The Aesthetics of Reality

Alexander, Thomas M.

doi:10.5422/fordham/9780823251209.003.0002

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…356, 575-576;Toulmin, 1984). These were certainties and dualisms that Dewey saw as obstructing a more active coping with conditions and creating possibilities for human growth (Alexander, 2013;Dewey, 1922Dewey, , 1929. Based on Dewey's admiration for the methods of physical science, social inquiry emerged as a form of experimental empiricism that could be broadly used to handle social challenges (Festenstein, 2019): Through systematic and iterative coupling of reflection and concrete experience, the uncertainty of a troublesome situation can be reduced and tentative next steps taken (Evans, 2000).…”

Section: Theorizing Agency From a Pragmatist Lens Of Social Inquirymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…248-250). Belief may be needed to see the next step of inquiry, but in this case, as in Deweyan inquiry taken more broadly (Alexander, 1993(Alexander, , 2013, the shared intentionality of going forward (Robichaud, 2006) is primarily driven by the desire to contribute to human betterment and growth. From that perspective, the desiring lightness of agency may, paradoxically, be accentuated by the weight of a more generalized situation -in this case that of institutionalized care for elderly people -that the local inquiry exemplifies and in which it resonates.…”

Section: The Lightness Of Desire In Contributing To the Othermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To understand the significance of the turnaround process at Seahill, including the puzzling emphasis of lightness when emerging from a hardship, we turn to pragmatism and theories of agency. As a process philosophy dealing with action and meaning (Alexander, 2013;Dewey, 1922Dewey, , 1929Evans, 2000;James, 1890James, [1950; Joas, 1996), pragmatism is uniquely suited to understand growth of agency as a relational, emergent and generative phenomenon where people unlock problematic situations and discover new possibilities through action (Farjoun, Ansell, & Boin, 2015;Simpson & den Hond, 2022). Prior research has provided only partial knowledge of how people in organizations experience growth of agency when they overcome troublesome situations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Home Alone and All Together: Lightness of agency in social inquiry

Carlsen

Kvalnes

2023

Organization Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research has provided limited knowledge of how people in organizations experience growth of agency during circumstances that seem hopeless and stuck, and how such growth emerges. Drawing from the study of the turnaround processes at a nursing home and the Pragmatism of Dewey and Mead, we contribute with a theory of how agency is produced in social inquiry. We suggest that the puzzling accounts of lightness in the experiences of people at this nursing home help explain how a field of social inquiry may be charged with creative and agentic force. We show how agency emerged through a series of action sequences related to inviting people into inquiry through the opening of a troublesome situation, the resulting voicing of needs and ideas for improvement, as well as the subsequent experimenting and surfacing of tales of meaningful progress from such actions. Furthermore, our empirical observations suggest that the emergence of collective desire to meet the needs of the Generalized Other is a central, yet understated, part of agency produced through social inquiry. Lightness of agency may be accentuated, paradoxically, by the weight of a more generalized situation—in this case that of institutionalized care for elderly—that the local inquiry exemplifies and in which it resonates.

show abstract

Section: Theorizing Agency From a Pragmatist Lens Of Social Inquirymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Lightness Of Desire In Contributing To the Othermentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Home Alone and All Together: Lightness of agency in social inquiry

Carlsen

Kvalnes

2023

Organization Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This specific shape was only potential or implicit ( implizit ). Thus, the explication of the implicit always involves the realization of some of the potentialities allowed by partially indeterminate situations, leaving aside other potentialities (Alexander 2013; Frega 2010). 10 This constructive dimension of inquiry has been captured in pragmatist developments of the sociology of social problems.…”

Section: Articulating the Social Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Articulating the social: Expressive domination and Dewey’s epistemic argument for democracy

Serrano-Zamora

2022

Philosophy & Social Criticism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper aims at providing an epistemic defense of democracy based on John Dewey’s idea that democracies do not only find problems and provide solutions to them but they also articulate problems. According to this view, when citizens inquire about collective issues, they also partially shape them. This view contrasts with the standard account of democracy’s epistemic defense, according to which democracy’s is good at tracking and finding solutions that are independent of political will-formation and decision-making. It is also less vulnerable to the criticisms that have been raised against the standard account. To show this, the paper develops a theory of expressive domination and argues that problem-articulation works best when it is inclusive and domination-free. It also shows that democratic conflict represents a fundamental element for problem-articulation.

show abstract

“…Bringing into dialogue Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics (1934) and central concepts from embodied cognition, Johnson argues that “all meaningful experience is esthetic experience” (2018: 2). It draws on all the processes by which we make sense of the world and “enact meaning through perception, bodily movement, feeling, and imagination” ( Johnson, 2018 : 2; see also Alexander, 2013 ). Meaning is thus fundamentally “relational, experiential, and enactive” ( Johnson, 2018 : 244), framed in a particular social, material, cultural, and historical context.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Aesthetics of Encounter: A Relational-Performative Design Approach to Human-Robot Interaction

Gemeinboeck

2021

Front. Robot. AI

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article lays out the framework for relational-performative esthetics in human-robot interaction, comprising a theoretical lens and design approach for critical practice-based inquiries into embodied meaning-making in human-robot interaction. I explore the centrality of esthetics as a practice of embodied meaning-making by drawing on my arts-led, performance-based approach to human-robot encounters, as well as other artistic practices. Understanding social agency and meaning as being enacted through the situated dynamics of the interaction, I bring into focus a process of bodying-thinging; entangling and transforming subjects and objects in the encounter and rendering elastic boundaries in-between. Rather than serving to make the strange look more familiar, aesthetics here is about rendering the differences between humans and robots more relational. My notion of a relational-performative design approach—designing with bodying-thinging—proposes that we engage with human-robot encounters from the earliest stages of the robot design. This is where we begin to manifest boundaries that shape meaning-making and the potential for emergence, transformation, and connections arising from intra-bodily resonances (bodying-thinging). I argue that this relational-performative approach opens up new possibilities for how we design robots and how they socially participate in the encounter.

show abstract

The Aesthetics of Reality

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Home Alone and All Together: Lightness of agency in social inquiry

Home Alone and All Together: Lightness of agency in social inquiry

Articulating the social: Expressive domination and Dewey’s epistemic argument for democracy

The Aesthetics of Encounter: A Relational-Performative Design Approach to Human-Robot Interaction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About