Theme (narrative)

About: Theme (narrative) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 13050 publications have been published within this topic receiving 159511 citations. The topic is also known as: narrative theme.

Common Themes in the Work of Gilbert White and John Dewey: A Pragmatic Appraisal

Abstract: Gilbert White has had a profound influence on natural resources and hazards research, but the philosophy that guides his work has not been clearly defined. White's approach has broad affinities with the pragmatic tradition of American social thought, most notably with the work of john Dewey. This paper compares four major themes in the work of White and Dewey: the precariousness of existence, the pragmatic conception of inquiry, learning from experience, and discourse and democracy. For each theme, I show how similarities and differences between White and Dewey can help to clarify controversies within geography, and directions for future research.

Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse

Abstract: Building on the work of Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, David Howes and other scholars of the senses, this article examines the reconfiguration of contemporary American legal discourse represented by the apparent shift from mostly visually-evocative metaphors for law and legal practice (judicial "review", "bright-line" distinctions, "penumbras" of authority, "observing" the law, "squaring" precedents, etc.) towards a greater number of aurally-evocative figures of speech (law as "dialogue", "conversation", "polyphony", etc.). Part I of the article establishes the importance of examining this reconfiguration in light of the nature of metaphor and its central role in thought and legal reasoning. Part II explores the techno-cultural, sociological and phenomenological roots of American jurists' traditional preference for visual legal metaphors. It argues that visualist legal language has both reflected and reinforced three fundamental circumstances: first, Americans' long-standing technological and cultural prejudice in favor of visual expression and experience; second, the legal and political power of certain gender, racial, ethnic and religious groups which at least in the American context have demonstrated a particular respect for visuality; and third, the correspondence between traditional American legal values and the values supposedly supported by vision itself. Part III of the article investigates the multiple factors behind the growing vogue of aural metaphors in American legal discourse, especially among critical theorists seeking liberation from orthodox outlooks and values. It attributes the new figurative aurality to three factors: first, American culture's technologically-stimulated interest in aural expression and experience; second, the new and self-assured "turn towards experience" being taken by a growing number of legal scholars from previously marginalized gender, racial, ethnic and religious groups which at least in the American context have demonstrated a particular respect for aurality; and third, the existence of a "fit" between the central tenets of critical jurisprudence and the supposed phenomenological biases of sound and hearing. The Conclusion of the article returns to the theme of reconfiguration and considers the future of both aural and visual legal metaphors in American legal discourse.

Gender and Technology: a Reader

Abstract: VOL 45 Despite, and perhaps because of, the rapid growth of literature on gender and technology over the past three decades, classroom instructors are still challenged to find a suitable book of readings to present a coherent segment of this work for students. Filling this gap is the objective of Gender and Technology: A Reader. To the seven articles drawn from the special issue of Technology and Culture on gender analysis and the history of technology published in January 1997, the editors have added several equally fine and representative articles to make up the fourteen chapters in the book. The original historiographic essay, "The Shoulders We Stand On," has been brought up to date to form an important coda to the collection. Since the articles were previously published in refereed journals or distinguished collections and have therefore been vetted as scholarly works, I will not evaluate them on this score. Rather, because its intent is a teaching tool, I will assess the book and its contributions in light of this aim. It focuses on the reciprocal relationship between gender and technology in the specific historic and cultural context of North America from 1850 to 1950, during the heyday of industrial capitalism. The book starts with definitions: technology as "people's ways of making and doing things" (p. 2), and gender as "not only a way to sort people . . . [but] also a way to assign power in particular contexts," which operates at the levels of "identity" "structures and institutions" and "in symbolic and representational ways" (p. 4). Exploring the major theme of "Interrogating Boundaries," the book is divided into four parts: the "Entwined Categories" of parts 1 and 2 on how gender and technology construct each other, and parts 3 and 4 on the "Industrial Junctions" of gender and technology as technological change takes place. Several articles illustrate the ways gender analysis not only questions gender boundaries themselves but also interrogates those of race, class, and ethnicity as these identities and power configurations intersect when humans engage in making, using, and shaping technologies. Focusing on technological knowledge, which demands the integration of the technical and social, Nina Lerman examines the technical education of school children in mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia. She finds not only the split between trades for boys and domestic-oriented subjects for girls but also racial separations within the sexual divisions: colored boys denied technical training and thus apprenticeship opportunities, colored girls slated for domestic service rather than housewifery in their own homes. Rebecca Herzig makes the use of race visible in the interwar period in her study of using x-rays for hair removal, as gendered and class standards prevail for hairless whiteness. For the meatpacking industry in the 1900s,