Theorizing

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences


Selected Abstracts


Curricular Theorizing From the Periphery

CURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 5 2008
ANGELINA WEENIE
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to propose theory and knowledge from the peripheral space. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary perspectives of curriculum, the intent of this article is to make explicit the story of curriculum, and the influence of poststructuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial paradigms on the development of Aboriginal curriculum. This article will explore the philosophical and ontological basis of Aboriginal knowledge and its implications for curricular theory. [source]


Masculinity and the Biographical Meanings of Management Theory: Lyndall Urwick and the Making of Scientific Management in Inter-war Britain

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 2 2001
Michael Roper
This article explores the biographical shaping of management theory. Using the British management theorist Lyndall Urwick (1891,1983) as a case study, it argues that existing understandings of the history of management studies are limited by their lack of attention to the emotional a priori of theory production. For men such as Frederick Taylor or Urwick, the work of composing management theory for a public audience was intimately connected to events and experiences in the private life. Theorizing addressed emotional dilemmas even while it strove to construct a separation between the personal and the organizational. Management theories are not only historically, socially or discursively constructed, but can be read in terms of the evidence they provide about individual subjectivity. Psychoanalytic concepts can help illuminate such relations. Theorizing can be seen as a form of play: as something which, in D.W. Winnicott's terms, takes place in the space between the psychic reality of the ,me' and the external world of the ,not me'. The ,classical' administrative theory represented by Taylor, Fayol and Urwick sought to create organizational structures which could stand apart from, and allow the management of, individual personalities. It simultaneously insisted on the status of theory as the ,not me'; that is, as a product which was not shaped by personal experience, but which constituted objective knowledge. The illusion of theory as a largely external, social product persists in much management and organization studies today. This article challenges that social determinism, first, by showing how Urwick's theories addressed issues of separation and intimacy, and second, by placing Urwick's work in the context of his relations with women. [source]


Critical Theorizing: Enhancing Theoretical Rigor in Family Research

JOURNAL OF FAMILY THEORY & REVIEW, Issue 3 2009
Stan J. Knapp
Theory performs vital descriptive, sensitizing, integrative, explanatory, and value functions in the generation of knowledge about families. Yet theory and research can also simultaneously misconceive, desensitize, misdirect, misinterpret, and devalue. Overcoming the degenerative potentialities of theory and research requires attention to critical theorizing, a joint process of (a) critically examining the explicit and implicit assumptions of theory and research and (b) using dialogical theoretical practices. I draw upon the work of John Stuart Mill to argue that critical and dialogical theorizing is a vital and necessary practice in the production of understandings of family phenomena that are more fully scientific and empirical. A brief examination of behavioral research on marital interaction illustrates the importance of critical theorizing. [source]


Theorizing through the New World?

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 4 2006
Not really
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism

THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2009
Zhang Juan
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Creative Management: A Predicted Development from Research into Creativity and Management

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2007
Fangqi Xu
A proposal is made for the establishment of a conceptual domain of Creative Management by fusion of two related bodies of knowledge, that of management studies and creativity. Through an examination of examples from around the world, we show how Creative Management is appearing in embryonic form as a global possibility, emerging from and enriching the predominantly American contributions of earlier stages. We suggest that such a development will take management studies forward from its historical trajectory, through the global convergence of organizational theories and practices. The proposed synthesis of creativity and management indicates the possibilities of a new stage in management incorporating humanistic, socio-technical and knowledge management components. Collectively, the conceptual shift is towards what we have labelled Toyotaoism, in acknowledgement of practices and theorizing developed from the integration of Western and Eastern belief systems and theories in action. [source]


A Design Theory Approach to Building Strategic Network-Based Customer Service Systems,

