The Menagerie of the Senses

ABSTRACT

The term “menagerie” convenes two claims: firstly that our relation to our senses is one of active and constructive management (the old sense of the word “menagerie”), and that animal senses, or our idea of them, play an indispensable part in that management of the senses. While our senses mediate the world to us, animals mediate our senses to us; animals are thus the mediators of the mediation. A review of the use of animals as emblems of the five senses in medieval and early modern illustrations shows that while, on the one hand, animals were used to enforce the idea of the lowliness of the senses, on the other hand, the awareness of the superiority of certain animal senses encouraged the imaginative recruitment of animals to augment or transform human powers. This is brought to a focus in representations of the fly. Finally, this essay considers the part played by simulations of animal perception in the development of new technologies for augmenting and extending human senses. The new organs, perceptions and forms of awareness of our world continue to implicate and improvise upon the animals, which helps us to take leave of our senses.     

日常生活的结构与意义：《礼记·曲礼》的社会学研究

社会人类学对于礼与仪式的研究有助于我们认识日常社会生活和加深对社会结构的理解,因为研究所侧重的仪式过程激活了人在社会交往和互动中的实践主体性。通过对《礼记·曲礼》的社会人类学解读,我们发现,人的日常生活具有社会结构与时间性这些基本要素,礼制结构内含复杂的人伦结构与天人关系,以及丰富的时间体验。礼所体现的情感与意义是社会生活之神圣感的源泉,礼仪就是将人和社会带入这种境界的手段与过程。这种尝试性的解读意在将传统礼仪纳入社会学的研究范围。     

Them and Us: Hidden Ideologies-Differences in Degree or Kind?

This article looks at three measuring instruments—the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, and the Attitudes About Reality Scale—used to examine covert ideology and its relationship to social and political beliefs and behaviors. These scales share similar ideological components involving abdication of moral responsibility to an outside agent, belief that one's own ideology represents the only form of truth, and negative beliefs about individuals who are not members of one's own group. Evidence is provided to suggest that radical fundamentalists and some groups within U.S. society share ideological beliefs that differ in degree rather than kind. These beliefs make it easy for them to divide the world into "us" and "them" and exacerbate the present conflict.     

社会工作在西部少数民族农村地区功能分析

西部民族地区农村是属于“老、少、边、穷”地区,这一地区的发展关系到我国社会的稳定、发展。本文分析了西部农村现存的主要社会问题,并阐述了社会工作在这一地区如何发挥其应有的社会功能。     

Interpretive Psychology: Stories, Circles, and Understanding Lived Experience

This essay provide an overview of the "interpretive" or "hermeneutic" approach to psychological research. It draws primarily on the work of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), a philosopher and literary historian who is generally recognized as the "father" of the modern hermeneutic enterprise in the social and human sciences. Dilthey argued that the human world was sufficiently different from the natural world that special methods were required for its study. Hermeneutics, the deliberate and systematic methodology of interpretation, was the approach Dilthey proposed for studying and understanding the human world. This essay summarizes Dilthey's vision of hermeneutics and considers his conception of the so-called hermeneutic circle, which characterizes the complex dynamics involved in the process of interpretation. It then illustrates Dilthey's approach by interpreting a brief interview narrative using a method based on his work. It concludes with an exploration of some of the ethical implications of adopting a hermeneutic approach to psychological research.     

社会性个体的生成：杜威的儿童研究及其社会理论意涵

本文通过集中讨论杜威基于儿童研究而进行的行动力教育,揭示实用主义思想对个体主义的具体理解。在美国镀金时代,孤立个体主义加剧了现代美国人的道德危机和社会分裂。杜威此时进行的儿童研究与教育改革,首要的目标是重新理解现代个体的行动结构和人格形态,以克服孤立个体主义造就的行动难题。利用“刺激—反应”的行动机制,杜威同时结合了自然力量和社会意识,力图在开展行动力教育的过程中塑造一种“社会性个体”。社会性个体一方面保留了源于自然的神圣性,另一方面又不断吸收来自社会的文明传统,以应对现代世界在人心和社会两方面的挑战。本研究有助于我们进一步理解美国社会学的早期思想根基并反思当下的生存处境。     

Beyond Simple Truths: The Human-Internet Interaction

The Internet is only 10 years old, but it has already had a great impact on the world. In its "early" days, it was both heralded as a liberating force for the spread of democracy and condemned as a grave threat to the social fabric. However, as the present articles indicate, our knowledge of the Internet across a variety of social science perspectives has now accumulated to where we have a good initial picture of how the Internet really is (or isn't) affecting social life. One theme stands out: These effects depend on how the unique qualities of Internet communication modes interact with the particular characteristics and goals of the individuals, groups, and communities using them.     

