scholarly journals The Analytic Lenses of Ethnography

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 237802311773525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Jerolmack ◽  
Shamus Khan
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Test Theory ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Different Dimensions

It is almost axiomatic that there are two contrasting theoretical approaches to ethnography: induction and deduction. However, regardless of whether ethnographers build theory from observations (induction) or use observations to test theory (deduction), they approach the field armed with one or more particular analytic lens that leads them to focus on a distinct thread of the social fabric. We outline the suite of analytic lenses that typify ethnography and identify eight ideal types. Though not mutually exclusive, they can be usefully grouped and contrasted accordingly: (1) the level of explanation: micro, organizational, and macro; (2) the subject of explanation: people and places and mechanisms; (3) the location of explanation: dispositions and situations; and (4) reflexivity. We specify the basic modes of analysis that typify each ideal type, trace their implications for how one selects units of observation, and demonstrate how these different ethnographic styles illuminate different dimensions of the social world.

scholarly journals On the subject matter of International Relations

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 898-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Albert ◽  
Barry Buzan
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThis article deals with the subject matter of International Relations as an academic discipline. It addresses the issue of whether and how one or many realms could legitimately be claimed as the discipline’s prime subject. It first raises a number of problems associated with both identifying the subject matter of IR and ‘labelling’ the discipline in relation to competing terms and disciplines, followed by a discussion on whether, and to what degree, IR takes its identity from a confluence of disciplinary traditions or from a distinct methodology. It then outlines two possibilities that would lead to identifying IR as a discipline defined by a specific realm in distinction to other disciplines: (1) the ‘international’ as a specificrealmof the social world, functionally differentiated from other realms; (2) IR as being about everything in the social world above a particularscale. The final section discusses the implications of these views for the study of International Relations.

scholarly journals Accounting and the Making of Homo Liberalis

2012 ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Lambert ◽  
Eric Pezet
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Organisational Context ◽  
Management Accountants ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

This paper investigates the practices whereby the subject, in an organisational context, carries out systematic practices of self-discipline and becomes a calculative self. In particular, we explore the techniques of conduct developed by management accountants in a French carmaker, which adheres to a neoliberal environment. We show how these management accountants become calculative selves by building the very measurement of their own performance. The organisation thereby emerges as the cauldron in which a Homo liberalis is forged. Homo liberalis is the individual capable of constructing for him/her the political self-discipline establishing his/her relationship with the social world on the basis of measurable performance. The management accountants studied in this article prefigure the Homo liberalis in the self-discipline they develop to act in compliance with the organisation’s goals.

Postmodern and Social Problems of Cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 931 ◽  
pp. 765-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gennady V. Sorokin ◽  
Tatyana I. Eroshenko ◽  
Alexander V. Fedoseenkov ◽  
Alexander V. Malyshev
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
General Level ◽  
Theoretical Studies ◽  
Demographic Structure ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Single Tooth ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

Today it is possible to speak about a postmodern sociology. It is based on the number of provisions reflecting the general level of social and humanitarian knowledge as well the provisions formulated on the ground of the theoretical studies analysis on postmodernism performed. In its diverse manifestations the postmodern paradigm essentially turns into an independent cognitive and theoretical-ideological entity that influences mainly the development of the already existing sociological concepts and arises their new models or modalities. The mono-city is the element of the self-organising social being fabric that is the subject of social synergies. The cognitive and heuristic element of joining social, economic and political problems and the prospects for the development of single-tooth cities can be classified as "fractal". The social world consists of many things that are the processes of formation, and in fact are fractals. The degradation of modern Russia in the social, political and economic sense is an indicator of the destruction of single-tooth cities in the conditions of the modern socio-demographic structure within the framework of the postmodern "end of history".

Tearing the Social Fabric: Neoliberalism, Deindustrialization and the Crisis of Governance in Zimbabwe. By Padraig Carmody. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. 240p. $67.95. African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999. By Nicolas Van De Walle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 304p. $59.95 cloth, $19.95, paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 844-846
Author(s):  
Michael F. Lofchie
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Developing Regions ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Publishing Group ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Sub Saharan

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to underperform the world's developing regions, remaining a region of pronounced economic stagnation at correspondingly frightful human and social costs. Exactly why this is so has been the subject of extensive debate both among academics and within the policy community. Since most sub-Saharan African countries have been implementing neoliberal economic reforms, there has been particularly heated discussion about whether or not these policies have helped to improve the economic environment.

The Feeling of Being a Body: Resurrection and Habitus in Vaughan’s Medical Writings

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-147
Author(s):  
Daniel Juan Gil
Keyword(s):  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Devotional Writings

Chapter 4 articulates more explicitly than the previous chapter the way resurrection beliefs in Vaughan’s poetry function as “critical theory” about selfhood, identity, and the social world. The chapter examines Vaughan’s devotional and religious “self-help” literature and Vaughan’s translation and expansion of a hermetic medical treatise. Vaughan’s immanent corporeal resurrectionist commitment to finding the “seeds” of resurrection leads him to posit an essential core of bodily life—the radical balsam—that seeks eternal life but that is sickened when it is penetrated and rewired by the social and historical world. The goal of Vaughan’s devotional writings and medicine alike is to rewire the self so that it reduces its investment in the historical and social world by having its life directed by the essential core, a move that is analogous to his poetic search for the seeds and signs of resurrection within himself his poetry (the subject of chapter 3). This vision anticipates Heidegger’s phenomenology and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. Vaughan also describes a form of sexuality that anticipates Leo Bersani in imagining the body as socialized and yet as potentially unhinged from that social connectedness.

