Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

Galen in a celebrated passage remarks that there were three ‘choirs’, in early Greek medicine: the choirs of Cos, of Cnidus, and of Sicily. The word is vague and suggestive, and we do well to keep it so. If we look in the Hippocratic Corpus for schools of medical theory, with distinct sets of doctrine marked off clearly from the doctrines of rival schools, we shall be lucky indeed if we can find them, and, having found them, succeed in convincing (...) others of their existence. But we shall find, now and again, an individual voice proclaiming itself from among its impersonal surroundings with clarity and vigour: some treatises in the collection have their author's personality stamped on them as distinctly as on a work of art. (shrink)

Galen in a celebrated passage remarks that there were three ‘choirs’, in early Greek medicine: the choirs of Cos, of Cnidus, and of Sicily. The word is vague and suggestive, and we do well to keep it so. If we look in the Hippocratic Corpus for schools of medical theory, with distinct sets of doctrine marked off clearly from the doctrines of rival schools, we shall be lucky indeed if we can find them, and, having found them, succeed in convincing (...) others of their existence. But we shall find, now and again, an individual voice proclaiming itself from among its impersonal surroundings with clarity and vigour: some treatises in the collection have their author's personality stamped on them as distinctly as on a work of art. (shrink)

This study aims to reveal patterns of e-petition co-signing behavior that are indicative of the political mobilization of online “communities”. We discuss the case of We the People, a US national experiment in the use of social media technology to enable users to propose and solicit support for policy suggestions to the White House. We apply Baumgartner and Jones's work on agenda setting and punctuated equilibrium, which suggests that policy issues may lie dormant for periods of time until some event (...) triggers attention from the media, interest groups, and elected representatives. In the case study presented, we focus on 21 petitions initiated during the week after the Sandy Hook shooting in opposition to gun control or in support of policy proposals that are alternatives to gun control, which we view as mobilized efforts to maintain stability and equilibrium in a policy system threatening to change. Using market basket analysis and social network analysis we found a core group of petitions in the “support law-abiding gun owners” theme that were highly connected and four “communities” of e-petitioners mobilizing in opposition to change in gun control policies and in favor of alternative proposals. (shrink)

Historically, recordkeeping has been an essential task for health professionals. Today, this mandatory task increasingly takes place as digital documentation. This study critically examines problem constructions in practical documents on digital documentation strategies in Danish municipal healthcare and how these problem constructions imply particular solutions. A document analysis based on the approach presented in Bacchi's “What's the problem represented to be?” was applied. Forty practical documents in the form of guidelines, strategies, and quality control documents were included. The analysis uncovered (...) three problem representations: lack of coherence between health services in a complex healthcare system, lack of assessable data for management and political prioritization, and inefficiency in the healthcare system. The proposed solution is a digitalized and standardized practice that transforms recordkeeping in the municipalities. However, municipal healthcare is at risk of being fragmented due to digital documentation's focus on the organizational management of health with task‐oriented practices supplied by an anonymous health professional. We find that digital documentation functions as an organizational micromanagement approach that assigns the health professional a subject position as an employee acting according to the organization's framework rather than the profession's normative framework. (shrink)

In the past decade, members of the legal profession in Canada and other common law jurisdictions, including England and the United States, have directly engaged the question of how to retain women in private practice environments. As a result, the 'retention of women' discourse has emerged as a dominant lens through which issues of gender equity in the legal profession are identified and analysed. The goal of this article is to build upon existing critiques of the 'retention of women' discourse (...) by asking what insights Queer theory might bring to ongoing debates about the 'retention of women' in the legal profession. The analysis charts the rise of the 'retention of women' issue in Canada and other common law jurisdictions and connects the 'retention of women' discourse with Queer legal theory. Drawing on select tenets of Queer theory, the article then considers how the 'retention of women? debate reconstitutes conventional notions of lawyer professionalism and recasts the boundaries of 'insider' and 'outsider' lawyers. The article concludes, first, that Queer theory is a useful theoretical lens though which discussions about the 'retention of women' in the discourse of legal professionalism can be meaningfully examined, and, second, that a Queer theory lens reveals fundamental limitations of existing approaches to the 'retention of women' question in the common law world. (shrink)

