Informal Logics Research Articles

Women's informal entrepreneurship through the lens of institutional voids and institutional logics

AbstractIn this conceptual paper, we respond to the calls for broader theoretical approaches that can coherently demonstrate a high degree of conceptual sensitivity to multiple combinations of institutional factors influencing women's informal entrepreneurship (WIE) and related agency. We do so by integrating constructs of gender and gender inequality with those of institutional logics and institutional voids. We find that a refined understanding of institutional voids is required to pave the way for a meaningful theoretical integration and empirical application of the related conceptualizations. We offer such a revised definition by placing formal and informal logics (rather than institutions) at the heart of it. In our theorizing, we propose that gender interplaying with formal and informal institutional logics create varying degrees of obscure and unique institutional voids that shape WIE prevalence. The proposed harmonized theoretical lens provides researchers with flexible yet consistent guidance for conducting context‐specific empirical work that can coherently advance understanding of underlying logics shaping WIE and related agency.

THE RELEVANCE CRITERION OF ARGUMENT EVALUATION: PRAGMATIC INTERPRETATION

In the paper I consider the relevance criterion for argument evaluation within informal logic. I focus on the dialectical relevance concept, which is the result of dialogical interpretation of argumentation process.The research topicality is due to the lack of the relevance notion unified understanding within the contemporary argumentation theory. This notion analysis is important because relevance is one of the criteria for argument evaluation. The elimination of its interpretation`s contradictions can be the step towards to both better practical argument evaluation using and integrative relevance understanding conception.The purpose of the article is to find out the specific features of the dialectical relevance in compare with others relevance kinds. To achieve this goal I, firstly, analyzed the key characteristics of the dialogue argumentation model in the relevance perspective. Secondly, I clarify the essential features of the dialectical relevance and irrelevance. Thirdly, I provide a comparative analysis of the dialectical and premissary relevance.The methodology of this research is based on the informal logics and dialogical approaches to an argument and argumentation analysis.The novelty of the research results is the dialectical and premissary relevance notions comparison. As the result I conclude that, firstly, dialectical relevance is merely dialectical, not logical criterion of evaluation. Secondly, dialectical relevance deals with argumentation process, not with argument as a premise-conclusion relation. Thirdly, dialectical and premissary relevance have common features, as the relation to the conclusion justifying. However, the dialectical relevance specifics are its rule`s compliance, dynamic and dialectical character, and relation to the argumentation correctness.

LA CONFIGURACIÓN DEL ENTRAMADO INTERGUBERNAMENTAL EN EL CASO URUGUAYO A PARTIR DE LA CREACIÓN DE LOS MUNICIPIOS COMO NUEVO NIVEL DE GOBIERNO

Uruguay has historically been a strongly centralizedcountry. However, since 2009, a decentralization reform process beganwith the approval of the laws of Decentralization and Citizen Participation, which established the municipalities as the third level of government, enabling citizens to choose authorities at the local level. Thisreform significantly modified the dynamics of inter-governmental relations, creating a new weave of economic, legal, political and administrative relations at central and local government level, and further at thenew municipal level. This paper aims to analyze how this configurationhas been developed, characterizing and describing the formal areas ofinter-governmental relations. In this sense, although formal spaces haveadvanced, they are still in a process that presents important challengesand risks, with informal logics that threaten some cardinal principles ofdecentralization reform.

The Patient’s Perspective on Institutional Logics in Russian Maternity Care

The interplay between different institutional logics is a vital topic in contemporary institutional analyses of healthcare. In this paper, we consider relations between professional, bureaucratic, market, and informal logics in the volatile and ever-transforming context of post-Soviet maternity care. We approach this issue from an unconventional angle and study how various logics are interpreted, enacted and manipulated by women-patients. Neo-institutional scholars commonly enlist patients as institutional actors that are involved both in maintaining and changing the institutional order. However, current research neglects the patients’ perspective instead focusing on the practices of healthcare providers. In order to fill this gap, we investigate how expectant mothers make sense of and navigate the complex institutional environment of Russian maternity care. In our analysis we rely on empirical data from fifty-nine qualitative interviews with recent mothers conducted in St. Petersburg in 2015–2017. This data allows us to conclude that the institutional dynamics of maternity care are powered mostly by the rivalry of two logics – one bureaucratic, the other market-driven. The professional logic, meanwhile, remains underrepresented and dominated by the other two. Unlike healthcare practitioners, women perceive the bureaucratic logic as chaotic and unpredictable, while wealthy clients employ a repertoire of actions offered by the market logic to exercise more control of their hospital routine. Different institutional logics compete for dominance, leaving areas of uncertainty in regard to institutional rules. In some cases, patients use informality to manage such ambivalence and challenge the formal order of healthcare facilities. The common character of this strategy prompts us to suggest that informality forms a distinctive fourth logic that frames some actions and interactions within Russian maternity care.

