Personal branding has become an important concept in management literature in recent years. Yet, with more than 100 scholarly papers published on the concept to date, it has developed into a fragmented area of research with a diversity of definitions and conceptual boundaries. This paper posits that this heterogeneity of extant research impedes theoretical and empirical advancement. To strengthen the foundation for future work, we review the extant literature and offer an integrative model of personal branding. Through our systematic literature (...) review we identify the key attributes of the construct, establish its clarity by comparing it with similar concepts in its nomological network, and suggest the definitions of personal branding and personal brand based on the reviewed literature. Further, we propose a theoretical model of personal branding summarizing the findings from the reviewed papers. The proposed model outlines the trends conducive to personal branding, as well as its drivers, processes, and outcomes. Finally, we discuss ethical implications of personal branding for both scholarly work and practice. In conclusion, we outline a further research agenda for studying personal branding as a critical career and organizational behavior activity in contemporary working environment. (shrink)

Que veut dire « vivre de sa plume»? L'expression a souvent été invoquée par des historiens avançant le récit d'un progrès dans les pratiques littéraires marqué par le passage des écrivains du patronage au marché, afin de définir la « modernité » auctoriale par rapport à un modèle ancien de l'homme de lettres protégé par la noblesse. Or un examen plus attentif montrera que ce progrès vers une autonomie gagnée par la vente des écrits n'est guère aussi évident qu'on a (...) eu tendance à le croire. Cet article étudie donc les ambiguïtés du récit historique implicite dans la notion de « vivre de sa plume ». Il propose ensuite une approche différente qui considère cette représentation non pas comme le reflet d'une nouvelle réalité professionnelle, mais comme un élément dans une nouvelle rhétorique de la présentation de soi en tant qu 'intellectuel. Comme topos, l'image va désigner - et en fait, constituer - à la fois la libération sociale de l'auteur à l'égard de la noblesse et son autorité morale lorsque ses tentatives de vivre de ses écrits échouent et qu'il persiste tout de même à sacrifier son bonheur personnel à son art. (shrink)

As employers, higher education institutions in the UK are now under a statutory obligation to institute and implement equal opportunities policies. Integral to the process of instituting and implementing equal opportunities policies is effective communication of the policies. In this paper I conduct a critical discourse analysis of the staff equal opportunities policies of six UK higher education institutions as they were presented on their websites in October 2004. The aim of the analysis is to map out the policy documents' (...) genres and styles, the types of audiences addressed and anticipated, the representation of social identities, and the inter-textual meanings that are incorporated and presupposed. It is argued that the policy statements draw upon and intersect several genres which do not sit quite comfortably with each other and which create some ambiguities as to their communicative purpose, and that they are organized around performative enunciations of promises and commitments largely oriented towards the future. I will also explore the ways in which the policy statements relay and re-inflect the statutory obligations emanating from governmental legislation, and the tensions and contradictions following from the policy statements' attempts to reconcile the principle of equal opportunities with the ideological construct of meritocracy. And finally, considering the aggregate configuration of the six higher education institutions' policies, I highlight the differential topicalization of equal opportunities ‘areas’ in the policy documents. (shrink)

The idea to utilise cognitive neuroscientific research for educational purposes is known as Mind-Brain Education or Educational Neuroscience. Despite some calls for an uncritical endorsement of such an agenda, a growing number of educational scholars argue that it must remain impossible to translate neurological descriptions into mental or educationally relevant descriptions. This paper takes these well-established arguments further by not only focusing upon these different levels of description but going beyond this issue to assess the theoretical foundations of cognitive science (...) as a functional theory of the mind. With relevance to education it is argued that because of its functional character a cognitive-psychological approach to education suffers from an inherent blind spot regarding the actor’s feelings and motivations. The paper concludes with the claim that, because of this experiential poverty, any cognitive neuroscientific approach must face severe limitations when utilised for educational purposes. (shrink)

