scholarly journals (Meta-)communicative work in a counselling centre for refugees: reiteration, erasure and agency

2021 ◽  
Vol 272 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Jonas Hassemer
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Situational Meaning ◽  
Institutional Actors ◽  
Institutional Order

Abstract We have no apartments is a phrase repeated over and over again at the counselling centre for refugees on housing matters based in Vienna, Austria, where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork. Based on an analysis of processes of entextualisation, de- and recontextualisation in the reiterative, discursive chain, this paper traces the emergence of an institutional regime of communication and the ways institutional actors – counsellors and volunteers – produce, navigate and reproduce this regime by engaging in (meta-)communicative work. The analysis shows how individual agency is both contingent and co-productive of institutional order and social order more generally. With this contribution, I propose Judith Butler’s concept of the postsovereign subject as a way to understand the relations between “local” practices and wider processes of trans-situational meaning-making.

scholarly journals Counselling Muslim Selves on Islamic Websites: Walking a Tightrope Between Secular and Religious Counselling Ideals?

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mona Abdel-Fadil
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Counselling Service ◽  
Online Data ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Online Counselling ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Counselling Psychology

This article focuses on the interactive counselling service Problems and Answers (PS), an Arabic language and Islamic online counselling service, which draws on global therapeutic counselling trends. For over a decade, PS was run and hosted by www.IslamOnline.net (IOL). Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article aims to provide a layered, contextualized understanding of online Islamic counselling, through addressing the ‘invisible’, ‘behind the screens’ aspects of PS counselling and the meaning making activities that inform the online output. In particular, I examine: 1. The multiple ways in which ‘religion’ shapes the PS counsellors' counselling output, and 2. The extent to which secular and religious counselling ideals clash, in PS counselling. Drawing on a mixed methods approach, I demonstrate instances in which offline data nuance and generate new understandings of online data. The findings demonstrate the multivocality and variations in the PS counsellors' perspectives on both religion and counselling psychology, and shed light on possible tensions between professed ideals and actual online practices.

scholarly journals The Integrity of the Territorial Identification of a Person in the Russian Social Space

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2276-2286
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Social Identification ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Institutional Order

Purpose of the study: To investigate the sociological dimension of social space structuring under the influence of territorial movements in the era of globalization based on the example of modern Russia. As the methodology for the study, the synthesis of E. Giddens’ theory was structured, its provisions on the topography of social space in the geographical plane. The paradigm of structuralist constructivism of P. Bourdieu was used as well, in which it was relevant for us to analyze habitus as a socio-geographical environment for the formation of institutional strategies of agents of social relationship. Factors that contribute to and hinder the adaptation of personality in the new social environment, were examined based on works by O. Toffler, U. Beck, V.I. Chuprov and Yu.A. Zubok. To determine the mechanism of the genesis and functioning of meanings in the new communicative environment, the authors relied on N. Luman's approach to self-identification and self-conference. In the process of analyzing the nature of trust in the institutional order in the context of globalization, the authors used works by A.V. Ivanov and S.A. Danilova who analyze the mechanisms of formation. The empirical basis for the article was a sociological study conducted on the basis of the Sociological Center of Kutafin Moscow State Law University.The article reveals the features of personality identification in a dynamic environment of interethnic and cross-cultural interactions, structured under the influence of territorial factors. The degree of conformity of the scale, the nature and depth of self-identification in various territorial planes of the social space are determined by the example of modern Russian society. Factors of social integration in the process of the formation of territorial identity both at the institutional level and in everyday life when constructing informal social ties are disclosed. The restrictions of social identification in the regions of Russia are found that prevent the formation of civic identity and responsibility for the reproduction of the social order. The values that determine social integration in cross-cultural interaction are revealed. The results of the study make a significant contribution to the development of methods for determining the causes of the genesis of separatist sentiments and the conditions for designing constructive social participation in various regions. The article is relevant for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as lecturers, involved in the problems of the sociological study of globalization, social space and group identity. The work uses an integral methodology for measuring social processes from the perspective of the subject of action, constructing strategies in the new social environment, and from the perspective of a system that ensures the reproduction of the institutional order.

