Search results for "social theory"
showing 10 items of 47 documents
Insults, humour and freedom of speech
2016
In this article we argue that freedom of speech should be understood as a social freedom. In the public discussion after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it has often been understood as an absolute right to say anything – to offend, to make a fool of others and of oneself, and to express any opinion regardless of the consequences. We challenge this view and propose that advocating freedom of speech without understanding its social foundations is misleading and counterproductive. Based on the critical social theories of Erich Fromm, Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, we show that there is an alternative tradition in which freedom is fundamentally rooted in social relations and therefore requires re…
Developing a new approach to managing and mediating conflicts
2017
Generally speaking, words can be elusive and they need to be carefully selected when conveying messages, ideas and proposals between parties. This is all the more evident in mediation process as language has to be neutral and mediators should avoid expressions directing parties. In this regard, recent theoretical developments in postmodern social theory and the social constructionist movement in the social sciences and humanities have provided the field of alternative dispute resolution with a new approach to managing and mediating conflicts. These developments are organized around the ‘narrative approach’ which helps us to see how the language we use to describe and understand our conflict…
An activity theory perspective on contradictions in flipped mathematics classrooms at the university level
2019
Author´s accepted manuscript (postprint). This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology on 24/03/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0020739X.2019.1591533.
Habermas’ Universal Pragmatics: Theory of Language and Social Theory
2013
Although Habermas’ universal pragmatics has played a marginal role in studies on pragmatics, it can still make an important and meaningful contribution, precisely because it highlights the system of validity claims that lie in speech acts. This type of analysis allows one to consider the dialogic dynamics that engage speakers in the activity of reciprocal giving and asking for reasons for saying and doing things. The reasons why a speaker knows he or she can say what he or she says in the presence of other speakers constitute an essential element of the production of meaning; and reciprocally identification of the speaker’s reasons by the listener is an indispensable condition of the activi…
Exclusión discursiva. Hacia un nuevo concepto de la exclusión social
2011
The term “social exclusion” has been converting into a buzzword in European social sciences in the last decade. But the double use of the notion, as a concept of social politics as well as a sociological concept is producing a blurring of its contents. The aim of this article is to offer an approach which is able to satisfy the theoretic requirements for an analytical sociological concept by making use of the concept of discursive exclusion. Therefore the text develops the notion of discursive exclusion based on the most recent findings about sociological discourse theory and its contributions to the understanding of the construction of social reality. The process of social exclusion has to…
Bodies in the early childhood education classroom: a Bourdieusian analysis of curricular materials
2019
To our knowledge, no studies have used Bourdieu's theoretical contributions to frame investigations on how early childhood education (ECE) teaching materials construct body differences in a way that justifies gender inequality. For Bourdieu, the power to classify and grant properties and signs to subjects, does not reside only in the power to impose, but also in the degree to which the vision is anchored within reality. Therefore, the aims of this study is to assess the representation of the body in the curricular materials of ECE classrooms in 10 public centers, by means of quantitative content analysis and to provide, using Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical framework on the construction of th…
Constructing relational space in early childhood education
2014
This paper examines early childhood education (ECE) by applying and developing relational-spatial perspectives on everyday life in educational institutions for young children. The aim is to investigate the dynamic process of construction of space and to illustrate with selected empirical episodes how this process occurs in ECE. Drawing on authors such as Soja and Bourdieu, the starting point for the analysis is that space is socially produced in everyday interactions in a process that intertwines the physical environment and concrete objects, personal interpretations of physical and cultural space, and cultural and collective views about space in ECE. We illustrate this process with ethnogr…
“Why do I have to learn this?” A case study on students’ experiences of the relevance of mathematical modelling activities
2017
In this paper we explore how students can experience the relevance of mathematical modelling activities. In the literature we found that relevance is a connection among several issues (relevance of what? to whom? according to whom? and to what end?). We framed this concept in terms of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), a theory for analysing how individuals engage in activities within social environments. We designed modelling activities within a mathematics course for engineering students: there were ample mathematical modelling tasks, a guest lecture by an employee from an engine company who used mathematical modelling in his job, and a group work modelling assessment with a pres…
Struggles for recognition: a content analysis of messages posted on the Internet
2012
Anders Johan W Andersen,1,2 Tommy Svensson31Department of Psychosocial Health, University of Agder, Norway; 2Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden; 3Department of Behavioral Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Linköping, SwedenBackground: The Internet has enlarged the possibilities of human communication and opened new ways of exploring perceptions of mental health. This study is part of a research project aiming to explore, describe, and analyze different discourses of mental health in Norway and Sweden, using material from Internet-based services.Aim: To examine messages posed by users of publicly available question-and-answer services and to descri…
Higher Education in Networked Knowledge Societies
2016
This conceptual chapter articulates an analytical synthesis: Networked Knowledge Society. This synthesis incorporates the role of knowledge, information and communication technology (ICT) and networks in order to better understand the dynamic nature of contemporary societies. It also conceptualises the relationships between contemporary societies and higher education. A traditional approach to examining the relationships between higher education and society is to consider this from the societal point of departure to interpret or explain change in higher education. Our approach, by contrast, is relational with respect to the dynamic role of higher education in societies and the ways in which…