DECISION SCIENCES, Issue 3 2009
M. Kathryn Brohman
ABSTRACT Customer service is a key component of a firm's value proposition and a fundamental driver of differentiation and competitive advantage in nearly every industry. Moreover, the relentless coevolution of service opportunities with novel and more powerful information technologies has made this area exciting for academic researchers who can contribute to shaping the design and management of future customer service systems. We engage in interdisciplinary research,across information systems, marketing, and computer science,in order to contribute to the service design and service management literature. Grounded in the design-science perspective, our study leverages marketing theory on the service-dominant logic and recent findings pertaining to the evolution of customer service systems. Our theorizing culminates with the articulation of four design principles. These design principles underlie the emerging class of customer service systems that, we believe, will enable firms to better compete in an environment characterized by an increase in customer centricity and in customers' ability to self-serve and dynamically assemble the components of solutions that fit their needs. In this environment, customers retain control over their transactional data, as well as the timing and mode of their interactions with firms, as they increasingly gravitate toward integrated complete customer solutions rather than single products or services. Guided by these design principles, we iterated through, and evaluated, two instantiations of the class of systems we propose, before outlining implications and directions for further cross-disciplinary scholarly research. [source]


DOES ETHICAL THEORY HAVE A PLACE IN POST-KOHLBERGIAN MORAL PSYCHOLOGY?

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 2 2010
Bruce Maxwell
Philosophers tend to assume that theoretical frameworks in psychology suffer from conceptual confusion and that any influence that philosophy might have on psychology should be positive. Going against this grain, Dan Lapsley and Darcia Narváez attribute the Kohlbergian paradigm's current state of marginalization within psychology to Lawrence Kohlberg's use of ethical theory in his model of cognitive moral development. Post-Kohlbergian conceptions of moral psychology, they advance, should be wary of theoretical constructs derived from folk morality, refuse philosophical starting points, and seek integration with literatures in psychology, not philosophy. In this essay, Bruce Maxwell considers and rejects Lapsley and Narváez's diagnosis. The Kohlbergian paradigm's restricted conception of the moral domain is the result of a selective reading of one tendency in ethical theorizing (Kantianism). The idea that moral psychology may find shelter from normative criticism by avoiding ethics-derived models overlooks the deeper continuity between "ethical theory" and "psychological theory." The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case conceptual confusion and methods of proof.) The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.1 [source]


EDUCATING COMMUNAL AGENTS: BUILDING ON THE PERSPECTIVISM OF G.H. MEAD

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 4 2007
Jack Martin
In this essay, Jack Martin aims to remedy such oversight by interpreting Mead's social-psychological and educational theorizing of selfhood and agency through the lenses of the perspectival realism Mead developed in the last decade of his life. This interpretation understands education as concerned with the cultivation and coordination of cultural, societal, interpersonal, and personal perspectives. Within this framework, communal agency is understood as a self-interpreting, self-determining capability of persons. This agentive capability derives from immersion and participation with others within sociocultural practices and perspectives, but also includes reactivity to those same practices and perspectives. The education of communal agents as envisioned here emphasizes the social nature of education, students' experience and development, and the critical role of the teacher as a mediator between student development and social process. Such an education is grounded in the immediate experiences and perspectives of learners, but increasingly assists learners to move beyond their own experiences through engaged interaction with others and with resources for acquiring broader, more organized perspectives on themselves, others, and the world. [source]


Bruner's Search for Meaning: A Conversation between Psychology and Anthropology

ETHOS, Issue 1 2008
Cheryl Mattingly
The articles in this special issue situate Bruner's meaning-centered approach to psychology and his groundbreaking work on narrative in the broader context of the developmental trajectory of both of fields of inquiry. Bruner's work has been enormously influential in the subfields of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, especially because of his important contributions to our understanding of the intimate relationship between culture and mind. We examine Bruner's past and ongoing engagement with such luminary figures as Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Alfred Kroeber, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz to highlight points of convergence and tension between his version of cultural psychology and contemporary theorizing and practice in psychological anthropology. We also review his practical and theoretical contributions to the fields of medicine, law, and education. [Jerome Bruner, cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, meaning, narrative, mind, culture] [source]


Reinforcement sensitivity theory at work: punishment sensitivity as a dispositional source of job-related stress