Gender and Embodiment as Negotiated Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. L. Crawley ◽  
Ashley Green
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Interactionist Approach

Gender pervades every part of life, from identity and embodied practices to institutional and transnational social order. An interactionist approach recognizes that gender is constituted by pervasive, thoroughgoing, situational organizing practices of meaning-making pervading our worlds, which are always relational and emergent among people in institutional contexts at historical moments. Gender identities are not a feature of “types” of individuals but, rather, comprise negotiated relations between and among us—which can be normalizing or resistant. This chapter examines the development of sociological theory on gender and embodiment. It begins by looking at a brief timeline of the last 150 years of the everyday (US) “queer” lexicon to demonstrate how academic concepts seem to intertwine with the proliferation of everyday identities in the mundane world. The chapter then outlines its beginnings in microsociology, the connections between micro and macro theorizations, and emergent masculinities, femininities, transgender, and non-binary identity practices, pointing to various paradigm shifts along the way including feminisms, intersectionality, and queer theory. Constantly in production for everyone, gender proliferates as negotiated relations, made especially visible by resistance identities. We conclude briefly with future directions.

Framing the Issues

Journeys ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Susan L. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Violent Relationship

Chapter 1 explores the key theoretical and empirical literature that guides the research project. It describes the pushes and pulls that women experience in relationships characterized by IPV/A and it outlines what we understand women need in the short term and long term after the dissolution of a violent relationship. This chapter also incorporates a discussion of central thematic concepts such as growth, healing from trauma, individual agency and collective efficacy, identity, and meaning making. I challenge the false, or incomplete, assumption that there is some kind of closure for women after leaving a violent relationship. Finally, it looks at what it means to be “resilient.”

Ethnographic Assessments Using Ethnographic Fieldwork Methods to Help Undergraduate Students Experience, Understand, and Describe Living Abroad

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Kinsella
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Undergraduate Study ◽  
The People ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Reflection Prompts ◽  
Living Skills ◽  
Students Success

In this article, I examine one strategy through which international educators attempted to measure the success of undergraduate study abroad experiences. Using guided reflection prompts grounded in ethnographic fieldwork practices, we hoped to develop a method by which we could measure our students' success connecting their daily experiences abroad with concepts learned in the classroom, describing their physical surroundings and the people with whom they share them, and challenging stereotypes they knowingly or unknowingly retained when they began their program abroad. Drawn from over five years of essays collected from students at the conclusion of their study abroad experience, we focused our analysis on the students' self-awareness and their ability to be conscious of their own values and judgments as they tried to adapt to local practices and values while attaining new knowledge, thereby enhancing their intercultural living skills.

scholarly journals Meaning-Making of Motherhood Among Mothers With Substance Abuse Problems

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siu-ming To ◽  
Ming-wai Yan ◽  
Cheryl Danielle Lau
Keyword(s):  
Substance Abuse ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Parental Stress ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
History Of ◽  
Situational Meaning ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
And Coping

Previous literature has documented the unique challenges encountered by mothers with substance abuse problems, which may hinder the ability to fulfill parenting responsibilities. Since there is evidence suggesting the engagement in meaning-making processes can help individuals reinterpret their transitions into parenthood and cope with parental stress, this study examined the meaning-making processes of motherhood among mothers with substance abuse problems. Sixteen Hong Kong Chinese mothers with a history of substance abuse were purposively selected and invited to narrate their life and maternal experiences in individual interviews. Based on the meaning-making model in the context of stress and coping, whereby global meaning refers to orienting system of an individual and situational meaning refers to the meaning one attributes to a particular situation, the global and situational meanings of participants related to motherhood and substance use, and their reappraised meanings in response to the discrepancies between global and situational meanings were analyzed. Using thematic analysis, the results showed that when faced with an internal conflict between global and situational meanings induced by substance abuse, most participants engaged in the meaning-making process of assimilation. Rather than changing their inherent parental beliefs and values, most participants adjusted their appraisals toward the situation, and hence made changes in their cognitions or behaviors such as making efforts to quit substance use or reprioritizing their parenting responsibilities. The analysis further revealed that being a mother provided a significant source of meaning to the participants in confronting highly stressful mothering experiences induced by substance abuse. Altogether, the findings suggest that a meaning-making approach may have benefits and implications for helping this population reorganize their self-perceptions, gain a clearer sense of future direction in motherhood, and achieve more positive life and parenting outcomes.

scholarly journals Complexity of Academic Socialization of Historically Underrepresented Doctoral Students: De-Privileging Distinctions Between Macro-and-Micro-Theoretical Approaches

JCSCORE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Zarrina Talan Azizova
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Academic Socialization ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Conceptual Work

This article represents a conceptual work that critiques and challenges traditional linear theoretical assumptions of academic socialization and integration that are often applied to research of diverse populations in academia in general and doctoral education specifically. The article further proposes a new conceptual framework of academic socialization as a meaning-making act of historically underrepresented doctoral students. The ultimate goal of the proposed framework is to reconcile the restrictive use of sociological macro- and micro- orientations to foreground possibilities of a conceptual and empirical focus on an individual meaning making act (as a form of individual agency) of historically underrepresented doctoral students within the critical contexts of academia. The proposed framework offers methodological and analytical tools for a more complex qualitative research and institutional/individual practice to account for increasingly diverse populations in higher education.

