scholarly journals Emotions, language and the (un-)making of the social world

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-230
Author(s):  
Frédéric Minner

What are the motivational bases that help explain the various normative judgements that social agents make, and the normative reasoning they employ? Answering this question leads us to consider the relationships between thoughts and emotions. Emotions will be described as thought-dependent and thought-directing, and as being intimately related to normativity. They are conceived as the grounds that motivate social agents to articulate their reasoning with respect to the values and norms they face and/or share in their social collective. It is argued that because they are modes of thinking, emotions generate cognitive activities that relate to the making of evaluative and deontic judgements, the utterance of speech acts, the mastering of normative concepts and the building of arguments. Furthermore, each type of emotion generates its own constitutive judgements and structures normative thinking according to its own logic. The main thesis is that emotions provide sociological explanations for social agents’ thinking and speech, for emotions are precisely what motivate and, especially, structure normative reasoning and language. Being observable in language, emotions allow us to explain a) how social subjects reason and argue through norms and values, and b) how social subjects through their speech acts can contribute to the (un-)making of the social world.

Author(s):  
Cahyo Pamungkas

This is article derived from a thesis study in the Sociology Department of the University of Indonesia in 2008 exploring socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural contexts playing their roles in the formation of the political and religious fields along with their respective ‘habitus’ of the social agents in the Papua land. This paper discusses the history of the term “papua” itself based on a historical study conducted by Solewijn Gelpke (1993). Based on historical approach, the relationship between Muslims and Christians in Papua can be traced as a religious and cultural heritage. Also, by using a sociological conception elaborated by Bourdieu (1992: 9), we may view the Papua land as a social space encompassing all conceptions of the social world. Bourdieu’s social space conception considers the social reality as a topology (Harker, 1990).


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-270
Author(s):  
Laurence Kaufmann ◽  
Philippe Gonzalez

This article discusses some of the central theses proposed by Nathalie Heinich in her book Des Valeurs ( Values). After focusing on the distinction between norms and values, and the inductive approach favoured by an axiological sociology, we will address how public values might emotionally engage actors, the specificity of moral values and of people as ‘objects of valuation’ and, finally, the ambiguities inherent in the ‘axiologically neutral’ reconstruction of an ‘axiological grammar’. Somewhat countering the ‘descriptive relativism’ that Nathalie Heinich advocates, we will argue, from a pragmatist stance, in favour of a minimal moral realism based on axiological affordances. Finally, we will show that such a stance helps to account for the normative functioning of the public sphere.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlyna Maros ◽  
Azianura Hani Shaari

How do members of the new generation praise each other? Do they still adhere to the communication strategies prescribed in their traditional cultural values or modernization has played a role in initiating changes in peoples linguistic behavior?The book addresses the changes in the cultural values that have emerged in the speech acts of compliments and compliment responses of native speakers of Malay in Malaysia. In the field of sociolinguistics, the discussion provides insights into the current practices of the Malay speech acts and linguistic identity among the speakers, especially after 60 years of Malaysias independence. The rapid developments in technology and cyber communication have contributed to linguistic innovation and changes in language use to a certain extent, hence calling for a look at its impact on Malay cultural values.Through empirical evidence, the book attempts to elucidate the emerging norms that indicate changes in the cultural values of the new Malays. Our arguments are supported by the theories related to how utterances are analysed linguistically, taking into consideration the social factors, such as power, social distance, social status of the interlocutors and weight age of the imposition on the speech acts.This book is written to bring you closer to the members of the new generation, by providing insights into their strategies of communication. Specifically, it is written to uncover and understand the norms and values of the Malays of the 21st century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-74
Author(s):  
Abdou Barrow

Relationship between state and civil society has been of great interest in the field of social sciences especially in the field of sociology and political science. There have been several theorist that tries to look into this relationship. The aim of this paper is to review the theoretical approaches of Marxist, Elites, and Neo-Consensualist on the relations between state and civil society in nowadays societies. Research are based on literature studies, on conflict perspectives in sociology. These theories are very prominent when talking about state-civil society relationship in sociology. Marxist looks the relationship between the two as conflictual, meaning dominant civil society use the state as an instrument in exploiting the weak economic class. Elites argue the relationship differently from that of Marxist and liberals, as for them, state is run by few individuals at the expense of the mass. In the eye of Neo-Consensualist is entirely a different story, as that of Parson view certain prospectin the social world of constituting the society that is; norms, and values. As for Bellah he sought religion as a mechanism in the spirit of acculturating a kind of doctrine in a sense that, state and citizens go bye. Result for this theoretical views is elites show the relationship different from the Marxist and liberals, as for them the state is run by few individuals at the expense of the mass. This people are a minority group that has influence through economically, socially and the like but in short they have potentials in making things happen. This minority group the called them the elite as the mas they called the ruled.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Scharff

Enrique Pichon-Rivière, a pioneer of psychoanalysis, worked and wrote in Argentina in the mid-twentieth century, but his work has not so far been translated into English. From the beginning, Pichon-Rivière understood the social applications of analytic thinking, centring his ideas on "el vinculo", which is generally translated as "the link", but could equally be translated as "the bond". The concept that each individual is born into human social links, is shaped by them, and simultaneously contributes to them inextricably ties people's inner worlds to the social world of family and society in which they live. Pichon-Rivière believed, therefore, that family analysis and group and institutional applications of analysis were as important as individual psychoanalysis. Many of the original family and couple therapists from whom our field learned trained with him. Because his work was centred in the analytic writings of Fairbairn and Klein, as well as those of the anthropologist George Herbert Mead and the field theory of Kurt Lewin, his original ideas have important things to teach us today. This article summarises some of his central ideas such as the link, spiral process, the single determinate illness, and the process of therapy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-237
Author(s):  
Eyal Clyne

Drawing on speech acts theory, this article discusses the illocutionary and perlocutionary forces of discursive practices with which certain academic circles seek to discredit the Saidian ‘Orientalism’ framework. Identifying the unusual value attached to Said as object of attachment or detachment, desirability and exceptionality, this analysis turns away from deliberations about ‘orientalism’ as a party in a battle of ideas, and studies common cautionary statements and other responses by peers as actions in the social (academic) world, that enculture and police expectations. Cautioning subjects about this framework, or conditioning its employment to preceding extensive pre-emptive complicating mitigations, in effect constructs this framework as undesirable and ‘risky’. While strong discursive reactions are not uncommon in academia, comparing them to treatments of less-controversial social theories reveals formulations, meanings and attentions which are arguably reserved for this ‘theory’. Conclusively, common dismissals, warnings and criticisms of Said and ‘Orientalism’ often exemplify Saidian claims, as they deploy the powerful advantage of enforcing hegemonic, and indeed Orientalist, views.


This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.


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