Conceptual Reorientation Research Articles

Infrastructural Fractals: Revisiting the Micro—Macro Distinction in Social Theory

The relationship between the supposedly small—the micro—and the supposedly large—the macro—has been a long-standing concern in social theory. However, although many attempts have been made to link these two seemingly disjoint dimensions, in the present paper I argue against such an endeavour. Instead, I outline a fractal approach to the study of space, society, and infrastructure. A fractal orientation requires a number of related conceptual reorientations. It has implications for thinking about scale and perspective, and (sociotechnical) relations, and for considering the role of the social theorist in analyzing such relations. I find empirical illustration in the case of the development of electronic patient records in Danish health care. The role of the social theorist is explored through a comparison of the political and normative stance enabled, respectively, by a critical social theory and a fractal social theory.

Toward a Paradigm for Management

This paper traces the development of management thought and discusses the utility of a conceptual reorientation to the study of management. The evolution of different paradigms in the field of management is highlighted and a critical evaluation of their capacities to unify and provide coherence to the field is offered. The usefulness of order as a unifying concept in developing a paradigm of management is pointed out. Present theories of management are reviewed in the light of the order paradigm and an attempt is made to point out the viability of the paradigm for future theory building in management. Implications for management practice are briefly discussed.

U.S. Deaf Education Teacher Preparation Programs: A Look at the Present and a Vision for the Future

Numerous reports identify critical learning needs of deaf and hard of hearing students, but there is a growing recognition that these students' ability to achieve academic success is tied to the instructional effectiveness of teachers. Developments in deaf and hard of hearing education include (a) a shift toward educating students in local public schools; (b) a conceptual reorientation toward establishing effective learning environments; and (c) a critical, nationwide shortage of qualifi ed teachers. The result has been a growing acceptance of the need to examine and redesign the way teachers are prepared to educate deaf and hard of hearing students. The present article is an examination of key redesign issues.

Ageing, Disability and the WHO's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)

Around the globe, policymakers have long been concerned about the social and economic effects of an ageing population, and in particular the impact of a decline in labour market participation on pensions and other forms of income security. Technological improvements in medical diagnosis and treatment, better nutrition and other factors have increased healthy life, and this, coupled with a lowering birth rate, has led to an increase in consumption of health services and a decrease in the number of people entering the labour force. The proportion of people retired to those in work (the 'dependency ratio') is steadily increasing, and this affects how a society finances healthcare, long-term care, pensions and other social services. In 1987, The Geneva Association, in response to these trends created the 'Four Pillars' research agenda for rethinking healthcare and social security. In addition to the three pillars of contributory public pension, private occupational pension and individual savings, the Association identified the need to extend working life through a re-visioning of employment and retirement. Somewhat later, the Association launched another research project, Health and Ageing, to study interventions that maintain an active and healthy life after 65, as well as ways of organizing and financing long-term care. The complementary objectives of extending working life, and extending healthy life for work are based on the single social strategy of increasing the participation of older people in the workplace in order to spread the costs of ageing more equitably across the entire population. At the same time, increasing work participation and lowering unemployment are human rights objectives that underscore the importance of ensuring that everyone, regardless of age or functional capacity, participates fully in fundamental life activities. But both objectives also presume our ability to identify age-related functional decrements, to assess and measure them, and armed with this information, to devise interventions, strategies and policies that increase work participation. More is involved here than mere data collection. There is an important, and radical, conceptual reorientation that needs to be made. The relationship between an individual's functional capacities to work - his or her inherent work capacity - and the work environment and its demands is both interactive and negotiable. We normally think of people being 'fit for work' ; but we need also to think of work being fit for people. Although decrements in functional capacity can be ameliorated, or even

Human Security: A Shotgun Approach to Alleviating Human Misery?

