‘Maybe she just hasn’t matured yet’: Politeness, gate-keeping and the maintenance of status quo in a community of practice

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodie Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Field Hockey ◽  
Label Function ◽  
Hockey Players ◽  
Gate Keeping ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractPoliteness research has much to offer work that explores the complexities of gate-keeping in a community of practice. In this article I draw upon principles and terminology from politeness research to explore the tension that arises when members of a particular community of practice (a university field hockey team) who are morally opposed to homosexuality are confronted with the fact that some of their teammates are openly gay. This line of investigation relies upon a redefinition of politeness2: I define politeness2 as the moral compulsion to respect the boundaries around different levels of social structure, which include (but are not limited to) sets of attitudes, perspectives and priorities. In the hockey players’ community of practice, two moral priorities are in conflict: an aversion to homosexuality on the one hand, and a desire for a friendly, socially inclusive club on the other. I investigate the various evaluative resources participants draw upon/produce in this community, which include evaluation schemes based upon the labels “rude” and “im/mature”. I claim that the label “im/mature” – and concepts related to this label – function in this community as a means of concealing the conflict between the two moral priorities and maintaining a commitment to both.

Breaking gender stereotypes: The relationships between psychological gender, personality and the system of values in the case of the female field hockey players

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (77) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Joanna Basiaga-Pasternak ◽  
Agnieszka Wojtowicz ◽  
Grażyna Kosiba ◽  
Agnieszka Bogacz-Walancik
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Personal Values ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
The Other ◽  
Field Hockey ◽  
National Team ◽  
Hockey Players ◽  
Psychological Gender ◽  
Female Sports ◽  
The One

The aim of the study was to determine the predictors of female sports success by examining the relations between psychological gender on the one side and personality and the system of values on the other in the case of female field hockey players. An attempt was made to demonstrate what the dominant psychological gender of the athletes under the study was, while it had been assumed that it would be the androgynic type. The research was conducted among field hockey Polish National Team. The average age was 21,42. The present research did not confirm the dominance of masculine or androgynic types among the female field hockey players under study. A personality type, therefore, was related to the system of values, and a psychological gender was a factor moderating the preferred values. In the case of androgynic types under study, the dimension Openness was connected with the decrease of the importance of a True Frendship and Agreeableness with the increase in the Forgiveness value. Androgynic athletes were more oriented on terminal personal values, while feminine ones were oriented on social goals. Feminine athletes were characterized by lower level of extraversion than androgynic and undifferentiated subjects.

Lorenzo at ‘The Theatre’ Meeting actors and audience

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-38
Author(s):  
N. Ceramella
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The One

The article considers two versions of D. H. Lawrence’s essay The Theatre: the one which appeared in the English Review in September 1913 and the other one which Lawrence published in his first travel book Twilight in Italy (1916). The latter, considerably revised and expanded, contains a number of new observations and gives a more detailed account of Lawrence’s ideas.Lawrence brings to life the atmosphere inside and outside the theatre in Gargnano, presenting vividly the social structure of this small northern Italian town. He depicts the theatre as a multi-storey stage, combining the interpretation of the plays by Shakespeare, D’Annunzio and Ibsen with psychological portraits of the actors and a presentation of the spectators and their responses to the plays as distinct social groups.Lawrence’s views on the theatre are contextualised by his insights into cinema and its growing popularity.What makes this research original is the fact that it offers a new perspective, aiming to illustrate the social situation inside and outside the theatre whichLawrenceobserved. The author uses the material that has never been published or discussed before such as the handwritten lists of box-holders in Gargnano Theatre, which was offered to Lawrence and his wife Frieda by Mr. Pietro Comboni, and the photographs of the box-panels that decorated the theatre inLawrence’s time.

