Ideal type

About: Ideal type is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 400 publications have been published within this topic receiving 8012 citations.

Power and Resistance: The Untold Stories in the Context of a Local Health Office

Abstract: This study is about the internal dynamics of power within a particular local Provincial Public Health Office: how power was used? ; what was the meaning behind its use?; and, was there any resistance to certain abuses of power? It is “autoethnography” design study, as a researcher also a subject for study along with three other key informants/co-researchers whose experiences are interviewed as “life narratives.” The concepts used to analyze and discuss are a) Max Weber’s concept of power and authority under the “ideal type of bureaucracy;” b) Michel Foucault’s concepts of power in the form of knowledge and truth as a discursive practice, discipline, and the “game of truth;” c) and, “weapon of the weak” from James C. Scott. The key finding is the transforming of the strong hold of Thai traditional culture of patron/client to more economic and political aspects gives rise to exploitation of subordinates and social resources for the superior good will. The favoritism toward cronies and “cooperative” subordinates, and corruption has become a normal practice. The struggle of recalcitrant subordinates will face the superior’s use of tactics like “the game of truth” and “discipline and punishment” by “the gaze of surveillance.” The disaster in their career and family life are then unavoidable.

Utopias e Distopias na Comunicação: Uma Breve Discussão Sobre os Modelos Idealizados da Comunicação

Abstract: In this article we purpose to analyze two communication paradigms, the totalitarian and the democratic ones as ideal types. We take the weberian notion of ideal type to identify these paradigms, evaluating them through dystopian or utopian perspective, according to its more common representations.

Det nya propagandakriget - En studie om det moraliska rättfärdigandet i användandet av psykologiska operationer

Abstract: Seeking to identify alternative intervention techniques, to reduce mortality in war becomes more extensive. Some methods are met with more criticism than others. Psychological operations are not a new phenomenon, but starts to be used more and more, and is also a new addition for the Swedish Armed Forces. This paper therefore intends to explore how the moral justification for these operations might look like. The survey consists of an analytical framework of two ideal types which constricts each other, Consequentialism and Deontologin, both of which are rooted in the cosmopolitan thinking. The purpose with this framework is to have a discussion about what can be seen as morally justified or not. The trial will take place on psyops use in the Swedish Armed Forces' intervention in Afghanistan and how different forms of information that are sent can be justified differently based its accuracy in the information. The result shows that consequentialism as ideal type, is more accepted than deontologin, regarding the information’s correctness.

Studien zur Genese rationaler Lebensführung und zum Sektentypus Max Webers / Studies on Max Weber’s Sect as an Ideal Type and the Genesis of the Rational Way of Life

Abstract: Zusammenfassung Den Ausgangspunkt des Aufsatzes bildet die Frage, ob und inwiefern die These von der protestantischen Ethik Max Webers und der von ihm entwickelte Sektentypus als geeignete Interpretamente anzusehen sind, um das religiöse Selbstverständnis sowie das Sozial- und Wirtschaftsverhalten mennonitischer Bauernfamilien im linksrheinischen deutschen Südwesten zwischen 1632 und 1850 plausibel zu rekonstruieren und zu analysieren. Auf der Grundlage einer kritischen Würdigung des religionssoziologischen Ansatzes Max Webers und unter Berücksichtigung neuerer Forschungsansätze der Täuferforschung werden die Grade der Abweichung der mennonitischen Glaubensgemeinschaften im deutschen Südwesten vom Idealtypus der Sekte in den Bereichen Bekenntnisentwicklung, Organisations- und Ämterstruktur, familiäre und verwandtschaftliche Verankerung der Glaubensgemeinschaft und soziale Differenzierung vorgestellt und erläutert. Im Ergebnis wird der von Max Weber allen Mitgliedern protestantischer Sekten unterstellte Individualismus und Habitus rationaler Lebensführung, der als wesentlicher mentaler Faktor für die Ausprägung des kapitalistischen Geistes anzusehen ist, weitgehend auf bestimmte Mitglieder eingeschränkt, die informelle und formelle Führungsaufgaben übernahmen. Die Genese rationaler Lebensführung wird hypothetisch als das Produkt dialektischer Prozesse endogener und exogener Faktoren beurteilt. Zu den endogenen Faktoren gehören Abkehr von Mission, Anerkennung der Obrigkeit, kirchenähnliche Gemeindebildung, Schärfung der Kirchenzucht und Intensivierung innerweltlicher Askese sowie Zuwachs zentraler Aufgaben bei einzelnen Mitgliedern, zu den exogenen Faktoren sind tolerantere Religionspolitik und wachsende Bedeutung ökonomischer Zielvorgaben der Obrigkeiten, verbesserte Rechtslage für Minderheiten sowie Verdichtung und Dynamisierung von Marktbeziehungen zu zählen. Summary This article starts from the question, if and to what extent Max Weber’s thesis of the Protestant Ethic and his ideal type of the sect are suitable for analysing the religious mentality and social and economic behavior of Mennonite peasant families in South West Germany on the left bank of the Rhine between 1632 and 1850. After a critical appreciation of Weber's approach and a consideration of new concepts in the research on Mennonites the differences between Mennonites in South West Germany and the ideal type of the sect are pointed out and explained in respect to religious group formation, the structure of the organization and its offices, family roots and relationships in the religious community, and social inequality. The conclusion is that individualism and the rational way of life, which Max Weber attributed to all members of Protestant sects and which he thought be a crucial mental factor for the spirit of capitalism, was limited to group members with formal and informal leadership functions. The article puts forward the hypothesis that the genesis of a rational way of life results from dialectical processes involving endogeneous and exogeneous factors. Some of the endogeneous factors are the renunciation of mission, the acceptance of secular authority, community formation similar to church organization, a sharpening of sect discipline, intensified asceticism, and the concentration of central tasks on special members. Exogenous factors, in contrast, include more tolerant religious policies, the increasing importance of economic goals on the part of the authorities, the improved legal position of minorities, and more dynamic and denser market relations.

