The comment addresses central issues of a "theory theory" approach as exemplified in Gopnik' and Goldman's BBS-articles. Gopnik, on the one hand, tries to demonstrate that empirical evidence from developmental psychology supports the view of a "theory theory" in which common sense beliefs are constructed to explain ourselves and others. Focusing the informational processing routes possibly involved we would like to argue that his main thesis (e.g. idea of intentionality as a cognitive construct) lacks support at least for two reasons: (...) one methodological and one structural. On the other hand, Goldman raises an important question when he is asking how people ascribe mental states to themselves. Reasons why Goldman's attempt to understand common sense mental representations by using an analogy from visual perception is problematic are discussed. The role which is attributed to a phenomenology is evaluated. (shrink)

Strategy frames the contemporary epistemological space of urbanism: major cities across the globe such as New York, London and Sydney invest time, energy and resources to craft urban strategies. Extensive empirical research projects have proposed a shift towards a strategic framework to manage cities. This theoretical curiosity is reflected in the rising interest in urban strategy from practice. For instance, the World Bank regularly organizes an Urban Strategy Speaker Series, while the powerful network CEOs for Cities lobbies for a strategic (...) approach to urban development. Critical scholars such as Zukin diagnose not a shift in but a shift to strategic thinking in the contemporary city. This article poses the question: what makes strategy such an attractive ‘thought style’ in relation to imagining and managing cities? How can we understand the practice of urban strategy? And what are its intended and unintended consequences? The objective of this article is to analyse strategy as a socio-political practice that shapes cities, and by extension, society at large. (shrink)

The blossoming literature on genealogy in recent years has come as somewhat of a pleasant surprise to the historically inclined among us. It has not, however, come without its difficulties. As I see it, the literature on genealogy is guilty of two conflations, what I call the “debunking/problematizing conflation” and the “problematizing/rationalizing conflation.” Both are the result of the inadequate typological maps currently used to organize the literature. As a result, what makes many genealogies philosophically interesting often remains obscure. In (...) response, I propose a new two-dimensional typology that avoids these conflations and outfits us with a richer conceptual vocabulary with which to understand and organize the genealogies which populate the literature. By identifying a second dimension of analysis which has thus far gone untheorized, my typology enables us to elucidate the various normative objectives and objects of investigation structuring a literature which is more diverse than previously acknowledged. We can thus get a clearer understanding of the problems those genealogies face, of their critical potential, and of their implications for our conception of critique. (shrink)

The present study examined the traces of neoliberal ideology in O-level English language textbooks taught in elitist private schools in Pakistan that follow the UK-based international educational system administrated by the University of Cambridge under the General Certificate of Education (GCE). Analysis in the study was informed by Fairclough's CDA writings. Moreover, Bourdieu's views on neoliberalism were also considered to shed some light on neoliberal ideology in the textbooks. Findings suggest that several neoliberal themes were evident in the textbooks under (...) scrutiny, including marketization, consumerism, branding, celebrity culture, competition, individualism, self-responsibility and self-entrepreneurship, mobility, new ‘Othering’ strategy and English as a neoliberal skill. Based on the findings, we argue that the global ELT industry that produces teaching materials, including textbooks for the periphery is a major contributor to the neoliberal world order maintained by the local (political) elite in the government(s) e.g. Pakistan in case of the present study. The textbooks prepare learners for a competitive world rather than a world based on cooperation, mutual progress, and happiness. The study thus questions such neoliberal hegemony encoded in the textbooks and argues for critical examination and selection of the materials for contexts where English is taught as a foreign language. (shrink)