The Futurists. Experts in World Futures

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Images Of The Future ◽  
The Way

Alvin Toffler’s writings encapsulated many of the tensions of futurism: the way that futurology and futures studies oscillated between forms of utopianism and technocracy with global ambitions, and between new forms of activism, on the one hand, and emerging forms of consultancy and paid advice on the other. Paradoxically, in their desire to create new images of the future capable of providing exits from the status quo of the Cold War world, futurists reinvented the technologies of prediction that they had initially rejected, and put them at the basis of a new activity of futures advice. Consultancy was central to the field of futures studies from its inception. For futurists, consultancy was a form of militancy—a potentially world altering expertise that could bypass politics and also escaped the boring halls of academia.

Premchand, nationalism and civil resistance in colonial North India

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Shailendra Kumar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
North India ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Civil Resistance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The theme of nationalism in the works of Premchand, the pre-eminent Urdu–Hindi writer of the 1920s and 1930s, not only serves as an organising principle but also constitutes a protean and contentious field of study, which has resulted in conflicting interpretations. On the one hand, his nationalist narratives are categorically denounced for their apparent lack of radicalism, while on the other hand, they are unequivocally valorised for their so-called subversive content. Both these diametrically opposed schools of criticism, however, share a common lacuna, that is, both of them tend to conflate the writer’s nationalist narratives with his peasant discourse, thereby precluding the possibility of different themes yielding different interpretations. This article examines the theme of nationalism in Premchand’s works, in general, and the question of civil resistance in particular, in order to demonstrate how the writer’s politics of representation in his nationalist writings differs from the one that we find in his peasant narratives. It argues that as opposed to the authorial valorisation of the fictive peasant’s conformity to the exploitative status quo, civil resistance in Premchand’s nationalist narratives is not only necessary and desirable but also synonymous with dharma (moral duty) itself.

scholarly journals (Re)production of Inequalities in Retirement Practices and Meanings Assigned to the Term ‘Retiree’ in the Post-Communist Context

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Urbaniak
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Productive Aging ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Wave ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Life Course Transition

In the institutionalized life course transition from work to retirement is the transition that culturally defines the beginning of later life. However, there is no universal way of experiencing retirement or understanding retirees’ social roles. Especially in the context of the post-communist, liquid modern reality in Poland. The social role of the retiree, defined as a set of rules and expectations generated for individuals occupying particular positions in the social structure, is constructed at the intersection of what is culturally defined and individually negotiated. Therefore, the way in which individuals (re)define term “retiree” and “do retirement” reflects not only inequalities in individual resources and attitudes, but also in social structure in a given place and at a given time. In this contribution, I draw upon data from 68 qualitative interviews with retirees from Poland to analyze retirement practices and meanings assigned to the term “retiree.” Applying practice theory, I explore the inequalities they (re)produce, mirror and reinforce at the same time. Results show that there are four broad types of retirement practices: caregiving, working, exploring and disengaging. During analysis of meanings assigned by participants to the term “retiree,” two definitions emerged: one of a “new wave retiree” and the other of a “stagnant retiree.” Results suggest that in the post-communist context, retirement practices and meanings assigned to the term “retiree” are in the ongoing process of (re)negotiation and are influenced on the one hand by the activation demands resulting from discourses of active and productive aging, and on the other by habitus and imaginaries of retirement formed in the bygone communist era. Retirement practices and definitions of the term “retiree” that emerged from the data reflect structural and individual inequalities, highlighting intersection of gender, age and socioeconomic status in the (re)production of inequalities in retirement transition in the post-communist context.

English as a Lingua Franca in the Expanding Circle

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Expanding Circle ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
First Languages ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

This article discusses English in terms of its role as a contact language among expanding circle users of English from different first languages. It begins by observing both similarities between English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and other lingua francas, and the difference in scale between them, with ELF involving a far higher number of people and first languages. The article goes on to explore empirical research into ELF, and its key findings: on the one hand, that certain “nonstandard” English forms are regularly preferred to “standard” (i.e. native) ones, and on the other, that ELF is far more affected by context and accommodation processes, and, therefore, far more diverse, than native Englishes. The notion of “community of practice,” it is argued, is, thus, more appropriate to ELF than that of “speech community.” The article concludes by considering three key areas of ELF research that need to be tackled.

