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The Stranger
Abstract
The present paper intends to study in terms of a general theory of interpretation the typical situation in which a stranger finds himself in his attempt to interpret the cultural pattern of a social group which he approaches and to orient himself within it. For our present purposes the term “stranger” shall mean an adult individual of our times and civilization who tries to be permanently accepted or at least tolerated by the group which he approaches. The outstanding example for the social situation under scrutiny is that of the immigrant, and the following analyses are, as a matter of convenience, worked out with this instance in view. But by no means is their validity restricted to this special case. The applicant for membership in a closed club, the prospective bridegroom who wants to be admitted to the girl’s family, the farmer’s son who enters college, the city-dweller who settles in a rural environment, the “selectee” who joins the Army, the family of the war worker who moves into a boom town — all are strangers according to the definition just given, although in these cases the typical “crisis” that the immigrant undergoes may assume milder forms or even be entirely absent. Intentionally excluded, however, from the present investigation are certain cases the inclusion of which would require some qualifications in our statements: (a) the visitor or guest who intends to establish a merely transitory contact with the group; (b) children or primitives; and (c) relationships between individuals and groups of different levels of civilization, as in the case of the Huron brought to Europe — a pattern dear to some moralists of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, it is not the purpose of this paper to deal with the processes of social assimilation and social adjustment which are treated in an abundant and, for the most part, excellent literature but rather with the situation of approaching which precedes every possible social adjustment and which includes its prerequisites.
... According to Alfred Schutz ([1942] 1976, the stranger's "clearsightedness" stems from the fact that his way of seeing things differs from that of the approached group. In other words, the stranger transcends the boundaries of his "thinking as usual," which gives rise to a special type of objectivity. ...
... According to Alfred Schutz ([1942] 1976, the stranger's "clearsightedness" stems from the fact that his way of seeing things differs from that of the approached group. In other words, the stranger transcends the boundaries of his "thinking as usual," which gives rise to a special type of objectivity. ...
... The stranger finds himself confronted with a "cultural pattern of group life" with which he is unfamiliar. Following Parsons, Schutz ([1942Schutz ([ ] 1976 uses this concept to designate "all the peculiar valuations, institutions, and systems of orientation and guidance." With explicit reference to Max Scheler's notion of the "relatively natural conception of the world" (95f.), ...
Participation in phenomenology-based ethnography is about involvement and “doing-it-yourself,” which generates data derived from immediate experience that can contribute to the reconstruction of the internal viewpoint by uncovering the essence of a phenomenon. This phenomenological orientation is the main focus of interest of the present paper. Based on reflections on the ethnographer as a participant who voluntarily assumes the role of the stranger, we demonstrate how observation can be supplemented with participation. We exemplify it with an ongoing research project on the deployment of a so-called social robot in dementia care. Our aim is to show that a subjective perspective, which does not claim to be superior but rather to be of value in its own right, increases the knowledge yield.
... The phenomenological approach maintains that, in the everyday life-world, there is a level of common sense knowledge where people accept tipifications as a resource, constructing socially shared objective meanings to avoid uncertainty (Correia: 2005: 38-39). People, in everyday life, suspend their doubts in order to turn their world into a safer one (Schutz, 1976). ...
... Such an attitude assumes a reliable premise in the permanence of the structures of the world: one trusts that the world will remain as it has been known up until now. The familiarity with social reality implies an organized standard of routine (Schutz, 1976: 108) learned from the knowledge of "prescriptions" and typical behaviors (Schutz, 1975: 94-95). ...
We will try to develop a theoretical framework that will allow us to critically explain
some features of journalism language, using the concepts of tipification, frame, and ideology.
Throughout some examples of Portuguese news focused on the representation of
migrants, we will try to make a small demonstration of how ideology, frame and tipifications are
articulated in order to make sense of social world.
In the final part of this essay, we’ll try to discuss journalism reform movements – such as
civic journalism – that supports changes in journalism practice in order to engage it with
democratic deliberation and citizen’s participation. Our argument is that any approach that
supports the civic role of journalism in democratic deliberation must take into consideration the
role performed by journalistic language in the social construction of reality. So, it must consider
not only the agenda setting, but also the way as journalistic discourse represents issues, events
and social identities.
Finally, we will try to show that it is necessary to launch a programme of research in
journalism studies, drawing on the contribution of Critical Discourse Analysis and sociocognitive
(phenomenological) approaches.
... Basch et al, 1995;Kearney, 1995;e Foster, 1991). Schutz (1971) também elabora o tipo ideal do estrangeiro. Não pretendo, porém, discutir aqui este conceito, uma vez que ele se distancia um pouco do caso aqui analisado. ...