Existing social disparities in the United States are inconsistent with the promise of democracy; therefore, there was a need for critical conceptualization of the first principles that undergird American democracy and the genesis of democratic social change in America. This constructivist grounded theory study aimed to construct a grounded theory that provides an understanding of the process of American democratic social change as it emerged from the nation’s founding documents. A post hoc polytheoretical framework including Foucault’s, Bourdieu’s, and Marx and (...) Engels’s theories of power was used to understand power dynamics. The research question focused on understanding the process of democratic social change in America. The sample comprised the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and the U.S. Constitution. The documents were retrieved from the National Archives and Library of Congress. The data analysis plan incorporated successive comparison, situational and dramaturgical analysis, deconstruction, and perspective taking as strategies. The result was the construction of a democratic social change process theory preceded by five grounded theories: (a) first principles of democracy, (b) first principles of democracy conceptual framework, (c) socio-ethical principles of democracy, (d) demoralizing process, and (e) either-or approach to democracy. Positive social change implications include applying a democratic social change process to future social change endeavors across domains and levels of analysis, a normative framework for a republican form of government, and a tool to analyze and minimize the latent consequences of social justice policies. (shrink)

Discusses the conditions of possibility for intercultural and comparative philosophy, and for crosscultural communication at large. This innovative book explores the preconditions necessary for intercultural and comparative philosophy. Philosophical practices that involve at least two different traditions with no common heritage and whose languages have very different grammatical structure, such as Indo-Germanic languages and classical Chinese, are a particular focus. Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel look at the necessary and not-so-necessary conditions of possibility of interpretation, comparison, and other forms (...) of interaction and how we can speak of similarities and differences in this context. The authors posit that it is necessary to dissolve the question of universalism versus relativism by replacing the ideal language paradigm with a paradigm of family resemblances and that it is not necessary to share a common language to engage in comparison. Numerous case studies are presented, including many comparisons of Western and Chinese concepts. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

La formación docente es indispensable para responder a los requerimientos de la compleja sociedad actual. De su conocimiento, iniciativa, praxis y creatividad depende el éxito o el fracaso del sujeto que aprende. Al modificar el rol del docente se transforma la actitud de los estudiantes. ¿Cómo entender la formación filosófica transdisciplinar? Este texto responde a este y otros cuestionamientos: ¿cuáles son los planteamientos pedagógicos afines a la era digital? ¿en qué medida las TIC se encuentran al servicio de una filosofía (...) educativa transdisciplinar?, ¿cómo se explica ese enfoque en la formación del docente?, ¿cuál es la función de la formación en la innovación educativa?, ¿cómo formar para la ciudadanía mundial?, ¿cuáles son las contribuciones de las nuevas ciencias para la formación educativa? El crecimiento exponencial de la ciencia y de la tecnología nos obliga a pensar en procesos formativos innovadores. En tal sentido, resulta imprescindible el estudio de estas problemáticas. (shrink)

Linguistic justice is about institutions distributing material and symbolic resources fairly when they are faced with linguistic diversity. However, no theory of linguistic justice has developed a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral dilemmas that take place in interpersonal linguistic relationships, in particular the power dynamics leading to (linguistic) domination. The aim of this article is to start building a general theory of linguistic domination, one that offers new conceptual tools for both empirical and normative analyses of linguistically diverse (...) societies. Using the republican tradition of thought, I argue that there is linguistic domination whenever someone is subject to the uncontrolled capacity for interference over their linguistic uses, ideology and acquisition by another agent. This article tests under what conditions this phenomenon takes place and the parties involved in it (both in terms of individuals and political institutions). (shrink)

