scholarly journals Identity in social constructionism: A review

Sociologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-221
Author(s):  
Djordje Milivojevic

The terms personality, identity, self or person and many others, are used in the literature in different ways. Sometimes the term implies the personality of the self and the person (Leary, 2004), and sometimes the identity (Harre, 2001). An important source of terminological confusion in the study of self and identity lies in a variety of different perspectives in the social sciences. The subject of this paper is to present the concept of identity in social constructionist paradigm. The paper focuses on works of social psychologist Kenneth Gergen (Gergen, 1991; Gergen, 2002; Gergen, 2009), Rom Harre (Harre, 2001, Harre, 2004; Harre & Tisaw, 2005) and John Shotter (Shotter, 1989; Shotter, 1997) whose speaking of the fragmented nature of identity. The similarities and differences between these approaches are shown. In conclusion, theoretical, methodological and political implications of adopting a new understanding of identity are reconsidered.

Author(s):  
Omnia El Shakry

This chapter considers Freudian itineraries in postwar Egypt through an exploration of the work of Yusuf Murad, the founder of a school of thought within the psychological sciences, and the journal he coedited from 1945 to 1953, Majallat ʿIlm al-Nafs. By training a generation of scholars, Murad left a wide-ranging legacy on psychology, philosophy, and the wider academic fields of the humanities and the social sciences. Melding key concepts from psychoanalysis with classical Islamic concepts, Murad elaborated a psychological theory of the subject as an integrative agent, embodying a complex synthesis of unity and multiplicity. Theorizing the temporality of the subject, the epistemology of psychoanalysis and the analytic structure, and the socius, Murad both drew upon and departed from European psychoanalytic thought, while often insisting on the epistemological and ethical heterogeneity of different theories of the self.


1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Durrheim

This paper serves as an introduction to social constructionist approaches to psychology. It outlines the arguments which have prompted a shift away from empiricism in the social sciences. Harré's (1992) distinction between behaviourism and the first and second cognitive revolution is used to provide a broad historical framework to develop contrasts between mainstream empiricist psychology and constructionist approaches. The central claim is that theories of meaning are embodied in theories of science, and that we need a new (constructionist) theory of science to underpin a psychology which takes the meaningful nature of human activity as its object of study. Finally, the paper introduces discourse analysis as a methodology which can sustain a constructionist, post-empiricist analysis.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Efnan Dervişoğlu

Almanya’ya işçi göçü, neden ve sonuçları, sosyal boyutlarıyla ele alınmış; göç ve devamındaki süreçte yaşanan sorunlar, konunun uzmanlarınca dile getirilmiştir. Fakir Baykurt’un Almanya öyküleri, sunduğu gerçekler açısından, sosyal bilimlerin ortaya koyduğu verilerle bağdaşan edebiyat ürünleri arasındadır. Yirmi yılını geçirdiği Almanya’da, göçmen işçilerle ve aileleriyle birlikte olup işçi çocuklarının eğitimine yönelik çalışmalarda bulunan yazarın gözlem ve deneyimlerinin ürünü olan bu öyküler, kaynağını yaşanmışlıktan alır; çalışmanın ilk kısmında, Fakir Baykurt’un yaşamına ve Almanya yıllarına dair bilgi verilmesi, bununla ilişkilidir. Öykülere yansıyan çocuk yaşamı ise çalışmanın asıl konusunu oluşturmaktadır. “Ev ve aile yaşamı”, “Eğitim yaşamı ve sorunları”, “Sosyal çevre, arkadaşlık ilişkileri ve Türk-Alman ayrılığı” ile “İki kültür arasında” alt başlıklarında, Türkiye’den göç eden işçi ailelerinde yetişen çocukların Almanya’daki yaşamları, karşılaştıkları sorunlar, öykülerin sunduğu veriler ışığında değerlendirilmiş; örneklemeye gidilmiştir. Bu öyküler, edebiyatın toplumsal gerçekleri en iyi yansıtan sanat olduğu görüşünü doğrular niteliktedir ve sosyolojik değerlendirmelere açıktır. ENGLISH ABSTRACTMigration and Children in Fakir Baykurt’s stories from GermanyThe migration of workers to Germany has been taken up with its causes, consequences and social dimensions; the migration and the problems encountered in subsequent phases have been stated by experts in the subject. Fakir Baykurt’s stories from Germany, regarding the reality they represent, are among the literary forms that coincide with the facts supplied by social sciences. These stories take their sources from true life experiences as the products of observations and experiences with migrant workers and their families in Germany where the writer has passed twenty years of his life and worked for the education of the worker’s children; therefore information related to Fakir Baykurt’s life and his years in Germany are provided in the first part of the study.  The life of children reflected in the stories constitutes the main theme of the study.  Under  the subtitles of “Family and Home Life”, “Education Life and related issues”, “Social environment, friendships and Turkish-German disparity” and “Amidst two cultures”, the lives in Germany of children who have been  raised in working class  families and  who have immigrated from Turkey are  evaluated under the light of facts provided by the stories and examples are given. These stories appear to confirm that literature is an art that reflects the social reality and is open to sociological assessments.KEYWORDS: Fakir Baykurt; Germany; labor migration; child; story


