The Rhetorical Construction of "the Teacher"

1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Nespor ◽  
Liz Barber
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Harvard Educational Review ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Rhetorical Structure ◽  
Rhetorical Construction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Textual Strategies

Authors in the field of education inevitably use rhetorical strategies that embody particular,and often implicit, theoretical, epistemological, and political positions. In this article, Jan Nespor and Liz Barber critically examine the rhetorical structure of a 1987 article published in the Harvard Educational Review — Lee S. Shulman's "Knowledge and Teaching:Foundations of the New Reform." The authors examine various textual strategies — such as"the phenomenological hook," "appropriating a constituency," and "moving on" — that Shulman used to construct "the teacher" as an object of study. Through a detailed analysis of this widely cited article, Nespor and Barber address broader issues of representation and power in the social sciences, and conclude with a call for "a more 'critical literacy' among the readers and writers of research texts."

scholarly journals Literary Anthropology

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Máiréad Nic Craith ◽  
Laurent Sebastian Fournier
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Performances ◽  
Textual Strategies

This special issue on anthropology and literature invited proposals for original contributions focusing on relationships between anthropology and literature. We were especially interested in the following questions: what role does literature play in anthropology? Can literature be considered as ethnography? What are the relationships between anthropology and literature, past and present? Are anthropology and anthropological motives used in literature? We also looked for critical readings of writers as anthropologists and critical readings of anthropologists as writers. Moreover, we wanted to assess the influence of literature on the invention of traditions, rituals and cultural performances. All these different questions and topics are clearly connected with the study of literacy, illiteracy and popular culture. They also lead to questions regarding potential textual strategies for ethnography and the possibilities of bringing together the field of anthropology (more associated with the social sciences) and literary studies (traditionally part of the humanities).

Quale modello di partecipazione per la ricerca sociale? Riflessivitŕ nel rapporto tra ricercatore e attore sociale

2012 ◽  
pp. 127-153
Author(s):  
Silvia Cataldi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social Actor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The Relationship

The article begins with a brief overview of how the relationship between researcher and object of study has been approached in social sciences. The goal is to reflect further on the process of this study and to raise two essential questions: what kind of relationship develops between the researcher and the social actor? And what kind of participation is required from the social actor? To answer these questions the article proposes identifying four different models of participation, the effects of which are analyzed by rediscovering all the practices that include a particular involvement of the social actor in the research process.

scholarly journals Future Anticipation in Sociology

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 333-341
Author(s):  
Carlos Miguel Ferreira ◽  
Sandro Serpa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
The Future ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Scientific Fields

The ability to make forecasts about events is a goal favored by the so-called exact sciences. In sociology and other social sciences, the forecast, although often sought after, is not likely to be realized unconditionally. This article seeks to problematize and discuss the connection between sociology and forecast. The object of study of sociology has particular features that distinguish it from other scientific fields, namely facts and social situations, which deal with trends; the systems of belief of social scientists and policymakers that can influence the attempt to anticipate the future; the dissemination of information and knowledge produced by sociology and other social sciences, which have the potential to change reality and, consequently, to call into question their capacity for the social forecast. These principles pose challenges to sociology’s heuristic potentials, making the reflection on these challenges indispensable in the scientific approach to social processes.

Philosophy of Social Sciences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Elster
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Holistic Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Causal Laws

This chapter addresses problems and themes in the social sciences. Social sciences are understood specifically as sciences that have (or should have) the following minimal characteristics: their object of study is human behavior and they follow a certain number of methodological principles, including a marked effort towards analytical clarity; the investigation of causal explanations through the formulation of causal laws or at least causal mechanisms; and a subscription to a form of methodological individualism, if an amended one, which puts at the heart of social science the notion of choice. We discuss three principal themes. The first raises the question of the status of laws in the social sciences and, in particular, that of “consequence laws,” otherwise known as functionalist explanations. The second theme takes up methodological individualism, as compared to holistic approaches. The last theme concerns hypotheses of rationality and self-interested motivations, which increasingly figure in social scientific explanations.

European New Legal Realism and International Law: How to Make International Law Intelligible

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAKOB V. H. HOLTERMANN ◽  
MIKAEL RASK MADSEN
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Law ◽  
Complex Analysis ◽  
Sociology Of Law ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Realist Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Domestic Law

AbstractInternational law remains in many ways a challenge to legal science. As in domestic law, the available options appear to be exhausted by either internal doctrinal approaches, or external approaches applying more general empirical methods from the social sciences. This article claims that, while these major positions obviously provide interesting insights, none of them manage to make international law intelligible in a broader sense. Instead, it argues for a European New Legal Realist approach to international law accommodating the so-called external and internal dimensions of law in a single more complex analysis which takes legal validity seriously but as a genuinely empirical object of study. This article constructs this position by identifying a distinctively European realist path which takes as its primary inspirations Weberian sociology of law and Alf Ross’ Scandinavian Legal Realism and combines them with insights originating from Bourdieusian sociology of law.

scholarly journals “Text-as-Means” versus “Text-as-End-in-Itself”

Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-84
Author(s):  
Lynne Pearce
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
The Social ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Insight Into

This article explores three reasons why literary scholars have been slow to engage with both the New Mobilities Paradigm and the New Mobilities Studies promoted by Transfers, namely: (1) the residual conservatism of “English studies”; (2) the sort of textual practice associated with “literary criticism” (where the text remains the primary object of study); and (3), the tension between the humanist and/or “subject-centered” nature of most literary scholarship and the posthumanist approaches of mobilities scholars based in the social sciences and other humanities subjects. However, the close reading of literary and other texts has much to contribute to mobilities studies including insight into the temporalities—both personal and social—that shape our long-term understanding of contemporary events such as the current pandemic.