Through a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following discussions, this article defends a negotiating model of normativity according to which normative authority is always subject to contestation. To refute both individualism and collectivism, I supplement Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument with a Social Language Argument, showing that normativity cannot be monopolized either individually or socially (i.e. it cannot be privatized or collectivized). The negotiating view of normativity here developed lays the foundations of a politics of radical contestation which converges with Chantal Mouffe's (...) framework of 'radical democracy', while departing from her agonism in preserving the structuring and constraining role that tacit agreement in action plays in rule-following practices. My account of the 'burdens of eccentricity' elucidates how the normative force of dissidence can be properly recognized and used effectively for social transformations. I argue that there is a 'presumption of normalcy' in favour of the established consensus of action, but that this presumption is defeasible: in normative disagreements, a violation of expected normalcy shifts the burden onto the shoulders of rebellious agents who must show that their dissenting behaviour can be a legitimate extension, revision, or transformation of the practice in question. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony are often invoked in current debates concerning cultural imperialism, globalisation and global English. However, these debates are rarely cognizant of Gramsci's own university training in linguistics, the centrality of language to his writings on education and hegemony, or his specific engagement with language politics in his own day. By paying much greater attention to Gramsci's writings on language and education, this article attempts to lay the groundwork for an adequate approach to the current (...) politics of global English.While Gramsci may have left formal education and his studies in linguistics at Turin University as a young man to become a full time journalist and political activist, he certainly did not ‘jettison’ his study of language as is commonly implied. It has been widely accepted that Gramsci had an expansive conception of education which would curtail any suggestion that ‘education’ must be limited to formal schooling or university. Likewise, this article demonstrates the importance of Gramsci's lifelong analysis of language, its role in education and the development of hegemony. It argues that Gramsci's writings on language policy in Italy, specifically la questione della lingua[the language question] and his concern with linguistics, are an integral part of his approach to education and hegemony. (shrink)

This study explores the circulation of Bourdieu's symbolic capital at the level of face-to-face interactions. Recounting a single interaction between three individuals, this study provides an example of the negotiated nature of capital articulation and the relationship between identity practice and capital articulation, when addressed at the microlevel of interaction. Given a group task which forced participants to negotiate at an explicit level symbolic capital affordances, one participant – a non-native speaker of English in an English conversation – was able (...) to articulate cultural capital by way of her links to academic institutions. However, later in the group task her attempt to index capital by way of her reflexive positioning as Asian was rebuked, leading her to disengage from the group task. This study emphasizes the need to analyze symbolic capital from the ‘ground-up’ for that is where its distribution is reproduced but also potentially transformed. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo analizaremos, a través de una serie de actividades diseñadas para implementar en el aula, el modo en el que un grupo de jóvenes gallegos co-construyen el conocimiento metalingüístico y metapragmático acerca de las diferentes variedades locales del español y gallego. La exposición de su trayectoria biográfica permite que afloren diversos saberes y conocimientos metalingüísticos que los estudiantes han ido adquiriendo a lo largo de su escolarización y, además, surgen diversas categorizaciones sobre lenguas y variedades que ponen (...) de manifiesto sus ideologías lingüísticas, pp. 157–174). A través del análisis de las prácticas metalingüísticas y metapragmáticas comprobaremos cómo se reproducen las ideologías lingüísticas de estos jóvenes; por una parte, las ideologías de la institución académica y escolar; y por otra, las ideologías lingüísticas de los jóvenes presentes en el aula, en donde etiquetan, clasifican y establecen jerarquizaciones y valoraciones de su repertorio comunicativo. Finalmente, se comprueba cómo las diferentes variedades del español y del gallego actúan como índices de identidad social diferente de la reconocida en el ámbito institucional y académico, con distintos valores en el mercado lingüístico. (shrink)

In recent years, alternative teacher preparation programmes are globally emerging to address teacher quality in ‘hard-to-staff’ schools. These programmes commonly attract graduates from prestigious...

ABSTRACTThis article examines right-leaning press representations of people living in the UK who can’t speak English, or at least speak English well, following the 2011 Census, which was the first to ask respondents about their main language and proficiency in English. The analysis takes a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse analysis, based on a 1.8 million-word corpus of right-leaning newspaper articles about ‘speak English’ in the years following this historic Census. The analysis reveals the tendency for the press to focus (...) on immigrants – particularly in the contexts of education and health – who are represented with recourse to a series of argumentation strategies, or ‘topoi’. Over the course of this paper, we argue that these topoi are problematic, as they present paradoxes, obscure the role of the Government in ensuring integration, overlook the difficulties of language learning and cultural assimilation, and generally contribute to a broader anti-immigrant UK media narrative which serves to legitimise exclusionary and discriminatory practices against people from minority linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. (shrink)