... This interactive principle further regulates the development of social cultures. As Schutz (1971) argues, a culture results from people's participation, allowing them to share and construct a specific culture with unique meanings. The findings of Tunstall (1973) further indicate that such a participative construction, functioning to exchange personal experiences and viewpoints, is able to shape a collective identity. ...
It is argued that social networks are able to circulate important information, functioning to assist the actor to achieve his/her goals. This positive function would stimulate people to construct their own social ties. This article is set up to explore the meaning of social capital. It further explores how Sino-culture conditions the operation of social capital by analyzing the case of Taiwanese school masters.
... However, I think that it is possible to provide a more Foucaultian interpretation in which hegemonic forces work in less hierarchical and deliberate ways, through multiple and networked power relations (Foucault, 1977(Foucault, , 1978(Foucault, , 1980(Foucault, , 1982. A hegemonic gender order would, therefore, be a way in which gender norms are maintained through a complex of power relations and normalising forces which influence people's 'thinking as usual' (Schutz, 1964) coupled with a continued investment in gendered social arrangements. This investment, might, for example, be due to things such as the pleasure adults and children get from gendered behaviour (Blaise, 2005), or the sense of stability that comes from understanding oneself as having a coherent gender identity. ...
In this paper I consider and challenge the ways in which hegemonic femininity has mainly been conceptualised in the gender literature. This approach has several limitations, including being strongly binary, positioning girls and women as Other and frequently essentialised. After suggesting some criteria for a more useful conceptualisation, I consider some of the alternatives, which I critique for their dependence on sexuality and sexual desire. I propose an alternative definition of hegemonic gender performances, avoiding binary distinctions, building on Francis et al.'s (2016) suggestion that a more directly Gramscian conceptualisation may be useful. Having outlined this alternative, I examine how it is played out in the specific context of one English primary school classroom.
... Apesar da consolidação do conceito no seio da comunicação, constatou-se a persistência de ambiguidades que conduziram à identificação indevida com outros tipos de modelos de efeitos. (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007 Primeiro, verificou-se um conjunto de trabalhos primordiais de Bateson e de Goffman (1974), o segundo dos quais reflete, por sua vez, intuições vislumbradas nos conceitos de William James e de Alfred Schutz (1967;1975;1976) que entendemos por real. Assim frames seriam os princípios básicos de organização que orientam os eventos (Goffman, 1986:11). ...
... Apesar da consolidação do conceito no seio da comunicação, constatou-se a persistência de ambiguidades que conduziram à identificação indevida com outros tipos de modelos de efeitos. (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007 Primeiro, verificou-se um conjunto de trabalhos primordiais de Bateson e de Goffman (1974), o segundo dos quais reflete, por sua vez, intuições vislumbradas nos conceitos de William James e de Alfred Schutz (1967;1975;1976) que entendemos por real. Assim frames seriam os princípios básicos de organização que orientam os eventos (Goffman, 1986:11). ...
... "Learning is the process of becoming (and being recognized as) a member of such a community as well as the development of tacit understanding, inherent judgment, and shared identity that comes with participation" (Duguid, 2003). Schutz (1976) describes the stranger's work of moving from the periphery to the center and becoming a member of the community. In addition to the acquisition of tacit knowledge, Schutz addresses the necessity for the stranger to acquire explicit knowledge of the cultural practices of group life (1976:92). ...
... also Bauman, 1991). Rapoport and Lomsky-Feder (2001: 487) summarize and classify these theories on the stranger as follows: ' each theory develops a different perspective of society and social reality by examining and elaborating a different dimension of the stranger: the stranger as a cultural reader (Schutz, 1964), the stranger as demarcator of social boundaries (Simmel, 1950) and the stranger as a trespasser of social categories (Bauman, 1991)' . ...
... Power is not something that is acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile relations. (Foucault, 1978 p. 94) Such a view of power is mainly concerned with the micro-powers that are part of the thinking-as-usual of everyday life (Schutz, 1964). It regards power relations as inhering in all social activity, pervading human life as an inescapable aspect of existence. ...
... Initial professional education is, at least in part, concerned with this process. As well as acquiring the knowledge required to carry out their professional duties, those undergoing initial professional training are initiated into the mores and expectations of the professional group, developing a 'thinking as usual' (Schutz, 1964) common to the membership as a whole. Later professional education, as well as further developing professional knowledge, is also concerned with the maintenance and reinforcement of this professional role. ...
Over the past several years those working in higher education have shown a growing interest in professional development, particularly with regard to those areas of work, such as teaching, nursing and medicine, which have undergone rapid, outsider‐led change. There remain a number of questions, however, about what professional development means and how it can be brought about. This paper addresses these issues, first by considering the question of what it is to be a professional, then by looking at issues in professional preparation, the taking up of the professional role and the longer term development of professional practice, and finally by giving some suggestions for ways forward. The theoretical analysis is illustrated by examples from a range of occupational areas, with particular focus on the ‘caring professions’.
