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Journal ArticleDOI

Outline of a Theory of Practice.

01 Mar 1980-Contemporary Sociology-Vol. 9, Iss: 2, pp 256
About: This article is published in Contemporary Sociology.The article was published on 1980-03-01. It has received 14683 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Practice theory.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, an alternate model based on cultural integrity and Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus is delineated, and a program that instills these qualities in inner-city Black and Hispanic adolescents as they prepare for college is described.
Abstract: This article maintains that Tinto's theory of college student retention misses the mark for minority students. With its implicit suggestions that such students must assimilate into the cultural mainstream and abandon their ethnic identifies to succeed on predominantly White campuses, Tinto's framework is faulted not only for overlooking the history of ethnic oppression and discrimination in the U.S. but also for being theoretically flawed. An alternate model based on cultural integrity and Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus is delineated. A program that instills these qualities in inner-city Black and Hispanic adolescents as they prepare for college is described. In 1970, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education predicted that it would not be necessary for colleges and universities in the year 2000 to provide compensatory education programs or to struggle over flexible criteria for admissions and grading. Though one might admire the boldness and hopes of such an assertion, the reality of the prediction is one of dreams deferred, if not denied, for those who have not had equal access to postsecondary education. Although more people attend a postsecondary institution today than at any other time throughout this century, not all high school graduates are academically prepared for success in college. Large discrepancies, determined by income and race/ethnicity, continue to persist. Broadly stated, the poor and working classes are less likely to attend college than the wealthy. Black, Hispanic, and Native American students are less likely to attend a postsecondary institution and to attain a degree than are their European American and Asian American counterparts. Since the Carnegie Commission made its hopeful prediction in 1970, postsecondary institutions and other related agencies have tried a variety of remedies to increase college participation among low-income and ethnic minority youth. Several significant and farreaching strategies were devised and employed to increase postsecondary educational opportunities and attendance by underrepresented populations. State and federal governments stepped in to provide the financial assistance necessary to attend college for lowincome families in the form of grants and loans. Similarly, minority students who had been discriminated against in the past, or who needed additional consideration to be admitted to a college or university, merited a systematic plan-affirmative action-to ensure equal opportunity. However, as we begin the 21st century, equal access to postsecondary opportunities has not yet been achieved by low-income and minority youth. Affirmative action, if not in danger of outright elimination, came under attack or has been banned in some states, and financial aid lags behind what it once was. Although I support the basic premises of affirmative action and financial aid (Tierney, 1996, 1997), my intent in this article is not to debate the merits of these policies for those who need it most. Even if these approaches were firmly in place, low-income and minority youth would still lag far behind their counterparts in college participation. It is thus not hard to conclude that alternative policies ought to be utilized if access and equity are to remain goals for society. Though they are surely not a panacea, existing alternatives offer an avenue for increasing college access for low-income and minority youth. However, as Perna and Swail (1998) have noted, very little is known about the status or success of these options from national, state, or local perspectives. Accordingly, this article first delineates a theoretical framework for thinking about college preparation programs that utilizes the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986). It then describes one such program, the Neighborhood Academic Initiative that I have studied since 1997. Last, it offers a "cultural integrity" model that might be utilized to develop other such programs and thereby increase minority students' access, participation, and retention in postsecondary education. …

432 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a new data-driven framework for understanding parental engagement in urban elementary schools, the Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) framework, is proposed.
Abstract: What we know about parental involvement in schools cuts across two areas: how and why parental involvement is important and the structural barriers that impede parental participation. However, it has been difficult to construct an account of parental involvement, grounded in everyday practice that goes beyond a laundry list of things that good parents do for their children’s education. In this article we make a case for a new data-driven framework for understanding parental engagement in urban elementary schools, the Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) framework. The EPE framework marks a fundamental shift in how we understand parents’ involvement in their children’s education—a shift from focusing primarily on what parents do to engage with their children’s schools and with other actors within those schools, to also considering how parents understand the hows and whys of their engagement, and how this engagement relates more broadly to parents’ experiences and actions both inside and out of the school...

