Expanding the reflexive space: resilient young adults, institutional cultures, and cognitive schemas

For many U.S. young adults, being resilient to stressful events hinges on making meaning of such events and thereby minimizing their negative emotional impact. Yet why are some better able to do this than others? In this study, which uses an innovative outlier sampling strategy and linked survey and interview data, we argue that one important factor is connection to institutional cultures associated with higher education, religion/spirituality, and the military. Such cultures provide material for the development of cognitive schemas that can be adopted and applied to their stressful experiences, which include narratives of social progress, divine providence, and self‐discipline. Using a metaphor adapted from the pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, we argue the resulting schemas have the effect of “expanding the space” of reflexive thought, providing new cognitive material for interpreting stress and supporting resilience. Finally, we argue this framing improves in several ways on the concept of meaning making often used in stress process research.Accepted manuscrip

Auto-comprensión y re-narración : Reflexiones peirceanas sobre dos temas contemporáneos

Fil: Colapietro, Vincent M.. Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania. Departamento de Filosofía; Estados Unidos

Auto-comprensión y re-narración : Reflexiones peirceanas sobre dos temas contemporáneos

Fil: Colapietro, Vincent M.. Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania. Departamento de Filosofía; Estados Unidos

Auto-comprensión y re-narración : Reflexiones peirceanas sobre dos temas contemporáneos

Fil: Colapietro, Vincent M.. Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania. Departamento de Filosofía; Estados Unidos

Book Review Editor

by R. T. Alle

Habitus, reflexividade e realismo

Many scholars continue to ascribe a fundamental role to routine action in social theory and defend the continuing relevance of Bourdieu's concept of habitus. Meanwhile, the majority recognize the importance of reflexivity. In this article, Archer examines three versions of efforts to render these concepts mutually compatible: "empirical combination", "hybridization", and "theoretical and ontological reconciliation". In analytical terms, none of these versions is fully successful. The empirical argument is that the relevance of habitus began to decline in the late 20th century, in light of major structural changes in advanced capitalist democracies. In these circumstances, habitual forms have proven incapable of providing guidelines for people's lives, thus making reflexivity necessary. The article concludes with the argument that even the reproduction of one's birth history now constitutes a reflexive activity, and that the most favorable mode of its production, which the author refers to as "communicative reflexivity", is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain