scholarly journals The abject and the vulnerable: the twain shall meet: Reflections on disability in the moral economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-846 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Shadow Side ◽  
The One

The meaning of impairment is often Janus-faced. On the one hand, it is associated with defect, deformity, monstrosity and other tropes that carry the weight of ontological ruin, haunting narratives of physical, mental or sensory catastrophe that disturb the normate sense of being human. Impairment is invested with the debilitating social and moral consequences that symbolise disability. Disavowed and repudiated by the non-disabled community, disability represents the murky, shadow side of existence that separates normal embodiment from its benighted, abject ‘other’. Disgust – on the part of non-disabled, ‘clean and proper’ subjects – is the likely emotional response to the pollution and impropriety that disability represents. The emotional relation between the two parties may be mired in normate repulsion.

scholarly journals The Moral Economy of Thrift: The Production of the Indebted Self in the Reality Series Getting out of Debt and Life or Debt

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 485-500
Author(s):  
Silke Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Moral Economies ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Tv Show

In this article, the intersection of the economic and social dimensions of thrift is analysed under the special condition of debt. The debt context serves as a focal glass exposing agents, their social practices and strategies of accumulation capitals with regard to appropriate spending. In order to capture the many layers of thrift, the concept of moral economies is applied. This concept tries to reconcile two seemingly divergent dimensions of human behaviour which can be described as individualistic, calculating and serving a self-interest (economy) on the one hand and community-oriented and benefitting a common good (morality) on the other hand. Starting out with an overview over studies on moral economies in historical and social science since the early 1970s, I will explain the heuristic use of the concept for the case of debts research and apply it to representations of thrift as visualised and popularised in the reality TV shows Raus aus den Schulden (Getting Out of Debt) and Life or Debt. Here, the images of homes are clues for the cultural productions of appropriateness on TV: What are suitable ways of living when in debt? What are adequate scenes of dwelling and narratives of dealing with debts and which normative structures regulate those stories, the perception of the self and potential social exclusion? By examining the TV show as a strong voice in the debt discourse, thrift turns out to be a cornerstone in the internal and external regimes of governing debt in the micropolitics of TV.

scholarly journals The moral economy of early intervention

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodolfo Maggio
Keyword(s):  
Early Intervention ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
County Council ◽  
Deficit Spending ◽  
The One ◽  
Access Services ◽  
Children’S Centres ◽  
Incontrovertible Evidence

In November 2015, protests erupted in Oxford in response to the decision of the Oxfordshire County Council to cut, among other things, forty-four Children’s Centres and seven Early Intervention Hubs. The debate about whether these centres could be considered as disposable or not did not get to an agreement. I argue that the main cause of this outcome is that the opposing arguments were based on moral positions that were not only incompatible but fundamentally incommensurable. Those in favour of reducing deficit spending argue that cuts to social services (including family and children services) are unavoidable. Parents, however, refuse to accept austerity measures that will undermine the rights of their children to access services that will improve their chances in life. Neither position is based on incontrovertible evidence. On the one hand, the decision to cut a given service always involves the arbitrary evaluation of that service against other services that will not be cut. On the other, the demand to fund those services is based on the hope that early intervention initiatives will benefit children, even if the evidence that early intervention works is unconclusive or thin. On the basis of a thematic analysis of twenty-seven stories written by Oxfordshire parents, I interpret this conflict using the notion of moral economy, and argue that such an approach allows an appreciation of the link between health economics, perinatal mental health, the morality of parenting, and the early intervention discourse.

scholarly journals Cuestionario breve de respuesta parental ante el comportamiento disruptivo (RPCD): Perspectiva de los padres.

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 689
Author(s):  
María Cantero-García ◽  
Jesús Alonso-Tapia
Keyword(s):  
Behavior Management ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Fit Indices ◽  
Parental Response ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Confirmatory Factor ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Personal Orientation ◽  
The Relationship

<p>The aim of this study is to develop and validate the <em>questionnaire of parental response to </em><em>disruptive behavior (PRDB). </em> Parents can act proactively towards problems and their emotional repercussions, focusing on how to handle them positively, or can focus their attention on the emotional response generated by behavior problems, being overburdened by them. In order to assess the prevalent personal orientation to cope with disruption, to guide parents and to assess the effect of psychological interventions, a questionnaire such as the one proposed here is required. A total of 420 parents and their children participated in the study. The structural validity of the questionnaire was tested using confirmatory factor analysis first to compare a multifactorial model (five specific factors) with a multifactorial-hierarchical model (with two second-order factors), and second, to study the cross validity of both models. The predictive validity was tested analyzing the relationship between parents’ and children’ perceptions of family climate. Children’s perceptions were assessed with the "Questionnaire of Behavior Management Climate perceived by children." Results showed that both models had good and similar fit indices that were almost identical in the two subsamples. Besides, the correlation analysis showed that although in general the relationship between perceptions of parents and their children is in the expected direction, this does not always happen. </p>

