Methods for the Study of Everyday Cohabitation

White, Bob W.; Germain, Annick

doi:10.1080/07256868.2022.2047274

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 23 publications

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“…But how are these norms imposed or made explicit? White and Germain introduced the notion of normative density, an interesting reference to the interconnectedness of coexisting norms or normative frameworks [99]-at whatever level, be it societal, cultural, political-legal, organisational, etc.-that structure personal life commitments and visions.…”

Section: Hierarchical Structure Bureaucracy and The Power Dimensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Reflection on Paradoxes and Double Binds in the Workplace in the Era of Super-Diversity

Côté

2023

Humans

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Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a largely technical field, still guided by a biomedical model of health that seeks to isolate factors that cause injury. Despite a growing literature on organisational and managerial factors influencing occupational health, their full integration into the OHS concept has been slow. A broader understanding is still needed to recognise the restructuring of work and the link between well-being at work and management style. In the context of a rapidly changing world of work, increasing workforce diversity, and inequality, OHS needs to take account of the social sciences and humanities to broaden its reductionist vision. Occupational illnesses, distress, and suffering, especially in relation to relational or organisational issues, have no initial cause or specific ontology; they result from a long-standing process or repetitive relational pattern that needs to be exposed and understood in greater depth, considering contextual factors and dynamics. Using the authors’ anthropological backgrounds and the basic principles of the double bind theory developed many decades ago by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues at the Palo Alto School of Communication, we propose a reflection on pragmatic paradoxes or double bind situations in the workplace (which can be briefly defined as the presence of contradictory or conflicting demands or messages), their potential impact on workers’ health and well-being, and how to resolve them. This paper sought to explore the world of pragmatic paradoxes and double binds by discussing different categories, types, or forms of paradoxes/double binds that occur in the context of occupational health and their underlying mechanisms. It also includes a discussion of the possible link to the concept of super-diversity, as it too is associated with migration channels, employment, gendered flows, and local systems. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of this understanding for health professionals, researchers, and policymakers, from a perspective of promoting more holistic and context-sensitive interactional approaches to occupational health.

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Section: Hierarchical Structure Bureaucracy and The Power Dimensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Reflection on Paradoxes and Double Binds in the Workplace in the Era of Super-Diversity

Côté

2023

Humans

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Rethinking encounter through parochial meaning-making on the urban margins in South Africa

Monson

2023

Migration Studies

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Originating in normative interventions aiming to remedy segregation through contact with difference, the notion of ‘meaningful encounter’ has become a portmanteau for contact that results in greater respect and tolerance. This article questions the epistemic justice of such a value-laden concept by presenting four examples of parochial meaning-making around encounters in a South African informal settlement. Drawing on secondary interviews conducted after ‘xenophobic’ expulsions of foreign-born newcomers from the settlement in 2008, as well as primary ethnographic fieldwork conducted four years later, the article highlights the meaningfulness of four encounters that did not lead to increased tolerance or respect for difference—encounters with affluence; with social mobility; with hardship in conditions of poverty and marginality; and with seemingly uncommitted newcomers against a backdrop of contentious politics. In each case, the article illustrates both the meaningfulness of the encounter, and its effect of producing tensions rather than mediating them. The article uses these examples to problematise the assumptions implicit in received notions of ‘meaningful encounter’: that tension necessarily pre-exist encounter, that established/newcomer boundaries are based on prejudice, and that encounters are not meaningful unless they advance a predetermined normative position. Along the way, it highlights the importance of embodiment, materiality, inequality, and space in the production of difference. Having made the case for a conceptual sharpening in the light of these seldom-studied encounters in the urban margins of South Africa, the article concludes by urging scholars to adopt a value-free conception of the meaningfulness of encounter.

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Methods for the Study of Everyday Cohabitation

Cited by 2 publications

References 23 publications

A Reflection on Paradoxes and Double Binds in the Workplace in the Era of Super-Diversity

A Reflection on Paradoxes and Double Binds in the Workplace in the Era of Super-Diversity

Rethinking encounter through parochial meaning-making on the urban margins in South Africa

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