Writing is critical to two main anthropological goals: to communicate useful knowledge about humanity and society; and to stimulate interest, discussion, and action on issues that are of societal import. To achieve these goals anthropologists must write in accessible styles for diverse audiences. In this paper, we review the work of five popular nonfiction writers to determine the extent to which their approachable writing styles are compatible with anthropological rigor and nuance. While none of these authors meets all of our hopes for anthropological analysis, each does manage to blend some elements of scholarship with a readable style. We therefore highlight some of their stylistic approaches in the hope that these might help anthropologists engage more effectively in public debate.

通常對於股票市場之評價,我們採取單一方向,但是實際上股票市場會以某種狀態回饋給投資人使得我們對於股價以及認知產生偏頗,而這些認知上的偏頗則產生了股票市場繁榮以及崩解的型態 / I used to be a securities specialist, serving in Taishin Holdings during January 2007-October 2008. As a securities specialist, I found financial markets so fascinating. Among all the financial markets, stock market seems to be the most eye-catching spot, because of its low transaction costs, a large number of participants, instant communication. If there is any place where the theory of perfect competition ought to be translated into practice, it is the stock market. When it comes to real word, traditional pricing model seems to be irrelevant. What is the real driving force behind stock market? Is it only simply the discount of dividends regardless of acquisition, future prospect or the credit of leading staff? I would like to discuss the issue under the foundations of behavioral finance which is different from those of tradition market theory. In this article, I shall start with briefly introducing Behavioral Finance and its psychological foundations in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, a review to Gordon Model. In chapter 4, I will start with confirmation bias as the entry point creating a new boom/bust model with Reflexivity. In chapter 5, I shall illustrate a case and discuss the advantage and also the flaw of the model.

In post-traditional societies, identity has been pervasively understood as a ‘thing’ one needs to and can endeavour to achieve or create. Many studies about identity in the humanities and social sciences have increasingly been approached in both reified and impersonal ways. These trends in understanding identity have made a significant impact on research into education and identity. This thesis aims to demonstrate the complexity of personal identity on a theoretical level and endeavours to rethink the theoretical understanding of personal identity in relation to the notion of learning. Based on Paul Ricoeur and Charles Taylor’s theories of personal identity, this thesis argues that personal identity needs to be understood both as sameness and as selfhood at a conceptual level. Ontologically, the former belongs to the category of ‘thing’, ‘substance’ in terms of permanence in time. The latter belongs the category of ‘being’ in terms of permanence in time. This thesis will argue that this conceptual understanding of personal identity suggests that identity is largely ‘shaped’ by social, cultural, traditional, moral and ethical dimensions in the human world over time, rather than merely being a result of personal endeavour as an individual creation or/and an adaptation to constant social changes. The moral and ethical dimensions of personal identity also suggest that the need for and ‘meaning’ of personal identity to a person in his/her life cannot be simply approached in an objective manner through impersonal terms. Rather, personal identity constitutively depends on self-interpretation, which highlights the role of narrative in understanding personal identity. This thesis further argues that a new understanding about reflexive learning relevant to personal identity can be drawn from this theoretical understanding of personal identity and narrative. This new understanding is based on a person’s reflexivity not only in the dialectical frameworks between sameness, self and others, but also in different moral frameworks. What this presents us with is a different view of lifelong learning as an alternative to lifelong learning implied in the notion of a ‘reflexive project of the self’.

This synthesis article joins the authors of the special issue "Gender perspectives in resilience, vulnerability and adaptation to global environmental change" in a common reflective dialogue about the main contributions of their papers. In sum, here we reflect on links between gender and feminist approaches to research in adaptation and resilience in global environmental change (GEC). The main theoretical contributions of this special issue are threefold: emphasizing the relevance of power relations in feminist political ecology, bringing the livelihood and intersectionality approaches into GEC, and linking resilience theories and critical feminist research. Empirical insights on key debates in GEC studies are also highlighted from the nine cases analysed, from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Further, the special issue also contributes to broaden the gender approach in adaptation to GEC by incorporating research sites in the Global North alongside sites from the Global South. This paper examines and compares the main approaches adopted (e.g. qualitative or mixed methods) and the methodological challenges that derive from intersectional perspectives. Finally, key messages for policy agendas and further research are drawn from the common reflection.

