Reconsidering Social Identification

Reconsidering Social Identification

Author: Abdul R. JanMohamed

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2020-11-29

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 100008406X

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This volume investigates how four socially constructed identities (race, gender, class and caste) can be rethought as matrices designed to accumulate various kinds of socio-economic values and to translate and transfer these values from one group to another. Essays in the anthology also attempt to compare the mechanisms deployed by various groups to consolidate identificatory investments. Drawn mainly for the fields of literary and cultural studies, the essays are grouped in four categories. Essays collected under ‘Theoretical Approaches’ scrutinize the relative value of various approaches; those collected under ‘Considerations of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation’ examine the interaction between these three categories in formation of identities; those grouped under ‘Comparative Analysis of African-American and Dalit Writing’ provide comparative analyses of the literary productions of these two oppressed groups; and, finally, those under ‘The Persistence of Racialized Perceptions’ focus on the role of ideologically inflected perception of European colonizers and the persistence of such perception in the categorization and treatment of colonial migrants to the metropolis.


Reconsidering Social Constructionism

Reconsidering Social Constructionism

Author: Gale Miller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-29

Total Pages: 573

ISBN-13: 1351494449

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With the impact of social interactionist and ethnographic methodology twenty-five years ago, the research agenda in social problems began to shift its focus, giving rise to the Social Constructionism movement. The present volume and the related shorter text, Constructionist Controversies, review the substantial contributions made by social constructionist theorists over that period, as well as recent debates about the future of the perspective. These contributions redefine the purpose and central questions of social problems theory and articulate a research program for analyzing social problems as social constructions. A generation of theorists has been trained in the constructionist perspective and has extended it through numerous analyses of diverse aspects of contemporary social life.The debates in this volume pose fundamental questions about the major assumptions of the perspective, the ways in which it is practiced, and the purposes of social problems theory. Their point of departure is Ibarra and Kitsuse's essay, cutting new theoretical ground in calling for ""investigating vernacular resources, especially rhetorical forms, in the social problems process.""Contributors are forceful proponents both within and outside of the social constructionist community, who take a broad array of positions on the current state of social problems theory and on the rhetorical forms that need exploring. They also lay down the general lines for diverse and often competing programs for the future development of the constructionist agenda.


Author:

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published:

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 3031553977

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Reconsidering Dementia Narratives

Reconsidering Dementia Narratives

Author: Rebecca Bitenc

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0429619502

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Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.


Human Rights Discourse in a Global Network

Human Rights Discourse in a Global Network

Author: Lena Khor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1317119797

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In her innovative study of human rights discourse, Lena Khor takes up the prevailing concern by scholars who charge that the globalization of human rights discourse is becoming yet another form of cultural, legal, and political imperialism imposed from above by an international human rights regime based in the Global North. To counter these charges, she argues for a paradigmatic shift away from human rights as a hegemonic, immutable, and ill-defined entity toward one that recognizes human rights as a social construct comprised of language and of language use. She proposes a new theoretical framework based on a global discourse network of human rights, supporting her model with case studies that examine the words and actions of witnesses to genocide (Paul Rusesabagina) and humanitarian organizations (Doctors Without Borders). She also analyzes the language of texts such as Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost. Khor's idea of a globally networked structure of human rights discourse enables actors (textual and human) who tap into or are linked into this rapidly globalizing system of networks to increase their power as speaking subjects and, in so doing, to influence the range of acceptable meanings and practices of human rights in the cultural sphere. Khor’s book is a unique and important contribution to the study of human rights in the humanities that revitalizes viable notions of agency and liberatory network power in fields that have been dominated by negative visions of human capacity and moral action.


Reconsidering The Role of Play in Early Childhood

Reconsidering The Role of Play in Early Childhood

Author: Julie M. Nicholson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-11

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0429769997

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Reconsidering the Role of Play in Early Childhood: Towards Social Justice and Equity—a compilation of current play research in early childhood education and care—challenges, disrupts, and reexamines conventional perspectives on play. By highlighting powerful and provocative studies from around the world that attend to the complexities and diverse contexts of children’s play, the issues of social justice and equity related to play are made visible. This body of work is framed by the phenomenological viewpoint that presumes equity is best confronted and improved through developing an expanded understanding of play in its multiple variations and dimensions. The play studies explore the potential and troubles of play in teaching and learning, children’s agency in play, the actual spaces where children play, and different perspectives of play based on identity and culture. The editors invite readers to use the research as an inspiration to reconsider their conceptions of play and to take action to work for a world where all children have access to play. This book was originally published as a special issue of Early Child Development and Care.


