Shadow education, or supplementary private tutoring, has expanded to become a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide, capitalising on the desires of parents and their children to succeed and excel in education. In doing so, shadow education draws upon and reproduces cultural capital represented by knowledge, skills and educational credentials and symbolic capital constituted in the prestige, privilege and legitimacy of educational achievement. The study on which this article is based adopts a critical discourse analytic approach to examine the websites of five leading (...) private tuition centres in Singapore as seen through the lens of Bourdieu’s concept of capital. The aim is to identify specific forms of cultural capital, examine how they are harnessed for promotional purposes, and show how this reflects and reproduces the forms and representations of educational achievement and success valued in Singapore. Findings offer a deeper understanding of the marketing discourse of shadow education that pivots on the quality of private tutors, success beyond examinations and school, and concrete representations of social distinction and achievement. More significantly, the study contributes to research situated at the nexus of shadow education and Bourdieu’s concept of capital to shed light on how shadow education reflects and magnifies broader socio-cultural orientations and socio-economic structures. (shrink)

This article examines the connections among heuristics, the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that underlie theorizing, and substantive explanations in sociology. It develops and contrasts three heuristics: “doing as knowing” (DK), “categorizing as knowing” (CK), and “praxis as knowing” (PK). These are each composed of four dimensions: the theory of knowledge, the theory of reality, the theory of the growth of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge producers. The article then shows the importance of heuristics for empirical work by demonstrating how (...) they shape explanations in the sociological subfield of the historical sociology of knowledge. The essay draws two main conclusions: it argues that PK offers a more useful basis for developing explanations in sociology than either of the two alternatives (DK and CK) that currently shape substantive work; furthermore, it claims that the exposition of heuristic assumptions is an important task for sociology. (shrink)

The ArgumentAlexandre Koyré is one of the most important historians of philosophic and scientific though since the thirties. Research on the Scientific Revolution, on Galileo, Descartes, Newton, as well as on Paracelsus and Boehme has deeply changed under his influential method: it has been a model for Kuhn's methodology of paradigms and revolutions in the histroy of science. Whereas Koyré used to be considered opposed in his ideology and method to sociological approaches, he has recently been characterized by Yehuda Elkana (...) as a sociologist of knowledge. In fact, until now one of the main sources of his method had not been identified: it is only by acknowledging the influence of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl on Koyré that it is possible to explain how the latter wrote his thesis on Boehme's mystical thought just before his Etudes galiléennes. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl was teaching history of philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Koyré was strongly influenced by his idea of “prelogical thinking” as a universel phenomenon and in a general way by the sociological school of Durkheim. Conceptual analysis deriving from Husserl, collective representations and attitude mentale, came together in Alexandre Koyrè's method. (shrink)

In Geneva, since the beginning of pre-service secondary teacher training at university, two different types of students in teacher preparation coexist: some of them have got part-time classes, others have no teaching assignment. In an introduction to the teaching profession, students from different disciplines of the two types take a course on the same sources of professional knowledge. By analyzing the representations of the teaching profession, we find that the process of construction of their professional identity varies according to whether (...) they have a student teaching placement or not. A Genève, depuis l’universitarisation de la formation des enseignants du secondaire, deux statuts d’étudiants en formation initiale à l’enseignement coexistent : les uns à mi-temps en responsabilité de classe, les autres sans contact avec le terrain. Dans une unité de formation d’introduction à la profession enseignante, des étudiants de disciplines différentes des deux statuts suivent un dispositif de formation identique portant sur les savoirs de référence constitutifs de la profession. En analysant les représentations du métier d’enseignant des étudiants, on constate que l’identité professionnelle en construction de ceux-ci évolue différemment selon s’ils sont sur le terrain ou non. (shrink)

A pesar de algunos antecedentes dispersos y excepciones, existe una manifiesta laguna en la literatura sobre el concepto de cultura científica comunitaria. Con esa expresión nos referimos a situaciones en las cuales unos ciudadanos perciben un problema, se agrupan, organizan, comunican y ponen en común sus recursos para buscar, evaluar y producir conocimiento científico con el fin de encarar dicho problema. En este trabajo realizamos una propuesta de caracterización de la cultura científica comunitaria. Posteriormente, procedemos a aplicarla y contrastarla respecto (...) del caso de los colectivos de afectados por la COVID persistente. La metodología empleada se ha basado en el análisis documental. (shrink)

Cet article se penche sur la notion de pluralité dans l’œuvre d’Emile Durkheim. Il commence par préciser le sens du concept de pluralisme, qui fait l’objet de débats depuis plusieurs années. Selon cet article, la question de la pluralité se pose à plusieurs niveaux. On peut distinguer entre 1) la question ontologique de la nature de la réalité elle‐même ; 2) la question philosophico-anthropologique de la constitution de la personne humaine ; 3) la question sociologique de la diversité des opinions (...) cohabitant au sein d’une même entité sociale ; 4) la question historique de la stabilité dans le temps des configurations politiques et sociales ; 5) la question socio‐anthropologique de la variabilité des formes d’organisation sociale. Cet article montre que sur chacun de ces sujets Durkheim, contrairement à une lecture répandue qui le perçoit comme un penseur de l’unanimité et de l’harmonie sociales, croit en l’existence d’une forte pluralité. De plus la pluralité, à son avis, à des effets positifs sur la vie sociale moderne, car elle confère à l’individu une plus grande autonomie. (shrink)

