(Dis)embodied encounters between art and academic writing amid a pandemic

The current account recounts the authors’ artistic virtual interactions during the COVID‐19 period of quarantine to discuss how connections between art, writing, humans’ embodied struggles and technologies can enable forms of feminist writing, as a cyborg practice, which have the political potential to meaningfully voice embodied experiences of inter‐sectionality and vulnerability that remain increasingly under‐expressed, in a neoliberal world of pandemic. Presented in a creative prose, whereby theory interweaves with artistic performances, poetry and extracts of the authors’ virtual exchanges, this account reflects how hybrid, non‐conventional, cyborg writing explorations can connect different bodies in an academic text even when these bodies are physically kept apart. By invoking hybridity that counters the masculine conventions of academic writing, this text aspires to produce academic knowledge that writes and speaks of embodied experiences of othering that urgently seek expression under the COVID‐19 pandemic. The current account builds on the burgeoning stream of organizational literature on writing differently and especially feminist forms of writing integrating genre‐blurring prose, poetry and art‐based research.     

Writing organization/romancing fictocriticism

A provocation?…?the minds of my generation of organizational theorists are haunted by the spectre of scientific discourse, shoehorned into dry genres, bullied by audit regimes that try to wring the passion out of thought. Without gaiety, the science that calls us has no exuberance, it cannot dance. What are the possibilities for writing about organizations that allows the heart's instincts to be followed, the vast possibilities of expression to be explored and enjoyed? I explore this through a form of writing known as fictocriticism – a writing engaged in genre-bending as a literary and theoretical engagement with existence and selfhood. Why import this term into organization studies? Might fictocriticism have some value to ‘us’ who locate ourselves here? I am engaging in a form of romance; a courtship of ideas from elsewhere. What might result from this union is not clear, but it offers hope, excitement and promise.     

An empirical assessment of writing and research proficiency in HBCU social work students

ABSTRACT

Lack of proficiency in writing and research among social work students has increasingly concerned social work educators and practitioners. Given the significance of written communication with clients and emphasis on evidence-based practice in the field of social work, it is critical to assess students’ competence in both writing and research. However, deficit-based approaches to assessing writing and research competence have disadvantaged students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This pilot study aims to assess writing and research proficiency of HBCU master’s of social work (MSW) students through empirical analysis of their capstone papers and surveys from educators to provide implications for developing a writing and research manual for social work programs at HBCUs. Ten capstone papers were randomly selected and qualitatively analyzed; nine faculty and one field supervisor completed the survey, and their respondents were analyzed using cross-case analysis. Analyses of the capstone papers identified two themes for writing and research domains, respectively: (1) weakness in developing statements and lack of knowledge of writing style and (2) plagiarism and lack of understanding of research structure. Moreover, analyses of the surveys revealed four themes regarding assessment of writing and research skills among students struggling with basic writing mechanics, indicating that HBCU MSW students may have potential and capacity for learning, as evidenced by their ideas and critical thinking skills. These findings suggest both teaching- and research-oriented programs could employ the proposed writing and research assessment manual, as well as a writing and research lab/center for improving writing and research skills among their students.     

The responsibilities of sociological poets

My contention is that we can't meet our aims and responsibilities as qualitative sociologists by writing poetry. I propose that our responsibilities include creating access to social worlds by exposing and analyzing the frameworks of meaning that uphold those worlds; writing as clearly and accessibly as we can; and making the rules of our craft known to outsiders. Poetry fails at these things because it keeps its foundations hidden, functions as a restricted code, and gives primacy to form over analytic content. I use the work of Laurel Richardson, an advocate for the use of poetry in qualitative sociology, as a foil for developing my argument. My conclusion is that, while there are ways we can use poetry in our research, the only way to meet the aims and responsibilities that define our craft and discipline is to write better prose.     

The Science of Two‐Timing: The State of Infidelity Research

This article provides an overview of research on infidelity in an effort to synthesize past studies and orient future studies. It begins with infidelity estimates, followed by a synopsis of evolutionary explanations prominent in both popular and academic writing. Despite the potential utility of evolutionary arguments, I argue that infidelity needs to be understood as a dynamic social process subject to influence by the context in which it is embedded. This conceptualization urges scholars to attend to the component, proximate, and psychological factors that affect one’s decision to engage in infidelity. Accordingly, I categorize empirical infidelity research in this manner. I conclude by addressing new developments and avenues for future research.     

KILLING THE ANGEL IN A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN. BEING AS UNCONSCIOUS AS POSSIBLE WHEN WRITING UP QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

The author begins this paper by establishing a context of writing within a qualitative research framework. He goes on to identify blocks to writing in part one of the paper. In part two various strategies for negotiating these blocks are suggested and illustrated. Extracts of writings from George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Dylan Thomas and Ted Hughes among others are used to show how these great writers have acknowledged and negotiated blocks in the production of their work. Links and connections with writing up qualitative research are made. The crucial and recurring theme of the paper is that the unconscious is to be trusted as an invaluable ally in accessing and producing writing of value. Thinking about writing, while necessary to some extent, should therefore be given second place to the primary importance of clearing a space within which the unconscious can be befriended and surprise us and thereby facilitate the writing process.     

