Artwork as Practical Social Action: An Ethnomethodological Study and the New Sociology of Art.

<p>Few studies in the sociology of art observe artists in their work. Of the few, little investigate the phenomenon of social order, and when they do, they research artists at a distance. Hence, there is room to contribute studies and descriptions of the observable actions artists conduct when they find themselves in the midst of doing their work; that work is argued here as a sociological accomplishment, topic of interest, and evidence of the actual and not imagined practical management of social reality. An emergent literature, the new Sociology of Art, has started to pay close attention toward observing artists’ situated and sequential actions as they occur naturally and in real time. Yet neglected in these often overly conceptual studies are detailed descriptions of artists finding ad hoc solutions to their practical workplace problems. In my motivation to observe artists in their work, I ask how artworks are organised in and as practical social action. With video camera in hand and in aid by the sociological attitudes of ethnomethodology and its research praxis, I aim to explicate social phenomena of order, specifically observable within sites consisting of a street corner, an artist’s studio, an urban café, and river terrain. This thesis presents data first collected and then taken from the large video data corpus to form four single-cases. I recognise in this thesis the effort evident within ethnomethodology’s recent scholarship to acknowledge Aron Gurwitsch’s gestalt concept functional significance as partially influencing Harold Garfinkel’s study of endogenous order. I saw functional significance as an opportunity to explore, rather experimentally, how one artistic action relates to another, and how that interdependence was locally managed by the artists themselves during their artistic processes. This thesis contributes written descriptions of artistic action as social action, findings from which the new Sociology of Art may benefit.</p>

Artwork as Practical Social Action: An Ethnomethodological Study and the New Sociology of Art.

<p>Few studies in the sociology of art observe artists in their work. Of the few, little investigate the phenomenon of social order, and when they do, they research artists at a distance. Hence, there is room to contribute studies and descriptions of the observable actions artists conduct when they find themselves in the midst of doing their work; that work is argued here as a sociological accomplishment, topic of interest, and evidence of the actual and not imagined practical management of social reality. An emergent literature, the new Sociology of Art, has started to pay close attention toward observing artists’ situated and sequential actions as they occur naturally and in real time. Yet neglected in these often overly conceptual studies are detailed descriptions of artists finding ad hoc solutions to their practical workplace problems. In my motivation to observe artists in their work, I ask how artworks are organised in and as practical social action. With video camera in hand and in aid by the sociological attitudes of ethnomethodology and its research praxis, I aim to explicate social phenomena of order, specifically observable within sites consisting of a street corner, an artist’s studio, an urban café, and river terrain. This thesis presents data first collected and then taken from the large video data corpus to form four single-cases. I recognise in this thesis the effort evident within ethnomethodology’s recent scholarship to acknowledge Aron Gurwitsch’s gestalt concept functional significance as partially influencing Harold Garfinkel’s study of endogenous order. I saw functional significance as an opportunity to explore, rather experimentally, how one artistic action relates to another, and how that interdependence was locally managed by the artists themselves during their artistic processes. This thesis contributes written descriptions of artistic action as social action, findings from which the new Sociology of Art may benefit.</p>

Perception of Identity, Perception of Relationship and Strategic Interaction — An Analysis on China–Indian Border Disputes from the Perspective of Game Theories

Based on the continuous observation of the ongoing China–India border conflict in recent years, the author intends to answer why China has not yielded prospective policy returns from the Indian side, even if it has been pursuing a cooperative strategy toward India after the Doklam standoff. Inspired by several doctrines of game theory under the dynamic game scenario and the application of relevant gaming tactics, this essay argues that after the Doklam standoff, China has been consistently pursuing an India policy that is risk-averse in nature, represented by its fundamental goal of persevering stability in the secondary direction of China–India border area. As a supporter of this argumentation, a diachronic investigation in terms of the evolution of China–India Relations between 2017 and 2020 was conducted, in which both countries were presumed as state actors involving in repeated gaming process with observable actions and asymmetric information sources. The investigation covers the respective actions adopted by both China and India since the Doklam standoff in 2017, along with the strategic interactions between the two sides from 2018 to 2019, till the most recent standoff in the Galwan Valley and the standoff along the Panggong Tso in 2020. The major finding of this essay is that there exists a causal-effect relationship between the expected payment structures of both sides in a gaming process and the outcome of the implementation of a certain cooperative strategy. Besides, as opponents in a gaming process, either side’s self-cognition and its evaluation on the bilateral relations will pose critical impact on its policy-making. Therefore, in the specific case of China–India border conflict, it is highly advised that China should make practical efforts to avert cognition risks of all kinds while managing its relation with India; otherwise, negative consequences may occur due to the mismatch of its strategic goals and its policy devices.

