Realist social theory : the morphogenetic approach
TL;DR: The Morphogenetic Cycle: the basis of the morphogenetic approach 7. Structural and cultural conditioning 8. The morphogenesis of agency 9. Social elaboration.
Abstract: Building on her seminal contribution to social theory in Culture and Agency, in this 1995 book Margaret Archer develops her morphogenetic approach, applying it to the problem of structure and agency. Since structure and agency constitute different levels of stratified social reality, each possesses distinctive emergent properties which are real and causally efficacious but irreducible to one another. The problem, therefore, is shown to be how to link the two rather than conflate them, as has been common theoretical practice. Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach not only rejects methodological individualism and holism, but argues that the debate between them has been replaced by a new one, between elisionary theorising and emergentist theories based on a realist ontology of the social world. The morphogenetic approach is the sociological complement of transcendental realism, and together they provide a basis for non-conflationary theorizing which is also of direct utility to the practising social analyst.
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TL;DR: In this article, two writers describe their experiences of conducting doctoral studies in this genre and in these faculties and each discover alternative ways of employing a body of published research papers in development of an overarching thesis.
Abstract: PhDs by publications are a relatively new model for doctoral research, especially in the context of the Humanities or Education. This paper describes two writers’ experiences of conducting doctoral studies in this genre and in these faculties. Each discover alternative ways of employing a body of published research papers in development of an overarching thesis. The writers argue that whilst it can be a pragmatic choice for some, PhDs by publications are more likely to be highly complex meta-narratives and that an overview of past research is fraught with theoretical, conceptual and epistemological challenges in the quest for coherence. They claim that the nomenclature ‘PhDs by publications’ or ‘through publications’ is misleading: in the epistemological space of Humanities or Education studies, this mode of doctoral research is more accurately represented as a ‘PhD with or alongside publications’. They conclude that the particular affordance of the model is that it privileges accounts of the process of k...
19 citations
Dissertation•
01 Oct 2011
TL;DR: In this article, a case study on the Europeana initiative (a digitization project of European libraries, archives, and museums) reveals a fundamental shift in the field of memory institutions, and the disintegration of the cultural heritage artefact, its standard modes of description and the catalogue as such into a steadily accumulating assemblage of data and metadata.
Abstract: The study of social memory has emerged as a rich field of research closely linked
to cultural artefacts, communication media and institutions as carriers of a past
that transcends the horizon of the individual’s lifetime. Within this domain of
research, the dissertation focuses on memory institutions (libraries, archives,
museums) and the shifts they are undergoing as the outcome of digitization and
the diffusion of online media. Very little is currently known about the impact that
digitality and computation may have on social memory institutions, specifically,
and social memory, more generally – an area of study that would benefit from
but, so far, has been mostly overlooked by information systems research.
The dissertation finds its point of departure in the conceptualization of
information as an event that occurs through the interaction between an observer
and the observed – an event that cannot be stored as information but merely as
data. In this context, memory is conceived as an operation that filters, thus
forgets, the singular details of an information event by making it comparable to
other events according to abstract classification criteria. Against this backdrop,
memory institutions are institutions of forgetting as they select, order and
preserve a canon of cultural heritage artefacts.
Supported by evidence from a case study on the Europeana initiative (a
digitization project of European libraries, archives and museums), the
dissertation reveals a fundamental shift in the field of memory institutions. The
case study demonstrates the disintegration of 1) the cultural heritage artefact, 2)
its standard modes of description and 3) the catalogue as such into a steadily
accruing assemblage of data and metadata. Dismembered into bits and bytes,
cultural heritage needs to be re-membered through the emulation of recognizable
cultural heritage artefacts and momentary renditions of order. In other words,
memory institutions forget as binary-based data and remember through
computational information.
19 citations
01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a framework of competing educational epistemologies, which are seen as being generated, shaped and selectively foregrounded through educational responses to the prevailing cultural context.
Abstract: This chapter seeks to shed some light on the prevailing vocationalisation of adult and lifelong education and learning policy and provision. It does so through a framework of competing educational epistemologies, which are seen as being generated, shaped and selectively foregrounded through educational responses to the prevailing cultural context. Shifts in the nature of that context selectively favour different epistemologies, and may be used to explain: the historical hegemony of disciplinary epistemology; the episodic flourishing of constructivist and emancipatory epistemologies and—with the recent development of a neoliberal cultural context—also the shift from ‘education to learning’ in labelling the field, the contemporary ascendency of instrumental epistemology evident in the vocationalisation of the field, and the anticipated future decline of that epistemology, with the possible rise of a situational epistemology.
19 citations
19 citations
Dissertation•
30 Jun 2015
19 citations