Resources and resonance: Notes on patiency as world relation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2110173
Author(s):  
Svend Brinkmann
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Sociocultural Psychology ◽  
The World

Sociocultural psychology is now a firmly established approach to human meaning making ( Bruner, 1990 ) and meaning construction ( Valsiner, 2014 ). Its proponents rightly see culture not as a causal power but as a set of resources used by human agents ( Gillespie & Zittoun, 2010 ). However, I argue in this article that this approach needs to be balanced by the phenomenological insight from Heidegger and others that meaning is not always “made” but can also be “found.” Following Rosa (2019) , I argue that we should be careful not to reduce our relationship to the world to one of active agents that use passive resources as this easily mirrors the experiences of alienation in modernity. Humans display not only agency but also what I will call “patiency” in letting the world speak or resonate as we relate to it as more than a set of resources.

For a translational sociology: Illuminating translation in society, theory and research

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102110021
Author(s):  
Esperança Bielsa
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Cultural Globalization ◽  
Methodological Nationalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Sociology Of Translation ◽  
Basic Social Process

This article argues for a non-reductive approach to translation as a basic social process that shapes both the world that sociologists study and the sociological endeavour itself. It starts by referring to accounts from the sociology of translation and translation studies, which have problematized simplistic views of processes of cultural globalization. From this point of view, translation can offer an approach to contemporary interconnectedness that escapes from both methodological nationalism and what can be designated as the monolingual vision, providing substantive perspectives on the proliferation of contact zones or borderlands in a diversity of domains. The article centrally argues for a sociological perspective that examines not just the circulation of meaning but translation as a process of linguistic transformation that is necessarily embodied in words. Only if this more material aspect of translation is attended to can the nature of translation as an ordinary social process be fully grasped and its intervention in meaning-making activities explored. This has far-ranging implications for any reflexive account of the production of sociological works and interpretations.

scholarly journals Media Literacy in the Lifeworlds of Malaysian Children

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanthi Balraj Baboo
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
User Experiences ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
School Settings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Home And School

Many children grow up in contemporary Malaysia with an array of new media. These include television, video games, mobile phones, computers, Internet, tablets, iPads and iPods. In using these new media technologies, children are able to produce texts and images that shape their childhood experiences and their views of the world. This article presents some selected findings and snapshots of the media lifeworlds of children aged 10 in Malaysia. This article is concerned with media literacy and puts a focus on the use, forms of engagement and ways that children are able to make sense of media technologies in their lives. The study reveals that children participate in many different media activities in their homes. However, the multimodal competencies, user experiences and meaning-making actions that the children construct are not engaged with in productive ways in their schooling literacies. It is argued that media literacy should be more widely acknowledged within home and school settings.

Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 713-728 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Wedeen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Meaning Construction ◽  
Ethnic Identity Formation ◽  
Work Habits ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Theoretical Category ◽  
Causal Variable ◽  
Oriented Approach

This essay makes a case for an anthropological conceptualization of culture as “semiotic practices” and demonstrates how it adds value to political analyses. “Semiotic practices” refers to the processes of meaning-making in which agents' practices (e.g., their work habits, self-policing strategies, and leisure patterns) interact with their language and other symbolic systems. This version of culture can be employed on two levels. First, it refers to what symbols do—how symbols are inscribed in practices that operate to produce observable political effects. Second, “culture” is an abstract theoretical category, a lens that focuses on meaning, rather than on, say, prices or votes. By thinking of meaning construction in terms that emphasize intelligibility, as opposed to deep-seated psychological orientations, a practice-oriented approach avoids unacknowledged ambiguities that have bedeviled scholarly thinking and generated incommensurable understandings of what culture is. Through a brief exploration of two concerns central to political science—compliance and ethnic identity-formation—this paper ends by showing how culture as semiotic practices can be applied as a causal variable.

scholarly journals Using Technology in Pedagogically Responsive Ways to Support Literacy Learners

2009 ◽  
pp. 203-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Kervin ◽  
Jessica Mantei ◽  
Jan Herrington
Keyword(s):  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Authentic Learning ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Literate Practices ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Literacy Learners

In this chapter the authors discuss two central themes: the changing nature of literate activity brought about by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and suggestions for how educators could respond to this guided by principles of authentic learning. The access many young people have to ICT has resulted in new forms of literacy as they manipulate technology, using this new knowledge to assist the process of meaning making. Each new technology brings with it navigational concepts, space to negotiate, new genres and a range of modalities, all of which need to be interpreted. ICTs have the potential to reshape literate practices in classrooms as students create, collect, store and use knowledge as they connect and collaborate with people and resources across the world. What is crucial though, is that the nexus between technology and literacy within classrooms is conceptualised through meaningful, relevant and authentic connections with curricula.

