Hermeneutic Circle Research Articles

Comment étudier le matériau de gestion ? Propositions méthodologiques

Résumé La complexité des terrains qu’elles étudient amène les sciences de gestion à recourir à de nombreux emprunts transdisciplinaires. Il en résulte une ambiguïté quant à la pertinence et à la légitimité des productions académiques de gestion, face à laquelle un changement de période en matière d’écrits épistémologiques, mais aussi méthodologiques, s’avère nécessaire. Il est tout d’abord proposé ici de reformuler axiomatiquement l’objet comme l’objectif des sciences de gestion, sous l’angle de la représentation. Cet angle d’attaque, qui permet l’application de considérations structuralistes au sens large, amène à formuler plusieurs propositions d’ordre méthodologique visant à opérationnaliser en gestion les approches herméneutiques. Cinq jalons-clés de la démarche de recherche en gestion sont mis en avant, qui s’appuient pour partie sur le structuralisme des géologues : « élargir progressivement les cercles herméneutiques », « dé-plier les représentations de proche en proche », « repérer le front de schistosité », « redistribuer les représentations en un méga-pli unique » et enfin « repousser le front de schistosité ». Destinée à permettre au chercheur de croiser les disciplines tout en mesurant en quoi diffèrent ressemblances profondes d’une part et ressemblances superficielles d’autre part, une telle approche se veut tout aussi bien modulatrice que génératrice et régulatrice du travail scientifique.

Oppression, emancipation, and volunteer tourism: Research Propositions

This paper develops research propositions for volunteer tourism using a combination of critical theory and social movement theory as a foundation. As is often the case with emerging areas of research, a theoretical foundation has been difficult to establish in volunteer tourism. The inherent contradictions of volunteer tourism, particularly concerning the interplay of oppression/emancipation, dependency/resistance and dominant hegemony/agency beg to be deconstructed with a critical theory lens. Social movement theory then in turn offers a tool through which researchers can look to break the hermeneutic circle by examining good practices in volunteer tourism, particularly concerning potential improvements for all stakeholders in self-efficacy, resource networks, and consciousness-raising experiences. The paper culminates with a proposition model based on these theoretical perspectives.

Mixed Methods for the Interpretation of Longitudinal Gerontologic Data

This article's main objective is to demonstrate that data analysis, including quantitative data analysis, is a process of interpretation involving basic hermeneutic principles that philosophers have identified in the interpretive process as applied to other, mainly literary, creations. Such principles include a version of the hermeneutic circle, an insistence on interpretive presuppositions, and a resistance to reducing the discovery of truth to the application of inductive methods. The importance of interpretation becomes especially evident when qualitative and quantitative methods are combined in a single clinical research project and when the data being analyzed are longitudinal. Study objectives will be accomplished by showing that three major hermeneutic principles make practical methodological contributions to an insightful, illustrative mixed methods analysis of a qualitative study of changes in functional disability over time embedded in the Precipitating Events Project-a major longitudinal, quantitative study of functional disability among older persons. Mixed methods, especially as shaped by hermeneutic insights such as the importance of empathetic understanding, are potentially valuable resources for scientific investigations of the experience of aging: a practical aim of this article is to articulate and demonstrate this contention.

Grid Information Security Functional Requirement Fulfilling Information Security of a Smart Grid System

This paper describes the background of smart information infrastructure and the needs for smart grid information security. It introduces the conceptual analysis to the methodology with the application of hermeneutic circle and information security functional requirement identification. Information security for the grid market cover matters includes automation and communications industry that affects the operation of electric power systems and the functioning of the utilities that manage them and its awareness of this information infrastructure has become critical to the reliability of the power system. Community benefits from of cost savings, flexibility and deployment along with the establishment of wireless communications. However, concern revolves around the security protections for easily accessible devices such as the smart meter and the related communications hardware. On the other hand, the changing points between traditional versus smart grid networking trend and the information security importance on the communication field reflects the criticality of grid information security functional requirement identification. The goal of this paper is to identify the functional requirement and relate its significance addresses to the consumer requirement of an information security of a smart grid. Vulnerabilities may bring forth possibility for an attacker to penetrate a network, make headway admission to control software, alter it to load conditions that destabilize the grid in unpredictable ways. Focusing on the grid information security functional requirement is stepping ahead in developing consumer trust and satisfaction toward smart grid completeness.

Reversing the biblical tide: What Kuruman teaches London about mission in a Post-Colonial era<sup>1</sup>

Through a case study focusing on the shift from the London Missionary Society (LMS) to the Council for World Mission (CWM) this essay argues that there is a hermeneutical circle between the Bible and mission. A particular reading of the Bible led the missionaries of the LMS to Africa, and their concern to promote the Bible led to the translation and printingof the Bible in indigenous languages — most famously into Setswana by Robert Moffat at Kuruman. Inevitably, the availability of the Bible in indigenous languages led to new ways of understanding the church and mission from the perspective of the South. This post-colonial dynamic led to changes in the LMS and to the emergence of CWM in 1977. The essay then pursues the argument by showing how over the thirty years of CWM’s lifethere continues to be the development of a biblical vision for mission that takes seriously the perspectives of the post-colonial world.