... But Flavell acknowledges the problem here whilst sticking to the idea that metacognitive knowledge is no different from any other kind of knowledge. For the autonomous learner metacognitive knowledge might be habitualmight in Schutz's (1971) term be 'thinking as usual' -but this is not to say that such monitoring is not purposive or that intentions are not involved (see Giddens, 1976). On the other hand we would expect the autonomous learner to go beyond this and be capable of thinking that led to new learning. ...
In this article an attempt is made to evaluate pupils' cultural practices with reference to assumptions about the interrelationship between autonomy, democracy and education. Conceptions of education implicit in pupil culture are described and analysed using illustrations and concepts from ethnographic studies. It is suggested that pupil culture can be understood as an aspect of common‐sense knowledge consisting of a mix of contradictory elements some more consonant with educational ideals than others and that this knowledge might usefully be conceived as an aspect of metacognitive knowledge, that is, knowledge about self, others and the learning process in school. The nature of this knowledge and its implication for a teaching intervention are then discussed. The approach advocated suggests a new curriculum synthesis which would hopefully maximise the scope for pupils' critical evaluation of schooling.
... The apparent aim was that all those who attend will be edified in their allegiance to the Catholic mission of the university. In his essay on "The Stranger" Alfred Schutz (1971) writes that: the reproach of doubtful loyalty originates in the astonishment of the members of the in-group that the stranger does not accept the total of its cultural pattern as the natural and appropriate way of life and as the best of all possible solutions of any problem. The stranger is called ungrateful, since he refuses to acknowledge that the cultural pattern offered to him grants him shelter and protection. ...
Explores both the place and displacement of humanistic psychology within institutional contexts ranging from private liberal arts colleges to professional organizations like the American Psychological Association. First, from the perspective of social constructionism, we present the function and marginalization of humanistic psychologists (including existential, phenomenological, human science, transpersonal, and "postmodern" schools of thought) within American academic psychology. Next we consider, from the perspective of A. Schutz's social phenomenology, humanistic psychology's place within academic psychology as "the stranger," both in terms of the fundamental incongruence of "traditional" versus "humanistic" psychological relevance systems and the resulting breakdown of the "interchangeability of standpoints" that normally allows for contemporaries to communicate. The specific nature of these conflicts is then elaborated with reference to M. Heidegger's analysis of the concept of time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In journalism studies and political communication research it is generally agreed that news media trust concerns a psychological state related to audiences’ willingness to be vulnerable to news media. Nonetheless, a number of theoretical considerations for refining conceptual understandings of news media trust remain to be addressed. These include: (1) what news media trust consists of; (2) the situational character of news media trust; and (3) how different levels of analysis are related to each other. The article explores how phenomenological sociology offers a theoretical framework to address these issues. Besides refining conceptual understandings of news media trust, the article outlines how the framework advances empirical research, with a specific focus on two research strands: (1) non-normative analysis of mechanisms of power underlying news media trust, which contributes to de-Westernize news media trust research; and (2) investigations focused on the trust journalists place in the audiences to perform journalism.
This analysis focuses on the role of appresentational orders in the “building of the lifeworld.” Based in phenomenology and the philosophy of culture, the article contributes to semiotics by further developing some of Göran Sonesson’s ideas on signs. Appresentation means that “absent” data is intended as co-present with a directly perceivable term within the unity of consciousness (Husserl). Alfred Schutz sees “marks,” “indications,” and “signs” as different types of couplings between “present” and “absent” data according to one single cognitive style or “subworld.” These appresentational relations contrast with the more complex “symbols,” which are couplings between different styles or subworlds. For instance, a crucifix may co-present a “Latin cross” given to everyday perception with meanings belonging to the world of religion, making it “symbolically pregnant” (Cassirer). Beyond a mere coupling, appresentation is constituted by appresentational orders, which can reflect high relational complexity. Although Schutz introduced the concept of these orders, he, like Sonesson, misses their full potential for understanding appresentation. Signs and sign-like relations (such as marks and indications), which make possible (life)worldly communication, spatial and temporal orientation, and social organization, can be further differentiated according to the appresentational orders “dominant” in each certain case. In contrast, symbols, which ensure an experience of the lifeworld as a whole (Voegelin), that connect subworlds such as religion, science, dreams, etc., are rather to be characterized by a relevance “annihilation” between appresentational orders.
The article discusses relationships between racism and antisemitism. It focuses on three major contestations that have taken place during the post-Second World War era(s) regarding the ways racism, antisemitism and the relationships between them should be analysed. The first examines the different academic disciplinary approaches from which racism and antisemitism need to be studied. The second concerns the relationship between antisemitism, racism and modernity, introducing the notion of ‘new antisemitism’, which has become entangled in this contestation. The third examines how understanding racism and antisemitism relates to the theory and politics of intersectionality. The article argues against exclusionary constructions of racism resulting from different forms of identity politics. It calls for an inclusive definition of racism in which vernacular and specific forms of racism can be contextualised and analysed within an encompassing de-centred non-Eurocentric definition of racism. Within such an analytical framework, antisemitism should be seen as a form of racism.
