View Of Social Reality Research Articles

“You are either with us, or against us”: The association between dichotomous thinking and political extremism among Israeli voters

Purpose of the study: people prone to political extremism often exhibit a rather simplistic black-and-white view of social reality. This is a consequence of the psychological tendency to perceive and interpret the world in a certain way. The hypothesis underlying this study is that this tendency manifests in a style of thinking defined as “dichotomous thinking”. That is, a tendency to perceive and interpret the world in terms of binary options (i.e., “black or white”, “good or bad”, or “all or nothing”). The study was conducted in Israel during the 2019 election campaign, which initiated a prolonged political crisis leading to deep polarisation between the two main political camps in Israel. Participants (N = 312) completed an online survey, which included a demographic questionnaire and measures of political identification and dichotomous thinking style. The study found both linear and quadratic associations between dichotomous thinking and political identification. Thus, dichotomous thinking was associated with both right-wing political orientation and an overall propensity for political extremism, both right-wing and left-wing. These results provide empirical support for theoretical models suggesting that there is a U-shaped relationship between cognitive rigidity and political identification, but this relationship is stronger at the right end of the political spectrum

The influence of animated cartoons on primary children's views of social reality: an ethnographic study in a Maltese primary school

ABSTRACT This paper presents ways in which animated cartoons influence primary school children's views of social reality based on students’ relationships with these characters and their perception of these characters as being ‘real’. For this purpose, a mixed methods approach was adopted, in which 9/10-year-old Maltese primary school children were provided with an opportunity to participate in activities related to cartoon characters. In these activities the children (n = 10) provided their interpretations of animated cartoon characters through drawings, writings and verbally during semi-structured interviews and cartoon watching. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the children's verbal expressions and interpretations. From the outcomes of the analysis, educational implications and cross-curricular pedagogical suggestions were then derived through the use of the MIRROR multimodal framework. These educational implications indicate that children can be taught critical thinking skills through the integration of animated cartoons in different curricular subjects. Moreover, the results indicate that students need to be offered the possibility to express themselves through various modes as exemplified in the pedagogical suggestions proposed. These pedagogical suggestions can be used by primary school educators, parents and guardians in order to teach creativity, expressive skills and literacy skills to primary school children.

Just What is Social Ontology?

Abstract Construing ontology as an inventory of what genuinely and nonredundantly exists, this paper investigates two questions: (i) Do all – or any – social phenomena belong in ontology? and (ii) What difference does it make what is, and is not, in ontology? First, I consider John Searle’s account of social ontology, and make two startling discoveries: Searle’s theory of social reality conflicts with his ontological conditions of adequacy; and although ontology concerns existence, Searle’s theory of social reality is wholly epistemic. Then, I offer my own view of social reality, on which social phenomena are ontologically significant. Since ontology concerns what genuinely and nonredundantly exists, anyone interested in what there is ought to care about ontology.

Comment on “On History and Policy: Time in the Age of Neoliberalism”

It is not only economics that needs to regain a sense of history but also much of social science. Like economists social scientists need to liberate themselves from a Newtonian clockwork view of the world, and from a view of social reality as an emanation and arbitrary illustration of universal laws governing social life in general. Social science needs a renewed awareness of its origins in a systematic theory of historical social development and evolution, of endogenous social dynamics, and of directionality of social and institutional change, especially in contemporary capitalism, free from historical teleology and economic determinism.

A Language-in-Use Study of EFL Students’ Social Discourses in Project-Based Learning

This article is based on a qualitative research study that was conducted to explore students’ discourses as citizens in an English as aForeign Language (EFL) course. A pedagogical intervention was proposed in order to bridge the existing gap. The instructional design consistedof PBL sessions with a coeducational group of eighteen undergraduate students, who worked collaboratively to discuss social issues whilestudying the target language (TL). Student artifacts, transcriptions of project oral reports, and a conference with the participants were used togather the data. Following a discourse analysis approach, three main discourses were identified to show the learners’ social representations,their critical stand on topical issues, and their interest in social transformations. Overall, the findings suggest that the students’ views of socialreality are diverse, contradictory, and changing, and that the EFL class can become a site for citizenship education when the TL is presentedas a tool to facilitate self-expression and critical reflection.

