Aesthetic forms of data representation in qualitative family therapy research

In this article we provide a rationale for using alternative, aesthetic methods of qualitative representation (e.g., creative writing, art, music, performance, poetry) in qualitative family therapy research. We also provide illustrative examples of methods that bring findings to life, and involve the audience in reflecting on their meaning. One problem with such forms of data representation has been that, until recently, there have not been standards with which to evaluate them. We summarize evolving standards and explain when the forms are appropriate and when they are not. We also address issues of legitimacy and conflicting standards held by others.     

Autonomy,spontaneity and creativity in research with children. A study of experience and participation,in central Italy and North West England

ABSTRACT

Research involving children, deemed to have difficulties with conventional means of communication, can perpetuate reductive forms of representation of children’s knowledges and experiences. This article focuses on the possibilities and opportunities that visual and creative methods can offer to researching with children. Children advance their views in and through spontaneous and concrete forms of participation. Autonomy in aesthetic acts is central to this methodology; to explore practices that produce and reproduce presuppositions deriving from societal attitudes affecting research with children, their agency and self-presentation. This cross-cultural study was conducted in Central Italy and North West England: children contributed their perspectives and experiences through participation in a series of creative encounters resulting in aesthetic and embodied outcomes of sociological and educational significance. The study contributes to the debate on children’s autonomy and the value and quality of participation through artistic practice. Examples from the corpus of data, which includes a series of artefacts and over 900 photographs from each geo-cultural context, are presented. The study shows that it is possible to harmonise power imbalances in spaces of creative freedom, in research and education, where children’s choices and agency are respected.     

For a sociology of committed professionals: “Art Worlds” in the United States and opposing the war in Iraq

This article analyzes American artists’ opposition to the war in Iraq, emphasizing the way it was determined by their professional situations. Regardless of the networks and political organizations involved, or the ideological dimensions of the anti-war cause, individual professional identities and relationships persisted and influenced their public practices and positioning. In a first section, we compare different artistic subfields and labor configurations, to grasp what, in the participants’ own eyes, made the combination of artistic and militant identities - and, sometimes, the production of a form of “political art” - tenable. The second section concentrates on how political commitment emerged in fields of professional activity, how the functioning of artistic milieus today – that have become more autonomous, specialized and professional – tends to discourage “mixing registers”, i.e. combining aesthetic motives and political logics.     

The aesthetics of rock construction work: the beauty of sprayed concrete,rock reinforcement and roof bolting

The concepts of aesthetic and aesthetic knowledge have recently been appropriated and discussed in the organization theory literature. In this broader recognition of human skills and capacities complementing the conventional rational and logical modes of thinking prioritized in scientific thinking, a few studies reports how aesthetic knowledge is employed in areas not regularly associated with aesthetics, for instance computer programming or financial analysis. This paper reports how the concepts of aesthetic and aesthetic knowledge can be used to examine the work of qualified rock construction workers. Rather than being a skill that can be accommodated through training, the best rock construction workers have tacit know‐how that are not easily learned or transferred between co‐workers. Such skills are here referred to as aesthetic knowledge. The paper concludes that more studies of everyday work and aesthetic knowledge may be helpful when rethinking the nature of human and individual knowledge.     

SCHOOLS OF ACTIVITY AND INNOVATION

Explanations of artistic innovation have generally focused on political or psychological factors influencing individual socialization. This article suggests an alternative approach focusing on the organizational processes in an art world, specifically the production of concert music. Concerts are produced through the collective activity of musical specialists. Compatible collaborators identify each other by constructing "schools of activity" that group conventional concert practices and practitioners. Different schools, however, do not simply represent alternative conventions, rather they represent degrees of convention that correspond to varying aesthetic interests in innovation and virtuosity. The first part of this article examines the organization of artistic activity and the formation of schools. The second part presents data from the concert world illustrating the organization of alternative types of artistic practice.     

Reclaiming the aesthetic of women: de-colonizing land ownership

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with the study of the aesthetic as an embodied form and offers a critique of the study of value and commodification that emerges in the global spatial imagination. I explore the neglected interrelationship between cultural-spatial reconstruction and land ownership as a sign of livelihood by way of a critique of development and through an investigation of the multiple traces of colonialism in Indonesia in contemporary times, after the massacres. First, land is taken from communities to be used for state and corporate industrialization, and then aesthetic acts of resistance and remembrance by members of these communities, via artistic productions and protest, are commoditized as touristic attractions by the state as a form of nationalism and fetishism of the indigenous, and by corporations as a form of corporate cultural responsibility. This new method of capitalist inclusion of the survivor in a globalized project of aestheticizing space is a neoliberal tactic in which the commoditized reappearance of the aesthetic creations of the marginalized is not, in fact, a sign of inclusion but rather of further displacement. My study follows the focus of this special issue to analyse cultural production within the complexity of multiple and converging colonial forms in historical and contemporary contexts considering the relationality, contradictions and incommensurabilities generated within converging structures of colonial and racialized violence. I locate the ways in which artistic projects within this schema may be used as acts of resistance but also possibly co-optation/ domination. Aesthetic creations intended as means of archiving may also bring insurrections into the paradigm of globalization and to its attention. This paper is an attempt to look at how the creative urge negates and also creates the possibility of resistance, inviting us to urgently rethink aesthetic projects and their representation through a genealogy of global participation.     

