Law as Technique

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralf Michaels ◽  
Annelise Riles
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theoretical Innovation ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Legal Expertise

This chapter challenges anthropologists’ long-standing antipathy to the study of legal technique. It highlights Max Weber and Karl Llewellyn’s early interest in legal experts and legal knowledge as objects of sociological study, but suggests that the impetus to produce an external critique of law or context for law has hindered subsequent generations of anthropologists and sociolegal scholars from engaging legal technique as an object of ethnographic inquiry. In response, this chapter argues for greater ethnographic attention to the aspect of legal knowledge that most captivates lawyers: the means. The chapter highlights a growing body of sociolegal scholarship that engages with legal technique by drawing variously on systems theory and science and technology studies (STS) to illuminate the recursivity of legal expertise, the materiality of legal knowledge, and the agency of legal technique. Ultimately, this chapter argues that anthropologists’ long-standing attention to the constraints of form inherent in exchange can serve as a productive starting point both for anthropological theory and methods to elucidate the workings of legal knowledge, and for ethnography of legal technique to serve as a source of theoretical innovation.

Holism, Chinese Medicine and Systems Ideologies: Rewriting the Past to Imagine the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Volker Scheid
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Medicine ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Shared Objective ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.

Toward a transdisciplinary integration of research purposes and methods for complex dynamic systems theory: beyond the quantitative–qualitative divide

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Hiver ◽  
Ali H. Al-Hoorie ◽  
Diane Larsen-Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Dynamic Systems Theory ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Transdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Complex Dynamic Systems ◽  
Human And Social Sciences ◽  
Starting Point

Abstract Complexity theory/dynamic systems theory has challenged conventional approaches to applied linguistics research by encouraging researchers to adopt a pragmatic transdisciplinary approach that is less paradigmatic and more problem-oriented in nature. Its proponents have argued that the starting point in research design should not be the quantitative–qualitative distinction, or even mixed methods, but the distinction between individual versus group-based designs (i.e., idiographic versus nomothetic). Taking insights from transdisciplinary complexity research in other human and social sciences, we propose an integrative transdisciplinary framework that unites these different perspectives (quantitative–qualitative, individual–group based) from the starting point of exploratory–falsificatory aims. We discuss the implications of this transdisciplinary approach to applied linguistics research and illustrate how such an integrated approach might be implemented in the field.

scholarly journals Revisiting Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature in an Age of Digital Idealism

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Christopher Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Government

The idealism that Fredrich Engels seeks to defeat in Dialectics of Nature today pervades online discourse and pedagogies of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The deterministic view that STEM is dedicated to unleashing the inherent power in objects for the service of privileged societies fails to understand the basic principles that Engels proposed. Engels exposes his contemporaries’ flawed understanding of science and technology and provides interdisciplinary examples that exemplify a different way of thinking. Outside of China, Engels’s ideas have been used suggest that social considerations cannot be a part of science because they limit the free exchange of ideas. Within China, particularly after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, these ideas have been the basis of new thinking about the relationships among developers, the government, and the people. Moreover, readers of Dialectics of Nature who are familiar with the basic tenets of Science and Technology Studies (STS), such as social constructivism and actor-network theory, will not be so impressed with the idea that social theory has no place in understanding science and engineering. This analysis suggests avenues of cooperation for international science studies. In addition, it provides a starting point for pedagogies to promote the development for science and technology that reduces inequality and supports the notion that the liberal arts have an important place in the study of science and engineering, an insight known as STEAM.

scholarly journals What we can learn from semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology to understand religious communication

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 192-223
Author(s):  
Volkhard Krech
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Religious Communication ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Cultural Sphere ◽  
Meaning System ◽  
Religious Evolution ◽  
Societal Evolution

If religion is a socio-cultural meaning system as part of the socio-cultural sphere, then how does it relate to mental, organic, and physical processes that belong to the environment of religion? The article contributes to answering this question by referring to semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology. The starting point is understanding religious evolution as a co-evolution to societal evolution, namely, as one of the latter’s internal differentiations. In turn, societal evolution is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. These evolutionary spheres mutually constitute one another’s environments. The eigenstate of the socio-cultural sphere consists of language activated via communication. Language is the replicator of socio-cultural processes corresponding to the function of the genome in organic processes. The differentiation of spheres in general evolution concerns respective organic, mental, and socio-cultural substrates, while the substrate-neutral structure of the two evolutionary dimensions of organic and societal processes, including religion, is revealed as semiotic patterns that organic and societal processes have in common. Organic and religious processes of generating information are isomorphic. Thus, semiosis mediates between religious communication and its environment.

scholarly journals Religion as a factor of political culture and economic development

2005 ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irena Ristic
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Ethic ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism

In his essay ?The Protestant Ethic? Max Weber explains the specific economic development and the foundation of capitalism in Western Europe due to the appearance of protestant sects and the ?spirit of capitalism?. By doing so, Weber assigns religion a significant place among the factors of social and economic development. Taking Weber?s theory and argumentation as a starting point, this article drafts a thesis on ?orthodox ethic? and determines its role in the development of the ?spirit of capitalism? in orthodox countries. For that purpose this article compares political-historical circumstances on the territory of the Western and Eastern Church on one, and pictures the theological-philosophical basis of both Protestantism and Orthodoxy on the other side.