Trials of Embodiment: Being a Gothic Body in Mary Barton

Trials of Embodiment:Being a Gothic Body in Mary Barton Lucy Sheehan (bio) I do assure you it was from just such an involved set of thoughts that Jem drew the resolution to act as if he had not seen that phantom likeness of John Barton—himself, yet not himself. —Mary Barton, 347 Mary Barton is, above all, the story of characters who are themselves, yet not just themselves. As Elizabeth Gaskell’s characters move through the social world of the novel, from parliament to union meetings, from local riots to courthouse scenes, they become representative figures—characters who embody not only themselves but a multiplicity of others. For Gaskell, political, novelistic, and Christological acts of representation deform the individual body, so that even after it expels this multiplicity of others, individuals remain haunted by their encounter with the social. While the novel’s characters encounter opium, madness, disease, and dream-states, the narrator weaves her way in and out of so many different identities (character and author) and positions (middle class, working class, immediate, retrospective) that the narration becomes a model of distorted subjecthood, moving through distinct bodies and sometimes inhabiting many at once. The fundamental instability of industrial England is reflected in the narration’s tenuous distinction between the real and the fantastic—in other words, in its Gothic narration. Industrial novels, a set of mid-century Victorian novels that includes Mary Barton, North and South, Sybil, Alton Locke, Hard Times, Felix Holt, and Shirley, document the social problems arising from industrialization, urbanization, and the extreme destitution that swept the country in the 1830s and 1840s. The novels are widely regarded as a response to Chartism, a short-lived political movement of the same period that sought to expand political representation of the working classes in England.1 Traditionally, studies have emphasized the genre’s insistence on individual morality and the consequent failure to produce political solutions to social problems, particularly in industrial novelists’ denial of the expansion of working-class suffrage.2 Likewise, critics fault Mary Barton for its retreat into generic forms that obscure historical social reality and render the novel unable to sufficiently depict class politics within its narrative scope. Ruth Bernard Yeazell and Catherine Gallagher argue that the courtship plots in Mary Barton and other industrial novels deploy romance in order to divert [End Page 35] attention from the political, while Gallagher adds that Gaskell offers tragedy, religious homily, and melodrama as forms that retreat from political reality. Little attention has been paid, however, to the Gothic mode, despite the frequent appearance throughout these novels of conventional Gothic figures: ghostly nuns in Shirley, doubles and degenerative families in Felix Holt, opium addicts in Mary Barton, the delirious in North and South, dreamers in Alton Locke, and the murderously violent in Sybil.3 While David Ellison’s account of ghosts and spectres in Mary Barton revises Gallagher’s claim that “although [Gaskell] does not find a narrative form that satisfactorily reveals the reality of working-class life, she does identify several conventional genres that hide the reality” (67), Ellison nevertheless posits that spectral figures serve as a displacement of, rather than a direct engagement with, working-class politics (486–90). But what if we were to take appearances of the Gothic seriously? Indeed, Gaskell’s novel demands we do so by invoking the spectre of the Gothic not to conceal or mediate the political but rather to engage in a critique of representation as a shared literary and political form. Gaskell uses Gothic metaphors to suggest that political and novelistic representation stretches the bounds of individual and social bodies until they become deformed, monstrous, and fantastical. In so doing, the novel imbricates fantastic and realist modes in order to broaden, rather than constrict, our view of social reality in mid-century England, granting access to the ghastly conditions that underlie industrialized society and that cannot be adequately captured by non-fantastic narration alone. This essay begins by examining Gaskell’s particular use of the Gothic mode as a means of casting doubt on three systems of representation—political, literary, and Christological—that form the basis for social interactions in the world that her novel inhabits...

Editorial: Biographical methods in migration research

During the last decades, qualitative biographical/narrative methods gained a prominent position within the spectrum of social science methodology and research practice, mainly due to a reaction to the positivist-empiricist dominance and associated views of social reality. After an initial interest to biographical methods, which followed the edition of ‘The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1919-1921)’ by Thomas and Znaniecki (1958), biographical and generally qualitative research methods gave way to empiricist-quantitative approaches and only since the end of 1960 the positivist domination begun to be unsettled (Halfacree and Boyle 1993; Findlay and Li 1997; Tsiolis 2006).

