Generics in society

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-532
Author(s):  
Susan A. Gelman
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Generic Language ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Positive Functions ◽  
Context Free

ABSTRACTThis article examines two interrelated issues: (i) how considering generics within their social contexts of use contributes to theories of generics, and (ii) how contemporary work on generics provides promising directions for the study of language as an aspect of social life. Examining the function of generics in meaningful interactions stands in contrast to standard treatments, which consider generics as isolated, context-free propositions. Additionally, recent psychological approaches suggest new questions that can enrich sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological research. These include, for example, when and why generics serve not just negative functions (such as stereotyping) but also positive functions (such as meaning-making), how generics gain their power from what is unstated as opposed to stated, and how generic language distorts academic writing. Ultimately, the study of language in society has the potential to enrich the study of generics beyond what has been learned from their study in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. (Generics, concepts, categories, stereotyping, induction)*

Fast Foes: The affective consequences of interacting in a negative self-disclosure situation.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gordils ◽  
Jeremy Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Cardiovascular Responses ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Negative Behaviors ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Affective Consequences

Background and Objectives: Social interactions involving personal disclosures are ubiquitous in social life and have important relational implications. A large body of research has documented positive outcomes from fruitful social interactions with amicable individuals, but less is known about how self-disclosing interactions with inimical interaction partners impacts individuals. Design and Methods: Participants engaged in an immersive social interaction task with a confederate (thought to be another participant) trained to behave amicably (Fast Friends) or inimically (Fast Foes). Cardiovascular responses were measured during the interaction and behavioral displays coded. Participants also reported on their subjective experiences of the interaction. Results: Participants assigned to interact in the Fast Foes condition reported more negative affect and threat appraisals, displayed more negative behaviors (i.e., agitation and anxiety), and exhibited physiological threat responses (and lower cardiac output in particular) compared to participants assigned to the Fast Friends condition. Conclusions: The novel paradigm demonstrates differential stress and affective outcomes between positive and negative self-disclosure situations across multiple channels, providing a more nuanced understanding of the processes associated with disclosing information about the self in social contexts.

Sociology of Mass and New Media through an Interactionist Lens

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie B. Wiest
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Media Influence ◽  
Presentation Of Self ◽  
Symbolic Interactionist

This chapter explores symbolic interactionist insights and perspectives on both mass media and new media, with a concentration on the ways in which different forms of media influence meaning-making through social interaction while also being influenced by those interpretive processes. It also examines the relations between various media and the construction and interpretation of social reality, the ways that media shape the development and presentation of self, and the uses and interpretations of media within and between communities. Although it clearly distinguishes between mass media and new media, the chapter also discusses the variety of ways in which they intersect throughout social life.

Terminology Used to Describe Human Variation in Forensic Anthropology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marin Pilloud ◽  
Cassie Skipper ◽  
SaMoura Horsley ◽  
Alba Craig ◽  
Krista Latham ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Anthropology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Forensic Sciences ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Human Variation ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Ancestry Estimation ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
The U.S

To understand the implications of the forensic anthropological practice of “ancestry” estimation, we explore terminology that has been employed in forensic anthropological research. The goal is to evaluate how such terms can often circulate within social contexts as a result, which may center forensic anthropologists as constituting “race” itself through analysis and categorization. This research evaluates terminology used in anthropological articles of the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 1972 and 2020 (n = 314). Terminology was placed into two categories: classifiers and descriptors. Classifiers were standardized into one of five options: “race,” “ancestry,” “population,” “ethnic,” or “other.” Descriptors included terms used to describe individuals within these classificatory systems. We also compared these terms to those in the NamUs database and the U.S. census. Our results found that the terms “ancestry” and “race” are often conflated and “ancestry” largely supplanted “race” in the 1990s without a similar change in research approach. The NamUs and census terminology are not the same as that used in forensic anthropological research; illustrating a disconnect in the terms used to identify the missing, unidentified, and in social contexts with those used in anthropological research. We provide histories of all of these terms and conclude with suggestions for how to use terminology in the future. It is important for forensic anthropologists to be cognizant of the terms they use in medicolegal contexts, publications, and in public and/or professional spaces. The continued use of misrepresentative and improper language further marginalizes groups and perpetuates oppression rooted in systemic racism.

scholarly journals Socially relevant curriculum

Teachers Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1and2) ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Janette Patricia Kelly-Ware
Keyword(s):  
Student Teachers ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Online Discussion Forum ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Age Appropriate ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Socially Relevant

Socially relevant curriculum and the importance of opening up spaces for negotiation and meaning making to occur are increasingly common ideas in my academic writing. This article reports on student teachers making meaning in an online discussion forum in the aftermath of the terrorist massacre at Christchurch mosques in Aotearoa New Zealand last year. Dominant discourses and critical questions are highlighted for teachers in early childhood and tertiary education settings about religion, racism and cultural otherness. The central argument is that these issues are highly pertinent to us all: they speak to the things that matter in all of our lives at this time, and in this space and place. Cultural otherness, anti-racism, spirituality and religion are fundamental to contemporary socially relevant curriculum. Courageous teachers committed to a more socially just world need to facilitate learning about these issues in ‘age-appropriate’ ways.  