The stranger is a multilayered and multidimensional idea that crosses various disciplines such as psychoanalysis, sociology, phenomenology, existentialism, and postcolonialism. It has been associated with the cultural, racial, and religious other, with our relationship to an internal other, and to a general existential condition. The experience of the stranger also exposes the misunderstanding that occurs across cultures, but also to a state of objectivity. More recently the emergence of the “cyborg stranger” has seen a shift away from classical accounts of strangeness that were premised on face‐to‐face encounters.
This article puts forward the concept of immobile subjectivities to understand the ambivalence marking the condition of existential immobility in migration. I look at the experiences of two migrant women in Switzerland—a refugee and the partner of a mobile professional—who each face the predicaments of mobility and yet continue to aspire to a career in the face of uncertain and unstable work. The trajectories of migrants who, like these two women, are confronted with disruption in their professional lives converge in the effort of navigating the codes of mobility and personal career aspirations. By focusing on these trajectories, the article aims to challenge the distinction between migrant categories and advance our understanding of immobility as an increasingly human condition.
While a large body of auto-ethnographic literature focuses on the bias associated with conducting methodological research as ‘insiders’ and examines the implications of their backgrounds for their research design, the interpretation of the data and the complexities of their position for the research, less reflection exists in the literature on the complexities of exiting the field. Drawing on auto-ethnographic reflections from fieldwork among Arab Muslim families in Denmark, I discuss field exit in relation to field access and field behaviour. I show how the established trust, friendship and intimate relationships with our interlocutors can position us as the subject and the object of our study. While embracing familiarity and being intimately inside one’s field offer significant advantages, I argue that it simultaneously reshapes and complicates the researcher’s insider role experiences and expectations, as the strategies, behaviour and negotiations we make in the field often have an impact on field exit.
The article opens a conversation around what constitutes a ‘migration experience’ by identifying and examining various analytical frameworks that constitute an ‘experience’ as migration. Unlike previous approaches to describing young people’s ‘migrant experiences’, I do not take the notion as self-explanatory; rather, what we come to know as the ‘migrant experience’ hides various epistemological and political processes. I begin with an analysis of different conceptualisations of experience such as mediated, unmediated and experience as strangeness. The discussion then moves onto how these inform the spatial/temporal, critical and phenomenological accounts of an event known as the migration experience. The second part of the article demonstrates what empirical analysis may entail when we examine the idea of the migration experience as an analytical category. By drawing on my students’ self-reflective papers on their migration experience, specifically their stories on being Othered in the host and ‘home’ country and their experience of hybrid identities, we open an analytical space that reveals constructive tensions and synergies among the analytical frameworks. In so doing, the article illuminates and contributes to conceptualising the ‘migrant experience’ as both a category of analysis and practice.
The full article can be downloaded for free at: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IGTNEFXXEXIRFQJHWTRX/full?target=10.1080/00330124.2021.2008260
Abstract: Deep mapping is a research method and working practice mainly developed by artists and scholars that promises to blur the boundaries between science and art as well as between experts and local populations. This article presents the methodological thoughts and results of a deep map project carried out in a rural municipality in the Alpine region of Valle d’Aosta, Italy. Following two years of preparation, in 2019 our research team, consisting of scientists and artists, took up residence in a house in the village for a week. Based on these deep mappers’ experiences and the results of the residence, it is argued that deep map practices can benefit from being combined with a research residence in the area under investigation, as well as by using a dialogic research design to develop a clear ethical and methodological stance. The research experiences further suggest that the creation of multimedia products for deep map projects can help to animate local populations and initiate continuous dialogues between residents and deep mappers. Finally, critical moments of the investigation design are highlighted, and theoretical gaps are addressed with a view to improving the design of future deep map projects.
The relevance of translation has never been greater. The challenges of the 21st century are truly glocal and societies are required to manage diversities like never before. Cultural and linguistic diversities cut across ideological systems, those carefully crafted to uphold prevailing hierarchies of power, making asymmetries inescapable. Translation and interpreting studies have left behind neutrality and have put forward challenging new approaches that provide a starting point for researching translation as a cultural and historical product in a global and asymmetrical world. This book addresses issues arising from the power vested in and arrogated by translation and interpreting either as instruments of change, or as tools to sustain dominant structures. It presents new perspectives and cutting-edge research findings on how asymmetries are fashioned, woven, upheld, experienced, confronted, resisted, and rewritten through and in translation. This volume is useful for scholars looking for tools to raise awareness as to the challenges posed by the pervasiveness of power relations in mediated communication. It will further help practitioners understand how asymmetries shape their experiences when translating and interpreting.
