Reciprocal Understanding Research Articles

Writing ‘between-the-six’: Mentorship, distance and the co-construction of dissertation research

Abstract In this article, three faculty members and three doctoral students make visible the mutual construction of dissertation research. Through a collaborative and duographic approach, the co-authors write in pairs to explore the relational, affective, and personal processes surrounding mentoring doctoral research. The pairs of duographic narratives are placed side by side to enable multifaceted interaction ‘between-the-six’ authors. The authors theorize and perform the process and concept of mentoring through affective, embodied, sensory, reflective, and dialogic encounters. They also acknowledge the ways in which all mentoring encounters differ and are therefore subject to how individual awarenesses inform multiple, collective, and reciprocal understandings.

Understanding Workplace Adaptation as an Acculturation Process: A Qualitative Examination of South Korean Highly Skilled Workers in Japan

<p>Although study on job stress and coping among Highly Skilled Migrants (HSMs) has been increasing around Anglo European countries, little is known about Asian migrants working in Asian countries. The present study examined stress factors among South Korean HSMs in Japan and explored their coping strategies in relation to acculturation processes. Semi-structured interviews with eight participants found three main domains affecting work adaptation-related stress: acculturation and adjustment, life events, and job stress. Job demand, relationship formation, and company climate were identified as major job stress factors. HSMs tended to perceive job stress factors as being related to a cultural difference or unique characteristics of Japanese organizations. This qualitative study addresses an initial step towards researching Asian migrant workers in Japan society, suggesting importance of incorporating culture-specific issues in acculturation processes with their job adjustment issues. It is necessary for immigration policy makers to encourage reciprocal understandings between migrants and local colleagues for improving mental health and well-being of both groups in organizations.</p>

The Heritage of Displacement: Forced Migration in the Mediterranean through History

The Heritage of Displacement: Forced Migration in the Mediterranean through History

Inequalities and Agencies in Workplace Learning Experiences: International Student Perspectives

National systems of vocational education and training around the globe are facing reform driven by quality, international mobility, and equity. Evidence suggests that there are qualitatively distinctive challenges in providing and sustaining workplace learning experiences to international students. However, despite growing conceptual and empirical work, there is little evidence of the experiences of these students undertaking workplace learning opportunities as part of vocational education courses. This paper draws on a four-year study funded by the Australian Research Council that involved 105 in depth interviews with international students undertaking work integrated learning placements as part of vocational education courses in Australia. The results indicate that international students can experience different forms of discrimination and deskilling, and that these were legitimised by students in relation to their understanding of themselves as being an ‘international student’ (with fewer rights). However, the results also demonstrated the ways in which international students exercised their agency towards navigating or even disrupting these circumstances, which often included developing their social and cultural capital. This study, therefore, calls for more proactively inclusive induction and support practices that promote reciprocal understandings and navigational capacities for all involved in the provision of work integrated learning. This, it is argued, would not only expand and enrich the learning opportunities for international students, their tutors, employers, and employees involved in the provision of workplace learning opportunities, but it could also be a catalyst to promote greater mutual appreciation of diversity in the workplace.

Practitioners’ use of shared concepts in anthroposophic pain rehabilitation

Purpose: To elucidate the meaning of anthroposophic practitioners’ conceptualizations of caring for persons living with chronic pain.Methods: Interviews were conducted with 15 practitioners working with rehabilitation of persons with chronic pain at an anthroposophic hospital in Sweden. The interviews were analyzed using a phenomenological hermeneutical method.Findings: When practitioners discussed patient care, they used a shared language with particular concepts. Concepts, such as “trauma,” “self,” and “life intention,” were interpreted as a means of understanding persons with pain and their current life situation. The meaning of the concepts also had explicit or implicit implications for the caring process, e.g., the concept “caring shelter” referred to an inherent and continuous part of the caring culture enabling patients’ own exploration of their life and suffering and the meaning of their pain in the context of their lives.Conclusions: The practitioners’ use of a conceptual language is here interpreted as a sign of a shared “caring culture” that enabled them to understand patients and their suffering from an existential perspective. A reciprocal understanding within a caring culture may extend the abilities of practitioners to engage in a dialog with patients about life and health as intertwined with the phenomenon of pain.Implications for rehabilitationIn the rehabilitation process, health practitioners’ language may contribute to shaping a caring culture that emphasis an understanding of patients’ needs of health.Shared concepts in rehabilitation might increase health practitioners’ possibilities to support patients from broader and more personalized perspectives, involving not only biopsychosocial aspects but also existential dimensions.The shared conceptual understanding of anthroposophic practitioners in this study may serve as an example to practitioners in other pain rehabilitation settings, developing a contextual understanding of their central concepts, and caring values.

