The plight of the sense-making ape

This is a selective review of the published literature on object-choice tasks, where participants use directional cues to find hidden objects. This literature comprises the efforts of researchers to make sense of the sense-making capacities of our nearest living relatives. This chapter is written to highlight some nonsensical conclusions that frequently emerge from this research. The data suggest that when apes are given approximately the same sense-making opportunities as we provide our children, then they will easily make sense of our social signals. The ubiquity of nonsensical contemporary scientific claims to the effect that humans are essentially--or inherently--more capable than other great apes in the understanding of simple directional cues is, itself, a testament to the power of preconceived ideas on human perception

Heroes and Victims:Fund Manager Sense-making, Self-legitimation and Storytelling

This paper explores how fund managers continue to do their job when on one level they know they cannot all be exceptional. They do this by telling stories, constructing satisfying narratives to explain to themselves, as well as others, why their investments work out and providing equally plausible reasons for when they underperform. Using the story typology of Gabriel (2000. Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) – epic, tragic, comic and romantic, we explore two sets of fund manager narratives. First, we analyse the transcripts of interviews with 50 equity fund managers in some of the world's largest investment houses. Second, we examine a similar number of published fund manager reports to their investors. In both cases, we show how storytelling is used by asset managers to make sense of what they do and justify their value to themselves as well their clients and employers. Similar processes are employed in both sets of narratives, one verbal and informal, the other written and formal. Our study serves to highlight how storytelling is an integral part of the work of the professional investor

Sense-Making and Library History

A few days before leaving for Philadelphia I was asked to read over a manuscript written by Don Davis, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and one of his doctoral students at Texas, Jon Aho, in which they were kind enough to mention my name, identifying me as a "library historian." I had never really thought of myself as a library historian and am really not sure of exactly what that means—I presume someone who does histories of libraries as opposed to real history. I am not a real historian. I was an English major. The only official course work I have had in history consists of a course taken as an undergraduate at the University of Florida (UF)—a survey of English history—taught by an elderly gentleman who was a holdover from the days before 1947 when UF was a male school. His entire series of lectures quickly degenerated into a series of dirty jokes about Henry VIII, which he told while carefully watching the reactions of the women in the class. This experience, plus a short course in historical methods taken at the insistence of my major professor at Florida State University (FSU) during my doctoral work there, of which I can remember nothing, accounts for my entire academic background in history

Why call bodily sense making "languaging"?

Journal ArticleN/AThe European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007- 2013

Sense-Making with Students: An Ethics in Action Case Example

A student has recently returned from a service trip abroad, and meets with her academic advisor to plan classes for the following semester. The advisor is anxious to hear about the student’s experience, but as the student begins to share stories, she reveals some information that raises red flags for the advisor. She begins sharing the pictures she took with members of the host community that she has posted on her Facebook page, and there is little evidence that the host community participated in planning the event in any way. The advisor also suspects that the student has been allowed to complete duties outside her scope of knowledge, and with little supervision. As the advisor pushes on these points of concern, the student becomes frustrated and defensive. She believes the trip did wonders for the community it served, and she is shocked that the advisor might suggest otherwise. The student is planning to apply for professional medical programs and she is certain that this experience will give her a “leg up” in the admission process. The advisor isn’t so sure, and wants to help the student reflect more critically on the experience without shutting down her enthusiasm for serving vulnerable populations

Hermeneutics: Interpretation, Understanding and Sense-making

Gadamer (1989: xxxiii) describes hermeneutics as ‘a theory of the real experience that thinking is’. In this chapter, we explore two main aspects of this experience of thinking - interpretation and understanding. We draw on the work of Schleiermacher (1768-1834) to review the origins of modern hermeneutics as an activity of interpretation, and on Heidegger (1889-1976) and Gadamer (1900-2002) for hermeneutics as a philosophy of understanding. We consider the ways in which Ricoeur (1913-2005) and Habermas (1929-) move hermeneutics towards critical theory, challenging the trustworthiness of text and the possibility of understanding, and urging reflection on their ideological construction and motivation. We use the most famous idea in the hermeneutic canon, the hermeneutic circle, as a leit-motif for the chapter. This illuminates a range of mutually constitutive relationships between context and text, whole and parts, general and particular, anticipation and encounter, familiarity and strangeness, presence and absence, and sense and non-sense. We discuss how hermeneutics has influenced contemporary organization and management research, inspiring an array of interpretive methods and inviting critical reflection on personal and organizational sense-making

The Novel, Sense-Making, and Mao

There was a in-joke floating around the University of Sydney when I was an arts student in the early 1980s that is telling of the times. It went something like this: Sydney has only one opera house, only one harbour bridge, but its university has two philosophy departments. One discipline, but two departments? Clearly, despite being friends of wisdom, these philosophers couldn’t agree. Somewhere in the hushed halls of the university’s sandstone towers, well before my time, some kind of schism had occurred, creating the Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy, and the Department of General Philosophy. Looking at the course offerings, even my naïve undergraduate understanding could grasp the difference. Trad Mod was right-wing and conservative, and General was left-wing and progressive. In my first year, I decided to do subjects in both departments