A disposition of risk: Climbing practice, reflexive modernity and the habitus

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bunn
Keyword(s):  
Risk Society ◽  
Theory Of Practice ◽  
Slow Development ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
Embodied Practice

The paper utilizes climbing practice to examine how risk societies generate risk consciousness in agents. It critiques the cognitive basis of reflexivity, particularly in Beck’s work, and seeks an alternative rooted in embodied practice. Sweetman’s ‘reflexive habitus’ serves as a starting point to synthesize a relationship between Ulrich Beck’s risk society and Bourdieu’s theory of practice. However, it is argued that both Sweetman and Beck overstate the shift reflexive modernity implies. Instead, the article focuses on Bourdieu’s account of ‘regulated improvisation’ to argue that, as fields become more ambiguous, agents must make use of improvisation to match their subjective capacities with objective possibilities. For climbers, this involves a slow development of the perceptual basis for climbing risks. This allows risk to become perceptively controllable, whereby climbers can manage the basis of the risks they take through a host of options, including the length, remoteness and severity of a climbing route.

Choreographic pedagogies: towards an embodied practice

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chrissie Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Research In Education ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
Knowledge Exploration

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the inter-relationship between choreography and pedagogy. It refers specifically to a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project that dealt with investigations into performance making and the design of a teaching and learning model. Shifts from making performance from a pre-determined starting point to a participatory and interactive process are traced to reveal a “choreographic pedagogy” informed and transformed by the experience of its actors. Design/methodology/approach – The paper includes a brief explanation of the terms and shared features of choreography and pedagogy, and how PAR facilitated a cyclic generation of new findings that drove the research forward. The research question is tackled through concepts, practices and tasks within the four cycles of research, each year with new participants, questions and expanding contexts. Findings – The experience of the research participants reveals unexpected and “unfolding phenomena” that open up spaces for imagining, creating and interpreting, as a “choreographic pedagogy” in action. Research limitations/implications – The research might appear to be limited to the areas of performance and teaching and learning, although it could provide a model for other subjects, especially for those that engage with creative processes. Practical implications – The research is a “practice as research” model and has implications for research in education as a practice of knowledge exploration and generation. Originality/value – It is original and has the potential to inform the ways in which educators explore and expand their disciplines through teaching and learning investigations.

Fashioning culture: Transforming perspectives from Oceania

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Kalissa Alexeyeff ◽  
Geir Henning Presterudstuen
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Clothing Style ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
Analytical Category ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
The Relationship

In this introductory article we discuss what might be gained from examining more familiar areas of anthropological research such as cloth, dress or material culture through fashion as an analytical category and, in turn, how insights from Pacific clothing cultures can broaden understandings of fashion. Our aim is to unsettle the ethnographic gaze that is often brought to bear on non-western cultures of fashion, cloth, clothing, style and innovation. Fashion, as we conceive of it, spans from the physical production and design of garments and objects to everyday appearances, the desire to be ‘in vogue’ and the consumption of aesthetic objects that are considered popular. From this starting point we move analyses of fashion from the systemic to the experiential, reflecting ethnographic sensitivity to everyday embodied practice and the constant political and creative negotiation of values and norms that takes place in quotidian social relations. We situate these analyses in a region that is often perceived to be at the very edge of the world economy and invite further discussion about the relationship between fashion and the global flow of people, ideas and commodities.

scholarly journals Attitudes of Students of the University of Split towards Asylum Seekers as a Realistic and a Symbolic Threat in the Context of Risk Society

2020 ◽  
Vol XVIII (2) ◽  
pp. 245-258
Author(s):  
Vlaho Kovačević ◽  
Krunoslav Malenica ◽  
Igor Jelaska
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Scale Reliability ◽  
Stratified Sample ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
The University

The aim of this research was to analyze the attitudes of the student population at the University of Split towards asylum seekers as a multidimensional threat to the community in the context of risk society. We have approached the empirical data collection within a multidimensional theoretical framework. The first part of our subject interest is the theoretical direction of reflexive modernity and risk society proposed by Ulrich Beck, while the second part deals with the theoretical explanations regarding the perception of asylum seekers as a threat. In accordance with the research objective, a stratified sample of 286 Croatian students from the University of Split expressed their attitudes toward asylum seekers using a scale. Reliability of the used questionnaire was assessed by using test and retest method. Results indicate that students perceived asylum seekers as a statistically significantly more realistic than a symbolic threat. The respondents thus recognize one, equally important yet diffuse phenomenon showing interest among the respondents for the rational choice but also for respecting the individual’s subjectivity.