Qualitative Methods and Cross-Method Dialogue in Political Science

The author accepts the basic argument that recent advances in qualitative methods have had an uneven impact on the three major empirical fields in political science. He emphasizes that scholars in all three fields have made significant contributions to qualitative methodology, but these contributions have a more profound impact on the practice of qualitative work in comparative and international politics than in American politics. The author argues that the differences between qualitative and quantitative or formal research are less pronounced than some would believe. In particular, the author argues that scholars have overstated the argument that qualitative researchers are significantly more skeptical of universal generalizations, more inclined to incorporate scope conditions into their theories, and more complex in their views of social reality than are quantitative and formal researchers.

Educación, sociedad y cultura : la controversia epistemológica

This paper sets out a view of social reality, giving a brief analysis of the social changes that have taken place from the 60s up to the present day. During this period, society has felt the need to develop and provide new social services, but these have so far failed to resolve existing problems. The paper argues that institutions should give grater priority to social education, since the number of people nneding help is now so overwhelming that those in the caring professions are failing to meet their needs or to solve these pressing social problems.

Business as Usual

Business as Usual

FROM RATIONALITY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS: A UNIVERSAL THEORY OF ACTION

This is a paper of methodological orientation. An attempt has been made to delineate the basic elements of a Qur'anic view of social reality as an integral part of the worldview of the Qur'an. The theoretical frame thus derived from the Qur'an is then shown to lay the foundation for a universal theory of social science. A theory of action based on the concept of the righteous actor is contrasted with a theory of action based on the concept of the rational actor, the former representing Homo‐Islamicus, the second representing Homo‐economicus. The theory of action suggested rests on the work of Imam al Shatibi on the purposes (magasid) of Shari'ah, which is shown to emanate logically from the Qur'anic view of social reality suggested by the author.

Social change and education for sustainable living

This article focuses on the ways in which environmental education can be used to promote education for sustainable living. In doing so it deliberately draws upon an eclectic framework for analysis and suggests a focus on the primacy of action. Recent research concerning environmental education points to a gap between the knowledge which young people have about the environment and the degree to which they expect to be able to contribute to protecting the future of the environment. This paper proposes that one way to begin to overcome this problem is to conceive of a form of environmental education which is holistic, community oriented and aimed at supporting a sustainable future. The nature of community focused, holistic education for sustainable living is explored. This is followed by a proposed theory of social change based on an understanding of individuals' actions as pragmatically rational in order to identify how education for sustainable living might begin to promote behavioural change. The purpose of this is to elaborate a view of social reality and political change which includes a theory of social action. The implications for educational action are explored. In order to do this we have deliberately employed a modernist device of constructing a narrative based on posing paradoxes. The article accepts that there are significant barriers to this proposed development and concludes by suggesting the direction in which environmental education might develop through a fusion of socially critical models and deep ecology in order to propose a theoretical manifesto for education for sustainable living.

Educative Accountability Policy Research: Methodology and Epistemology

This article shows that accountability policy research has tended to use systems theory, an objectivist view of social reality, and logical empiricism to identify performance indicators of learning. It makes the case that policy knowledge production should permit a more holistic and causally interdependent view of teaching, learning, and leadership services. It argues that the accepting of responsibility in education obliges leaders to provide reasonable and coherent forms of accountability in a context of formative evaluation, educative reporting relationships, and politically sensitive planning. It then offers a methodology whereby accountability policies can be developed in a demonstrably educative manner. This methodology reflects a consequentialist moral theory, argues for the reconciliation of stakeholder perspectives through their active engagement, and applies a nonfoundationalist account of knowledge production.