In this study of an economic field and its relationships to a cultural field, we apply Pierre Bourdieu’s central concepts of economic capital, cultural capital, symbolic capital and field, and thus follow in a tradition that at the outset was considered to be post-structuralism, but which by Bourdieu later has been brought into the realm of realism. We have mapped relationships between the actors and thus the field structures that these relationships entail. The fields in which a segment of an (...) art world is operating is represented in multi-dimensional figures which illustrate relationships and bonds between the different categories of organizations. Some of the business actors we have studied are engaging in cultural activities with a great deal of autonomy, others are connected to the cultural field in less active ways. In participating in the cultural field they are in different ways and to different extents accumulating symbolic capital including prestige and honor. The method we have applied is multiple correspondence analysis which was frequently used by Bourdieu. (shrink)

Uncertainty is an intriguing aspect of social life. Uncertainty is epistemic, future-oriented, and implies that we can neither predict nor foresee what will happen when acting. In cases in which no institutionalized certainty about future states exists, or can be generated, judgment is needed. This article presents the forms by which uncertainty is reduced as a result of judgments made about different alternatives in a process involving several actors. This type of uncertainty may exist, for example, about which artist is (...) the best, which offer in the market is more valuable, which football team is better than all the rest, or which research proposal will get a grant. The result of different forms of uncertainty reduction is increased certainty concerning alternatives in relation to one another, such as good and bad, rank lists, scores, quality assessment, and “winner and losers.” Based on the result, uncertainty is reduced and action is facilitated. The forms are structural and comprise roles; may be legitimate in a smaller or larger domain; and may exist in all spheres of life, as exemplified in sports competitions, in labor markets, and in the ranking of universities. Three forms of uncertainty reduction based on judgment are identified in this article: (1) decision, made by an authority; (2) valuation, by means of which order arises as a result of actors ascribing values; and (3) contest, by which an order is the result of direct struggle. (shrink)

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the (...) common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands. (shrink)

This exegesis questions and explores the types of identities that are emerging as a result of human engagement with contemporary communications and media technology. These identities are communicated, shaped and defined by the way we appropriate and engage with a smorgasbord of communications and media consumption technologies which merge in our imaginations to form a technosocial mediascape. As artist and teacher, consumer and prosumer, I participate in the technosocial mediascape, along with colleagues, students, artists, friends and family members. As we (...) produce, communicate and ultimately co-create that technosocial environment, how are we changed by this experience? We contribute to a diverse and globally circulating, but paradoxically transient parade of data and media that apparatuses and humans together bring into existence. How does this mediascape impact on human ontology and sociology? What are the different ‘positions’—relationships with the mediascape—that emerge? My method derives from analysis of my own experience as an engaged and flexible ‘position-taker’ within the technosocial mediascape. I analyse my own creative practice with reference to a range of modernist, postmodernist and media theories. The technosocial enshrines the idea that technology and human behaviour are not separable, and draws on many theoretical sources, including phenomenology, the philosophy of language, design theory and digital media theory. All media, and mediums, are technosocial, because they impact on the praxis of identity. However, a range of contemporary media and mediums are more explicitly technosocial, and that is where my focus lies. I will suggest that the role of language in technosocial contexts is peculiar, important and under-theorised. Our ‘linguistic apparatuses’ offer an alternate concept of technology to the ‘heavy modernism’ of Martin Heidegger. I will explore ways in which technosocial engagement privileges fluid identities which drift in and out of different but co-existing realities. Various types of ‘immersion’—some neo-baroque and some neo-romantic—contribute to technosocially-engaged identity construction. Thus, our engagement with the technosocial mediascape challenges received ideas about personal identity, and indeed, the nature of the real. (shrink)

This article develops an analytical framework to study the role of narratives in markets and argues that there is a relationship between the structure and composition of narratives produced by market actors and market dynamics. With respect to theory, the article bridges the perspectives that study markets as cultures and as fields and draws from the organizational studies approach to the analysis of narratives. Two empirical cases of the crises narratives in the emerging contemporary art markets of Russia and India (...) illustrate the use of the framework. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with artists and art dealers as well as observations in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai conducted between April 2012 and June 2013. The article shows that there is a widely shared crisis narrative with a coherent structure in the Indian art market. In contrast, fragmented and contested stories that lack narrative structure dominate in the Russian art market. The analysis of the first case highlights the narrative structure and shows the productive work it does in the Indian market—it provides a moral justification of existing market norms and produces a perspective for the future. The analysis of the second case focuses on the context of narrative production and connects the conflicting interpretations of the crisis in the Russian art market to contested hierarchies and persistent uncertainty. (shrink)

