Related Social Practices Research Articles

Power in the Flattened Internet – Research Challenges

Media studies have enhanced the classic discourse-centred analyses of symbolic power with an additional reflection on the agency of the technological infrastructure through which discourse is produced. The article’s starting point is an overview of concepts related to the role of the technological sphere in communication processes and related social practices. The theoretical reflection is then juxtaposed with examples of research that attempts to capture these relationships on an empirical level, and with a reflection on the resistance that technological matter poses to such activities.

A qualitative meta-synthesis of carers' perceptions of factors influencing preschool children's oral hygiene practices-A social practices perspective.

This study comprises a synthesis of published qualitative studies from developed countries on the perspectives of carers regarding the oral hygiene toothbrushing practices of preschool children, through the lens of social practice theory. A search of the following electronic databases was conducted for all available years: MEDLINE, EMBASE and Global Health using the Ovid platform; Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source (DOSS), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and Scopus. Included qualitative studies reported primary caregivers' perceptions of oral hygiene practices (focusing on toothbrushing) in preschool children (0-5 years old) in developed countries. A thematic synthesis of the qualitative findings was undertaken for the results of each study. Eleven articles were included in this meta-synthesis. The focus of this paper was toothbrushing practices. A conceptual map of toothbrushing as a social practice was developed. Key findings included practice elements (meanings, competences, and materials), spatial and temporal aspects, and barriers and facilitators to performance. The application of a social practice lens to published qualitative research on the oral hygiene of preschool children provided insights into the meanings and competences related to toothbrushing, as perceived by primary caregivers. However, it also revealed limited information on material, spatial and temporal aspects of toothbrushing practices, indicating the importance of considering social practice theory as a framework in future research to address this gap. Furthermore, exploring toothbrushing in connection with related social practices has the potential to increase understanding of factors influencing oral health in preschool children.

An interdisciplinary inquiry in the communicator: implications of relational social paradigm, practice theory, and biological science

ABSTRACT Communication research is interdisciplinary in nature. Many communication scholars have addressed the interdisciplinary nature of communication from diverse perspectives. While communication scholars have discussed the communicator, I propose introducing a sociological approach to the communication field, particularly drawing on relational sociology and practice/embodiment theory. And I discuss the link between the sociological theory and communication theories regarding identity and self. Finally, I suggest that communication research expand interdisciplinary collaboration with biological science, particularly neuroscience, for empirical research. Based on the discussion, I will conceptualize the communicator whose capacity and propensity for communicating (1) shift according to changing contexts and relationships, (2) are socially shaped and personally embodied throughout their life trajectory, and (3) can be empirically assessed through biological research. This theoretical modeling of the communicator also suggests pathways for interdisciplinary theoretical discussions and empirical inquiries about the ontology of the communicator in the field of communication.

Social Status and Reputation of Writers in Modern Russia: Thematic Analysis

This article examines the forms of social evaluation of writers' work in modern Russia. As a methodological basis, the theory of the “literary field” developed by Pierre Bourdieu and his followers is used, on the basis of which a conceptual and empirical reconstruction of the concepts of social status and reputation was carried out. Based on an empirical thematic analysis of public interviews with leading Russian experts in the field of literary process, a set of topics regarding the social status of the writer and his literary reputation in the Russian literary field has been identified. A discrepancy in the opinions of various groups of experts was found, which may indicate the presence of antagonism in the modern literary field. This circumstance, coupled with the dependent state of the literary field on the political one, confirms the hypothesis of the marginalization of these concepts and, accordingly, related social practices in modern Russia.

Masculinities and affective equality; the case of professional caring

AbstractCritical studies of men and masculinities [CSMM] aim to advance gender equality by critiquing and deconstructing male hegemony and hegemonic masculinities. Although the implicit value of gender equality is clear in CSMM generally, the conceptualization of equality is frequently vague, implied, and lacks conceptual definition. The problem is compounded in caring masculinities studies which additionally often lack engagement with critical feminist and other socio‐political perspectives on caring. These shortcomings hide the complex interrelation of different dimensions to inequality as they intersect with multiple relational identities. Caring practices are also complex, having distinct phases that engage different forms of labor within separate relational contexts. In response, this article proposes the model of affective equality (Lynch et al., 2009) and the concept of care as relational social practice (Tronto, 1993) as normative perspectives that explicitly link care with equality. The case of professional caring, where the impact of CSMM has been especially limited, is used to illustrate the micro‐politics of how men manage their identities within the context of feminized caring. Here, men face the precarious task of managing their masculine status while navigating emotional expectations. Caring masculinities studies can be advanced with greater theoretical and empirical attention to (i) the intersection of multiple inequalities; (ii) the affective circles of caring; (iii) the specificity of caring work; (iv) the inequalities of caring; and (v) the ethics of caring practices.