In the mid-19 th century, increases in global migration and mobility produced a discernable rise in the number of ambiguous absences. This shift, combined with a novel expectation, linked to improved communications technology, that such absences might be resolved engendered the emergence of missing persons as a social category. A demand on the part of families of the missing that the state aid in their location would produce a Bourdieusian classification struggle over how to define and categorize this new mass (...) of absences. At issue would be whether an ambiguously absent individual was merely absent, as a routine component of social life, or whether the individual merited legitimation by the state as a new form of deviant: a "missing" person. Scholars have described the emerging administrative state’s enhanced powers of surveillance and classification and its persistent inclination to render their populations, in James Scott’s phrase, “legible.” Brought to the attention of the state, missing persons represented a body of people who had conspicuously fallen out of official sight. Yet, instead of attempting to fix this omission by gathering additional information on the lost — to, in effect, see the missing — as theories of the state would lead us to expect, the state chose to look away. In the United States, the state, in the form of municipal police departments, resisted classifying absences as cases of missingness and pushed back against families’ requests for aid. Leveraging the inherently ambiguous characteristics of the missing, the state promoted a definition of missing persons that conveniently freed it from the burden of managing an unmanageable population. In this article, drawing from archival data, I challenge prevailing theories of the modern state that emphasize its avidly classificatory nature by offering a case in which legibility was strategically withheld and a population was, in service of state interests, intentionally obscured. Only after the state lost its symbolic monopoly and the category was raced and gendered, becoming, in public discourse, associated with a socially valuable demographic – namely, young, white women – would the state, facing a threat to its legitimacy, deem the missing as worthy of being seen. (shrink)

The promotion of the self‐managing capacities of people has become a marker of contemporary mental health practice, yet self‐management remains a largely uncontested construct in mental health settings. This discourse analysis based upon the work of Foucault investigates self‐management practices for bipolar disorder and their action upon how a person with bipolar disorder comes to think of who they are and how they should live. Using Foucault's framework for exploring the ethical self and transcripts of interviews with people living with (...) bipolar disorder, this discourse analysis finds that the discursive practices of self‐management for bipolar disorder are prescribing a restricted regime for living based upon the quintessential neo‐liberal subject using practices that are focused upon managing an unreliable and problematic self. The article concludes with the proposition that the problem of bipolar disorder (for which self‐management is an answer) is less about the object itself and more about how we construct the nature of the self. A Māori indigenous ontology is used here as an example of an alternative discursive resource through which people make sense of the self and which allows ways of thinking about self‐management that engage with ambivalence and ambiguity rather than restriction and regulation. (shrink)

How we think national standard languages came to dominate the world depends on how we conceptualize the way languages are linked to the people that use them. Weberian theory posits the arbitrariness and constructedness of a community based on language. People who speak the same language do not necessarily think of themselves as a community, and so such a community is an intentional, political, and inclusive production. Bourdieusian theory treats language as a form of unequally distributed cultural capital, thus highlighting (...) language’s classed nature. The rise of standard languages thus reflects a change in the class structure of a nationalizing society. In contrast, I move beyond the familiar Western cases on which these theories are based to reveal the shortcomings of both these theoretical approaches. China, with an exceptionally artificial national standard language that was promulgated by the state in an extremely top-down process, highlights the importance of intentionality in both the design of the language and the social function it was supposed to play. Building on Weber and Bourdieu, I argue that even egalitarian language standardization projects, such as the Chinese case, can result in unintended new hierarchies of privilege and power, outrunning the best intentions of their designers. (shrink)

Having been recognised as a “resource-intensive” economy, the People’s Republic of China has been experiencing major implications in terms of ecological environment degradation, which continuously harms the health of the Chinese people and the productivity of China’s economy. Among the political efforts set forth by the Chinese central authorities, the claim of promoting a “National Ecological Accounting and Auditing Scheme” has been drawing nationwide attention. Through a series of critical discourse analysis on relevant written texts produced by the central authorities, (...) mainstream media and the Chinese academics, this paper sets out to analyse the historical evolution of the institutional context in relation to the establishment of such a scheme, and further, to decipher the ideological underpinnings that have shaped this context. The findings indicate that the signification of NEAAS goes far beyond the environment protection, in that, this scheme constitutes a fundamental institutional reform that the Communist Party of China seeks to conduct. (shrink)