When Are Net Effects Gross Products? Communication

The rush to judgment about the social effects of the new communications media has branded them as positive and negative in equal measure. Alienation from "real world" relationships coupled with a lack of social regulation within the medium is balanced by liberation from the influences, inequalities, and identities to which people are subjected in face-to-face interaction. We argue that such general conclusions may in fact be turned upside down and propose that these media may actually strengthen social bonds but also reinforce power inequalities. Reviewing evidence of our research with university students, employing the social identity model of deindividuation effects, we show how these technologies can often be more "social," and socially regulated, than face-to-face interaction.     

哈贝马斯新社会运动理论述评

哈贝马斯把新社会运动视为人的需要受到忽视的结果,通过参照"系统"与"生活世界"的分裂的观点,从"合法化"的角度来探讨新社会运动的命运。哈贝马斯认为新社会运动具有两大特点:一是这些运动能防止"生活世界殖民化",通过交往理性来维护规范共识;二是这些运动的本质要求是较少关注物质再生产,而更关注文化再生产、社会一体化和社会化。由于这些运动与传统的围绕分配而展开斗争的工人运动不同,哈贝马斯认为它们不可能被政党制度化或通过物质补偿而缓和。哈贝马斯的"新社会运动理论"对当下的和谐社会的构建具有启发意义,但其在有着理论解释力的同时也存有某些理论局限性。     

Bodies of Knowledge: Beyond Cartesian Views of Persons, Selves and Mind

In this piece, I argue against the Cartesian trend of seeing persons, selves and mind as something distinct from the body. It is claimed that Descartes realized the importance of the link between body and mind, but never pursued this connection, and this then becomes the aim of the paper. Another effect of Cartesian modes of thinking is to divorce human knowledge from its material contexts, driving a wedge between mind and matter. Some forms of social constructionism appear to fall into this latter trap and instead I argue for a view of persons as embodied beings whose selves are intimately connected to the body. Using the work of Bourdieu, Elias, Merleau-Ponty, and Ilyenkov, I also suggest that thought cannot be disengaged from a human body active in its world and that knowledge not only partly separates us from the materiality of existence, but connects us to it in deeper ways, as another dimension of human existence. Human beings can then be regarded as bodies of knowledge – active thinkers and persons engaged with the multi-dimensional world around them and capable of producing change.     

Living in a Wittgensteinian World: Beyond Theory to a Poetics of Practices

As human beings, we share many historically developed, language-game interwoven, public forms of life. Due to the joint, dialogically responsive nature of all social life within such forms, we cannot as individuals just act as we please; our forms of life exert a normative influence on what we can say and do. They act as a backdrop against which all our claims to knowledge are judged as acceptable or not. As a result, it is not easy to articulate their inadequacies in a clear and forceful manner. However, within most of our forms of life, we have a first-person right to express how our individual circumstances seem to us. And by the use of special forms of poetic, gestural talk—talk that can originate new language-games—we can offer to make our own 'inner lives' public. In this paper, I want to claim that this is just what Wittgenstein is attempting to do in his later philosophy: by use of the self-same methods that anyone might use to express aspects of their own world picture, he is offering us his attempts to make the background 'landscape' of our lives more visible to us. These methods are explored below.     

The Effects of Animals on Human Health and Well-Being

Substantial sums of money are invested annually in preventative medicine and therapeutic treatment for people with a wide range of physical and psychological health problems, sometimes to no avail. There is now mounting evidence to suggest that companion animals, such as dogs and cats, can enhance the health of their human owners and may thus contribute significantly to the health expenditure of our country. This paper explores the evidence that pets can contribute to human health and well-being. The article initially concentrates on the value of animals for short- and long-term physical health, before exploring the relationship between animals and psychological health, focusing on the ability of dogs, cats, and other species to aid the disabled and serve as a "therapist" to those in institutional settings. The paper also discusses the evidence for the ability of dogs to facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of specific chronic diseases, notably cancer, epilepsy, and diabetes. Mechanisms underlying the ability of animals to promote human health are discussed within a theoretical framework. Whereas the evidence for a direct causal association between human well-being and companion animals is not conclusive, the literature reviewed is largely supportive of the widely held, and long-standing, belief that "pets are good for us."     

感知与洞察：研究实践中的现象学社会学

本文认为,现象学社会学对定性研究实践的最重要的意义在于,由现象学的内涵所规定而强调的一种积极的认知态度。而这种积极的认知态度一旦被贯彻,就会给我们的研究乃至学生培养和训练带来一种革命性的改变。这样一种认知在研究实践中经由感知与洞察得以完成,从而获得对现象的意义的相对深刻与准确的理解和解释,由此也给出了现象学社会学将“日常生活”作为其主要研究领域的原因：日常生活即是“生活世界”的中心,而由社会行动者（包括他们形成的主体间际）及其生活于其中的环境所组成的生活世界在某种程度上可以称之为一个意义的世界。     

