scholarly journals Fixity and flux: A critique of competing approaches to researching contemporary Jewish identities

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxim GM Samson ◽  
Robert M Vanderbeck ◽  
Nichola Wood
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Personal Significance

Jewish identities are becoming increasingly pluralised due to internal dynamics within Judaism and wider social processes such as secularisation, globalisation and individualisation. However, empirical research on contemporary Jewish identities often continues to adopt restrictive methodological and conceptual approaches that reify Jewish identity and portray it as a ‘product’ for educational providers and others to pass to younger generations. Moreover, these approaches typically impose identities upon individuals, often as a form of collective affiliation, without addressing their personal significance. In response, this article argues for increased recognition of the multiple and fluid nature of personal identities in order to investigate the diverse ways in which Jews live and perform their Jewishness. Paying greater attention to personal identities facilitates recognition of the intersections between different forms of identity, enabling more complex understandings of the ways in which individuals both define their own identities and contribute to redefining the boundaries of Jewishness.

scholarly journals Understanding Individual Voluntary Giving as a Practice: Implications for Regional Arts Organisations in the UK

Sociology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-88
Author(s):  
Caroline Moraes ◽  
Athanasia Daskalopoulou ◽  
Isabelle Szmigin
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Income Sources ◽  
Voluntary Giving ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Uk

This research examines individual voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Our research speaks to the new funding challenges traversing the British arts sector. Historically reliant on government funds, increasingly regional non-profit arts organisations must diversify their income sources and target a range of voluntary givers. By drawing on practice theories and interpretive qualitative data, we illuminate how giving understandings, procedures and engagements interconnect and interact, coming together in ways that lead to specific giving choices that prioritise cause-based charities over the arts. In doing so, we make two original contributions towards existing sociological research on voluntary giving. First, we transform and broaden the scope of empirical research by conceptualising voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Second, we offer a lens through which to investigate and explicate shared social processes, mechanisms and acts that traverse structures and individuals, co-construing and reproducing voluntary giving patterns.

Power, Empowerment and Social Participation- the Building of a Conceptual Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Corrêa Cavalieri ◽  
Helena Neves Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Model ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Participation ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Intervention ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Strategic Process ◽  
Relations Of Power

Abstract Social intervention integrates multidisciplinary and participative concepts and practices that, in different areas, contribute to social processes of empowerment, one of the intervention paradigms in contemporary society. The use of the term empowerment has been recurrent in the fields of psychological and social intervention and its definition implies the contribution of various knowledge. This requires the operational contextualization of its definition. Based on a review of the literature, this article intends to conceptualize and contextualize empowerment as a strategic process of intervention. It is structured around three topics that present the relations of power in contemporary society, as well as the conceptual process of empowerment and social participation. It produces a reflexive work combining various theoretical approaches of empowerment in order to define differente analitycal dimentions of the concept, and to produce a conceptual model that can be later operacionalized in empirical research.

Using cultural hybridity as an analytic lens for missiological research

2021 ◽  
pp. 009182962110435
Author(s):  
Peter T. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Analytic Tool ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Hybridity Theory

This article considers cultural hybridity as a concept that helps interpret complex social phenomena found in various intercultural contexts in missions. The concept of cultural hybridity is better used as an analytic tool rather than an object of analysis in order for it to have an interpretive power. Adopting cultural hybridity in missiological research requires focusing on its active, dynamic, and processual nature found in the verb form, “hybridization,” rather than a stationary concept depicted by the noun form, “hybridity.” When using cultural hybridity in empirical studies, the mission researcher needs to develop a framework using the concept by immersing in the prior and current scholarly discussions, analyze social processes at multiple levels, utilize the hybridity theory in conjunction with other relevant social theories, and close the gap between the theory and data by focusing on how things work rather than forcing meanings out of the data. These practices may aid missiologists in their empirical research and increase their understanding of challenging intercultural issues.

scholarly journals The contradictions of Diaspora: A reflexive critique of the Jewish Diaspora’s relationship with Israel

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106
Author(s):  
Ilan Zvi Baron
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Theoretical Investigation ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The World ◽  
Survey Results

This article explores a question that is often assumed but rarely addressed: What does Israel provide ideationally for Diaspora Jews that serves as the basis for Diaspora/Israel relations and justifies the importance of Israel for Jewish identity? Whereas past literature on this topic has either assumed an answer to this question or debated survey results and demographics, this article takes a different approach by not assuming an answer to this question. The article argues that Diaspora Jews’ relationship with Israel is best understood phenomenologically. The significance of Israel for Diaspora Jews is found in a type of obligation that is political but is not based in sovereignty or law but instead in meaning that serves as a form of authority and functions as part of the phenomenological structure characterizing Jewish being-in-the-world in the age of Israel. Using a combination of personal reflection, empirical research, and theoretical investigation, the article concludes by suggesting that critique serves as an activity that reveals the normative character of Israel’s meaningful authority, but that Israel’s authority in this phenomenological sense needs to be undermined if it will be possible to move beyond the increasingly polarizing role that Israel is having in Jewish communities today.