The critical realist and Bourdieusian conceptions of action fundamentally disagree on a number of fronts: the synthetic versus dualistic relationship between structure and agency; the social nature of the self/body; the link between morphogenesis and reflexivity. Despite these differences, this article argues that re-reading Bourdieu’s theories with attention to some of the core tenets of critical realism (emergence, the stratification of reality, and conjunctural causality) can provide insights into how the habitus is capable of reflexivity and social change. In particular, (...) this article reworks Bourdieu’s theory of habitus by suggesting that social selves are always situated at the intersection of multiple and competing social locations (or field positions) and that the habitus itself is always layered. Reflexivity arises from horizontal disjunctures (between field positions) and vertical disjunctures (across temporal sedimentation). (shrink)

This book seeks to show how religion is controlled by political ideologies, and how evangelism is moulded and manipulated by the demands of the dominant political order of the day. Out of his experience as a Christian in India, the author challenges churches and congregations to participate in political action as an expression of their commitment to evangelism and to a better society.

This paper develops a structural parallel between the maternal/feminine body in Greek mythology and the figure of the body in Plato’s Timaeus. HistoricallyPlato is often portrayed as a thinker who is concerned with the corporeal only insofar as philosophy is engaged in transcending bodily limitations. Yet the Timaeus is not engaged in producing a dualistic opposition between the intelligible and the sensible, nor is Platonic philosophy a rejection of life in favor of the perfect wisdom that comes with death. The (...) following work will suggest that the Timaeus is a dialogue deeply concerned with the question of birth and corporeality and that this concern is disclosed (and not repressed) in and through Timaeus’s evocation of the body. (shrink)

Critical realism is a philosophy of science, which has made significant contributions to epistemic debates within sociology. And yet, its contributions to ethnographic explanation have yet to be fully elaborated. Drawing on ethnographic data on the health-seeking behavior of HIV-infected South Africans, the paper compares and contrasts critical realism with grounded theory, extended case method and the pragmatist method of abduction. In so doing, it argues that critical realism makes a significant contribution to causal explanation in ethnographic research in three (...) ways: 1) by linking structure to agency; 2) by accounting for the contingent, conjunctural nature of causality; and 3) by using surprising empirical findings to generate new theory. The paper develops the AART research schema and illustrates its strengths by employing a Bourdieusian field analysis as a model for morphogenetic explanation. (shrink)

Critical realism is a philosophy of science, which has made significant contributions to epistemic debates within sociology. And yet, its contributions to ethnographic explanation have yet to be fully elaborated. Drawing on ethnographic data on the health-seeking behavior of HIV-infected South Africans, the paper compares and contrasts critical realism with grounded theory, extended case method and the pragmatist method of abduction. In so doing, it argues that critical realism makes a significant contribution to causal explanation in ethnographic research in three (...) ways: 1) by linking structure to agency; 2) by accounting for the contingent, conjunctural nature of causality; and 3) by using surprising empirical findings to generate new theory. The paper develops the AART research schema and illustrates its strengths by employing a Bourdieusian field analysis as a model for morphogenetic explanation. (shrink)

I give a rough outline of Brandom¿s scorekeeping account of conceptual content. The account is meant to be phenomenalist, normativist, expressively complete and non-circular; the question is how and to what extent it succeeds in meeting these goals.

I give a rough outline of Brandom’s scorekeeping account of conceptual content. The account is meant to be phenomenalist, normativist, expressively complete and non-circular; the question is how and to what extent it succeeds in meeting these goals.