This article examines whether the attention to cultural products on the internet is more democratically structured than in traditional print media, and how these types of media attention affect commercial success. For the U.S. fiction book releases in February 2009, I analyze consumer ratings at the web store Amazon.com and the social networking site Goodreads.com. The results show that on the internet far more books receive attention, and that this indeed comes to the advantage of female authors and authors of (...) popular fiction. Moreover, online publicity positively affects commercial success. These outcomes suggest that online attention to cultural products dampens the effects of institutionally embedded evaluations, while word-of-mouth mechanisms are becoming increasingly prominent in terms of how cultural products are discussed. (shrink)

Starting from the metaphor of “playing chamber music at a rock festival” used by Peter L. Berger in 1992 to describe the impact of The Social Construction of Reality on US sociology, this article works out how the book’s somewhat puzzling legacy as a bestseller and a classic with remarkably rare direct follow-ups in the US discourse can indeed be conceived. I argue that one needs to take into account the theoretical-historical context in which Berger and Luckmann developed their ideas, (...) including the specific forms of knowledge production in US sociology at the time, the institutional background of the book’s emergence at the New School for Social Research and the author’s biographical trajectories. On this basis, on can explain why Berger and Luckmann’s reformulation of the sociology of knowledge both perfectly met the 1960s Zeitgeist and at the same time remained theoretically marginal. (shrink)

Jeffrey Olick is one of the most prominent researchers in the field of memory studies today. Yet, none of his works have been translated into Russian. “Figurations of memory” is one of his most important texts. It is dedicated to the process-relational methodology. J. Olick criticizes traditional approaches to collective memory as a static thing, whereas it should be studied as a process. On the other hand, the author criticizes a mainstream understanding of memory as a unified object. Instead, he (...) suggests that there are multiple mnemonic forms and practices that should be investigated. As a result he presents a new methodology that is based on analysis of the four essential aspects of memory work: field, medium, genre, and profile. This method of analysis leads to emergence of additional empirical categories, such as official, vernacular, public, and private memory; affective, aesthetic-expressive, instrumental-cognitive, and political-moral media; the normal legitimation, German traditions, German victimhood, and German guilt genres; and the reliable, moral, and normal profiles. Though the final model may seem rather complex, the author claims that it is clearer and more precise that other models of research of collective memory. He claims that this methodology is universal for studying a large number of sociological topics. (shrink)

György Márkus’s post-Marxist writings on high culture are evaluated in terms of their possible contribution to a neo-Marxist theory of high culture. Because of the highly essayistic character of Márkus’s presentation, this necessarily involves investigation of their dependence on his previous work. According to Márkus, Marxism can be critically reconstructed and superseded on the basis of an independent theorization of the consequences of Marx’s most basic theoretical move: the identification of production as paradigmatic for social action in general. In section (...) 3 this idea of the production paradigm is criticized. In section 4 I show how in Márkus this idea is made the basis of an ostensibly historicist concept of critical theory, in which not only the theory’s object is historicized, but the theory is itself organized as an articulation of the needs of historically specific constituencies. I argue, however, that in reality the idea of the production paradigm stands in fundamental contradiction to this methodological ideal. Márkus’s theory of high culture likewise combines historicist ambitions and reliance on the dehistoricized ‘production paradigm’. I argue that his ‘systematically dialectical’ deployment of this notion allows a quasi-historicist conceptualization of modern high culture as a whole, but that this method simultaneously renders theorization of high culture’s connection with more ‘infrastructural’ social relations problematic, and tends to exclude reflection on the ‘utopian moment’ in high cultural practice today. Section 5, and some remarks at the end of Section 11 suggest horizons for a genuinely historicist theory of high culture, in relation to the constitutive failure of Marxism to confront its dependency on the institutions of high culture, and also suggest a possible confluence and conflict with Roy Bhaskar’s work. (shrink)