Moral Intuition, Social Sin, and Moral Vision: Attending to the Unconscious Dimensions of Morality and Igniting the Moral Imagination

This paper argues that the unconscious dimensions of the moral life—for example, moral vision, moral imagination, and distorted consciousness—are some of the most urgent provinces of moral theology today. Historically, moral theology was concerned with moral quandaries and observable actions, and moral agents were understood to be rational, deliberate, self-aware decision makers. Cultures of sin, such as racism and sexual violence, require that moral theologians reconceive of moral agency. Confronting these unconscious dimensions of the moral life requires integrating research in disciplines such as science, sociology, history, and anthropology with Christian ethics, pushing the boundaries of what has traditionally been understood to be the domain of moral theology. As an example, this paper draws upon the mutually reinforcing theories of moral intuition, developed by social and moral psychologists, and recent theories of social sin in Christian ethics, arguing that attention to the unconscious province of the moral life is necessary for developing an accurate conception of moral agency and for future work in moral formation. This paper concludes with a modest proposal for how stories might enable awareness of our distorted consciousness.

Rethinking the Path to Intended Violence

The authors rethink the threat assessment model they first conceptualized during the mid-1990s. Styled the “path to intended violence,” the model postulates that individuals intending to commit an act of violence move from grievance to ideation to research and planning to preparation to breach to attack. The authors affirm that the path remains universal for understanding and preventing acts of intended violence, but they find that modern technology, including Internet resources and social media, complicate efforts by threat managers to identify, assess, and manage problem individuals because so much can be done online that heretofore required observable actions by the subject. The authors illustrate their new thinking with current case studies and examples. They conclude by introducing the concept of detect, report, and act (DRA) as the essential building block for any effective threat management program.

Rural Teachers’ Teaching of Algebraic Functions Through a Commognitive Lens

Rural contexts and their schools have continuously been overlooked by researchers of mathematics education in South Africa. This is despite the assumption that the educational landscape may vary markedly in rural areas compared to urban and township areas which have been solely researched in the post-apartheid dispensation. To address the dearth of mathematics education research located within South Africa's rural contexts, the study explored five Grade 10 rural mathematics teachers' discourses and approaches of teaching algebraic functions with five teachers from five different school sites. This qualitative multiple case study, using Sfard's commognitive theory, draws attention to rural mathematics teachers' classroom practices and views about the teaching of algebraic functions which is unexamined in the South African context. Three data generation tools were used to gain insight into teachers' discourses and approaches while teaching the topic. These are individual semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and Video-Stimulated Recall Interviews (VSRI). Research findings focus primarily on the data generated through classroom observations. To analyse the data, I use Sfard's commognitive theory to give meaning to teachers' classroom practices. Focusing on the distinction between two tenets of commognitive theory, ritual and explorative routines, the findings demonstrate that four participating teachers acted in an extremely ritualised way. The other teacher was more explorative in her classroom observable actions. The findings illuminate that teachers need to move more towards the participationist approach during teaching to enable them to think, observe, and communicate about mathematical objects that commognitively link more with explorative routines.