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 7 2007
Dimitri van der Linden
Abstract Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) describes two important personality constructs; sensitivity to reward and sensitivity to punishment. In two studies, we examine whether these constructs can be considered dispositions to work stress. Results of Study 1 (N,=,105 employees in different occupations) indicated that employees with strong punishment sensitivity reacted more strongly to work stressors than others. This idea was confirmed in a longitudinal design in Study 2. Reward sensitivity was unrelated to stress in both studies. Overall, results strongly support the idea that punishment sensitivity is a dispositional source of work stress. Results further confirm that RST and its derived personality measures can contribute to theorizing about personality,environment interactions in a highly relevant daily setting, namely the working environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 7 2009
Thomas W. Schubert
Adaptive action is the function of cognition. It is constrained by the properties of evolved brains and bodies. An embodied perspective on social psychology examines how biological constrains give expression to human function in socially situated contexts. Key contributions in social psychology have highlighted the interface between the body and cognition, but theoretical development in social psychology and embodiment research remain largely disconnected. The current special issue reflects on recent developments in embodiment research. Commentaries from complementary perspectives connect them to social psychological theorizing. The contributions focus on the situatedness of social cognition in concrete interactions, and the implementation of cognitive processes in modal instead of amodal representations. The proposed perspectives are highly compatible, suggesting that embodiment can serve as a unifying perspective for psychology. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Marital Research in the 20th Century and a Research Agenda for the 21st Century

FAMILY PROCESS, Issue 2 2002
John M. Gottman Ph.D.
In this article we review the advances made in the 20th century in studying marriages. Progress moved from a self-report, personality-based approach to the study of interaction in the 1950s, following the advent of general systems theory. This shift led, beginning in the 1970s, to the rapid development of marital research using a multimethod approach. The development of more sophisticated observational measures in the 1970s followed theorizing about family process that was begun in the decade of the 1950s. New techniques for observation, particularly the study of affect and the merging of synchronized data streams using observational and self-report perceptual data, and the use of sequential and time-series analyses produced new understandings of process and power. Research in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the realization of many secular changes in the American family, including the changing role of women, social science's discovery of violence and incest in the family, the beginning of the study of cultural variation in marriages, the expansion of the measurement of marital outcomes to include longevity, health, and physiology (including the immune system), and the study of co-morbidities that accompany marital distress. A research agenda for the 21st century is then described. [source]


Regularized Intergovernmentalism: France,Germany and Beyond (1963,2009)

FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2010
Ulrich Krotz
Regularized intergovernmentalism refers to a distinct kind of foreign policy practice that connects and intertwines foreign policy processes in particular ways. This paper puts forth a concept to properly capture and expose such distinctive foreign policy realities characterizing certain periods and places. With this concept, the article systematically scrutinizes the intergovernmental fabric of bilateral Franco,German relations from 1963 to 2009. The characteristic features of Franco,German regularized intergovernmentalism represent a crucial foreign policy connection, foundational for European affairs of the past half century and a defining feature of Europe's post-war order and regional governance. Exploring key aspects of what it is that links France and Germany in particular ways, this paper offers a historically deeply grounded constitutive analysis. Based on its constitutive inquiries, the papers points at new possibilities of causal theorizing and explores some of regularized intergovernmentalism's hypothesized effects and limitations. Franco,German intergovernmental affairs may be the most developed instance of this practice. But regularized bilateral intergovernmentalism is not a Franco,German idiosyncrasy. Rather, it is an important and apparently growing approach to structuring foreign policy conduct, and seems an increasingly prominent aspect of how the world is organized. [source]


Resistance Is Not Futile: Liberating Captain Janeway from the Masculine-Feminine Dualism of Leadership

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 4 2004
Michèle A. BowringArticle first published online: 10 JUN 200
. . . the boundary between science-fiction and social reality is an optical illusion' (Haraway, 1990, p. 191) My underlying purpose in this article is to uncover the way in which research on leadership has been constrained by a reliance on the categories male-female and/or masculine-feminine for theorizing and for empirical work. I argue that both gender and leadership are caught within what Judith Butler calls the heterosexual matrix and that this has significant repercussions on leaders and leadership discourse. I use the character of Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager as a case study. I begin by analysing her leadership on the television series. I then perform a similar analysis of Janeway as she is represented in a text that subverts her gender by queering her character. I compare the two Janeways and the effect that the construction of each one's gender has on her leadership. In the conclusion I discuss ways in which we can use this analysis to move towards fluidity in the theorizing and practice of both gender and leadership. [source]