The Black Image on the White Screen: Representations of African Americans from the Origins of Cinema toThe Birth of a Nation

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN URWAND
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Hundredth Anniversary ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
Narrative Cinema ◽  
The One

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American cinema played a major role in transforming what George Fredrickson has called “the black image in the white mind.” This transformation began with the invention of cinema and climaxed withThe Birth of a Nation, a film whose appeal derived not from its content, but rather from D. W. Griffith's ability to seize on this content to provoke an intense emotional response in his viewers. This essay begins by examining some of the first images of African Americans captured on camera. It then turns to Griffith's innovations in the one- and two-reelers he made at the Biograph Company. Finally, and on the occasion of the film's hundredth anniversary, the essay provides a detailed analysis of how Griffith achieved his effect inThe Birth of a Nation. What the essay shows, ultimately, is that whereas the earliest depictions of African Americans relied on audience foreknowledge, the arrival of American narrative cinema led Griffith to create new kinds of black characters. Griffith's use of the close-up, the point of view, the shot/reverse-shot pattern, and parallel editing enabled him to convince his audiences of a “black menace” that threatened white America.

The Evolution of Sin

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Gregor Etzelmüller
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Specific Potential ◽  
Shadow Side ◽  
Human Failure ◽  
The One ◽  
Theological Understanding ◽  
Cultural Entities ◽  
Theological Concept

The article develops a theological concept of the evolution of sin. In dialogue with evolutionary biology, the article clarifies how sin evolves out of the shadow side of creation. Therefore, we need to acknowledge how sin, already before the evolution of human beings, influences life. What this means for the understanding of human sin, is worked out in dialogue with evolutionary psychology on the one side and the Pauline understanding of flesh on the other side. From this perspective, sin appears as the human failure to live up to one’s divine calling by not transcending the evolutionary advance socialisation. Finally, the article addresses boundary cases in the dialogue, which undergird the specific potential of a theological understanding of sin. Theology can show how the power of sin endangers those cultural entities upon which the hopes of modernity rest in the struggle to overcome violence.

United in Separation: The Inventions of Gel Filtration and the Moral Economy of Research in Swedish Biochemistry, ca. 1950–1970

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Sven Widmalm
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Gel Filtration ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Separation Techniques ◽  
Separation Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Activity

ArgumentThe Uppsala school in separation science, under the leadership of Nobel laureates, The (Theodor) Svedberg and Arne Tiselius, was by all counts a half-century-long success story. Chemists at the departments for physical chemistry and biochemistry produced a number of separation techniques that were widely adopted by the scientific community and in various technological applications. Success was also commercial and separation techniques, such as gel filtration, were an important factor behind the meteoric rise of the drug company Pharmacia from the 1950s. The paper focuses on the story behind the invention of gel filtration and the product Sephadex in the 1950s and the emergence of streamlined commercially oriented separation science as a main activity at the department of biochemistry in the 1960s. The dynamics of this development is analyzed from the perspectives of moral economy and storytelling framed by the larger question of the social construction of innovation. The latter point is addressed in a brief discussion about the uses of stories like the one about Sephadex in current research policy.

The ineffable: A framework for the study of methods through the case of mid-century mind-brain sciences

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 789-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Stark ◽  
Nancy D Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Brain Sciences ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
The One ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
New Framework

Conventionally, the story of modern research methods has been told as the gradual ascendancy of practices that scientists designed to extract evidence out of minds and bodies. These methods, which we call ‘methods of extraction’, have not been the exclusive ways in which experts have generated evidence. In a variety of case studies, scholars in Science and Technology Studies have persuasively documented scientists’ efforts to know the extra-linguistic, internal experiences of other beings – prior to or aside from their efforts to represent those experiences in words and images. We propose a new framework to resolve a seeming contradiction in STS, which stems from the fact that the language of ‘subjectivity’ has been used to refer to two analytically distinct features of scientists’ methods: the epistemological premises of a method, on the one hand, and the evaluation of the method in the moral economy of science, on the other hand. Building on Shapin’s provocation to study the ‘sciences of subjectivity’, we analyze three sites in the epistemic niche of 1950s US Federal mind-brain scientists and find that ‘methods of extraction’ neither replaced nor invariably trumped additional methods that researchers designed to provide evidence of people’s interior experiences. We call these additional approaches ‘methods of ingression’ because researchers purported to generate authoritative evidence by climbing inside the experience of another being, rather than pulling the evidence out. Methods of ingression and methods of extraction coexisted and developed iteratively in dynamic relationship with each other – not in isolation nor in competition, as is commonly assumed. Through this empirical study, we provide a new framework that departs from the binary framework of objectivity-subjectivity to allow scholars in STS to more aptly describe scientists’ epistemic worlds; to discern a greater range of methods at play; and to appreciate the warrants for knowledge used in our own field.

