Particularity Of Experience Research Articles

Unsettling intimacies:Re-cognizing ecological relations with the work of Jean Clandinin


 For Jean Clandinin, narrative inquiry is not about being but becoming and as such posits knowledge as a continuous, non-teleological process rather than a static object. Experiential knowledge, for Clandinin, then, is intimately bound up with the vicissitudes of lived experience. If stories make meaning from experience, they open up an imaginative space through which researchers can come to understand experience as well as the knowledge that emerges from it or re-cognize such. Inquiring into experiential knowledge through narratives is valuable for research, and particularly for research that engages ecological crises, because it enables a more robust, nuanced view of life—both human and nonhuman—to emerge. Further, as Clandinin’s work reconfigures the role of the researcher, it unsettles hierarchical assumptions within the research space, allowing for collaboration, polyphonic texts, and reconfigured understandings to emerge. Clandinin’s work troubles dominant narratives about knowledge that presuppose conceptual reification and mastery. As such, narrative inquiry has the potential to support research that is interested in reconfiguring relationships between human and non-human “nature” in ways that do not necessarily fit into dominant narratives about knowledge in education. Using a framework informed by contemporary eco-criticism and trauma theory, I consider how narrative inquiry might offer reparative methods for educational research that engages ecological crises. As narrative inquiry aims to honour the particularity of experience and promote growth without assimilating plurality into an objective singularity, its methods have the capacity to provide insights into ecological relations that are critical, self-reflexive, and ethically responsive.

Toward an Understanding of Attunement as an Autobiographical Theory of Education

I explore the concept of attunement in this paper. Informed by my own story and other scholarly work, attunement in this paper is employed to describe an autobiographical theory of education. In such an autobiographical theory of education learning becomes situated not only in the school-subject and specific prior knowledge, but also in one’s subjective sense of intellectual labor. Basically, this paper comprises two sections. In the first I elucidate my understanding of the concept of attunement. Attunement, in this paper, refers to learning guided and experienced by oneself subjectively striving for deeper understanding, during which one searches for meaning as well as begets one’s engagement with the world. In the second, I describe that attunement has three elements: contingency, boundary and sensitivity. Contingency emphasizes the particularity of experience, identified from one’s own perspective; boundary refers to the challenges and difficulties experienced by oneself; sensitivity underscores how one can go beyond one’s boundary subjectively, thus being attuned to new forms of understanding or thinking. Key-words: attunement, contingency, sensitivity, awakening inwardness

On the particularity of experience

Phenomenal particularism is the view that particular external objects are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. It is a central part of naïve realist or relational views of perception. We consider a series of recent objections to phenomenal particularism and argue that naïve realism has the resources to block them. In particular, we show that these objections rest on assumptions about the nature of phenomenal character that the naïve realist will reject, and that they ignore the full resources that naïve realism has to offer in explaining phenomenal character.

Imageability and Form in the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec: The Baroque as a More-Than-Representational Technique toward the Paradoxical Particularity of Experience in Space

Because of an inattention to architectural form in building events, architectural geography has yet to fully explore the subjective aspects of the spatial politics of affect. And because of an analytical focus on the programming of affect, it has undertheorized affective styles which may unsettle the performativity of space. Architectural theorists call such spaces ambiguous or contradictory. They variously insist that baroque space is crucial to redressing individualism and capitalism insofar as it encourages relationality, democracy, and resubjectification. I take a more circumscribed approach to the more-than-representational and show that formal spatial ambiguity produces delight and provokes a paradoxical sort of looking, feeling(s), and thinking (ie, the particularity of experience). My argument is based on observant participation and interviews on the affective consistencies (here, in-betweenness) of perception, speed, and ascension in the Grand Bibliothèque du Québec. As for the political merits of the baroque, inasmuch as its tensions strike a contrast with the rhythm of the performativity of space, it must be considered a complement to more expressly representational attempts to wrest loose from the disciplinary doing of the world.

Culture, personal experience and agency

In this article, we explore what we perceive to be a gap between agency as articulated in practice theories and agency as personally experienced. The gap is not created by a turn to practice in theorizing, but by the tendency to produce theoretical representations that silence the particularity of experience and the diversity of voices in experience. In exploring the gap, we identify aspects of practice theories that explicitly commit to theoretical representation over personal experience and describe Bakhtin's commitment to action and personal experience as an alternative. In order to exemplify Bakhtin's approach in practice, we then present an analysis of one artist-teacher's experience of her own agency in making art and in teaching. Finally, we comment on what a commitment to representational theorizing does to accounts of an artist's activities and personal experience.

Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body: Toward Embodied Maternity

We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding.

Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body: Toward Embodied Maternity

We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding.

Adoption, ART, and a Re-Conception of the Maternal Body: Toward Embodied Maternity

We criticize a view of maternity that equates the natural with the genetic and biological and show how such a practice overdetermines the maternal body and the maternal experience for women who are mothers through adoption and ART (Assisted Reproductive Technologies). As an alternative, we propose a new framework designed to rethink maternal bodies through the lens of feminist embodiment. Feminist embodied maternity, as we call it, stresses the particularity of experience through subjective embodiment. A feminist embodied maternity emphasizes the physical relations of the subjective lived-body rather than the genetic or biological connections. Instead of universalizing claims about the maternal body, embodied maternity looks to communicable experiences and empathetic understanding.

Creating 'A Lot on Her Hands'

‘A lot on her hands - the history of Australian working women’ is an exhibition, one of 43 major projects funded through the Queensland Heritage Trails Network program with support from the Centenary of Federation initiative. The Network aimed to create a series of heritage attractions throughout Queensland as a means of preserving and promoting the State’s natural, indigenous and cultural heritage and developing educational resources, creating jobs, stimulating development and fostering tourism. This article explores the experience of developing an historical statement in this format, in this context and under the pressures of a consultancy of this kind. It examines the effect of the team approach to projects such as this, which are the cumulative result not only of researchers, but also of designers and preparators. It also discusses the nature of historical argument in the museum context, arguing that the task here is more about evoking the nature of experience than advancing an explanation of historical events and processes. The article notes also that the statements in an exhibition are non-linear and only partly verbal in nature; that this exhibition was also influenced by its setting and the celebratory nature of its sponsorship; and that the aim of the researcher and curator to focus on the particularity of experience of a range of individuals was, in the event, only partly achieved in the final product.

Changes in the Westphalian Order: Territory, Public Authority, and Sovereignty

nature of concepts. All concepts are abstract. Indeed, root of word means to draw out or away from what Harry Eckstein called the relentless particularity of experience. Concepts attempt to draw together elements of concrete experience that can be grouped in a fruitful way, so as to improve our understanding. Thus, point is not to avoid abstraction, but to build fruitful concepts. Again, no one will disagree with so anodyne a statement. The challenge is to pitch concepts at right level so as to connect both upward (towards general theory) and downward (towards empirical data). The mix of concepts associated with Westphalian order (sovereignty, authority, autonomy, control, territoriality) have fallen on latter criterion, that is, on connection between abstract concepts and empirical observations. Dichotomous nature of concepts. Concepts such as and territoriality have been treated as if they could take on two possible values-present or absent, or not sovereign, territorial or nonterritorial organization. While some concepts are inherently dichotomous, many so treated are at bottom continuous. Even types of political systems, such as presidential and parliamentary, can be conceptualized as having or less of these properties measured on some underlying continuum (Shugart and Carey 1992:2-3). Defining our concepts in either/or terms has caused us to labor needlessly about whether certain states are or not, whether emerging international unions such as European Union (EU) possess or not, and if they do, whether such is shared with constituent nation states. Dichotomous conceptions of have also prevented us from conceptualizing sovereignty bargains (Litfin 1997). Disputes over and who possesses it are bound up with notion that is ultimate right to decide. Sovereignty in this sense implies a hierarchy of both 4 Changes in Westphalian Order 5 norms and power. Many institutions within (and outside) society may possess both competencies and normative support, but when they are in conflict with one another-when the chips are down as saying goes-the important question is who has final authority? Since ideas of normative conflict and hierarchy of norms are central to much legal reasoning, lawyers tend to adopt this view of as located in final authority. Since law is about adjudication among competing norms, lawyers are supremely well placed to shed light on so defined. Yet idea of as ultimate right to decide has seriously retarded progress. Dichotomous conceptions of do not allow much observable variation, cannot be untangled from other important concepts, and are not easily assimilated into language of political exchange (compromising sovereignty, bargains) and practices. Almost all of concepts related to Westphalian model-territory, control over borders, authority, autonomy, legitimacy, and sovereignty-can be thought of in continuous terms. While phrases such as more or less sovereign may sound odd, I suggest they do so because of ingrained notion that is ultimate right to decide. While this point is straightforward, it is not uncontroversial, and finding areas of agreement with respect to definitions is an important first step. The aggregation of concepts. Concepts such as territoriality, sovereignty, and authority obviously exist at a very high level of aggregation. To some extent, this is unavoidable. We are dealing with macroconcepts that often cannot be factored into specific, microlevel representations. Anarchy is a structural characteristic of international system, not a characteristic of states. States are not anarchic, yet placed in relation to one another they form an anarchy. And individual states are not bipolar or multipolar but system as a whole may be. Information about components is used to construct systemic properties (how could it be otherwise?), but once assembled in relation to one another, system takes on meanings of its own. Composition counts. The placement of elements makes a difference. Waltz (1979) has gone to great pains to establish independence of thirdimage (systemic) theory. If Waltz is correct-and I think he is on this pointsystemic theory cannot be reduced to its components. A theory of market is different from, and not reducible to, a theory of firms, just as a theory of international relations is separate from a theory of foreign policy.4 Lest I sound as if I am defending what I want to criticize, I note that aggregation issue takes two forms. The first, discussed briefly above, concerns 4This is a separate question from whether systemic theory by itself is underdetermined and therefore requires a theory of foreign policy as a complement.