Are we getting it right?

2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Value Judgements ◽  
Cultural Feature ◽  
Second World

Beck’s “risk society” is alive. From this starting point the article assumes that risk today has to be addressed in a cultural way, taking into account that risk was not a cultural feature of the Second World War society. Among the tools for addressing the question are risk-communication research and practice, which focus on the exchange of information between all the parties concerned because it is in the framework of the communication process that risk brings together scientific uncertainty and value judgements in ways that are intimately related to politics, people’s lifestyles and the nature of our democracy.

Science in the World Risk Society: Risk, the Novel, and Global Climate Change

2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
Risk Discourse

AbstractAnthropogenic climate change constitutes one of the major global risks of our time. In spite of widespread scientific consensus, however, climate change discourse is still characterized by controversy. This controversy reflects both a variety of conflicting interests that frame the perception of climate change and a fundamental trend in our age of reflexive modernity: an increased awareness of scientific uncertainty and a loss of trust in scientific authority. It also defines our current cultural moment as paradoxical: societies worldwide are simultaneously characterized by such increased awareness of scientific uncertainty and by reliance on scientific knowledge to a historically unprecedented degree. According to Ulrich Beck, this paradox in part defines what he conceived of as a new manifestation of modern society, the ‘world risk society.’ This essay addresses the fictional contribution to the risk discourse of global climate change. After introducing the role of science in the world risk society and the climate change novel as a fictional risk narrative, it discusses how Susan M. Gaines’

scholarly journals Science education in pandemic times: what can we learn from COVID-19 on science technology and risk society

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurício Pietrocola ◽  
Ernani Rodrigues ◽  
Filipe Bercot ◽  
Samuel Schnorr
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Risk Perception ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Document Analysis ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Citizen Education ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
Complex Events ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
Decision Making Model

The current COVID-19 pandemic raises reflection on the new roles of science education in citizen education in a world characterized by civilization risks, derived from the socioeconomic development. This specific type of risk is treated as manufactured risk as proposed by the sociologist Ulrich Beck. In this work, we report a document analysis starting from Beck's risk society theory, followed by notions of reflexive modernity, risk perception and the Cynefin decision making model for complex problems. COVID-19 pandemic is characterized as a manufactured risk and we present features of it. We state that students are unable to deal with manufactured risk because of the type of problems they are usually prepared to solve at school and the limited risk perception they have. In order to acquire a better science education, we propose the integration of wicked problems in science programs alongside the use of a multidimensional schema, so-called amplified risk perception space, a tool to locate students' risk perception. We hope to contribute to prepare citizens for a world of global and complex events, such as the current pandemic.

scholarly journals Religion and International Relations in the Middle East as a Challenge for International Relations (IR) Studies

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Solarz
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
System Level ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Ir Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reflexive Modernity ◽  
Level Of Analysis

This article addresses the search for religion’s “suitable place” within International Relations (IR), taking as a starting point the social changes in the world (“reflexive modernity”) and the postulated “Mesopotamian turn” in IR. The assumption is that religion is present at each level of IR analysis in the Middle East and, thanks to that, more and more at the international system level. This presence of religion serves to undermine one of the basic assumptions lying at the heart of the modern international order (and therefore also IR), i.e., the so-called “Westphalian presumption”. The author, inter alia, emphasizes how more attention needs to be paid to the “transnational region” constituted by the Middle East—in association with the whole Islamic World. A second postulate entails the need for a restoration of the lost level of analysis in IR, i.e., the level of the human being, for whom religion is—and in the nearest future, will remain—an important dimension of life, in the Middle East in particular. It can also be noted how, within analysis of IR, what corresponds closely to the level referred to is the concept of human security developed via the UN system. The Middle East obliges the researcher to extend considerations to the spiritual dimension of security, as is starting to be realized (inter alia, in the Arab Human Development Reports). It can thus be suggested that, through comparison and contrast with life in societies of the Middle East as it is in practice, religion has been incorporated quite naturally into IR, with this leaving the “Westphalian presumption” undermined at the same time. The consequences of that for the whole discipline may be considerable, but much will depend on researchers themselves, who may or may not take up the challenge posed.

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