Ethical eating as experienced by consumers and producers: When good food meets good farmers

2020 ◽  
pp. 146954051989996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Carolan
Keyword(s):  
Management Practices ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Ethical Consumption ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Rural Producers ◽  
The One ◽  
Sociology Of Consumption ◽  
Good Food

This article engages with two rich but largely disparate research traditions: one looks at ethical consumption, that is, constructions and contestations around good food, while the other interrogates the equally contested space of what it means to be a good farmer. The argument is informed by qualitative data collected from, on the one hand, those engaged in shaping urban food policy and institutional procurement plans in Denver, Colorado, and, on the other hand, rural Colorado farmers and ranchers who supply out-of-state markets. Given the growing appeal of locally sourced food from smaller scale producers utilizing certain so-called ethical management practices (resulting in, e.g. cage-free chickens, organic food, and grass-fed beef), the article asks, “how are particular markers of good food,” which I show to be commonly held in urban foodscapes, “understood by rural producers?,” and “how do these constructions play into their conceptions of what it means to be a good farmer?” Conceptually, the argument is situated within a moral economy framework, which reminds us that the market is always mediated by institutions, individuals, and communities and vice versa. This framework emphasizes the point that markets are moralizing – and demoralizing – entities. The article adds to the fields of sociology of consumption and critical agrifood studies by interrogating aspects of how the two “ends” of the supply chain are interconnected. Eaters’ constructions of good food and producers’ understandings of what it means to be a good farmer are shown to be intertwined.

Real readers reading Wasco’s ‘City’: A storyworld possible selves approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Maria-Angeles Martinez ◽  
Luc Herman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Emotional Response ◽  
Possible Selves ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Conceptual Integration ◽  
Graphic Narrative ◽  
Internal Organization ◽  
Reader Responses ◽  
The One

This study empirically investigates reader responses to the one-page graphic narrative ‘City’ within the theoretical framework of storyworld possible selves. These are blended structures resulting from the conceptual integration of two input spaces: the mental representation that readers construct for the narrator or character that perspectivizes a narrative, and the mental representation that readers entertain for themselves, or self-concept. In our study, we use a questionnaire to elicit information about the internal organization of storyworld possible selves blends in 15 real readers, and we discuss the bearing of both collectively shared and idiosyncratic storyworld possible self blends on character construction, emotional response, and narrative construal.

Rebounding Nationalism: State and Ethnicity in Wollega 1968–1976

Africa ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Hultin
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Active Selection ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article deals with the interrelationship of ethnic and national processes in a rural district in Wollega at the time of the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. It describes how the state policy of ‘official nationalism’ and Amharisation on the one hand, and the policy of land confiscation and land grants on the other, affected two different categories of Oromo: the small, educated elite, and the peasants. The government promoted Amharic as the language of state, whilst the Oromo language was banned from public contexts and not allowed in print. The government feared popular involvement in politics, and all political parties and organisations were banned. University students voiced demands for modernisation and land reform whilst the war in Eritrea raised the ‘question of nationalities’, but there was not yet any Oromo nationalist claim for statehood. Among the farmers, opposition to the state centred on land tenure and taxes and on the abuse of authority by the government. Most Oromo-speaking regions had been conquered and incorporated into the empire in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Land was confiscated and granted to warlords, or to local leaders who collaborated with the emperor. The original inhabitants became tribute-paying tenants under the new lords. As most landlords were immigrants to the area, ethnicity was an obvious aspect of property relations. In Wollega, however, local Oromo who had collaborated with the emperor were in control of much of the land and both landlords and share-croppers were Macha Oromo. They shared basic value-orientations by which performance is judged. Memories of the moral economy of an earlier time provided an alternative to the existing situation. Reference to history implied an active selection of elements in the formulation of a critical discourse on power and property that addressed the basic opposition between society and state. The last part of the article describes how educated and farmers met in a political meeting that was organised by the local authorities in 1976 to celebrate the revolution and its land reform. The occasion turned into an intense celebration of local values and, at least to some of the participants, this was a moment of new ethnic awareness and a call to revive gada, the Oromo ritual system. Threatened by ethnic identification, the state responded with brutal repression, and several people were murdered. Shortly after, some activists joined the Oromo Liberation Front to wage guerrilla war against the state.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document