Social psychology is often said to be a scientific discipline aiming at the observation and explanation of actions between human beings or, more generally, between the human individual and the environment. This general proposition holds for most social psychologists, irrespective of allegiance. Accepting this, it is implied that we are observing the social aspect of a human individual. This text will ask for the conditions under which this social psychology is possible. Indeed, what has to be the case for the observation and explanation of the sociality of the individual to occur? On the basis of G. H. Mead, generally considered the hub around which modern social psychology developed, it will be argued that for a social psychological science to be possible, conditions are implied that make it impossible. Less rhetorically put, accepting or returning to Meads social argument and trying to co-ordinate it with basic premises of scientific conduct, one will find oneself caught between two Meadian facts. On the one hand each individual must be considered social, i.e., appearing to experience as two objects at once. On the other hand, however, explaining an object is to state the object in an unambiguous fashion, i.e., as an independent, hence individual, object. It will be argued here that Mead’s epistemology does not support a scientific and social psychology. Rather a scientific social psychology based on Mead constitutes a contradiction in terms, stemming from a series of misinterpretations. It is the objective of this text to demonstrate these misinterpretations with respect to attempts at a scientific social psychology based on the social vision of this scholar.

The thesis presented here explores the relevance of the classical works of Emile Durkheim and George Herbert Mead to contemporary postmodern cultural critiques. Postmodern social theory specifically that of Richard Rorty and Jean Baudrillard have come to offer a type of social theory that challenges the notion of the social. This referential problem of the social becomes a striking attack on the epistemology of sociology, which purports to offer scientific knowledge about the human condition as a social process. The theoretical works of Durkheim and Mead especially their respective concepts of the "collective consciousness" and the "generalized other" are offered here as closely related articulations of the core sociological concept of "the social." It is argued that postmodernism, by postulating an excessively precarious social theory, falls short as a theory of society when juxtaposed to the classic sociologies of Durkheim and Mead. However, it is also noted that the transformation of the field of sociology from a primarily textual discourse to a quantitative enterprise increasingly exposes the field of sociology to uniquely postmodern critiques.

Dans ce travail, une méthode d'optimisation à coût fini, essentiellement locale,mais qui devient globale lorsque le nombre d'analyses croît est développée. La ± globalisation α vient de ré-initialisations probabilisées de recherches locales prenant en compte les points de départ et de convergence passés. L'optimiseur local est une version améliorée de la méthode de Nelder-Mead, où les variables sont bornées, où les contraintes d'inégalité sont prises en compte par pénalisation adaptative, et où les dégénérescences du simplexe sont traitées par ré-initialisation. Cette méthode, appelée ± Globalized and Bounded Nelder-Mead α (GBNM), est testée sur des fonctions multimodales et des problèmes de conception de stratifiés composites. Puis, des applications plus complexes sont traitées avec GBNM : l'optimisation de la raideur de flexion et l'identification des positions des sauts de plis de monopalmes de nage.

This narrative research study investigated the identity development process of a group of beginning teachers participating in Teach For America (TFA). The participants (n=3) were middle or high school teachers who had taught in high needs, low income urban school settings. They had also blogged on the “Teach For Us” blog hosting site about their experiences in the classroom as beginning teachers. Through the lenses of Sfard and Prusak’s (2005) narrative theory of identity and Mead’s (1934) social theory of identity and the role of the “Generalized Other”, narrative research techniques were used to analyze the stories found in their blog postings. Their stories show that these teachers were ill prepared for the realities they would face and that teaching in a challenging, high poverty, urban school setting was at times overwhelming. The duality and struggle between their Generalized Other concepts of a TFA corps member and who they were becoming as a teacher was found throughout their stories. The stories also show that over time, each became more confident in their abilities and in who they were becoming as a teacher. With this growth came more job satisfaction, yet each decided to leave their TFA placement schools after their second year to pursue other options. Themes include the struggles the teachers faced their first year, the transformation that occurred during their second year, the conflicts between their TFA identity and their teacher identity, the impact of high stakes testing and racial issues, and the cathartic nature of blogging.

Before a new flight control system is released for flight, a huge number of simulations are evaluated to find weaknesses of the system. This process is called flight clearance. Flight clearance is a very important but time consuming process. There is a need of better flight clearance methods and one of the most promising methods is the use of optimization. In this thesis the flight clearance of a simulation model of JAS 39 Gripen is examined. Two flight clearance algorithms using two different optimization methods are evaluated and compared to each other and to a traditional flight clearance method. In this thesis the flight clearance process is separated into three cases: search for the worst flight condition, search for the worst manoeuvre and search for the worst flight condition including parameter uncertainties. For all cases the optimization algorithms find a more dangerous case than the traditional method. In the search for worst flight condition, both with and without uncertainties, the optimization algorithms are to prefer to the traditional method with respect to the clearance results and the number of objective function calls. The search for the worst manoeuvre is a much more complex problem. Even as the algorithms find more dangerous manoeuvres than the traditional method, it is not certain that they find the worst manoeuvres. If not other methods should be used the problem has to be rephrased. For example other optimization variables or a few linearizations of the optimization problem could reduce the complexity. The overall impression is that the need of information and problem characteristics define which method that is most suitable to use. The information required must be weighed against the cost of objective function calls. Compared to the traditional method, the optimization methods used in this thesis give extended information about the problems examined and are better to locate the worst case.