Dans quelle mesure les caractéristiques fondamentales des êtres humains, telles que leur capacité de penser, de raisonner, de vouloir et de communiquer, peuvent-elles être complètement expliquées à l'aide des seules ressources des sciences naturelles? En s'appuyant sur l'analyse rigoureuse de quelques-uns des travaux les plus significatifs de la philosophie de l'esprit, en particulier ceux de R. Millikan, F. Dretske, W. Quine et D. Davidson, Daniel Laurier révèle les limites d'un tel programme de naturalisation de l'esprit et soutient qu'il n'y a (...) pas de position stable entre le naturalisme radical et ce qu'il faut bien appeler le surnaturalisme. Ce livre s'adresse principalement aux philosophes professionnels et aux chercheurs et étudiants en sciences humaines qui s'intéressent à l'épistémologie et aux fondements philosophiques des sciences cognitives. (shrink)

The spectacle of the relentless use and abuse of animals in various human enterprises led some human beings to formulate animal welfare policies and to offer philosophical arguments on the basis of which the humane treatment of animals could be defended rationally. According to the animal welfare concept, animals should be provided some comfort and freedom of movement in the period prior to the moment when they are killed. This concept emphasizes the physiological, psychological, and natural aspects of animal life (...) with the focus on freedom. Ironically, however it is not concerned with the rights of animals; nor is it interested in their remaining alive. So, animals are least benefitted by such provisions, which is the major concern for those who defend animal rights. It seems dubious to demand comfort for a being in life, but not security for its actual life, since rights and freedom are essential for the maintenance of a normal life. This paper aims to critically analyze the animal welfare system, which prioritizes only freedom; to demonstrate how animal welfare is incomplete without animal rights and how they are closely related to each other; and to bridge the gap between animal welfare and animal rights. The underlying principle of animal welfare concept is restricted by its anthropocentric framework with the result that the ethical element is missing. Mere ‘freedom’ is not sufficient for constituting an ideal animal welfare domain. In order to achieve real animal well-being, it is necessary to consider both the rights as well as the welfare of animals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMahatma Gandhi’s profound theory of non-violence takes into account both human beings and animals. His fundamental thought on the subject of protecting animals is the outcome of a cluster of theories, including the non-violence of Jainism, the teachings of the Gitā, Sānkhya, Christianity, and Tolstoy. While retaining the literal meaning of non-violence i.e. non-killing, Gandhi attributes to it certain features that expand its scope and yet also determine its limitations. He suggests that non-violence does not merely imply non-hurting in thought (...) and deed, but that it entails an extension of love and compassion. He identifies its limitation by unmistakably denying the possibility of absolute non-violence. He defends his stance on animals on the basis of a wide range of perspectives: religious, scientific, political, as well as economic. Gandhi demands protection of their lives and also enhancement of their welfare. This paper aims to philosophically analyse Gandhi’s doctrine of non-viol... (shrink)

ABSTRACTBuddha’s fundamental philosophy mainly addresses the issue of suffering and the ways of preventing suffering in life. Accordingly, his commendable stance on the protection of animals is und...

The question to be discussed is whether the distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual is best understood as pertaining primarily to intentional contents or to intentional states or attitudes. Some authors have suggested that it must be understood in the second way, in order to make the claim that experiences are nonconceptual compatible with the idea that one can also believe what one experiences. I argue that there is no need to do so, and that a conceptual content can (...) be understood as being simply one which is composed of concepts, without compromising this intuitive view of the relation between beliefs and experiences. (shrink)

This article takes the motorway seriously as a place where the society of traffic can be found and studied. While many kinds of activities are done by drivers and passengers in parallel with driving on the motorway, such as listening to the radio, eating lunch or caring for, or being, children, I focus here on office work. Empirical material from a video-ethnography of one driver doing paperwork and overtaking a slow-moving vehicle ahead is used to examine in detail some of (...) the practices of combining driving and office-duties in the car while in motion. Drawing on the work of Harvey Sacks, the article examines how this mobile society is naturally organized as an architectural configuration brought to life in the practices of driving in traffic. Overlooked phenomena that are orderly stable features of being mobile are analysed, such as ‘overtaking’, ‘tailgating’ and ‘cruising’. Where other writers have used ‘speed’ to theorize the contemporary period, a brief re-specification is offered in the light of the uses, moral and otherwise, of speed within, and as made apprehensible in relation to, traffic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I explain and rebut four objections to the claim that attributions of intentional attitudes are normative judgments, all stemming, directly or indirectly, from the widespread assumption that the normative supervenes on the non-normative.