Exploring the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Micro-Resistance: The Tactical Mimicry of Social Enterprise by English Third Sector Organizations

Abstract: In the English third sector, the policy discourse of social enterprise has raised serious concerns. For some critical commentators, encouraging voluntary organizations to adhere to market principles and behave more like mainstream businesses can be understood as a (somewhat perverse) neoliberal response to the problems caused by neoliberalism (Amin et al., 2002; Blackburn & Ram, 2006). Early empirical studies revealed how practitioners resist ‘social enterprise' and the ideological assumptions associated with the term, notably as they pertain to managerialism (Parkinson &Howorth, 2008). Since the early work of Parkinson and Howorth (2008) it would appear that increasing numbers of voluntary organizations in England have come to identify as social enterprises. However at closer inspection many of these organizations seem to exhibit little more than surface level identification, with many not even engaging in ‘trading' (Teasdale et al. 2013). This raises some important questions as to the interpellative power of discourse: for instance, "to what extent does the discourseof social enterprise regulate the identity and practice of voluntary organizations in determinate ways?", and conversely, "what are the possibilities of resistance for third sector organizations?" Here, we are not so much interested in offering a final answer to these questions, for this will necessarily lead to the conclusion that power and resistance are inseparable, standing in a agonistic relationship of ‘permanent provocation' (Foucault, 1982). Our purpose rather is to advance the theorizing by foregrounding forms of resistance where provocation and struggles are not an issue. We do so by placing performative, temporal and spatial aspects of identification at the heart of the debate on micro-resistance. Concretely, we contend that identification with prevailing norms can nevertheless qualify as resistance in that the enactment of compliance with power's invocation in one space might open up new opportunities for individual and collective action at another moment and in another space. Our research To illustrate this double operation of identification (compliance-resistance), we draw upon a case study from Real Times, a longitudinal in-depth study of English third sector organizations (see Macmillan et al. 2010).Concretely, we highlight instances where Anna, a third sector practitioner exhibits surface level compliance with the governmental discourse of social enterprise. Anna, a self-professed social entrepreneur, claims her organization (Beech) is a social enterprise and regularly speaks on the social enterprise "self-congratulation circuit' to help develop the emergent field. These processes of identification with government discourse might initially be seen as conserving the status quo. However, studying Beech from a temporal and spatial perspective, identification took on a new meaning. That is, Anna's acts of identification turned out to be performative imitations of the policy "ideal type' stipulation of social enterprise with the aim of opening up new opportunities for individual and collective action elsewhere, in other spaces. In claiming to run a social enterprise and through her working of the social enterprise self congratulation circuit, new funding opportunities arise for Anna. Somewhat perversely the awards presented to Beech for being a "sustainable social enterprise' (i.e. non-grant dependent) lead to funding bodies keen to be associated with this new phenomena providing unrestricted grant income. It is this grant funding which is used (indirectly) to pursue Beech's more radical (or indeed traditional third sector) agenda around providing a space for people with mental health problems to participate in what is ostensibly a "work integration' social enterprise. Contribution to the theme Our paper specifically addresses whether voluntary organizations are able to work in harmony with the sector's values while coping with the new economic reality. Drawing on de Certeau's (1984) work of micro-resistance, we coin the term "tactical mimicry' to conceptualize processes whereby individuals enact organizational identities which at surface level comply line with official stipulations, norms or rules in order to expand opportunities of individual and collective action in other spaces. In concluding, we argue that research at the intersection of power and micro-resistance should refrain from judging the latter exclusively in terms of whether it changes "the sociosymbolic network in which we and our way of life make sense" (Contu, 2008, p. 374). Research based on embedded methodologies which capture spatial and temporal dimensions can better develop understanding of how compliance and identification in one space, though basically leaving intact the constellation of power relations, become a precondition for more radical opportunities in another.