Furious Feedback and the Revolutionary Ode to Noise

Furious Feedback and the Revolutionary Ode to Noise

The Impact of COVID-19 on (Remaking?) Social Service Delivery: An 18 Month Review

ABSTRACT Purpose Our 18-month exploratory qualitative study explored the impacts of COVID-19 on social service delivery in the mid-island region of Vancouver Island, Canada to contribute to meaningful local practice and to add to evolving social work knowledge regarding pandemics. Method: Interviews were held at six-monthly intervals with representatives from 12 social service nonprofit and government organizations. Results The study demonstrates that the challenges and stressors of this period have resulted in both a re-affirming of relational social work practice alongside some re-making of social service delivery. Discussion The study confirms expectations of COVID-19 entrenching inequities, deepening needs, and creating new categories of service users while also taxing service providers. The value of face-to-face engagement is underscored as foundational to effective social work, though how this is effected has changed. A hybrid model of social service delivery has emerged blending in-person and remote approaches. Policy engagement has shifted in the short-term allowing greater visibility of complex service provider issues. Workplace conditions have altered, and placement options have expanded. These developments offer a tenuous template for the future, though whether such social service delivery remaking is temporary or not remains unclear. Conclusion The research concludes that pandemic conditions will prompt immediate adaptation and innovation, but that evaluation is needed to identify which measures are sustainable in dealing with a prolonged pandemic and to anticipate future disruptions.

Introduction: epistemic contestations in the hybrid media environment

ABSTRACT “Post-truth era” and “fake news” have been the talk of the day for around 10 years now. In our understanding, these terms are used to refer to the contestations of epistemic hierarchies in Western liberal democracies experiencing political shifts toward populist political style and polarization. The contestation takes many forms but is mainly expressed through digital media technologies and related social practices that contribute to the epistemic instability. In this introductory article for the special issue of Epistemic contestations in the hybrid media environment, we argue that the experienced “epistemic crisis” is not only a crisis of epistemic hierarchies and worldviews but also a crisis of knowledge production within epistemic institutions, including the academia. The aim of the special issue is to explore how a multiplicity of competing epistemologies interact and compete in the “post-truth” marketplace of ideas in online popular communication.

Promoting Culture Change Within Organizations.

Promoting Culture Change Within Organizations.

How Do We Inhabit Openness?: Rethinking Volunteerism in the Context of Whole Person Education

— In this paper, I aim to advance a reframing of our understanding of “whole persons” in the well-established paradigm of Whole Person Education. At a time characterized by rising social conflicts and schisms, what would be an appropriate humanistic reimagination of a so-called well-rounded person? Drawing on the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold and using youth volunteerism as an exemplar of social practice, I propose the idea that a whole person, if achievable, is someone who inhabits “the open” as an unfolding, interconnecting, vibrant, and enjoyable horizon. Further, it is suggested that this open horizon moves with, and is moved by, strangers. It is hoped that an epistemology of the open that embraces stranger relationality, in the form of volunteerism or any other related social practices, will help us move toward a new whole personhood.

Collaboration gaps and regional tourism networks in rural coastal communities

Tapping into and creating broad networks is integral to connecting communities and destinations to wider flows of tourists and ensuring local benefits from tourism development. However, little research has probed how communities build these connections. This article examines how tourism stakeholders perceive and practice the work of network-building and assess the challenges they face in pursuing this work in regional tourism development. Drawing on survey and focus group data from Atlantic Canada, we identify “collaboration gaps” between the perceived value of network-building and related social practices. Social practice theory is used to analyse tourism network-building and explain why collaboration gaps exist and persist. Our analysis found three gaps: between meaning and practice; vertical collaboration gaps related to the scale of network-building; and horizontal collaboration gaps related to the range of actors involved in tourism networks. These collaboration gaps can be addressed through a focus on meaning, competencies, and materials as means to foster successful collaborations and overcome gaps.

Negotiating participation and identity in a second language: Mainland Chinese students’ English learning experiences in a multilingual university in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This paper investigates mainland Chinese students’ experiences of learning English as a second language (L2) in a multilingual university in Hong Kong, with particular attention to their negotiation of participation and identity. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with a group of mainland Chinese students, the study revealed that their participation in L2 practices appeared to be shaped by the contextual conditions in different communities within the university and mediated by their agentic responses to the contextual realities of these communities. While they gained fuller participation in L2-mediated activities in the local student community and the classroom community as a result of their appropriation of the associated language practices and their display of knowledge and competence in the related social practices, they struggled to gain access to L2 interactional opportunities in the community of exchange students, where their negotiation of positionalities was subject to the perceived unequal power relations between native and non-native speakers of the English. It is argued that their participation in L2-mediated activities in the university could be understood as a complex, dynamic, situated and co-constructed process of negotiating access, competence, membership, positionality, identities and discursive practices associated with different communities.