Budget formality and informality as a tool for organizing and governance amidst divergent institutional logics

This historically informed field study examines a period of budget process change at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In so doing, it provides an in-depth examination of the ability of budget process to serve as a forum for debate and compromise between disparate logics for action, and to manage periods of change within institutionally complex environments. Our analysis addresses two primary concerns: 1) the nature of divergent institutional logics and resulting pressure for heterogeneous institutional change; and 2) formal and informal budget process change as a tool to successfully manage institutional complexity through time. This study echoes those of hybrid organizations generally, where the ability to selectively draw upon multiple logics for action is a significant asset in managing the coexistence of competing logics through time. Our focus on budget processes builds upon these results by emphasizing the distinction between formal and informal logics and highlighting the gradual nature of institutional change.

К МОДЕРНИСТСКОЙ ПОЭТИКЕ И ПОЭТОЛОГИИ ПРОГУЛКИ: Р. М. РИЛЬКЕ, Р. ВАЛЬЗЕР, Т. БЕРНХАРД, П. ХАНДКЕ

The paper examines walking as a subject of representation and reflection in German modernist li­terature. It analyzes fiction by Swiss and Austrian writers (R. M. Rilke, R. Walser, Th. Bernhard, P. Handke). This cultural practice is considered from several points of view: as a form of a modern person idling, a literary topic, a narrative model, a form of modernist poetology. The choice of subject matter is determined by cultural, historical-literary and style factors. The imagery of walking and wandering has had a long tradition in literature of the Alpine region (the so called “Alpen-Literatur”), being revised in the 20th century by modernist writers, who preserved but deconstructed its key topics. Poetics of the writers under research has some common features: a focus on search for the self, subordination of principles of composition to informal logics of the narrating I, lack of plotting, reduction of the objective world, preference for abstract vocabulary, inclusion of references to abstract art (avant-guard paintings and graphics, atonal music). This research aims to reveal genetic, typological and unique (national, author’s) features of modernist poetics and poetology of walking. The following features of the modernist poetics of walking have been identified: the domination of aesthetic issues over the pragmatics of movement in space, prevalence of the imagined landscape over real, replacement of topography and close interconnection of walking and writing. In the modernist prose, thus, a walking person is a professional writer, and a ramble submits to intentions to compose a text about the walk.

Intertwining lives and logics: Household and informal economies in Cape Town

Enabling households to make ends meet, the practices of small, informal businesses are not simple, but bound up in the struggles of households and the social and economic relationships that weave local economies together. This paper draws on stories of local businesses in an impoverished Cape Town township to situate these diverse logics and strategies, the histories and aspirations that shape small business success and struggle. Drawing on interviews and mapping every informal sector business in the neighbourhood, I reflect on the specific difficulties of running a business in the context of poverty, including unreliable and inadequate incomes, difficulties of credit, as well as the challenges of operating business on a small scale. This material demonstrates the community-based, as well as livelihood, logics that motivate local business owners as well as sustain their livelihoods. The paper concludes with an argument that the neighbourhood economy, instead of a vehicle driven primarily to maximize profit, forms an intimate part of peoples’ lives. This more multifaceted and embedded analysis stretches overly narrow notions of the informal economy, its limits and logics.

Risk, Instrumentalism and the Humane Project in Social Work: Identifying the Informal Logics of Risk Management in Children's Statutory Services

This paper addresses growing professional discontents with the increasing formalisation of social work practice exerted through systems of risk management and audit. Drawing on an ESRC-funded study of social work practices in children's statutory services, this paper provides a critique of instrumental approaches to risk management in social work. Through the discussion of three illustrative case examples, we argue that risk management is an inherently complex, contingent and negotiated activity. Social work practitioners are obliged to comply with risk reduction technologies, but informal processes continue to play a critical role in shaping decisions and actions in this relationship-based profession. From practitioner accounts, we identify key elements of the informal logics of risk management. We conclude that the bureaucratic–instrumental bias manifest in the modernisation of children's services, in privileging metrics and administrative power leaves the informal and relational aspects of practice under-emphasised and under-theorised. Suggestions are made about how practice might be advanced in the complex world of child welfare and protection.

Are Scientific Induction and Metaphysical Coherence Really Separate Informal Logics?

Are Scientific Induction and Metaphysical Coherence Really Separate Informal Logics?