New medical imaging devices, such as the CT scanner, have begun to challenge traditional role relations among radiologists and radiological technologists. Under some conditions, these technologies may actually alter the organizational and occupational structure of radiological work. However, current theories of technology and organizational form are insensitive to the potential number of structural variations implicit in role-based change. This paper expands recent sociological thought on the link between institution and action to outline a theory of how technology might occasion different organizational structures by altering institutionalized roles and patterns of interaction. In so doing, technology is treated as a social rather than a physical object, and structure is conceptualized as a process rather than an entity. The implications of the theory are illustrated by showing how identical CT scanners occasioned similar structuring processes in two radiology departments and yet led to divergent forms of organization. The data suggest that to understand how technologies alter organizational structures researchers may need to integrate the study of social action and the study of social form.

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Technology as an occasion for structuring: evidence from observations of CT scanners and the social order of radiology departments.

indeed may not be quite possible But I have no doubt it is worth a try It has to do with the nature of thought and with one of its uses It has been traditional to treat thought, so to speak, as an instrument of reason Good thought is right reason, and its efficacy is measured against the laws of logic or induction Indeed, in its most recent computational form, it is a view of thought that has sped some of its enthusiasts to the belief that all thought is reducible to machine computability But logical thought is not the only or even the most ubiquitous mode of thought For the last several years, I have been looking at another kind of thought (see, eg, Bruner, 1986), one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form of thought that goes into the construction not of logical or inductive arguments but of stories or narratives What I want to do now is to extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis of the stories we tell about our lives: our "autobiographies" Philosophically speaking, the approach I shall take to narrative is a constructivist one a view that takes as its central premise that "world making" is the principal function of mind, whether in the sciences or in the arts But the moment one applies a constructivist view of narrative to the self-narrative, to the autobiography, one is faced with dilemmas Take, for example, the constructivist view that "stories" do not "happen" in the real world but, rather, are constructed in people's heads Or as Henry James once put it, stories happen to people who know how to tell them Does that mean that our autobiographies are constructed, that they had better be viewed not as a record of what

Life as Narrative

Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall☆

In a work with far-reaching implications, Chela Sandoval does no less than revise the genealogy of theory over the past thirty years, inserting what she terms "U.S. Third World feminism" into the narrative in a way that thoroughly alters our perspective on contemporary culture and subjectivity.What Sandoval has identified is a language, a rhetoric of resistance to postmodern cultural conditions. U.S liberation movements of the post-World War II era generated specific modes of oppositional consciousness. Out of these emerged a new activity of consciousness and language Sandoval calls the "methodology of the oppressed". This methodology -- born of the strains of the cultural and identity struggles that currently mark global exchange -- holds out the possibility of a new historical moment, a new citizen-subject, and a new form of alliance consciousness and politics. Utilizing semiotics and U.S. Third World feminist criticism, Sandoval demonstrates how this methodology mobilizes love as a category of critical analysis. Rendering this approach in all its specifics, Methodology of the Oppressed gives rise to an alternative mode of criticism opening new perspectives on a theoretical, literary, aesthetic, social movement, or psychic expression.

Methodology of the oppressed

A sociocultural approach is used to explore voluntary high-risk consumption. Specifically, we examine the dynamics of individuals' motives, risk perceptions, and benefit/cost outcomes of participation in increasingly popular high-risk leisure activities such as skydiving, climbing, and BASE jumping (parachuting from fixed objects). An ethnography of a skydiving subculture provides the primary empirical data. We propose an extended dramatic model that explains both macroenviron-mental and inter- and intrapersonal influences and motives for high-risk consumption. Key findings indicate (1) an evolution of motives that explains initial and continuing participation in high-risk activities and (2) a coinciding evolution of risk acculturation that leads to the normalization of risk.

/pdf/an-exploration-of-high-risk-leisure-consumption-through-2ygvo2klw6.pdf

An Exploration of High-Risk Leisure Consumption through Skydiving

Preface to the Second Edition Introduction to the Second Edition Introduction to the First Edition Acknowledgements Author's Foreword I. On the History of the Problem II. The Method and Material III. The Functions of Dramatis Personae IV. Assimilations: Cases of the Double Morphological Meaning of a Single Function V. Some Other Elements of the Tale A. Auxiliary Elements for the Interconnection of Functions B. Auxiliary Elements in Trebling C. Motivations VI. The Distribution of Functions Among Dramatis Personae VII. Ways in Which New Characters Are Introduced into the Course of Action VIII. On the Attributes of Dramatis Personae and their Significance IX. The Tale as a Whole A. The Ways in Which Stories Are Combined B. An Example of Analysis of a Tale C. The Problem of Classification D. On the Relationship of Particular Forms of Structure to the General Pattern E. The Problem of Composition and Theme, and of Themes and Variants F. Conclusion

Morphology of the folktale

Morphology of the Folktale

HT HE calendar year lends itself to associations with the human course from birth to death. Agrarian rites, centered around the two equinoxes and the two solstices, to a certain degree belong in each phase to a different generation. Children have primacy in the winter and early spring customs, then successively the adolescents and young adults in the spring and summer, the mature people in the fall, and finally the old men and women at the time of the winter solstice, immediately succeeded by the youngsters again. In my inquiry into the calendar rites of the Czechoslovak immigrants in America, three facts determined my decision to focus upon the fall ritual: it belongs to the mature people, those who are married and who assume the principal responsibility for the community. It is a ritual in which both men and women are equally involved and in which, besides the main actors, all the generations play some part, since the whole village actually participates in the harvesting work, followed by the festivities. It climaxes the agricultural efforts of the year and, since the welfare of the village depends upon the outcome of the harvest, the ritual merriment has a rational justification for the people. The majority of my native informants in America were of peasant origin. Most of those who are now mature and married experienced the harvest ritual in their childhood or youth at home and, had they not emigrated, would now be playing leading parts in it. Here they are the most vital representatives of their ethnic group and the principal organizers of its social activities.

Svatava Pirkova-Jakobson

Papers

Morphology of the folktale

Morphology of the Folktale

Harvest Festivals among Czechs and Slovaks in America