Co je to strategie ? Konceptualizace pojmu a model pro využití v bezpečnostní strategii ČR

The article conceptually explains the notion of strategy. Drawing on its understanding by well-established authorities like Carl von Clausewitz, Basil Liddel Hart, André Beaufre, or Colin Gray, the authors discuss strengths and weaknesses of various views. Furthermore, the article employs Arthur Lykke's definition of strategy to demonstrate various conceptual requirements. Strategy is thus perceived as the relationship among means, ends, and ways. Crucial implications for a development of the Czech strategic documents are further examined. The article argues that, the vital importance of coherent interconnection of all the afore-mentioned parts of the strategy has been so far neglected in this process. It is suggested that particular attention should be paid to the clear formulation of a goal, which is the prerequisite for any meaningful strategy. However, any goals must be developed with the close relation to the available or potentially attainable resources, and purposeful ways how to employ them. The whole process is best described as the hermeneutic circle.

Preceptors' Experiences Training New Graduate Nurses

Preceptors are a key to retaining new graduate nurses in a hospital setting. Thus, it is important to understand new staff teaching experiences from their own perspectives. Preceptor experience is an inadequately explored topic in Taiwan. The purpose of this study was to explore preceptor experiences related to their training of new graduate nurses in a hospital setting in Taiwan. For this interpretive phenomenological study, researchers purposively recruited 15 nurse preceptors from a medical center in central Taiwan. Study data were collected by means of semistructured, in-depth interviews. Tape recordings were transcribed verbatim, and transcripts were analyzed using a hermeneutic circle approach. Three general themes captured the new nurse training experiences of the preceptors: (a) applying a variety of teaching strategies, (b) feeling the burden of being a preceptor, and (c) developing a sense of achievement. Being in the role of both a preceptor and nurse was perceived as a challenge by participants because of heavy workloads and fears of failure. Thus, reducing the preceptor's patient care responsibilities while educating new nurses should be a priority. This study also found cultivating a positive work climate as crucial to support preceptors and new nurses so that preceptors do not feel alienated or overly stressed. A workshop is a useful strategy to introduce preceptors and new nurses to standardized training procedures and documents; this, in turn, can provide a more holistic approach to teaching and learning and reduce pressures on preceptors caused by additional, unfamiliar paperwork.

The Robot's Heart: Tinkering with Humanity and Intimacy in Robot-Building

This paper explores the processes by which humanoid robots become sites of affective investment in contemporary Japan. It particularly analyses how narratives of intimacy, conventionally found in relationships between humans, are being reproduced and embodied in interactions with humanoid robots. It uses ethnographic research on participants in Robo-One, one of Japan's most popular robotics events, to examine the development of intimate relationships between the human and the robotic, understood in terms of kokoro (loosely translated as ‘heart’). The robot's heart emerges in the grey area between technological material and human imagination. Through the respective processes of tinkering and spectating, both robot builders and ‘robot watchers’ experience the intimacy that results from apprehending the robot's heart. This experience creates an endless hermeneutic circle, drawing together subject and object, original and copy, creator and created, and watcher and watched, to ultimately reconfigure participants' senses of their own kokoro.

Narrative Pedagogy and Art Interpretation

Contemporary practices in nursing education call for changes that will assist students in understanding a complex, rapidly changing world. Narrative pedagogy is an approach that offers teachers a way to actively engage students in the process of teaching and learning. The narrative approach provides ways to think critically, make connections, and ask questions to gain understanding through dialogue. The hermeneutic circle of understanding offers a way to interpret stories and discover meaning. Narratives exist in art forms that can be interpreted to evoke discussions and thinking that relate to nursing practice. Art interpretation is a way to gain access to others and acquire a deeper appreciation for multiple perspectives in the teaching-learning process.

Doubt as Methodology and Object in the Phenomenology of Religion

The Holy Grail in the phenomenology of religion (and, to a lesser extent, the sociology of religion) is a definition of religion that actually works, but, so far, this seems to have been elusive. Classical definitions of religion—substantive (e.g. Tylor) and functionalist (e.g. Durkheim)—fail, in part because they attempt to be in three places at once, as it were: they attempt to distinguish religion from non-religion; they attempt to capture what religions have in common; and they attempt to grasp the 'heart', or 'core', of religion. Consequently, family resemblance definitions of religion replace certainty and precision for its own sake with a more pragmatic and heuristic approach, embracing doubt and putting forward definitions that give us a better understanding (Verstehen) of religion. In this paper, I summarise some 'new' definitions of religion that take this approach, before proposing and defending another one, defining religion as non-propositional and 'apophatic', thus accepting that doubt is central to religion itself, as well as to the analysis of religion.