Lloyd Axworthy penned an eloquent and thought-provoking essay in these pages about the necessity and utility of extending the concept of beyond the level of the state and toward individual human [1] Axworthy is not alone in making this plea: scholars have been pushing the conceptual frontiers of the term ever since the Brandt Commission's report Common Security was published in 1981. [2] Since the 1980s, foundations have poured millions into supporting works that broaden the notion of security. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been appropriating the discourse to advance their humanitarian activities. However, when such a plea comes from an activist former minister of foreign affairs, who presumably acted on these premises while in office, it deserves special attention and reflection. Before the 1980s, the notion of national was thought to be the preserve of states. It referred to the ability of states to defend themselves against encroachments on their territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Issues of military power, strategy, and deterrence therefore loomed large. Since then, the notion of has been progressively broadened to incorporate such areas as economic privation, environmental degradation, and gender discrimination. In other words, scholars and policymakers have anointed such issues as security issues. In the parlance of the new studies, when issue areas are so anointed they become securitized. The purpose of securitizing certain issues, while leaving others alone, is obvious. Once an issue like drug trafficking is securitized, its status in the policy hierarchy changes. It becomes an urgent issue, worthy of special attention, resources, and fast-track or immediate amelioration or resolution, perhaps even by military means. By the 1990s, the broadeners had won: analysts who wanted to limit the notion of studies to military issues basically surrendered and retreated to strategic studies as the branch of international relations devoted to the analysis of military security. Having securitized all the likely nonmilitary candidates, the next step seemed almost natural and inevitable: Why not the individual human being? After all, the reason for labeling the environment as a issue is based on the threat its destruction poses to human beings. In the final analysis, it is the safety and well-being of individuals--their security--that is the object of our concern. It is natural to carry the extension of the notion of to its logical conclusion: human beings are indeed the ultimate referent of security. The good intentions behind this move to human beings cannot be gainsaid, and the potential benefits have been mentioned above. However, it is also necessary to point out the potential pitfalls of this methodological and conceptual reorientation. International relations theorists are concerned about theoretical incoherence and the impossibility of generating rigorous hypotheses about the world when the referents are individuals instead of states. Security studies theorizing was difficult enough with 200 states--what of 6 billion people, and counting? The objective here is not to address this objection, which is about the misfit between the human approach and theory building in mainstream studies. Instead, I try to sketch out the three major pitfalls of well-intentioned attempts to securitize the individual human being: generating false priorities, generating false hopes, and proceeding on false causal assumptions. False Priorities and Hopes The policy rationale for securitizing any given issue--the environment and individuals, for example--is to inform relevant audiences (one's own bureaucrats and citizens, the so-called international community, as well as the victims of environmental degradation) that an issue has priority and that it is high on the policymakers' agenda. …

Character identification in evolutionary biology: The role of the organism

In this article we argue that an organismic perspective in character identification can alleviate a structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology relative to the ones in the physical sciences. The problem with many biological theories is that they do not contain the conditions of their validity or a method of identifying objects that are appropriate instances of the models. Here functionally important biological characters are introduced as conceptual abstractions derived within the context of an ontologically prior object, such as a cell or an organism. To illustrate this approach, we present an analytical method of character decomposition based on the notion of the quasi-independence of traits. Two cases are analyzed: context dependent units of inheritance and a model of character identification in adaptive evolution. We demonstrate that in each case the biological process as represented by a mathematical theory entails the conditions for the individualization of characters. Our approach also requires a conceptual re-orientation in the way we build biological models. Rather than defining a set of biological characters a priori, functionally relevant characters are identified in the context of a higher level biological process.

Cognition Enhancing Profile of CR 2249, a New NMDA‐Glycine Site Modulator

Memory processes have been widely studied in recent decades. Unfortunately, although several intriguing hypotheses about the possibility of modulating cognition have been developed, no conclusive result has been obtained (69). Two different neurotransmission models are of major interest in understanding how the brain can acquire and store a single cognitive event (3,23). The main neuronal agents involved in transferring this kind of information seem to be acetylcholine and glutamic acid. These two neurotransmitters are present in all the cerebral areas involved in the memory processes and both are responsible for the stimulation currents linked to the propagation of neuronal signals (1,4). The cholinergic hypothesis of memory ( 3 ) is based on the observation that a marked degeneration of the cholinergic neuronal pathway is often associated with the development of cognitive disorders ( 12). Moreover, it has been reported that one distinctive feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) consists of a progressive loss of either cholinergic or adrenergic neurons’ ability to transmit stimuli received from the limbic areas to the cerebral cortex (10,12,21,75). To help preserve high levels of acetylcholine in the synaptic cleft, several antiacetylcholinesterase agents have been synthesized and tested on both biochemical and behavioral models of learning (32,46). Tacrine is certainly the most studied among these agents ( 13). Clinical trials with tacrine revealed some interesting pro-mnemic properties of this compound (42,68), but tacrine exhibits major hepatotoxicity that strongly restricts its use ( 13,73). Donepezil (E2020) is another interesting compound of this family. Two recently published clinical studies (25,63) demonstrate both the efficacy of donepezil in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease and its relative liver safety. Other potent acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, such as metrifonate and SDZ ENA 7 13, are currently under clinical evaluation (28,62,65). The glutamatergic hypothesis of memory is based on a particular characteristic of the glutamatergic neuronal pathway: long-term potentiation (LTP). LTP was first defined by Bliss and Collingridge (8) as a synaptic memory model expressed as a persistent increase in the size of the synaptic component of the evoked response. The