The role of arts in raising ethical awareness and knowledge of the European refugee crisis among social work students. An example from the classroom

This paper presents and discusses an arts-based project, carried out by the first-year students in the classroom, at the Department of Social Work, in Athens, Greece. The project was designed for raising ethical awareness and knowledge of the 2015 Europe’s refugee crisis among social work students. The purpose of this project was three-fold: (1) to help students to better understand the refugee crisis as an emerging problem in Europe and in the rest of the world; (2) to help students raise their ethical awareness about the plight of refugees and to learn how to avoid discrimination and racism; and (3) to improve students’ abilities to work effectively with refugee populations. The project used art-based activities (drawing, writing, photos, etc.) as a powerful pedagogical tool for teaching students and supporting their learning in the classroom. As the literature has shown, the use of arts in social work education helps student to learn through an artistic and creative way and provides a secure base, from which they can explore real-life situations and try to give meaning to them.     

Making claims on value: The rhetoric construction of aesthetic innovation by ethnic minority creatives

Conceptualizing aesthetic innovation as the social and cultural act of claiming value, we investigate how ethnic minority creatives rhetorically construct their work as innovative, while dealing with contradictory discourses of ethnicity. From our analysis of the rhetorical schemes they deploy to construct aesthetic innovation, three types of argumentations emerged: (1) argumentations relating one's creative work to one's unique self and biography through liaisons of coexistence; (2) argumentations establishing aesthetic innovation vis-à-vis other products and traditions through comparisons and model schemes and (3) argumentations highlighting power struggles between the creative and some ‘significant others’ in the creative industries through personifications and hierarchies. This study contributes to a better understanding of rhetorical strategies to construct aesthetic innovation focusing on the role social identities play in this process. More generally, it shows the suitability of rhetoric theory and method to analyse claims on value.     

Assistive technology for disabled visual artists: exploring the impact of digital technologies on artistic practice

Abstract

Disabled artists with physical impairments can experience significant barriers in producing creative work. Digital technologies offer alternative opportunities to support artistic practice, but there has been a lack of research investigating the impact of assistive digital tools in this context. This article explores the current practice of physically impaired visual artists and their experiences around the use of digital technologies. An online survey was conducted with professional disabled artists and followed up by face-to-face interviews with 10 invited artists. The findings illustrate the issues disabled artists experience in their practice and highlight how they are commonly using mainstream digital technologies as part of their practice. However, there is little awareness around novel forms of technology (e.g. eye gaze tracking) that present new creative opportunities. The importance of digital tools for supporting wider practice (i.e. administrative and business tasks) was also highlighted as a key area where further work is required.     

People with sight impairment in the world of visual arts: does it make any sense?

Abstract

The article describes an educational and artistic project in Poland where individuals with sight impairments could learn more about visual arts through guided city tours around their greatest monuments, appreciation of art pieces and meetings with artists. During workshops, they could test their own artistic skills by creating tactile drawings, pottery sculptures, photographs and tactile picture book. The effects of their attempts were presented in a temporary exhibition in the contemporary art gallery (with an associated educational program). The exhibition was a significant experience both for the artists with visual impairments and the visitors. Through analysis of the structure and content of the artworks, the gallery visitors could understand more about the situation of people with sight impairments as they struggle with everyday tasks and how creative they are.     

Unemployed by choice: young creative people and the balancing of responsibilities through strategic self-management

The Danish welfare system inadvertently provides a good opportunity for young creative people to pursue their dreams in creative fields such as art, acting, music while being on unemployment benefits. As Michael, one of the participants, puts it: ‘I consider unemployment benefit entrepreneurial support’. The subversive practice is illegal. This qualitative study investigates how young unemployed people who choose to be unemployed in order to engage in innovative projects in creative fields understand and justify their practice. Analysis of in-depth interviews with six young unemployed persons shows how the understanding and management of responsibility is pivotal in the self-understanding and legitimization of receiving unemployment benefits by choice, not out of need. This creative group reflects the contours of a new type of unemployed that has received very little attention in the research literature. The group challenges the traditional representation of the unemployed and portrays themselves as innovative, competent and able to cope with financial insecurity even though it is psychologically distressing and a risky path to go down. We characterize them as strategic self-managing as they use educational systems and unemployment benefit systems for something entirely different from what they are intended – they use it to create their own artistic life courses. This study tentatively points to a categorization distinguishing between personal, social and societal responsibility by which we can improve our understanding of responsibility in neoliberal contexts.     