This article explores the interplay between the globalization process and the nation/nation-state by examining the case of contemporary Taiwan. Globalization is analyzed along four dimensions: flows of people, flows of culture, economic globalization and international/transnational institutions. Along each dimension, it is found that globalization has had a profound impact upon how cultural and political elites imagine their nation, leading to rising aspirations for nationhood and nation-stateness. Meanwhile, nation-building efforts have deepened Taiwan's embeddedness in globalization, where globalization itself is being employed, (...) both by the state and non-state elites, as a strategy to construct the nation. Three implications suggest that the relationship between `the global' and `the national' be reconceptualized. First, nations and nationalism can be better comprehended against a global/international backdrop, as national identity to a large extent depends upon the imagined or real approval of other nations. Second, there emerges a new strategic alliance between the global and the national, in the sense that globalization gives new ground upon which the nation can be formulated. And finally, by reinforcing certain institutional prerogatives of nations and nation-states, globalization may also lead to an increased desire for nationhood and nation-stateness in cases where the latter two have not been fully realized. (shrink)

The growing Chinese middle class and their accumulation of wealth and economic capital have seen an increasing number of Chinese students pursuing their education in the West. Due to this growing number, motivations behind their decision to study abroad warrant scholarly treatment. This article discusses the motives of Chinese middle-class families and their children in seeking studying abroad. The paper reports on a recent study of 166 students on American campuses from 2017 to 2018. It uses Bourdieusian concepts of capital, (...) habitus, and the idea of social mobility and social reproduction, to understand Chinese middle-class families’ strategic decisions around studying overseas in relation to employability, labour market competitiveness, and family support. Studying abroad, therefore, is construed by Chinese middle class families as a way of pursuing and preserving their social status and social mobility. (shrink)

The paper will discuss the role of the visual in French urban space. It will reveal the close connections between visual and semiotics where the visual dimension is central rather than marginal. We will evaluate altogether the psychological, legal and social impacts of the new shapes of our own environment. Rethinking our public space shapes our identities, unveils the ‘hidden’ powerful discourse behind these new urban models.

In both their wider cultural dimensions and the institutional practices they stem from, the practices of ink art in Hong Kong manifest themselves in a variety of discourses ranging from the ‘tradit...

This article addresses the fundamental issues about sovereignty and an ethical polity that the event of September 11th has brought to a crisis. It examines the geography of power that has become more visible as the USA sets about ensuring that the new world order that has been emerging with neo-liberalism and corporate capitalism is protected from challenges of any kind. It argues that the state of emergency has become chronic, making possible the enactment of exceptional measures that threaten the (...) basic principles underlying democracy and liberty. Terror is becoming a universal tool to compel compliance with a global form of neo-feudalism. It questions the way in which Islamic fundamentalism is being used as ideological cover to legitimate another fundamentalism, namely neo-liberalism. The article opens up aspects of fundamentalism to an analysis that explores the interconnections between onto-logical lack, violence, surplus terror and the unpresentable in the discourse constitutive of authority. It also examines the exceptional status and character of the USA in the history of modernity, particularly with regard to its militarism. It calls for a critique of the present that recognizes that the current forms of totalitarianism eliminate the possibility of just forms of sociality emerging. (shrink)

A commentary on a target article by Alison Gopnik (1993) How we know our minds: the illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality. Focusing on evidence of how children acquire a theory of mind, this commentary argues that there are internal inconsistencies in theories that both argue for the functional role of conscious experiences and the irreducibility of those experiences to third-person viewable information processing.

