Social action

The is the chapter on Civil Resistance from the book Empowerment: A Primer.

This book provides an interdisciplinary examination of the multiple meanings of "empowerment." Rather than seeking to define and critique this term, it draws out a range of different meanings, exploring diverse possibilities for action and engagement.

In concise chapters, the book maps out a range of ways that people can be empowered along different continuums of power, moving from more familiar forms of teaching and counselling to less common and more radical strategies for fostering solidarity and civil resistance.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Nutzung und Handhabung von Smartphones in der Alltagskommunikation, indem er beschreibt, wie mobile Endgeräte in der Kopräsenz zum Teilen von visuellen Inhalten genutzt werden. Das Smartphone wird hier nicht bloß im Sinne eines  Informationsträgers verstanden, über den mediale Inhalte wie Texte, Bilder, Textnachrichten, Musik oder Videos an eine/-n einzelne/-n Benutzer/-in vermittelt und von diesem/-r konsumiert werden, sondern insbesondere als physisches Objekt, dessen Materialität in der face-to-face-Kommunikation eine besondere Rolle spielt. Während oftmals davon ausgegangen wird, dass das Smartphone die Aufmerksamkeit seines/-r Besitzers/-in absorbiert und ihn/sie von der direkten sozialen Interaktion isoliert, soll hier die Behandlung des Smartphones als ‚soziales Objekt’ im Vordergrund stehen, da es auch in der Kopräsenz auf systematische und strukturierte Weise zu gemeinschaftlichen Handlungen eingesetzt wird. Zwar ist das Smartphone - zumindest im westlichen Kulturkreis - für gewöhnlich ein persönliches und personalisiertes Objekt, entgegen der Erwartungen wird es aber häufig auch mit anderen Interaktionspartnern/-innen geteilt: Es werden nicht nur Blicke auf das Display gewährt, sondern auch Berührungen oder sogar die kurzzeitige Übernahme des Gerätes.
Hier möchte ich mich daher der Frage widmen, wie genau Zeigesequenzen mit Smartphones initiiert werden, d.h., wie das Gerät in der Kopräsenz als gemeinsamer Bezugspunkt relevant gemacht wird und wie ein/-e weitere/-r Teilnehmer/-in sich als Rezipient/-in für einen visuellen Inhalt auf dem Display positioniert und anschließend auf diesen reagiert. Es soll untersucht werden, welche sprachlichen und körperlichen Ressourcen von den Teilnehmern/-innen hierzu eingesetzt werden und wie bzw. von wem das mobile Endgerät gehalten, manipuliert und betrachtet wird. Ziel ist es, grundsätzliche sequenzielle Muster in initialen Zeigesequenzen erkennbar zu machen und detailliertere Beobachtungen zur gemeinsamen Benutzung und Handhabung von Smartphones in der face-to-face Interaktion zu formulieren. Die hierfür verwendete Methode ist die multimodale Konversationsanalyse, die hör- und sichtbare Handlungen in ihrem jeweiligen sequenziellen Kontext analysiert und so systematisierbar macht (Deppermann 2013; Goodwin 1981; Mondada 2013, 2016; Schmitt 2007; Streeck et al. 2011).

The main goal of this article is to analyse the relationship between reflexivity and action along three axes. The first entails the discussion of a reflexive action model that explores the combination of factors, processes and mechanisms which explain the guiding role reflexivity can play with regard to practices, in specific circumstances. The second axis concerns situations in which reflexivity does not act as an orientation mechanism and may even have the opposite effect, as a source of disorientation and paralysis of practices. The third relates to the production of social change and reproduction that may arise from the exercise of reflexivity. The whole discussion points to the mediation role that reflexivity assumes in the relationship between structure and agency, i.e. in the way structural enablements and constraints are received, filtered and mobilised by subjects in the subjective definition and reflexive implementation of their personal projects.

Educational Makerspaces are fertile grounds for students to develop innovative products infused with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) principles, and practice social action. Yet, rarely do these Makerspaces prioritize such outcomes. Rather, they tend to revolve around the creation of novel artifacts using low- and high technology.   

Drawing on field observations, interviews, and artifact analysis, this qualitative study explored the experiences of low-socioeconomic students participating in a social action themed School Makerspace. Based on a transformative research perspective, the teacher-researcher sought not only to infuse STEAM and social studies into student work, but to also address the “participation divide,” a term suggesting that students of higher socioeconomic status have more opportunity to produce media creatively than their low-SES counterparts.

Qualitative results indicated that students reported increased agency in effecting positive change in their world. Their creation process required extensive research and brought about social action within their communities. Their products included a cigarette smoke-detecting shirt, an edible bug stand, and handcrafted wallets and jewelry for the homeless. The study concludes with recommendations for the implementation of Educational Makerspaces in schools.