This paper is divided into two parts. The first traces the conceptual development of because motives, while simultaneously endeavouring to grasp the notion of the unconscious revealed in Schutz's analysis. The author refers to Leibniz's theory of petites perceptions and Freud's theory of the unconscious; theories whose respective characteristics are somehow compared, integrated and thus juxtaposed with the characteristics of because motives. The second part of the paper raises the question why Schutz, in his analysis of motives and unconscious behaviour, does not refer to Husserl's conception of the unconscious
From its very beginning, sociological thought has been concerned with a topic central to our daily lives: social distance. Since inception, the concept of social distance has referred to the relationships of familiarity and strangeness between social groups, which is experienced in the social world in terms of “We” and “They”. This article covers the main tenets of a Schutzian phenomenological approach to the study of social distance and group relationships. Specific focus is placed on the different attitudes and valuations of the in-group towards the out-group considered as a stranger, the invisible excess of meaning that emerges in these types of social relationships and the conceptual construction of the Other that explains the phenomenon of discrimination.
In the present paper, I intend to systematically revisit Thomas Luckmann’s account of the relation between phenomenology and sociology and to assess its strengths and weaknesses in terms of constructive criticism. In order to achieve this aim, I will proceed in three steps. First (1), I will reconstruct the Luckmannian approach by means of an exhaustive analysis of his programmatic texts. Second (2), I will identify its strengths and merits. And finally (3), I will discuss its shortcomings and try to correct them in two ways, namely, by bringing Luckmann into a dialogue with other sociological-theoretical and phenomenological accounts, and by counteracting some of his problematic claims with alternative insights contained in his own work.
This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness that escapes from both methodological nationalism and what can be designated as the monolingual vision, providing substantive perspectives on the proliferation of contact zones or borderlands in a diversity of domains. The article centrally argues for a sociological perspective that examines not just the circulation of meaning but translation as a process of linguistic transformation that is necessarily embodied in words. Only if this more material aspect of translation is attended to can the nature of translation as an ordinary social process be fully grasped and its intervention in meaning-making activities explored. This has far-ranging implications for any reflexive account of the production of sociological works and interpretations.
Background and Aim of Study: Migration is a complicated and complex social phenomenon. Arriving in a new country, immigrants find themselves in a strange, unfamiliar environment; simultaneously they may have left behind almost everything that they had in their home country. Such a life event changes the relationship between a person and their things: immigrants lose their connection with the things left behind, while new connections with the things of the host country have yet to be forged. This is a natural process of an adult’s migration. But what is it like for a child? The aim of the study: to reflect the experiences of immigrant children and their changing relationship with things in phenomenological methodology approach. Material and Methods: The article is based on hermeneutic phenomenology, when children migrating is analysed as a phenomenon. In order to investigate such phenomena phenomenology as a research strategy is applied. Its data were collected using several methods. The main method was the unstructured phenomenological interview with children and adults who due to economic reasons left their home country and came to live in another while being children together with their parents (or one of them). Having changed the country, they had also to change schools. Results: Show the uniqueness of the children migration experience and reflects it in the phenomenological matter. Conclusions: Children migration experience is often underestimated from the position of grown-ups, while children view migration differently, as they see things, objects and space around them differently (they see, feel and imagine world in a totally unique manner). That is why children taken out of their usual and normal lifestyle, home space facing totally different world, with strange and unfamiliar things, facing the world of unpredictability, temporality and eternity, fantasy and dreams, where misunderstood, or unnoticed are left alone, even while being surrounded by people.
The idea of experience has been taken at face value in scholarly accounts of the migration experience, consequently very little attention has been given to how this idea has acquired its meaning and how it relates to the category of the ‘migration experience’. This article provides an analytical investigation into the nature of the phenomenon known as the ‘migrant experience’; firstly, by examining mediated and non-mediated conceptions of experience as well as an alternative account of experience associated with strangeness/disruption. Through this conceptual lens, I then critically consider how the migration experience, as an analytical construct, has been constituted through a spatial–temporal framework, a critical migration perspective, and within the phenomenological and existential accounts. In conclusion, these approaches, as I will demonstrate, are not necessarily mutually exclusive, rather they complement and, at times, are in tension with each other. Such an examination will provide some conceptual clarity that is currently lacking in empirical work on an ‘experience’ categorized as migration.
