A Biographic Researcher in Pursuit of an Aesthetic: The use of arts-based (re)presentations in “performative” dissemination of life stories

The (re)presentation of biographic narrative research benefits greatly from embracing the art of its craft. This requires a renewed interest in an aesthetic of storytelling. Where do we find an aesthetic in which to base our new “performative” social science? The 20th Century was not kind to 18th Century notions of what truth and beauty mean. The terms need to be re-examined from a local, quotidian vantage point, with concepts such as “aesthetic judgment” located within community. Social Constructionism asks us to participate in alterior systems of belief and value. The principles of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics offer one possible set of convictions for further exploration. Relational Art is located in human interactions and their social contexts. Central to it are inter-subjectivity, being-together, the encounter and the collective elaboration of meaning, based in models of sociability, meetings, events, collaborations, games, festivals and places of conviviality. Bourriaud believes that Art is made of the same material as social exchanges. If social exchanges are the same as Art, how can we portray them? One place to start is in our (re)presentations of narrative stories, through publications, presentations and performances. Arts-based (re)presentation in knowledge diffusion in the post-modern era is explored as one theoretical grounding for thinking across epistemologies and supporting inter-disciplinary efforts. An example from my own published narrative biography work is described, adding credence to the concept of the research report/presentation as a “dynamic vehicle”, pointing to ways in which biographic sociology can benefit from work outside sociology and, in turn, identifying areas of possible collaboration with the narrator in producing “performances” within published texts themselves.

Social Constructionism and Social Representation Theory

This chapter considers how the perspectives of social constructionism and social representations theory can overlap and cross-fertilize more than was once recognized, when the study of change is at stake. This applies particularly to the study of meaning-making through practices and relations via social artifacts. Focusing on those scholars considered to be the main initiators and developers of these two perspectives in social psychology—Serge Moscovici and Kenneth J. Gergen—the authors analyze their works on different levels: meta-theoretical, theoretical, and methodological. Grounding their reasoning on research that they themselves and others have conducted on the two frameworks, mainly on aging in an aging society, the authors call for a further erasure of distinctions between the two. They conclude by suggesting a fruitful future enrichment of the dialogue and a reciprocal cross-fertilization that might overcome nominalistic barriers in the study of social knowledge, particularly where change and continuity are concerned.

Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the aduentus Saxonum

For centuries, archaeologists have excavated the soils of Britain to uncover finds from the early medieval past. These finds have been used to reconstruct the alleged communities, migration patterns, and expressions of identity of coherent groups who can be regarded as ethnic 'Anglo-Saxons'. Even in the modern day, when social constructionism has been largely accepted by scholars, this paradigm still persists. <br><br>This book challenges the ethnic paradigm. As the first historiographical study of approaches to ethnic identity in modern 'Anglo-Saxon' archaeology, it reveals these approaches to be incompatible with current scholarly understandings of ethnicity. Drawing upon post-structuralist approaches to self and community, it highlights the empirical difficulties the archaeology of ethnicity in early medieval Britain faces, and proposes steps toward an alternative understanding of the role played by the communities of lowland Britain - both migrants from across the North Sea and those already present - in transforming the Roman world.