Focusing on the production of a processual ethnographic sociology, this article has three major objectives. The first is to outline the roots of “generic sociology,” particularly in light of the interpretive/ethnographic inquiry. The second objective is to indicate the sorts of difficulties ethnographers are apt to encounter in pursuing the study of generic social processes. Third, some suggestions for an

This paper explores the role of member participation in decision-making (PDM) from an organizational learning (OL) perspective. Community-based organizations (CBOs) serve as mediators between the individual and the local community, often providing the means for community member participation and benefiting organizationally from members' input. Community psychologists have recognized these benefits; however, the field has paid less attention to the role participation plays in increasing CBOs' capacity to meet community needs. We present a framework for exploring how CBO contextual factors influence the use of participatory decision-making structures and practices, and how these affect OL. We then use the framework to examine PDM in qualitative case study analysis of four CBOs: a youth development organization, a faith-based social action coalition, a low-income neighborhood organization, and a large human service agency. We found that organizational form, energy, and culture each had a differential impact on participation in decision making within CBOs. We highlight how OL is constrained in CBOs and document how civic aims and voluntary membership enhanced participation and learning.

Criminal trials require jurors to make sophisticated judgments about complex information. The absence of formal guidelines for making these judgments suggests that some more basic communication process must underlie the formal discourse of trial. Storytelling is the everyday practice that organizes information and guides the interpretation and judgment processses. A model of stories as judgment devices illustrates the communicational bases of justice and judgment and raises the possibility that there are common structural elements ...

Two camps have begun to emerge from the rich ferment in legal ethics teaching and scholarship over the last twenty years.  The first group, whose members might be termed “law-givers,” consists of those who view legal ethics as chiefly concerned with the identification, transmission, and enforcement of uniform standards governing the conduct of lawyers.  The second group—considerably smaller, but increasingly well-defined—might be called the “story-tellers.”  The story-tellers place a higher value on persons and context than on principles and procedures, and on the cultivation of a deeper, less mechanical sense of professionalism than detailed rules can provide.

Larry Dubin’s most recent educational videotape, Legal Heroes, brings him more firmly into the ranks of the legal ethics master story-tellers.  Reasonably short and fast-moving, the videotape is exceptionally well-planned, and it refreshes the spirit and nourishes the soul in the best tradition of story-telling.  The film focuses on three lawyers who elected to chart altruistic courses, and in the process secured not only important results but the admiration of their peers.  Often, attempting to reinforce positive professional images is not an easy sell; idealism is passe.  Nevertheless, Professor Dubin produces an effective and useful product.  Legal Heroes is a very positive film, designed to make lawyers and, more importantly, law students feel comfortable, even proud, of their choice of career, and reminds them that there can be much more to law practice than the law alone.

Phytoliths were analysed from shell-midden samples from the Yamana site Túnel VII, located on the northern shore of the Beagle Channel, in Tierra del Fuego. A detailed and intensive sampling strategy was applied to understand the variability and distribution of phytolith assemblages in the hut occupation layer, which resulted from both taphonomy and the working processes carried out in the dwelling.This investigation has demonstrated that a proper sampling strategy must take into consideration the research questions. It also must be capable of indicating the inherent variability of the phytolith record, related to both natural and social causes. The use of a single sample to represent the entire archaeological context should not be considered a standard practice for phytolith analysis, especially when the studied context is a milieu of several, and sometimes unrelated, social actions.

... from balloons? (Q) Kate: But we have three now, right? (Q) Mark: Tim, do you have some pergament about blue rockets? (Q) Tim: No, I have something about you want to get high . . . and I've got one of these desks. I think these two craft things are desks. ...

Comparative studies and comparative research settings have contributed significantly to the theoretical development of higher education research. Burton Clark developed his influential theoretical device after having studied systems other than US higher education (Clark 1983). ‘Clark's triangle’ is, however, only one of the intellectual devices developed in comparative research. Equally interesting is the concept ‘fields of social action’ as introduced by Bleiklie, Hostaker and Vabo (2000), which was developed, again, in a comparative research setting. Comparative studies have also challenged us to define different categories of higher education traditions and systems, thus providing useful intellectual devices for placing one's national higher education system in a larger context (Gellert 1993; Teichler 1988). Historical comparative studies have, in turn, increased our understanding of various traditions and origins of Western universities (e.g. Rashdall 1895; Cobban 1988). Comparative studies have been especially popular as a research strategy in European Higher education studies. According to Ulrich Teichler (1996), one of the reasons for this is that the number of higher education researchers is quite small in most individual European states. This has created a need for a broader basis of thought. In addition, new political (and academic) interests in monitoring European developments in a comparative research setting have emerged, because of the pressures to harmonise and standardise the European higher education area through the Bologna process over the last years.