Research on Gender and Education in the Nordic Countries

Sex has for many years been an important independent variable in educational research, but the serious theoretical discussion of the variable as a dependent variable belongs mostly to the last three decades. A need for a conceptual reorientation has emerged which, for one thing, resulted in the replacement of the concept sex by the concept gender. The article in this section presents and discusses the necessity and the development of this theoretical reorientation in the Nordic countries, which has attracted many researchers and instigated inventive projects. In addition the article gives an overview of Nordic empirical gender research in or related to education: first the studies that opened up the field, then the development that followed. This presentation focuses on different subareas, such as studies of gender and ability, learning and achievement, studies of gender aspects of classroom interaction, studies of single‐sex learning arrangements, action research studies in order to expand the interpersonal and emotional skills repertoire of boys and girls, studies of gender identity. Although differences between the Nordic countries are clear, similarity is the dominant trait. At the end the article comments on recent viewpoints on the likely development of gender policy and outlines basic educational questions within the Nordic educational systems.

The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine (review)

Reviewed by: The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine Bruce T. Moran James J. Bono. The Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine. Vol. 1, Ficino to Descartes. Science and Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. xi + 317 pp. $50.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paperbound). Where should one look for the dynamics of cultural and scientific change in early modern Europe? According to James Bono, the force of change has less to do with external conditions (e.g., the impact of printing, or social context) than with competing language theories—that is, assumptions and debates about the relation between words and things. On this account, language theory and science form “intersecting discourses” joined by means of metaphors common to each. In the case of late Renaissance science and medicine, the metaphors most frequently employed were those of the “Book” and the “Word.” The contest over narrative authority to interpret Scripture and the Book of Nature, argues Bono, led to new relationships between the languages of man and the Word of God. A number of theories regarding the nature and origins of language existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A Neoplatonic theory of language, formulated in large part by Marsilio Ficino, assumed such an intimate connection between the human word and the verbum dei as to make language the means of seizing the powers of nature. In this regard, Bono argues, Renaissance magic underscored a potentially disquieting relationship between language as a tool for acquiring knowledge and as an instrument of magical power. The Reformation advanced its own theory of language, one in which the human word became incapable of comprehending the “Word of God.” Without access to any “supernatural” language, an understanding of divine creation might still result from an exegetical reading of the “Book of Nature.” Whether truth rested in books or in nature became the focus of competing language theories, according to Bono, in a debate between Jean Fernel and William Harvey over spirits and the blood. Here, the contest of hermeneutic practices led finally to a rejection of Renaissance Neoplatonic narratives based on the assumption that ancient texts contained shadowy glimpses of divine wisdom that could be brought to light through philological studies. Both Fernel and Paracelsus viewed nature as an expression of the divine Word. And yet, as Bono shows, they developed different strategies for reading nature’s “text.” For Fernel ancient texts, although written in a “fallen,” “post-Babylonic” language, nevertheless contained a pure, hidden wisdom that [End Page 151] could be exhumed through exegetical expertise. Paracelsus, on the other hand, switched the direction of exegesis from the “Book” to “Nature.” In his “text” matter and spirit were interwoven in such a way as to allow the comprehension of the divine logos through the understanding of the signs and symbols imprinted by God in nature. In the hands of the Paracelsian Oswald Croll, the “text” of Paracelsus came to be reinscribed, in Bono’s view, by means of a “radical” Calvinist narrative of redemption and divine sovereignty. Another reading of the Book of Nature resulted from separating the knowledge of nature from theology. The principal agent in authorizing that reading was Francis Bacon, who transformed cultural narratives by recasting the biblical story of Adam and the Fall. Where Adam’s knowledge in the Garden of Eden brought with it dominion over nature, the fallen state of man subjected human beings to a distorted intellect and to sensory deceptions. These hindrances might be overcome, however, when human labor, experimental tools, and rigorous method mediated the engagement with nature. In this way, Bacon considered possible a “Great Instauration,” a restoration to something like an original Adamic perfection. Beyond the discussion of specific hermeneutic strategies, Bono’s book articulates a very important conceptual reorientation in which nature is defined less in terms of self-presenting material objects than as a “text,” the language of which depends upon a variety of narratives and linguistic assumptions. In this sense “science” itself gets redefined and embraces a broad range of discursive “practices” that are as much linguistic and rhetorical as...

