Showing papers on "Social theory published in 2016"

Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams

Abstract: This volume is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.

Theories of practice and public health: understanding (un)healthy practices

Abstract: Psychological understandings and individualistic theories of human behaviour and behaviour change have dominated both academic research and interventions at the ‘coalface’ of public health. Meanwhile, efforts to understand persistent inequalities in health point to structural factors, but fail to show exactly how these translate into the daily lives (and hence health) of different sectors of the population. In this paper, we suggest that social theories of practice provide an alternative paradigm to both approaches, informing significantly new ways of conceptualising and responding to some of the most pressing contemporary challenges in public health. We introduce and discuss the relevance of such an approach with reference to tobacco smoking, focusing on the life course of smoking as a practice, rather than on the characteristics of individual smokers or on broad social determinants of health. This move forces us to consider the material and symbolic elements of which smoking is comprised, and to follow ...

Against the Dark: Antiblackness in Education Policy and Discourse

Abstract: I argue that analyses of racial(ised) discourse and policy processes in education must grapple with cultural disregard for and disgust with blackness. This article explains how a theorization of antiblackness allows one to more precisely identify and respond to racism in education discourse and in the formation and implementation of education policy. I contend that deeply embedded within racialized policy discourses is not merely a concern about disproportionality or inequality, but also a concern with the bodies of Black people, the signification of (their) Blackness, and the threat posed by the Black to the educational well-being of other students. Using school (de)segregation as an example, I demonstrate how policy discourse is informed by antiblackness, and consider what an awareness of antiblackness means for educational policy and practice.

The Mediated Construction of Reality

Abstract: Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media. Drawing on Schutz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital media s profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition

Abstract: A new and often controversial theoretical orientation that resonates strongly with wider developments in contemporary philosophy and social theory, the so-called 'ontological turn' is receiving a great deal of attention in anthropology and cognate disciplines at present. This book provides the first anthropological exposition of this recent intellectual development. It traces the roots of the ontological turn in the history of anthropology and elucidates its emergence as a distinct theoretical orientation over the past few decades, showing how it has emerged in the work of Roy Wagner, Marilyn Strathern and Viveiros de Castro, as well a number of younger scholars. Distinguishing this trajectory of thinking from related attempts to put questions of ontology at the heart of anthropological research, the book articulates critically the key methodological and theoretical tenets of the ontological turn, its prime epistemological and political implications, and locates it in the broader intellectual landscape of contemporary social theory.

All Lives Matter, but so Does Race: Black Lives Matter and the Evolving Role of Social Media

Abstract: This article demonstrates the ways in which youth of color played an active role in debates that erupted on Twitter following the tragic deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014. These debates on social media represent a larger struggle over discourse on race and racism across the nation. Drawing from critical theory and race theory, and engaging in the relatively new practice of using Twitter as a source of data for sociological analysis, this article examines Twitter as an emerging public sphere and studies the hashtags “#AllLivesMatter” and “#BlackLivesMatter” as contested signs that represent dominant ideologies. This article consists of a qualitative textual analysis of a selection of Twitter posts from December 3 to 7, 2014, following the nonindictments of officers in the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The debates on Twitter reveal various strategies that youth of color employed to shape the national discourse about race in the wake of these high-profile tragedies.

Transforming Social Work Practice: Postmodern Critical Perspectives

Abstract: Transforming Social Work Practice shows that postmodern theory offers new strategies for social workers concerned with political action and social justice. It explores ways of developing practice frameworks, paradigms and principles which take advantage of the perspectives offered by postmodern theory without totally abandoning the values of modernity and the Enlightenment project of human emancipation. Case studies demonstrate how these perspectives can be applied to practice.

Communities of practice as a social theory of learning: A conversation with Etienne Wenger

Abstract: The aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding and use of the theory of communities of practice. In order to clarify terms, explore applications for education and reflect on various ...

Transformational responses to climate change: beyond a systems perspective of social change in mitigation and adaptation

Abstract: There is a growing imperative for responses to climate change to go beyond incremental adjustments, aiming instead for society-wide transformation. In this context, sociotechnical (ST) transitions and social–ecological (SE) resilience are two prominent normative agendas. Reviewing these literatures reveals how both share a complex-systems epistemology with inherent limitations, often producing managerial governance recommendations and foregrounding material over social drivers of change. Further interdisciplinary dialogue with social theory is essential if these frameworks are to become more theoretically robust and capable of informing effective, let alone transformational, climate change governance. To illustrate this potential, ideas from Deleuze and Guattari's political writing as well as other approaches that utilize the notion social fields (as opposed to sociosystems) are combined to more fully theorize the origins and enactment of social change. First, the logic of systems is replaced with the contingency of assemblages to reveal how pluralism, not elitism, can produce more ambitious and politicized visions of the future. In particular, this view encourages us to see social and ecological tensions as opportunities for thinking and acting differently rather than as mere technical problems to be solved. Secondly, the setting of social fields is introduced to situate and explain the power of ideas and the role of agency in times of uncertainty. The potential of such insights is already visible in some strands of climate change mitigation and adaptation research, but more needs to be done to advance this field and to bring it into dialogue with the mainstream systems based literature.