Youth Action Research for Prevention (YARP), a federally funded research and demonstration intervention, utilizes youth empowerment as the cornerstone of a multi-level intervention designed to reduce and/or delay onset of drug and sex risk, while increasing individual and collective efficacy and educational expectations. The intervention, located in Hartford Connecticut, served 114 African-Caribbean and Latino high school youth in a community education setting and a matched comparison group of 202 youth from 2001 to 2004. The strategy used in YARP begins with individuals, forges group identity and cohesion, trains youth as a group to use research to understand their community better (formative community ethnography), and then engages them in using the research for social action at multiple levels in community settings (policy, school-based, parental etc.) Engagement in community activism has, in turn, an effect on individual and collective efficacy and individual behavioral change. This approach is unique insofar as it differs from multilevel interventions that create approaches to attack multiple levels simultaneously. We describe the YARP intervention and employ qualitative and quantitative data from the quasi-experimental evaluation study design to assess the way in which the YARP approach empowered individual youth and groups of youth (youth networks) to engage in social action in their schools, communities and at the policy level, which in turn affected their attitudes and behaviors.

Since the Black women’s literary renaissance ended nearly three decades ago, a profitable and expansive market of self-help books, inspirational literature, family-friendly plays, and films marketed to Black women has emerged. Through messages of hope and responsibility, the writers of these texts develop templates that tap into legacies of literacy as activism, preaching techniques, and narrative formulas to teach strategies for overcoming personal traumas or dilemmas and resuming one’s quality of life.

Drawing upon Black vernacular culture as well as scholarship in rhetorical theory, literacy studies, Black feminism, literary theory, and cultural studies, Tamika L. Carey deftly traces discourses on healing within the writings and teachings of such figures as Oprah Winfrey, Iyanla Vanzant, T. D. Jakes, and Tyler Perry, revealing the arguments and curricula they rely on to engage Black women and guide them to an idealized conception of wellness. As Carey demonstrates, Black women’s wellness campaigns indicate how African Americans use rhetorical education to solve social problems within their communities and the complex gender politics that are mass-produced when these efforts are commercialized.

This paper argues that recent phenomenographically inspired studies of student learning (Marion et al. 1984) have treated the interview as analytically transparent. The result has been the neglect of three important themes in the understanding of verbal accounts; such accounts are given in a social setting which they constitute; the purpose of accounts is to coordinate social action; such action is moral. The implications of this neglect are examined and alternative analytical approaches to students' interview accounts and the study of student learning suggested.

Over the last 30 years, conservative power in the United States, financed and organized by Christian fundamentalist sects, the Catholic Church, and conservative corporate and political leadership, has become more threatening and potentially destabilizing of progressive democratic principles and practices. Powerful interlocking political, financial and social forces are arrayed against women in many Southern and Western states. They are having destructive effects on women's ability to control their fertility and maintain bodily integrity and health. Poor women and women of color are disproportionately affected by restrictions on abortion services. Strategically developed interventions must be initiated and managed at every level in these localities. It is urgent to coordinate and empower individuals, multiple organizations and communities to engender effective changes in attitudes, norms, behavior and policies that will enable women to obtain reproductive health services, including abortion care. This paper describes contextual factors that continue to decimate U.S. women's right to health and, then, describes a community organizing-social action project in a number of US' states aimed at reversing the erosion of women's right to have or not to have children.

The advocacy-research partnership has been identified as a key method of conducting the feminist and activist research that is important to domestic violence. However, these partnerships are often fraught with challenges that may jeopardize their development, sustainability, and potential impact on policy. Previous commentators have identified key challenges to engaging in advocate-researcher collaborations. This article takes particular care to set forth an advocate perspective through the authors' experience of planning and executing a collaborative study on the effects of mandatory arrest. The authors use a study that was specifically designed to affect policy to offer insight into the challenges faced and to make recommendations for successfully incorporating social action in advocacy-researcher collaborations.

The concept of usability has evolved in different research communities and the focus of research has varied. During the last couple of years, research has been oriented towards acknowledging more appropriately the social context of IT system use. The purpose of this paper is to investigate further the usefulness of a communicative perspective on user interfaces, as a means to

The possibility of Cooperation is still a matter of debate in the field of GT. Generally speaking, the emergence of cooperation is seen in the prospect of re-encounter as a forward-looking, calculated, and self-interested decision to cooperate. In this paper, it is argued that neither one-shot nor repeated versions of PD-game can account for a theory of cooperation as distinct from other forms of social action, and particularly bargaining it. It is also argued that in order to provide a theory of cooperation it is necessary to ground social ...

The article deals with the reconceptualization of Weber's notion of "the meaning of action" held by phenomenology. Phenomenological sociology is one of the theoretical grounds of Goffman's frame analysis. The author shows how the main theses of action theory which were transformed by their phenomenological interpretation are embodied in frame analysis and further revisited.

Статья посвящена переопределению веберовского понятия «смысл действия» в феноменологическом проекте. Автор показывает,
как базовые положения теории действия, трансформированные
в процессе ее феноменологической интерпретации, находят отражение
и подвергаются дальнейшей переработке в рамках фрейм-анализа.

Este trabajo pretende abordar, desde una perspectiva historiográfica, la caracterización del caso quebequés de regu !ación y acción social en un marco de tratamiento regional, fundamentalmente aplicado al periodo de influencia liberal.

This work tries to approach, from a hitoriographical perspective, the characterization ofthe case quebequés ofregulation and social action in  a framc ofrcgional trcatmcnt, fundamcntally applied to the period ofliberal influcnce