Why we Act Irrationally

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zohaib Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Self Reflection ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Irrational Action ◽  
Breaking Work

Psychologists, cognitive experts, and philosophers alike have long been interested in why people go against their better judgement: why do people do y when they know all things considered x is better to do? Why does a student go out rather than working on his/her essay; the completion of which they know to be their top priority. The purpose of the presentation is twofold. First and foremost, it hopes to make digestible to the everyday thinker the philosophical research that has been conducted on this matter. Oftentimes when philosophers release ground-breaking work their paper is too dense and prose-filled to be comprehensible by non-philosophers. Secondly, this presentation hopes to locate not only the source of irrational action, which it finds to be the passions, but also present a solution to the problem of irrational action, which it argues is self-reflection. It is by having an honest and open conversation with oneself about 1) one's goals, aims, and ambitions and 2) one's values [what kind of person they want to be], that one is able to turn away from weakness and to act rationally. Moreover, this paper argues that acting rationally is an ongoing process, where the individual must continually assess their actions to ensure they are falling in line with their aims and values.

The Everyday in a Time of Transformation: Exploring a Single South African Lifeworld after 20 Years of Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
P. Conrad Kotze ◽  
Jan K. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Epistemological Framework

Transformation has come to be a defining characteristic of contemporary societies, while it has rarely been studied in a way that gives acknowledgement to both its societal effects and the experience thereof by the individual. This article discusses a recent study that attempts to do just that. The everyday life of a South African is explored within the context of changes that can be linked, more or less directly, to those that have characterized South Africa as a state since the end of apartheid in 1994. The study strives to avoid the pitfalls associated with either an empirical or solely constructivist appreciation of this phenomenon, but rather represents an integral onto-epistemological framework for the practice of sociological research. The illustrated framework is argued to facilitate an analysis of social reality that encompasses all aspects thereof, from the objectively given to the intersubjectively constructed and subjectively constituted. While not requiring extensive development on the theoretical or methodological level, the possibility of carrying out such an integral study is highlighted as being comfortably within the capabilities of sociology as a discipline. While the article sheds light on the experience of transformation, it is also intended to contribute to the contemporary debate surrounding the current “ontological turn” within the social sciences.

scholarly journals From an ethnography of the everyday to writing echoes of suffering

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Rechtman
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Collective Modes ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
The Individual

Veena Das has introduced a major shift in our contemporary conception of ethnography. While she brings forward a new way of looking at everyday life, which is already a major achievement, she also offers a conceptual resolution to a classical unresolved opposition between the individual and the collective, and between idiosyncratic psychology (subjectivity) and collective modes of thinking, through a challenging debate on what makes one a member of a group and yet radically distinct from all others. The ethnography in her book Affliction stands on three major pillars: The first is the ethnographer’s subjective position in the field regarding the issues of lives, testimony, and research. The second is the neighborhood as the site of fieldwork, with all of its heterogeneity, rather than the group, such as an ethnic or racial group or one cohering around another criterion of belonging. The third and final pillar is the focus on the ordinary through ethnography of the everyday. I then illustrate Veena Das’s perspective on subjectivity with my own fieldwork with survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

scholarly journals Moral discourses and pharmaceuticalised governance in households

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
P Norris ◽  
J Gabe ◽  
K Chamberlain ◽  
D Hodgetts
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Natural Production ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Health Experts