This thesis arises out of a critique of the way language is decontextualized and presented from a reductively linguistic viewpoint in foreign language instruction. In particular, it focuses on the weaknesses of the broad approach known as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and highlights the disparity between its theoretical assumptions and practical applications. With this in mind, the thesis identifies and explores three foundational premises that should be considered as part of an attempt to design a theoretically coherent framework for foreign (...) language instruction. By applying three sets of principles based on these premises, the thesis goes on to outline such a framework. After providing a background to the study, the first consideration is the nature of cultural and communicative performance. The study turns to sociological concepts regarding cultural organization and production, in order to better conceptualize how 'culture' can be understood in the context of foreign language learning. The second part of this area focuses on meaning and communication in order to undermine current treatments of 'language' in foreign language pedagogy. The second area of interest is that of learning and thus considers a number of theories of how people learn. The focus here is on learning-in-general rather than learning languages specifically. What emerges from this are a number of principles that should be borne in mind when creating conditions favorable to language learning. Finally, one largely overlooked area in foreign language learning and applied linguistics more broadly, is how the field of foreign language pedagogy constructs and legitimizes its practices, as well as suppresses its foundational theoretical assumptions in its activities (including research, methodology and teaching). A chapter is therefore devoted to this issue, and a set of principles is formulated in order to ensure that the design of any instructional framework is honest and ethical. Thus furnished with the triangulation of principles, an attempt is made to outline how a learner-focused, ethical pedagogical framework that stresses culture might look. This thesis is theoretical in nature and relies on arguments and positions from diverse and less commonly considered academic fields in foreign language instruction. Its main theoretical inspiration comes from concepts and claims generally considered 'poststructural' or 'postmodern'. However, there is no exclusive devotion to any particular author or theory. It is hoped that this thesis can make a genuine, if not controversial, contribution to the field of foreign language teaching by initiating a dialogue concerning the (lack of) philosophical and epistemological reflexivity in the field. (shrink)

In this thesis I outline a view of primary legislation from a systems perspective. I suggest that systems theory and, in particular, autopoietic theory, as modified by field theory, is a mechanism for understanding how society operates. The description of primary legislation that I outline differs markedly from any conventional definition in that I argue that primary legislation is not, and indeed cannot be, either a law or any of the euphemisms that are usually accorded to an enactment by a (...) parliament. I cite two reasons for such a conclusion. The primary reason for my conclusion is that I see primary legislation as being an output of a particular subsystem of society, while the law is the output of another subsystem of society. I argue that these outputs are the discrete products of separate subsystems of society. I argue that primary legislation should be viewed as a trinity. The first state of this trinity is that, upon enactment, primary legislation is a brute fact in that it is but a thing and the only property of this thing is that of being a text. The second state of this trinity is that following the act of enactment, the thing enacted will be reproduced and this reproduction is a separate thing that will sit in some repository until used. The third state of this trinity is that, upon use, this thing that is primary legislation will be transformed into an object and the user will attribute such functions and attributes to that object as are appropriate to the context within which the object is used. The thing has therefore become an object and an institutional fact. The second reason for my conclusion that primary legislation is not a law relates to the fact that the thing that is primary legislation is a text and the only function of a text is that it is available to be read. That is to say, of itself, a text is incapable of doing anything: it is the reader who defines the status of the text and attributes functions and attributes. Upon use, primary legislation thus becomes a censored input for future action and one of these actions may be some statement by a court of law. I assert that the view of primary legislation that has been accepted within the body politic is the product of the discourse of a particular subsystem of society that I have designated 'the legal practice', and I outline why and how this has occurred. Outlining a view about primary legislation also necessitates outlining a view as to the nature of the law. I assert that the law is a myth and I see this myth as a product of the discourse of the legal practice. I have asserted that although it is the judges that state the law, such statements flow from the discourse of those who practise the law. (shrink)

The sociology of art has experienced a significant revival during the last three decades. However, in the first instance, this renewed interest was dominated by the ‘production of culture’ perspective and was heavily focused on contextual factors such as the social organization of artistic markets and careers, and displays of ‘cultural capital’ through consumption of the arts. In this article, I outline a new mode of approaching art sociologically that begins with Alfred Gell’s (1998) Art and Agency, but comes to (...) full fruition in what I am calling the ‘new sociology of art’. A major theoretical statement that captures many of the aspirations of the new approach is Jeffrey Alexander’s essay: ‘Iconic Consciousness: The Material Feeling of Meaning’. It is suggested that the new sociology of art has much in common with material culture studies, and that a more robust concept of the artwork’s agency is needed now that art has well and truly taken on a social and cultural life well beyond those institutions traditionally understood as the ‘art world’. (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)