431 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors start from the assumption that both, the localised cluster of advertising agencies in the advertising village (the "Village" and the global communications group (the 'Group'), share basic principles of social organisation.
Abstract: In the 1980s, the hegemony of the large US advertising networks has been challenged by a new breed of London-based agencies who pioneered what is known in the trade as ‘second wave’. On the one hand, second wave implied the emancipation of Soho from an ‘outpost of Madison Avenue’ to the ‘advertising village’ on the basis of momentous product and process innovations. On the other hand, a few London agencies rose to global top positions on the crest of the second wave by transforming themselves from international advertising networks into global communication groups. This paper starts from the assumption that both, the localised cluster of advertising agencies in the advertising village (the ‘Village’) and the global communications group (the ‘Group’), share basic principles of social organisation. It aims at demonstrating that the organisational logic of both the Village and the Group can be conceptualised in terms of a heterarchy. By drawing on case-study evidence from Soho on the one hand and from the wo...

431 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 May 2003
TL;DR: The Sacramento Water Forum, a group of contentious stakeholders from environmental organizations, business, local government and agriculture, spent five years in an intensive consensus-building process as discussed by the authors, and agreed on a strategy and procedures for managing the limited water supply in northern California's semi-desert.
Abstract: The Sacramento Water Forum, a group of contentious stakeholders from environmental organizations, business, local government and agriculture, spent five years in an intensive consensus-building process. In 1999 they agreed on a strategy andproceduresfor managing the limited water supply in northern California's semi-desert. Leaders in the region were sufficiently impressed to set up a similar collaborative policy dialogue around the equally volatile issues of transportation and land use in thisfast-growing region. When environmental groups decided to sue the regional transportation agency for not protecting the region's air quality, the business community was ready to pull out of this nascent policy dialogue. They were stopped by a leading businessman and elected official who had been involved in the Water Forum and influenced by this way of working. He told the other business leaders in an eloquent speech, 'We have no choice. We have to stay at the table. There is no alternative.' They accused him of being 'one of them', suggesting he had crossed over to the environmentalist side. This businessman told them they were wrong, saying 'The Water Forum process transformed me. I now understand that collaboration is the only way to solve problems. I do it now in everything I do, including running my business and dealing with my suppliers, employees and customers." ' The business community staved with the process and consensus building around transportation got underway

430 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a case study of Whole Foods Market (WFM), a corporation frequently touted as an ethical market actor, is used to investigate the relationship between consumerism and citizenship.
Abstract: Ethical consumer discourse is organized around the idea that shopping, and particularly food shopping, is a way to create progressive social change. A key component of this discourse is the “citizen-consumer” hybrid, found in both activist and academic writing on ethical consumption. The hybrid concept implies a social practice – “voting with your dollar” – that can satisfy competing ideologies of consumerism (an idea rooted in individual self-interest) and citizenship (an ideal rooted in collective responsibility to a social and ecological commons). While a hopeful sign, this hybrid concept needs to be theoretically unpacked, and empirically explored. This article has two purposes. First, it is a theory-building project that unpacks the citizen-consumer concept, and investigates underlying ideological tensions and contradictions. The second purpose of the paper is to relate theory to an empirical case-study of the citizen-consumer in practice. Using the case-study of Whole Foods Market (WFM), a corporation frequently touted as an ethical market actor, I ask: (1) how does WFM frame the citizen-consumer hybrid, and (2) what ideological tensions between consumer and citizen ideals are present in the framing? Are both ideals coexisting and balanced in the citizen-consumer hybrid, or is this construct used to disguise underlying ideological inconsistencies? Rather than meeting the requirements of consumerism and citizenship equally, the case of WFM suggests that the citizen-consumer hybrid provides superficial attention to citizenship goals in order to serve three consumerist interests better: consumer choice, status distinction, and ecological cornucopianism. I argue that a true “citizen-consumer” hybrid is not only difficult to achieve, but may be internally inconsistent in a growth-oriented corporate setting.

429 citations