Epistemological Orientation Research Articles

A construção do corpo ideal no balé clássico: uma investigação fenomenológica

ResumoO objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar e compreender pela perspectiva das bailarinas participantes do estudo o ideal de corpo demandado pela prática do balé. Para tanto, optamos por uma orientação epistemológica apoiada na fenomenologia de Edmund Husserl e em autores afinados com a fenomenologia proposta por esse filósofo. As entrevistas semiestruturadas em profundidade constituíram a técnica de pesquisa utilizada. O que há de comum nas falas das bailarinas é a referência a um corpo ideal centrado nas produções feitas pelas grandes companhias de balé. Nessas percepções, o corpo desejado e ideal para o balé clássico pode ser tanto inato à pessoa, quanto construído e transformado com muito esforço e dedicação pela bailarina.

Categorical Ways of Acting

This paper proposes the “conceptual pragmatism” of C. I. Lewis as a useful epistemological orientation for studying the relationship between the social and individual registers, in particular as it is set out in Bourdieu’s sociology of practice. Bourdieu’s concepts of habits based upon ‘social schematism’ and of culture as a ‘second nature,’ as well as Lewis’ conception of logical schemas constructed by humans are all formulated in the wake of Kant, and mediating between sensorial experience and the conceptual level is a common issue for Lewis and the French sociologist. This paper discusses Lewis’ controversial idea of “sense meaning” in order to show his commitment to a pragmatic, interactive theory of knowledge and language. Moreover, I emphasize Lewis’ intertwining of conceptual schemas, actions, and reality as a theoretical network for reshaping analysis of the relationship between sociality and individuality according to a pragmatist perspective, and for implementing and improving Lewis’ commitment to observing, describing, and interpreting the effective functioning of conceptual schemas, one that includes an option in favor of an externalist philosophical methodology which, in principle, tallies with the methodological attitude that mostly characterizes the contemporary social sciences.

Open Educational Resources: Developing and Evaluating in Master of Educational Technology Learning´s Students

The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate one Open Educational Resources (OER), identifying: (a) instructional design strategy to facilitating the meaningful learning, (b) build an OER about making concept map with quality and (c) evaluate it and contribute to OER debates. This investigation was conducted in a Mexican University (Master of Technology Learning). The epistemological orientation was a constructivist philosophical stance, research paradigm used was mixed. The method used was Educational Technology Research and Development (RD (2) a small group tryout with eight students; and (3) a field trial with a whole class of learners (twenty students).After, we did a summative evaluation by seven experts. The participants were eighteen students. The research findings were: a new OER was created to facilitate the meaningful learning about making concept map, summative evaluation was conducted an evaluation about the OER´s design strategy by seven experts to provide a professional and qualified judgment and to determine the overall value of the instruction, an analysis and interpretation of the evaluations. The instruments were questionnaires.

Can You Digit? Digital Sociologyys Vocational Promise

The proliferation of digital technologies and augmented social relations offer great potential for the vocation of sociology. Although the greatest interest in the digital turn has centered on sources of data, digitality also provides many excellent methodological benefits as well as new and evolving subjects of analysis. This paper seeks to make the case for a more digitally-attuned sociology, and to forge a path in that direction. To accomplish this task, I begin with a brief history of digital sociology — in the U.S. and beyond — as well as a survey of other, related approaches that have gained greater traction in the field. Next, I examine the state of social life in the digitally networked era and make the case for sociology’s need to update its epistemological orientation to put an end to fetishisms of technology and the real world. Finally, I outline an agenda for the future of digital sociology along with some suggestions for how it might be accomplished.