This article draws on historical material to examine the co-evolution of economic science and business education over the course of the twentieth century, showing that fields evolve not only through internal struggles but also through struggles taking place in adjacent fields. More specifically, we argue that the scientific strategies of business schools played an essential—if largely invisible and poorly understood—role in major transformations in the organization and substantive direction of social-scientific knowledge, and specifically economic knowledge, in twentieth century America. We (...) use the Wharton School as an illustration of the earliest trends and dilemmas (ca. 1900–1930), when business schools found themselves caught between their business connections and their striving for moral legitimacy in higher education. Next, we look at the creation of the Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration after World War II. This episode illustrates the increasingly successful claims of social scientists, backed by philanthropic foundations, on business education and the growing appeal of “scientific” approaches to decision-making and management. Finally, we argue that the rise of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago from the 1960s onwards (and its closely related cousin at the University of Rochester) marks the decisive ascendancy of economics, and particularly financial economics, in business education over the other behavioral disciplines. We document the key role of these institutions in diffusing “Chicago-style” economic approaches—offering support for deregulatory policies and popularizing narrowly financial understandings of the firm—that sociologists have described as characteristic of the modern neo liberal regime. (shrink)

The purpose of this theoretical article is to contribute to the analysis of knowledge and valuation in markets. In every market actors must know how to value its products. The analytical point of departure is the distinction between two ideal types of markets that are mutually exclusive, status and standard. In a status market, valuation is a function of the status rank orders or identities of the actors on both sides of the market, which is more entrenched than the value (...) of what is traded in the market. In a market characterized by a standard, the situation is reversed; the scale of value is more entrenched than the rankings of actors in the market. In a status market actors need to know about the other actors involved as there is no scale of value for evaluating the items traded in the market independently of its buyers and sellers. In a standard market it is more important to know how to meet the standard in relation to which all items traded are valued. The article includes empirical examples and four testable hypotheses. (shrink)

Emirbayer and Johnson critique the failure to engage fully Bourdieu’s relational analysis in empirical work, but are weak in giving direction for rectifying the problem. Following their recommendation for studying organizations-in-fields and organizations-as-fields, I argue for the benefits of analogical comparison using case studies of organizations as the units of analysis. Doing so maximizes the number of Bourdieusian concepts that can be deployed in an explanation. Further, it maximizes discovery of the oft-neglected links among history, competition, resources, sites of contestation (...) and struggle, relations of dominance and domination, and reproduction of inequality. Perhaps most important, case studies can identify the connection between macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors in the formation and shaping of habitus. To support my claims empirically, I draw from case study research (Vaughan The challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA, 1996; Signals and interpretive work: The role of culture in a theory of practical action. pp. 28–56, 2002) that verifies Bourdieu’s as the “Theory of Practical Action” that supplies the micro-level component to the new institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell, Introduction. pp. 1–41, 1991). (shrink)

This is a case study of top management in a Swedish pulp industry at Skutskär. After decades of proactive response to change, starting in 1976 the pulp industry experienced a rapid and significant restructuring. In 1992, and after a prolonged hold on local investments, came a large‐scale investment with major labor reductions, which created a local crisis. The aim of this study is to analyze how top managers of a local business plant perceive and explain their citizenship relationship to the (...) community of the company town during a transition period from 1976 to 2007. Our study shows that too much reliance on top management cost reduction requirements and not caring, or underscoring, local social concerns created gaps and local stakeholder distrust. We discuss how prolonged distrust of the company to bear social responsibility ended up in a broken relationship between the company and the local community. Our case indicates at least two problems that must be handled for successful corporate citizenship. First, the traditional control‐oriented management view is too narrow and not adjusted to today's citizenship reality, including how to handle corporate social responsibility. Second, we can see a possibility where the conceived needs on a global corporate level may lead to situations to obscure local needs and consequences. (shrink)