Systems Theory and Introducing Action

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Catherine Raeff
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Complex Phenomena

The goals of this chapter are to summarize systems theory, which provides an overarching theoretical basis for the current work, and to introduce action as the key concept that will be conceptualized in more detail in subsequent chapters. Systems theory is the starting point for the current work because it is based on integrative and relational assumptions and because it offers a way of understanding complex phenomena in terms of multiple processes that mutually affect each other. In this chapter, systems theory is further summarized in terms of connections among parts and wholes, multiple kinds of causality, emergence, stability, and variability. Action is then identified as the wider whole or system that represents what people do. The chapter ends by acknowledging some of the values that inform how the author is thinking about action.

Feminism and rethinking our models of the self

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Meehan
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Developmental Systems Theory ◽  
Developmental Systems ◽  
Starting Point

In this article I argue that Butler and Benhabib work with models of the self that should be jettisoned. Butler relies on what I call the outside-to-inside model, while Benhabib shuttles between an outside-to-inside and an inside-to-outside model. Because of the inherent limitations of these models neither can do what both authors set out to do, which is to describe the ontogeny of the self. I trace their discussions over the course of their writings and then propose that the notion of emergence that one finds in Developmental Systems Theory offers a much better starting point for account of the nature and development of the self.

Student medical education with the real orthopedic case presented as interactive computer simulation

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacek Dygut ◽  
Sylwia Płonka
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Procedure ◽  
Severely Injured ◽  
Virtual Patients ◽  
Case Presentation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Proper Training ◽  
Expert’S Opinion ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Court Expert ◽  
Legal Expertise

AbstractThis article presents an example application of an e-learning tool for presenting cases with the aim of acquainting medical students with the procedures performed by a court expert in assessing causes and effects of an accident at work.The present publication is based on medico-legal expertise dealing with the case of a 51-year-old manual worker of a carpentry company who, due to lack of proper training in handling the machine, severely injured his hand. The main advantage of this publication is the presentation of a series of cause-effect events at every stage of the patient’s treatment that led to minor and major complications and adverse effects. Their starting point was the employer’s evident error, i.e., failure to provide the worker with proper training in handling the machine.The discussed orthopedic case has been implemented in the CASUS base (mainly using the program “Virtual Patients” as tool for case presentation) in the form of a description of a properly carried out diagnostic procedure and equipped with the expert’s opinion and explanation of possible inappropriate decisions.

scholarly journals Everyday people’s patriotism in Russia: Possibilities and limitations of sociological study and typologization

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 891-902
Author(s):  
I. V. Trotsuk
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Depth Interviews

The article is a review of the book by K. Clment Patriotism from Below. How Is It Possible That People Are So Poor in the Rich Country? (Moscow: NLO, 2021. 232 p.). The book is based on the results of the research project aimed at the detailed description of different types of everyday Russian patriotism with the help of the qualitative approach (in fact, case studies and semi-formalized interviews were conducted, although the book presents them as ethnographic research and in-depth interviews). The book identifies and describes the following types of the grassroot Russian patriotism which does not always coincide with the state patriotic discourse (patriotism from above): non-state and state everyday patriotism, non-patriotism, detached patriotism, and local patriotism. The review identifies both the undoubted merits of the book and its conceptual, methodological and analytical limitations which can become a starting point for further sociological studies of discursive practices and behavioral patterns of Russians, especially of those living in the Russian hinterland (depressed peripheral regions of the country).

scholarly journals Managing risks or generating uncertainties? Ambiguous ontologies of testing in Australian healthcare

2020 ◽  
pp. 136345932091283
Author(s):  
Kiran Pienaar ◽  
Alan Petersen ◽  
Diana M Bowman
Keyword(s):  
Health Professionals ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Medical Testing ◽  
Australian Health ◽  
Individual Health ◽  
Disease Markers ◽  
Diagnostic Certainty

Medical testing promises to establish certainty by providing a definitive assessment of risk or diagnosis. But can those who rely on tests to offer advice or make clinical decisions be assured of this certainty? This article examines how Australian health professionals, namely clinicians, microbiologists, specialist physicians and health policymakers, delineate the boundary between certainty and uncertainty in their accounts of medical testing. Applying concepts from science and technology studies, and drawing on qualitative data from a sociological study of testing in Australian healthcare, we consider how professionals ascribe meaning to testing and test results. As we argue, for these health professionals, the ‘evidence’ that testing generates has ambiguous ontological significance: while it promises to provide diagnostic certainty and clear direction for advice or treatment, it also generates uncertainties that may lead to yet further tests. Our analysis leads us to question a key premise of testing, namely that it is possible to establish certainty in medical practice via the measurement of individual health risks and disease markers. Against this dominant view, the responses of the health professionals in our study suggest that uncertainty is intrinsic to testing due to the constantly changing, unstable character of ‘evidence’. We conclude by considering the implications of our analysis in light of healthcare’s increasing reliance on sophisticated technologies of ‘personalised’ testing using genetic information and data analytics.

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