Anthropology’s Science Wars Insights from a New Survey

In recent decades the field of anthropology has been characterized as sharply divided between proscience and antiscience factions. The aim of this study is to empirically evaluate that characterization. We survey anthropologists in graduate programs in the United States regarding their views of science and advocacy, moral and epistemic relativism, and the merits of evolutionary biological explanations. We examine anthropologists’ views in concert with their varying appraisals of major controversies in the discipline (Chagnon/Tierney, Mead/Freeman, and Menchú/Stoll). We find that disciplinary specialization and especially gender and political orientation are significant predictors of anthropologists’ views. We interpret our findings through the lens of an intuitionist social psychology that helps explain the dynamics of such controversies as well as ongoing ideological divisions in the field

Locating distributed leadership

This special issue addresses a number of the key themes that have been surfacing from the literature on distributed leadership (DL) for some time. Together with those papers selected to be included in this special issue, the authors set out both to explore and contribute to a number of the current academic debates in relation to DL, while at the same time examining the extent to which research on DL has permeated the management field. The paper examines a number of key concepts, ideas and themes in relation to DL and, in so doing, highlights the insights offered through new contributions and interpretations. The paper offers a means by which forms of DL might be conceptualized to be better incorporated into researchers' scholarship and research, and a framework is presented which considers a number of different dimensions of DL, how it may be planned, and how it may emerge, together with how it may or may not align with other organizational activities and aspects. © 2011 The Authors. International Journal of Management Reviews © 2011 British Academy of Management and Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Raymond Caldwell: Agency and Change in Organizational Theory

How we conceive our capacity for “agency” in the world has enormous implications for how we think about the possibilities and limits of our ability to manage change in organizations and society. For Raymond Caldwell, agency is the prism through which we think about change. If we conceive ourselves as things, as “substances” that simply think and act intentionally or rationally, we will end up with extremely limited epistemologies for understanding agency. For Caldwell the old models of knowledge and power, rationality and control, and agency and structure in organizations have fallen apart. The idea of “distributed agency” partly captures this reality by treating change as an ongoing process defined by practices, which in turn questions explanations of change that rely on intentional action or abstract notions of organizations as entities that change from one relatively fixed state to another. In sum, he treats agency as a practice and change as a process. But Caldwell’s recent work, partly under the philosophical influence of Whitehead, takes these ideas further by including the nonhuman in how we define distributed agency: agency is potentially everywhere in a social-material world in which the ontological divide between the social and the natural world no longer makes much sense. Always provocative, always challenging, Caldwell’s work is an important contribution to redefining the boundaries of how we think of agency and change in organizations. After briefly noting some early influences on Caldwell’s work, the chapter organizes his contributions into three major phases: agency and change, agency as practice, and change as a process. A key insight section then reflects on how his early contributions have influenced others. The chapter concludes with legacies and new directions in Caldwell’s search for a process-in-practice perspective on organizational change

The Role of Narrative Fiction and Semi-Fiction in Organizational Studies

In this chapter, we discuss the use of narrative fiction and semi-fiction in organizational research and explore the strengths and weaknesses of these alternative approaches. We begin with an introduction reviewing the existing literature and clarifying what we mean by fiction and semi-fiction. We then present and discuss examples of fiction and semi-fiction focusing on how these approaches can be used in organizational research. We argue that fiction is more useful as a source of data and as a way of representing theory to an audience. Semi-fiction, on the other hand, provides a novel approach to the production and representation of theory. In both cases, researchers face a number of challenges, but also gain access to new and powerful techniques for developing insights into organizational topics.Organizational studies;Narrative fiction;Semi-fiction

A POSTMODERN CRITIQUE OF THE SACSSP'S DRAFT CODE OF ETHICS

In the course of the past few years, social work academics have begun increasingly to explore the relevance of postmernism for social work in South Africa, thus beginning to reconsider fundamentally some of its constituting components, including its moral, ethical and values base (Sevenhuijsen, 2003: Sewpaul & Hölscher, 2004; Williams & Sewpaul, 2004).  With regard to the latter, it appears that al least since Abraham Flexner's now famous 1915 assertions regardig the professional standing of social work, the profession has been at great pain to make its moral, ethical and value base, and thus its role and function in relation to broader society, explicit.  Flexner, in his paper entitled "Is Social Work a Profession?" presented at the 1915 National Conference of Charities and Corrections, defined the professions as those occupations that "...engage in intellectual operations involving individual responsibility, derive their material from science and learning, work this material up to a practical end, and apply it using techniques that are educationally communicable, are self-organised, and are motivated by altruism" (Popple, 1985:561, author's emphasis) and found that social work at the time did not qualify as a profession