Frivillig enkelhet är en livsstil/rörelse som tar avstånd från cirkeln av lönearbete och konsumism som av anhängarna anses vara roten till förlusten av en meningsfull tillvaro, möjligheten till självförverkligande, förestående miljökris och de starka gemenskapernas försvinnande (Grigsby 2004). Syftet med uppsatsen var att beskriva och skapa djupare förståelse för frivilliga förenklares identitetskonstruktion och välbefinnande utifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv. Identitetsteori med utgångspunkt i Mead (1934/1976), livsstil utifrån Bourdieu (1984) och värderingar utifrån Kasser och Ryans (1996) inre/yttre-värderingsmodell användes och relaterades till en sen-/postmodern kontext. Empirin utgjordes av åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer. Den viktigaste slutsatsen var att frivillig enkelhet och välbefinnande går att kombinera. Medierande faktorer var en inre värdeorientering med starka moraliska inslag och autonomi att förverkliga sina kreativa och moraliska projekt som ger en upplevelse av autenticitet. Den moraliska identiteten tycks vara mer central för de ”holistiska förenklarna” än för de ”starka förenklarna” enligt Etzionis (1998) indelning. För de starka förenklarna framträder de personliga kreativa projekten som det mest centrala i livsstilsvalen och identiteten. Den teoretiska ramen visade sig vara användbar för beskrivning och förståelse av de frivilliga förenklarnas identitetskonstruktion och välbefinnande. / Betyg: VG Examination: 2011-06-15

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur ungdomar som varit placerade på Närsjögläntans HVB-hem har upplevt sin vistelse och vilka implikationer som vistelsen medfört. Våra frågeställningar berör hur ungdomar ha upplevt tiden på Närsjögläntan, hur livet efter placeringen ser ut och hur de lyckats att anpassa sig till livet utanför institutionen samt hur ungdomarnas liv såg ut innan placeringen på Närsjögläntan i förhållande till livet efteråt.Den empiriska undersökningen har utförts genom ostrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer med fem respondenter. Vår forskningsansats grundar sig i hermeneutiken och vår undersöknings- och analysmetod influeras av grounded theory. Våra teoretiska perspektiv utgår från E. Goffmans teori om totala institutioner och G. H. Meads socialisationsteori.De slutsatser vi drar utifrån denna studie är att ungdomarna upplever att Närsjögläntan i allmänhet och personalen i synnerhet har haft en stor betydelse för deras förbättrade livssituation och självbild efter placeringen. Dock framgår att livssituationen efter vistelsen innefattar viss kvarvarande problematik som till viss del är beroende av negativa konsekvenser som institutionsvistelsen fört med sig.

Intersubjectivity is the acknowledgment that the subject of the self, the I, is in direct relations with the subject of the other. There is an immediate correspondence; in fact, one implies the existence of the other as a necessary state of intersubjective experience. This direct relationship negates a need for any external mediation between the two subjects, including the idea of a separate object between the subject of one individual and that of another. The essay proposes that our confrontation with the other occurs not in physical geometric space, but in liminal space, the space outside of the mean of being, at the threshold of relativity. The essay endorses the idea that liminality is not a space between things, but instead is an introjection, an internalization of the reflected world, and a reciprocal notion of the externalized anomaly of the other within each of us. We meet the surface of the world at the edge of our body but the mind is unencumbered by such limitations and as such subsumes the other as itself. Through symbolic language and myth, the surfaces and edges of things, both animate and inanimate, define the geography of the intersubjective mind. Inside the self the other becomes an object and persists as an abstraction of the original subject. We begin to perceive ourselves as the imagined projections of the other; we begin to perceive ourselves as we believe society perceives us. The process applies to the design of architectural space as a rudimentary vocabulary that is consistent with the language of the landscape. / text

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Thesis (M.A.)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed July 3, 2008). Advisor: Jeffrey Wattles. Keywords: social self; self-other dialectic; pure experience; I-Me; I-Thou; sunyata; kenosis; basho; absolute nothingness; George H. Mead; Nishida Kitaro; Steve Odin. Includes bibliographical references (p. 65).