THE SALVADOR, BAHIA CONFERENCE, 1996

International Review of MissionVolume 84, Issue 334 p. 291-293 THE SALVADOR, BAHIA CONFERENCE, 1996 REFLECTIONS FROM AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN PASTOR Mac Charles Jones, Mac Charles Jones Mac Charles Jones is pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri and a member of the World Council of Churches' Commission Programme Unit II: Churches in Mission — Health, Education, Witness.Search for more papers by this author Mac Charles Jones, Mac Charles Jones Mac Charles Jones is pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri and a member of the World Council of Churches' Commission Programme Unit II: Churches in Mission — Health, Education, Witness.Search for more papers by this author First published: July 1995 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.1995.tb02708.x AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume84, Issue334July 1995Pages 291-293 RelatedInformation

The Progressive Construction of Mind

We propose a vision of the structure of knowledge and processes of learning based upon the particularity of experience. Highly specific cognitive structures are constructed through activities in limited domains of experience. For new domains, new cognitive structures develop from and can call upon the knowledge of prior structures. Applying this vision of disparate cognitive structures to a detailed case study, we present an interpretation of addition‐related matter from the corpus and trace the interplay of specific experiences with the interactions of ascribed, disparate structures. The interpretive focus is on learning processes through which a broadly applicable skill emerges from the interaction and integration of knowledge based on specific, particular experiences.

The progressive construction of mind

We propose a vision of the structure of knowledge and processes of learning based upon the particularity of experience. Highly specific cognitive structures are constructed through activities in limited domains of experience. For new domains, new cognitive structures develop from and can call upon the knowledge of prior structures. Applying this vision of disparate cognitive structures to a detailed case study, we present an interpretation of addition-related matter from the corpus and trace the interplay of specific experiences with the interactions of ascribed, disparate structures. The interpretive focus is on learning processes through which a broadly applicable skill emerges from the interaction and integration of knowledge based on specific, particular experiences.

Should Children Read Books?

The question of what it is fitting for children to read would seem to be one which is always being debated. “Cinderella,” wrote a woman in 1802, “is perhaps one of the most exceptionable books ever written for children. It paints some of the worst passions that can enter into the human breast— envy, jealousy, vanity, a love of dress.” The same writer disapproved of Robinson Crusoe, which, she feared, might lead “to an early taste for a rambling life and a love of adventure.” On August 12th, 1955, the leading article of The Times Literary Supplement, dealing with the quality of present day writing for children, speaks of “a kind of struggle that is now taking place in the battlefields of our children's souls between the child's active appetite for the particularity of experience and its passive vulnerability to the stereotype.” The Literary Supplement goes on to say: “Almost any child has at once more sensibility, and less discrimination, than almost any adult. And one of the most worrying things about some levels, at least, of our contemporary culture is the tendency to damp and dim that intrinsic sensibility and to exploit that innocence, that inability to discriminate.” This, be it noted, is not directed at the “Comics”, English or American, but at children's books, the books which fill the shelves of the libraries which the teacher is perpetually urging the child to join.