Machine Translation: Mining Text for Social Theory

Abstract: More of the social world lives within electronic text than ever before, from collective activity on the web, social media, and instant messaging to online transactions, government intelligence, and digitized libraries. This supply of text has elicited demand for natural language processing and machine learning tools to filter, search, and translate text into valuable data. We survey some of the most exciting computational approaches to text analysis, highlighting both supervised methods that extend old theories to new data and unsupervised techniques that discover hidden regularities worth theorizing. We then review recent research that uses these tools to develop social insight by exploring (a) collective attention and reasoning through the content of communication; (b) social relationships through the process of communication; and (c) social states, roles, and moves identified through heterogeneous signals within communication. We highlight social questions for which these advances could offer powerful ...

Relational agency Relational sociology, agency and interaction

Abstract: This article explores how the concept of agency in social theory changes when it is conceptualized as a relational rather than an individual phenomenon. It begins with a critique of the structure/agency debate, particularly of how this emerges in the critical realist approach to agency typified by Margaret Archer. It is argued that this approach, and the critical realist version of relational sociology that has grown from it, reify social relations as a third entity to which agents have a cognitive, reflexive relation, playing down the importance of interaction. This upholds the Western moral and political view of agents as autonomous, independent, and reflexive individuals. Instead, the article considers agency from a different theoretical tradition in relational sociology in which agents are always located in manifold social relations. From this, an understanding is created of agents as interactants, ones who are interdependent, vulnerable, intermittently reflexive, possessors of capacities that can onl...

Philosophy Of Social Science The Philosophical Foundations Of Social Thought

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Central Problems In Social Theory Action Structure And Contradiction In Social Analysis

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The Limits of Learning: Habermas' Social Theory and Religion

Abstract: Habermas' view that contemporary philosophy and social theory can learn from religious traditions calls for closer consideration. He is correct to hold that religious traditions constitute a reservoir of potentially important meanings that can be critically appropriated without emptying them of their motivating and inspirational power. However, contrary to what he implies, his theory allows for learning from religion only to a very limited degree. This is due to two core elements of his conceptual framework, both of which are key features of his account of postmetaphysical thinking. The first is the requirement of ethical agnosticism; this requires philosophy and social theory to refrain from offering guidance on questions of the good life. The second is his language-immanent conception of truth in the domain of practical reason; this follows from his rejection of any source of validity beyond human communication in this domain. I make the case for a more robust account of learning from religious traditions and metaphysical worldviews, arguing that for this purpose Habermas must modify his requirement of ethical agnosticism and relinquish his language-immanent conception of truth.

Digital social norm enforcement: online firestorms in social media

Abstract: Actors of public interest today have to fear the adverse impact that stems from social media platforms. Any controversial behavior may promptly trigger temporal, but potentially devastating storms of emotional and aggressive outrage, so called online firestorms. Popular targets of online firestorms are companies, politicians, celebrities, media, academics and many more. This article introduces social norm theory to understand online aggression in a social-political online setting, challenging the popular assumption that online anonymity is one of the principle factors that promotes aggression. We underpin this social norm view by analyzing a major social media platform concerned with public affairs over a period of three years entailing 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated.

Climate change and social transformations: is it time for a quantum leap?

Abstract: Climate change is recognized as an urgent societal problem with widespread implications for both natural and human systems, and transforming society at the rate and scale that is mandated by the 2015 Paris Agreement remains a major challenge. Do we need to be open to new paradigms for social change? In this opinion piece, I draw attention to the emerging field of quantum social theory and consider its implications for climate change responses. Quantum social theory considers how concepts, methods and understandings from quantum physics relate to societal issues, and it provides a physically based, holistic perspective on conscious and intentional transformations to sustainability. It is distinct from other social theories in that it raises deep metaphysical and ontological questions about what is really real. I explore the methodological, metaphorical and meaningful significance of quantum social theory for understandings of social change. Quantum concepts such as entanglement, complementarity, uncertainty, and superposition provide a strong basis for recognizing and promoting people as the solution to climate change. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Sociolinguistics and Social Theory

