Politics as Interpretation

2020 ◽  
pp. 2-16
Author(s):  
John Echeverri-Gent ◽  
Kamal Sadiq

John Echeverri-Gent and Kamal Sadiq’s ‘Introduction’ synthesizes the understandings of the volume’s contributors into an interpretive analytical framework that builds upon the Rudolphs’ seminal insights. It elaborates the implications of the Rudolphs’ concept of ‘situated knowledge’ by depicting it in terms of the meanings and motivations constructed by people embedded in a field that is structured by social relations, time, place, and culture. Analyzing how actors translate contextual circumstances into meaning and motive is central to explaining how they choose strategies for action. Investigation of this interpretive process illuminates the importance of discourse, emotions, and political leadership in shaping the construction of meaning. The chapter elaborates the methodological implications of the interpretive approach including: the importance of interviewing, narrative analysis, and a reflexive approach to scholars’ knowledge claims which takes into account the positionality of the researcher and the researched and the manner in which their mutual interpretation shapes their knowledge claims.

2021 ◽  
pp. 147309522110389
Author(s):  
Chuan Wang

Numerous novel planning concepts have been developed in pursuit of better urban environments, while many are notoriously difficult to define. Lacan’s master signifier is widely employed to criticise these vague, fashionable concepts but lacks a specific examination tool. To fill this gap, this article develops an analytical framework based on Lacanian discourse analysis (LDA) to decipher the complex social relations in the process of applying new concepts to planning policymaking and practice. A comprehensive review of the UK urban village movement is used to demonstrate how this framework provides a deeper analysis, arguing that urban villages are understood differently depending on individual social positions, which, to some extent, determine their actions towards planning practice.


Author(s):  
Julie Meldgaard ◽  
Louise Norman Jespersen ◽  
Tue Helms Andersen ◽  
Dan Grabowski

Summary People with type 2 diabetes (T2D) live with several challenges, which may enhance the risk of poor mental and physical health. However, despite living with a chronic illness, some individuals manage to achieve a life with positivity and well-being. The objective of this study is to explore the potential of Positive Psychology and Salutogenesis when analyzing how families with one or more members with T2D experience having resources leading to thriving. Data consist of 18 semi-structured family interviews with 38 participants. Data were analyzed using systematic text condensation with the concepts of sense of coherence and upward/downward spirals as the analytical framework. The analysis revealed three overall findings: (i) T2D is perceived as manageable due to general optimism despite living with a chronic illness; (ii) establishing supportive social relations means having the opportunity to share the burden of diabetes; and (iii) achieving an open dialogue and communicating the difficulties of diabetes without straining surroundings with negative illness communication. The three overall findings may reinforce each other in an upward spiral and enhance the sense of coherence. These findings have implications for diabetes management research and our understanding of psychological health in chronic illness. The overall goal is to help people with diabetes create meaning with their illness and make use of their social environment through dialogue and communication in order to increase positivity, optimism and mental health.


Author(s):  
Henriette Müller

This chapter presents the analytical framework for studying the political leadership performance of EU Commission presidents. First, it clarifies why European integration theories have proved insufficient in explaining the actual impact and performance of the presidents of the European Commission. Second, it conceptualizes political leadership as a behavioral phenomenon within the field of social interaction and relates it to European governance. Third, it introduces the interactionist approach to analyzing political leadership, focusing on its central variables: (1) personal (pre-)dispositions, (2) institutional structure, and (3) situational setting. Moreover, it develops a typology of patterns of leadership performance and a functional-phases/variable model to operationalize leadership analysis of the Commission presidency. Fourth and finally, it presents the research strategy, encompassing a structured, focused comparison alongside systematic content and discourse analyses for each case under study.


2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 113-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Bloch

In the sociology of science, social relations have been discussed in terms of competition and recognition. The purpose of this chapter is to enlarge our understanding of the social relations of Academia by incorporating the emotional dimensions of these relations into our discussion. To this purpose the results of an empirical study of emotions and emotional culture in Academia is presented. These results are based on analytical distinctions between the structural conditions of emotions, the emotional culture of Academia, lived or felt emotions and the management of emotions. Within this analytical framework different ways of managing the emotions of uncertainty, shame, anger and pride are identified and presented. It is shown how these feelings emerged from the structural conditions of the social relations and it is shown how persons try to manage the mentioned emotions according to the tacit rules of feelings of Academia. The study shows how these emotions are managed according to the representative feelings of Academia. It is also shown, however, how these emotions and their management relate to damaged social bonds. These unintended consequences of the emotions and the emotional culture of Academia are interpreted as emotional fuel to the prevalent basic moods of academic departments and their research environment.