Space reflects the culture of its respective society. By analyzing configurational patterns of space, the discipline of spatial analysis attempts to reveal the underlying socio-cultural implication within space. In this paper, however, spatial analysis is criticized as being superficial, as the cultural studies discipline sets out several topics that currently cannot be properly addressed by spatial analysis. One major topic is the Individualism-Collectivism cultural dimension. This study provides insight on how the IND-COL dimension can be addressed through spatial analysis. The IND-COL dimension is reinterpreted as the degree of differentiation between inhabitants and strangers, where the differentiating factor is 'familiarity' obtained through the differing wayfinding behavior within a spatial configuration. Assuming that an individualist space displays a configurational pattern that hardly differentiates spatial familiarity between inhabitants and strangers, while a collectivist space displays a larger difference between the two groups, spatial familiarity of inhabitants and strangers are quantified as the integration synergy index and ERAM synergy index, respectively. It is then the degree of difference between the two synergy indexes that identifies the IND-COL dimension of a spatial configuration. To verify this conceptual framework, comparative analysis on single-family houses and multi-family apartments, housing types with differing cultural backgrounds, was conducted.
Forced to stay on the island by unfavorably winds, Odysseus' men slaughter the cattle and are subsequently all killed by a thunderstorm sent by Zeus. Odysseus himself is punished when Calypso on Ogygia keeps him from returning to Ithaca for seven more years. e article gives a comparative and critical overview on theories of time in policy analysis. It is based on two central assumptions: First, the various ways time is conceptualized in policy analysis are closely related to underlying understandings of politics and political action. eories of time are also always political theories. Debating time is thus not only of analytic value. It also has large implications on how power, rationality, and collectivity are related to each other. Secondly, theories of time as political theories can be highly inuential in practice. When they nd their way into policymaking, they may realign the time horizons and temporal orders of political action.
In the early days of the Internet, significant researchers on sociological aspects relating to the Internet thought that online and off life worlds were somewhat disconnected as if they were parallel universes. Cyberculture emphasized a more contingent, flexible and fluid experience of selfhood. Those approaches produced a strong influence in early postmodern Internet studies (Hayward, 1991; Stone, 1996; Mosco, 2004; Talbot, 1995). Reading those earlier papers, it seems that the Internet has opened the way for the full realization of political utopias that conceived cyberspace as having an inherently democratic structure (Barlow, 1996). The web of our days is far from being the same of earlier stages. Dominated not just by Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia, it has recently been shaped by WikiLeaks and the so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Over the years, perspectives on identities and social interactions have very much changed. Today, Internet studies follow a path based on the empirical research of the effective social interactions performed in the digital environment. Most of these perspectives derive its theoretical framework from important currents of social thought such as phenomenological sociology and symbolic interactionism. The purpose of this paper is to discuss complex literature on the issue of the autonomy of the self with relevance to understanding the meaning of political activism and mobilization.
Theodor Adorno has often been portrayed as the prototypical example of the permanent exile, even though, after living fifteen years in Britain and the US, he returned to Germany in 1949 and spent the last twenty years of his life there. This article traces Adorno’s reflections on his homecoming and analyses how his experiences of exile and return shaped his mature thought. Conceiving homecoming not simply as a return to one’s origins but as a continuation of a radical experience of the foreign, it builds on the remarkable continuity of Adorno’s theory of intellectual experience over time. The article also explores homecoming in relation to Adorno’s thought on language and translation, an aspect that has been little studied in the existing literature, both in terms of the articulation of a philosophy of language where the foreign plays an important role, and in terms of how language and translation were directly connected with Adorno’s return.
The redrawing of the European map in the aftermath of the events of 1989 and the collapse of the communist regimes triggered an unprecedented mobility of persons and heralded a new phase in European migrations. The former predominantly labour migration pattern has become highly diversified: refugees, ‘repatriates,’ shuttle/commuter migrants, undocumented and trafficked migrants are now some of the numerically most important categories along with the traditional labour and family migration (Morawska, 2000; Morokvasic & Rudolph, 1994, 1996; Okolski, 2001; Salt, 1995; Thränhardt, 1996; Wallace, C., Chmouliar, O., & Sidorenko, E., 1996; Wallace & Stola, 2001; Weber, 1998; Withol de Wenden & de Tinguy 1995). A new ‘migratory space’ between East and West (Morokvasic & de Tinguy, 1993) emerged as a space of departure and circulation, and also functions as a transit and a target space (Iglicka, 1999; Morawska, 2000; Okolski, 1998). Some scholars therefore call this new space a “buffer zone” (Stola, 2001; Wallace, 2001; Wallace et al., 1996).
This paper interrogates the ways in which ‘reflexivity’ has proliferated as a normative methodological discourse in the field of international and comparative education. We argue that the dominant approach to reflexivity foregrounds the standpoints of researchers and their subjects in a way that does not attend to the situated, contingent, and relational dynamics of ‘knowing’ itself. This too easily bypasses the performative effects of research; how disciplinary ways of knowing (through associated methods and discourses) enact particular realities of the world. Drawing on theoretical devices from actor–network theory, we put forward the perspective that social researchers, through the methods and disciplinary discourses they deploy, are ‘brokers’ and ‘translators’ of knowledge. This signifies the ways in which the process of research engages actors, scripts, and performances which produce particular understandings of, and effects on, education and development. The paper illustrates the contribution of this perspective through the case of research on teachers and education reform in India.