Gender and Workplace Bullying in Lao Organisations

<p>Workplace bullying has gained more attention in many Western countries and in some Asian countries than in Laos. It is a serious workplace health and safety issue for both individuals and organisations. In order to understand workplace bullying experienced by individuals, it is important to put bullying in a gendered context. This will help people better understand the perceptions and coping tactics of individuals who have experienced workplace bullying. Where existing studies consider gender, they mainly focus on statistical differences in patterns of bullying experienced between women and men and only a few discuss the gendered processes of workplace bullying. This is an exploratory study addressing gender and workplace bullying in a distinctive non-Western context, taking specific cultural factors into account. This thesis studies the perceptions of ten Laotian women, including myself, of bullying in their current and previous workplaces. These include NGOs, private and public organisations. In this national context, the concept of workplace bullying is not well recognised and understood, and gendered and workplace bullying has not been studied at all. The topic is seen as an extremely sensitive one. Snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit participants. Selected key concepts of workplace bullying from Western-based studies were adapted in order to identify and explore bullying in the Laotian context. In addition, a qualitative epistemology, in which social constructionism and interpretivism were employed, was used to understand and interpret the forms of workplace bullying as experienced by the Laotian women in the study. Semi-structured interviews were developed to help identify experiences of bullying in relation to gender and culture. The analysis of gender and workplace bullying is based on gendered organisation theory and social dominance theory. The findings indicate a number of risk factors that I have identified associated with workplace bullying in Laos. These include gender and culture factors such as marital status, power distance, ethnocentrism, Westerner privilege and religion. These risk factors give more context to the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) framework when understanding and interpreting the nature of workplace bullying. Importantly, gender and culture have a strong relationship and cannot be separated from each other when understanding workplace bullying. Various forms of workplace bullying appear to be different from that found in many Western studies and are based on the risk factors. Remedies are also different because of the lack of support systems available, and the fact that participants often have to cope with the bullying by themselves. I hope that my findings can inform the Lao government to pay more attention in developing policies to address and prevent the phenomenon of workplace bullying in Lao organisations, and also can educate women’s organisations about the nature of this problem so that they can find effective ways to better address and prevent the problems associate with workplace bullying.</p>

Developing post-ableist music therapy: An autoethnography exploring the counterpoint of a therapist experiencing illness/disability

<p>This PhD examined a therapist’s experience of illness/disability to see if any new light could be shed on music therapy whilst also finding ways to navigate disability as a practitioner. There has not been adequate research attention given to the experiences of music therapists who have an illness/disability. The position is often negotiated in isolation with minimal tools and resources. An arts-based autoethnography was used to determine how the close examination of one’s personal experience with illness/disability can impact on practice, how the work can be negotiated, and to uncover any new practical or theoretical meanings. Furthermore, it looked to determine what arts-based autoethnography could offer one’s practice. A poststructural lens was used that drew on social constructionism, feminism, and the work of Michel Foucault. Data generated from a music therapist’s practice, experiences of illness/disability, literature, and professional documents were analysed using Foucault’s “critical ontology of ourselves” (Foucault, 1984b, p. 47). Hidden processes of problematic ableism were found within the practice examined as well as in some educational and professional encounters. These regimes of ableism were supported by universalising and dichotomising discourses, namely humanism, western normativity, limited observable understandings of disability, and the enforcement of able/disabled divide through many binaries. The methodology provided the tools to reposition the practice to politicise disability and address ableism. Addressing ableism was found to be more complex than simply incorporating disability issues into existing contemporary frameworks. The analysis led to the development of Post-Ableist Music Therapy (PAMT). PAMT extended the relational ethic beyond what was present in the prior practice by drawing on aspects of posthumanism, agonistic plurality, and increasing the visibility of disability studies and crip theory. Therefore, PAMT offers a different lens to the critical orientations’ apparatus: a social justice practice not based on empowerment and humanism but on agonism and posthumanism instead. As there is a lag in the theorisation of ableism, PAMT provides an alternative framework that can be applied to current approaches to increase our professional consciousness of ableism. By repositioning the practice and exploring alternative subjectivities, the professional and personal narratives of a therapist experiencing illness/disability became more integrated, working with–not against–each other in a shared activism. The methodology fostered an increased ethical care of the self; offered tools that critiqued what we are; experimented with going beyond the limits imposed on us. The use of such tools could have wider application in the everyday practices of therapists. The findings have significant implications for practice and training, as the challenges people and societies face cannot be adequately dealt with without tools to explicitly uncover and address normalisation and ableism.</p>