Going from “paper and pen” to ICT systems: Perspectives on managing the change process

ABSTRACTBackground: Lack of participation from staff when developing information and communication technologies (ICT) has been shown to lead to negative consequences and might be one explanation for failure. Management during development processes has rarely been empirically studied, especially when introducing ICT systems in a municipality context. Objective: To describe and interpret experiences of the management during change processes where ICT was introduced among staff and managers in elderly care. Design: A qualitative interpretive method was chosen for this study and content analysis for analyzing the interviews. Results: “Clear focus–unclear process” demonstrated that focus on ICT solutions was clear but the process of introducing the ICT was not. “First-line managers receiving a system of support” gave a picture of the first-line manager as not playing an active part in the projects. First-line managers and staff described “Low power to influence” when realizing that for some reasons, they had not contributed in the change projects. “Low confirmation” represented the previous and present feelings of staff not being listened to. Lastly, “Reciprocal understanding” pictures how first-line managers and staff, although having some expectations on each other, understood each other’s positions. Conclusions: Empowerment could be useful in creating an organization where critical awareness and reflection over daily practice becomes a routine.

The Economic Crisis and the Rule of Law in Europe

As a critical lens to assess the rule of law the article confronts the often used term of criticism levelled at it: that it is inherently elusive or uncertain. Taking this as a starting point the article considers whether there is something productive in this apparent uncertainty which renders this challenge both misleading and also apt to neglect key aspects of the concept in favour of adopting a version of rule of law based on predictability. The article develops an account of what can be termed ‘the constitutive’ dimension of the rule of law which it is argued here has been neglected due to an emphasis on predictability and also ‘regulatory’ dimension which concentrates on the rule of law as the control or restraint of political power. The constitutive dimension of the rule of law explores the meaning of the foundational moment of the constitutional community and the language used to express this as a basis for solidarity and as a point of orientation during points of considerable change or crisis. In this regard the article establishes that there is an important theoretical relationship between the rule of law and ideas about the constituent power which require development and further reflection. The second part of the article, in Sects. 3 and 4, takes the theoretical investigation of the constitutive dimension to the rule of law and considers how this concept can provide a basis for critical reflection regarding the economic crisis of the EU. The focus on the economic crisis in the EU is two-fold: in the first instance the economic crisis is a moment of stress on the political and legal understanding of the EU and shows up the complexity of the commitment to the rule of law in this context. Secondly, given the aspect of the EU as a ‘polity’ under construction the economic crisis and its response underscores the problematic aspect of the constituent power in the EU. The article primarily focuses on the contributions made by Jurgen Habermas in respect of the crisis and its response in terms of the rule of law. Habermas argues for a reciprocal understanding of political solidarity and justice to be made part of the solution and response to the EU economic crisis and a rejection of the executive federalism dominated approach which is characterised by a technocratic approach to political question. Habermas’ approach is noteworthy for the manner that it focuses on a response which articulates how the crisis can become a basis not only for an appreciation of the importance of political solidarity but equally to allow Europe to confront the constitutive meanings of the EU as a legal and political project.

Multiple and Fluid: Religious and Diasporic Belonging in Venice’s Maritime State in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period

As a result of the Ottoman territorial conquests, the Venice of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a site of an unprecedented influx of immigrants from its colonies in the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean. Venice’s own polycentric and plural legal and institutional system provided a backdrop for complex processes of accommodation and contestation of cultural difference. Both state institutions and legal categories struggled to respond to the demands of Venice’s increasingly diverse populations. Immigrants themselves negotiated the legal and social categories of the state, and drew on different conceptions of social membership, in order to formulate their own claims about identity and belonging. This article focuses on two specific social sites where notions of community and belonging were elaborated: the establishment of Venetian civic ritual and the resulting negotiation of local religion in the eastern Adriatic commune of Kotor (Cattaro), and the working of lay religious corporations of foreigners in Venice, which complicated metropolitan and colonial perspectives and created a more reciprocal understanding of the world in which both colonial administration and local populations picked their way between multiple legal, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries. Religious devotion emerges not simply as a reflection of wider social, economic, and cultural changes, but as a dynamic and active agent in their negotiation.

