The Spatial and Temporal Constitution of Social Action: A Critical Reading of Giddens

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Storper
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Inconsistent Theories

A number of social theorists have attempted to elaborate poststructuralist analytics that capture the dialectics of social structure and human agency. Giddens proposes a ‘general theory’, centered on the notion of ‘structuration’. He is particularly important to geography because he suggests that the spatiality of social practices belongs at the center of social theory and historical analysis. Systems of social practices are defined by their time–space characteristics. There are problems in the corpus of Giddens's work that require attention, however, before such a theory can be fully viable. These include: Giddens's derogation of intentional action in favor of practical knowledge; his notion that structure is ‘instantiated’; his concept of power; his treatment of material resources; and his lack of attention to discursive strategies. From an examination of these areas of Giddens's work, it can be seen that he advances several, inconsistent, theories of social change. In a reinvigorated theoretical human geography, based on the analysis of interaction in time and space, these problem areas must be tackled.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Nisenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Fundamental Tension

The concluding chapter draws on the story of Rosenzweig’s near conversion to Christianity and return to Judaism to explain why, for Kant and his heirs, what is at issue in reason’s conflict with itself is our ability to affirm both the value of the world and of human action in the world. The chapter explains why Rosenzweig came to view the conflict of reason as the manifestation of a more fundamental tension between one’s selfhood and one’s worldliness, which could only be dissolved by understanding human action in the world as the means by which God is both cognized and partly realized. To make Rosenzweig’s ideas more accessible, the chapter compares them with contemporary interpretations of Kant’s views on the nature of practical knowledge and (intentional) action. It also shows how the book’s take on the issues that shaped the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism can help us see that the conflict of reason can be regarded as the underlying concern that recent competing interpretations of this period share.

Non-violent revolutions are believed to take place: A Discourse-Historical analysis of the Armenian Velvet Revolution in Armenian news media

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132110177
Author(s):  
Shushan Azatyan ◽  
Zeinab Mohammad Ebrahimi ◽  
Yadollah Mansouri
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Velvet Revolution ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

The Velvet Revolution of Armenia, which took place in 2018, was an important event in the history of Armenia and changed the government peacefully by means of large demonstrations, rallies and marches. This historic event was covered by Armenian news media. Our goal here was to do a Discourse-Historical Analysis of the Armenian Velvet Revolution as covered by two Armenian websites: armenpress.am-the governmental website and 168.am-the non-governmental website. In our analysis we identified how the lexicon related to the Armenian Velvet Revolution was negotiated and legitimized by these media, and which discursive strategies were applied. We concluded that ‘Armenpress’ paid more attention to the government’s speeches, discussions, meetings and tried to impose the opinion of the government upon the people. In contrast, ‘168’ tried to present itself as an independent website with a neutral attitude toward the Velvet Revolution but, in reality, as we can conclude from the negative opinions about the Velvet Revolution in the coverage of ‘168’, it also represented the government’s interests. There was also a discursive struggle over the exact meaning of ‘revolution’ and the sense of ‘velvet’ in politics and the academic field that was to some extent introduced by these media.

scholarly journals Reconciling Practical Knowledge with Self-Deception

Mind ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 128 (512) ◽  
pp. 1205-1225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
Correct Description ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Do So

Abstract Is it impossible for a person to do something intentionally without knowing that she is doing it? The phenomenon of self-deceived agency might seem to show otherwise. Here the agent is not (at least in a straightforward sense) lying, yet disavows a correct description of her intentional action. This disavowal might seem expressive of ignorance. However, I show that the self-deceived agent does know what she's doing. I argue that we should understand the factors that explain self-deception as masking rather than negating the practical knowledge characteristic of intentional action. This masking takes roughly the following form: when we are deceiving ourselves about what we are intentionally doing, we don't think about our action because it's painful to do so.

“Uma revolução democrática é sempre uma revolução inacabada” — or — “A democratic revolution must always remain unfinished”

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filipa Perdigão Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Democratic Revolution ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach ◽  
Ideological Tensions

This article analyses the discursive construction of collective memories and the function of commemorative events for national identity. It focuses on how the 30th anniversary of the Portuguese 1974 revolution was portrayed in the government’s Programme of Action issued for the 2004 commemorations and in forty-three newspaper opinion articles also published in 2004. The 1974 revolution ended a 48-year right-wing dictatorship and has shaped subsequent historical events since the 1970s. When the Programme of Action changed the 1974 slogan ‘April is revolution’ into ‘April is evolution’, the written press responded by conducting a debate on this reframing. Using the Discourse-Historical Approach in CDA as the analytical framework, this paper highlights the discursive strategies on which the government’s manifesto was built and explores the opinion articles’ ongoing political and ideological tensions over the revolution, its commemorations, and how it paved the way into Europe, by describing the main macro-discursive strategies and raising issues regarding the (mis)representation of social actors and social action.

