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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
31

Relativism, vitalism and modernity in Georg Simmel's social theory

Gangas, Spiros January 1994 (has links)
Current sociological theory seems to be in a state of confusion due to the lack of a substantive paradigmatic framework of explanation. Debates in post-modern discourse seems to undermine the concept of epistemology and the idea of a progressive social science. My interest in Georg Simmel's social theory stems from what I saw as being problematic interpretations of his work, which discourage the view of Simmel as a substantive and methodologically rigorous social theorist. These interpretations, in light of their relevance to modern debates, contribute to the marginalisation of classical social and sociological theory. My particular focus is based around epistemological and cultural issues in Simmel's social theory and their relation to wider aspects of European thought in general. I have looked at Simmel's underlying ideas in epistemology, such as relativism and vitalism and I have tried to demonstrate their interrelated nature and show their significance for current issues in the epistemology of social science. Thus, I examine the precise relationship between notions of power and utility and I address dominant and established themes in Simmel's theory, such as formal sociology and historicism through the perspective of relativism and vitalism. Both theoretic approaches serve as methodological tools for a new synthetic interpretation of Simmel's sociology that attempts to unify epistemology and the sociology of culture with the aim of providing a better understanding of modern society. Among the contributions to European thought that I regard as particularly significant for a proper understanding of Simmel's work are Nietzsche's nihilism, Dilthey's historical hermeneutics, Bergson's vitalism and Spengler's critique of modernity.
32

The trials of men : sexuality and socio-legal politics

Rush, Peter January 1993 (has links)
This thesis describes the ways in which it has been demanded that men put their masculine sexuality in question. This demand and the various responses to it are traced, not at a general level, but by way of several in-depth studies of particular problematiosations in contemporary sexual politics. The studies are prefaced by an initial chapter. It describes the emergence of men's groups, the inscription of their discourse by the law of narrative in the academic genre of men's studies, and the parallel refusal of narrative meaning by an anti-representational genre of male feminist criticism. As such, the chapter provides a context for the analysis of the law of masculinity and sexual difference in the subsequent chapters. At the same time, it introduces in more general terms the debates and theoretical resources that inform the thesis. The resources are primarily post-structuralist - and in particular, the ways in which it radicalises the implications of a general theory of language for the human sciences. The 'sciences' which provide the thesis with its privileged interlocutors are feminism, psychoanalysis, queer theory and legal theory. Each of the subsequent essays are however not designed as illustrations of a post-structuralist approach. Rather, they are essays which attempt to contribute to the analysis of the intersections of law and sexual politics. In this respect, discrete problematisations are addressed in depth.
33

Sociological factors in patterns of religious conversion and in their investigation

Taylor, Brian January 1976 (has links)
In this thesis, I explore some theoretical, methodological and empirical factors contingent upon the construction of socio-logical analysis of religious conversion. To do this, I employ a tripartite division of intellectual labours, the title of each of my three sections indicating their respective analytic intent. My first section constitutes an exposition and critique of prevailing tendencies in the social-scientific study of conversion. Operating from a necessarily bibliographical basis, I seek to elucidate some dimensions of conceptual unsophistication in the approaches adopted in the extant psychological, historical, anthropological and sociological literature. I focus upon a recurrent confusion of ecology and etiology in such approaches, explicating the resultant stress on the sociocultural antecedents and behavioural consequences of conversion experience at the expense of a prior substantive loyalty to the social construction of that experience itself. Developing discussion from consideration of constructivist and phenomenal approaches within the sociology of religion, I recommend a radically autonomous sociological approach to the analysis of conversion, utilising perspectives operation-alised in extant sociological work on the areas of knowledge, deviance and motivation. I delineate some conceptual desiderata upon which any such analysis will require to be premised, specifying a prior analytic loyalty to those features of converts' accounts of conversion, formulated as responses to motivational questions, which afford the experience of conversion its unique epistemological status. My second section addresses some central methodological issues involved in the satisfactory construction of sociological accounts of conversion experience. Discussion focusses upon the particular areas of language and of biography as exemplifying those peculiar difficulties of epistemological verification which characterise the adequate formulation of such accounts. Extrapolating from a broadly Wittgensteinian perspective on use/meaning distinctions in natural language analysis, I recommend a distillation of some elements of the ethnomethodological paradigm for incorporation into a sociolinguistic approach to the examination of verbalised accounts of conversion experience. I indicate that to ask after the veracity of converts' accounts is to enquire into those procedures whereby truth is conferred by converts upon their experience, and that questions of the epistemological status of that experience may be sociologically reformulated as questions of how converts negotiate its accountability in the course of motivationally accounting for its occurrence. My final section attends to some empirical characteristics of converts' accounts by way of exemplifying and embodying an alternative conception of sociological theorising. Following a nominally processual model of conversion experience, I seek to show how the reality of conversion is known by converts only from within situational contexts constituted through the interactional manifestation of linguistic competence, and how, consequently, talk takes, on the epistemological status and epistemological characteristics of converts' talk as a managed accomplishment of the knowable context of negotiating conversion's accountability. I take up, in a final addendum, the cognitive outcome of the operation of such a sociological mode of analysis. I conclude by indicating the essentially maieutic character of the relationship between converts' accounts and converts' experience as an instance of the manifestation of the equiprimordiality of the relationship between speech and its grounds.
34