Gender and Workplace Bullying in Lao Organisations

<p>Workplace bullying has gained more attention in many Western countries and in some Asian countries than in Laos. It is a serious workplace health and safety issue for both individuals and organisations. In order to understand workplace bullying experienced by individuals, it is important to put bullying in a gendered context. This will help people better understand the perceptions and coping tactics of individuals who have experienced workplace bullying. Where existing studies consider gender, they mainly focus on statistical differences in patterns of bullying experienced between women and men and only a few discuss the gendered processes of workplace bullying. This is an exploratory study addressing gender and workplace bullying in a distinctive non-Western context, taking specific cultural factors into account. This thesis studies the perceptions of ten Laotian women, including myself, of bullying in their current and previous workplaces. These include NGOs, private and public organisations. In this national context, the concept of workplace bullying is not well recognised and understood, and gendered and workplace bullying has not been studied at all. The topic is seen as an extremely sensitive one. Snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit participants. Selected key concepts of workplace bullying from Western-based studies were adapted in order to identify and explore bullying in the Laotian context. In addition, a qualitative epistemology, in which social constructionism and interpretivism were employed, was used to understand and interpret the forms of workplace bullying as experienced by the Laotian women in the study. Semi-structured interviews were developed to help identify experiences of bullying in relation to gender and culture. The analysis of gender and workplace bullying is based on gendered organisation theory and social dominance theory. The findings indicate a number of risk factors that I have identified associated with workplace bullying in Laos. These include gender and culture factors such as marital status, power distance, ethnocentrism, Westerner privilege and religion. These risk factors give more context to the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) framework when understanding and interpreting the nature of workplace bullying. Importantly, gender and culture have a strong relationship and cannot be separated from each other when understanding workplace bullying. Various forms of workplace bullying appear to be different from that found in many Western studies and are based on the risk factors. Remedies are also different because of the lack of support systems available, and the fact that participants often have to cope with the bullying by themselves. I hope that my findings can inform the Lao government to pay more attention in developing policies to address and prevent the phenomenon of workplace bullying in Lao organisations, and also can educate women’s organisations about the nature of this problem so that they can find effective ways to better address and prevent the problems associate with workplace bullying.</p>

Developing post-ableist music therapy: An autoethnography exploring the counterpoint of a therapist experiencing illness/disability

<p>This PhD examined a therapist’s experience of illness/disability to see if any new light could be shed on music therapy whilst also finding ways to navigate disability as a practitioner. There has not been adequate research attention given to the experiences of music therapists who have an illness/disability. The position is often negotiated in isolation with minimal tools and resources. An arts-based autoethnography was used to determine how the close examination of one’s personal experience with illness/disability can impact on practice, how the work can be negotiated, and to uncover any new practical or theoretical meanings. Furthermore, it looked to determine what arts-based autoethnography could offer one’s practice. A poststructural lens was used that drew on social constructionism, feminism, and the work of Michel Foucault. Data generated from a music therapist’s practice, experiences of illness/disability, literature, and professional documents were analysed using Foucault’s “critical ontology of ourselves” (Foucault, 1984b, p. 47). Hidden processes of problematic ableism were found within the practice examined as well as in some educational and professional encounters. These regimes of ableism were supported by universalising and dichotomising discourses, namely humanism, western normativity, limited observable understandings of disability, and the enforcement of able/disabled divide through many binaries. The methodology provided the tools to reposition the practice to politicise disability and address ableism. Addressing ableism was found to be more complex than simply incorporating disability issues into existing contemporary frameworks. The analysis led to the development of Post-Ableist Music Therapy (PAMT). PAMT extended the relational ethic beyond what was present in the prior practice by drawing on aspects of posthumanism, agonistic plurality, and increasing the visibility of disability studies and crip theory. Therefore, PAMT offers a different lens to the critical orientations’ apparatus: a social justice practice not based on empowerment and humanism but on agonism and posthumanism instead. As there is a lag in the theorisation of ableism, PAMT provides an alternative framework that can be applied to current approaches to increase our professional consciousness of ableism. By repositioning the practice and exploring alternative subjectivities, the professional and personal narratives of a therapist experiencing illness/disability became more integrated, working with–not against–each other in a shared activism. The methodology fostered an increased ethical care of the self; offered tools that critiqued what we are; experimented with going beyond the limits imposed on us. The use of such tools could have wider application in the everyday practices of therapists. The findings have significant implications for practice and training, as the challenges people and societies face cannot be adequately dealt with without tools to explicitly uncover and address normalisation and ableism.</p>