This article situates the role of psychological investigations in analyses of social problems like colonialism and racism, via a phenomenological reading of the writings of Frantz Fanon. Emerging scholarship on Fanon's use of psychology is beginning to elucidate how his style of analysis enables an interweaving of psychological insights with sociopolitical ones. The present paper builds on this research by explicating the essential moments of Fanon's approach. Fanonian investigations are shown to be characterized by a focus on: experience, concrete examples, evidence, meaning, unprejudiced seeing from multiple perspectives, delineation of essential structure, and critical and liberating praxis. Fanon is then compared to other theorists operating at the nexus of psychology and society in order to delineate an overall structure of psychopolitical investigations. Overall, the paper attempts to sketch ways in which psychology can be advanced as a science and praxis of human liberation.
FTER the optimism which followed the falling of the Berlin Wall, one has found out that the alternative to Cold War wasn't the Global Peace. Regional conflicts have grown stronger, becoming more intense than ever. At several levels, some taken-for-granted evidences were shaken by new social, cultural, political and technological phenomena. Risk, contingence, and entropy became major categories of contemporary theoretical approaches. The post-modern society appears now to contempo- rary thought as a new world shaped by social and cultural fragmentation, and the eruption of new identities. The emergence of a novel public sphere con- cerned, mainly, with emergent social and political rights of minorities; and the constant flow of people, either immigrants or refugees crossing cultural and geographic spaces, brought to light new and old identities, leading those ancient and secure borders to collapse. Some confluent phenomena such as en- vironmental problems, contemporary hazards associated with nuclear power, chemical pollution, terrorism, changes on cultural attitudes, the "women's lib" and their subsequent arrival to labour market, the crisis of the old traditional mediation apparatus (Church, Family, Tradition), the decadence of ideologies, emerge as main features of a society where everything that was solid melted on air (Adam, Beck, e van Loom 2000: pp 6-7). Increasing reflexivity in face of answers once taken-for-granted challenged by those enormous changes, and anxiety in face of a changing world makes that concern with security and risk become a major problem of our societies. Insecurity is thus an existential con- text: we don't know anymore how to go on the basis of tradition. The implicit validity claims of taken-for-granted values and traditions become problematic and potentially questioned (Adam, Beck e van Loom, 2000:37)- Throughout this text, one appeals to a theoretical approach where we can find elements from the phenomenology of Lebenswelt, from the theory of mul- tiple realities, from the theory of social representations and also from the analy- sis of the didactic and safety functions of journalism. With this approach, we
Ethnographic studies, like all research studies, provide no easy answers about what teachers should do. Zeuli and Floden support that general point by showing the complexities surrounding issues of cultural congruity. Although ethnographic studies sometimes reveal ways in which incongruity contributes to inequity, the research does not imply that teachers should always promote cultural congruity. Unless teacher educa tors understand the problems underly ing endorsements of cultural congruity, they may contribute to the miseducation of future teachers and their students.
The Austrian School of Economics has always taken a deep interest in methodological issues, and has used its methodological reflections to build substantive theories towards explaining the role of knowledge in economic life. This ‘double’ interest for knowledge within the Austrian School can be traced back at least to Alfred Schutz’s 1932 thesis The Phenomenology of the Social World, which was written within the context of the Ludwig von Mises’ seminar group. A central idea in this thesis is that conceptualizations in the social sciences are of a second-order nature, since they build on the conceptualizations already formed by social actors in their everyday lives about other social actors. In this article I try to trace how Alfred Schutz’s writings on scientific and everyday knowledge were influenced by and in turn influenced Austrian economists, including Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Oskar Morgenstern, and Fritz Machlup. Furthermore, I raise the question of why Alfred Schutz himself as well as Fritz Machlup took an apologetic stance towards neoclassical economics, while Friedrich Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern were much more critical of the orthodoxy. In answering this question I argue that while Schutz and Machlup both defended equilibrium economics based on a conventionalist–instrumentalist view, Hayek and to some degree Morgenstern proposed to build more process-oriented models relying on a realist view of scientific explanations.
This article seeks to illuminate some of the social psychological correlates of social mobility. It proceeds from the observation that while a great deal is known about aggregate rates of mobility and the factors that inhibit or enhance persons' movement through social structures, far less is known about the way individuals define, interpret, comprehend, and give meaning to their own movement through social space. In-depth interview data from 25 professionals who grew up in working- or lower-class circumstances suggests that such a background deeply influences persons' perceptions and actions throughout their occupational lives. The professionals whose own words we will hear, all between 50 and 60 years of age, have “made it” in the occupational world. And they have done it by traversing great social distances. As the recount their stories of becoming doctors, lawyers, academics, and businesspersons, they also mention over and again how their motives, strategic occupational choices, and self-images are connected to the circumstances of their origins. Class and ethnic background is an important “frame” within which persons understand, experience, and create their careers.
