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Social Positioning (social + positioning)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences50%

Selected Abstracts

Points of View, Social Positioning and Intercultural Relations

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2010
GORDON SAMMUT
The challenge of intercultural relations has become an important issue in many societies. In spite of the claimed value of intercultural diversity, successful outcomes as predicted by the contact hypothesis are but one possibility; on occasions intercultural contact leads to intolerance and hostility. Research has documented that one key mediator of contact is perspective taking. Differences in perspective are significant in shaping perceptions of contact and reactions to it. The ability to take the perspective of the other and to understand it in its own terms is a necessary condition for successful intergroup outcomes. This paper sheds light on the processes involved in intercultural perspective taking by elaborating the notion of the point of view based on social representations theory. The point of view provides a theory of social positioning that can analyse cultural encounters between social actors, and identify the conditions for positive relations. Insights are drawn from a study of public views on the relative merits of science and religion, following a documentary by Richard Dawkins in which it was suggested that religion is a source of evil. The findings demonstrate that the point of view may be categorised according to a three-way taxonomy according to the extent to which it is open to another perspective. A point of view may be monological,closed to another's perspective entirely, dialogical,open to the possibility of another perspective while maintaining some percepts as unchallengeable, or metalogical,open to another's perspective based on the other's frame of reference. [source]

"They Took Out the Wrong Context": Uses of Time-Space in the Practice of Positioning

ETHOS, Issue 2 2004
Kevin M. Leander
Time-space is not merely a backdrop to social interaction; rather, individuals use particular forms of time-space to discursively position themselves and others. This article analyzes how several adolescents interpreted a previous classroom interaction, which was rife with social positioning. Responding to a videotape of this interaction, the adolescents were in general agreement that one of them ("Latayna") acted "ghetto." An analysis of the interview data reveals how participants use typified forms of time-space, or particular chronotopes, in the practice of positioning. These chronotopes index the relative changeability of the social world, the possibilities of individual agency, and the relations of social and individual development. The analysis also makes visible how individual actors, including Latanya, creatively and strategically shape subjectivities by transforming and laminating diverse chronotopes. [source]

Celebrating Ourselves: The Family Reunion Rituals of African-Caribbean Transnational Families

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 3 2004
Constance R. Sutton
In the past decade, family reunions have become an important ritualized event among Afro-Caribbean transnational migrants. Dispersed across a large number of North Atlantic countries, Afro-Caribbeans have turned to organizing events specifically designed to reunite kinfolk. The rituals constitute a celebration of family as a distinct social group with a kin-based, lineage-like identity. Re-creating kin ties among those spread across different nations and transmitting kin-based connections to their offspring are the main incentives for holding these rituals. In this article I describe three different recent family reunions, one held in Barbados, one in Grenada, and one in Trinidad and Barbados. I analyse the specific forms these rituals take, relate their differences from the social positioning of the core members of the kin groups and discuss the signifying practices of the reunions for maintaining Caribbean family connections in the diaspora. Finally, I raise questions about how the kin-based identities constructed in the reunion rituals intersect with race/class, ethnic and national identities. [source]

Points of View, Social Positioning and Intercultural Relations

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2010
GORDON SAMMUT
The challenge of intercultural relations has become an important issue in many societies. In spite of the claimed value of intercultural diversity, successful outcomes as predicted by the contact hypothesis are but one possibility; on occasions intercultural contact leads to intolerance and hostility. Research has documented that one key mediator of contact is perspective taking. Differences in perspective are significant in shaping perceptions of contact and reactions to it. The ability to take the perspective of the other and to understand it in its own terms is a necessary condition for successful intergroup outcomes. This paper sheds light on the processes involved in intercultural perspective taking by elaborating the notion of the point of view based on social representations theory. The point of view provides a theory of social positioning that can analyse cultural encounters between social actors, and identify the conditions for positive relations. Insights are drawn from a study of public views on the relative merits of science and religion, following a documentary by Richard Dawkins in which it was suggested that religion is a source of evil. The findings demonstrate that the point of view may be categorised according to a three-way taxonomy according to the extent to which it is open to another perspective. A point of view may be monological,closed to another's perspective entirely, dialogical,open to the possibility of another perspective while maintaining some percepts as unchallengeable, or metalogical,open to another's perspective based on the other's frame of reference. [source]

Imagined lives and modernist chronotopes in Mexican nonmigrant discourse

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010
HILARY PARSONS DICK
ABSTRACT The globalization literature spotlights the way that the experiences of transnational actors are refracted through lives inhabitable elsewhere. In this article, I examine this process in spoken discourse about U.S.-bound migration produced by nonmigrants in the Mexican city of Uriangato. This talk is organized around a "modernist chronotope" that pits "progress" against "tradition," producing images of space,time grafted onto images of persons, or social personae. I show that acts of position taking vis-à-vis these social personae are fundamentally expressed through the ways speakers deploy the modernist chronotope and, thus, become emplotted in its imaginative sociology,a practice that constructs speakers as certain gender and class types. [discourse, chronotope, transnational migration, modernity, social positioning, gender and socioeconomic class] [source]

From personal reflection to social positioning: the development of a transformational model of professional education in midwifery

NURSING INQUIRY, Issue 4 2002
Diane Phillips
A transformational model of professional identity formation, anchored and globalized in workplace conversations, is advanced. Whilst the need to theorize the aims and methods of clinical education has been served by the techno-rational platform of ,reflective practice', this platform does not provide an adequate psychological tool to explore the dynamics of social episodes in professional learning and this led us to positioning theory. Positioning theory is one such appropriate tool in which individuals metaphorically locate themselves within discursive action in everyday conversations to do with personal positioning, institutional practices and societal rhetoric. This paper develops the case for researching social episodes in clinical education through professional conversations where midwifery students, in practice settings, are encouraged to account for their moment-by-moment interactions with their preceptors/midwives and university mentors. It is our belief that the reflection elaborated by positioning theory should be considered as the new epistemology for professional education where professional conversations are key to transformative learning processes for persons and institutions. [source]