Nurse Leader Mentor as a Mode of Being: Findings From an Australian Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study

To develop an interpretation of Australian nurse leaders' understandings and experiences of mentorship for nurse leadership. The study aimed to explore experiential meanings and understandings that Australian nurse leaders apply to their mentoring relationships; determine whether mentoring relationships contribute to nurse leader development in Australia; and identify how Australian nurse leaders conceptualize mentorship. Hermeneutic phenomenology provided the methodological framework for the study. A purposive sample of 13 Australian nurse leaders was interviewed so they could share subjective experiences of mentorship through conversational narrative. Interview transcripts were analyzed to uncover and isolate key aspects of the phenomenon in text. An adaptation of Radnitzky's hermeneutic circle was used to develop a hermeneutic meaning interpretation of the text. The lived experience of mentorship for nurse leadership was understood and described through three existential motifs: imagination, journey, and mode of being. This article specifically addresses the finding that mentorship for leadership was sustained by the mentor's mode of being. These nurse leaders were not formally prepared to be mentors; rather, they grew into being mentors as a result of their life journeys. The nurse leaders possessed a life attitude of mentorship that impacted how they perceived and interacted with their world. Mentorship was not formally learned, nor was it enacted as an adjunct role. Being a mentor was a fully integrated aspect of their person. Nurse-leaders use mentorship to grow and develop leadership potential in other nurses. Formal preparation to be a mentor is not fundamental to all mentorship. Some nurse leaders who mentor others for leadership grow into being mentors as a result of lifelong subjective experiences.

Culpa in eligendo. Het scheve perspectief van een nieuwe Bernhard-biografie (discussiedossier over Bernhard. Een verborgen geschiedenis)

Culpa in eligendo. The Skewed Perspective of a New Bernhard BiographyThe new biography Bernhard. Een verborgen geschiedenis [Bernhard: A Hidden History] by Annejet van der Zijl is seen, in the context of the sensational discourse on the monarchy in the Netherlands, through a typical narrowing of the biographical perspective. In explaining Prince Bernhard, in terms of his time and social class, simply as ‘the last feudal’, Van der Zijl has become trapped in the hermeneutic circle between Zeitgeist and individuality. Not only is this a rude denial of the modernity of the German Reich, but Bernhard’s background is not to blame for his failings. It is more interesting to ask how the Dutch political elite used Bernhard’s personal falsifications as an image-building tool for the monarchy. This review is part of the discussion forum 'Een verborgen geschiedenis' (Annejet van der Zijl).

Knowledge of journalism in the hermeneutic circle

In the letters written by Voltaire, Juan Luis Cebrián and AlbertoDines, I find a wisdom originating from experience which is transformed into knowledge for the practice of the profession.In this wisdom there are signs that journalism dialogues with thedisciplines of the social sciences and of language, at the same time that their authors point out the issues which will be transformed into the subject for study according to the theories of journalism. From the wisdom of experience to scientific practice and from the latter to the practice of the profession there is a circulation of knowledge which, in this article, I place in the perspective of the hermeneutic circle indicated by Boaventura de Souza Santos.

Fair Trade Sex: Reflections on God, Sex, and Economics

God, sex, and economics are all intertwined. The trafficking of people for sex intensifies each year. The sex trade crosses a spectrum from ‘high class’ escorts to sex slaves. The sex industry includes toys, pornography, and the exchange of sex between buyers, sellers, and managers. In this market exists sexual poverty caused by injustice, the imbalance of sexual power between individuals and within structures. Poverty pushes people into the market to sell, to be sold. Theologically there is a harmful, top-down, and irrelevant theology that often ignores our sexuality. Liberation theology’s hermeneutical circle, a circle of action and reflection in community, can address sexual poverty. Its steps include: 1. assessing our situation; 2. analyzing our situation with academic tools; 3. analyzing our faith; and 4. praxis; right action. It can help us to draw the line between sexual exploitation and the celebration of sex as a way to know God.

School-Based Lived Experiences of Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes

Diabetes self-management is challenging for adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). School plays a crucial role in the adolescents' lives. However, evidence of inadequate quality of school-based diabetes care has been reported in the literature. The purpose of this preliminary study was to obtain an initial understanding of school-based lived experiences of adolescents with T1DM to serve as a foundation of future research. The Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach served as the philosophical underpinning for this study. Two Taiwanese adolescents with T1DM were purposively recruited. Individual, audio-recorded, semistructured interviews were conducted. Verbatim transcripts were analyzed through hermeneutic circle. Participants described their school-based lived experiences as a dynamic learning process. Four interwoven themes were discovered: (a) learning to be master of their disease, (b) learning to find ways to feel comfortable, (c) learning to not be different, and (d) learning to not let others (especially parents) worry about them. Diabetes care professionals, school nurses, school personnel, and parents should help strengthen resilience of the adolescents to overcome common social obstacles in schools. Creating a supportive learning environment is warranted to help incorporate diabetes management into their daily lives. Future studies should consider specific situational obstacles that the adolescents face to design effective interventions to improve school-based diabetes care.