Creative London? Investigating New Modalities of Work in the Cultural Industries

2008 ◽  
pp. 3807-3819
Author(s):  
David Lee
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Number Of Individuals

This chapter considers the emergence of the discourse of creativity in contemporary economic, political, and social life, and the characteristics of emerging labour markets in the cultural industries. In particular it is concerned with analysing the working experiences of a number of individuals working in the cultural industries in London. Using a critical theoretical framework of understanding, it examines the importance of cultural capital, subjectivisation, governmentality, network sociality, and individualization as key concepts for understanding the experience of labour in the creative economy. This chapter considers how creative individuals negotiate the precarious, largely freelance, deregulated and de-unionised terrain of contemporary work. As the economic becomes increasingly inflected by the cultural in contemporary social life, the terrain of experience of individuals working in these expanding sectors has been neglected in cultural studies. This chapter seeks to critically intervene in this area, arguing that the “creative” turn in contemporary discourse can be seen to mask emergent inequalities and exploitative practices in the post-industrial employment landscape.

Law, Morality, and Health Care Professionals: A Multilevel Framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-135
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Chiarello
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Multilevel Approach ◽  
Health Care Work ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Movement Mobilization ◽  
The Relationship

Socio-legal scholars have long been interested in the relationship between law and morality. This article uses a multilevel approach to understanding this relationship by focusing on health care professionals, key actors in an institution that covers broad swaths of social life and that serves as a key site of moral meaning making and practice. I demonstrate how morality and law interface differently at three levels: through daily social interaction, during which providers assess patients’ deservingness while patients attempt to present themselves as morally worthy; through organizational structures and processes that establish legalistic rules and bring diverse workers into shared space; and through field-level legal and moral infrastructures that shape frontline decision making and that change due to social movement mobilization. The article concludes by describing the benefits of a multilevel approach to examining the interplay between law, morality, and health care work and suggesting strategies for theoretically investigating these relationships more completely.

Creative London? Investigating New Modalities of Work in the Cultural Industries

2007 ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lee
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Creative Economy ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Number Of Individuals

This chapter considers the emergence of the discourse of creativity in contemporary economic, political, and social life, and the characteristics of emerging labour markets in the cultural industries. In particular it is concerned with analysing the working experiences of a number of individuals working in the cultural industries in London. Using a critical theoretical framework of understanding, it examines the importance of cultural capital, subjectivisation, governmentality, network sociality, and individualization as key concepts for understanding the experience of labour in the creative economy. This chapter considers how creative individuals negotiate the precarious, largely freelance, deregulated and de-unionised terrain of contemporary work. As the economic becomes increasingly inflected by the cultural in contemporary social life, the terrain of experience of individuals working in these expanding sectors has been neglected in cultural studies. This chapter seeks to critically intervene in this area, arguing that the “creative” turn in contemporary discourse can be seen to mask emergent inequalities and exploitative practices in the post-industrial employment landscape.

Revisiting the Madrassa Question in Pakistan: Worlding Lived Religion and Religious Education in Urban Spaces

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonora C. Angeles ◽  
Omer Aijazi
Keyword(s):  
Religious Education ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Community Spaces

The association of madrassas as “breeding grounds for terrorists” is problematic, exacerbated by a lack of understanding of how Islamic religious schools function and contribute to cities and urban social life. Our article provides an interpretative examination of the so-called madrassa question by explaining the urban-spatial embeddedness of madrassas and emphasizing the heightened sense and deployment of religious identities in the quotidian “worlding” of “lived religion” and “lived religious education” of research participants in two madrassa communities in Islamabad, Pakistan. Positioned within the growing research on urban sociology and geographies of the intersections of religion and education, this article examines lived religion and religious education within urban spaces. It discusses ethnographic findings on the performance and reproduction of spatially grounded extrareligious roles, identities, and practices in city-based madrassas. We emphasize the religious and nonreligious meanings people attach to these identities and practices, and how these are manifested, represented, and experienced in urban community spaces. We demonstrate madrassas’ connection to people’s place-making practices and meaning-making as historical processes and purposeful action. Urban landscape, quotidian religious practices, and extra-local political economy are important to linking place, human aspirations, and lived religion in reframing the madrassa question in Pakistan.

The signifying voice

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward McDonald
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
Linguistic Imperialism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Semiotic Systems ◽  
Language And Music ◽  
The Common

Abstract Drawing on a social semiotic framework, this paper sets out to examine two different semiotic systems whose default mode of expression is the human voice – language and music. Through comparing how each system differentially employs the human voice, we can identify both their commonalities and differences, and go some way to treating both equally within de Saussure’s envisaged broader field of “semiology”, avoiding the common trap of “linguistic imperialism”, i.e. taking language as the model for all semiotic systems. Starting by conceptualising the key relationship between the text, or unified instance of meaning-making, and the social contexts in which it functions, the paper then examines the material affordances utilised by each system, and the kinds of social meanings they express.

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