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 article outlines the features and application of a set of model curriculum materials that utilize eco-democratic principles and humanities-based content to cultivate critical analysis of the cultural foundations of socio-environmental problems. We first describe the goals and components of the materials, then discuss results of their use in two different types of classrooms: an undergraduate humanities seminar at a mid-sized four-year college, and a developmental writing course at a community college.

It has been claimed that to fully understand the law, one must know the language of normative texts and the relevant rules governing its use. It usually means that normative texts do not seem to be comprehensible enough to persons without formal legal training. In an on-going research project, we are focusing on the process of writing texts of legal regulations, conducting semi-structured interviews with those involved in drafting normative texts. In this paper, we focus on lawyers as a speech (...) community of legal language speakers and we discuss why and to what extent this speech community may be considered an elite in a society. We show that competent usage of special – legal – language in regulating the whole society may help create a special group of persons wielding an important segment of cultural capital: the knowledge of legal language, and, in consequence, competent knowledge of law. Given the fact that this language is used to exercise (legal) power in a society, lawyers appear to be in the advantageous position of an elite. We argue that those who draft new legal texts reproduce writing rules and customs, constantly re-creating legal language as a language mostly incomprehensible to a non-competent speaker, and, in consequence, creating lawyers as an elite speech community. (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)

This article examines the characteristics of a new form of visibility which has become a pervasive feature of the modern world and which is linked to the development of communication media. With the development of the media, the visibility of individuals, actions and events is severed from the sharing of a common locale: one no longer has to be present in the same spatial-temporal setting in order to see the other or to witness an action or event. The rise of (...) this new form of mediated visibility has transformed the relations between visibility and power. Thanks to mediated visibility, political rulers are able to appear before their subjects in ways and on a scale that never existed previously. Skilful politicians exploit this to their advantage; with the help of their PR consultants and communications advisers, they seek to create and sustain a basis of support by managing their visibility in the mediated arena of modern politics. But mediated visibility is a double-edged sword: it also creates new risks for political leaders, who find themselves exposed to new kinds of dangers. Hence the visibility created by the media becomes the source of a new and distinctive kind of fragility. However much political leaders try to manage their visibility, they cannot completely control it: mediated visibility can slip out of their grasp and can, on occasion, work against them. (shrink)

Recent approaches to studying argumentation in institutions have pointed out the role of institutional rules in constraining argumentation that takes place in institutional contexts. However, few studies explain how these rules concretely affect actual argumentation. In particular, little work has been done as to the consequences of interactional asymmetry which often exists between participants in institutional contexts. While previous studies have suggested that this asymmetry exists as an aberration in the deliberative process, this paper argues that asymmetry is built into (...) day-to-day institutional practices as a means of achieving institutional agendas. This article draws upon findings from workplace and discourse studies to explicate particular dimensions of asymmetry that commonly occur within institutional settings, and establishes a methodological framework to account for how this asymmetry can be operationalized for arguments that favor institutional interests regardless of the underlying strength of the arguments being made. Drawing on a controversial case of institutional argumentation during a hearing of the US House Committee on Un-American Activities in the mid-1950s, this article demonstrates how in using these advantages, HUAC is able to overcome legitimate witness counterarguments to its claims and achieve its institutional goals for the hearing. Though the testimony is admittedly 60-years old, HUAC is a useful case study: the asymmetry in the exchange is clear and we have a historical record to verify the factual accuracy of the claims being made. Additionally, we can see how the subsequent legal reforms that reduced conditions of asymmetry for witnesses were responsible for HUAC’s eventual demise as an institutional force. Though this paper analyzes one particular interaction, these findings are applicable to analysis of argumentation in many institutional settings. (shrink)