Communication difficulties experienced by deaf male patients during their in-hospital stay: findings from a qualitative descriptive study.

Studies available have described several specific issues affecting healthcare accessibility by deaf people, but to date, no research has reported the experience of deaf patients with in-hospital communication. The aim of the study was to explore the communication experience of deaf patients with regard to their in-hospital stay. A purposeful sample of participants was selected. The data collection process was based on a focus group. The focus groups were conducted in Italian sign language and videorecorded; subsequently, the entire conversation was faithfully transcribed. A qualitative content analysis of the transcription was performed and the findings are reported using the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research approach. Four themes have emerged: (a) experiencing a common vulnerability: the need for reciprocal understanding and sensitivity, (b) being outside the comfort zone: feeling discriminated against once again, (c) perceiving a lack of consonance between care and needs and (d) developing a sense of progressively disempowerment. The experience of deaf individuals during their in-hospital stay may be critical: they are exposed to protracted communication and interaction with healthcare providers and an environment that is not prepared and designed for these vulnerable patients. Two levels of strategies should be identified, implemented and developed to increase the quality of communication with deaf people during hospitalisation, both at the hospital/health system level and at the healthcare professional/clinical level.

The extra-territorial paradox of voting: the duty to vote in extra-territorial elections

ABSTRACTThe question of why individuals vote, the so-called “paradox of voting”, has been a crucial debate within political science, conceived deductively as an interaction between costs, benefits, and, as some argue, duties. This article situates the question of why individuals vote within the context of extra-territorial elections, focusing on how and why those who acquire citizenship kin-states participate in kin-state elections following citizenship acquisition, while continuing to reside outside of the kin-state. The article uses the case of newly acquired Romanian citizens in Moldova, who have never resided in nor intend to reside in Romania, to unpack whether, how, and why individuals acquiring Romanian citizenship in Moldova vote in Romanian elections. The article uses an interpretive and inductive approach to explore from the bottom up both the experiences of and motivations for political participation of extra-territorial citizens. The article finds, unexpectedly, how those acquiring Romanian citizenship in Moldova are motivated by a duty to participate. Overall, the article argues for a relational and reciprocal understanding of citizenship and voting, which focuses on the relationship between the kin-state, facilitating citizenship as a right, and the kin-citizen, performing their duty to vote.

Wittgenstein: incertidumbre instintiva y diversidad conceptual

Important theories about the attribution of mental contents and/or linguisticmeanings propose a theoretical characterization about mental and linguisticunderstanding. As one of the consequences of this, they cannot account forinstances of genuine conceptual diversity: the exotic expressions and their conceptual repertoires must be re-describe by means of a theory, articulated in our conceptual repertoire, that eliminates that diversity. Wittgenstein, on the other side, has argued that understanding of the linguistic and non linguistic behavior of other creatures is based on primitive ways of reciprocal understanding, settled on practical agreements. Consequently, he has characterized our relationship towards radically estrange behaviors as a form of “instinctive uncertainty”. On these bases, I will attempt to show how it is possible to dissolve skeptical problems and elude contrived solutions about other “forms of life”, recognizing that genuine conceptual diversity is possible.

Gift Exchange with Saints in Medieval Icelandic Miracle Stories

Employing anthropological perspectives on gift giving, I analyze exchanges between Icelandic saints and their devotees in the miracle stories of Saints Jon and Þorlakr. Norms of reciprocal gift giving offered a framework for seeking saintly assistance that involved predictable stages, including vows, counter-pledges, and pledge-confirmations, followed by gifts and counter-gifts. I highlight the need for equity in gift exchange and the negotiations between devotees and saints seeking materially and/or symbolically balanced exchange. The examples discussed underscore the role of reciprocal exchange in structuring the miracle stories, the consequences of failed saintly gift transactions, and the Church’s role in promoting a reciprocal understanding of saintly worship. Counter-gifting of material goods by the devotee to the saints’ cathedrals directed wealth towards the Church, but I contend that the pivotal outcome of saintly gift exchange conducted according to traditional norms was the cementation of socio...