Health and social theory

Carson, Alexander McMurdo January 1997 (has links)
This thesis examines the relationship between the theory and practice of health. While health has become a major concern in our society, there continues to be debate about what exactly health is. This thesis engages with this debate in examining various historical and modern definitions of health. Beginning with the Greeks and continuing through to modern and post-modern theories of health, this thesis evaluates these definitions in terms of their implications for the kind of practice they articulate. Chapter 1 examines the work of three prominent modern theorists; Parsons, Garfinkel and Foucault. While these theorists have been influential in defining modern versions of health, we find that their theories are difficult to practice. Chapter 1 concludes with a crisis in that we seem to have no version of health that we can practice. The search for a theory of health which we can live with is taken up in Chapter 2, in an examination of the work of Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum wants to define health as a flexible life, but we find that this proposal, though admirable in many respects, fall short in terms of practice. In Chapter 3, we examine the work of Alan Blum and Peter McHugh, two analysts, in their definition of health as Principled action. This definition of health is found to not only allow us to live healthy lives but also to realize the significance of this healthy life. The work of Charles Taylor and his definition of health as engagement is examined in Chapter 4. Taylor's work is found to provide, like Blum & McHugh, a version of health that can enhance our practice. We conclude with the notion that these two versions of health could allow us to develop ourselves in healthy ways.
35

Technology made legible; A cultural study of software as a form of writing in the theories and practices of software engineering

Frabetti, Federica January 2009 (has links)
No description available.
36

Social philosophy and modern public health

Heath, Paul J. January 1996 (has links)
No description available.
37

A consideration of the value of philosophical phenomenology for sociology with particular reference to methodology and the problem of intersubjectivity

Wright, Christopher January 1975 (has links)
No description available.
38

The interface of (social) science with government and politics : An ethnography of political action

Watson, Patrick Gordon January 2009 (has links)
This dissertation explores the possibility of conducting an ethnography of political action through the detailed examination of politician's use of a specific political phenomenon: performance measurements. Performance Measurements are a combination of actuarial, managerial and social science assessments of which culminate, in the UK case, as a ranking of municipal performance, on each individual publicly (municipally) provided service as well as an overall ranking of local authorities in England. Using performance measurements as a departure point from which to explore the structures of politics more generally, I will illustrate how ethnomethodologically informed ethnography responds to Foucault's proposed examination of the arts and sciences of government in light of recent developments in politics and public policy in the Western world. Over the last thirty-or-so years, governments in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been, nearly unanimously, incorporating what are considered business management techniques for monitoring and assessing public service provision. This ranges from various levels of government (central/federal, provincial/state/regional, municipal) and reforms have been implemented in a variety of ways. As a general description, it can be said that the advent of cost-benefit accounting combined with business management expectations and assorted social science techniques have furnished the assessment regimes with varying degrees of acceptance and success. At the same time, political scientists, management theorists, and social scientists, aware of this paradigm shift in the practice of governance, have been examining methods for approaching the phenomenon of the governmental actor. In a handful of cases (c.f. Gains, 2009; Yannow, 2006; Rhodes, 2005; Abram and Cowell, 2004) ethnographic approaches to the phenomenon of political action have been proposed, explored developed and implemented. However there is a great deal of deliberation on what might properly be said, ethnographically, about government activity, and the new field of ethnography of government or governance is struggling to come to terms with a mode a purpose. I will propose an ethnomethodologically informed ethnography of government can provide insights to what Foucault (1991) described as governmentality: the rational and practical features of government action. While Foucault proposed a historically informed examination of the discourses of government, I will suggest that an observationally informed inquiry garners knowledge on "rational action", as well as organisational rule usage, decision making practices and accountability structures or practices in a way that other forms of inquiry cannot achieve. In a time of flux in the structures and practices of governance, I will suggest that ethnomethodologically informed ethnography is one approach with rich insights towards the inquiry of these new governmental arrangements.
39

Spaces of resistance – places of transformative learning : women's metamorphosis and empowerment?

Pazioni-Kalli, A. January 2006 (has links)
The research reported on here is an investigation of the relations of Transformative Learning and Transformative Spaces. It is an interdisciplinary study aimed at exploring the interplay between space, culture, memory and identity in learning. In particular, it seeks a) to understand how our individual and social identities are determined by space and movement within/in-between/across/beyond space(s), and b) to establish a dialogic formation between and among concepts of social, spatial, gendered learning environments and their interaction with time in the production of collective action, democracy, and freedom. In this respect, its aims are to contribute to understandings of different power relations that influence knowledge construction, and about what can be learnt when people struggle for a more equitable society. In so doing, it draws from a very broad array of theorists but also from empirical investigation conducted in two ways: a) through a case study of a particular place (Greece), focusing on a social (political) movement emerged in the years of Greece’s military dictatorship, 1967-1974 and b) through a life history/biographical narrative study of four particular (Greek) women. The dissertation will bring to the fore a cultural analysis of the emergence of the movement as well as of the construction of gender identities within and beyond that movement.  It will challenge views that seek only structural exegeses of social phenomena and relations by arguing that a social phenomenon cannot be analysed detached from the space and time that brought it about, thus pointing out the importance of context, in addition to aspirations, emotions, contradictory feelings and imagination in the processes associate with the concept of transformative learning.
40

Paul Lazarsfeld : the biography of an institutional innovator

Morrison, David Edward January 1976 (has links)
No description available.

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