scholarly journals Dealing With Sri Lanka’s Demons: Using Documentary Film for Peacebuilding

2021 ◽  
pp. 154231662098575
Author(s):  
Nilanjana Premaratna
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
Peace And Conflict Studies ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Post War

Documentary film is a popular resource amongst peacebuilding organisations and practitioners. Despite this popularity, research on documentary film is still emerging in peace and conflict studies. This article explores documentary film’s role in the study and practice of peacebuilding by examining the documentary Demons in Paradise and its engagement with issues of peace and conflict in post-war Sri Lanka. This article makes conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions. Drawing from empirical research, I identify and discuss documentary film’s engagement along three analytical angles: documentary film as a text, within social processes, and within research processes. Under each angle, I explore how empirical observations and understanding of peace emerge through the visual, using diverse methods and data, including interviews, participant observation, visual elicitation in post-screening focus groups, and film analysis. I conclude that documentary film can contribute to the study and practice of peacebuilding by offering multiple analytical angles that elucidate plural, disparate understandings of peace in post-war societies.

scholarly journals Identity Processes to Trigger Turnaround in Response to Organizational Decline

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Rockwell
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Organizational Decline ◽  
Identity Negotiations ◽  
Identity Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organizational Death ◽  
Future Work

This article proposes a model of identity-related social processes that, when applied during organizational decline, is hypothesized to support turnaround and avoid organizational death. The social processes are retiring, reclaiming, reaffirming, regenerating, and reimagining identity attributes. Although this model is rooted in past studies and literature on organizational decline and organizational identity, empirical research is needed to validate or adjust the model. Future work could involve examination of identity negotiations within past cases of organizational decline and turnaround as well as devising and testing specific retiring, reclaiming, reaffirming, regenerating, and reimagining interventions.

scholarly journals Introduction: Ambivalence and the social processes of immigrant inclusion

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Paolo Boccagni ◽  
Peter Kivisto
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Experience ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Migration Studies ◽  
Life Conditions ◽  
The Social

Ambivalence as an interpretive tool in sociology refers to the social experience of any complex, cognitively confusing, or emotionally charged phenomenon that calls simultaneously for opposite reactions. Migrants’ life conditions, as this Special Issue illustrates, are particularly subject to ambivalence. This introduction reviews the predominant understandings of ambivalence as a sociological category, its specific relevance in migration studies, and its implications for empirical research. It then reviews the articles in this Special Issue that are collectively intended to advance our understanding of the relevance of ambivalence for migration studies.

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

Selecting the Optimal FM System for Children With Cochlear Implants

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-24
Author(s):  
Erin C. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Speech Processor ◽  
System Input ◽  
Optimal Type

Children who use cochlear implants experience significant difficulty hearing speech in the presence of background noise, such as in the classroom. To address these difficulties, audiologists often recommend frequency-modulated (FM) systems for children with cochlear implants. The purpose of this article is to examine current empirical research in the area of FM systems and cochlear implants. Discussion topics will include selecting the optimal type of FM receiver, benefits of binaural FM-system input, importance of DAI receiver-gain settings, and effects of speech-processor programming on speech recognition. FM systems significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio at the child's ear through the use of three types of FM receivers: mounted speakers, desktop speakers, or direct-audio input (DAI). This discussion will aid audiologists in making evidence-based recommendations for children using cochlear implants and FM systems.

The Impact of Visual Feedback Type on the Mastery of Visuo-Motor Transformations

2012 ◽  
Vol 220 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Sülzenbrück
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Closed Loop ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Visual Input ◽  
Closed Loop Control ◽  
Loop Control ◽  
Feedback Type ◽  
Effective Use ◽  
The Impact

For the effective use of modern tools, the inherent visuo-motor transformation needs to be mastered. The successful adjustment to and learning of these transformations crucially depends on practice conditions, particularly on the type of visual feedback during practice. Here, a review about empirical research exploring the influence of continuous and terminal visual feedback during practice on the mastery of visuo-motor transformations is provided. Two studies investigating the impact of the type of visual feedback on either direction-dependent visuo-motor gains or the complex visuo-motor transformation of a virtual two-sided lever are presented in more detail. The findings of these studies indicate that the continuous availability of visual feedback supports performance when closed-loop control is possible, but impairs performance when visual input is no longer available. Different approaches to explain these performance differences due to the type of visual feedback during practice are considered. For example, these differences could reflect a process of re-optimization of motor planning in a novel environment or represent effects of the specificity of practice. Furthermore, differences in the allocation of attention during movements with terminal and continuous visual feedback could account for the observed differences.

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