Gender and New Public Management: Reconstituting Academic Subjectivities

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 4 2002
Robyn Thomas
This article is located within the context of British Higher Education. It examines the ,radical reforms' of New Public Management (NPM) (marketization and managerialism) in the management of university organizations. The article has two main aims. First, to explore the extent to which NPM initiatives have influenced individual women academics's day,to,day experiences of the gendered academy and their professional identities. Second, to understand individuals' active responses to NPM to develop theorizing of individual resistance in public service organizations. Adopting a Foucauldian feminist framework, it is suggested that the introduction of NPM presents a site for political struggle for women academics. The article explores the gendered nature of NPM, to determine how, in three individual universities, different women academics have responded to the ,managerialist challenge'. Finally, the article focuses on the ways in which different women academics might accommodate, resist, or transform the discourses of NPM, the factors facilitating this, and the material outcomes. [source]


The ,New War' on Terror, Cosmopolitanism and the ,Just War' Revival

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2008
Helen Dexter
The post-Cold War era has seen the return of the ,good war' and a move away from legal pacifism , the control of war through international law , to ,just war' theorizing. This article is concerned with the re-legitimization of warfare witnessed within the post-Cold War security paradigm that is being justified via humanitarian claims. It aims to highlight the difficult relationship that has developed since the commencement of the Bush administration's ,war on terror' between the cosmopolitan beliefs of those who have long argued for legal and legitimate humanitarian intervention, and the cosmopolitanism being espoused by the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration and the Project for the New American Century. [source]


Four methods for completing the conceptual development phase of applied theory building research in HRD

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2007
Julia Storberg-Walker
The purpose of this article is to describe four methods for completing the conceptual development phase of theory building research for single or multiparadigm research. The four methods selected for this review are (1) Weick's method of "theorizing as disciplined imagination" (1989); (2) Whetten's method of "modeling as theorizing" (2002); (3) Chermack's method of "scenario planning as theorizing" (2006); and (4) Storberg- Walker's method of "five components of conceptual development" (2007b). Each method is described in detail with a goal of providing readers with four alternative ways of approaching and completing the conceptual development phase. We present the methods from more to less abstract, beginning with a method illuminating the imaginative aspects of conceptual development and ending with a method that illuminates specific and interdependent cognitive tasks involved with conceptual development. These four methods cover a broad spectrum of ideas on how to best complete this most challenging component of theory building. [source]


Standpoint Theory and the Possibility of Justice: A Lyotardian Critique of the Democratization of Knowledge

HYPATIA, Issue 4 2007
MARGRET GREBOWICZArticle first published online: 9 JAN 200
Grebowicz argues from the perspective of Jean-François Lyotard's critique of deliberative democracy that the project of democratizing knowledge may bring us closer to terror than to justice. The successful formulation of a critical standpoint requires that we figure the political as itself a contested site, and incorporate this into our theorizing about the role of dissent in the production of knowledges. This essay contrasts Lyotard's notion of the differend with Chantal Mouffe's agonistic model. [source]


Inequality and Theorizing in International Relations: The Case for Subaltern Realism

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2002
Mohammed Ayoob
I argue that the dominant paradigms in IR fail to explain adequately two of the central issues in the international system: the origins of the majority of conflicts and the behavior of the majority of states. These paradigms fail because they formulate generalizations from data drawn from a restricted universe and because they lack historical depth. Both these flaws are related to inequality in the arena of the production of knowledge in IR, which in turn is a function of the inequality in material capabilities in the international system. A supplementary, if not alternative, perspective is needed to correct this situation and fill this gap. We can fashion such a perspective by drawing upon classical realist thought, the historical sociology of state formation, and the normative perspicacity of the English School. Combining their insights and applying them to the analysis of Third World conflict patterns and the external and domestic behavior of Third World states is likely to provide more satisfactory explanations for the origins of the majority of contemporary conflicts. Such an exercise will also shed light on the crucial variables that determine the behavior of the majority of states in the Third World. Moving postcolonial states into the mainstream of theorizing in IR will also help reduce the impact of inequality on the field and open new vistas for theoretically informed scholarly research. I also call for pluralism in international relations theorizing rather than a search for universally applicable law,like generalizations divorced from historical and social contexts. [source]


Optimum Currency Areas and Key Currencies: Mundell I versus Mundell II

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 4 2004
Ronald I. McKinnon
The East Asian economies are increasingly integrated in trade and direct investment. More than 50 per cent of their foreign trade is with each other. Both the high growth and level of trade integration is similar to what the western European economies achieved in the 1960s. So, in the new millennium, the inevitable question arises: is East Asia also an optimum currency area (OCA)? Despite the apparent success of EMU, many writers familiar with the East Asian scene think not. Taking the seminal papers of Robert Mundell as the starting point, this article first analyses traditional theorizing on the pros and cons of international monetary integration and then suggests new approaches to the problem of international risk-sharing in OCAs. [source]