Social representations research has tended to focus upon the representations that groups have in relation to some object. The present article elaborates the concept of social representations by pointing to the existence of “alternative representations” as sub-components within social representations. Alternative representations are the ideas and images the group has about how other groups represent the given object. Alternative representations are thus representations of other people's representations. The present article uses data from Moscovici's analysis of the diffusion of psychoanalysis to (...) examine how people engage with alternative representations. It is demonstrated that there can be more or less dialogical relations with alternative representations. The analysis concludes by considering seven “semiotic barriers” which work to neutralise the dialogical potential of alternative representations, thus on the one hand enabling groups to talk about the views of others, while, on the other hand, remaining unchallenged by those views. (shrink)

This paper explores the specific contribution of a strand of contemporary French social theory founded by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort to the understanding of human power. It formulates a conception of power that transcends its definitions in terms of physical coercion or institutionalised violence to reveal the way power is creative and institutes the social. Its reflection on the cultural nature of political power and it role in society is shown to extend the pioneering reflection of Durkheim's sociology, especially (...) as regards the homology that exists between religion and politics. The social role performed by the state explored by Durkheim prefigures Gauchet's theory of the state, which builds on Lefort's work. Gauchet's theory can be said to elaborate a critical synthesis of the two stands of Durkheim's work: the sociology of religion and the sociology of the modern state. This synthesis raises questions on the role played by the European state in the development of individualism, in both its political and economic manifestations. (shrink)

L’histoire officielle de la discipline veut que la psychologie sociale française, née et morte aussitôt à la fin du XIXe siècle, ait connu une longue éclipse pour renaître seulement dans les années 1950 sous influence américaine. Cette disparition dans la première moitié du XXe siècle serait due à la domination de la sociologie durkheimienne qui passe pour être hostile à la psychologie. Cet article remet en cause cette vision traditionnelle. Il montre que la sociologie durkheimienne s’est elle-même définie comme une (...) psychologie collective et qu’elle a su, à partir des années 1910 environ, ouvrir un véritable dialogue avec les psychologues au sein de l’université. L’idée durkheimienne que les catégories les plus fondamentales de la pensée sont déjà des constructions sociales provoqua chez les psychologues une véritable petite révolution intellectuelle. Elle les obligea en effet à sortir du champ étroit de la psychophysiologie qu’avaient promu depuis 1870 les fondateurs tels Taine et Ribot, en réaction contre le spiritualisme. Cette nouvelle psychologie sociale a influencé la plupart des grands psychologues de l’époque (Blondel, Dumas, Janet, Meyerson, Wallon), mais le temps et les hommes lui ont manqué pour s’institutionnaliser. De fait, elle disparaît avec la mort de ses principaux artisans (Blondel et Halbwachs) et l’oubli parfois volontaire pratiqué par leurs successeurs. (shrink)

In this article we revisit two different temporal phases related to the main publication of Serge Moscovici's book La Psychanalyse, son image et son public together with two key promissing notions of the theory, cognitive polyphasia and anchoring. The first phase, initiated by the durkheimian cercle, will give us the occasion to retrieve the traces of the fascinating intellectual debate about collective psychology that was involved in producing ¨frontier¨ propositions and renewing their perspectives in today's light, namely throught cognitive polyphasia. (...) The second phase, more recent, inspired by classical and modern research into the social representation's field, will serve us as a basis for a new hypothesis about anchoring. We will attempt to suggest that traditional familiarization allocated to anchoring can also work in the opposite sense, transmitting and guaranteeing the non-familiar, establishing strangeness. Finally, we are arguing that social representations are more than a simple theory, just as the symbol is always more than what it symbolizes. (shrink)

This paper considers the charge that—contrary to the current widespread assumption accompanying the near-universal neglect of his work—Wilhelm Jerusalem (1854–1923) cannot count as one of the founders of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. In order to elucidate the matter, Jerusalem’s “sociology of cognition” is here reconstructed in the context of his own work in psychology and philosophy as well as in the context of the work of some predecessors and contemporaries. It is argued that while it shows clear discontinuities with (...) the present-day understanding of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge, Jerusalem’s sociology of cognition was not only distinctive in its own day but also anticipated in nuce a much-discussed theme in current history of science. (shrink)

This paper deals with the questions of emergence and complex (mental and social) systems and with downward determination from the viewpoint of perspectival realism. These are issues concerning the foundations of the human sciences, generally speaking, and particularly psychology and sociology. A criterion is put forward, which distinguish metaphysicalfrom ontological (conceptual) problems, and the notions of complex, hierarchic system and causation that would be suitable for those that defend emergence and perspectivist foundations of the human sciences are discussed. Este artigo (...) trata das questões da emergência de sistemas complexos (mentais e sociais) e da determinação descendente do ponto de vista do realismo perspectivista. Essas são questões sobre os fundamentos das ciências humanas em geral e, em particular, da psicologia e da sociologia. É proposto um critério para distinguir problemas metafísicos de problemas ontológicos (ou conceituais), e são discutidas as noções de sistema complexo hierárquico e de causação que seriam adequadas para uma fundamentação emergentista e perspectivista das ciências humanas. (shrink)

The article deals with Le Collège de Sociologie, an elective organization founded in 1937 by a group of French thinkers, among whom were Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris. It tries to show how the notion of `force' or of `power', constitutive to the `new mythology' the members of the Collège wanted to create, was in fact deeply ambivalent in nature. This ambivalence can be traced back to the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory of the `collective effervescence', which (...) is shown to have influenced not only the collegians' notion of the sacred, but also their conception of power. This ambiguous theoretical heritage is curiously reflected in the conflicting conceptions Bataille and Caillois held of the notion of power — one of the major controversies, which later led to the dissolution of the Collège. The thesis defended here is that the seeds of this controversy lie already in the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory and that these ambivalences were in a certain manner reproduced not only in the dispute between Caillois and Bataille, but also in much of the contemporary social theory drawing its inspiration from the Durkheimian sociology of the sacred. (shrink)