Honoring (Recollecting) Our Memory of Peter McHugh as Social Theorist

The recent death of Peter McHugh becomes an occasion for the remembrance and recollection of the distinctive form of reflexive or analytic social inquiry, which framed his work and that of his longtime friend and collaborator, Alan Blum. Following dual appointments at York University, Toronto, Canada in 1972, Blum and McHugh’s partnership formed the basis for a community of scholars and students throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. A brief review of McHugh and Blum’s works shows theoretical roots in social constructivism and a deep appreciation of the linguistic turn, which in turn lead to the development of a form of social analysis that meets the stringent requirements of a reflexive sociology by repudiating any claim to a privileged exemption of theoretical speech (practice) from the hermeneutical circle of speech and language. Blum and McHugh are shown to embrace and not to evade the hermeneutical circle by a form of social inquiry that subverts the inherent possibilities available within speech and social convention to make available an encounter with the (moral) authority or form of life for that self-same speech. With each example of everyday life or conventional usage, McHugh (and Blum) move from theorizing which formulates the complexity of a particular instance of social interaction through its rules, to the question of the form of life that make that particular instance of the rules possible. It is the pursuit of transparency between speech and its roots in language that informed and continues to inform the distinctive style of social theory fostered at York-Toronto under the orchestration of McHugh and Blum.

Enhancing Students’ Conceptual Understanding by Engaging Science Text with Reflective Writing as a Hermeneutical Circle

Students can have great difficulty reading scientific texts and trying to cope with the professor in the classroom. Part of the reason for students’ difficulties is that for a student taking a science gateway course the language, ontology and epistemology of science are akin to a foreign culture. There is thus an analogy between such a student and an anthropologist spending time among a native group in some remote part of the globe. This brings us naturally to the subject of hermeneutics. It is through language that we attempt to understand an alien culture. The hermeneutical circle involves the interplay between our construct of the unfamiliar with our own outlook that deepens with each pass. It can be argued that for novice students to acquire a full understanding of scientific texts, they also need to pursue a recurrent construction of their comprehension of scientific concepts. In this paper it is shown how an activity, reflective-writing, can enhance students’ understanding of concepts in their textbook by getting students to approach text in the manner of a hermeneutical circle. This is illustrated using studies made at three post-secondary institutions.

The need for methodological development within qualitative clinical caring research

The need for methodological development within qualitative clinical caring research

The Path to Virtue

Modern hermeneutics, specifically H.-G. Gadamer’s hermeneutics, askswhat kind of meaningful horizon a text opens to us and what happens to uswhen we interpret and understand that particular horizon. The same questionsarise when we read Yasien Mohamed’s The Path to Virtue, a scholarlyorganized text full of fine historical and philosophical analyses. Not onlydoes this book meet internationally accepted research standards, but it alsodeserves to be a missing link between the philosophical ethical thought ofmedieval Islamic culture and our own modern ethical culture.When we read The Path to Virtue, we quickly find ourselves within theso-called “hermeneutical circle” as regards the text’s major topic. This circlereveals itself in two distinct viewpoints: the structure and the horizon ofthe text. As regards its structure, Mohamed’s text discloses both the mostgeneral aspects of al-Isfahani’s ethical thought and the critical detailedcorners of his way of thinking. Hence he is able to show us how the relationshipbetween general aspects of al-Isfahani’s thought fulfills itself in alogically coherent manner with the particularities of the same thought. Hedoes so not only in terms of referring to the internal relations between generaland particular aspects of al-Isfahani’s thought, but also by disclosing theexternal references of al-Isfahani’s thought, among them Plato, Aristotle,basic Islamic texts like the Qur’an and the hadith literature, Miskawayh, andothers. When we focus on the text’s structure, we soon find ourselves assilent participants of a grand discussion on character ethics among Plato,Aristotle, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Miskawayh, the Ikhwan al-Safa, al-Isfahani,al-Ghazali, and others ...

Exploring how Heideggerian philosophy underpins phenomenolgical research

This paper demonstrates the methodological implications of using Heideggerian philosophy to inform a phenomenological study of the experience of memory loss. In particular, it addresses the methodological implications in relation to forestructure and pre-understanding, gaining entry into the hermeneutic circle and the process of data analysis, by considering their influences on the research.