Jean Halley

Bio: Jean Halley is an academic researcher from City University of New York. The author has contributed to research in topics: White privilege & Social class. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 18 publications receiving 1390 citations. Previous affiliations of Jean Halley include Wagner College.

The affective turn : theorizing the social

Abstract: “The innovative essays in this volume demonstrat[e] the potential of the perspective of the affects in a wide range of fields and with a variety of methodological approaches Some of the essays use fieldwork to investigate the functions of affects—among organized sex workers, health care workers, and in the modeling industry Others employ the discourses of microbiology, thermodynamics, information sciences, and cinema studies to rethink the body and the affects in terms of technology Still others explore the affects of trauma in the context of immigration and war And throughout all the essays run serious theoretical reflections on the powers of the affects and the political possibilities they pose for research and practice”—Michael Hardt, from the foreword In the mid-1990s, scholars turned their attention toward the ways that ongoing political, economic, and cultural transformations were changing the realm of the social, specifically that aspect of it described by the notion of affect: pre-individual bodily forces, linked to autonomic responses, which augment or diminish a body’s capacity to act or engage with others This “affective turn” and the new configurations of bodies, technology, and matter that it reveals, is the subject of this collection of essays Scholars based in sociology, cultural studies, science studies, and women’s studies illuminate the movement in thought from a psychoanalytically informed criticism of subject identity, representation, and trauma to an engagement with information and affect; from a privileging of the organic body to an exploration of nonorganic life; and from the presumption of equilibrium-seeking closed systems to an engagement with the complexity of open systems under far-from-equilibrium conditions Taken together, these essays suggest that attending to the affective turn is necessary to theorizing the social Contributors Jamie “Skye” Bianco, Grace M Cho, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Melissa Ditmore, Ariel Ducey, Deborah Gambs, Karen Wendy Gilbert, Greg Goldberg, Jean Halley, Hosu Kim, David Staples, Craig Willse , Elizabeth Wissinger , Jonathan R Wynn

From Coney Island to Las Vegas in the Urban Imaginary Discursive Practices of Growth and Decline

Abstract: A discursive analysis of cultural images, social practices, and space adds a new level of social critique to the usual explanations of urban growth and decline. Instead of focusing on either "objective" or "subjective" factors, a discursive analysis assumes a coherence between social and spatial arrangements that is derived in and through cultural meanings attached to specific places and has a material effect on their growth and decline. Both the conscious manipulation and slow accretion of images are important, as they are diffused by mass media and interpreted by ordinary men and women. Taking the decline of Coney Island and growth of Las Vegas as examples, a discursive analysis emphasizes how these public spaces of amusement represent low-class and high-class spaces, racialized spaces, and different eras of capitalism-culminating in a national rejection of urban populism for freewheeling speculation and privatization.

To Speak of My Mother

Abstract: This is the second article in a series of experimental writing exploring childhood trauma and its subject. Here, the author examines or narrates herself within the particular social context of her family history. Through this experimental writing method, the author explores a repetitive, nonlinear way of knowing and speaking the world that both complements and challenges more traditional sociological ways of knowing.

Students Teaching Students: A Method for Collaborative Learning

Abstract: The Student Small Group Presentation (SSGP) model, a student-centered approach, is introduced and applied to learning communities. Similar to the jigsaw classroom, small groups of students in learning communities are responsible for teaching material to their peers. Unlike other jigsaw techniques, presentation groups in the SSGP teach an entire lesson based on collaborative work conducted outside of class. Presenters are responsible for thorough analysis of course material as they lead a discussion among a small group of peers. Students meet with the same small group throughout the semester, creating a feeling of intimate community within the larger learning community. By challenging students to become well versed on a section of course material, SSGPs promote student confidence, enhance critical thinking skills, and provide the opportunity to work as a member of a team. Jean Halley is an Associate Professor of Sociology at College of Staten Island, CUNY, in Staten Island, NY. Her most recent book is The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Amy Eshleman is a Professor of Psychology at Wagner College in Staten Island, NY.