Challenging hegemonic masculinity by performance of ethnic habitus

The aim of this article is to examine the effect of ethnic habitus, in a specific setting, on the construction of alternative dominant masculinity and the challenge of hegemonic masculinity. Based on Bourdieu's notion of habitus, the article will show that in a specific ethno‐cultural setting, characterized by ethnic habitus, marginalized groups construct and perform situated dominant masculinity. The study is based on the military, which is a central organization for the construction of masculine identities, and will focus specifically on combat soldiers, who constitute the most significant model of idealized masculinity. Based on semi‐structured interviews, this micro‐level study demonstrates the part of self‐performance in the construction of masculinity and the challenge of hegemonic masculinity. Furthermore, illustrating the performance of worthy dominant masculinity by inferior ethnic groups in effect exposes the separation between the social status and the masculine status. Separation between social status and masculine status gives emphasis to masculinity as relational and contextual social practice and enables alternative dominant masculinities to be detected that challenge hegemonic masculinity within different settings.

Women’s Resistance toward Discrimination in Egypt in The Novel Women at Point Zero using Bourdieu Perspective

Abstract The issue of women's discrimination in the Middle East has become common knowledge. Injustice treatment of women in Middle Eastern countries occurs because of the patriarchal culture that still surrounds by most of society. The problem has been raised in various media, one of which is literary media. Through the novel entitled Women at PointZero by Nawal El Saadawi raises the reality of women discrimination experienced by most Middle Eastern women, especially in Egypt. Therefore, this research seeks to reveal the issue of discrimination of women raised by authors in the novel. Descriptive research method of analysis by using the approach Pierre Bourdieu related habitus, arena, capital and social practices used to reveal the factors that cause discrimination against female character in the novel. The end result of the study shows the social practice of Firdaus in countering the discrimination of women in Egypt against male patriarchal dominance in social space of society. Key words: Discrimination of women in Egypt, habitus, arena, capital, social practice

On the margins of the child protection system: creating space for relational social work practice

AbstractIn the UK, a threshold divides between two categories of children, child protection (CP) and child in need. Each category tends to be treated as a homogeneous entity, despite containing heterogeneous levels and forms of risk and need. CP practice, accompanied by regulation, protocols and procedures, aspires to achieve a coordinated multi‐agency response to identified concerns with available resources targeted towards this category. However, it is well known that those children assessed as falling just below the CP threshold can still have high levels of need and risk, requiring a level of social work involvement beyond the low‐resource and low‐oversight model that generally accompanies a child in need categorisation. This paper probes an approach to practice, which divides levels of risk within the child in need category enabling adequate, coordinated support and oversight to be provided for children and families with complex needs. Evidence from our study evaluating this approach suggests that a simple protocol provided a clear process within, which social workers and agency partners felt confident and safe to practice outside of the formal CP framework. The protocol prevented drift and helped to create a space within, which relational social work practice flourished.

Everyday dramas of conscience: navigating identity through creative neutralisations

ABSTRACTThe paper seeks to recuperate autonomy within debates around identity as the discursive construction of self through exploring the ‘greening’ of intensive mothering discourse and the emergence of new subject positions and practices of accountability. It argues that facets of ideologies of ethical and sustainable consumption are inscribed within this discourse, authorising identity work and furnishing everyday provisioning routines with significance and urgency; and that related social practices that are marked for ‘greening’ diligence or negligence are not merely situated and productive, but transformative of mothering identities, roles and norms. We report the findings of a study of a group of professional working mothers as they negotiate competing and conflictual spaces of doing ‘green’ mothering. This opens an analytical window on the diversity of signifying practices that characterise how informants play with boundaries and ambiguity in creative ways, using images of responsible consumption and sustainable living to negotiate appeals to social well-being while authorising claims to ‘greening’ competence. Our interviews capture discursive events that rearticulate social messages, mixing them with brand appeals and media content that situate the invention of ‘new’ mothering with regard to flows of ‘greening’ discourse. Inventive appeals and related subject positions speak of a repertoire of strategic messaging practices, themselves consistent with a heightened reflexivity shaping content and presentation through practices we understand as modes of neutralisation – forms of self-governance and accountability that seek to generate resources of resilience that help reinforce green mothering identity claims made to self and others. Through socialising ‘sustainability’ in this way, we contribute to our understanding of the social surrogacy of brands and its problematics.