TWO WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING A METAPHOR: O. FREUDENBERG AND M. BAKHTIN

The article presents a comparative analysis of understand-ing a metaphor by O.Freudenberg and M.Bakhtin in the context of the cognitive nature of this phenomenon identi-fied by metaphorology. The basis for affiliating metaphors to philosophical concepts is the formation of metaphorolo-gy. The nature of the phenomenon of metaphors continues to raise debates; thus in philosophy metaphor is presented quite different than in literature. At the same time, the cog-nitive nature of metaphors gave rise to rethinking the met-aphors in contemporary philosophy. The article presents different definitions of a metaphor as a basis for verifying the cognitive side of metaphors. Due to the identified epis-temological orientation, the article highlights the under-standings of metaphors according to O.Freudenberg and M. Bakhtin. The concept of metaphors according to Freudenberg is considered in the context of her interest in the structure of archaic thinking and the role of language in the development of human society in its early phases. Un-derstanding of metaphors according to M. Bakhtin is built on active assessments of the phenomena of reality and bears the features constituting the world picture. Based on the comparative analysis, the article shows that O. Freudenberg and M. Bakhtin had identified the cognitive nature of metaphors through completely different ways and different materials long before it was done in metaphorolo-gy.

Engineering behaviour change in an epidemic: the epistemology of NIH-funded HIV prevention science.

Social scientific and public health literature on National Institutes of Health-funded HIV behavioural prevention science often assumes that this body of work has a strong biomedical epistemological orientation. We explore this assumption by conducting a systematic content analysis of all NIH-funded HIV behavioural prevention grants for men who have sex with men between 1989 and 2012. We find that while intervention research strongly favours a biomedical orientation, research into the antecedents of HIV risk practices favours a sociological, interpretive and structural orientation. Thus, with respect to NIH-funded HIV prevention science, there exists a major disjunct in the guiding epistemological orientations of how scientists understand HIV risk, on the one hand, and how they engineer behaviour change in behavioural interventions, on the other. Building on the extant literature, we suggest that the cause of this disjunct is probably attributable not to an NIH-wide positivist orientation, but to the specific standards of evidence used to adjudicate HIV intervention grant awards, including randomised controlled trials and other quantitative measures of intervention efficacy.

Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Autism, Neurodiversity, and Music Therapy

In this article, I suggest that a provisional paradigm shift from disability as pathology to disability as neurodiversity has the potential to productively resituate the epistemological orientations of music therapy, both as a field of inquiry and a domain of practice. I draw from my own work on the ethnomusicology of autism, as well as from research and writings in disability studies and autistic self-advocacy, in proposing that the relativistic foundations of ethnomusicology offer a potentially useful alternative and complement to the principally treatment-directed foundations of music therapy.

La formazione metodologica dei ricercatori sociali in America Latina

This article discusses some problems related to methodological training in the social sciences and the ways in which they are «solved» in the university teaching of methodology in Argentina and Brazil. The ideas presented here are based on empirical research focused on: a) the analysis of curricula and syllabuses (objectives, contents, theoretical and epistemological orientations, instructional strategies and bibliography), b) the investigation into the conceptions of professors and students about methodology, the processes of teaching and learning methods and their use in specific research projects, c) the comparison of the teaching strategies of methodology - and related issues - in the countries analyzed.

The geographies of community disaster resilience

There is increasing policy and research interest in disaster resilience, yet the extant literature is still mired in definitional debates, epistemological orientations of researchers, and differences in basic approaches to measurement. As a consequence, there is little integration across domains and disciplines on community resilience assessment, its driving forces, and geographic variability. Using US counties as the study unit, this paper creates an empirically-based resilience metric called the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) that is both conceptually and theoretically sound, yet, easy enough to compute for use in a policy context. A common set of variables were used to measure the inherent resilience of counties in the United States according to six different domains or capitals as identified in the extant literature – social, economic, housing and infrastructure, institutional, community, and environmental. Data were from public and freely accessible data sources. Counties in the US Midwest and Great Plains states have the most inherent resilience, while counties in the west, along the US-Mexico border, and along the Appalachian ridge in the east contain the least resilience. Further, it was found that inherent resilience is not the opposite of social vulnerability, but a distinctly different construct both conceptually and empirically. While understanding the overall variability in resilience, the BRIC is easily deconstructed to its component parts to provide guidance to policy makers on where investments in intervention strategies may make a difference in the improvement of scores. Such evidence-based research has an opportunity to influence public policy focused on disaster risk.