6. The why of creativity

2021 ◽  
pp. 82-96
Author(s):  
Vlad Glăveanu
Keyword(s):  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Creative Expression ◽  
The Other ◽  
Creative People ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Different Levels

This chapter addresses why people engage in creativity. This question can be answered at different levels. On the one hand, one can refer to what motivates creative people to do what they do. On the other hand, the question addresses a deeper level, that of how societies today are built and how they, in turn, construct the meaning and value of creativity. Nowadays, people consider creativity intrinsically valuable largely because of its direct and indirect economic benefits. However, creative expression also has a role for health and well-being. Creativity also relates to meaning in life. The chapter then considers how creativity can be used for good or for evil.

Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903–69)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent P. Pecora
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Social Theorist ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Necessity

Born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund to an Italian Catholic mother and an assimilated Jewish father, Adorno would take his mother’s vaguely aristocratic last name. Philosopher, aesthetician, social theorist, and musician, Adorno throughout his life remained committed to a decidedly secular and socialist European consciousness, even when dissecting German anti-Semitism in the 1940s. Yet his notion of utopian political transformation owed much to his early reading of Ernst Bloch’s insistence on a hunger for the transcendent that Bloch added to Marxian materialism. Adorno’s understanding of the work of art—a crucial element of his thinking, culminating in his Aesthetic Theory—was equally in tension over the historical necessity of its progressive secularization and rationalization. On the one hand, any "contamination of art with revelation" would uncritically embrace the mystical, fetish character of art. On the other hand, "the eradication of every trace of revelation from art" would reduce the artwork to a mere repetition of the status quo—that is, the lifeless routines of an administered society, including film and jazz, both of which Adorno denigrated.

The Dynamics of Environmental Campaigns

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Porta ◽  
Dieter Rucht
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Environmental Movements ◽  
Common Pattern ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Environmental Campaigns ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Levels

Environmental movements and their activities are studied from various angles, by different methods, and at different levels. While both detailed studies on single incidents of conflict and broad overviews of movements are available, relatively little work has been done at the intermediate level between these extremes. We argue that it is fruitful to engage at this level by undertaking comparative analysis of environmental campaigns. Such studies could help deal with inconclusive observations and findings on the changes of environmental movements during the last three decades. We hypothesize that indeed environmental activism has changed remarkably. By and large, conflicts are no longer marked by a relatively simple constellation of one challenger facing one target or opponent. Instead, we find a complex web of involved actors reaching from local to international levels. These actors tend to form broad alliances, and to link on different issues. Also, their activities are not restricted to only one arena or strategy but involve all available channels, arenas, and action repertoires to have an impact. Quite often, we observe loose coalitions of groups that act in an implicit division of labor, thereby playing on their respective backgrounds, foci, and experiences. Given the variety of actors, their organizational forms and tactics on the one hand and their different contexts on the other, it is unlikely that a common pattern of conflict will emerge across various issues and geographical areas. This is all the more true when comparing environmental conflicts in the Western and Non-Western world.

Global Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Domínguez ◽  
Rafael Velázquez Flores
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Multiple Actors

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of the literature on global governance, key elements for understanding its conceptualization, and a gateway to capture its multidimensionality. From this perspective, global governance is conceived as a framework of analysis or intellectual device to study the complexity of global processes involving multiple actors that interact at different levels of interest aggregation. The article is divided into four parts. The first section describes the origins, definitions, and characteristics of global governance. The second categorizes global governance based on different thematic areas where there is a confluence of governance practices, on the one hand, and the inclusion of a global level of interaction, on the other. The third discusses the different conceptual inquiries and innovations that have been developed around the term. Finally, the last part maps the different academic institutions that have focused their research on global governance and offer programs on this subject.

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