“Suddenly Everyone Started to Love Our Anthem, Our Flag”: Identity Construction, Crisis, and Change in (Almost) Sovereign Kosovo

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-736
Author(s):  
Alissa Boguslaw
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
National Symbols ◽  
The World

AbstractHow, amidst a crisis of sovereignty and identity, did once-rejected national symbols become meaningful to Kosovo’s Albanians? Having declared independence in 2008, a 2014 study found that less than one-third of Kosovo’s citizens identified with their newly adopted state symbols. As meanings are always shifting, depending on the contexts in which their forms appear and the actors involved, theories of social construction have focused on the representational aspects of meaning-making: the ways in which the forms stabilize (or destabilize) the constructs they depict. Instead of focusing on the representational—the determinable, measurable, and rational aspects, this article investigates the discursive mechanisms that mobilize meanings and configure contexts, extending Robin Wagner-Pacifici’s alternative theory of events. Through discourse and semiotic analysis, it tracks Kosovo’s new flag and anthem through the construction, crisis, and transformation of three social realities: political independence, national identity, and the world of international competitive judo, illuminating how changing meanings change, shifting contexts shift, and how to interpret actors’ fleeting emotions. In the Kosovo case, the construction is the crisis, as well as the change.

scholarly journals The best game in the world: Exploring young children’s digital game–related meaning-making via design activity

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pekka Mertala ◽  
Mikko Meriläinen
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Male Character ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Drawing Task ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Questions

Although digital games have become a constituent part of young children’s lives, not enough is known about the kinds of meanings children give to games and gaming. This qualitative study contributes to resolving this need by engaging 26 5- to 7-year-old Finnish preschoolers in an open-ended drawing task to answer the following research questions: What aspects of digital games appear meaningful for young children when they act as game designers? Why are these aspects meaningful for young children? The findings suggest that children are not mere passive consumers of digital games but are agentic meaning-makers who are capable of critically evaluating digital games when a safe and supportive space and the appropriate medium are provided. The children refined, modified, and personalized existing influential games by replacing the leading male character with a female one or by having a player operate as the antagonist instead of the hero. The findings suggest that there are vast unexplored dimensions for scholars to engage with in young children’s gaming cultures, children’s perceptions of game content, early game literacy, as well as children’s meaning-making in games. Implications for pedagogy of early childhood education are discussed.

scholarly journals Meaning-Making Through Creativity During COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hansika Kapoor ◽  
James C. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Adaptive Response ◽  
Abrupt Change ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Events ◽  
Personal Community

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an abrupt change in routines and livelihoods all around the world. This public health crisis amplified a number of systemic inequalities that led to populations needing to grapple with universally difficult truths. Yet some individuals, firms, and countries displayed resilient and creative responses in coping with pressing demands on healthcare and basic sanity. Past work has suggested that engaging in creative acts can be an adaptive response to a changing environment. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe how entities at the personal, community, and national levels cultivated and expressed creativity in an effort to make meaning during COVID-19. By overlaying the Four C model of creativity on such responses, we aim to (a) to connect mini, little, Pro, and Big creative behaviors with our attempts to make meaning of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and (b) to suggest how engaging in creative expression can be used to guard against the adverse consequences of this outbreak. Acknowledging that this time has been and continues to be distressing and filled with uncertainty, we propose some ways of making sense of current events by applying original thinking across domains. Further, we propose how engaging in creativity can serve to buffer against the negative effects of living through the pandemic.

"When the Sleeper Wakes": A Short Story Extending Themes in Radical Organization Theory

1985 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Jermier
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Humanistic Management ◽  
Control Room ◽  
Skilled Operator ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Actors

This is a short story about the two minds of Mike Armstrong, Dialectical Marxist Theory's romantic "everyman " and Critical Theory's "anti-hero." The story contrasts day and night versions of Armstrong's worklife as a skilled operator in the control room of a large phosphate plant located in Tampa, Florida. The two versions are presented to illustrate theoretical descriptions of psychic processes engaged when human actors confront an alien world and make sense of it. Alternative forms of subjective alienation, relied consciousness (drawn from Critical Theory), and reflective militancy (drawn from Dialectical Marxism) are developed as deep psychic states through which meaning is constructed in the world. It is proposed that subjective alienation is shaped by mythical forces in the broader symbolic environment and that it profoundly conditions actions and attitudes. Its importance in understanding organizational behavior and the practice of humanistic management is discussed in terms of human meaning-making processes.

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