Perspectives on Culture and Concepts

The well-respected tradition of research on concepts uses cross-cultural comparisons to explore which aspects of conceptual behavior are universal versus culturally variable. This work continues, but it is being supplemented by intensified efforts to study how conceptual systems and cultural systems interact to modify and support each other. For example, cultural studies within the framework of domain specificity (e.g., folkphysics, folkpsychology, folkbiology) are beginning to query the domains themselves and offer alternative organizing principles (e.g., folksociology, folkecology). Findings highlight the multifaceted nature of both concepts and culture: Individuals adopt distinct conceptual construals in accordance with culturally infused systems such as language and discourse, knowledge and beliefs, and epistemological orientations. This picture complicates questions about cognitive universality or variability, suggesting that researchers may productively adopt a systems-level approach to conceptual organization and cultural epistemologies. Related implications for diversity in cognitive science are discussed.

A polissemia dos conceitos e suas implicações para a sociologia: os usos do termo "sistema"

No presente artigo, examinamos a polissemia do termo "sistema" na Sociologia, com o propósito de demonstrar que o processo comunicacional, inescapável na prática científica, se fragiliza e, por vezes, se impossibilita se os termos empregados forem tomados fora das orientações teóricas e epistemológicas do autor. Acreditamos que a polissemia, fenômeno de ocorrência habitual na vida cotidiana, tem seus efeitos negativos amplificados quando se trata de termos que, no contexto argumentativo, possuem status de conceito. O emprego da palavra não garante por si só o compartilhamento intersubjetivo de significados, podendo ocorrer a produção de significados não desejada por aqueles que buscam se comunicar. Por outro lado, buscar um significado unívoco, sem ambiguidades e sem polissemias, para termos que operam abstrações significativas nas Ciências Sociais nos parece improvável, senão impossível.

Che cosa unisce Weber, Bachtin e Vygotskij?

As the title suggests, the main focus of the book edited by Bruno Maggi, Interpretare l’agire: una sfida teorica, is on human action and theoretical challenges of interpreting it. The volume is a remarkable contribution for at least two reasons, which are also its purposes. First, it shows that an interdisciplinary approach is more useful and required in order to analyse human action. In this perspective, thirteen researchers, from various nationalities (French and Italian), age (younger and elder), disciplinary frameworks and approaches (sociology, psychology, economy, etc.) present their point of view on different aspects of human action. Second, it points out that they share a common epistemological orientation, alternative to the classical conceptual dichotomies (objectivism/subjectivism, system/action, etc.): Maggi calls it the «third way». It had been identified by Weber within the Methodenstreit and can be found in the thinking of many authors, like Simon, Giddens, Elias and also in Vygotsky’s psychological and Bachtin’s sociolinguistic contributions. The «third way» is a unitary conception of acting, it denies the opposition between explanation and understanding, as it regards them as complementary parts of the same cognitive process. Interpretare l’agire is a volume by many hands but it has unity, in its plan as well as in its execution. Maggi organizes the exposition in the following way: the first part of the book deals with the epistemological, theoretical and methodological principles of elder researchers’ approaches (Clot, Faïta, Maggi, de Terssac); the second part is made up of young scholars’ essays (Albano, Bournel Bosson, Fabbri, Masino, Prot, Salento, Saujat, Thoemmes, Zamarian) illustrating the heuristic potential of previous theories in the analysis of a heterogeneous variety of phenomena (from the processes of family socialization to the dynamics of teaching or job training; from a sociological study of labor law to organizational learning).

Passing Knowledge: André Thevet’s Cosmographical Epistemology

Abstract This essay reconsiders whether the standard of a totalizing synthesis can take the appropriate measure of the epistemological orientation implicit in André Thevet’s cosmographic writings. By focusing attention on and contextualizing Thevet’s frequently repeated remark that he is describing something “in passing,” I argue that the hallmark of Thevet’s cosmographic discourse is its explicit provisionality: for all its authority and authenticity, such discourse is predicated on a belief in the inherent flux and impermanence of its object. I conclude that if we can construe Thevet’s non-totalizing, provisional cosmography as a legitimate form of cosmographic knowledge of the globe in the period, rather than as the last, tortured gasp of a self-destructing genre, we can perhaps reconsider both the value and the function of “passing knowledge” in the history of cosmographic discourse.