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This article extends our understanding of the everyday practices of pharmaceuticalisation through an examination of moral concerns over medication practices in the household. Moral concerns of responsibility and discipline in relation to pharmaceutical consumption have been identified, such as passive or active medication practices, and adherence to orthodox or unorthodox accounts. This paper further delineates dimensions of the moral evaluations of pharmaceuticals. In 2010 and 2011 data were collected from 55 households across New Zealand and data collection techniques, such as photo- and diary-elicitation interviews, allowed the participants to develop and articulate reflective stories of the moral meaning of pharmaceuticals. Four repertoires were identified: a disordering society repertoire where pharmaceuticals evoke a society in an unnatural state; a disordering self repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a moral failing of the individual; a disordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a threat to one's physical or mental equilibrium; a re-ordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify the restoration of function. The research demonstrated that the dichotomies of orthodox/unorthodox and compliance/resistance do not adequately capture how medications are used and understood in everyday practice. Attitudes change according to why pharmaceuticals are taken and who is taking them, their impacts on social relationships, and different views on the social or natural production of disease, the power of the pharmaceutical industry, and the role of health experts. Pharmaceuticals are tied to our identity, what we want to show of ourselves, and what sort of world we see ourselves living in. The ordering and disordering understandings of pharmaceuticals intersect with forms of pharmaceuticalised governance, where conduct is governed through pharmaceutical routines, and where self-responsibility entails following the prescription of other agents. Pharmaceuticals symbolise forms of governance with different sets of roles and responsibilities.

The Process of Wellbeing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iza Kavedžija
Keyword(s):  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Anthropological Research ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Do So

The Process of Wellbeing develops an anthropological perspective on wellbeing as an intersubjective process that can be approached through the prism of three complementary conceptual framings: conviviality; care; and creativity. Drawing on ethnographic discussions of these themes in a range of cultural contexts around the world, it shows how anthropological research can help to enlarge and refine understandings of wellbeing, through dialogue with different perspectives and understandings of what it means to live well with others and the skills required to do so. Rather than a state or achievement, wellbeing comes into view here as an ongoing process that involves human and nonhuman others. It does not pertain to the individual alone, but plays out within the relations of care that constitute people, moving and thriving in circulation through affective environments.

The Signature of Modernity: Experiential Foundations of the Open Society

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Leidhold
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Liberal Society ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Two Stages

The open society and its complement, the open mind, are the foundations of modernity. On both the individual and social levels, openness results from the combination of four specific modes of experience. These modes have evolved in two stages: first in the time of Greek antiquity and later during Western modernity. In the first stage, the discovery of self-reflection occurred, and the noëtic turn emerged. As a result, both in political and intellectual life, methods gained priority over faith in sacred authorities. In the second stage, the discovery of creative imagination took place, and the turn to consciousness evolved. Creativity led to the innovative dynamics of modernity, and personal and collective identities developed from the turn to consciousness. The combination of these four modes of experience constitutes the signature of modernity, crystallizing in the intellectual and political discourse of modernity, and creating what we call a liberal society.

The development of concepts through thousands of years

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-112
Author(s):  
Katalin Fried
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Prime Number ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Concept Development ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Number Concept ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Individual

There are several difficulties when teaching concepts; we have to consider its content, its abstract meaning, its visual representation, verbal and nonverbal aspects of it, etc. Also, the individual content of a concept changes with the knowledge of someone. However, the content of the concepts through the ages vary but education does not necessarily follow the changes. Not talking of the everyday meaning of a concept, this can get stuck at a certain level, while the scientific content changes. The concepts we teach in schools are not necessarily the actual ones. Thus, it is necessary to revise how we teach some of the concepts. One of the most important concepts of this kind is the prime number. Classification: D30, D39, C30, C39. Keywords: Prime number, concept development, goals of mathematics education, cognitive processes.

scholarly journals Managerial strategies of the personal values, used to improve engineers communication

2019 ◽  
Vol 290 ◽  
pp. 07004
Author(s):  
Mihaela Laura Bratu ◽  
Lucian-Ionel Cioca
Keyword(s):  
Employee Performance ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Workplace Communication ◽  
Individual Values ◽  
Internal Standards ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Managerial Strategies ◽  
The Individual