Bibliographical Practices in Islamic Societies, with an Analysis of MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Hs. or. 13525

Despite the constantly growing research on the literary history of the Muslim world and related social practices, there is hardly a period or a region in the long and diverse history of the Muslim world for which we can present a clear and detailed picture as to which books were available and popular in any given discipline. Nor do we know much about the diffusion of books, the processes of survival, selection, and transmission of books, or the mechanisms and ways of including books in a teaching curriculum, or excluding them from such a curriculum. An inquiry into the “curriculum” of a specific scholarly circle or “canon” at any given time can be based on a broad range of pertinent genres of documentary sources as well as literary texts and, of course, the preserved books themselves. The article discusses main genres, viz. inventories of transmitters and chains of transmission, autobibliographical inventories and bibliographical inventories of single authors, library inventories, lists of references, and notebooks and anthologies. Moreover, MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Hs. or. 13525, a library endowment deed, is analysed.

The Taste of Conviviality: A Poem on Food by Leon Modena

A survey of textual sources relating to Jewish eating habits in pre-modern Italy should also include a composition penned by the Venetian rabbi Leon Modena (1571-1648). Written on the occasion of the wedding of an affluent member of the Venetian community, the text humorously depicts, in verse, the dishes that—according to Modena—were served at the reception. Comprised of eight short units of verse, each devoted to a different dish and varying in length and meter, the composition reflects the assortment of food typical of festive occasions: delicacies like capon, duck, sausages and pastries are presented in an orderly sequence and their taste, texture, and shape are extolled. In a verbal display in which the gap between the real and the fictional table is annulled, some of the dishes even speak in the first person inviting the banqueters to enjoy the pleasures of commensality and dine heartily in honor of the bride and groom. Composed in a witty and punning language in which biblical and rabbinical allusions are masterfully mingled, Modena’s culinary epithalamium vividly captures a convivial occasion, thus casting light on the experience of fine dining in early modern Jewish Venice with its related social conventions and practices. By confirming the aesthetic value attributed to food in Jewish culture and its symbolic significance, Modena’s ‘menu in verse’ allows us to explore the ways in which food and poetry, both perceived as forms of art that bring pleasure and refinement, intersected, while being defined and conditioned by historical circumstances, cultural trends (meal- and food-related poetry was a common feature of Italian baroque literature), religious identity and social mores.

Practicing the cultural green economy: where now for environmental social science?

Debates concerning the development of the green economy necessarily focus on “upstream” issues that underpin the re‐structuring of national and regional economies through the lenses of financial, institutional and regulatory change. However, the growing interest in the cultural green economy requires a re‐scaling of debates surrounding the links that occur in complex socio‐technical systems, notably between individual consumers, social units and the architectures of the developing green economy. This necessitates a research and policy agenda that is attentive to both the complexities of such interactions (between structures, processes and practices) and the imperative to foster change in practices within wider society. This article explores the ways in which environmental social scientists have examined and evidenced these issues, arguing that two major barriers still exist for creating adequate understandings and opportunities for change. First, the overt focus on the individual consumer as a unit of measurement and political attention has stifled debate concerning the ways in which environmentally related social practices have developed in association with wider economic contexts. In this way, environmental social scientists have often failed to make the connections between individuals, practices and the economic system. Second, in adopting a largely individualistic perspective, environmental social scientists have tended to focus their attention on incrementalist and narrowly defined views of what ecological citizenship might look like and constitute in the green economy. The article therefore argues that environmental social scientists need to constructively engage in a new inter‐disciplinary dialogue about the role, purpose and ethics of citizen participation in developing and sustaining the green economy in an age of climate change and potential resource scarcity.

Empowering the people: ‘empowerment’ and the British Journal of Social Work, 1971–99

This paper offers a historical and contextual discussion of the concept of empowerment, a term that proliferates in contemporary social work and social policy discourse. First, I discuss the rise of ‘empowerment’ within social policy and social work highlighting some of the factors that have led to it becoming embedded within such circles, discussing the justifications and criticisms of both the term and the interventions that can result from it. Second, I take a more specific look at the way empowerment was discussed and debated within the British Journal of Social Work from the journal’s inception in 1971 through to the end of 1999. The discussion alerts us of the need to view empowerment not as a fixed a priori good, but as embedded within social and political relationships, and therefore as a concept that can be used for either progressive or regressive social policies and related social work practices.