Appreciative Case Management: Using the Social Constructionism in Social Intervention

The article presents a research in the field of case management, experiencing two forms of it: problem-centered case and appreciative case management. For this, an experiment carried out on a six-month period, during which time we verified the results obtained by applying two different supervision models, problem-oriented supervision and appreciative supervision. Based on parallel process, the case management was changed. For this experiment ten cases were identified with various degrees of risk in child abandonment. When the appreciative case management was applied, the studied cases showed better results compared to the cases that were managed based on problem. In the case of services aimed at preventing child abandonment, it can be seen that the classical intervention focused on problem, lasting less than three months, has no positive effect on the clients’ situation. This practically means that in such circumstances, the financial, human and material resources used for an intervention that lasts less than three months are wasted without significant results. The appreciative case management produces tangible results after a shorter period of time by comparison to the classical intervention. This can be seen in the results obtained within the experiment, which are due to the use of the appreciative approach in intervention. Focusing on problems in social work and the attempt to solve them may sometimes not result in their resolution; the orientation towards identifying deficiencies and dysfunctionalities yields poorer results than the appreciative intervention and preserves the problem.

Interactions between the Public and Assistance Dog Handlers and Trainers

This research aimed to explore the experiences of handlers and trainers of disability assistance dogs in terms of the types of interactions they had with members of the Aotearoa NZ (NZ) public and how these interactions were perceived, interpreted, and managed. A qualitative method, guided by an interpretive approach and social constructionism, was utilised to collect data via semi-structured interviews with six handlers and six trainers of assistance dogs. Data were analysed using thematic analysis with the social model of disability as the theoretical base. Findings indicated that participants regularly faced a complex range of unique interactions due to various factors such as the public’s lack of knowledge and understanding of the dog’s role and right of access to public places. While participants encountered brief friendly comments about the dog and its role, other encounters involved long conversations, invasive personal questions, interference with their dogs, and denied access to businesses, cafés, restaurants, and public transport. These findings underpin the need to provide more education to the public on the etiquette of engaging with handlers and their assistance dogs and more support for businesses to understand the legal rights of handlers. Through education and support to change societal attitudes and remove structural barriers, disabled people using assistance dogs may be able to independently participate in community life and be fully included without hindrance.

A Critical Analysis of the Networking Experiences of Female Entrepreneurs: A Study Based on Small Business Tourism Sector in Sri Lanka

This study goes on to expand on current knowledge through the way it accounts for how female entrepreneurs form and develop their networks in the Sri Lankan context. It adopts social constructionism philosophy and narrative design to explore the female entrepreneurs' networking behaviour. Thematic analysis is used to understand the life stories of fourteen women entrepreneurs in the tourism sector. Findings suggest that female entrepreneurs are likely to rely on more informal recruitment methods and informal training practices. They have strong relationships with local communities, but they focus on customers beyond the locals. Seasonality within tourism has been the emphasis of tourism literature due to its disruptive effect on economic transactions. However, less of the literature has examined the social effects of seasonality, which is where this study can contribute by exploring how gender roles related to social and domestic responsibilities are renegotiated during the low and high seasons when tourism entrepreneurs re-adjust to new time-demand realities. Yet, the narrative research design is not widely used in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore, this article attempts to add to the entrepreneurial networking knowledge by analyzing stories towards female entrepreneurs' experience and social constructionist perspective.