scholarly journals Worrying about Trust

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIOTR SZTOMPKA
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Central Research ◽  
Common People ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Late Modern

In the last few decades, the subject of trust has become one of the central research topics in sociology and political science. Various theoretical approaches have crystallized, and an immense amount of empirical data has been collected. The focus on trust is for two kinds of reasons. One has to do with immanent developments in the social sciences. We have witnessed a turn from almost exclusive preoccupation with the macro-social level, that is the organizational, systemic or structuralist images of society, toward the micro-foundations of social life; that is, everyday actions and interactions, including their ‘soft’ dimensions, mental and cultural intangibles and imponderables. Another set of reasons has to do with the changing quality of social structures and social processes in the late-modern period. The ascendance of democracy means that the role of human agency is growing, and more depends on what common people think and do, how they feel toward others and toward their rulers and how they choose to participate and cooperate. The process of globalization means that more and more of the factors impinging on everyday life of people are non-transparent, unfamiliar and distant, demanding new type of attitudes. The expansion of risk means that people have to act more often than before in conditions of uncertainty. The traumas of rapid, comprehensive and often unexpected social change produce disorientation and a loss of existential security. If the ambition of sociology to become the reflexive awareness of society is to be realized, then the current interest in trust seems to be wholly warranted.

scholarly journals On the Concept of Hybridization in the Research of National-Cultural Identity: the Issues and Prospects

2015 ◽  
pp. 4-9
Author(s):  
Elizaveta N. Levandovskaya ◽  
Anna V. Pryakhina
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Social World ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
Cultural Integrity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

Culture or Ethnicity (being usually heterogeneous) are the subject of a practical action, such as classification and categorization of Others or through Others, or existing cognitive systems (the denoted and perceived principles of the social world). These scientific problems can be attributed to the national-cultural prerequisites for the realization of intercultural communication and the phenomenon of hybridization. The dynamically developing process of transformation of contemporary states (from national to polycultural-national) is a subject of interdisciplinary discussions. The existence of ethno-social problems, misunderstanding, alienation, intolerance (racism, xenophobia, etc.), conflicts and violence (nazism, fascism, national-socialism, totalitarianism) testifies to the destruction of past strategies of formation of the conceptions of national identity, cultural integrity and intercultural communication. It is necessary to invent some new theoretical basis to the multi-ethno-cultural practices appearing in the multicultural globalization environment.

scholarly journals Piekło w komunałce. Analiza praktyk mieszkaniowych opisanych w „Mistrzu i Małgorzacie” Michaiła Bułhakowa

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Monika Gnieciak
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
The Master And Margarita ◽  
Master And Margarita

The author analyzes and interprets the housing practices of Muscovites in Soviet Russia of the 1930s through Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita. Literature is here used as a source of knowledge about the social world, and the author also makes numerous references to works on the subject of Bulgakov’s masterpiece. She shows how the fantastical picture presented in the novel, which in large measure corresponded to Bulgakov’s personal experience, brought to the fore those paradoxes of Soviet conditions that testified to the degeneration of the system.

scholarly journals Dialectics of ‘Inclusion and Exclusion’ in Nepal: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 50-61
Author(s):  
Chandra D. Bhatta
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Right

Nepal’s post 1990s political discourse has witnessed many issues and the most important ones, among them, are also related to inclusion and exclusion. Both of them have taken the centre stage for their own reasons.  Yet, the debate itself is not going toward the right direction and there is more than one reason for that. A closer look of the discourse on the subject indicates that it certainly has not been much helpful to address problems coming out of it. In contrast, it has not only weakened the social fabric of society but also preparing grounds for the latent conflicts as well. If Nepal’s problems of inclusion and exclusion are to be resolved, there certainly is a need to revisit the debate itself. There are certainly problems in Nepali society as they are in others societies as well. Having said this, however, the crux of the matter is that the narrative that has been established in society over the years and their role in guiding the process is not free problem. Among many other factors, they do not necessarily take societal realities and its foundations into consideration. 

Walter Eucken’s Concept of Economic Order and Business Cycle Analysis

ORDO ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-46
Author(s):  
Lachezar Grudev
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycle ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Exogenous Shocks ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Business Cycle

Abstract Walter Eucken formulated his concept of economic order as a solution to the tension between theoretical approaches and empirical observation that had constituted the conflict between the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School. Previous literature has established the linkage between the German-language business cycle debate of the late 1920 s and Eucken’s concept of economic order. This paper discusses how his concept of economic order can help to understand the severity of economic crises and thus concentrates on the elements constituting the economic order, i. e. its ideal types, with whose help Eucken aimed to derive hypothetical propositions. Based on the writings of his students Leonhard Miksch and Friedrich A. Lutz who underscored the role of equilibrium in business cycle research, this paper suggests that abstract theory of economic crises should employ ideal types as models and thus study how exogenous shocks affect the endogenous economic variables. The subject of inquiry should be oriented to the process of equilibrium reestablishment. Crucial for this paper is that the equilibrium reestablishment depends on institutional factors. This method to explain economic crises represents the link which connects the business cycle debate of the 1920 s and 1930 s to the subsequent emergence of the ordoliberal theory of institutions and orders.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document