Principles and related strategies for spinal cord injury research partnership approaches: a qualitative study

Background: Conducting and/or disseminating research in partnership with potential research users is a popular approach to conducting useful and relevant research. Despite calls for guidance to support these research partnerships, evidence-based tools and resources remain limited.Aims and objectives: This study aimed to explore principles and related strategies for conducting and/or disseminating spinal cord injury (SCI) research in partnership with the SCI community, in order to gain insight into ways to support SCI research partnerships.This qualitative study included ten semi-structured interviews with SCI research partnership champions. The interviews focused on participants’ experiences with SCI research projects that are conducted or disseminated in partnership, and related principles and strategies to work in research partnerships.Participants mainly talked about principles related to: (1) the relationship between researchers and research users (for example, respect each other, avoid tokenism); (2) co-production of knowledge (for example, research user engagement early and throughout); and (3) meaningful engagement (for example, allowing flexibility). Examples of related strategies included attending collaborative conferences, research user engagement in refinement of research questions, training in research methods, and hiring people with SCI as part of the research team.Key conclusions: This qualitative study presents research partnership principles (norms) and related strategies (observable actions). This study can provide guidance for other researchers and research users who want to engage in (SCI) research partnerships. The findings of this study could be used to inform the development of evidence-based tools and resources to support future research partnerships.<br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>We provide guidance for researchers and research users to engage in research partnerships;</li><br /><li>The guidance includes research partnership principles (norms) and related strategies (observable actions);</li><br /><li>Linking strategies to principles may help researchers and their partners to engage in research partnerships;</li><br /><li>This study can support the use of research partnership principles within a research system.</li></ul>

Communication Scenarios of Misunderstanding

Introduction. The proposed paper discusses communication situations of mutual misunderstanding up to mutual rejection of each other by the parties. The research assumption is that misunderstanding in human communication is not necessarily accompanied by its overcoming. “Miscommunication communication” forms a communicative space that reveals the diversity of practices of personal self-realization, intergroup and intercultural interaction, while retaining the perception of the other side as incomprehensible.Methodology and sources. The methodological framework for analysis is a social constructionalist approach to the study of social reality, offering a conceptualization of the practical and observable actions of individuals or, in other words, “what people do when they act”. According to pragmatically oriented methodology, we cannot make an exhaustive conclusion about the internal reasons that motivate people to act in one way or another, but we can consider linguistic and non-linguistic actions that are perceived and interpreted by them as having a certain meaning and, therefore, trigger a certain response. The meanings that communicators give to a message are not pre-defined, but are created, produced, and constructed in a communicative interaction through contextspecific discursive procedures and practices, while also triggering specific socially recognizable types of contexts.Results and discussion. The variant of classification of various types of cognitive and communicative experience acquired by people in situations of misunderstanding is offered. Empirical data are the records of interviews, conversations, and comments that are at our possession. The basis for distinguishing between communicative scenarios of misunderstanding is the values in the range of “expanding one's own experience” ↔ “isolation from others' experience”. The structure of description of the selected situations includes: communicative status of the participant; verbal formulas that determine the choice of vector by the participants of the communication; characteristics of cognitive and communicative experience generated by a situation of misunderstanding; examples and illustrations containing replicas, comments, description of life situations of collision with misunderstanding, corresponding to a specific communicative scenario.Conclusion. Situations of misunderstanding are developed in scenarios that provide their participants with the resources to cope with the threat of risk to their personal or group (cultural) identity. The range of cognitive and communicative practices ranges from recognizing the value of cultural (social) diversity for social and personal development to discriminating against others, including violence and the exclusion of the incomprehensible from interaction. Discussion of the issue of “understanding misunderstanding” makes it possible to fit misunderstanding into the social fabric of human behavior practices as a vital resource for any social community.

Learning from other minds: An optimistic critique of reinforcement learning models of social learning

In the past decade, reinforcement learning models have been productively applied to examine neural signatures that track the value of social information over repeated observations. However, by operationalizing social information as a lean, reward-predictive cue, this literature underestimates the richness of human social learning: Humans readily go beyond action-outcome mappings and can draw flexible inferences even from a single observation. We argue that reinforcement learning models need minds, i.e, a generative model of how other agents’ unobservable mental states cause their observable actions. Recent advances in inferential social learning suggest that even young children learn from others via a generative model of other minds. Bridging these perspectives can enrich our understanding of the neural bases of distinctively human social learning.