scholarly journals Den diskursive distribution af struktur og agens

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Marianne Winther Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Localize Potential ◽  
Final Answer ◽  
Access To Knowledge ◽  
The Relationship

Marianne Winther Jørgensen: The discursive distribution of structure and agency. An ana-lysis of subject positions in the human sciences One of the central issues in sociology is the relation between structure and agency. While there have been many discussions and proposals about the relationship between them, none has been accepted as a final answer. This article explores that issue employing Foucault’s diagnosis of modern man, and suggests that the question of structure and agency is posed in a way that precludes such an answer. This does not, however, render all discussion obsolete, but rather leaves space for a perspective on the discursive construction and distribution of structure and agency. Two texts are examined, one by Bourdieu and one by Tyler. Both have a similar objective – employing texts in a way to further agency, but these authors see their own role differently. Bourdieu gives himself and science a privileged position as regards access to knowledge, while Tyler sees structures as agents and himself as deliverer, that is, spokesperson for an inevitable development. The author proposes conceiving agency as an “empty form“ and argues that there is a need for agency in order to discuss responsibility and to localize potential for change.

Contemporary Qur'anic Studies in Iran and its Relationship with Qur'anic Studies in the West

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Morteza Karimi-Nia
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The West ◽  
Communications Technologies ◽  
Religious Learning ◽  
The Status ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The status of tafsīr and Qur'anic studies in the Islamic Republic of Iran has changed significantly during recent decades. The essay provides an overview of the state of Qur'anic studies in Iran today, aiming to examine the extent of the impact of studies by Western scholars on Iranian academic circles during the last three decades and the relationship between them. As in most Islamic countries, the major bulk of academic activity in Iran in this field used to be undertaken by the traditional ʿulamāʾ; however, since the beginning of the twentieth century and the establishment of universities and other academic institutions in the Islamic world, there has been increasing diversity and development. After the Islamic Revolution, many gradual changes in the structure and approach of centres of religious learning and universities have occurred. Contemporary advancements in modern sciences and communications technologies have gradually brought the institutions engaged in the study of human sciences to confront the new context. As a result, the traditional Shīʿī centres of learning, which until 50 years ago devoted themselves exclusively to the study of Islamic law and jurisprudence, today pay attention to the teaching of foreign languages, Qur'anic sciences and exegesis, including Western studies about the Qur'an, to a certain extent, and recognise the importance of almost all of the human sciences of the West.

scholarly journals Hidden in the limelight: A feminist engagement with innovation studies

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 135050842110153
Author(s):  
Lara Pecis ◽  
Karin Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
Innovation Studies ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Space Race ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Positively Charged ◽  
Blind Spots

Innovation is filled with aspirations for solutions to problems, and for laying the groundwork for new technological and social breakthroughs. When a concept is so positively charged, the hopes expressed may create blindness to potential shortcomings and deadlocks. To disclose innovation blind spots, we approach innovation from a feminist viewpoint. We see innovation as a context that changes historically, and as revolution, offering alternative imaginaries of the relationship between race, gender and innovation. Our theoretical framework combines bell hooks (capitalist patriarchy and intersectionality), Mazzucato (the entrepreneurial state and the changing context of innovation) and Fraser (redistributive justice) and contributes with an understanding of innovation from the margin by unveiling its political dimensions. Hidden Figures, the 2016 biographical drama that follows three Black women working at NASA during the space race, provides the empirical setting of the paper. Our analysis contributes to emerging intersectionality research in management and organisation studies (MOS) by revealing the subject positions and dynamics of inclusion/exclusion in innovation discourses, and by proposing a radical – and more inclusive – rethinking of innovation. With this article, we aim to push the margins to the centre and invite others to discover the terrain of the margin(alised). We suggest that our feminist framework is appropriate to study other organisational phenomena, over time and across contexts, to bring forward the plurality of women’s experiences at work and in organisations.

Old Media, New Gigs: The Discursive Construction of the Gig Economy in Australian News Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110346
Author(s):  
Luci Pangrazio ◽  
Cameron Bishop ◽  
Fiona Lee
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
Short Term Contract ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Work And Life

This article analyses the representation of the gig economy in three Australian newspapers from 2014 to 2019. ‘Gig work’ is defined as short term, contract or freelance employment and is seen by many social institutions as the future of work. Drawing on a corpus of 426 articles, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory is used to examine the construction of the ‘gig economy’ in the cultural imaginary. Five key elements emerge, including: demographics of workers; working conditions; workers’ rights; resistance and regulation; and change and disruption. Despite multiple competing discourses evident across the newspapers, each constructs the gig economy as an inexorable phase in the evolution of the relationship between capital and the worker. The article critically analyses the construction of the discourse, including the difficulties of regulating gig economy platforms and the narrative of inevitability used to describe changes to work and life brought about by technology.