Re-Imagining Peace

In March 2017 during the armed conflict in Syria, the “Four Towns Agreement” was sealed as a reconciliation deal between the government and the armed opposition under the auspices of Iran and Qatar. Using the methodology of Elicitive Conflict Mapping, Lama Ismail makes use of the “Four Towns Agreement” as a conflict episode, i.e. a window to explore the agreement as an expression of the conflict as a whole, with large and wide implications depending on who is experiencing it. Beyond the prevalent discourses of justice and security, this research puts different viewpoints and discourses into conversation with each other. At the epicentre of the conflict, the analysis shows how visions of peace collide, layers of conflict extend beyond families and communities, and relational spaces between different groups of people are made visible. The analysis of the “Four Towns Agreement” reveals the complex conflictive landscape in Syria and the many ways it can be understood. In recognizing this, what kind of world emerges from the point of view of many rather than one? This book is a timely contribution to the reading of the Syrian conflict for students, researchers and professionals interested in the region, as well as those conversant with the fields of international relations, sociology, philosophy, history, international law and peace and conflict studies.; Während des bewaffneten Konflikts in Syrien im März 2017 wurde das „Vier-Städte-Abkommen“ als ein Versöhnungsabkommen zwischen der Regierung und der bewaffneten Opposition unter der Schirmherrschaft von Iran und Katar besiegelt. Lama Ismail verwendet die Methode der Elicitive Conflict Mapping und nutzt das „Four Towns Agreement“ als Konfliktepisode, d. h. als Fenster, um das Abkommen als Ausdruck des gesamten Konflikts zu untersuchen, mit großen und weitreichenden Auswirkungen. Über die vorherrschenden Diskurse von Gerechtigkeit und Sicherheit hinaus werden bei dieser Untersuchung unterschiedliche Standpunkte und Diskurse miteinander ins Gespräch gebracht. Im Epizentrum des Konflikts zeigt die Analyse, wie Friedensvisionen kollidieren, Konfliktschichten jenseits von Familien und Gemeinschaften entstehen und Beziehungsräume zwischen verschiedenen Personengruppen sichtbar gemacht werden. Die Analyse des „Vier-Städte-Abkommens“ zeigt die komplexe Konfliktlandschaft in Syrien und die vielen Arten, wie sie verstanden werden kann. Welche Art von Welt entsteht aus der Sicht vieler statt einer? Dieses Buch ist ein zeitgemäßer Beitrag zur Lektüre des Syrienkonflikts für Studenten, WissenschaftlerInnen und Fachleute, die an der Region interessiert sind, sowie für diejenigen, die mit den Bereichen internationale Beziehungen, Soziologie, Philosophie, Geschichte, Völkerrecht und Friedens- und Konfliktforschung vertraut sind

Education in South Africa : towards a postmodern democracy

Bibliography: leaves 104-112.The requirements of social and educative justice are examined further in the light of John Rawls's conception of justice as 'fairness'. In particular, critical response to his notions of 'the original position', 'veil of ignorance' and 'overlapping consensus' misrepresents the critical and creative capacity that these concepts properly denote and preserve in the interests of participants' 'strong' democratic capacity. The ethical implications of a non-authoritarian relationship between learners and existing discursive formations are then discussed with reference to Philip Wexler's 'textualist' theory of social analysis and education. His advocacy of 'collective symbolic action' is found to be compatible with an uncoercive discourse ethic, oriented to mutual understanding and contextualised hypothesis formation by self-reflective agents. Inferences for education are proposed, in conclusion, emphasising the teachers' role as agent provocateur of the 'liminal imagination' (generating non-formulaic symbolic movement and self-formative struggle by the learners themselves), which qualifies the usual obligation to approved curricular content. Education for a postmodern democracy is sustained by, and sustains, both context-relative knowledge - publicly educed - and an ongoing 'desublimation' of discourse, in the interests of participatory self-critique and renewal

Populism as an active and effective form of contemporary South African politics

Research Report Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Political Studies University of the Witwatersrand March 2015Recent 21st century political developments in South Africa have given rise to debate surrounding a threat to a functioning democracy. New radical political parties, turmoil in the labour sectors, and dysfunctional government policies and activities have made populist tendencies a central aspect of this debate. Populism is an entity oft evoked in a negative light and rhetoric in this debate. It is associated with demagogues and the ‘uncontrollable’ urges of the masses that would be let loose upon society given the chance, destroying democracy in the process. It is the aim of this paper to argue the opposite. By expanding and contributing to the theoretical literature on populism, and through the analysis of empirical evidence – the Western Cape farm worker’s strikes and the Marikana strikes and subsequent massacre of 2012 –in South Africa this research report seeks to fill a gap in the conceptualisation and practical characterisation of populism in our political setting. Can populism be conceptually, theoretically, and empirically utilised to characterise and explain trends in contemporary South African politics and can it be utilised in providing a contextual underpinning for explaining recent events in South African society as a whole? Through the reliance on the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek the aim will be to identify the underlying gaps in democratic politics that gives rise to populist movements and through this argument to build and utilise this conception of populism as a positive and effective analytical tool of contemporary South African politics