24,021 research outputs found
Lifeworld Analysis
We argue that the analysis of agent/environment interactions should be
extended to include the conventions and invariants maintained by agents
throughout their activity. We refer to this thicker notion of environment as a
lifeworld and present a partial set of formal tools for describing structures
of lifeworlds and the ways in which they computationally simplify activity. As
one specific example, we apply the tools to the analysis of the Toast system
and show how versions of the system with very different control structures in
fact implement a common control structure together with different conventions
for encoding task state in the positions or states of objects in the
environment.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file
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Socio-phenomenology and conversation analysis: interpreting video lifeworld healthcare interactions
This article uses a socio-phenomenological methodology to develop knowledge and understanding of the healthcare consultation based on the concept of the lifeworld. It concentrates its attention on social action rather than strategic action and a systems approach. This article argues that patient-centred care is more effective when it is informed through a lifeworld conception of human mutual shared interaction. Videos offer an opportunity for a wide audience to experience the many kinds of conversations and dynamics that take place in consultations. Visual sociology used in this article provides a method to organize video emotional, knowledge and action conversations as well as dynamic typical consultation situations. These interactions are experienced through the video materials themselves unlike conversation analysis where video materials are first transcribed and then analysed. Both approaches have the potential to support intersubjective learning but this article argues that a video lifeworld schema is more accessible to health professionals and the general public. The typical interaction situations are constructed through the analysis of video materials of consultations in a London walk-in centre. Further studies are planned in the future to extend and replicate results in other healthcare services. This method of analysis focuses on the ways in which the everyday lifeworld informs face-to-face person-centred health care and supports social action as a significant factor underpinning strategic action and a systems approach to consultation practice
The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring
Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patientâs identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations
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A video life-world approach to consultation practice: The relevance of a socio-phenomenological approach
This article discusses the [development and] use of a video life-world schema to explore alternative orientations to the shared health consultation. It is anticipated that this schema can be used by practitioners and consumers alike to understand the dynamics of videoed health consultations, the role of the participants within it and the potential to consciously alter the outcome by altering behaviour during the process of interaction. The study examines health consultation participation and develops an interpretative method of analysis that includes image elicitation (via videos), phenomenology (to identify the components of the analytic framework), narrative (to depict the stories of interactions) and a reflexive mode (to develop shared meaning through a conceptual framework for analysis). The analytic framework is derived from a life-world conception of human mutual shared interaction which is presented here as a novel approach to understanding patient-centred care. The video materials used in this study were derived from consultations in a Walk-in Centre (WiC) in East London. The conceptual framework produced through the process of video analysis is comprised of different combinations of movement, knowledge and emotional conversations that are used to classify objective or engaged WiC health care interactions. The videoed interactions organise along an active or passive, facilitative or directive typical situation continuum illustrating different kinds of textual approaches to practice that are in tension or harmony. The schema demonstrates how practitioners and consumers interact to produce these outcomes and indicates the potential for both consumers and practitioners to be educated to develop practice dynamics that support patient-centred care and impact on health outcomes
Action theory in Habermas and educational practices
In this paper I explore the potential for viewing education as an âunrestricted communication communityâ (Habermas 1990: 88), using categorisations from Habermas of different kinds of action as analytical tools for examining educational practices. For the paper, I pursue two main themes: 1) how the concept of communicative action in relation to the three forms of knowledge-constitutive interest (Habermas 1987) can be operationalised in educational discourse 2) how the distinguishing of communicative action and discourse ethics from other forms of action may be used to understand the interaction taking place in educational contexts to develop evaluative tools for examining teaching practices. The potential of this framework for encouraging critical reflection on teaching, on critical incidents in teaching, peer observation, or tutor observation of novice practitioners is also discussed in relation to the forms of reflexivity that Habermas identifies as necessary conditions of human freedom (1996). Taken together, these different constructs form a powerful framework for critically examining the truth and validity claims both explicitly made and implied in educational practices from the perspectives of the individual as well as the professional community to which the individual belongs. It is accepted that a rational, communicative action aimed at reaching consensus does not necessarily dominate either the school or the higher education institutionâs normal mode of discourse. Thus, the paper also differentiates other forms of action, incorporating these into the overall critical framework
"Freedom" through Repression: Epistemic Closure in Agricultural Trade Negotiations
A central concern of critical theory is that of how the forces of Modern reason cause certain logics to become reified in the name of rational progress. Two such logics â the ongoing spread of liberal capitalism, and territorial particularism â are simultaneously embodied within social institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) that regulate the global economy, a phenomenon that occurs on the premise of maximising global welfare. Building upon a critical reading of JĂŒrgen Habermas' theory of communicative action, this article undertakes an empirical immanent critique of the extent to which such logics repress the possibility of normative imperatives being considered within agricultural trade negotiations. Specifically, it argues that the dialectic of functionalist and communicative rationality, operating as a theoretical heuristic, reveals that the DDA is susceptible to an ethical indictment that arises from its inability to countenance the alternatives to the dual logics of neo-liberalism and state-interest that could otherwise emerge from a free and rational discussion. The nature of the WTO as a site of social action is revealed to be that of a closed epistemic community in which important normative claims are repressed, and as such, one in which the underlying rational bases for communication are fundamentally distorted
Evaluating Lifeworld as an emancipatory methodology
Disability research is conducted within a highly politicised âhotbedâ of competing paradigms and principles. New researchers, who want to work within the social model, are soon faced with complex and challenging methodological and philosophical dilemmas. The social model advocates research agendas that are focused on the emancipation and empowerment of disabled people but, in reality, these are rarely achieved. To be successful researchers need to engage with innovative and creative methodologies and to share their experiences of these within environments that welcome challenge and debate. This paper focuses on Lifeworld and assesses its value as a tool for emancipatory research. Using examples from a study with parents, whose children were in the process of being labelled as having autism, the paper illustrates how the principles that âunderpinâ the methodology offered a supportive framework for a novice researcher
Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds
This paper introduces âinfrastructural speculations,â an orientation toward speculative design that considers the complex and long-lived relationships of technologies with broader systems, beyond moments of immediate invention and design. As modes of speculation are increasingly used to interrogate questions of broad societal concern, it is pertinent to develop an orientation that foregrounds the âlifeworldâ of artifactsâthe social, perceptual, and political environment in which they exist. While speculative designs often imply a lifeworld, infrastructural speculations place lifeworlds at the center of design concern, calling attention to the cultural, regulatory, environmental, and repair conditions that enable and surround particular future visions. By articulating connections and affinities between speculative design and infrastructure studies research, we contribute a set of design tactics for producing infrastructural speculations. These tactics help design researchers interrogate the complex and ongoing entanglements among technologies, institutions, practices, and systems of power when gauging the stakes of alternate lifeworlds
Power relations, ethnicity and privatisation: A tale of a telecommunications company
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the confluence of political and economic interests of the Fijian elite in transforming state assets into private property and financial gain. Drawing on a Habermasian theoretical framework applied to a privatised state monopoly (Telecom Fiji), it is demonstrated how an implementation of privatisation concealed social and political interests. Thus privatisation provided a convenient rhetoric and tool of implementation for social and political gain by a ruling elite. For those inside the Telecom company, the ethos of public service could not withstand the messengers of capitalism with their rhetoric of the need for greater efficiency, effectiveness and consumer awareness. However, as for many other privatisation programmes around the world, the results are not reflected in the improved organisational performance or wellbeing of the ordinary citizen when state monopolies are privatised
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