Abstract: Sociolinguistics and Social Theory brings together new critical overviews of the interface between language, social structure and social action A wide range of theoretical and methodological traditions are represented: variationist and ethnographic sociolinguistics, conversation and interaction analysis, discourse analysis, social semiotics and ideological linguistics, as well as sociology and social theory itself The book proposes a new agenda for sociolinguistic theory, in the broadest sense, and debates the theoretical grounding of different research methods Contributors include Frederick Erickson, David Graddol, Christian Heath, Monica Heller, John Heritage, Gunther Kress, Per Linell, Michael Lynch, Miriam Meyerhoff, Lesley Milroy, Jonathan Potter, Ben Rampton, Celia Roberts, Richard Watts, John Wilson and Ruth Wodak

Ordinalization: Lewis A. Coser Memorial Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting 2014

Abstract: We can think of three basic principles of classificatory judgment for comparing things and people. I call these judgments nominal (oriented to essence), cardinal (oriented to quantities), and ordinal (oriented to relative positions). Most social orders throughout history are organized around the intersection of these different types. In line with the ideals of political liberalism, however, democratic societies have developed an arsenal of institutions to untangle nominal and ordinal judgments in various domains of social life. In doing so, I suggest, they have contributed to the parallel amplification of both. In this article, I specifically discuss the socio-technical channels through which ordinal judgments are now elaborated, a process I call ordinalization. I conclude by exploring the political and economic possibilities of a society in which ordinal processes are ubiquitous.

Social media, professionalism and higher education: a sociomaterial consideration

Abstract: Within debates about student professionalism and how to develop it in higher education (HE), increasing focus has turned to students' uses of social media While social media skills are promoted by some HE educators, most emphasis is still given to perceived hazards and abuses of social media in practice These are typically framed as a matter of professional ethics; some have argued for new codes of ‘e-professionalism’ This article problematizes the dynamics being conflated in these debates, drawing from three theoretical sources: current debates about professionalism; critical digital media studies that provide nuanced analyses of social media engagements; and sociomaterial concepts that reconfigure the issues to suggest new possibilities The argument is theory-based and exploratory, not empirical The aim is to pose new directions for research and teaching that open, not foreclose, new issues and enactments of professionalism

Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism

Abstract: Based on theoretical developments in research on world-systems analysis, transnational migration, postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, whilst considering continuities of inequality patterns in the context of colonial and postcolonial realities, Global Inequalities Beyond Occidentalism proposes an original framework for the study of the long-term reproduction of inequalities under global capitalism. With attention to the critical assessment of both Marxist and Weberian perspectives, this book examines the wider implications of transferring classical approaches to inequality to a twenty-first-century context, calling for a reconceptualisation of inequality that is both theoretically informed and methodologically consistent, and able to cater for the implications of shifts from national and Western structures to global structures. Engaging with approaches to the study of class, gender, racial and ethnic inequalities at the global level, this innovative work adopts a relational perspective in the study of social inequalities that is able to reveal how historical interdependencies between world regions have translated as processes of inequality production and reproduction. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, political and social theory and anthropology concerned with questions of globalisation and inequality.

Social cartographies as performative devices in research on higher education

Abstract: In this article, we review social cartography as a methodological approach to map and collectively engage diverse perspectives within the study of higher education. We illustrate the uses of this approach by drawing on our own experiences engaging it as part of an international research project about the effects of the convergence of globalization and economic crises in higher education. We offer several examples of how social cartography can enable agonistic collaboration amongst existing positions, as well as open up new spaces and possibilities for alternative futures in higher education.

Historical sociology and world history: uneven and combined development over the longue durée

Abstract: The concept of 'uneven and combined development' was originally coined by Leon Trotsky to theorise Tsarist Russia's distinctive experience of modernity and revolution. But it has re-emerged over the last decade or so as a burgeoning research programme within International Relations (IR) and historical sociology. It has been critically and creatively deployed in two main areas: the provision of a sociological foundation to international theory overcoming the chronic schism between ‘sociological’ and ‘geopolitical’ modes of enquiry; and, relatedly, in superseding prevailing Eurocentric approaches in the social sciences. This volume is the first to provide a sustained reflection on the idea of uneven and combined development as the intellectual basis for a non-Eurocentric social theory of ‘the international’. It does so through a series of empirically rich and theoretically informed analyses of socio-historical change, political transformation, and intersocietal conflict over the longue duree. The volume thereby aims to demonstrate the unique potentials of uneven and combined development in overcoming IR and historical sociology’s shared inability to theorize the interactive and multilinear character of development.