Affective spaces, melancholic objects: ruination and the production of anthropological knowledge*

Abstract: This article critically engages with recent theoretical writings on affect and non-human agency by way of studying the emotive energies discharged by properties and objects appropriated during war from members of the so-called ‘enemy’ community. The ethnographic material comes from long-term fieldwork in Northern Cyprus, focusing on how it feels to live with the objects and within the ruins left behind by the other, now displaced, community. I study Turkish-Cypriots’ relations to houses, land, and objects that they appropriated from the Greek-Cypriots during the war of 1974 and the subsequent partition of Cyprus. My ethnographic material leads me to reflect critically on the object-centred philosophy of Actor Network Theory and on the affective turn in the human sciences after the work of Gilles Deleuze. With the metaphor of ‘ruination’, I study what goes amiss in scholarly declarations of theoretical turns or shifts. Instead, proposing an anthropologically engaged theory of affect through an ethnographic reflection on spatial and material melancholia, I argue that ethnography, in its most productive moments, is trans-paradigmatic. Retaining what has been ruined as still needful of consideration, I suggest an approach which merges theories of affect and subjectivity as well as of language and materiality. Resume L'article examine sous un angle critique les ecrits theoriques recents sur l'affect et l'agency non humaine pour etudier les energies emotives liberees par les biens et objets confisques lors d'un conflit arme aux membres de la communaute dite «ennemie». Le materiel ethnographique provient d'un travail de terrain de longue duree dans le Nord de Chypre, qui portait sur le ressenti de ceux qui vivent avec ces objets, dans les ruines laissees par l'autre communaute desormais deplacee. L'auteure etudie les relations des Chypriotes turcs avec les maisons, les terres et les objets qu'ils se sont appropries sur les Chypriotes grecs lors de la guerre de 1974 et de la partition de Chypre. Le materiel ethnographique la conduit a une reflexion critique sur la philosophie centree sur les objets de la theorie de l'acteur-reseau et sur le tournant affectif des sciences humaines a la suite des travaux de Gilles Deleuze. Par la metaphore de la «ruine», l'auteur sonde ce qui ne va pas dans les proclamations academiques de tournants theoriques et de changements paradigmatiques. En lieu et place, elle propose une theorie de l'affect engagee dans l'anthropologie, par une reflexion ethnographique sur la melancolie spatiale et materielle, et affirme que l'ethnographie, dans ses moments les plus productifs, est trans-paradigmatique. En gardant ce qui est «ruine» comme digne encore de consideration, l'auteure suggere une approche qui concilie les theories de l'affect et de la subjectivite et du langage et de la materialite.

Affect and discourse – What’s the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice

Abstract: The recent ‘turn to affect’ in social and cultural research has been built on the notion of affect as a kind of excess. Affect is contrasted with the discursive and the cognitive, and distinguished from ‘domesticated’ emotion. The focus is on the presumed direct hit of events on bodies and on what is sensed rather than known. This formulation in combination with the need for new methods has disconnected discourse studies from research on affect. In common with other recent critics, I argue that the formulation of affect as an excess is unsustainable. I focus here, however, on the methodological consequences. The objective of affect research is to produce textured, lively analyses of multiple modes of engagement and to understand the working of power through patterns of assemblage. Intriguingly, fine-grain studies of discursive practice might realize these aims more effectively than some new, ‘non-representational’ methodological approaches. I contrast one example of non-representational empirical investigation with an example of discursive research on normative episodic sequences. My general aim is to build a more productive dialogue between rich traditions in discourse studies and new lines of research on affect and emotion.

Trends in the Turn to Affect: A Social Psychological Critique

Abstract: This article explores the psychological logics underpinning key perspectives in the ‘turn to affect’. Research on affect raises questions about the categorization of affective states, affective meaning-making, and the processes involved in the transmission of affect. I argue that current approaches risk depopulating affecting scenes, mystifying affective contagion, and authorizing questionable psychobiological arguments. I engage with the work of Sedgwick and Frank, Thrift, and Ahmed to explore these points and suggest that the concept of affective practice offers a more promising social psychological grounding. Notions of affective practice are more commensurate with trends in contemporary psychobiology, explain the limits on affective contagion, and emphasize relationality and negotiation, attentive to the flow of affecting episodes. A practice approach positions affect as a dynamic process, emergent from a polyphony of intersections and feedbacks, working across body states, registrations and categoriz...

Methodology-21: what do we do in the afterward?

Abstract: This paper asks “after what” and situates qualitative research in the present moment in the midst of various “deaths” and “returns.” With a focus on fleshing out post-qualitative research, it first sketches efforts to discipline qualitative research via standards and rubrics as a part of neoliberal govenmentality and then elaborates what post-qualitative might mean via four exemplars. The first is from Sweden, a focus on relational entangled data analysis in the feminist classroom; the next two exemplars are collaborative studies from Australia at the intersection of Western and Aboriginal knowledge systems; the final exemplar is from Egypt, a feminist post-colonial study of the women’s mosque movement. The paper concludes with a call to “imagine forward” out of troubling a narrow scientificity and enacting an “after” of neoliberalism.