219 research outputs found
Charismatic species and beyond: how cultural schemas and organisational routines shape conservation
It has long been suggested that charismatic species attract a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in international conservation. This paper follows up on this observation to investigate how cultural schemas and organisational routines shape resource allocation in conservation more broadly. Based on 44 in-depth interviews with programme managers in international conservation NGOs and in zoos with conservation programmes, we argue that the way units of intervention are institutionalised in conservation work shapes the allocation of resources in ways that are not directly based on conservation science. In addition to the role of species, and charismatic species in particular, we examine the role of focus countries political boundaries shape the conditions under which NGOs can do their work and they shape NGOsâ work via the priorities of institutional donors. We also discuss the role of landscape types, and competition among landscape types, and of solution-based programming
Comparative research: beyond linear-casual explanation
This book compares things, objects, concepts, and ideas. It is also about the practical acts of doing comparison. Comparison is not something that exists in the world, but a particular kind of activity. Agents of various kinds compare by placing things next to one another, by using software programs and other tools, and by simply looking in certain ways. Comparing like this is an everyday practice. But in the social sciences, comparing often becomes more burdensome, more complex, and more questions are asked of it. How, then, do social scientists compare? What role do funders, their tools and databases play in social scientific comparisons? Which sorts of objects do they choose to compare and how do they decide which comparisons are meaningful? Doing comparison in the social sciences, it emerges, is a practice weighed down by a history in which comparison was seen as problematic. As it plays out in the present, this history encounters a range of other agents also involved in doing comparison,who may challenge the comparisons of social scientists themselves. This book introduces these questions through a varied range of reports, auto-ethnographies, and theoretical interventions that compare, and analyse these different and often intersecting comparisons. Its goal is to begin a move away from the critique of comparison and towards a better comparative practice, guided not by abstract principles, but a deeper understanding of the challenges of practising comparison
Prioritization in human rights NGOs: the role of intra-organizational units of planning
Drawing on forty in-depth interviews with program managers in nineteen Western international human rights organizations, this article examines how human rights organizations make decisions about how to allocate resources and how to manage their commitments to specific causes, specific people, and specific areas. It argues that organizational routines shape the allocation of resources relatively independently of other factors and it pays particular attention to the role played by intra-organizational âunitsâ of work and planning. Units of work and planning function as candidates for the allocation of resources within organizations. Resources are not allocated directly to issues or causes but rather are distributed on the one hand among a set of range of practices, such as reports and campaigns, and ways of responding, which are considered legitimate, and on the other hand among the thematic and geographical units, which structure human rights organizations. The article concludes by discussing some factors that play a role in the selection among these units. As human rights workers consider where their organizations can make a difference, other organizations and conditions for their work come into view, levers matter, and the way making a difference can be demonstrated plays a role
Trump and Brexit: beyond âwhy Trump wonâ
Monika Krause is a Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Political and academic analyses of Trumpâs election victory, like the analysis of the results in the Brexit referendum, has initially largely focused on the role of class, race, gender, and to some extent region. For weeks, we have taken the task to âexplain Trumpâ to be the task to explain why so many people voted for him
Reading list: neglected cases in the social sciences
In Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites, Monika Krause explores how scholars in the social sciences and humanities repeatedly draw on particular cases and research objects, shaping our understanding of more general ideas in disproportionate ways. In this reading list, she highlights books that are based on neglected cases that make excellent contributions to scholarly debates and give a sense of the wide space of possibilities when it comes to combining what we are aiming to study and what we are trying to understand
On sociological reflexivity
This article offers a critique of the self-observation of the social sciences practiced in the philosophy of the social sciences and the critique of epistemological orientations. This kind of reflection involves the curious construction of wholes under labels, which are the result of a process of âdistillationâ or âabstractionâ of a âpositionâ somewhat removed from actual research practices and from the concrete claims and findings that researchers produce, share, and debate. In this context, I call for more sociological forms of reflexivity, informed by empirical research on practices in the natural sciences and by sociomaterial approaches in science and technology studies and cultural sociology. I illustrate the use of sociological self-observation for improving sociological research with two examples: I discuss patterns in how comparisons are used in relation to how comparisons could be used, and I discuss how cases are selected in relation to how they could be selected
Interpretation and critical classification. Geertzism and beyond in the sociology of culture
How can we explain the success of Geertzâs Interpretation of Cultures in American sociology? On rereading Geertz today, it seems insufficient to point to the limits of Parsonâs account of values and the lack of culture elsewhere in the discipline at the time to understand why such relatively concept-free and eclectic essays could become the placeholder for âcultureâ in some circles. If Geertz was successful partly because of the ambiguity of his work, this ambiguity is not perfectly open. The paper works towards a critical understanding of the celebration of Geertz in sociology in the context of the alternatives occluded within it.It discusses the consequences of an interpretation of âhermeneuticsâ and âthe humanitiesâthat goes back only as far as Dilthey, which ignores alternative, earlier forms of hermeneutics; it also discusses Weberâs position, which was also already an answer to Dilthey. What is at stake is the question as to how interpretation is defined, what it is defined against, and whether and how it is possible to combine interpretation with observation and critique in the sense of situating social phenomena within the range of possibilities for how thingscould be otherwis
Undocumented Migrants: An Arendtian Perspective
The number of people without rights of residence or work in the territory of Western Europe's nation states is growing. In official representations of political life this group is commonly 'symbolically eliminated' or taken up by an increasingly hostile discourse on 'illegal immigrants' and 'international terrorism'. This article explores what a rereading of the work of Hannah Arendt can contribute to the analytical task of giving an alternative meaning to the presence of this group. Arendt opens up new ways of thinking and acting in view of the present situation. She shows us the rightless migrant as subject to a very specific form of domination - total domination. With Arendt we can see the migrant also as an emblematic philosophical figure, whose status exposes the contradiction of state-centred citizenship and the discourse of human rights. Lastly, the migrant comes into view as a potential political actor; protests by sans papiers become visible as sites of active citizenship
Practicing Authorship: The Case of Brechtâs Plays
Practicing Culture seeks to revitalize the field of cultural sociology with an emphasis not on abstract theoretical debates but on showing how to put theoretical sources to work in empirical research. Culture is not just products and representations but practices. It is made and remade in countless small ways and occasional bursts of innovation. It is something people do â and do in rich variety and distinctive contexts as engaging case studies from the book reveal. Practicing Culture will reshape and invigorate the sociology of culture, not only through internal development, but through enhanced connections to the interdisciplinary social theory and to related fields like the sociology of knowledge and ethnography. It will prove an essential tool for students and researchers of cultural theory, contemporary social theory and cultural sociology
Materialising reform: how conservation encounters collection practises in zoos
This paper examines how zoos decide which animals to keep, drawing on guidance produced by zoo membership organisations and in-depth interviews with zoo curators. Zoos make curatorial decisions within constraints posed by each zooâs legacy of buildings and animals. Different versions of âconservation valueâ inform decision-making alongside other criteria such as education value, visitor value and whether or not animals are available. We find that an international agenda to rationalise zoo collection planning in the name of environmental conservation has only partially reshaped existing practices. As a âbald objectâ in the Latourian sense, âconservationâ presents a clean surface, which also means that it invites projections that attach to concrete practices only in loose ways. Given the ambiguity of conservation as a value, conservation presents zoos with a range of options and can be made to fit a broad range of choices, which make sense to actors for other reasons. Reform efforts gain traction where they are inserted as âhairy objectsâ and resonate with practical problems zoos are already facing. Reforms in the name of conservation have led to networks of exchange and co-operation, which help zoos to secure new animals in the context of new regulations
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