to provide an account of why the commission came to the decisions it did but to illustrate how the political-economic context and the culture of regulatory science both exacerbate public concerns about unacknowledged uncertainty and commercial influence and make it difficult for those concerns to influence the outcomes of public dialogues. The discursive flexibility of science (...) as alternately predictive and provisional silences concerns about uncertainty, while a further interpretive choice of science as the autonomous activities of individuals unconstrained by political-economic context occludes the nature of concerns about commercial influence. Rather than the increasingly prevalent focus on processes of engagement, I argue that it is essential that researchers in this area attend to how public dialogue is placed in relation to the cultures and structures of regulatory science and neoliberalism. (shrink)

The principal aim of this article is to examine the capacity of existential analytic to suggest alternatives to entrenched dichotomies and dilemmas in practice theory, and more generally, in social theory. In this regard, the doctrine of trans-subjective existentialism is developed. The underlying aim is to inform hermeneutic engagement with social practices’ potentiality-for-being in order to illuminate a possible existential ontology of practices. It is argued that the concept of chronotope should be central in this ontology. Thus, the possibility of (...) hermeneutic realism about social practices becomes open to scrutiny. (shrink)

Why are things different on the other side of national borders and how can this be explained sociologically? Using as its point of departure Dutch cycling culture, a paradigmatic example of non-state-led national similarity, this article explores these questions. The first section introduces Norbert Elias’ concept of ‘national habitus’, using this notion to critique comparative sociology and argue for a more processual approach to national comparison. The second section discusses four processes that have contributed to increasing similarity within nations: growing (...) interdependence within nations; increasing density of networks and institutions; vertical diffusion of styles and standards; and the development of national we-feelings. Together, these processes have contributed to the development of national habitus: increasing similarities within nations and increasing differences between people living in different countries. These processes reached their apex in the second half of the 20th century. The third section explores how these processes have diminished since the 1960s, leading to increasing variations within countries and growing similarities between comparable groups in different countries. Both the rise and decline of national habitus are illustrated by changes in Dutch cycling culture. Particularly important is the breakdown of trickle down as a result of the rise of the egalitarian informal ethos. This analysis poses new challenges for sociologists: first, concerning comparative research; second, concerning the diffusion of styles and standards; and, third, concerning the consequences of the decline of national habitus for social inequality, as evidenced by the growing rift between ‘locals’ and (bike-loving) ‘cosmopolitans’. (shrink)

Postmodernist thinkers have often claimed that there is something like a `modernist' model of theory and metatheory in the social sciences which is objectivistic, dogmatic, and generally over-ambitious, aiming to dominate the theoretical landscape like a modernist skyscraper. This paper suggests that there is little to support such a view, and that most sociologists and social anthropologists, and many other social scientists, have been much more cautious and tentative in their claims than postmodernists have claimed. The alleged distinctiveness of postmodern (...) social science is therefore itself open to question. The paper includes a discussion of reflection and reflexivity in realist philosophy of science and in the social theory of Habermas and Bourdieu. (shrink)

Habitus has been an attractive concept for works examining body-centric practices. This article draws on interviews and 18 months of ethnographic research with high-risk climbers primarily throughout North America. An important guide to this research has been the concept of habitus. However, this article demonstrates that there are limits to habitus being used to address the moment of action. The scope of habitus ranges widely, limiting its capacity to effectively address the experience of the individual. Rather than abandoning the concept, (...) habitus can be extended through a reconceptualization drawing on the use of echoes as a metaphor. Using echoes as an allegorical mode of understanding dispositional acquisition and activation, the embodied echo can more radically and precisely explore the habitus in motion during the intensely body-centric practice of alpine climbing. This is particularly critical when exploring the use of speed as a form of safety in the alpine environment. (shrink)

Loïc Wacquant’s article ‘Homines in Extremis’ outlines five propositions about habitus that support a broader and richer use of Bourdieu’s famous concept. His article was a response to a new edited volume by Sanchez and Spencer under the title Fighting Scholars. In this article, I support Wacquant’s argument, but suggest that he undersells habitus as a topic of and tool for inquiry. I point to previous conversations about habitus and suggest that we may learn more about social phenomena by engaging (...) the relational aspects of habitus and the social aspects of the incorporation of habitus. (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)