This article addresses reflective practice in research and practice and takes the issue of consciousness of social class in vocational psychology as a working example. It is argued that the discipline’s appreciation of social class can be advanced through application of the qualitative research method autoethnography. Excerpts from an autoethnographic study are used to explore the method’s potential. This reflexive research method is presented as a potential vehicle to improve vocational psychologists’ own class consciousness and to concomitantly enhance their capacity to grasp social class within their own spheres of research and practice. It is recommended that autoethnography be used for research, training, and professional development for vocational psychologists.
This article presents research on both the source and continuity of support received by bereaved parent(s) within four different social contexts: family, friends, co-workers, and clergy. The data were obtained from a study conducted in 1990–91 on the social impact of the death of a child, and are drawn from fourteen interviews with bereaved parents representing nine families and ten child deaths. The responses to three questions are considered. First, how were you treated by family members and close friends? What were their expectations? Second, how were you treated by your boss and co-workers when you returned to work? What were their expectations? And, finally, how did your clergy treat you? Using the work of Therese Rando and William Worden as point of departure, social support or lack thereof for the bereaved parent is reexamined from a symbolic interactionist perspective. Implications for grief counseling are discussed.
This paper is a reflexive account of a number of methodological issues that arose in the field as I was conducting a study of the relationship between identity and participation in school governance in six African, Xhosa speaking communities in the Eastern Cape. I conducted this study periodically in four phases between April 2002 and May 2005. I collected data using ‘residence’ methodology, and included surveys, in-depth interviews and participant observations. Research sites comprised four rural and two townships. This paper aims to explore the nature of my own researcher identity, which in this context translated into both insider and outsider positions. This shows the fluid nature of my identity as a researcher. This paper intends to make a contribution to the researcher status debate that challenges the simplistic insider-outsider dichotomy evident in popular qualitative literature, and suggests, rather, that we begin to imagine the possibility of a continuum in which the researcher is located. In this I suggest that positionings of oneself as 'native' and 'stranger' shift, providing the researcher with a complex challenge of constantly having to 'read' his or her location. Such a reading, I argue, can be utilized to inform and enhance the research experience. Reflections are made on the advantages of being an insider, and the challenges, incompleteness and destabilization that come with recognition of this status. Recommendations are made for young researchers to be conscious of the complexity of fieldwork politics, which at times require one to adjust to unexpected situations.
When one says “John is a more rational person than Henry,” many meanings of the word “rational” can be distinguished. Some of these meanings are related to affairs of everyday life, some to affairs of scientific theorizing, and it is the scientific rationalities that writers on social organization and decision making commonly refer to as features of “rational choice.” It is here suggested that other meanings of rationality should be taken into account and treated as data in empirical research.
The paper examines the stereotypes of South Asian descent women held by midwives in a British hospital. The data are drawn from a small-scale ethnographic study which investigated the women's maternity experiences. The midwives’ stereotype contained four main themes: the difficulty of communicating with the women; the women's lack of compliance with care and abuse of the service; their tendency to ‘make a fuss about nothing’; and their lack of ‘normal maternal instinct’. The creation, perpetuation and effects of this negative stereotyping are examined in the light of the wider sociological research on patient typification. Black and minority ethnic patients are particularly vulnerable to negative typification because of their visibility combined with the fact that crude racial stereotypes are common in wider society. Stereotyping reflected and reinforced the view that Asian women are ‘all the same’ but ‘not like us’. Midwives used stereotypes to help them to make judgements about the kind of care different women want, need and deserve. It is therefore argued that stereotyping is a factor in the creation of the inequality in health experiences of black and minority ethnic patients.
The sociological study of intellectual innovation has long been polarized between romantic notions of the creative marginal intellectual and competing accounts stressing the benefits of national, organizational and network centrality in the production of knowledge. I offer the concept of “optimal marginality’ as an attempt to move beyond this longstanding but increasingly stale debate. The relationship between a certain type of marginality and intellectual creativity is discussed in the context of a case study on innovation within psychoanalysis. German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm's contributions to the modern revision of Freudian theory is highlighted to illustrate the conditions under which marginality is likely to lead to innovations within theoretical systems and intellectual organizations. What types of marginality lead to innovation? Under what conditions does marginality lead to insight, and when does it lead to marginal ideas? Four ideal types are outlined and a research agenda is called for that operationalizes and tests these theoretical ideas in the context of comparative sociological analysis of intellectual creativity.
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