qualitative, quantitative, epistemology, science, validity, causality,

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Anne:] &dquo;I can't, I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?&dquo; &dquo;I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say,&dquo; said Marilla. &dquo;Weren't you? Well did you ever try to imagine you were in the depths of despair?&dquo; &dquo; No, I didn't.&dquo; &dquo;Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right up in your throat and you can't swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel.&dquo; -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables.Emotion, as a &dquo;suprarational&dquo; property, transcends rationality in that it can be thought of as a group, contextual rather than as a solely individual trait, and thus is a higher order property, as the above quote suggests. This proposal arises from a metatheoretical analysis of models available to broach questions of emotion. I use metatheoretical in the sense of both the context of theory production and the theory of theory. From the first arose the idea that emotion, through the use of irrationality, has surfaced as a working equivalent to inexplicability or rational relativity, and can be modelled more adequately as suprarational, with a unique nature in its own right. The latter led me to propose that the concept of emotion as contextual, a higher order group level property, is possible and tentatively profitable.A great deal of attention has been directed toward social factors that shape emotion (Radley 1988, Harre 1986 and towards how talk about emotion is constructed (Scheff 1990), but there has been less interest in conceptualizing emotion itself. Important as these efforts are, they are not enough, because emotion needs to be mod-2015 at Kungl Tekniska Hogskolan / Royal Institute of Technology on July 4, dio.sagepub.com Downloaded from

The belief that fertility problems derive from maternal age, increasing markedly at 35, reflects social constructions of biology in developed nations. These constructions perpetuate a negative view of female aging. However, research since 1985 can be interpreted to suggest that there is no, or minimal, association between maternal age and problems associated with fertility. Differences in problems between pre- and postmaternal age 35 fertility can be explained by social conditions occurring with fertility, notably, parenting decisions, physical problems with the male and the potential child, and medical intervention. Once we look at fertility as a relationship among the woman, the man, and the potential child, rather than the woman only, we can see these factors. These components suggest that maternal age may be related only tangentially to successful fertility.

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General systems theory is compatible with the spirit of feminist thought. The unnecessary association of systems theory with hierarchy and status quo-oriented proponents has formed a limited impression of what it can offer to feminisms. Looking at a fuller range of systems-oriented work shows up that, like feminisms, systems theory has been radical in its rejection of traditional ways of analytic thinking. This paper looks at two central feminist ideas, sexuality and equality, as a spirit of feminism to forge a link between feminisms and systems theory. This shows up several areas of common ground between feminisms and a general systems theory approach to the bene®t of both. The idea that action and inaction and equally causal derives from cybernetics and echoes a cell to action for social change in feminisms. Cybernetic causality re¯ects notions of discourse and¯uid identities, allowing analysts to move beyond blame and dichotomous units. The idea that systems of logic are parallel relates closely to standpoint feminism. Systems focus on different outcomes to the same stimuli provides a way to capture emotion as a property of human interaction.

This article presents some general theoretical concepts that can be used to consider processes of reality construction in interpersonal contexts. I developed a model of family context that taps affective dimensions of reality construction and used this model to explore these processes as highlighted by the labeling of symptoms of senile dementia. Ethnographic observations of 45 families with aged members were used to sketch a dichotomous typology of family-context patterns that promote symptom identification versus patterns that do not. The model suggests that the categorization of behavior as symptomatic or normal in context may be related to the extent to which reality construction processes are shared among members.