scholarly journals A pragmatic critique of the conception of everyday praxis within Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 423-443
Author(s):  
Srdjan Prodanovic
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Comparative Advantages

This paper tries to critically analyse Jeffrey Alexander?s cultural sociology. In the first part of the paper I will examine Alexander?s conception of hermeneutical structuralism which argues that conventional systemic sociology and richness of experience found in everyday praxis can be reconciled. In the next section I will provide a critique of this kind of approach to social theory and maintain that Alexander?s sociology is, in principle, reductionist regarding everyday life. In addition, I will also point out some of the comparative advantages that pragmatically oriented theory has in the attempt of integrating theoretical and practical knowledge. In the final section of the paper, I will try to illustrate some of the major shortcomings of Alexander?s sociology on the concrete example of advances in computer technology.

scholarly journals Microarchaeology, Materiality and Social Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Per Cornell ◽  
Fredrik Fahlander
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Social Totality ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Social Entities ◽  
Material Evidence

In this paper we propose an operative social theory that eliminates the need for a pre-defined regional context or spatio-temporal social entities like social system, culture, society or ethnic group. The archaeological object in a microarchaeological approach is not a closed and homogeneous social totality, but rather the structurating practices, the regulative actions operating in a field ofhumans and things. In order to address these issues more systematically, we discuss social action, materialities and the constitution of archaeological evidence. Sartre's concept of serial action implies that materialities and social agency are integrated elements in the structuration process. We suggest that such patterns of action can be partially retrieved from the fragmented material evidence studied by the archaeologist.

Practical Knowledge

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hunter
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Bodily Sensation ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Philosophical Questions

A person typically knows what she is doing when she does something intentionally, and she usually knows this without having to observe herself. This so-called practical knowledge raises many philosophical questions. Does intentional action require practical knowledge and, if so, what is the strength of this requirement? What is it about intentional action that requires it, since a person can be doing something unintentionally without knowing about it? What is the source or ground of this knowledge? How is it related to observation, bodily sensation, and proprioception? How is a person’s practical knowledge connected to the reasons she has for acting and to practical reasoning more generally? In what sense, if any, is a person’s practical knowledge the “cause” of what it understands, as Anscombe famously claimed? While the notion of practical knowledge was central to the theory of action in the middle decades of the 20th century, it lost this place in the 1960s. But the last ten years has seen a renewed interest in the notion. This article aims to chart both the early debates and the recent discussions of practical knowledge. While it organizes the literature according to certain questions and topics, other ways to organize the literature are possible and nearly all of the texts would fit equally well under several headings.

Phantasying, How to Get Out of Oneself and Yet to Remain Within

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 121-141
Author(s):  
Marek Chojnacki ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Phenomenological Reduction ◽  
Double Structure ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Point Of Departure

Assuming the importance of Alfred Schutz’s “protosociology” in social theory as a given, the paper tries to explore its philosophical core, treating Schutz’s sociophenomenology as an answer to the most fundamental questions of phenomenology, such as evidence and phenomenological reduction. It analyses Schutz’s point of departure – the problematization of Max Weber’s concept of the meaning of social action and its deepening by means of Henri Bergson’s and Edmund Husserl’s notion of time – and tries to unravel the double structure of consciousness (first in Brentano and Husserl, then in Schutz), revealing increasingly its complex temporal character. Brentano’s and Husserl’s double intentionality, seeming to offer a kind of “decent realism” in modern philosophical context, in Schutz turns out to be marked by the profound pastness of reflexive consciousness, reaching the primary stream experience only by means of primary and secondary acts of remembrance, re-effectuated intersubjectively in acts of phantasying about future (modo futuri exacti), thus constituting the very core of meaning, with its reference to external objects. It appears that only analysing this mode of phantasying in reference to its motives that we can solve the conundrum of realism in its modern shape.

Understanding the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement: A critical discourse historiographical approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 453-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Flowerdew
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
Critical Discourse Studies ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Occupy Movements

Within the context of a critical discourse historiographical (CDH) approach to critical discourse studies (CDS), this article applies a range of theories to the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, or Hong Kong Occupy Movement, to understand it as a discursive event. The CDH approach argues that a diachronic, historiographical approach can contribute to historiography, the writing of history, in that it can create first readings and interpretations of important events. The approach focuses on critical moments in discourse, of which the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement is considered an important one in the context of Hong Kong’s ongoing socio-historical development. Four theories are applied, in addition to the historical analysis, to further interpret the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement phenomenon: social movement theory, performance theory, identity theory and social action as text theory. It is concluded that the CDH approach to CDS and findings of the study may be useful in the consideration of other social movements and Occupy movements globally.

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