Formalism, Behavioral Realism and the Interdisciplinary Challenge in Sociological Theory

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2009
OMAR LIZARDO
In this paper, I argue that recent sociological theory has become increasingly bifurcated into two mutually incompatible styles of theorizing that I label formalist and behavioral-realist. Formalism favors mathematization and proposes an instrumentalist ontology of abstract processes while behavioral-realist theory takes at its basis the "real" physical individual endowed with concrete biological, cognitive and neurophysiological capacities and constraints and attempts to derive the proper conceptualization of social behavior from that basis. Formalism tends to lead toward a conceptually independent sociology that in principle requires only minimal reference to the empirical and ontological storehouse of other disciplines, while behavioral-realist theory leads to an interdisciplinary sociology that can be located within a hierarchy of behavioral sciences, leading to questions regarding the relationship between sociology and other disciplines as well as issues of transdisciplinary unification and possible interdisciplinary reduction. I explore the consequences of this split for the project of explanatory sociological theory within the context of how it has manifested itself in sociological network theory and social psychology. I close with a critique and assessment of formalist tendencies in sociological theorizing. [source]


Social perceptions of cancer and their impacts: implications for nursing practice arising from the literature

JOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 3 2000
Jean Flanagan MSc BSc RGN RNT
Social perceptions of cancer and their impacts: implications for nursing practice arising from the literature At the millennium cancer still holds a special mystique and is imbued with socio-cultural meanings, which extend far beyond the rational, scientific and biological facts of the disease. Excessive fear and dread may cause family and friends to display avoidance or overprotective behaviours to the ill person, who may subsequently perceive dissatisfaction with social support. Drawing on a literature review this paper explores the impact of cancer on social relationships. Interpersonal strain in relationship is often explained in the stigmatization of the illness and this concept is explored through contemporary social theorizing. These findings have direct implications for nursing practice where the goal of care is to enhance the support relationship. [source]


Workforce Segregation and the Gender Wage Gap: Is "Women's" Work Valued as Highly as "Men's"?,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2008
Christine Alksnis
This study focuses on gender segregation and its implications for the salaries assigned to male- and female-typed jobs. We used a between-subjects design to examine whether participants would assign different pay to 3 types of jobs wherein the actual responsibilities and duties carried out by men and women were the same, but the job was situated in either a traditionally masculine or traditionally feminine domain. We found pay differentials between jobs defined as "male" and "female," which suggest that gender-based discrimination, arising from occupational stereotyping and the devaluation of the work typically done by women, influences salary allocation. The ways in which the results fit with contemporary theorizing about sexism and with the shifting standards model (Biernat, 1995, 2003) are discussed. [source]


A neuropsychological dimension for anchoring effects

JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DECISION MAKING, Issue 5 2005
John D. Jasper
Abstract Previous research has shown that strength of handedness predicts differences in sensory illusions, Stroop interference, episodic memory, and beliefs about body image and the origin of species. Recent evidence also suggests handedness differences in the susceptibility to information framing and persuasion. The present paper extends this line of work to decision anchoring effects. In Experiment 1, 131 introductory psychology students responded to 12 real-world knowledge questions after being given random, uninformative high or low anchors. Results indicated that "strong-handers" showed larger anchoring effects than "mixed-handers." In Experiment 2, 89 introductory psychology students responded to 6 real-world knowledge questions in a modified, two-step anchoring task in which participants were given a credible source for the anchored information and asked to give pre- and post-anchor estimates. In contrast to Experiment 1, results revealed that mixed- and strong-handers were affected similarly by anchoring. In Experiment 3, 158 students were asked to estimate the answer to one of two versions of 8! (8,×,7,×,6,×,5,×,4,×,3,×,2,×,1 or 1,×,2,×,3,×,4,×,5,×,6,×,7,×,8),a multiplication problem in which the high and low anchors are inherently informative. Here, mixed-handers showed larger anchoring effects than strong-handers. A theory centered around the notion of hemispheric specialization and the communication between the two halves of the brain as well as arguments about the informativeness of anchors, metacognition, and recent theorizing in the anchoring literature are used to account for these data. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Reevaluating the distinction between Axis I and Axis II disorders: The case of borderline personality disorder