The Social Development Summit and the developing countries

This article discusses some concerns of the 1996 UN Summit on Social Development. Conference organizers identified the three key conference issues as poverty alleviation, social integration of the marginalized and disadvantaged, and expansion of productive employment. The goal of a "society for all" means dealing with the increasing differences between rich and poor countries, the survival of weaker economies in a competitive market system, wide variations in consumption patterns between countries, attainment of political stability while respecting ethnic identity, the rise in social problems among countries with a high human development index, and increasing joblessness. The Human Development Report for 1994 emphasizes human security. Social development is not the equivalent of human resource development nor a side issue of economic growth. The integration of ethnic groups poses social and political problems. There remains a question about what political system and culture would be best for social integration. Developed countries define poverty as the inability of people and government to provide resources and necessary services for people's productive activity. Poverty in developing countries is blamed on colonialism. Globally, developed countries control 71% of world trade. Sharing resources to meet basic needs throughout the world is not an operational ideal. The highest 20% of income earners receive 83% of the world income. The culture of poverty is the strategy used by the poor to survive. Welfare is not an end in itself but does enable the poor to improve their conditions. Development that focuses on productive employment is uncertain. Developed and developing countries do not share similar perceptions of human rights. There is a question as to who should set the priorities for social development. Sustainable social development is related to preservation of natural resources, control of population growth, and promotion of social security.     

Animals,Agency and Resistance

In this paper we develop a relational approach to the question of animal agency. We distinguish between agency and action and, using three examples of non‐human animal behaviour, explore how human‐other animal interactions might be understood in terms of action, agency and resistance. In order to do this we draw on the distinction between primary and corporate agency found in the work of Margaret Archer, arguing that, while non‐human animals are able to act and to exercise primary agency, they are unable to exercise corporate agency. Animals are therefore agents; they act and their actions have consequences, they also resist conditions which they do not like and, in some circumstances, are able to change the conditions of their agency. We discuss the place of animals in the social world and the political implications of this way of viewing animal agency.     

Undisciplining Social Science: Wittgenstein and the Art of Creating Situated Practices of Social Inquiry

There are now countless social scientific disciplines—listed either as the science of … X … or as an ‐ology of one kind or another—each with their own internal controversies as to what are their “proper objects of their study.” This profusion of separate sciences has emerged, and is still emerging, tainted by the classical Cartesian‐Newtonian assumption of a mechanistic world. We still seem to assume that we can begin our inquiries simply by reflecting on the world around us, and by allowing our conceptualizations to guide our actions in our inquiries. Beginning our inquiries in this retrospective manner, however, means that our concepts and conceptualizations are both after‐the‐fact and beside the point, for ‘something else’ altogether is guiding us in the performance of our situation‐sensitive actions than merely our conceptualizations. We need before‐the‐fact, hermeneutically‐structured inquiries that can ‘set out’ inner ‘landscapes of possibilities’, to think‐with and to provide guidance, as we try in our more scientifically organized efforts to achieve socially desired outcomes in particular socially shared situations. Conducting such preliminary inquiries is thus an art, requiring not only judgment, but also imagination and poetic forms of expression aimed at creating such shared, inner landscapes among all concerned.     

The Analysis of the Borders of the Social World: A Challenge for Sociological Theory

ABSTRACT: In order to delimit the realm of social phenomena, sociologists refer implicitly or explicitly to a distinction between living human beings and other entities, that is, sociologists equate the social world with the world of living humans. This consensus has been questioned by only a few authors, such as Luckmann, and some scholars of science studies. According to these approaches, it would be ethnocentric to treat as self-evident the premise that only living human beings can be social actors. The methodological consequence of such critique is a radical deanthropologization of sociological research. It must be considered an open question whether or not only living human can be social actors. The paper starts with a discussion of the methodological problems posed by such an analysis of the borders of the social world, and presents the results of an empirical analysis of these borders in the fields of intensive care and neurological rehabilitation. Within these fields it must be determined whether a body is a living human body or a symbol using human body. The analysis of these elementary border phenomena challenges basic sociological concepts. The relevant contemporary sociological theories refer to a dyadic constellation as the systematic starting point of their concept of sociality. The complex relationship between at least two entities is understood as the basis of the development of a novel order that functions as a mediating structure between the involved parties. Based upon empirical data, I argue that it is necessary to change this foundational assumption. Not the dyad but the triad must be understood as the foundational constellation. This implies a new understanding of the third actor, which is distinct from the concepts developed by Simmel and Berger and Luckmann.     

Social Group Work in Community Life

This paper focuses on social group work practice with adult community groups, highlighting the importance of these groups to the achievement of increased citizen participation in current social concerns, and identifying characteristics of these groups which require some different conceptualizations of social group work practice. This paper characterizes our current social context as deficient in the necessary social arrangements for a just and humane society. Thus it argues for a major shift of professional skill to assisting adult community groups to deal with environmental deficiencies, whether these be social policy, resource allocation, or program administration. It suggests that many problems which are identified as "personal inadequacy" may, in fact result from environmental deficiencies, and may be better served through the active efforts of citizens in their own behalf. The paper assumes an interaction between person, group and context, and posits that more effective use is made of professional knowledge and skill through work with those groups which seek to address the environmental context of human affairs.