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Theoretical Reflections (theoretical + reflection)
Selected AbstractsFrom Antagonistic Autonomy to Relational Autonomy: A Theoretical Reflection from the Southern ConeLATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 1 2003Roberto Russell ABSTRACT The concept of autonomy has acquired a plurality of meanings in international relations; this article analyzes the distinct uses given to this term in Latin America and its relationship to theoretical contributions from outside the region. The authors propose a far-reaching reconceptualization of autonomy appropriate to Latin America's new circumstances in the global context. They argue that these new circumstances favor the shift from autonomy as traditionally defined to what they call relational autonomy, a construct based on contributions from classical political theory, political sociology, gender studies, social and philosophical psychology, and the theory of complex thought. [source] The Self-Referential European Polity, its Legal Context and Systemic Differentiation: Theoretical Reflections on the Emergence of the EU's Political and Legal AutopoiesisEUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 4 2009Jiri Priban It highlights the role of statehood in those debates and suggests moving beyond the constraints of institutionalist and constructivist perspectives by adopting specific notions from the theory of autopoietic social systems. The following part describes the EU political system as self-referential, functionally differentiated from the system of European law, and internally differentiated between European institutions and Member State governments. Although the Union transgresses its nation-state segmentation, the notions of statehood and democratic legitimacy continue to inform legal and political semantics of the EU and specific responses to the Union's systemic tensions, such as the policy of differentiated integration legislated by the flexibility clauses. The democratic deficit of instrumental legitimation justified by outcomes, the most recent example of which is the Lisbon Treaty, subsequently reveals the level of EU functional differentiation and the impossibility of fostering the ultimate construction of a normatively integrated and culturally united European polity. It shows a much more profound social dynamics of differentiation at the level of emerging European society,dynamics which do not adopt the concept of the European polity as an encompassing metaphor of this society, but makes it part of self-referential and self-limiting semantics of the functionally differentiated European political system. [source] ALL THIS HAPPENED, MORE OR LESS: WHAT A NOVELIST MADE OF THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN,HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 2 2009ANN RIGNEY ABSTRACT Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) was a popular and critical success when it first appeared, and has had a notable impact on popular perceptions of "the bombing of Dresden," although it has been criticized by historians because of its inaccuracy. This article analyzes the novel's quirky, comic style and its generic mixture of science fiction and testimony, showing how Vonnegut consistently used ingenuous understatement as a way of imaginatively engaging his readers with the horrors of war. The article argues that the text's aesthetics are closer to those of graphic novels than of realist narratives and that, accordingly, we can understand its cultural impact only by approaching it as a highly artificial linguistic performance with present-day appeal and contemporary relevance, and not merely by measuring the degree to which it gives a full and accurate mimesis of past events. The article uses the case of Vonnegut to advance a more general argument that builds on recent work in cultural memory studies: in order to understand the role that literature plays in shaping our understanding of history, it needs to be analyzed in its own terms and not as a mere derivative of historiography according to a "one model fits all" approach. Furthermore, we need to shift the emphasis from products to processes by considering both artistic and historiographical practices as agents in the ongoing circulation across different cultural domains of stories about the past. Theoretical reflection should account for the fact that historiography and the various arts play distinct roles in this cultural dynamics, and while they compete with one another, they also converge, bounce off one another, influence one another, and continuously beg to be different. [source] Embodiment of discrimination and overseas nurses' career progressionJOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 12 2007John Aggergaard Larsen PhD Aim and objectives., To examine empirically and in-depth how discriminatory attitudes and practices are experienced by overseas nurses and how the discrimination may affect their well-being and career progression and, furthermore, to apply the theoretical perspective of embodiment in understanding these processes. Background., The UK healthcare sector has, in recent years, relied on overseas-trained professionals to fill up vacancies in nursing and other professions. Research shows that overseas nurses claim that their UK colleagues, managers and patients express discriminatory, racist and xenophobic attitudes. Design and method., The paper provides an existential phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with two overseas nurses. The data are drawn from a study of overseas-trained healthcare workers' experiences working and living in the UK. The two cases have been purposively selected to provide an illumination and discussion of personal experiences with discrimination, how individuals may respond to these and how their professional career is affected. Findings., Discrimination towards migrant workers may, at times, be experienced as ,blatant racism' or, in more subtle forms, as ,aversive racism'. It is demonstrated how such discrimination may impact on the afflicted person's sense of self, suggesting a theoretical model of the embodiment of discrimination. Discrimination not only works at an interpersonal and institutional level, but is a form