This thesis introduces and explores a novel construct for studying human beliefs in social science: doxastic spaces. These flexible analytical devices are demonstrated as capturing three key properties of beliefs which are difficult to depict through other formats: the relational, relative, and reflexive properties of beliefs. The doxastic-space paradigm developed by this thesis is likewise shown to enable new and insightful theories about belief formation and change. Two such theories cultivated herein are quantized evidence theory (QET) and entropy-based social learning (EBSL). These theories prioritise not only the evidential bases of beliefs, but also the cognitive limitations on memory and attention that people face in constructing and updating beliefs about their worlds. Such bases and limitations underscore not only the role that context has to play in sculpting beliefs, but also the reciprocal function of beliefs in helping to determine and demarcate context. Part of that context is discussed as being other people relevant in social judgment and learning situations. And interplay between beliefs and context is used to aid explanation for unstable tendencies in neglectful cognition. The work mixes theoretical and empirical investigation of the doxastic-space framework, and suggests that it may serve social science by working to not only forge deeper comprehension of belief dynamics but also to operate as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange.

Cette thèse porte sur le rapport au temps individuel des actifs occupés. Il s'intéresse à la façon dont ils le constituent et dont ils le transforment, et propose une approche compréhensive des dimensions réflexives de leur « conduite de vie ». Les évolutions des temporalités au sein de la société (liées à l'entrée des femmes dans le salariat, à la diffusion des TIC, etc.) tendent, selon nous, à créer de nouvelles contraintes et possibilités dans les programmes d'activités des individus. Ainsi, elles lancent de nouveaux défis à l'organisation du temps, mais aussi à l'individu et plus précisément à sa réflexivité. En effet, l'individu n'assume pas passivement cette complexité de son emploi du temps, mais cherche au contraire à la maîtriser. Pour cela, il fournit un « effort » permanent, mais qui n'est pas pour autant constant au fil du temps. A partir d'une enquête par entretiens semi-directifs menés entre 2006 et 2008, nous avons construit une typologie des différents rapports au temps, qui correspondent aux attitudes temporelles générales que les individus construisent et adoptent pour articuler les différentes sphères de la vie sociale, et répondre aux différentes situations qu'ils rencontrent dans leur quotidien. Elle nous a permis de montrer que tous les individus ne sont pas confrontés de la même façon à cette complexité, et de fait, que tous ne sont pas réflexifs au même degré dans leur quotidien. Partant de quatre idéaux-types, nous observons les contraintes (privées et professionnelles) dans lesquelles ils sont insérés ainsi que les outils techniques (les agendas papier et électroniques) et sociaux (les personnes et les institutions) qu'ils utilisent. Par ailleurs, l'observation de deux situations particulières (les imprévus de la vie quotidienne et le déménagement) révèle la façon dont les individus font évoluer leur rapport au temps / This thesis focuses on workers' relationships with time. It is concerned with the ways they construct and transform it, and proposes a comprehensive approach to the reflexive dimension of their “life conduct”. In our view, societal changes in temporalities (related to women's entry into the labor market, the diffusion of ICT, etc.) tend to create new constraints on individuals' activity programs. These changes create new challenges for personal time management, but also for the individual herself, specifically her reflexivity. Indeed, individuals do not passively accept the complexity of their schedules, but rather seek to control it. Achieving this requires constant "effort", but the strength of this effort is not necessarily constant over time. Based on a survey involving semi-structured interviews conducted between 2006 and 2008, we built a typology of different relationships with time, i.e. general temporal attitudes that individuals create and adopt to articulate the different spheres of social life and cope with the different situations they encounter in their daily lives. We demonstrate that not all individuals face complexity in the same way, and that they are not all equally reflexive in their daily lives. Using four ideal-types, we observe the private and professional constraints they are facing and the tools they use, both technical (paper or electronic agendas) and social (people and institutions). Finally, the observation of two exceptional situations (unexpected events in everyday life and changes of residence) reveals how people are changing their relationships with time

