Glassblowing Tools: Extending the Body Towards Practical Knowledge and Informing a Social World

Understanding tools in the development of practical knowledge and in the formation of social worlds is critical for the sociology of culture insofar as they reveal how matter, or material, informs practice and discourse. This article is an ethnographic exploration of the variations of the maker-tool-material relation in glassblowing, informed by Bourdieu's logic of practice as well as phenomenological considerations of the body's dispositions towards and interactions with the material world. These relations form the backbone of the glassblowing studio, and more importantly provide the subject matter of ‘tool talk,’ studio talk about tools, which forges feelings of empathy and consequently contributes to the formation of the glassblowing social world. Through this exploration, we come to understand how material, the subject of much studio discourse, is a structuring force of a lifeworld, the glassblowing studio.

Science for Policy: A Case Study of Scientific Polarization,Values, and the Framing of Risk and Uncertainty

It is well documented that more research can lead to hardened positions, particularly when dealing with complex, controversial, and value‐laden issues. This study is an attempt to unveil underlying values in a contemporary debate, where both sides use scientific evidence to support their argument. We analyze the problem framing, vocabulary, interpretation of evidence, and policy recommendations, with particular attention to the framing of nature and technology. We find clear differences between the two arguments. One side stress that there is no evidence that the present approach is causing harm to humans or the environment, does not ruminate on uncertainties to that end, references nature's ability to handle the problem, and indicates distrust in technological solutions. In contrast, the other side focuses on uncertainties, particularly the lack of knowledge about potential environmental effects and signals trust in technological development and human intervention as the solution. Our study suggests that the two sides’ diverging interpretations are tied to their perception of nature: vulnerable to human activities versus robust and able to handle human impacts. The two sides also seem to hold diverging views of technology, but there are indications that this might be rooted in their perception of governance and economy rather than about technology per se. We conclude that there is a need to further investigate how scientific arguments are related to worldviews, to see how (if at all) worldview typologies can help us to understand how value‐based judgments are embedded in science advice, and the impact these have on policy preferences.     

New contributions from old sources: Recovering Barnard’s science and revitalizing the Carnegie School

Scholars have called for the Carnegie School to revisit fundamental ideas such as decision, behavioral plausibility (Gavetti, Levinthal, & Ocasio, 2007, p. 531), and the individual (Cohen, 2007). In essence, these calls urge greater realism, beyond the School’s founding concepts such as satisficing and bounded rationality, which differentiated organization science from economics. This paper argues that revisiting the School’s ties to Chester Barnard advances work along these lines because of Barnard’s experiential method and his findings on the subjective and objective nature of, and on the personal and impersonal forces entailed in, organization. The paper begins by discussing the insufficient recognition of the School’s ties to Barnard and the emphasis on Herbert Simon’s translation of Barnard at the expense of the original Barnard. Then, based on Barnard’s unpublished and lesser known works (O’Connor, 2012, p. 112–170), it shows the scope and depth of Barnard’s contributions: a new “organic applied social science” (Barnard’s phrase, Wolf, 1995a) founded on a subjective relationship to scientific knowledge and ordinary action that Barnard called “personal responsibility.” Likewise, this science emerged from Barnard’s relationship to his own experience, specifically, his pursuit of a science to explain his and others’ experience of organization.     

Corporate social responsibility attribute rankings

This research presents the findings of a rank order evaluation of corporate social responsibility attributes by a target public (N = 72) of a contemporary corporate social responsibility campaign. The results indicate that publics value corporate honesty above other corporate social responsibility behaviors.     

The Ethnos in the Polis: Political Ethnography as a Mode of Inquiry

In the social sciences, there is renewed attention to political ethnography, a research method that is based on close-up and real-time observation of actors involved in political processes, at times even extending the definition of these processes to move beyond categories of state, civil society, and social movements. This article examines the emergence of political ethnography from a number of disciplinary locations, such as political science, the cultural turn in sociology, and anthropology, and shows the value of this new approach for understanding how politics work in everyday life.