Search results for "bourdieu"

Social Simulation Based on Cellular Automata: Modeling Language Shifts

2011

Nowadays, language shifts (i.e., a community of speakers stops using their traditional language and speaks a new one in all communication settings) may produce a massive extinction of languages throughout the world. In this context, an important task for social sciences research should therefore be to achieve a deep comprehension of language shifts. However, modeling the social and behavioral variables that guide the social behavior of individuals and groups has traditionally been tricky in all the social sciences. In this situation, social simulation provides a tool for testing hypotheses and building models of social phenomena (see, for example, Gilbert, 1996; Gilbert & Toitzsch, 2005; an…

Guanxi and social capital: Networking among women managers in China and Finland

2014

Considering that women are still under-represented in management, researchers have claimed that networking is an important career management tool for women. This study aims to empirically explore how women managers benefit from social networks in the information technology (IT) field in China and Finland. Guanxi, an Eastern term for social networking, has seldom been studied in terms of gender and career, especially within cross-cultural research. Social capital is a Western term for social networks. Using questionnaires, in-depth interviews and interpretive analysis, we compare the composition and structure of social networks used by women managers within the information technology sector …

Liberalism, Governmentality and Counter-Conduct; An Introduction to Foucauldian Analytics of Liberal Civil Society Notions

2015

This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one han…

The role of civil society organisations in European responsible research and innovation

2018

EC policy reveals a strong conviction that CSO’s main function in EU-funded research and innovation projects is to take care of the ‘societal perspective’, which would not be adequately represented otherwise. With this, CSOs are supposed to be the main advocates of RRI in project consortia and are supported by all kinds of EC policy measures to fulfil this role. This conviction is not only problematic due to definition problems concerning CSO as such. Empirical data about the role of CSOs in high-tech/high-innovation research projects and the distribution of RRI activities among consortia members reveal that the role of CSOs is much more multi-faceted (data providers, providers of access to…

Pedagogika transgresyjna w wychowaniu przedszkolnym

2018

The 21st century is characterized by the accelerating pace of life as well as civilization, cultural and technological changes. Therefore, it requires a new view on the future human being. Education from preschool to adulthood plays a crucial role in this regard. Contemporary preschool pedagogy is searching for innovative solutions in the field of unleashing genetic potential and development of the multidimensional personality. One of the new ideas is pedagogy of transgression, consisting in exceeding one’s own limitations through activity, experience, self-reliance and responsibility. The paper shows theoretical foundations of transgression, factors which unleash child’s capabilities, orga…

Flexible Grouping as a Means for Classroom Management in a Heterogeneous Classroom

2011

This article concerns issues of classroom management in heterogeneous classrooms. Although research in the field of learning styles has yielded mixed results, there is a call for information about how they could be used to individualize instruction, especially in primary schools. This article is part of an ethnographic study aiming to examine teacher collaboration in a primary school and it draws strongly on field notes and on interviews with teachers. The intention was to discover how the two teachers in the classroom studied categorized pupils according to the learning styles model they had invented, and how the resulting groups were used for the purposes of classroom management. The stu…

Klientelistische Korruptions-Netzwerke – Konzeptionelle und empirische Ansätze

2014

Corruption is widespread all over the world. It is seen as a serious problem for wealth, equality, democracy and development. In many countries, corruption is not a deviant behaviour but the norm, generally practised by actors; hence corruption is an informal institution. Despite this, a consensual definition of corruption is nowhere in sight. One way of approaching corruption might be to study forms of corruption. A form or variant often mentioned is corruption networks, or clientelism. In this paper, clientelism is analysed in order to proceed further towards an understanding of corruption. With this perspective, corruption is not seen as a deviant behaviour but the social embeddedness of…

Cytoskeleton and Consciousness: An Evolutionary Based Review

2015

The fields of quantum biology and physics are now starting to unite to solve the mysteries associated with the field of evolutionary biology. One such question is the origination and propagation of consciousness which has always been ambiguous and in order to understand this concept, many theories have been proposed by several philosophers and scientists. This review paper agrees with the idea, that evolution is not a random process but hypothesizes, that its succession was managed by the expanding level of consciousness due to cell division and cell differentiation. Several theories propose that the cytoskeleton and its proteins are promoters for consciousness in the brain, which propagate…

2018

This article explores promising points of contact between philosophy and the expanding field of virtual reality research. Aiming at an interdisciplinary audience, it proposes a series of new research targets by presenting a range of concrete examples characterized by high theoretical relevance and heuristic fecundity. Among these examples are conscious experience itself, “Bayesian” and social VR, amnestic re-embodiment, merging human-controlled avatars and virtual agents, virtual ego-dissolution, controlling the reality/virtuality continuum, the confluence of VR and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as of VR and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), VR-based social hallucinations…

Control Structures in Motivational Psychology

1996

Abstract Motivational processes in psychology have been interpreted from many different viewpoints. In the general case, they present an information feedback structure, with goals and disturbances, in a similar way most control systems behave. In this contribution, this similarity is analysed and examples of motivational processes corresponding to the most common control system structures are given. This comparison will be fruitful from both sides: to explore a new field of control theory application and to provide a new framework to the analysis of these complex processes.