Reconsidering Context in Language Assessment

Reconsidering Context in Language Assessment

Author: Janna Fox

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-04-06

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1351184555

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This volume reconsiders the problem of context in language testing and other modes of assessment from the perspective of transdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinary assessment research brings together collaborators who draw on the strengths of their differing backgrounds and expertise in order to address high-stakes complex socially-relevant problems. Traditional treatments of context in language assessment research have generally been informed by individualist cognitive theories within measurement and psychometrics. The additive potential of alternative social theories, including theories of genre, situated learning, distributed cognition, and intercultural communication, has largely been overlooked. In this book, the benefits of socio-theoretical reconsiderations of context are discussed and further exemplified in transdisciplinary research studies that investigate the use of assessment in classroom and workplace settings. The book offers a renewed view of context in arguments for the validity of assessment practices, and will be of interest to assessment researchers, practitioners, and students in applied linguistics, education, educational psychology, language testing, and other related disciplines and fields.


Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge

Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge

Author: Lewis R. Gordon

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-07-13

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 135034379X

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Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge collects key philosophical writings of Lewis R. Gordon, a globally renowned scholar whose writings cover liberation struggles across the globe and make field-defining contributions to the philosophy of existence, philosophy of race, Africana philosophy, philosophy of human sciences, aesthetics, and decolonization. Gordon's expansive output ranges across phenomenology, anti-Blackness, activist thinkers, sexuality, Fanon, Jimi Hendrix, Black Jewish struggles, critical pedagogy, psychoanalysis, and Ubuntu philosophy. Edited by Rozena Maart and Sayan Dey, two decolonial thinkers from South Africa and India, this reader shifts attention away from colonial centres of power, encouraging global dialogue across students, scholars, and activists. Featuring a foreword by the celebrated novelist and postcolonial thinker, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, this reader includes a mixture of research articles, short critical essays, reflections, interviews, poems, and photographs in the creative pursuit of liberation.


Rethinking Graduate Employability in Context

Rethinking Graduate Employability in Context

Author: Päivi Siivonen

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-07-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 3031206533

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This open access book offers critical, multidisciplinary analyses on graduate employability. The book examines employability at the macro, meso and micro levels: higher education policy, the labour market, higher education institutions, organisations, individuals and social groups, in European, North American and Australian contexts. The contributors provide social and contextual analysis of graduate employability as a theoretical concept, a discourse and policy imperative and a social and discursive practice. The volume also introduces novel methodological perspectives to study the process of graduate employability. There is an urgent need for comprehensive and unified critical perspectives on graduate employability, as such analyses have so far been scarce and often isolated. Besides filling this gap in the literature, the book will also serve as essential reading on courses that focus on graduate careers and employability as well as higher education policy and practice.


Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor

Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor

Author: Alison Arant

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1496831837

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Contributions by Lindsay Alexander, Alison Arant, Alicia Matheny Beeson, Eric Bennett, Gina Caison, Jordan Cofer, Doug Davis, Doreen Fowler, Marshall Bruce Gentry, Bruce Henderson, Monica C. Miller, William Murray, Carol Shloss, Alison Staudinger, and Rachel Watson The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded two Summer Institutes titled "Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor," which invited scholars to rethink approaches to Flannery O’Connor’s work. Drawing largely on research that started as part of the 2014 NEH Institute, this collection shares its title and its mission. Featuring fourteen new essays, Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor disrupts a few commonplace assumptions of O’Connor studies while also circling back to some old questions that are due for new attention. The volume opens with “New Methodologies,” which features theoretical approaches not typically associated with O’Connor’s fiction in order to gain new insights into her work. The second section, “New Contexts,” stretches expectations on literary genre, on popular archetypes in her stories, and on how we should interpret her work. The third section, lovingly called “Strange Bedfellows,” puts O’Connor in dialogue with overlooked or neglected conversation partners, while the final section, “O’Connor’s Legacy,” reconsiders her personal views on creative writing and her wishes regarding the handling of her estate upon death. With these final essays, the collection comes full circle, attesting to the hazards that come from overly relying on O’Connor’s interpretation of her own work but also from ignoring her views and desires. Through these reconsiderations, some of which draw on previously unpublished archival material, the collection attests to and promotes the vitality of scholarship on Flannery O’Connor.