Preparing for the 21st Century

After the end of the (Baudrillard, 1983), the death of master narratives (Lyotard, 1984), and the contentious end of sociological (Seidman, 1990), the need for new directions in the social sciences and in social theory is a topic central to the future of a number of disciplines (including sociology). This rethinking of social scientific inquiry reflects the shifting nature of global political and cultural affairs-including postcolonialism, the trend toward European unification, and the more recent collapse of the Soviet bloc. Within sociology as a discipline, conceptual reorientation is closely related to American sociology's perceived intellectual (Goulder, 1970). This crisis is related to the collapse of the functionalist paradigm in the 1960s and the lack of a shared intellectual orientation. Over the last two decades, various theorists (Alexander, Giddens) have attempted the reunification of sociology but with limited success. Others, however, have sought to rethink the very foundations of sociological knowledge. Giddens, Wallerstein, and Robertson are among those few who have sought to outline a new terrain of the social sciences in the 21st century. Their efforts reflect a growing awareness of the need for serious engage-

Inventing Eastern Europe: the map of civilization on the mind of the Enlightenment

This is a wide-ranging intellectual history of how, in the 18th century, came to be conceived as divided into Western Europe and Eastern Europe. The author argues that this conceptual reorientation from the previously accepted Northern and Southern was a work of cultural construction and intellectual artifice created by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. He shows how the philosophers viewed the continent from the perspective of Paris and deliberately cultivated an idea of the backwardness of Eastern Europe the more readily to affirm the importance of Western Europe.

Prevention Activities for Older Adults: Social Structures and Personal Competencies That Maintain Useful Social Roles

A conceptual reorientation for providing responsive psychological services to older adults is presented, focusing on the need to develop prevention programs for older adults that encourage the maintenance of useful social roles. Changes in social structures that encourage more active social engagement are discussed, with examples drawn from housing options, part‐time employment, and ways to develop more supportive social ties for older adults faced with network losses. Counselors and other mental health specialists can play a useful role in helping the public understand the social dilemmas faced by older adults and the value of their continued integration as useful citizens.

Tradition and the Critical Talent

Abstract From Montaigne to Edmund Burke to Matthew Arnold and William Bennett, tradition has been the special weapon of conservative critics attacking modernity and reform. In a further sign, if one were needed, that old intellectual and political oppositions are in flux, tradition has lately reappeared in a different guise especially among intellectuals on the “Left.” In The Past in Ruins David Gross attempts to formalize this conceptual reorientation by reintroducing tradition not primarily as an object for critical analysis but as a potential grounding for critical opposition to the dominant culture. His work introduces but does not quite answer the crucial question of tradition's place in a society where heterogeneity and division rather than homogeneity and unity are the rule.

Value Change in Industrial Societies

Ronald Inglehart has argued that, while most of the major political parties in Western countries tend to be aligned along a social class–based axis, support for new political movements and new political parties largely reflects the tension between materialist and postmaterialist goals and values. This has presented something of a dilemma to the traditional parties, and helps account for the decline of social-class voting. Scott Flanagan takes issue with Inglehart's interpretation in several particulars. Although their views converge in many respects, Flanagan urges conceptual reorientations and adumbrates a different interpretation of post–World War II political development in Europe and Japan.

Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders: Toward A Conceptual Reorientation

Traditionally, it has been assumed that there is only one type of anxiety; recent pharmacologic evidence suggests that there may be several. The psychoanalytic concept of "neurotic" symptoms as depressurizing mechanisms is out of keeping with most evidence now available. Spontaneous or "free-floating" anxiety may be partly biologic and genetic in origin. Anxiety symptoms evoked by specific stimuli behave in part like conditioned responses. Where conditioning theory has failed to propose a plausible unconditioned stimulus for pathologic anxiety, biology, ethology, and psychoanalysis may have been more successful.

