Search results for "social theory"

The Phantasmatic Core of Fascism: Psychoanalytic Theories of Antisemitism and Group Aggression Amongst the ‘Political Freudians’

2022

The period predating and overlapping with World War II saw psychoanalytic authors respond to the authoritarian and fascist developments in Europe through scholarly and analytical writings. These authors, sometimes referenced as ‘political Freudians’, were interested in bringing psychoanalysis in a dialogue with progressive social and pedagogical movements of their times, focusing their critique on the persecutory, eliminatory and purificatory fantasies, which they saw as animating the fascistic movements in Europe. This article analyses selected texts by Otto Fenichel, Ernst Simmel and Rudolf Loewenstein and argues that these authors asked about the political and ethical stakes of the fasci…

Predicting school students’ physical activity intentions in leisure-time and school recess contexts: Testing an integrated model based on self-determ…

2021

BackgroundIdentifying psychological correlates of children's physical activity intentions may signpost potentially modifiable targets for interventions aimed at promoting physical activity participation. School recess and leisure-time outside of school are appropriate contexts in which such interventions may be delivered. However, few studies have identified correlates of physical activity intentions in these environments. Examining correlates in these contexts may provide formative evidence on which to base interventions to promote physical activity.PurposeThe current study adopted an integrated theoretical model to test relations between motivational constructs from self-determination the…

Il mutamento sociale

2016

Teorie sociologiche; mutamento sociale

Who Is Ill When a Society Is Ill?

2021

This chapter gives an overview of four different approaches to social pathologies, which are present in contemporary critical social theory, and analyses their social-ontological commitments. The different approaches can be divided into two camps. The ‘thin sense’ of social pathology focuses on social wrongs, and the socially caused and pervasive suffering of individuals. The ‘thick sense’ of social pathology, in turn, claims that society is its own entity, or a whole, which can be ill. This chapter discloses the ontological commitments behind different conceptions of social pathology in order to highlight what difference these commitments make in relation to the critical potential of socia…

Grounding social criticism : from understanding to suffering and back

2019

This paper critically examines John Dewey’s and Axel Honneth’s critical social philosophies in order to highlight two different normative sources of social struggle: scientific understanding and social suffering. The paper discusses the relations of these sources with each other and aims to show to what extent the normative sources of Dewey’s and Honneth’s critical social theories are compatible. A further aim is to use the comparison between Dewey and Honneth in order to argue for a desiderata for critical social ontology. The argument is that we want to consistently include both elements – suffering and understanding – in critical social theory as only by having both will critical theory …

Review Essay

2000

Methodological reflections: supervisory discourses and practice-based learning

2009

The concept of dialogue is often examined apart from the social and historical context in which it is embedded. This paper identifies how dialogue between a superior and a subordinate generates a reorganisation of situated knowledge in the education and training of nurse teachers. We created an analytic method of supervisory discourse founded on differences between discourse-based and practice-based theories. The findings elicit two forms of dialogues: transformative and exploratory. Through the former, supervisors try to make their students reformulate their understanding by facilitating learning through questions and hints or to support their self-reflections in local contexts. Conversely…

La historiografía y la teoría social. Una discusión desde la historia de lo premoderno

2018

This article analyses the importance of social theory for historiography. It deals specifically with pre- modern historiography and the uses that it has for social theory. Through an example from the history of conflict resolution in the central Middle Ages, it will be shown how social theory plays a primordial role in the engagement of certain problems that cannot be tackled by the sole use of the tools which tradition- ally characterise history and its so-called 'auxiliary disciplines'.

How to explain socially responsible corporate actions institutionally: theoretical and methodological critique

2008

There has been little theoretical debate of why companies behave in socially responsible ways whilst descriptive analysis of corporate social responsibility is flourishing. As result, there have been few methodological debates on how to study both what responsible actions are and why companies act accordingly. This methodological and theoretical essay discusses how institutional social theory has been and could be used in explaining socially responsible corporate behaviour. It is explored what kinds of theoretical tools are needed in explaining this behaviour and how various tools can be integrated into one model explaining socially responsible corporate actions. It is argued that researche…

Utopianism in the Age of Capitalocene

2021

This article explores the social and political imagination of ‘the Anthropocene’ and the utopian counter images that can be derived from it. From the utopian studies perspective, I argue that the Anthropocene cannot provide sufficient societal alternatives for the current ecological predicament. This is due to the fact that the concept of Anthropocene relies too heavily on the image of abstract humanity to be able to offer real societal alternatives. It cannot name the social system we live in and, therefore, it cannot fundamentally challenge existing social arrangements. Based on utopian social theory, I conceptualize utopia as a counter image of the present motivated by a desire for bette…