Looking back at Social Knowledge in the Making

Sociolog

Talking Lines: A Research Protocol Integrating Verbal and Visual Narratives to Understand the Experiences of People Affected by Rarer Forms of Dementia

People affected by rarer forms of dementia often have a long and difficult experience obtaining a diagnosis and appropriate support, impacting family, employment and social relationships, quality of life and wellbeing. For this population progressive cognitive symptoms affect skills other than memory and disproportionately occur under the age of 65 years, often resulting in misdiagnosis and lack of appropriate care pathways. The objective of this study will be to better understand the subjective experience of the time period from first noticing symptoms to obtaining a formal diagnosis, through to accessing support, and onward to the present time. Through the concurrent use of line drawings and video-recorded interviews we will collect the stories of people living with different rarer dementias and/or family members who are care partners in Canada and the United Kingdom. Narrative and visual analysis will be used in parallel to methodologically explore how line drawing and verbal discourse interact and inform each other to construct knowledge, and how the use of drawing lines might enrich research interviews and increase accessibility of research participation. This novel research approach may also have implications for clinical interviewing, support services, and public engagement. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to retrospectively explore over time the experiences of people affected by rarer forms of dementia from initial symptoms—to diagnosis—to accessing support—to the present, using visual and verbal methodologies

Conceptualising and Understanding Artistic Creativity in the Dementias: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research and Practise

Creativity research has a substantial history in psychology and related disciplines; one component of this research tradition has specifically examined artistic creativity. Creativity theories have tended to concentrate, however, on creativity as an individual phenomenon that results in a novel production, and on cognitive aspects of creativity, often limiting its applicability to people with cognitive impairments, including those with a dementia. Despite growing indications that creativity is important for the wellbeing of people living with dementias, it is less well understood how creativity might be conceptualised, measured and recognised in this population, and how this understanding could influence research and practise. This paper begins by exploring prevailing concepts of creativity and assesses their relevance to dementia, followed by a critique of creativity and dementia research related to the arts. Perspectives from researchers, artists, formal and informal caregivers and those with a dementia are addressed. We then introduce several novel psychological and physiological approaches to better understand artistic-related creativity in this population and conclude with a conceptualisation of artistic creativity in the dementias to help guide future research and practise

Heredity, Environment, and Cranial Form: A Reanalysis of Boas's Immigrant Data

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65137/1/aa.2003.105.1.125.pd

Symptom-led staging for semantic and non-fluent/agrammatic variants of primary progressive aphasia

INTRODUCTION: Here we set out to create a symptom-led staging system for the canonical semantic and non-fluent/agrammatic variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA), which present unique diagnostic and management challenges not well captured by functional scales developed for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. METHODS: An international PPA caregiver cohort was surveyed on symptom development under six provisional clinical stages and feedback was analyzed using a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. RESULTS: Both PPA syndromes were characterized by initial communication dysfunction and non-verbal behavioral changes, with increasing syndromic convergence and functional dependency at later stages. Milestone symptoms were distilled to create a prototypical progression and severity scale of functional impairment: the PPA Progression Planning Aid ("PPA-Squared"). DISCUSSION: This work introduces a symptom-led staging scheme and functional scale for semantic and non-fluent/agrammatic variants of PPA. Our findings have implications for diagnostic and care pathway guidelines, trial design, and personalized prognosis and treatment for PPA. HIGHLIGHTS: We introduce new symptom-led perspectives on primary progressive aphasia (PPA). The focus is on non-fluent/agrammatic (nfvPPA) and semantic (svPPA) variants. Foregrounding of early and non-verbal features of PPA and clinical trajectories is featured. We introduce a symptom-led staging scheme for PPA. We propose a prototype for a functional impairment scale, the PPA Progression Planning Aid

Bourdieusian Reflections on Language: Unavoidable Conditions of the Real Speech Situation