The “so-called” UGC: an updated definition of user-generated content in the age of social media

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Luis Barbosa dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Peer Review ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Object Of Study

PurposeWhen a concept is diffusely defined or, as this article argues, “taken for granted”, it becomes very difficult to track such concept on the literature and have some continuity as researchers build on top of previous results. This article proposes a definition for user-generated content, a term that though has lost some saliency, stands in the center or the social media phenomenon, so it should not be disregarded as an object of study.Design/methodology/approachCelebrating 20 years of the concept, this research performs a multidisciplinary literature review of 61 academic articles on UGC. Through deconstruction of the acronym UGC, it builds on the present converging, conflicting and diverging definitions and/or approaches to UGC on an attempt to consolidate a broader definition that encompasses the complexities of the phenomenon in a context of consolidation of social media, to be applied to social sciences.FindingsFollowing the present analysis, UGC is defined as any kind of text, data or action performed by online digital systems users, published and disseminated by the same user through independent channels, that incur an expressive or communicative effect either on an individual manner or combined with other contributions from the same or other sources.Originality/valueThis is the first academic effort that aims to create an in-depth dialogue over the different approaches to UGC across disciplines on the social sciences field. It should help reignite interest in the acronym, which got somehow eclipsed by the broader field of social media; whilst without UGC, social media would not exist or would not have the same social impact it does in its current form. Analogously, UGC as a topic of research has been deeply affected by the emergence and consolidation of Social Media. As this debate evolves, this contribution should be helpful as a reference to operationalize UGC on future research.Peer reviewThe peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2020-0258

Unexpected Properties: Strathern on the Relation of Law and Culture

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 167-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol J. Greenhouse
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bronislaw Malinowski ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Bronisław Malinowski

This article takes up Marilyn Strathern’s formulation of a law/culture ‘duplex’ – her term for the complementarity of anthropology and law as means to each other’s ends. She draws attention to the limitations of the duplex, and urges us to consider ethnography as (in part) a project of unwinding its entwinement. As a step toward that end, the article returns to classic texts by Emile Durkheim and Bronislaw Malinowski – texts that were foundational to the emergence of anthropology, and to the establishment of law as an object of study for the social sciences. Re-read in light of Strathern’s insight, what has been widely taken as their relativism emerges instead as their defense of political community as a subject for ethnography, and (accordingly) the basis for a theoretical check on law conceived globally – within states or as colonial overrule. The article concludes with a discussion of the contemporary relevance of that position.

Paging Paul Krugman: Toward a Topoi of an Exemplar Public Intellectual in the Natural and Physical Sciences

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-104
Author(s):  
Michael J. Zerbe
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Climate Change ◽  
New York ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The Social

American economist Paul Krugman has become a highly influential public intellectual in the social sciences. The natural and physical sciences need a public intellectual like Krugman to make more effective arguments for the existence and urgency of climate change, the benefits of vaccine use, and other pressing issues. To demonstrate how such a goal can be achieved, this article presents a rhetorical analysis of Krugman’s public intellectual writing in The New York Times from 2013 to 2016. The substantial public impact of this body of work stems from Krugman’s use of rhetorical strategies that are both similar to and—more importantly—a departure from strategies used by other well-known public intellectuals in the sciences.

Anthropology and Research Methodology

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graciela Batallán
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Research Methodology ◽  
Research Training ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Qualitative Research Methodology ◽  
True Knowledge ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
The University

This article provides a reflection on “qualitative” research methodology and their study within the university and other educational levels and invites dialogue between paradigms and currents of thought that are identified with teaching and the methods of producing empirical information. From a critical perspective, together with the positivism of the social sciences, it argues that the node of this teaching is the process of constructing the object of study, a process that confirms the centrality of the researcher. In accordance with a theoretical-methodological focus that distinguishes the specificity of the object of the social sciences in its linguistic construction, and considering the capacity for agency of the temporarily situated actors, the researcher (also a social agent), in addition to taking on the scope and historicity of the concepts used to problematize the relationships being investigated, needs to analyze the reflexivity of his/her language, which is inscribed in the assumptions that guide his/her inquiry. In this way, research training embodies a pedagogical problematic, whereby addressing the aforementioned centrality of the construction of the object goes hand in hand with the pedagogical problematization of everyday speech. Research-in-action training constitutes the future researcher as a critical intellectual, in search of a reliable (or true) knowledge that will incorporate him/her into the scientific framework.

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