Author(s):  
Lexi Eikelboom

This book argues that, as a pervasive dimension of human existence with theological implications, rhythm ought to be considered a category of theological significance. Philosophers and theologians have drawn on rhythm—patterned movements of repetition and variation—to describe reality, however, the ways in which rhythm is used and understood differ based on a variety of metaphysical commitments with varying theological implications. This book brings those implications into the open, using resources from phenomenology, prosody, and the social sciences to analyse and evaluate uses of rhythm in metaphysical and theological accounts of reality. The analysis relies on a distinction from prosody between a synchronic approach to rhythm—observing the whole at once and considering how various dimensions of a rhythm hold together harmoniously—and a diachronic approach—focusing on the ways in which time unfolds as the subject experiences it. The text engages with the twentieth-century Jesuit theologian Erich Przywara alongside thinkers as diverse as Augustine and the contemporary philosopher Giorgio Agamben, and proposes an approach to rhythm that serves the concerns of theological conversation. It demonstrates the difference that including rhythm in theological conversation makes to how we think about questions such as “what is creation?” and “what is the nature of the God–creature relationship?” from the perspective of rhythm. As a theoretical category, capable of expressing metaphysical commitments, yet shaped by the cultural rhythms in which those expressing such commitments are embedded, rhythm is particularly significant for theology as a phenomenon through which culture and embodied experience influence doctrine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110201
Author(s):  
Thomas A. DiPrete ◽  
Brittany N. Fox-Williams

Social inequality is a central topic of research in the social sciences. Decades of research have deepened our understanding of the characteristics and causes of social inequality. At the same time, social inequality has markedly increased during the past 40 years, and progress on reducing poverty and improving the life chances of Americans in the bottom half of the distribution has been frustratingly slow. How useful has sociological research been to the task of reducing inequality? The authors analyze the stance taken by sociological research on the subject of reducing inequality. They identify an imbalance in the literature between the discipline’s continual efforts to motivate the plausibility of large-scale change and its lesser efforts to identify feasible strategies of change either through social policy or by enhancing individual and local agency with the potential to cumulate into meaningful progress on inequality reduction.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 793-806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduard Bonet

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and extended since the twentieth century. Its purpose is to foster the awareness on emerging new trends of rhetoric. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on an interpretation of the history of rhetoric and on the construction of a conceptual framework of the rhetoric of judgment, which is introduced in this paper. Findings – On the subject of the extension of rhetoric from public speeches to any kinds of persuasive situations, the paper emphasizes some stimulating relationships between the theory of communication and rhetoric. On the exclusion and recuperation of the subject of rhetorical arguments, it presents the changing relationships between rhetoric and dialectics and emphasizes the role of rhetoric in scientific research. On the introduction of rhetoric of judgment and meanings it creates a conceptual framework based on a re-examination of the concept of judgment and the phenomenological foundations of the interpretative methods of social sciences by Alfred Schutz, relating them to symbolic interactionism and theories of the self. Originality/value – The study on the changing boundaries of rhetoric and the introduction of the rhetoric of judgment offers a new view on the present theoretical and practical development of rhetoric, which opens new subjects of research and new fields of applications.