Gender and the Artist Archetype: Understanding Gender Inequality in Artistic Careers

Women artists are systematically disadvantaged across cultural fields. Although some of these disadvantages resemble gender inequalities in non‐artistic work, such as lower pay, underrepresentation, work–family conflict, and symbolic devaluation, others are unique to artistic careers. In this essay, I extend Acker's work on the implicit gendering of the ideal‐typical worker to show how gender implicitly organizes social expectations around artists and artistic work. I highlight themes emerging from past research on gender relations in artistic careers, which suggest that the ideal‐typical artist builds on a masculine model in at least three ways. First, collective understandings of creative genius center a masculine subject. Second, bias in aesthetic evaluations systematically favors men over women. Third, the structure of artistic careers, particularly the need for entrepreneurial labor and self‐promotion, requires artists to engage in behaviors that are more socially acceptable in men than in women.     

Reformulating tradition and modernity: Moroccan migrant women and the transnational division of ritual space

In this article I analyse the rituals that transnational migrants who live and work in Europe (mainly Italy) perform in Morocco during their return there for summer holidays. The transnational dimension of rituals and ceremonies reveals the diverse ways in which Moroccan families gain social recognition across transnational space. I explore how migrants construct and display their identities contextually and in opposition to multiple Others. By performing the traditional rituals associated with important turning points in their lives in Morocco, migrants seek to reintegrate themselves and maintain their membership of their community of origin. At the same time, however, these performances bring to the surface a hidden agenda: the assertion and exhibition of migrants’ differences with respect to those who have stayed behind. These rituals, which provide a perspective through which to analyse the intersection of global and local interconnections, also reveal complex and shifting interpretations of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, and the practices in which these are embedded. I conclude by suggesting that, in this process, migrants develop a creative interplay with ‘traditional practices’ by subverting, reformulating and giving new creative shape to their meaning and content.     

La carrière des artistes et les transformations de la production musicale. Relations de travail et relation au travail dans le monde des musiques rap et électroniques

The interaction between the artistic and managerial poles of the world formed by the persons specialized in rap and electronic music in France is described as well as musicians' occupational culture. The aesthetic and organizational characteristics of these musical genres are shown to influence the division of labour in recording and production. Owing to the combination of artistic and managerial activities typical of these musicians, occupational networks are fluid. This blurring of roles is especially visible in the recording labels used from home studios. Technical changes in the “tools” for this work have led these artists to become professionally involved in management and advertising. Cultural motivations also explain this involvement: the critical stance adopted by the “cultures” of rap, electro, techno, etc., tends to make obsolete the image of the artist as a creator who avoids the engineering aspects of the commercial distribution of his recordings. In contrast, rap and electronic musicians' careers develop through participation in many and various projects, which nurtures their artistic production, improves the quality of their groups and enhances their reputations. Accepting more short-term professional engagements supposedly increases their control over their career profiles. However these musicians voice concerns, in particular, about bonds between the individual and the groups whom they cross (and who cross them) — concerns that can be extended to other types de workers caught up in an occupational world organized “by project”.     

The use of body-mapping in interpretative phenomenological analyses: a methodological discussion

The increasing popularity of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) in social research brings an increasing criticism about its validity, robustness and, more recently, its lack of expressive features. Recently, the novel arts-based research approach called body-mapping was recognized as enhancing social science research in creative and nuanced ways. Body-mapping allows for unique insights into participants’ lived experiences, the meaning thereof, and into how meaning is impacted by their socio-cultural contexts. This article provides new understandings about the potential use of body-mapping as part of an IPA framework by drawing upon existing literature to critically discuss their philosophical and methodological congruence. The following discussion demonstrates how particular strengths of body-mapping align with weaknesses of IPA and that, when merged, they may be especially useful for research with vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations. Limitations of this discussion and implications for future research are provided.     

The social worker's style

The style of the social work practitioner is a very influential factor for therapeutic effectiveness and is a way of expressing the practitioner's creative artistry. The meanings and functions of style are clarified. The practitioner's general style is analyzed as a combination of personal and professional style elements, responsive to artistic role-task performances in helping clients. A case presentation illustrates a social worker's particular style. Wider cultural influences of a practitioner's style also merit recognition.     

Pour une sociologie des professionnels engagés : « Mondes de l’art » et militantisme contre la guerre en Irak aux États-Unis

This analysis of the mobilization of American artists against the war in Iraq emphasizes how their work situations have shaped their involvement. Regardless of political organizations and networks, or of the ideological dimensions of the anti-war cause, relations having to do with the work and occupational identities of these persons determined, in the first place, their actions and the positions they have adopted publicly. This article contrasts various “artistic subfields” and “patterns of activity” in order to understand the factors that have made it more or less tenable for these social actors to articulate the identities of artist and activist and, in some cases, to produce “political art”. The second part focuses on the “professional structuring” of this activism by showing how the current operation of artistic spheres — which have become more self-regulated, specialized and professionalized —tend to curb the confusion of issues that mixes aesthetic up with politics.     

CREATIVITY NARRATIVES AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS: Sociability and Everyday Creativity

Despite foundations in early pragmatism, research on social patterning of creative action has been scarce in the multidisciplinary literature on creativity. We address this by exploring how students perceive their creative contributions to college life. By analyzing narratives, we find that the majority of creativity is associated with everyday experiences and social interactions, in contrast to a popular and scholarly focus on extraordinary individual achievement in domains like art and science. We also find strong trends in sociability as students negotiate both "where they stand" with regards to those around them as well as "how they stand out" as individuals.