Editorial: Research as practice: on critical methodologies

Isabelle Stengers, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps knowingly, echoes a theme of the work of American philosopher Stanley Cavell (1995, p. 136) when she invites in the first edition of the journal Subjectivity, her readers to join her in slowing down, in hesitating, pausing, taking a breath in the face of our own endeavours to ‘produce subjectivity’ (Stengers, 2008, p. 49). Cavell’s gesture of hesitation is similarly evocative and provocative. Where Stengers pushes for an approach which betrays or reveals rather than denounces, Cavell suggests that in the face of apparently constitutive philosophical oppositions, in stead of seeking to decide we should seek to dismantle. Betrayal rather than denunciation; revelation rather than condemnation; dismantling rather than deciding. Alluring and seductive ideas but the question is begged: where is the critical edge? This volume grapples with this question. It hesitates in the face of the complex relations between theory, research methods and practice, and the persons and places, or milieus, they are embedded in. It represents an attempt to revive the question as to what it means to do psychology critically, or for that matter, to practice critical theory

Subordinating careers to market forces? A critical analysis of European career guidance policy

This study explores language regarding career and career development in European policy documents on career guidance in order to disclose underlying view(s) of these phenomena conveyed in the texts. Qualitative content analysis was used to approach the subject in the texts, followed by a sender-oriented interpretation. Sources for interpretation include several sociological and pedagogical approaches based upon social constructionism. These provide a framework for understanding how different views of career phenomena arise. The characterization of career phenomena in the documents falls into four categories: contextual change, environment-person correspondence, competence mobility, and empowerment. An economic perspective on career dominates, followed by learning and political science perspectives. Policy formulations convey contradictory messages and a form of career \u27contract\u27 that appears to subordinate individuals\u27 careers to global capitalism, while attributing sole responsibility for career to individuals. (DIPF/Orig.

Method and Writing: A Review of Adams’ Narrating the Close

The reviewer starts the review with her reading strategy of beginning with the discussion of the method. She argues that Adams’ work expands definitions of culture and what constitutes the field in ethnographic work in a beautifully written piece of autoethnography. Adams marries method, writing, and topic matter. The reviewer believes that this text would be appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students as well as those of us wanting an excellent example of autoethnography. In conclusion, the reviewer claims excitement to see where this will take ethnographers in the future, and especially those of us interested in the study of stigmatized and marginalized identities and close relationships

The ambivalence of adoption : adoptive families’ stories

The making of family through adoption is an emotionally and politically charged legal and social process. Both its historical and contemporary manifestations are characterised by ambivalence. Contemporary domestic adoption in the UK is at a point of profound reflection, as many of its ambivalent features are articulated at the levels of national policy making as well as within the micro political sphere of family life. Drawing on an online archive of adoption stories, in particular blogs written by adoptive parents, this article attends to the affective ways in which this ambivalence manifests within adoptive families. Queer theoretical resources are used to engage with themes of haunting, absence and loss, the strange temporalities of adoptive kinship and the complex politics of undoing at the heart of adoption

Reassessing balance: News coverage of Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood scandal before and during #metoo

Sexual abuse became an important part of news coverage in the months leading up to Donald Trump’s presidency and continued to dominate news cycles with the emergence of the #metoo movement. Yet, it remains to be seen whether the increasing amount of stories about sexual abuse have actually advanced social justice. We conducted content and textual analyses of newspaper, cable television, and online coverage of the Access Hollywood scandal before and during the #metoo movement (N = 1890) to understand how the journalistic objectivity norm of balance via issue dualism influenced reporting on sexual abuse. Television and right-leaning media had the highest levels of rape myth acceptance in their coverage for both time periods. The use of issue dualism advantaged Trump as Bill Clinton and other prominent accused men shifted focus away from Trump and largely overlooked the women coming forward against Trump. The objectivity norm of balance reduced and politicized this complex issue, as well as gave power to Trump’s retaliation while minimizing the serious accusations that have been brought against him

Technology Criticism in the Classroom (Chapter in The Nature of Technology)

I first heard about a tragedy in Tucson, not from major television news networks, but from a direct message sent by a politically-active friend who was attending the political gathering where a mass shooting took place, including the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords. While the television news sputtered around trying to offer details (initially wrongly claiming that she was dead, likely from pressure to be the first to report big news), I found myself reading Google News, piecing together Facebook posts, e-mailing friends and reading Twitter updates

Engaging with 'impact' agendas? Reflections on storytelling as knowledge exchange

The ‘impact agenda’, that is the whole gamut of initiatives related to knowledge exchange and public engagement that have been articulated in recent years, has had and continues to have a significant shaping influence on the way in which academics carry out their research. Within a UK context, the Research Excellence Framework (2008-2013) has made an explicit engagement with this agenda virtually compulsory for research-active academics by introducing ‘impact’ as a new criteria on which the research performance of universities, departments and individual researchers is assessed. The new emphasis on impact, defined as the ‘demonstrable contribution’ that research makes ‘to society and the economy’ beyond specialist academic audiences, has generated much discussion and controversy among academics. The ‘impact agenda’ has been critiqued on a number of grounds, ranging from diluting standards of academic excellence (Jump 2012), to limiting academic freedom by tying fundable academic enquiry to policy objectives, to concerns about the difficulties and costs involved in assessing ‘impact’ (Martin 2011). The widespread perception that academic autonomy is increasingly threatened by the twin forces of ‘audit culture’ and the commodification of higher education has been exacerbated by the broader climate of economic austerity and related cuts in university funding. Meanwhile, ‘impact’ itself remains a poorly understood and nebulous concept even as ‘impact case studies’ are embedded within REF criteria and scores. The difficulty in clearly defining the rules of the game stems from the fact that each discipline, research community and individual researcher has their own notion of ‘impact’ as it pertains to their work. Nonetheless, there is a real danger that lack of clarity, compounded with the obligatory compliance to impact assessment, may encourage a strategic ‘game-playing’ and a random incentivisation of short-term ‘impact’ activities by university management, rather than a vision of what meaningful engagement with non-academic publics may look like. In the light of this, the basic aim of this chapter is to reflect critically on the difficulties of implementing impact agendas with recourse to a Research Networking initiative (Translating Russian and East European Cultures), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The chapter focuses on knowledge exchange, since a key and recurring point of reflection throughout the initiative concerned the nature and practice of knowledge exchange (cf. Mitton et al. 2007) across academic and non-academic ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger 1998). This topic is explored here though a case study of one particular strand of the TREEC Network Initiative dedicated to storytelling. The heart of the chapter reflects on storytelling as a way to facilitate ‘knowledge exchange’, as well as on the ability of the storytelling events organised to bring together different publics. Whilst critical of ‘impact agendas’, I proceed from the position that, as publicly funded researchers, academics have a responsibility to contribute to the wider society through their knowledge, skills and resources, and that beyond strategic compliance to impact assessment ‘knowledge exchange’, broadly defined, has always been and should remain an integral part of university activities

What would learning in an open world look like? A vision for the future

The pace of current technological advancement is phenomenal. In the last few years we have seen the emergence of ever more sophisticated gaming technologies, rich, immersive virtual worlds and new social networking services that enable learners and teachers to connect and communicate in new ways. The pace of change looks set to continue as annual Horizon reports testify (http://www.nmc.org/horizon). Clearly new technologies offer much in an educational context, with the promise of flexible, personalised and student-centred learning. Indeed research over the past few years, looking at learners' use of technologies, has given us a rich picture of how learners of all ages are appropriating new tools within their own context, mixing different applications for finding/managing information and for communicating with others (Sharpe and Beetham, forthcoming)