Den anklagade tittaren. Strategiskt publiktilltal i satiriska anklagelser

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Tommy Bruhn ◽  
Joanna Doona
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Private School ◽  
Rhetorical Structure ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Queue System ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opening Up

Public accusations often lead to controversy. Accusations have been studied as causing certain types of defense, as well as for how accusing parties persuade audiences of guilt, and amplify an act’s offensiveness. We investigate a satire programme as a strategic act, with a specific focus on how its accusatory rhetorical structure strategically invites certain responses, and counteracts others. We show how a segment in the news satire programme ‘Swedish News’ constructed a complex accusation against the Swedish private school queue system, and against the character of the educated middle class who tend to use it. The segment’s structure places the accused middle class as an addressed audience in three different subject positions, wherein the relationship between them motivates penance rather than defense. The analysis shows how a changing positioning of the same group as judge, victim and accused can perform certain functions in accusatory speech, indicating roads to redemption and opening up for possibilities of reconciliation

scholarly journals Co-evolution between Stages of Institutionalization and Agency: The Case of the Music Industry’s Business Model

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 37-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilien Moyon ◽  
Xavier Lecocq
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Change Process ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Process Duration ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Alternative Practices ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between structure and agency is a central issue in studying change. The aim of this paper is to focus on the interactions between the process of institutional change and the actors’ strategic behaviour. Based on research on the music industry, we observed co-evolution between the actor level and the organizational field level by identifying three consequences of the incumbents’ actions on the institutional change process (alternative practices selection, alternative practices modification and process duration) and three consequences of coercive pressures on agency (strategic adjustment, traditional practices modification and legitimization).

Transformations in American Political Participation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deana A. Rohlinger
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Sociological Literature ◽  
The Relationship

The purpose of this chapter is to offer a critical review of the sociological literature on political participation and, in doing so, to underscore the importance of power dynamics to understanding political engagement in the digital age. The author argues that the focus on social movements, the organizations that animate them, and the conditions under which they emerge and decline made it difficult for sociologists to incorporate digital media into their theorizing. A key problem in this regard is that sociologists have not done a good job of accounting for the ability of individuals and small groups to use technologies to advocate for political change. One way for sociologists to rebalance their theoretical and empirical efforts is to think more critically about the relationship between structure and agency and how this might (dis)empower individuals and groups. The author illustrates the utility of this approach by, first, outlining how power shapes whether and how an individual gets politically involved and, then, discussing how power influences the form a group takes as well as its influence in political processes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of directions for future research.

scholarly journals ‘Diplomacy is a feminine art’: Feminised figurations of the diplomat

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 573-593
Author(s):  
Ann E. Towns
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
News Media ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe aim of this article is to examine whether and how diplomacy may be gendered, symbolically and rhetorically, using US representations of diplomacy as a case. Prior scholarship on gender and contemporary diplomacy is sparse but has shown that the symbolic figure of ‘the diplomat’ has come to overlap tightly with ‘man’ and be associated with traits often attributed to masculinity. Inspired by queer international relations methods, relying on the concept of ‘figuration’ and focused on US news media and biographies of diplomats from the past decade, this article uncovers and examines a palette of feminised figurations also at play in US representations of diplomacy, including the diplomat as ‘the “soft” non-fighter’, ‘the relationship builder’, ‘the gossip’, ‘the cookie-pusher’, and ‘the fancy Frenchman’. These feminised figurations alternate between configuring the diplomat as a woman and – more commonly – a (feminised) man. The analysis complicates rather than displaces existing claims, highlighting the importance of attention to slippages and challenges to dominant masculinised subject positions.

scholarly journals Patient-Physicians: Identities and Expertise Brought Into the Light of Diagnosis and Treatment

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
Carlos Andrés Arroyave ◽  
Marlín Téllez
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Chronic Disease ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Diagnosis And Treatment ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Researchers continue establishing a clear-cut division between identities of doctors and patients, but the perspective of the physician in the event that they became a patient is seldom analyzed. This article shows empirical evidence of the discursive construction of identities and expertise in the accounts of 24 patient-physicians diagnosed and treated for acute or chronic disease in the city of Bogotá, Colombia (2009-2015). An approach to these accounts from Science and Technology Studies, which is a perspective emerged among the field of social sciences during the 1970s that has achieved in our time a broader understanding of expertise, leads to the questioning of stereotypes about who doctors are and who patients are, and to illustrate the difficulty of drawing boundaries between experts and laypeople. Finally, it was concluded that identities and expertise are reconfigured in interaction, in a contingent and situated way, when considering diagnosis and treatment. New meanings of the relationship between doctor and patient were proposed, from a more symmetrical stance.

scholarly journals A Rotation in Contemporary Legal Scholarship

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 338-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Interdisciplinary Work ◽  
The Relationship

I develop my picture of contemporary legal scholarship in two broad strokes. In the first section, I focus on the relationship between legal scholarship and the traditions of theory, philosophy, and the human sciences, arguing that the interdisciplinary work of contemporary legal scholarship expresses legal culture's uneasiness about intellection. In the second section, I focus on the relationship between legal scholarship and political engagement, arguing that the programatic or exhortatory tone, structure and context of contemporary legal scholarship expresses legal culture's uneasiness about what it thinks of as “politics”.

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