Embodiment and Mechanisation: Reciprocal Understandings of Body and Machine from the Renaissance to the Present by Daniel Black

Embodiment and Mechanisation: Reciprocal Understandings of Body and Machine from the Renaissance to the Present by Daniel Black

Reciprocity in therapeutic relationships: A conceptual review.

Reciprocity has generally been understood as a process of giving and taking, within an exchange of emotions or services, and has long been recognized as a central part of human life. However, an understanding of reciprocity in professional helping relationships has seldom received attention, despite movements in mental health care towards more collaborative approaches between service users and professionals. In this review, a systematic search of the published papers was conducted in order to explore how reciprocity is conceptualized and understood as part of the dyadic therapeutic relationship between professionals and service users. Eleven papers met our inclusion criteria and a narrative synthesis was used to synthesize the key concepts of reciprocity. The concepts of: 'dynamic equilibrium', 'shared affect', 'asymmetric alliance', and 'recognition as a fellow human being' were recurrent in understandings of reciprocity in professional contexts. These conceptualizations of reciprocity were also linked to specific behavioural and psychological processes. The findings suggest that reciprocity may be conceptualized and incorporated as a component of mental health care, with recurrent and observable processes which may be harnessed to promote positive outcomes for service users. To this end, we make recommendations for further research to progress and develop reciprocal processes in mental health care.

MANAGEMENT STYLES IN A GLOBAL MARKET ECONOMY

Globalization is the intensification of the spatial organization ofsocial relations and transactions, which put distant localities and local activities at a level of worldwide range, consequence and significance. These activities cluster into new reality like a globally operating market system and a globally developing technoscience. The question is to what extent a global civil society will come about too. At the level of internationally operating firms management styles will have to be developed to enhance the understanding of cultural heterogeneity within this global civil society. Cultural complexity will increase due to the intensification of interactions and transactions. Within and between internationally operating firms. Communicative rationality in terms of dialogue and conversations should be reinforced to deal adequately with this complexity. Communicative rationality perceives language not only as a mere representation of an objective reality but also as a human practice in a social context. Firms operating as communities of practice will enhance through proper management styles the reciprocal understanding we need in a world economy.

Partnership Studies: A New Methodological Approach to Literary Criticism in World Literatures, Languages and Education

This article briefly describes the innovative research undertaken by the Partnership Studies Group based at the University of Udine (Italy), which, since 1998, has been investigating the possible configurations of a partnership model within contemporary world literatures, language, and education. Partnership Studies draw upon non-binary and trans-disciplinary paradigms as propounded by Riane Eisler, and have been demonstrating their strength and potentialities as epistemological and methodological instruments of transcultural consciousness and awareness, capable of fostering harmonious understanding and relations of reciprocity rather than domination among different cultures.

Mothering and ‘insider’ Dilemmas: Feminist Sociologists in the Research Process

This paper is about care, insider positions and mothering within feminist research. We ask questions about how honest, ethical and caring can we really be in placing the self into the research process as mothers ourselves. Should we leave out aspects of the research that do not fit neatly and how ethical can we claim to be if we do? Moreover, should difficult differences, secrets and silences that emerge from the research process and research stories that might ‘out’ us as failures be excluded from research outcomes so as to claim legitimate research? We consider the use of a feminist methods as crucial in the reciprocal and relational understanding of personal enquiry. Mothers invest significant emotional capital in their families and we explore the blurring of the interpersonal and intrapersonal when sharing mothering experiences common to both participant and researcher. Indeed participants can identify themselves within the process as ‘friends’ of the researcher. We both have familiarity within our respective research that has led to mutual understanding of having insider positions. Crucially individuals’ realities are a vital component of the qualitative paradigm and that ‘insider’ research remains a necessary, albeit messy vehicle in social research. As it is we consider a growing body of literature which marks out and endorses a feminist ethics of care. All of which critique established ways of thinking about ethics, morality, security, citizenship and care. It provides alternatives in mapping private and public aspects of social life as it operates at a theoretical level, but importantly for this paper also at the level of practical application.