Elaborating From Practice on the Theoretical Model of Engaged Scholarship

Engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007) is a collaborative form of inquiry involving academics and practitioners working on complex problems to co-produce knowledge. Van de Ven and Johnson (2006) proposed broad conceptual foundations for such scholarship based on five essential elements, a focus on big questions grounded in reality whose dimensions can only be understood by using a diversity of perspectives; a collaborative learning community that includes both academics and practitioners; an extended time frame; multiple models and methods of research and research designs; (re-)examination of researcher assumptions and awareness of epistemological standpoints. In addition, they acknowledged the potential for conflict as a result of likely differing epistemological orientations of academics and practitioners. In this paper we report on research that explores the implementation of engaged scholarship principles and also finds that not only are there epistemological differences between academics and practiti...

Epistemological perspectives in the scientific study and evaluation of executive function.

In this article, epistemological perspectives that have shaped and affected the scientific quest for understanding what neuropsychologists term “executive functions” are reviewed. Executive functions refer to the control functions of cognition and behavior. The underlying thesis of the paper is that one’s epistemological orientation determines how one sees the interaction between brain functions and our status in the world. Each different orientation thus carries with it implications with regard to how executive functions operate, as well as how, therefore, one should try to assess them. Until recently, these functions were approached through two primary epistemological points of view. One is analytic, which has its roots in the positivistic movement. The other approach is synthetic, otherwise known as “romantic science”, and forms the basis of the work of the prominent Russian neuropsychologist A.R. Luria. A third epistemological perspective, articulated under the umbrella of ‘embodied cognition’ approaches, has been advanced in the last 20 years, and is associated most closely with the work of Francisco Varela. A review of, and reflection on how these perspectives have affected research and clinical practice in neuropsychology is provided.

Computer Versus Microscope: Visual Activity Fields of Instruments in the Information Age

The increasing concern about visual representation in science has been usually converged on representations – photographs, diagrams, graphs, maps –, while instruments of visualization have been usually neglected, even because of the concrete difficulty to grasp their effects on visualization. In this regard, the questions and concepts formulated in the debate on digital visualization deserve here as a starting point to analyze the change in instrumental mediation triggered by the introduction of computer-assisted imaging technologies in those laboratories that traditionally have used and still use microscopes. Empirical materials gathered during an ethnographic investigation of Italian cytogenetics labs are here presented to show the visual spaces provided by microscopes and digital systems as activity fields, which are inhabited by and suggest in an either divergent or complementary way specific practices, materials, organizations, epistemological orientations and aesthetical preferences.

Epistemologies in the Text of Children's Books: Native- and non-Native-authored books

An examination of artifacts provides insights into the goals, practices, and orientations of the persons and cultures who created them. Here, we analyze storybook texts, artifacts that are a part of many children's lives. We examine the stories in books targeted for 4–8-year-old children, contrasting the texts generated by Native American authors versus popular non-Native authors. We focus specifically on the implicit and explicit ‘epistemological orientations’ associated with relations between human beings and the rest of nature. Native authors were significantly more likely than non-Native authors to describe humans and the rest of nature as psychologically close and embedded in relationships. This pattern converges well with evidence from a behavioral task in which we probed Native (from urban inter-tribal and rural communities) and non-Native children's and adults' attention to ecological relations. We discuss the implications of these differences for environmental cognition and science learning.