1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roscoe C. Martin

By tradition public administration is regarded as a division of political science. Woodrow Wilson set the stage for this concept in his original essay identifying public administration as a subject worthy of special study, and spokesmen for both political science and public administration have accepted it since. Thus Leonard White, in his 1930 article on the subject in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, recognizes public administration as “a branch of the field of political science.” Luther Gulick follows suit, observing in 1937 that “Public administration is thus a division of political science ….” So generally has this word got around that it has come to the notice of the sociologists, as is indicated in a 1950 report of the Russell Sage Foundation which refers to “political science, including public administration….” “Pure” political scientists and political scientists with a public administration slant therefore are not alone in accepting this doctrine, which obviously enjoys a wide and authoritative currency.But if public administration is reckoned generally to be a child of political science, it is in some respects a strange and unnatural child; for there is a feeling among political scientists, substantial still if mayhap not so widespread as formerly, that academicians who profess public administration spend their time fooling with trifles. It was a sad day when the first professor of political science learned what a manhole cover is! On their part, those who work in public administration are likely to find themselves vaguely resentful of the lack of cordiality in the house of their youth.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew ◽  
Thomas W. Pearson

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Wójcik

PurposeThe subject of the article is the concept of augmented intelligence, which constitutes a further stage in the development of research on artificial intelligence. This is a new phenomenon that has rarely been considered in the subject literature so far, which may be interesting for the fields of social sciences and humanities. The aim is to describe the features of this technology and determine the practical and ethical problems associated with its implementation in libraries.Design/methodology/approachThe method of literature review was used. Systematic searches according to specific questions were carried out using the Scopus and Web of Science scientific databases, as well as Google Scholar and the LISTA abstract database.FindingsThe results established that the issue of augmented intelligence has barely been discussed in the field of librarianship. Although this technology may be interesting as a new area of librarian research and as a new framework for designing innovative services, deep ethical consideration is necessary before this technology is introduced in libraries.Research limitations/implicationsThe article deals with some of the newest technologies available, and this topic is generally very rarely discussed in scientific publications in either the social sciences or humanities. Therefore, due to the limited availability of materials, the findings presented in the article are primarily of a conceptual nature. The aim is to present this topic from the perspective of librarianship and to create a starting point for further discussion on the ethical aspects of introducing new technologies in libraries.Practical implicationsThe results can be widely used in practice as a framework for the implementation of augmented intelligence in libraries.Social implicationsThe article can help to facilitate the debate on the role of implementing new technologies in libraries.Originality/valueThe problem of augmented intelligence is very rarely addressed in the subject literature in the field of library and information science.


Author(s):  
Eric Fabri

This chapter addresses ontology, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being. As a branch of metaphysics, ontology is mainly concerned with the modes of existence of different entities (tangible and intangible). Every subdiscipline in the social sciences relies on an ontology that defines which elements really matter when it comes to explaining the phenomenon they set out to elucidate. A specific branch of ontology is devoted to the modes of existence of social phenomena: social ontology. Two main positions emerge: realism and constructivism. Scientific realism assumes that social phenomena have an objective existence, independent of the subject. By contrast, constructivism claims that social phenomena have no objective existence and are a construction of the human mind. Its fundamental axiom is that, even if reality exists outside the subject’s perception, the subject cannot reach it without perceiving it. This implies the mediation of imaginary structures, which are provided by social groups. It is important to note, however, that many other positions exist apart from realism and constructivism.


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