Every person can be described by his behavior in certain situations, but also by the motivation of his actions, a motivation that reflects the individual values. The set of values of each individual is reflected in the everyday tasks, the way of communication, the degree of success of his actions. The higher the values apply in a wider area of life, the higher the personal satisfaction of the individual. Personal values are the internal standards and, at the same time, the inner force that determines us to learn, work and live in a certain way. The paper presents a study of a group of 116 engineers from different fields who sought to identify personal values in order to improve communication at the workplace. It was used The Inventory of Personal Values that measured the analyzed variable. The findings of the research are that management strategies that value the practical and organizational spirit of engineers improve workplace communication, increase employee performance and improve their well-being.

scholarly journals Bordering imaginaries and the everyday construction of the Mediterranean neighbourhood: Introduction to the special issue

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wesley Scott ◽  
Filippo Celata ◽  
Raffaella Coletti
Keyword(s):  
Regional Studies ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual

This special issue of European Urban and Regional Studies maps out a move from a strictly geopolitical to more socio-political and socio-cultural interpretations of the European Union’s (EU’s) ‘Mediterranean neighbourhood’. In doing this, the authors propose a dialogic understanding of neighbourhood as a set of ideas and imaginaries that reflect not only top-down geopolitical imaginaries but also everyday images, representations and imaginations. The introduction briefly summarizes conceptualizations of ‘neighbourhood’ provided by the individual contributions that connect the realm of high politics with that of communities and individuals who are affected by and negotiate the EU’s Mediterranean borders. Specifically, three cases of socio-spatial imaginaries that exemplify patterns of differential inclusion of the ‘non-EU’ will be explored. The cases involve Italy–Tunisia cross-border relations, the EU’s post-‘Arab Spring’ engagement with civil society actors and the case of Northern Cyprus. The authors suggest that ‘neighbourhood’ can be conceptualized as a borderscape of interaction and agency that is politically framed in very general terms but that in detail is composed of many interlinked relational spaces. The European neighbourhood emerges as a patchwork of relations, socio-cultural encounters, confrontation and contestation, rather than merely as a cooperation policy or border regime.

‘… sometimes you’ve just got to get away’: On trekking holidays and their therapeutic effect

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnthora Olafsdottir
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Effect ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Stress And Strain ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Relational Outcomes ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Affective Process

A traditional Romantic fix for the stress and strain of the everyday has been the idea of ‘getting back to nature’, exploring places of natural grandeur and beauty based on the belief in nature’s therapeutic agency on the traveller. This article introduces a theoretical framework that offers a way to explore how touristic spaces are lived within a human–non-human co-constituted affective process. It then engages with the spaces of nature-based tourism and reports findings from an ethnographic study on British-based trekking holiday to Iceland. These findings suggest that the emotions and therapeutic affect that have traditionally been reported from spending time in nature are relational outcomes; they depend both on nature’s performance and on what the individual contributes to the relations.

African Customary Law in the Former Portuguese Territories, 1954–1974

1984 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 72-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narana Coissoro
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Logical Consequence ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Customary Laws ◽  
The Individual

Throughout all Portuguese colonial history in the African continent, the question of recognizing oral local laws, the so called “customary laws”, and the koranic law in some areas of Guinea and the northern region of Mozambique, could never be separate from the constitutional law applicable to the aboriginal inhabitants who follow it in their daily lives. That is the reason why accepting the principle according to which the everyday-life relations of Africa could be controlled by specific juridicial rules distinct from Portuguese “common law” was always connected with the private and territorial validity of the individual rights and guarantees included in the constitutional texts concerning Africans. As a logical consequence of this link between citizenship and the application of the Portuguese law in force in the metropolis, applying traditional law always depended on the political concepts formed during the present century, as Portuguese sovereignty, until the end of the nineteenth century, was restricted to small littoral centres and the practice of authority in the other regions acquired at the Berlin Conference was deficient or merely nominal.The African juridical rules were always tolerated, as a means of securing colonial public peace or as a necessary condition for the smooth practice of Portuguese sovereignty beyond its European frontiers.

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