A Critical Methodological Review of Discourse and Conversation Analysis Studies of Family Therapy

Discourse (DA) and conversation (CA) analysis, two qualitative research methods, have been recently suggested as potentially promising for the study of family therapy due to common epistemological adherences and their potential for an in situ study of therapeutic dialog. However, to date, there is no systematic methodological review of the few existing DA and CA studies of family therapy. This study aims at addressing this lack by critically reviewing published DA and CA studies of family therapy on methodological grounds. Twenty-eight articles in total are reviewed in relation to certain methodological axes identified in the relevant literature. These include choice of method, framing of research question(s), data/sampling, type of analysis, epistemological perspective, content/type of knowledge claims, and attendance to criteria for good quality practice. It is argued that the reviewed studies show "glimpses" of the methods' potential for family therapy research despite the identification of certain "shortcomings" regarding their methodological rigor. These include unclearly framed research questions and the predominance of case study designs. They also include inconsistencies between choice of method, stated or unstated epistemological orientations and knowledge claims, and limited attendance to criteria for good quality practice. In conclusion, it is argued that DA and CA can add to the existing quantitative and qualitative methods for family therapy research. They can both offer unique ways for a detailed study of the actual therapeutic dialog, provided that future attempts strive for a methodologically rigorous practice and against their uncritical deployment.

Emotion and memory in nostalgia sport tourism: examining the attraction to postmodern ballparks through an interdisciplinary lens

Nostalgia sport tourism, one of Gibson's [1998. Sport tourism: A critical analysis of research. Sport Management Review, 1, 45–76] three forms of sport tourism, appears to have received little scholarly attention in contrast to active sport tourism and event sport tourism [Fairley, S. (2003). In search of relived social experience: Group-based nostalgia sport tourism. Journal of Sport Management, 17, 284–304; Gibson, H. J. (2002). Sport tourism at a crossroad? Considerations for the future. In S. Gammon & J. Kurtzman (Eds.), Sport tourism: Principles and practice (pp. 123–140). Eastbourne: Leisure Studies Association; Gibson, H. J. (2003). Sport tourism: An introduction to the special issue. Journal of Sport Management, 17, 205–213; Ritchie, B. W., & Adair, D. (2004). Sport tourism: An introduction and overview. In B. W. Ritchie & D. Adair (Eds.), Sport tourism: Interrelationships, impacts and issues (pp. 1–29). Buffalo, NY: Channel View]. Despite this apparent lack of research relative to the other two domains, insightful and thought-provoking scholarship has emerged within nostalgia sport tourism. Sociology, which is one of sport tourism's parent disciplines, has influenced much of this scholarship [Gibson, H. J. (2004). Moving beyond the ‘what is and who’ of sport tourism to understanding ‘why’. Journal of Sport Tourism, 9(3), 247–265; Harris, J. (2006). The science of research in sport and tourism: Some reflections upon the promise of the sociological imagination. Journal of Sport & Tourism, 11(2), 153–171]. Among other things, this epistemological orientation has yielded the importance of emotion and memory to nostalgically oriented experiences. This paper considers the emergence of emotion and memory within nostalgia sport tourism and, in so doing, continues this sociological emphasis. In particular, it argues that interaction ritual (IR) theory [Collins, R. (2004). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], a micro-sociological perspective, can be used to provide scholars with a deep understanding of tourists' and excursionists' motivations for engaging in nostalgically oriented experiences. Three additional constructs from the field of sport geography – place, placelessness [Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion], and topophilia [Tuan, Y.-F. (1974). Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] – are posited as useful supplements to IR theory that can enable sport tourism scholars to develop a more nuanced conceptualization of those elements inherent within nostalgically oriented sport sites. These theoretical positions are synthesized and used as a framework to examine sport tourists' and excursionists' attraction to the recent ‘throwback’ esthetic of contemporary Major League Baseball park design.

Epistemological pluralism in research synthesis methods

The purpose of research synthesis is to produce new knowledge by making explicit connections and tensions between individual study reports that were not visible before. Every effort of synthesizing research is inevitably premised on certain epistemological assumptions. It is crucial that research synthesists reflect critically on how their epistemological positioning enables them to pursue certain purposes while preventing them from pursuing other purposes. The literature on research synthesis methods is dominated by publications premised on positivist assumptions. The rhetoric of systematic reviews, best-evidence synthesis and What Works Clearinghouse privileges syntheses with positivist orientations. Contesting the hegemony of positivist research syntheses, this paper makes a case for research syntheses that are informed by diverse epistemological orientations. It illuminates how research syntheses with distinct epistemological orientations can serve complementary, equally worthwhile, purposes.