The Work of Black American Women Anthropologists in Jamaica

SINCE THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY, BY MY OWN informal counting, at least eleven African-American women anthropologists have carried out their doctoral research in Jamaica. Included on this list are Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Ida Tafari, Victoria Durant-Gonzalez, Faith Mitchell, Faye Harrison, Deborah A. Thomas, Gina Athene Ulysse, Bianca Williams, Lisa Anderson-Levy, as well as myself. What brings African-American women anthropologists to Jamaica?The reason for my focus on women anthropologists conducting research in has two parts. First, this is an aspect of my ongoing project, Face and Voice of Black Women Anthropologists'',1 an intellectual biography that historicises and focuses on theory building, recognition and respect or lack thereof garnered by the women who face barriers of racism and sexism in the academy and in the larger society of the United States; in that larger project I ask, what brings US black women to anthropology, this esoteric discipline, often demonised for its imperialist origins but the most scientific of the humanities and most humanistic of the social sciences? Second, included in the discussion of women anthropologists carrying out research in is the double-edged sword of public scrutiny, as they are gendered foreigners regardless of a shared phenotype. African-American anthropologist Brackette Williams reminds us that all my skinfolk ain't kinfolk as a way of expressing differences of class, nationality, gender, regardless of similar phenotype.2 What brings these researchers to a place such as Jamaica, I argue, is the development of an African diaspora knowledge and a mutual understanding of reciprocity, respect and responsibility that serves as a shared bridge across African diasporan cultures.Anthropological research utilises emic and etic methodologies. Conrad Kottak offers this definition of those processes and perspectives:The emic approach investigates how local people think. How they perceive and categorise the world, their rules for behaviour, what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things . . . The etic scientist-oriented approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realises that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures impartially. When using the etic approach the ethnographer emphasises what he or she considers important.3According to African-American anthropologist Lee Baker, there is a history of where one carries out this emic and etic research, and the reasons for it are part of the lore, lure, controversies and benefits of anthropology.4A major rite of passage in the field of anthropology is to conduct fieldwork in a place not of your own location to assure impartiality, fresh eyes from an emic or etic perspective. For African-Americans there is an additional political position that underscores this intellectual challenge. First, there is the action of heeding Marcus Garvey's words of'Africa here and abroad, meaning that wherever peoples of African descent are found there is Africa and an affinity in common oppression and history. Second, there is the issue of grappling with the never-ending misrepresentation of peoples of Africa and of the African diaspora by a variety of hegemonic forces. So do the people of the land of wood and water satisfy this academic ritual? What brings anthropologists to that location to pursue this essential element of their studies and career? Is it because of Jamaica's physical or demographic size? Is that preference accorded to by its dominance in the old British colonial order, or by family ties? Through reading of selected texts - ethnography, articles and reports written by the women being considered here - I try to answer the why Jamaica question, but more importantly, in doing so I ask: what kind of research did they do; how did they manage daily living; what did they learn? …

Negotiating Renditions in and through Talk: Some Notes on the Contribution of Conversation Analysis to the Study of Interpreter-mediated Interaction

Conversation Analysis has shown that the system of turn-taking results in the construction of meaningful actions in conversation. Turns are not independent units; they both project new contributions and display reactions to previous ones. Contributions to talk are thus the result of complex mechanisms of negotiation and make sense in reference to each other. Davidson (2002) shows that the common difficulty in conversing through an interpreter consists in establishing reciprocity of understanding between the primary interlocutors and suggests that models need to be developed that take into account the necessity of constructing reciprocal understanding. On the basis of an analysis of audio-recorded and transcribed interpreter-mediated interactions in healthcare, this paper shows that interpreters’ contributions are not free from the conversational system of turn-taking. Rather, the meaning of interpreters’ actions (renditions or non-renditions) is achieved locally, in the turn-taking system and in reference to the goals that are interactionally established in and through the sequences.

Notes on the Existential and Interactional Dimensions of Authenticity: A Symbolic Interactionist Study of Breast Cancer Internet Forums

Notes on the Existential and Interactional Dimensions of Authenticity: A Symbolic Interactionist Study of Breast Cancer Internet Forums