‘It’s OK to feel’: The emotionality norm and its evolution in U.S. print journalism

Between the 1960s and the 1990s journalists in U.S. newspapers created, constructed, and advanced emotionality as a new occupational norm in American print journalism, challenging some aspects of the dominant objectivity norm while simultaneously affirming its overall relevance. This historical study delineates how the emotionality norm emerged as a constitutive element of narrative journalism during this time period. Drawing from archival research, in-depth interviews, and textual analysis of trade publications, this study analyzes how narrative journalists developed moral ideals, practices, and justifications for advancing narrative journalism as an acceptable and desirable mode of emotional storytelling. As the emotionality norm affected journalistic roles, expanded the repertoire of journalistic forms, and transformed the emotive posture of newspapers, it contributed in nuanced and deliberate ways to the interpretive turn in U.S. journalism.

A Finnis-based Understanding of the Rule of Law and the Dialectical Method of Aquinas

The paper investigates the possibility of a conception of the Rule of Law, based on Finnis’ natural law theory. His claim that law exists in degrees, but has a focal meaning, is the starting point to the research. A contradiction regarding incommensurability of values in connection with the focal meaning of law is emphasized and an interpretive turn to his theory proposed. It is claimed that the substantive elements of the Rule of Law can be understood through his concept of common good. In order to assess the congruence of individual laws with the Rule of Law, supplementation with the dialectical method of Aquinas is proposed. Such an approach also enables the restatement of modern natural law on a theological foundation, which is, however, more nuanced than its older natural law counterparts.

Making Interpretivism Visible: Reflections after a Decade of the Methods Café

ABSTRACTMore than a decade after the observation that an “interpretive turn” was percolating through political science, there are clear indications of growth in the perceived legitimacy of interpretive scholarship. Both accompanying and contributing to interpretivism’s ascent has been the regular staging of Methods Cafés at various conferences in and beyond the discipline. First held at the 2005 meeting of the Western Political Science Association, the Methods Café subsequently landed at the 2006 conference of the American Political Science Association. The Methods Café has become an institutionalized feature of these and other conferences. This reflection looks at the past, present, and future of these events, as well as the key role they have played in making interpretivism visible in the discipline. In particular, I highlight their function as non-hierarchical intellectual spaces that promote teaching, learning, and interpretivist community building. Further, I offer friendly but not uncritical commentary on the successes and limitations of the Methods Café.

The Interpretive Turn: It's Our Turn

This is the text of the keynote address for the 2018 NACADA Annual Conference in Phoenix, Arizonia. The author discusses two main epistemologies in academic advising research and practice, and argues that both positivist epistemologies and constructivist epistemologies should be available to practitioners and researchers.

Philosophical debates

This chapter considers some of the major philosophical traditions that have established the need for an interpretive turn in the social sciences—including phenomenology, post-structuralism, pragmatism, analytic philosophy, and social constructivism. We reject the view that there is only one privileged philosophical route to an interpretive social science. Instead, the philosophical pluralism of the interpretive turn is defended albeit from a uniquely anti-naturalist perspective. Specifically, anti-naturalism corrects the tendency of some advocates of the interpretive turn to drift back into naturalist concepts as well as to distort the proper conception of human agency. Major philosophers of the interpretive turn are critically engaged, including Edmund Husserl, Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Conclusion

Anti-naturalism’s effect on the study of human behavior and society is profound and comprehensive. In terms of empirical inquiry, a new approach to explanation and concept formation is generated. In terms of normative inquiry, the wall dividing the study of values versus facts comes tumbling down. Where naturalism built barriers separating ethics, political theory, and social science, anti-naturalism instead builds bridges and opens access to areas of mutual concern. An interpretive turn also generates a uniquely humanistic approach to civic life, democracy, and public policy....

Public policy

Readers are introduced to how an anti-naturalist framework can ground a distinctively deliberative and interpretive turn in public policy. Over the last three decades there has been an important shift among a minority of public policy scholars toward interpretive and deliberative modes that are critical of naturalism’s justification of rule by supposedly scientific experts of human behavior. Like the interpretive turn more generally, this deliberative remaking of public policy has drawn on a great diversity of philosophical sources, including phenomenology, discourse theory, Dewey’s pragmatism, and post-structuralism. While we embrace the fact that this transformation of policy discourse and practice can be reached by a variety of philosophical routes, we also argue that an anti-naturalist framework can clarify certain confusions that cloud these debates.