scholarly journals Duše předmětu a tělo modlitby aneb zkoumání sociologických nejistot na případu Sóka Gakkai International

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Petra Tlčimuková
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
The Relationship

This case study presents the results of long-term original ethnographic research on the international Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI). It focuses on the relationship between the material and immaterial and deals with the question of how to study them in the sociology of religion. The analysis builds upon the critique of the modernist paradigm and related research of religion in the social sciences as presented by Harman, Law and Latour. The methodology draws on the approach of Actor-Network Theory as presented by Bruno Latour, and pursues object-oriented ethnography, for the sake of which the concept of iconoclash is borrowed. This approach is applied to the research which focused on the key counterparts in the Buddhist praxis of SGI ‒ the phrase daimoku and the scroll called Gohonzon. The analysis deals mainly with the sources of sociological uncertainties related to the agency of the scroll. It looks at the processes concerning the establishing and dissolving of connections among involved elements, it opens up the black-boxes and proposes answers to the question of new conceptions of the physical as seen through Gohonzon.

scholarly journals Strategic Alliances & Customer Impact: A Case Study Of Community Hospitals

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Helen McSweeney-Feld ◽  
Suzanne Discenza ◽  
George L. De Feis
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Strategic Alliances ◽  
Strategic Alliance ◽  
Font Size ◽  
The Social ◽  
Formal Relationship ◽  
Alliance Partners ◽  
The Relationship

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;" lang="EN"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A s<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">trategic alliance</span> (SA) is a mutually beneficial long-term formal relationship formed between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need while remaining independent organizations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It is a synergistic arrangement whereby two or more organizations agree to cooperate in the carrying out of a business activity where each brings different strengths and capabilities to the arrangement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The social structure of alliances has been considered previously (Gulati 1995, et al.), so instead of discussing the social structure relative to alliance partners, this paper looks at the relationship between the dyad alliance entity and its customer(s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This newer aspect is particularly important when there are differences in trust and culture to consider (Das &amp; Teng 1998) between alliance partners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Other considerations include authority, governance and structure, conflict, and the make-up of the strategic alliance, its partners, and the customer(s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: 10pt;"></span></p>

Exploring Another’s Subjective Life-World

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 563-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Eberle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Life World ◽  
Phenomenological Hermeneutics ◽  
The Social ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The Relationship

Regarding the relationship between phenomenology and the social sciences, significantly different traditions exist between German-speaking countries and the Anglo-Saxon world, which create many misunderstandings. Phenomenology is not just a research method; in its origin, it is a philosophy and has epistemological and methodological implications for empirical research. This essay pursues several goals: First, some basic tenets of Husserl’s phenomenology and Schutz’s mundane life-world analysis are restated. Second, an approach of “phenomenological hermeneutics” is presented that complies with the postulate of adequacy and aspires to understand other people’s life-worlds more profoundly than the widely accepted research practice of treating interview transcripts as data. The methodical procedure is illustrated using selected pieces from a case study of a patient who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and became severely disoriented. Third, some crucial implications of such an approach are discussed in regard to a phenomenology-based ethnography.

scholarly journals Cultural heritage as a means of heritage tourism development

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Alexandra Bitušíková
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Heritage Tourism ◽  
Tourism Development ◽  
Regional Context ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

A large number of studies within the social sciences have been devoted to the relationship between cultural heritage and cultural/ heritage tourism development in recent years and even decades. This area of study has been an object of interest for numerous disciplines, from economics, geography, sociology and history, to ethnology, sociocultural anthropology, museology and cultural studies. The study aims to present selected theories on cultural heritage and heritage tourism based on recent theoretical concepts, and to reflect their implementation within a particular national and regional context based on a case study of the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region, Slovakia.

Pragmatic Turn in der Verwaltungswissenschaft

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-576
Author(s):  
Michael Vollstädt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Pragmatic Turn ◽  
Administrative Science

The public administration is in a state of change and is confronted with ever new challenges. To cope with that it seems appropriate to incorporate new theories into the field of administrative science. Accordingly, two theory offers from the social sciences are used, the Actor-Network-Theory as well as the Sociology of Conventions, and their utility and limits for public administration theory are examined. The aim is to inaugurate a pragmatic theoretical enrichment for the administration and to show how application-oriented science of public administration can benefit from such a theoretical offer.

scholarly journals ‘I Saw You’: Searching for Lost Love via Practices of Reading, Writingand Responding

2001 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Laurier ◽  
Angus Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Public Displays ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Social

How do emotions move and how do emotions move us? How are feelings and recognitions distributed socio-materially? Based on a multi-site ethnographic study of a ëromanticí correspondance system, this article explores the themes of love, privacy, identity and public displays. Informed by ethnomethodology and actor- network theory its investigations into these ëinformalí affairs are somewhat unusual in that much of the research carried out by those bodies of work concentrates on ëinstitutionalí settings such as laboratories, offices and courtrooms. In common with ethnomethodology it attempts to re-specify some topics of interest in the social sciences and humanities; in this case, documents and practices of writing and reading those documents. A key element of the approach taken is restoring to reading and writing their situated nature as observable, knowable, distributed community practices. Re- specifying topics for the social sciences involves the detailed description of several situated ways in which the ëromanticí correspondence system is used. Detailing the translations, transformations and transportations of documents as ‘quasi- objects’ through several orderings, the article suggests that documents have no essential meaning and that making them meaningful is part of the work of those settings.