The debate over encumbered versus unencumbered selves that characterized the dialogue between liberalism and republicanism did not end well. Neither side seemed enlightened by its encounter with the other, as it became increasingly difficult to pin down the differences between the sides, never more so than when Michael Sandel was violently agreeing with Richard Dagger. Drawing on the work of novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, this essay argues that Sandel could have made a much stronger argument for his view than (...) he did. Sandel need not have conceded or concluded that encumbered selves are unable to choose freely. Freedom is a more subtle and complicated concept that either Sandel or Dagger recognize. (shrink)

At a time of increasing interest and advocacy in integrated and policy-oriented research, this paper offers an empirically-based view of the intellectual and practical challenges of undertaking such research. It analyses the experience of a long-standing university research and postgraduate training centre from 1973-2004: the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at The Australian National University. The paper discusses staff development issues, cross-disciplinary understanding, organisational requirements for collaborative research, postgraduate and early career considerations, a range of integrative frameworks, and the (...) tensions that arise for interdisciplinary research in the political and economic operating environments of modern universities. (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)

Despite the importance of mass media to deliberative democratic processes, few scholars have focused on how market forces, occupational norms, and competition among outlets affect the quality of media discourse in mainstream and political outlets. Here, I argue that field theory, as outlined by new institutionalism and Pierre Bourdieu, provides a useful theoretical framework for assessing the quality of media discourse in different kinds of media outlets. The value of field theory is that it simultaneously highlights the importance of homogeneity (...) and heterogeneity within a field of action, which provides a framework for discussing the roles different kinds of outlets play in deliberate democratic processes and evaluating the quality of discourse in mainstream and political venues. I illustrate the utility of this conceptualization through an analysis of 1,424 stories on abortion in nine U.S. media outlets and interviews with journalists, editors, and producers in these venues. I find that political media outlets provide higher-quality discourse than that of mainstream venues. Additionally, I find that while market pressures may heighten a focus on conflict in the abortion debate, this emphasis is exacerbated by mainstream journalists themselves, who assume that the general public is familiar with, and has taken a firm position on, abortion. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for deliberative democratic processes. (shrink)

Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of musical creativity (...) within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a vexed topic in philosophy, with a long history. For my purposes, an aesthetic experience is a foundational affective response to an object, to which terms such as “ugly”, “beautiful”, “pretty” or “harmonious” are applied. These terms are derived from a Discourse of aesthetics; some remain constant, others change from generation to generation. Aesthetics and ethics have been linked in Western thought since the days of Plato and Aristotle. This essay examines what is happening to that link in (...) contemporary experience. It emphasises the ways in which the popular media exploit aesthetic appeal to penetrate their market, and to exploit and frame intuitive responses to current and past events. Production values, the artfulness of editors and the financial interests of producers and directors thus do much to determine contemporary aesthetic and ethical judgements. That which is beautifully presented invites the ethical involvement of the audience. Events whose images are beautifully presented constitute “hyperevidence”, a pre-judged, reinforced and amplified illusion of reality and participation. Understanding how aesthetic excellence draws audiences into ethical relationship with what is presented becomes an important part of education in ethics, including bioethics. (shrink)

Zangwill's recent article offers a provocative and compelling account of the alleged deficiencies of the sociology of art. However, his main targets—christened, respectively, `production and skepticism' and `consumption skepticism'—are, in fact, only decontextualised and one-sided caricatures of the leading theories in this area. Zangwill has misrepresented some of the discipline's leading theorists including Bourdieu, Eagleton, Pollock and Wolff. His own `aesthetic' explanation of artistic acts appears, at first glance, attractive, not least for its repudiation of radical sociological reductionism. But it (...) turns out to be altogether too simplistic an alternative. Zangwill is a sociological `primitive' who understands adequately neither how society exists in the mind itself, nor, paradoxically, in artists' embodied sense of the right feel for the game. A less `enchanted' approach toartists' practices is required. This needs to stress both artists' role in the public sphere and also their specific interests in the artistic field. Key Words: sociology • art • aesthetics • canon • pleasure. (shrink)