Starting somewhere different: methodological cosmopolitanism and the study of world politics

In this article, I contribute to the debate on Ulrich Beck's idea of ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ from a political science perspective. How fruitful is Beck's idea for the study of world politics? How can a political science perspective turn ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ into a more transdisciplinary subject of debate? Guided by these questions, I speak to two audiences. First, I offer political scientists a distinct strategy for empirical ‘cosmopolitan political science’ research. At the heart of this strategy is a novel object of research, the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, understood as a discourse that breaks with the ‘national outlook’ to open possibilities for a world beyond ‘reflexive modernization’. With that, I shift the perspective from structure to discourse and broaden the normative grounds on which to assess cosmopolitan reality. Rather than just considering the emergence of normative cosmopolitan ideals, I build into cosmopolitan research the normative, empirical question of whether we see an emergence of a world beyond reflexive modernization. Second, I address scholars outside the field of political science who are interested in methodological cosmopolitanism by offering the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ as a novel object of study that could also be explored from other disciplinary perspectives and by proposing they put the question of the purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism centre stage. This question can, I argue, constitute grounds for substantial debates on methodological cosmopolitanism not already precluded through disciplinary premises and concerns. Contributing to such a transdisciplinary debate, I distinguish between the long‐term and immediate purpose of methodological cosmopolitanism, the former being about the development of a cosmopolitan language and grammar and the latter about empirical explorations of the reality of the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, eventually and in a collective and transdisciplinary endeavour building up to contribute to the former.     

Organizing the organism: a re-casting of the bio-social interface for our times

I present a future-oriented look at sociology and anthropology's historical appropriation of the concept of organism. The ‘future’ of which I speak is one in which the biological and technological are blending together. In cultural and science studies, the figure of the ‘cyborg’ is often discussed in this context. But the cyborg tends to be treated as a specifically ‘postmodern’ innovation, whereas the organism has always invited the cyborg's ontological ambivalence. This sensibility goes back to the dawn of both the modern biomedical sciences and the social sciences. I begin on the relatively familiar terrain of the role that emerging medical conceptions of the organism in the mid-nineteenth century played in the formation of such founding figures of sociology and anthropology as Emile Durkheim and Franz Boas. I then move to the specific ‘relativization’ of Darwin's theory of evolution that fostered turn-of-the-century conceptions of the social organism, including that emergent entity, the ‘superorganism’, which figures prominently – albeit differently – in the attempts to characterize the uniquely ‘human’ character of culture and technology. Finally I look at one very explicitly ‘constructivist’ approach to the social organism promoted by the distinguished chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was in turn anathematized by Max Weber in one of the original episodes of sociology's disciplinary boundary maintenance. The pride of place that Ostwald gave to ‘catalysts’ in consolidating and enhancing social organisms – from business firms to academic disciplines – earns his perspective a second look in our time. I end with directions for further exploration, which include reviving Norbert Wiener's cybernetic vision.     

Bisexuals Making Out with Cyborgs: Politics, Pleasure, Con/fusion

This article considers the appeal of the figure of the cyborg for bisexuals, offering bisexual readings of both Donna Haraway's cyborg, and of the cyborg self created within text-based virtual reality. The writer argues that understanding bisexuality as part of a web of meanings and material realities can lead to a new political awareness, and suggests ways to make some of these connections. Through her analysis, she emphasises the role of technology in creating and developing contemporary bisexuality.     

Technological sensibilities and the cyberpolitics of gender: Donna haraway's postmodern feminism

In this article, I discuss the far reaching implications of Donna Haraway's cyborg feminism for social and cultural theory. I argue that it allows us to re‐think the collapse of modernity not so much as the death of the social and the death of the subject, but as the eclipse of ‘Modern Man’ as the ‘natural’ anchorage of views from nowhere. Highlighting the inevitable particularism of embodiment, her notion of the cyborg marks the possibility of differential politics which combine critique with agonistique. Such an alliance could serve as particularly effective way of working through the challenge of postmodernity without either surrendering to ‘anything goes’ liberal pluralism or the romantic desperation of nihilistic fatalism.     

Reimagining social work case studies: a social work—creative writing collaboration

This paper describes a joint social work and creative writing project which analysed case studies from textbooks on reading lists for the Bachelor of Social Work course at Edith Cowan University. The textbook case studies were analysed from the perspectives of both social work and literary craft and it was found that they presented simplified scenarios which were limited in terms of diversity and rarely portrayed depth or complexity. The case studies were also often bereft of information about social workers’ or service users’ human qualities and frequently portrayed service users in terms of the problems they presented to the social worker. The authors argue that depicting social workers and service users in this way can create the impression that social work is a distanced procedural activity and can also serve to distance service users’ lives and experiences from social work students. Drawing on research in creative writing craft, as well as analysis of the textbook case studies, principles for writing engaging text-book case studies were developed and the paper concludes by arguing for the use of these principles when crafting social work case studies.     