Leadership ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 615-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuba Inal

Women’s political leadership has been ignored both in actual political scene of world’s democracies and by the studies of political leadership. The common perception in both areas has long been that gender difference makes women unfit leaders. More recent studies of gender and leadership as well as various women politicians, on the other hand, emphasized women’s fitness for leadership due to their gendered characteristics. This paper argues that using gender as a determining factor for good or bad political leadership endangers future leadership opportunities for women. An exploration of the experience of Turkey in the 1990s with a woman political leader, Tansu Çiller, and her leadership style in relation to her gender, demonstrates that while gender stereotypes make women’s political leadership to be perceived as ineffective, any argument that is made in its favor in gendered terms faces the risk of being refuted by actual experience hence delegitimizing women’s leadership altogether. Using Crosby and Bryson’s leadership model as an analytical framework to dissect Çiller’s political and ethical leadership and her use of gender in the Turkish context, we can see that gender itself does not make a leader more democratic or ethical and arguing so works against potential women leaders.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 673-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Cutler

This article concerns Chinese energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, surveying the foreign direct investment (fdi) behavior of Chinese National Oil Companies (nocs) in Kazakhstan and Russia. The first section provides a schematic overview of the general development of Chinese fdi strategy and behavior from the disintegration of the Soviet Union up until the present day. It systematically explains how that development occurred in three phases and gives some key indicators for distinguishing among the phases and the transition between successive phases. The second section looks more closely at the fdi strategy and behavior of the Chinese nocs specifically regarding Kazakhstan and Russia, periodizing it according to the first two of the three chronological phases distinguished in the first section. The third section of the article examines still more closely the phenomenon regarding Kazakhstan and Russia from the end of the last decade up until the present day, dividing the third above-mentioned phase into three subphases and inspecting the first two, of which the second is still ongoing. The fourth section of the article evaluates the conduct of Chinese nocs with regard to Kazakhstan and Russia from the standpoint of motives of corporate behavior and comparative incentive structures. The fifth section of the article concludes by introducing some caveats on the basis of a glance at recent behavior with respect to another large resource-rich country, Canada, where Chinese nocs have made massive fdi for some years now, but which has a rather different economic and social structure from Kazakhstan and Russia. The last section of the conclusion also includes a few final comments on the prospects for Chinese energy and Chinese nocs during the remainder of the decade and into the 2020s, on the basis of the analytical framework employed to structure the narrative analysis in the body of the article.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Forno ◽  
Paolo R Graziano

In the current economic crisis, social movements are simultaneously facing two types of challenges: first, they are confronting institutions which are less able (or willing) to mediate new demands for social justice and equity emerging from various sectors of society, and second, given the highly individualised structure of contemporary society, they are also experiencing difficulties in building bonds of solidarity and cooperation among people, bonds which are a fundamental resource for collective action. It is in this context that protests waves, which may be very relevant, are in fact often short-lived, and it is in this context that we detect the rise and consolidation of new mutualistic and cooperative experiences within which (similarly to the past) new ties and frames for collective action are created. This article discusses and analyses social movement organisations which focus on both the intensification of economic problems and the difficulties of rebuilding social bonds and solidarity within society, emphasising solidarity and the use of ‘alternative’ forms of consumption as means to re-embed the economic system within social relations, starting from the local level. While discussing what is new and/or what has been renewed in new Sustainable Community Movement Organisations, the article will develop an analytical framework which will combine social movements and political consumerism theories by focusing on two basic dimensions: consumer culture and identity and organisational resources and repertoire of action.


2003 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hege M. Knutsen

The article addresses possibilities and barriers to economic activity and development in the Oshana region of Northern Namibia. The focus is on the role of local embeddedness of economic activities in attaining economic development. A network perspective, based on theories of value chains that are embedded both in social relations and spatially, is selected as the analytical framework. The value chains of local black entrepreneurs in the study area are short. Moreover, the analysis reveals that social obligations may impede economic development, but that such practices are diminishing. The economic dominance and competition from South Africa is the main impediment to economic development in Northern Namibia. Local political embeddedness is shallow and political measures have not significantly reduced the implications of this dominance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 75
Author(s):  
Cahyo Pamungkas

This article is addressed to describe the social relations within the Papuan ethnic groups and between Papua native and migrants concerning some customary rights in Kaimana district. This research describes the struggle of inland and beach tribes in fighting for customary rights of land in Kaimana. Moreover, it captures the respond of migrants in dealing with the customary right. This study shows the recognition of the the eldest ethnic in Kaimana is a strategy and discourse constructed by Papua ethnic groups that have felt marginalized while migrants have taken their resources. This right could be understood as the need for recognition of Papua ethnic groups. The most important issue is not who the native of Kaimana is, but what the proper ways to give recognition to Papua ethnic groups which had been left behind in development are. The relation between the Papua natives and migrants in Kaimana is not complicated as the migrants have no privileges in the political contestation. However, these relationship are affected by the differences in religious affiliations. The Muslim Papua ethnic groups generally have a closer relationship with the Muslim migrants. The analytical framework of this study using the theoretical framework of identity and ethnicity to look at the issue. Does the definition of identity and ethnicity according to sociological theories are still relevant to understanding the issue of claims of ethnic identity in the city of Kaimana.


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