La problématique est de suivre comment Le Clézio, en faisant de l'espace une donnée fondamentale, parvient à en faire une donnée déterminante de l'altérité linguistique et à créer un style qui se construit au fil du changement. Cette caractéristique est aussi génératrice d'une identité particulière: grâce à ces espaces revisités tant par la fiction que par le déplacement, Le Clézio fait de l'écriture un espace d'autocréation et de quête de l'identité personnelle. Loin de s'abandonner à l'autobiographie directe et différente de l'autofiction, l'écriture leclézienne s'interroge sur un possible rapport entre le vivre et l'écrire. Elle se veut une possibilité d'exister et de revivre à chaque fois un passé ancestral que l'auteur n'a jamais connu. En cela, elle est réintégration de l'ailleurs dans une perspective de re-conquête de soi. Le Clézio a opté pour une esthétique du divers qui a fait du déplacement un principe fondamental, une sorte d' « errance sur la terre errante ». C'est pour cela que la langue se fait, elle aussi, mobile, une langue qui change à la frontière de l'Ici, là où le français se fait également voix de l'autre dans toute sa différence et voix de l'auteur. L'errance dont Le Clézio a renouvelé le sens depuis Le Livre des fuites touche tous les détails de la création littéraire. Nous assistons à une mobilité constante qui est plutôt "mobilisme" comme chez Bergson, là où la langue se fait parole écrite perpétuellement renouvelée. Ce choix esthétique a tout un soubassement philosophique qui s'inscrit dans la perspective de la rupture avec la pensée occidentale. Le Clézio revendique une nouvelle manière d'être au monde profondément liée à la circonstance. La mobilité appliquée à tous les détails de l'écriture, se trouve ontologiquement transposée en un devenir autre constant qui se présente comme trait définitoire d'un sujet qui vit mal la sédentarisation. Ainsi, le «je », libéré de toute historialité particulière, est toujours en quête d'un espace vital en perpétuel changement. En fait, l’Etre, dans la perspective leclézienne, est plutôt Etre-à. Loin de la conception cartésienne, Le Clézio fait de l'espace une des principales composantes d'un cogito qui est plutôt praxis dans le sens où le sujet doit quitter le cadre de la pensée, qui est aussi une prison, vers l'ouverture sur le monde. L'être-à leclézien est un passage du penser au vivre et du vivre à l'exister dans le sens d'une habitation poétique. C'est en dépassant l'autoréflexivité que le sujet se réalise en tant qu'entité non exclusivement cérébrale. / The main question is to explain how Le Clézio, while considering space a fundamental dimension, manages to make it a determining factor in the linguistic otherness and thus creates a style that is built all the way through change. This feature generates a unique identity. In fact, thanks to these revisited spaces both by fiction and displacement, Clézio is writing a space of self-creation and quest for personal identity. Far from yielding to direct autobiography which is different from autofiction, Le Clézio’s writing questions a possible relationship between living and writing. His writing claims the possibility to live and relive whenever an ancestral past is evoked and that the author has never known. As such, it is the reintegration of the somewhere in the perspective of self re-conquest. Le Clézio opted for an aesthetic of diversity that has made of displacement a fundamental orientation, a kind of "errance sur la terre errante". That is why language is made mobile. It is a language that changes on the borders of “the Here” and where French itself becomes a voice for the other in all its differences and also a voice of the author. The Errand that Le Clézio has renewed its meaning in Le Livre des fuites affects the very details of literary creation. We are witnessing a constant mobility is rather "mobilism" as with Bergson, where language is rendered a perpetually-renewed written word. This aesthetic choice is a whole philosophical foundation that fits in the context of the break with Western thought. Le Clézio boasts a new way of being in the world profoundly related to circumstantiality. Mobility applied to all the details of writing is ontologically transposed into another constant becoming that delimits a subject who badly lives settlement. Thus, the "I", free of any particular historicity, is still in search of a vital space in perpetual change. In fact, Being, according to Le Clézio is rather Being. Away from the Cartesian conception, Le Clézio renders space a major component of a cogito which is rather praxis in the sense that the subject must leave the framework of thought, which is also a prison, to the opening of the world. The Le Clézien l’être-à is a passage from thinking to living and from living to existing in the sense of poetic dwelling. It is by going beyond self-reflexivity that the subject is self- realized as an entity that is not exclusively cerebral.