Exclusivity in Psychological Specialization: A Conceptual or Practical Problem?

Although in basic agreement with Harari's goal of uniting clinical and social psychology, the present paper offers some thoughts on a basic issue that may separate the two areas of psychological specialization Harari conceives of the problem of union in terms of a practical matter—that is, how to improve on psychotherapeutic outcome. I propose an alternative difficulty in the path of union—that is, the conceptual differences that separate many clinicians from the majority of social psychologists It is argued that traditional clinical psychology has been devoted to the study of human beings as telic organisms. Social-psychological theory has too readily accepted mechanistic accounts and now seeks to “account for” the behavior of clinicians and their clients in light of this nontelic phraseology. It follows that many clinicians will resist this conceptual reorientation, and will even ask that social psychologists take a more “clinical” view of their experimental subjects.

Trade Union Responses to the Contemporary Economic Problems in Western Europe: The Context of Current Debates and Policies in the Federal Republic of Germany

Unions in most advanced capitalist societies have faced new challenges as a consequence of the lasting economic crisis since the mid-1970s. This rather unsettling situation has called for a strategic and conceptual reorientation on the part of most organized labor movements, including the West German. Although still very much in the stage of general formulation, the unions are in the process of rethinking their priorities in the area of collective bargaining, their relationship to the state and political parties, and their view of technology and economic growth; in short, we are witnessing a period of the reevaluation of previously-held positions. In specific, our paper focuses on this formative period in connection with economic policy in West Germany and analyzes the strident debates which have transpired in the daily formulation of actual strategies. Concretely, we delineate the unions' conceptions in opposition to the dominant theories in the West German political economy and highlight additional important intra-union debates. As evident in our brief description of the 'Memorandum' debates, these processes are far from being merely 'academic' and have decisive immediate implications upon the politics of West German unions and their role in German society.

The Anticipation of International Crises: Prospects for Theory and Research

The changing definition of international crisis is noted and related to the three major series of crises in the twentieth century. The rapid adaptation and institutionalization of American foreign and defense policy machinery to fit the crisis conditions of the Cold War era are traced in order to indicate the nature of the dislocation that began to occur in a “transition period” after 1964. The need to restructure and reinstitutionalize concepts and practices in the American foreign affairs establishment according to the requirements of the ongoing transformation of the international system is interpreted with special reference to conceptual reorientations toward crisis phenomena. Fresh opportunities to advance crisis studies in both theory and research under a closer cooperative relationship between the academic and policy communities are outlined.

Social Indicators for Analysis of Family Needs Related to the Life Cycle

Western sociology, much of family sociological research has focused on micro-level analyses of the nuclear family and its internal mechanisms, in isolation from society and its other institutions (Stolte-Heiskanen, 1972). There have been, however, some important developments that point to reorientation in family sociology toward a broader and more comprehensive direction. First of all, a number of important analyses have appeared that challenge the previously held notion of the nuclear family both as a universally functional and structural phenomenon unique to modern industrial societies (Aires, 1962; Konig, 1970; Gordon, 1972). Secondly, doubts are being increasingly cast upon the concomittant assumption of the functional necessity of the isolation and insulation of the family from the larger society (Litwak, 1970; Sennett, 1970). Both of these basic conceptual reorientations have contributed to the growing awareness of what has been termed as bridging type concepts between the family and other units (Hill, 1966:14). The resurgence of more macrosociological interests in sociology in general, too, has had its repurcussions in family sociology. Specifically, developments in general systems theory have provided an important stimulus for viewing the family in a larger context. The emergence of the so-called developmental approach also refocused family research oward the morphological aspects of family structures and made us aware of the importance of social space and time (Hill, 1972).

Discussion: Changing Orientations of Marketing Research

I am convinced that the contribution by Professor Shaffer in this paper and in his earlier working paper on the same subject will go down as an important milestone in our profession. The future usefulness of and respect for our profession may depend upon how well we implement the philosophic, conceptual, and organizational reorientations which he suggests. In spite of my high appraisal of Dr. Shaffer's paper I do have some critical views on it. Not only does his paper fail to provide an adequate treatment of the subdiscipline or subfield known as marketing but also in my