Practice theory as flat ontology

Abstract: Ontologies are an ineliminable part of social theory By ‘ontologies’ I mean accounts, or simply ideas, explicit or implicit, about the fundamental nature, structure, dimensions, or elements of some phenomenon or domain thereof Because social theories concern things social, the ontologies that imbue them are accounts of, or just ideas about, the fundamental nature of social life or social phenomena The present chapter discusses the kind of social ontology that is promulgated in theories of the practice sort and emphasizes one particular feature of this ontology, namely, its ‘flat’ character My claim is that practice theory as social ontology holds that the realm of the social is entirely laid out on a single level (or, rather, on no level) Practice theories are not the only theories to advance flat social ontologies Nonetheless, their version of this idea is unique and has significant implications for investigation and explanation

Environmental identity formation in nonformal environmental education programs

Abstract: This paper explores experiences that remained salient in the memories of former participants in three nature-based programs in Colorado, five to forty years after childhood involvement. Interviews with program founders and staff, archival research, and observations of current activities provided an understanding of each program’s history, mission and educational approach. In this context, 18 former participants were interviewed about program experiences that they remembered and program impacts on their environmental identities and academic or career choices. Results were analyzed through the lens of social practice theory, which has significant implications for the design and evaluation of environmental education programs. Results showed that social practice theory is a useful framework for interpreting the development of a social environmental identity, but an ecological identity that forms through direct contact with the natural world is an important complementary concept.

Conceptual boundaries of sharing

Abstract: Sharing has been subjected to continuous re-imagination and positioning throughout networked culture's history Recently, there has been specific emphasis on user-generated content and social media platforms Particular social actors, such as social media platforms, attempt to cultivate an imaginary of sharing in networked culture They do this by appropriating positive social values associated with common understandings of sharing, such as community, generosity, shared values of cooperation, and participation While there has been a recent surge of interest in sharing, conceptual gaps remain Though sharing is a central concept of networked culture, in this paper I show how its boundaries with other social theories of exchange have not been sufficiently established nor has the concept itself been adequately critiqued Most significantly, this paper problematizes how sharing is implicated and positioned in studies of networked culture I argue that a framework for a theory of sharing is needed and identif

Diagnostic Cultures: A Cultural Approach to the Pathologization of Modern Life

Abstract: Some studies estimate that each year, around a quarter of the population of Western countries will suffer from at least one mental disorder. Should this be interpreted as evidence for the progress of psychiatry, a discipline that is now able to identify and treat mental illnesses that have always existed, or might it be the case that modern life somehow creates new conditions, or social pathologies? This book argues that in fact something more fundamental has been taking place in recent years: the development of diagnostic cultures. Taking account of the phenomenon of patients themselves 'pushing for' pathologization - and acknowledging therefore that this is not simply a case of psychiatry pursuing an agenda of 'medicalisation from above' - this volume examines the emerging trend towards interpreting our sufferings in terms of psychiatric conceptions and diagnostic categories. Drawing on new empirical case studies of psychological diagnoses, including depression and ADHD, and employing both cultural-psychological and sociological analyses, it charts the development of contemporary diagnostic cultures and asks whether, in transforming existential, moral and political concerns into individual psychiatric disorders, we risk losing sight of the larger historical and social forces that affect our lives. A ground-breaking examination of the shift towards the pathologization of suffering and the dangers that this presents to human self-understanding, Diagnostic Cultures will be of interest to scholars of social theory and philosophy, the sociology of culture, psychology and the sociology health and medicine.

A critique of new materialism: ethics and ontology

Abstract: This article seeks to offer a critical assessment of the conception of ethics underlying the growing constellation of ‘new materialist’ social theories. It argues that such theories offer little if any purchase in understanding the contemporary transformations of relations between mind and body or human and non-human natures. Taking as exemplary the work of Jane Bennett, Rosi Braidotti, and Karen Barad, this article asserts that a continuity between ethics and ontology is central to recent theories of ‘materiality’. These theories assert the primacy of matter by calling upon a spiritual or ascetic self-transformation so that one might be ‘attuned to’ or ‘register’ materiality and, conversely, portray critique as hubristic, conceited, or resentful, blinded by its anthropocentrism. It is argued that framing the grounds for ontological speculation in these ethical terms licences the omission of analysis of social forces mediating thought’s access to the world and so grants the theorist leave to sidestep any questions over the conditions of thought. In particular, the essay points to ongoing processes of the so-called primitive accumulation as constituting the relationship between mind and body, human and non-human natures.