of ,symbolic violence' that may be internalized to affect the person's ,habitus'; it can be resisted through meaning-making activity that explains and hence objectifies and embodies the experience in a way that allows individuals to positively influence their situation through agency. Conclusion., This article details how social and institutionalized discrimination in the UK healthcare sector may be internalized by overseas workers and affects their professional careers. Relevance to clinical practice., The study allows a theoretical reflection on the damage inflicted by discrimination, and it may contribute to the eradication of discriminatory practices and the development of necessary support and monitoring mechanisms. [source] The Philosophy of Social Science: Metaphysical and EmpiricalPHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2007Francesco Guala Ontological debates have always been prominent in the philosophy of social science. Philosophers have typically conceived of such debates as pre-scientific attempts to reform social scientific practice, rather than as post-scientific reflections on a firm body of scientific knowledge. Two celebrated contemporary research programs in social ontology , collective intentionality and evolutionary game theory , also follow this approach. In this paper I illustrate their central elements and criticize their weak empirical foundations. I finish by reviewing some work that combines empirical evidence with theoretical reflection, and suggest that it constitutes the way forward in the philosophy of social science. [source] Entre la autonomía y la institucionalización: Dilemas del movimiento negro colombianoJOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2002Mauricio Pardo Among the various trends of the black movement in Colombia, with diverse claims, it is the peasant movement of the Pacific,whose territorial struggle has been presented as ethnic vindication,with the most initiative and the greatest accomplishments. The so-called "black communities" Law 70 of 1993, the result of the mobilization of heterogeneous black organizations, centers on the creation of collective territories in the Pacific, but has marginalized other aspects of the black movement and has caused it a decrease in political initiative, as well as considerable institutionalization. This, along with particular identitary proposals and organizing styles, has favored local organizations tied or aspiring to collective territories, but has also generated increasing fragmentation of other black organizations. Recently, armed conflict has burst violently into areas of rural black organizations. This article analizes this situation in the last decade, in light of theoretical reflections on identity, ethnicity, race, and social movements. [source] Multiple Sovereignty: On Europe's Self-Constitutionalization and Legal Self-ReferenceRATIO JURIS, Issue 1 2010This article focuses on theoretical reflections on sovereignty and constitutionalism in the context of the globalization and Europeanisation of the nation states, their politics, and legal systems. Starting from a critical assessment of the Kelsen-Schmitt polemic, the author claims that sovereignty needs to be analysed by the sociological method in order to disclose its current structural differentiation. The constitution of society may be imagined as the multitude of self-constituted and functionally differentiated social subsystems. The constitutional pluralism argument subsequently reconceptualizes sovereignty as socially differentiated and divided between specific subsystems. The EU's differentiated constitutional domain and the paradox of divided sovereignty are used as examples of profound structural and semantic changes in contemporary national and transnational societies. While the sovereign nation-state institutions have become marginalized in political structures of European societies, the self-constitutionalization of the functionally differentiated EU legal system proceeds by internalizing the concept of divided sovereignty and using it semantically as its mode of self-reference. [source] How I became a Jungian analystTHE JOURNAL OF ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2003Gustav Dreifuss Abstract This paper is a reflection on the significance of 80 years of my life and the 40 years of it I have spent working as a Jungian analyst in Europe and in Israel. If my Jewish identity and my experience of the tragic events of the Holocaust have profoundly influenced the course of my life, it has been my training as a Jungian analyst in Zürich that permitted me to establish a new relationship with the traditional Jewish symbols and created the possibility of a new way of experiencing what it means to be a Jew. This new understanding has in turn helped me both in my work with Holocaust survivors and victims of Israel's various wars and in my theoretical reflections on this subject. [source] Geomagnetism by the North Pole, anno 1769: The Magnetic Observations of Maximilian Hell during his Venus Transit ExpeditionCENTAURUS, Issue 2 2007Per Pippin Aspaas Hell's site of observation was Vardø in the remote northeastern corner of Norway. He had ambitions to present his journey and scientific results,which reached far beyond astronomy,in a grand work entitled Expeditio litteraria ad Polum arcticum. This work was never printed, although several fragments were published otherwise. Among the pieces not published were his geomagnetic observations. Hell's original manuscripts contain a considerable amount of declination readings as well as notes on instruments, practical procedures, and theoretical reflections involved in his work. In Vardø he set up a magnetic observatory, along with the astronomical one, and recorded, on an irregular schedule, the magnetic declination several times a day from April to June 1769. The records exhibit a clear signature of the diurnal variation as well as magnetic storms. Hell vigorously refuted contemporary suggestions of a connection between magnetic storms and Northern Lights. On the return voyage, a number of observations of magnetic declination along Norway were carried out, with a technique combining a gnomon with observations of the Sun's altitude with a quadrant. [source] | |||||||||||||