scholarly journals Digital label of communicative culture of XXI century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iryna Kanyukova ◽  
Evgeniya Sydorovska
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Social Order ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Business Communication ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Network Society ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Communicative Interaction

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of digital etiquette in the context of modern communicative culture, as well as to determine the specifics of its development as a new form of business etiquette of the XXI century in terms of communicative interaction in the network. Methodology. The method of culturological analysis is applied (for consideration of digital etiquette of business communication as an organic element of spiritual culture and an important component of communicative culture); method of system analysis and synthesis (for consideration of digital etiquette as a part of etiquette culture of the XXI century), typological method (for revealing characteristic features of digital etiquette), method of semantic and pragmatic interpretation (for complex interpretation of the meaning of paralinguistic, verbal, kinetic and material-sign means) digital etiquette), etc. Scientific novelty. The etiquette culture of the virtual space of the network society of the XXI century is studied; the concept of "digital etiquette" is clarified and its differences from "network etiquette" are revealed; the peculiarities of business communication etiquette in the context of specifics of information and communication technologies are analyzed; the prospects of development of etiquette culture according to various directions of digital etiquette are revealed. Conclusions. A digital etiquette is a modern form of business etiquette, the emergence of which is directly related to the active development of technology and the formation of a global network infrastructure. The study found that the development of digital etiquette is fully consistent with the formation of a new social order and a new social culture (digital) as a regulatory and meaning-making component of the network society. Digital etiquette as an important component of the communication culture of the XXI century. which defines the values ​​and standards for participants in network communications at all levels of interaction. At the beginning of the third decade of the XXI century, digital communication is an integral part of business communication, and digital etiquette is an important manifestation of the culture of business communication, the level of which affects various forms of communication processes. In accordance with the specifics of development in digital etiquette, the features of business etiquette of the previous historical period are being transformed and new patterns are formed associated with etiquette as a modern sociocultural phenomenon.

scholarly journals Of Genes and Germs: The Agenda of Health in Contemporary Hollywood

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-171
Author(s):  
Elwin John
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Biological Warfare ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Individual Agency

Within the digital labyrinth, our telling of the medical present and future is also mediated as expected, by a web of technological upgradations. Science and technology may have strengthened the health security of its citizens and so did the old villains/attackers of the human body which have become more powerful. Deadlier viruses have penetrated into the complex genomic structures of the human race which have paved the way for invention of human supportive vaccinations and also destructive possibilities of biological warfare. Through this paper, I study this tensely and anxious predicament of human beings as conceived and represented in popular cinema. With the help of certain select texts, Steven Soderbergh Contagion (2011), Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak (1995), Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 Weeks Later (2007) and Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013), I explore the sabotage of a specific individual agency- the human body and the ensuing chaos and disorder. While this paper will encompass the fear of the malign agent or the contagion and the cultural representation of health, I argue that the agenda of health may not localise/concentrate the workings of power to a privileged minority, but rather because of being a common requirement, this agenda can control and disrupt the entire social order of the world. The possibilities of this paper are limited within the framework of ‘virus’ as the agent, ‘health’ as the agenda and the human ‘body’ as the agency where various mediations could occur.

Methods and Tools of American Folklore and Folklife Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-104
Author(s):  
Anthony Bak Buccitelli
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Video Recording ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
American Folklore ◽  
Situational Meaning ◽  
Potential Methods

This article provides an overview of the analytical and fieldwork methodologies that are employed in the study of American folklore and folklife. It considers the history of method in folkloristics, as well as the historical tension between textual and ethnographic methods. It describes contemporary methods and tools, as they have taken shape since the discipline’s last major reorientation in the 1970s. The discussion of methodology includes different forms of ethnography, field collection, repertoire collecting, and analysis. Tools considered include indexes and archives, audio and video recording, photography, field notes, drawing and measurements, and mapping. Finally, the article covers emerging and potential methods and tools. This section gives particular attention to the integration of digital technologies into folkloristic research. It discusses ways that folklorists are working in digital settings, using powerful digital tools for data collection and analysis of both digital and nondigital folklore, and methods for collaborative work with participants. Informed by practice theory, this article makes the case that the study of aggregated performances and everyday practices of folklore is not only easier with the advent of digital tools, but it could also represent an important new way of linking the concerns for situational meaning-making of performance studies to practice-oriented scholars’ concerns with social structure.

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