This paper is a theoretical investigation of the common conception of laziness. It starts from constructing a tentative definition of laziness, defining laziness as a negative term referring to people who do not show an effort corresponding to their abilities and/or prerequisites, and/or the difficulty of the task in question. Jerome Bruner's folk psychology is applied to emphasise how the conception of laziness serves as a narrative re-establishing meaning when people do not act as they are expected. Furthermore, two perspectives concerning the characterisation of others as lazy are presented. First, Tversky's and Kahneman's Heuristics and Biases Approach, and second Moscovici's Social Representations Theory. Common for the ways in which the concept of laziness is understood and applied is that the actual motivation, abilities and qualifications of the person being evaluated are hardly never assessed. Thus, the concept of laziness can easily function as a reductionist explanation why others are not acting as expected, with the purpose of making the act of not acting as expected more comprehensible.Keywords Laziness . Cultural psychology . Folk psychology . Information-processing . Social representations theory . Unemployment . School psychology Laziness seems to be a pervasive concept in everyday human social life, used for explaining the behaviour of encountered individuals, or one's own behaviour in a given task or activity. Additionally, laziness is often found in the media and the public debate, attributed to numerous groups and individuals, including unemployed people, students and many more. The concept seems to imply that an individual not acting or performing as expected is not doing so because of causes controllable to herself, often referring to individual effort.In an educational context, Reyna and Weiner (2001) argue that teachers generally have more sympathy for students failing because of uncontrollable factors (low aptitude or external factors), while the opposite goes for students failing because of factors within their own control Human Arenas (2018) 1:288-304 https://doi
This article proposes an alternative conceptualization of the processes with which new university students try to overcome the challenges and potential stresses experienced in their movement into the university context. Instead of viewing coping efforts as solely directed towards avoiding stress and enhancing well-being, efforts of overcoming difficulties and stress are to be seen in relation to students’ goal-oriented movement towards becoming students at a particular institution and in a particular field of study. By drawing on the concepts of (hyper)generalized affective semiotic fields, and equifinality and bifurcation points, it is suggested that the process of making sense of a difficult situation is related to the dynamics between well-defined short-term goals and ill-defined long-term goals. In this conceptualization, students not only cope with a specific problem in the here-and-now but make sense of the problem while negotiating their unique trajectory towards more distanced imagined educational outcomes.
We examine how Danish politicians articulate views on the ‘parallel society agreement’ (aka, the ‘ghetto‐laws’), a controversial legislative intervention aiming to manage urban migration‐related diversity. Through nationwide urban redevelopment aimed at facilitating residential ‘mixing’, the goal of the legislation is to eliminate so‐called ‘parallel societies’—socio‐economically deprived neighbourhoods characterized by high concentrations of ethnic minorities. In‐depth interviews with Danish politicians (n = 11) explored how this proposal was supported, contested or rejected in situated discourse. Following social representations theory, we focus on how ‘parallel societies’ were constructed in relation to differing ideas about ‘mainstream society’ and value‐laden oppositional meaning‐categories (i.e. themata). In particular, we highlight processes of socio‐ethical reasoning that occurred through thematization of a shared oppositional meaning‐category: ‘freedom‐constraint’. Views on the intervention were articulated around this oppositional meaning‐category. Moreover, a connection was observed between the views articulated by individual politicians and sets of congruent ideas and images mobilized to represent ‘parallel societies’. We discuss the theoretical value of taking a social representations approach to urban policy debates, and the practical limitations of dominant representations for successfully promoting intercultural dialogue and engagement—the stated goal of this intervention.
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