La création photographique fonde et se fonde sur des conditions et des conduites d’émergence et de développement, que l’image ne saisit pas toujours, ou dont elle choisit de se dessaisir. Notre travail propose d’explorer les modalités et les enjeux du dévoilement des instances poïétiques dans l’image photographique. Par le biais d’une mise en tension des termes propres à l’atelier et au laboratoire photographique, nous situons ces deux espaces d’actions au coeur d’un territoire plastique ouvert aux interactions et aux circulations des éléments en jeu dans les divers processus et procédures suivis ou tracés. Notre pratique plastique engage le procédé photographique vers des dispositifs archaïques et vers de nouvelles fonctionnalités qui privilégient les voies de l’élaboration plastique, de l’expérience et de la réflexivité. Les motifs réflexifs mettent en question les fictions en construction et en éclairent en même temps les fondations ou les fondements. Le processus ne tend plus vers la restitution d’un résultat visé, mais vers des visions singulières qui retracent les expériences menées et vécues dans le laboratoire-atelier. Les ressorts poïétiques de la dissémination, de la sédimentation et de la fiction participent d’un chantier d’instauration plastique et photographique qu’ils donnent à voir et qu’ils redéfinissent sans cesse. / Creative photography implies and is based on conditions and emerging and developing behaviours, that the image does not always seize or chooses to impart. Our work aims to explore the modalities and goals of poietic disclosure inside the image. Through the opposition of terms specific to the studio and photographic laboratory, we set both spaces at the heart of an artistic territory, open to interactions and flows of the elements involved in the various processes and procedures followed or traced. Our fin art practice engages the photographic process to archaic devices and new functionalities that focus on developing artistic work, experience, and reflexivity. The reflexive patterns disturb fictions in construction, and point to their foundation. The process does not tend anymore towards the restoration of a preexistent outcome, but rather to singularities reflecting the experiments made or experienced in the photographic studio. Poietic methods of dissemination, sedimentation and fiction are part of en establishing fine art and photographic site, they present and remodel.

Esta tese tem por tema as relações entre protestantismo e modernidade no Brasil. O objetivo primordial é a compreensão das transformações nas relações entre o protestantismo e a modernidade no Brasil. Para alcançar o objetivo, utilizamos, no exame do tema, a sociologia compreensiva de matriz weberiana. A investigação sociológica, que reservou lugar de destaque para o protestantismo na emergência da modernidade ocidental, passou, de um lado, a interessar-se pela compreensão e explicação do declínio da religião protestante na sociedade moderna e, de outro, se as religiões pentecostais na América Latina mantinham ainda afinidades com o protestantismo e com a modernidade. O protestantismo valeu-se, para sua inserção no Brasil, a partir de meados do século XIX, de sua afinidade com a modernidade representada pelos Estados Unidos. Todavia, o significado da modernidade para o protestantismo foi sendo alterado ao longo do século XX. A primeira transformação nas relações entre protestantismo e modernidade no Brasil ocorreu quando a identificação com a herança moderna norte-americana passou do questionamento, nas primeiras décadas do século XX, à rejeição completa, na década de sessenta, por setores enraizados no liberalismo teológico. A segunda transformação nas relações do protestantismo com a modernidade no Brasil é encontrada na introdução da reflexividade no campo do conhecimento teológico. No esforço de apresentar-se como religião moderna, o protestantismo de inspiração liberal utilizou a reflexividade para reinterpretar a Bíblia à luz da cultura e da razão e para redefinir suas relações com o catolicismo romano. De tempos em tempos, ao longo do século XX, assistiram-se polarizações no interior do campo protestante brasileiro em torno de esforços de acomodação e de rejeição dos pressupostos cognitivos da modernidade, representados pela reflexividade. A sociologia do protestantismo brasileiro privilegiou a análise dos grupos protestantes, reunidos em torno da rejeição da reflexividade, usualmente denominados como fundamentalistas. Demonstramos que a atitude de acomodação aos pressupostos cognitivos da modernidade tem tido presença constante no protestantismo brasileiro, e a sua condição minoritária no campo religioso protestante não se explica apenas por meio da repressão sofrida por parte dos setores conservadores, mas levando-se em conta também a própria natureza das crenças liberais. A repressão conservadora oferece aos setores liberais a oportunidade para realização de rituais de ruptura, que, no caso do protestantismo, consistem basicamente nalguma transgressão no campo das idéias e das palavras. A particularidade do protestantismo reside na construção de sua identidade em relação íntima com a modernidade, seja de rejeição, seja de acomodação. / The theme of this thesis is the relations between Protestantism and modernity in Brazil. The primary goal is the understanding of the transformations in the relations between Protestantism and modernity in Brazil. In order to achieve the objective we used in the examination of the theme, the sociology of the comprehensive Weberian matrix. The sociological research that reserved a place of prominence for Protestantism in the emergence of a western modernity, has become, on one hand, interested in the understanding and explanation of the decline of Protestant religion in modern society and, on the other hand, if the Pentecostal religions in Latin America still maintained affinities with Protestantism and with modernity. Due to its affinity with the modernity represented by the United States, the Protestantism was inserted in Brazil in the mid-nineteenth century. However, the meaning of modernity for Protestantism changed over the twentieth century. The first transformation in the relations between Protestantism and modernity in Brazil occurred when the identification with the modern legacy of the North American, changed from questioning, in the first decades of the twentieth century, to the complete rejection in the sixties by the theological liberalism. The second transformation in the relations of Protestantism with modernity in Brazil was found in the introduction of reflexivity in the field of theological knowledge. In the effort to present as a modern religion, the Protestantism of a liberal inspiration used the reflexivity to reinterpret the Bible in the light of culture and reason and to redefine its relations with Roman Catholicism. From time to time, throughout the twentieth century, we saw a polarization within the Protestant Brazilian field around efforts of accommodation and rejection of cognitive assumptions of modernity, represented by the reflexivity. The sociology of the Brazilian Protestantism focused on the analysis of the Protestant groups gathered around the rejection of reflection, usually called fundamentalists. We demonstrate that the attitude of accommodation to the cognitive assumptions of modernity has constant presence in the Brazilian Protestantism and its minority condition in the Protestant religious field can not be explained only by means of repression suffered by the conservative sectors, but taking into account also the very nature of liberal beliefs. The conservative repression offers to the liberal sectors the opportunity to conduct rituals of disruption, which in the case of Protestantism, basically consists in some transgression in the field of ideas and words. The particularity of Protestantism lies in the construction of their identity in intimate relation with modernity, whether rejection or accommodation.