The theoretical costs of ignoring childhood: rethinking independence, insecurity, and inequality

Childhood scholars have found that age inequality can be as profound an axis of meaningful difference as race, gender, or class, and yet the impact of this understanding has not permeated the discipline of sociology as a whole. This is one particularly stark example of the central argument of this article: despite decades of empirical and theoretical work by scholars in “the social studies of childhood,” sociologists in general have not incorporated the central contributions of this subfield: that children are active social agents (not passive), knowing actors strategizing within their constraints (not innocent), with their capacities and challenges shaped by their contexts (not universally the same). I contend that mainstream sociology’s relative imperviousness has led to theoretical costs for both childhood scholars—who must re-assert and re-prove the core insights of the field—and sociologists in general. Using three core theoretical debates in the larger discipline—about independence, insecurity, and inequality—I argue that children’s perspectives can help scholars ask new questions, render the invisible visible, and break through theoretical logjams. Thus would further research utilizing children’s perspectives and the dynamics of age extend the explanatory power of social theory.     

Discovering Immigration into Turkey: The Emergence of a Dynamic Field

In the last couple of decades, Turkey has become an important country of immigration. In parallel, a new scholarly field has developed to study this largely unrecognized phenomenon. In this paper, I take stock of this new literature. I first show how students of immigration into Turkey had to define the field in relation to the powerful existing fields studying emigration from Turkey and internal migration in Turkey, as well as how they distinguished between “old” and “new” immigration. I then study the emergence of this field under the lead of Ahmet ?çduygu and Kemal Kiri?ci. Later, with the establishment of two central research centres (CARIM and MiReKoç), the field gained important institutional anchors and attracted many new scholars. Today, the field is characterized by a strong dynamism, a plurality of talented scholars and a diversity of concerns and approaches. Even though the field is still at an early stage, it is bound to grow rapidly, as the phenomenon of migration into Turkey remains a highly strategic and lasting phenomenon. It is therefore crucial for the field to become self‐aware of its strength and weaknesses. Consequently, in the final section, I identify important future directions for the field, especially the need for scholars to better understand the diverse political ramifications (foreign and domestic politics) associated with immigration into Turkey.     

A CAMERA WITH A VIEW JenniCAM, visual representation, and cyborg subjectivity

Hailed as the originator of the digital camera 'homecam' phenomenon, Jennifer Ringley has garnered national media attention for her website, JenniCAM (Ringley 1998c), which offers viewers a constant window into the bedroom of a young woman through internet technology. Using the JenniCAM website as my primary text, I examine how Jenni integrates flesh and machine in the formation and display of a cyborg subjectivity, a hybridized identity (re)presented through the new technology of the digital camera. Towards that end I use feminist film theory to demonstrate how the construction and display of the female body-via the medium of digital camera-transforms our readings of gendered bodies as sites of knowledge production and pleasure. I assert that JenniCAM, a cyborg subject created through the integration of the electronic image and the internet, exposes more than just flesh. JenniCAM reveals cultural tensions surrounding epistemological conceptions of vision, gender, and identity and raises questions for future conversations regarding the role of technology in the representation and construction of gendered subjects.     

Writing resistance together

This piece of writing is a joint initiative by the participants in the Gender, Work and Organization writing workshop organized in Helsinki, Finland, in June 2019. This is a particular form of writing differently. We engage in collective writing and embody what it means to write resistance to established academic practices and conventions together. This is a form of emancipatory initiative where we care for each other as writers and as human beings. There are many author voices and we aim to keep the text open and dialogical. As such, this piece of writing is about suppressed thoughts and feelings that our collective picket line allows us to express. In order to maintain the open‐ended nature of the text, and perhaps also to retain some ‘dirtiness’ that is essential to writing, the article has not been language checked throughout by a native speaker of English.     

Dilemma of a Native: On Location,Authenticity, and Reflexivity

With the focus on native/halfie anthropology, I address in this paper three issues of location, authenticity, and reflexivity of the anthropologist in close connection to the reality of uneven distribution of power inside academe among scholars and institutions, and, above all, anthropologists, including native anthropologists. I emphasise that interaction between the field and the ethnographer never closes even after the fieldwork is over; the issue of intersubjectivity is not confined in writing one book, but permeates an ethnographer's lifelong career; the power relation is no longer divided only between the field and the home institution, but also divided within so-called Western academe. Through these discussions, I try to draw our attention to multiple axes of tension in the production of anthropological knowledge.     

Education for Democracy

Literacy skills taught in the elementary grades establish a good foundation but are not adequate for the demands of secondary content curriculum. In history, preservice teachers must be prepared with a solid content base along with the pedagogy for teaching that content. To better teach and enhance student writing, preservice teachers need to learn how to integrate discipline-specific literacy into their instruction, using instructional strategies that are explicitly taught with scaffold supports. The purpose of this article is to present instructional ideas and strategies designed to help students develop key cognitive skills in history and engage in deeper-level thinking as they learn to write like a historian. Each strategy is research-based and includes sample writing assignments.