The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of language. Although he has dedicated a significant part of his work to the study of language and even though his analysis of language has been extensively discussed in the literature, almost no attention has been paid to the factthat Bourdieu’s account of language is based on a number of ontological presuppositions, that is, on a set of universal assumptions about the very nature of language. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature by offering a detailed overview of 10 key features which, from a Bourdieusian point of view, can be regarded as inherent in language. On the basis of this enquiry,the study seeks todemonstrate that——contraryto commonbelief——there is not only a Bourdieusian sociology of language but also a Bourdieusian philosophy of language, which provides a useful theoretical framework for examining the unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on the flaws and limitations of Bourdieu’s approach to language

Mediated Habits: Images, Networked Affect and Social Change

While many people remain hopeful that particular images of injustice will have the power to catalyse progressive transformation, there is also widespread belief in the inevitability of ‘compassion fatigue’. Bringing philosophers of habit into conversation with contemporary scholars of affect, visual culture and digital media, this article argues for a more nuanced understanding of the links between images and change – one in which political feeling and political action are complexly intertwined and repeated sensation does not necessarily lead to disaffection. When affect acts as a ‘binding technique’ compelling us to inhabit our sensorial responses to images, I suggest, we may become better attuned to everyday patterns of seeing, feeling, thinking and interacting – and hence to the possibility of change at the level of habit. This article thus contends that thinking affect and habit together as imbricated may enable us to better understand the dynamics of both individual and socio-political change today

Notes historiques sur l’apport de Parsons

Cet article réévalue l'opinion fort répandue selon laquelle The Structure of Social Action a représenté une orientation révolutionnaire par rapport aux tendances qui prévalaient en sciences sociales aux États-Unis dans les années 1920 et 1930. Cette époque est censée marquer l'apogée de la méthode scientifique positivo-empiriste, de l'approche behavioriste et d'une vision utilitaire de l'ordre social. Une analyse du contexte intellectuel de cette époque nous conduit à douter de cette affirmation et met en lumière, chez les contemporains de Parsons, la prédominance d'une méthode scientifique analytico-réaliste, d'une conception volontariste de l'action sociale perçue comme un processus de moyens et de fins, ainsi que des préoccupations soulevées par le problème de l'ordre social et le rôle joué par les normes dans sa solution. Une telle analyse laisse entrevoir que Parsons, en s'appropriant les recherches de Durkheim et de Weber, ne tournait pas le dos aux questions qui préoccupaient les intellectuels américains, mais qu'au contraire il faisait progresser l'étude de ces questions.This paper reappraises the widespread claim that The Structure of Social Action was a revolutionary departure from trends in American social science during the 1920s and 1930s - allegedly, the great age of the positivist-empiricist scientific method, the behaviorist approach to action, and the utilitarian view of social order. Examination of the intellectual context of the period challenges this claim by demonstrating the prevalence, among Parsons's contemporaries, of an analytical-realist scientific method, a voluntaristic conception of action understood as a means-end process, and a concern with the problem of order and its normative resolution. This analysis suggests that, in his appropriation of the works of Durkheim and Weber, Parsons was not abandoning American intellectual preoccupations but further advancing them.Este artículo revalúa la opinión muy generalizada según la cual The Structure of Social Action ha representado una orientación revolucionaria en relación a las tendencias que prevalecían en las ciencias sociales en Estados Unidos en los años 20 y 30. Esta época parece marcar el apogeo del método científico positivo-empírico, del enfoque del comportamiento y de una visión utilitaria del orden social. Un análisis del contexto intelectual de esta época nos conduce a dudar de esta afirmación y resalta, en los contemporáneos de Parsons, la predominancia de un método científico analítico-realista, de una concepción voluntarista de la acción social percibida como un proceso de medios y de fines así como de las preocupaciones al respecto del orden social y del rol que juegan las normas en su solución. Tal análisis deja entrever que Parsons, al apropiarse de las investigaciones de Durkheim y Weber, no hacía caso omiso de los cuestionamientos que preocupaban a los intelectuales americanos, sino que al contrario hacía avanzar el estudio de estos temas