Thesis advisor: Natalia Sarkisian / The recent proliferation of technologies to collect and analyze “Big Data” has changed the research landscape, making it easier for some to use unprecedented amounts of real-time data to guide decisions and build ‘knowledge.’ In the three articles of this dissertation, I examine what these changes reveal about the nature of expertise and the position of the researcher. In the first article, “Monopoly or Generosity? ‘Rock Stars’ of Big Data, Data Democrats, and the Role of Technologies in Systems of Expertise,” I challenge the claims of recent scholarship, which frames the monopoly of experts and the spread of systems of expertise as opposing forces. I analyze video recordings (N= 30) of the proceedings of two professional conferences about Big Data Analytics (BDA), and I identify distinct orientations towards BDA practice among presenters: (1) those who argue that BDA should be conducted by highly specialized “Rock Star” data experts, and (2) those who argue that access to BDA should be “democratized” to non-experts through the use of automated technology. While the “data democrats” ague that automating technology enhances the spread of the system of BDA expertise, they ignore the ways that it also enhances, and hides, the monopoly of the experts who designed the technology. In addition to its implications for practitioners of BDA, this work contributes to the sociology of expertise by demonstrating the importance of focusing on both monopoly and generosity in order to study power in systems of expertise, particularly those relying extensively on technology. Scholars have discussed several ways that the position of the researcher affects the production of knowledge. In “Distance Makes the Scholar Grow Fonder? The Relationship Between Analytical Distance and Critical Reflection on Methods in Big Data Analytics,” I pinpoint two types of researcher “distance” that have already been explored in the literature (experiential and interactional), and I identify a third type of distance—analytical distance—that has not been examined so far. Based on an empirical analysis of 113 articles that utilize Twitter data, I find that the analytical distance that authors maintain from the coding process is related to whether the authors include explicit critical reflections about their research in the article. Namely, articles in which the authors automate the coding process are significantly less likely to reflect on the reliability or validity of the study, even after controlling for factors such as article length and author’s discipline. These findings have implications for numerous research settings, from studies conducted by a team of scholars who delegate analytic tasks, to “big data” or “e-science” research that automates parts of the analytic process. Individuals who engage in self-tracking—collecting data about themselves or aspects of their lives for their own purposes—occupy a unique position as both researcher and subject. In the sociology of knowledge, previous research suggests that low experiential distance between researcher and subject can lead to more nuanced interpretations but also blind the researcher to his or her underlying assumptions. However, these prior studies of distance fail to explore what happens when the boundary between researcher and subject collapses in “N of one” studies. In “The Collapse of Experiential Distance and the Inescapable Ambiguity of Quantifying Selves,” I borrow from art and literary theories of grotesquerie—another instance of the collapse of boundaries—to examine the collapse of boundaries in self-tracking. Based on empirical analyses of video testimonies (N=102) and interviews (N=7) with members of the Quantified Self community of self-trackers, I find that ambiguity and multiplicity are integral facets of these data practices. I discuss the implications of these findings for the sociological study of researcher distance, and also the practical implications for the neoliberal turn that assigns responsibility to individuals to collect, analyze, and make the best use of personal data. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.