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 12 2005
Anthony C. Ruocco
The division between Axis I clinical syndromes and Axis II personality disorders is a long-standing distinction based primarily on three guiding principles: phenomenology, cause, and course. Clinical syndromes were generally thought to be characterized by transient symptoms with biological causes and an unstable course; personality disorders were supposed by many to be characterized by long-standing personality traits, whose roots were primarily psychological, and a stable and unremitting course. Borderline personality disorder (BPD), however, is a condition characterized by distinct clinical symptoms, varied causes, and a relatively unstable course. Past theorizing about the distinction between Axis I and Axis II disorders is presented in light of recent empirical evidence refuting the rationalization for the separation of personality disorders and clinical syndromes using BPD as a means for comparison. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol 61: 1509,1523, 2005. [source]


Coping With Uncertainties in Advance Care Planning

JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Issue 3 2001
Stephen C. Hines
This essay extends problematic integration theory and related theories of uncertainty management to communication about serious illness and death. These extensions (a) note that theorizing must focus on multiple, interrelated uncertainties rather than a single such uncertainty; (b) explain how communication with others often problematizes efforts to cope with illness-related uncertainties; and (c) identify specific factors that may influence how persons choose to cope with these uncertainties. The essay describes implications for ongoing efforts to improve communication with persons nearing death. Specifically, they point to 5 incorrect assumptions that limit the effectiveness of current efforts to encourage persons to talk about their end-of-life preferences with others in a process referred to as advance care planning and then suggest concrete changes derived from this framework that can improve the advance care planning process and enhance the quality of end-of- life care. [source]


Inspirations and aspirations of exemplarian action research

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2003
Harry Coenen
Abstract As a methodology aimed to focus social scientific theorizing on actual social problems and examine new directions and guidelines for emancipation and empowerment, action research is based on a joint learning process of researchers and researched. The model of exemplarian action research tries to capture how this learning process can develop in practice. Before describing this model and its emancipatory aspirations, the authors sketch the theoretical inspirations of the model of exemplarian action research. They then go on to focus on the relationship between researcher and the researched party, particularly on the principles of reciprocal adequacy and explicitness which are necessary both from an epistemologically and critical point of view. The article concludes by outlining some aspects in which exemplarian action research can be distinguished from pragmatic action research and by emphasizing that it does not stand for a post-modern position, but for a reflexive attitude that hopes to contribute to bringing us beyond a half-modern society. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Communication Privacy Management Theory: What Do We Know About Family Privacy Regulation?

JOURNAL OF FAMILY THEORY & REVIEW, Issue 3 2010
Sandra Petronio
For families, managing private information is challenging. Family members reveal too much, they allow more privacy access to outsiders than others desire, parents attempt to negotiate Internet disclosures with their teens, and family health issues often change the way private information is defined altogether. The complexities of privacy regulation call for a systematic way to grasp how privacy management operates in families. This article presents the evidenced-based theory of communication privacy management (CPM) and corresponding research on family privacy regulation that provides a road map to understand the multifaceted nature of managing private information (Petronio, 2002). The article discusses contributions of CPM to conceptualizing privacy in meaningful ways, along with current research trends and future directions for CPM research and theorizing. [source]


Critical Theorizing: Enhancing Theoretical Rigor in Family Research

JOURNAL OF FAMILY THEORY & REVIEW, Issue 3 2009
Stan J. Knapp
Theory performs vital descriptive, sensitizing, integrative, explanatory, and value functions in the generation of knowledge about families. Yet theory and research can also simultaneously misconceive, desensitize, misdirect, misinterpret, and devalue. Overcoming the degenerative potentialities of theory and research requires attention to critical theorizing, a joint process of (a) critically examining the explicit and implicit assumptions of theory and research and (b) using dialogical theoretical practices. I draw upon the work of John Stuart Mill to argue that critical and dialogical theorizing is a vital and necessary practice in the production of understandings of family phenomena that are more fully scientific and empirical. A brief examination of behavioral research on marital interaction illustrates the importance of critical theorizing. [source]