scholarly journals Towards a Postcolonial Critical Realism

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110039
Author(s):  
Meghan Tinsley
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Ontological Framework ◽  
The Relationship

This article proposes postcolonial critical realism (PCR) as an ontological framework that explains the structuring relationship between racialized, colonial discourses and the social world. Beginning with the case study of the global climate crisis, it considers how scholars and activists have made sense of the present crisis, and how their discourses reflect and reproduce the climate crisis at large. To theorize the relationship between racialized, power-laden discourses and material reality, it derives five tenets of PCR: first, colonial discourses underlie, and interact with, material structures; second, coloniality is global and made visible through differential events and experiences; third, subaltern lived experiences reveal the nature of reality at large; fourth, coloniality is power-laden, sticky, and often invisible; and finally, decolonization must target all three domains of the social world and their interactions. The article concludes by considering how this framework might enrich anticolonial thought in the social sciences, as well as social movements.

International vs. area? The disciplinary-politics of knowledge-exchange between IR and Area Studies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Stephen Aris
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Citation Practice ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Within the political-economy of the social sciences, Area Studies (AS) is supposed to supply contextually-informed knowledge on (non-Western) areas to the other social sciences, in exchange for theory to guide further empirical investigations. Based on this assumption, there are regular calls for greater engagement with AS to counteract the shortcomings of International Relations’ (IR) knowledge-base on many areas, perspectives, and practices of the international. However, there has been little work empirically detailing knowledge-exchange practices between IR and AS, so it remains an open question if the relationship functions as an exchange of ‘international’ theory-for-‘area’ empirics. This paper provides a macro-sociological analysis of the practices of IR–AS knowledge-exchange. By focusing on citation practice, it moves beyond accounts that treat the two disciplines as ‘black boxes’, to trace which parts of the ‘dividing discipline’ of IR are active in exchanging knowledge with which ‘area’ scholarships. Hence, it asks: Are there ‘area’ blindspots in IR's knowledge-production? And, what type of IR theory is exported to AS? This analysis informs an assessment of whether AS represents a significant resource for IR in its efforts to, one, better inform its knowledge-production about ‘other’ areas of the international, and two, assert its disciplinary-relevance within the academy.

Challenges of Teaching with Technology in HE

2013 ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Emma Bond ◽  
Tim Goodchild
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Teaching With Technology ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Technology And Learning ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines current debates and theoretical approaches to studying new media technology and learning in a Higher Education (HE) context. The authors interrogate the relationship between HE spaces, technological advantages, and engaging pedagogy to emphasize the importance of understanding complex interrelationships between technology and learning. The findings of the multi-method ethnographic research with 30 lecturers reveal how shifting globalized paradigms have led to paradoxical perceptions which further impact perceptions of professionalism. The chapter draws on Latour’s (1993) Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach to modernity, which, as a form of belonging, endorses democracy (Strathern, 1999). This ANT-inspired case study argues that we need to critically re-evaluate the hybridity of HE spaces and that the traditional distinctions between the social spheres of learning have become blurred, and that an ANT approach enables us to gain greater understanding of a new hybrid world.

MORE THAN ONE — LESS THAN TWO: THE CONCEPT AND METHODOLOGY OF ENACTMENT OF MULTIPLICITY IN ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 113-136
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Gender Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
Antonio Negri

Attempts to find alternatives to totalizing (which appears in the social sciences as explanations via society, class, gender, culture, etc.) and essentializing the understanding of the social lie at the heart of the contemporary efforts in the social sciences to appeal to a concept of multiplicity that enables rendering reality not only as various and fragmented, but also as inconsistent, complex and variously distributed within itself. Psychology, economics, political theory and many other disciplines have offered their own ways of conceiving multiplicity. In sociology the most wellknown attempts to use this concept are by the neo-Marxist authors Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Paolo Virno, and other such attempts are found in Schütze’s phenomenological sociology as well as in the Goffmanian tradition. The article provides theoretical and methodological explications of the multiplicity concept in actor-network theory. In the theoretical terms, it is argued that Annemarie Mol and John Law make the distinction between multiplicity and plurality without resorting to relativism and social constructivism. They employ multiplicity to analyze the decentralized, distributed objects which combine actual existence with the potential to change. The methodological approach of the article is to delineate and analyze the foundations of three methods of explicating multiplicity in actor-network theory: the ethnographic one (Annemarie Mol, John Law, Charis Thompson), the “technological” one (Noortje Marres, Albena Yaneva), and methods of making conceptual figures (Donna Haraway, Michel Serres, Isabelle Stengers). The author maintains that the juncture between theoretical and the methodological consideration of the concept of multiplicity enables actor-network theory to provide definite ways to carry out enactments of social reality rather than merely describing it.

scholarly journals Evidence, Ethics & Social Policy Dilemmas

1993 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven I. Miller ◽  
L. Arthur Safer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Evidential Support ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Evidence Condition

Within the philosophy of the social sciences, the relationship between evidence, ethics, and social policy is in need of further analysis. The present paper is an attempt to argue that while important social policies can, and perhaps ought to be, grounded in ethical theory, they are seldom articulated in this fashion due to the ambiguity surrounding the "evidence condition." Using a consequentialist-utilitarian framework, and a case study of a policy dilemma, the authors analyze the difficulties associated with resolving policy-based dilemmas which must appeal to evidential support as a justification for an ethical stand. Implication for the relevance of ethics to social policy formulation are discussed in detail.

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