The rhetoric of consensus politics: a critical review of technology assessment

Abstract Technology Assessment is a policy scientific lstoolrs which has recently enjoyed a great deal of increasingly enthusiastic attention, yet there is no clear idea of what it is. In this article, the author examines the literature on TA, and attempts to develop an analysis of its real political significance, as opposed to those overly optimistic prognostications that have seen it as the new panacea. In his view, TA is constrained in its scope and depth by implicit assumptions and commitments of a political character. These premises are obscured by the further founding canon of TA, namely that knowledge begets social consensus, and that where there exists no social consensus as to the evaluative framework by which society will assess its technology, then it can be objectively created by gathering and disseminating more social data. The author argues instead that this data collection (social indicators) is selectively constrained and structured by the prior commitment to consensus around a particular idea of the goals, purpose and meaning of social life. TA is in fact an integral part of a much more broad-ranging attempt to secure social consensus around a corporate-industrial consumer society, in which the latter institutions control a much wider range of social activity that even hitherto. Much of the lstheoryrs of TA can be seen as a rhetoric by which this paradigm is lstried outrs on the public; by ldtelling them how things arerd, this rhetoric at the same time tacitly asks them to adopt a view of social reality which corresponds with the premises framing the corporate industrialists' world view.

The presentation of competence in health care

This paper briefly addresses the views of social reality which underpin our interpretation of data, and argues that a social actor's statement is one account in a potentially infinite series, in which the actor presents him or herself as morally competent. This argument is illustrated by data from a study of subfertile couples, and other data from studies of parenting handicapped children. There is, however, a disjunction between these calm measured self-presentations, and the professional literature which describes a host of negative emotions. This raises questions about how needs, particularly emotional needs, are defined in health care.

METAPHOR OR REIFICATION: ARE RADICAL HUMANISTS REALLY LIBERTARIAN ANARCHISTS?

Metaphors may enlighten our theoretical understanding of affairs, and they may be used to mystify and distort our view of social reality. In a recent series of papers, Gareth Morgan has proposed increasing metaphorical usage, to enrich management and organizational theory. This paper argues that Morgan's advocacy of metaphorical usage is too indiscriminate. By favouring a relativist (rather than a rationalist) theory of knowledge, he invites a proliferation of metaphorical ideology. Morgan's preference for an unbridled metaphorical usage is attributed, in part, to what Edgely (1984) describes as‘liberal dogmatism’, and also to his neglect of the social processes that generate and disseminate metaphors. The paper uses a variety of previous metaphorical contributions to management thought ‐ cybernetic, psychological, biological, systemic, mechanical, neurological ‐ to argue that, in general, metaphorical usage in organization studies has always been socially partisan, and that Gareth Morgan's proposals will intensify a mode of partisanship that is clearly at variance with his sympathies expressed elsewhere.

Obstacles to the accumulation of knowledge in the social sciences

The accumulation of knowledge may be thought of as one of the criteria which must be satisfied before a discipline may call itself scientific. Al though there is an 'information explosion' in social science, at least if measured by the increase in the running feet of bookshelves devoted to social science literature, there is yet to be observed a substantial accumu lation of scientific knowledge. Further, with few exceptions, an examina tion of the type of training given to the future generation of researchers in social science gives little hope for any improvement in the near future. These factors the present substantial lack of accumulated knowledge coupled with the grossly inadequate training programs for the next gener ation of social scientists suggest that consideration should be given to the question: "What are the obstacles to the accumulation of knowledge in social science?" Consequently, this question is taken as a starting point for this essay. The theme to be developed is that the lack of accumulation of scientific knowledge in social sciences is a direct result of the lack of an appropriate view of social reality. The main purpose of the essay is to sketch one set of reality assumptions which could fill the conjectured void. If these proposed assumptions are to be utilized as a basis for social science research, a number of problems have to be solved. A few of these problems will be indicated. Before some basic assumptions about the nature of social science are stated, a few references related to the claim that social science is in an unsatisfactory state should be presented. Optimism for the future of scientific social science has been voiced by a few writers (Deutsch et al., 1971), but the significance of the optimism seems lessened when argu ments are presented by others (Filstead, 1970) disclaiming the appropri ateness of quantification. The basis for optimism for the development of scientific sociology also seems to be in question when sociologists review the status of some theories in their field. A general review of the work of several theorists has been presented (Robson, 1968) as well as a detailed review (Berger et al., 1968) of the work of Talcott Parsons, regarded by