This paper explores the role the Panhellenic centers played in facilitating the circulation of wisdom in ancient Greece. It argues that there are substantial thematic overlaps among practitioners of wisdom , who are typically understood as belonging to different categories . By focusing on the presence of σοφοί at the Panhellenic centers in general, and Delphi in particular, we can acquire a more accurate picture of the particular expertise they possessed, and of the range of meanings the Greeks attributed to (...) the word σοφία. This approach seeks to challenge the conventional categories of modern scholarship and to offer a broader and more inclusive interpretive framework in its stead. One such thematic overlap is the way in which many σοφοί are described as exerting an almost uncanny, yet highly conventional ability to attract listeners and enchant them with their verbal performances. There is plenty of material to support the view that σοφοό, through tapping into the repository of σοφία that Delphi constituted and by aligning themselves with its authority, were seen as themselves being a conduit for a similar type of charismatic speech. (shrink)

Micro-sociological theory has traditionally stressed interactional pressures towards alignment: actors’ attempts to co-construct a shared definition of the situation. We argue that this model provides an insufficient account of the coordination of action and of the emergence of intersubjectivity among actors. To complement the focus on alignment, we develop a theory of disruption—a perceived misalignment of the dramaturgical structure of interaction in coordinating expected lines of action. We develop a theory of the interaction order that takes the interplay between interactional (...) alignment and disruption as a foundational challenge both for sociology and for actors in their everyday lives. We focus on the practical ways in which actors negotiate both interactional breaches and wider relational ruptures, and how they differentiate between disruptions-of relations and disruptions-for them. By doing so, we connect the interaction order to a wider relational order, providing a bridge between micro-level interactionism and the sociology of culture. (shrink)

Efforts to understand gender segregation within and among science disciplines have focused on both supply- and demand-side explanations. Yet we know little about how academic scientists themselves view the sources of such segregation. Utilizing data from a survey of scientists at thirty top U.S. graduate programs in physics and biology and semistructured interviews with 150 of them, this article examines the reasons academic scientists provide for differences in the distribution of women in biology and physics. In quantitative analyses, gender is (...) more salient than discipline in determining the reasons scientists provide for gender disparities between disciplines, suggesting that gender may act as a “master status,” shaping the experiences of scientists regardless of the gender composition of the discipline. Qualitative interviews confirm this interpretation and reveal that scientists also perceive mentoring, natural differences, discrimination, and the history of the disciplines to be important factors. Results contribute to research on the relationship between emotional labor and occupational gender segregation conducted in professions such as law and nursing. (shrink)

Though the invocation to be “reflexive” is widespread in feminist sociology, many questions remain about what it means to “turn back” and resituate our work—about how to engage with research subjects’ visions of the world and with our own theoretical models. Rather than a superficial rehearsal of researcher and interlocutor standpoints, I argue that “reflexivity” should help researchers theorize the social world in relational ways. To make this claim, I draw together the insights of feminist standpoint theory and Bourdieu’s reflexive (...) sociology to lay the foundation for a renewed reflexive project that centers epistemic privilege, the idea that positions of structural exclusion provide the best resources for theorizing social power. Reflexive sociology should consider interlocutors’ experiences of exclusion and contradiction, engaging with sites of alternative knowledge and incorporating them into the object of study. This type of reflexivity provides improved resources for relational theory building. I offer support for these theoretical arguments with a historical analysis of knowledge production in the feminist anti-violence movement. (shrink)

In recent years, the concept of social capital – broadly defined as co-operative networks based on regular, personal contact and trust – has been widely applied within cross-disciplinary human science research, primarily by economists, political scientists and sociologists. In this article, I argue why and how fieldwork anthropologists should fill a gap in the social capital literature by highlighting how social capital is being built in situ. I suggest that the recent inventions of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital, e.g., inclusive (...) and exclusive types of social capital, are fruitful concepts to apply in an anthropological fieldwork setting. Thus, my case study on the relationship between local people and newcomers in the rural Danish marginal municipality of Ravnsborg seeks to reveal processes of bridging/bonding social capital building. Such a case study at the micro level has general policy implications for a cultural clash between two different groups by demonstrating the complexity of a social capital mix where bonding social capital strongly prevails. This ultimately leads to a “social trap” (Rothstein 2005), implying widespread distrust and serious social and economic costs for a whole population. (shrink)