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When a patient's treatment decisions are the product of delusion, this is often taken as a paradigmatic case of undermined decisional capacity. That is to say, when a patient refuses treatment on the basis of beliefs that in no way reflect reality, clinicians and ethicists tend to agree that their refusal is not valid. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, however, we have witnessed many patients refuse potentially life‐saving interventions not based on delusion but on conspiracy beliefs. Importantly, many of the beliefs espoused by conspiracy theorists resemble delusions in a number of relevant ways. For instance, conspiracy beliefs often posit states of affairs that could not possibly exist in the world, they are recalcitrant in the face of disconfirming evidence, and they tend to put the believer in a state of paranoia. Given these similarities, how should we think about conspiracy theorists' capacity for making clinical decisions? In this paper, I attempt to answer this question by first offering an account of just what makes some set of beliefs count as a conspiracy theory. Second, I attempt to disambiguate conspiracy beliefs from delusions by exploring important conceptual and psychological features of both. Finally, I apply standard criteria for assessing a patient's decision‐making capacity to instances of conspiracy beliefs and argue that, although the picture is muddy, there may be cases in which conspiracy beliefs undermine capacity. I end by exploring the implications that this might have for surrogate decision‐making and addressing potential objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the paper "Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare" Joshua Hordern starts by questioning whether the language of accommodation is itself problematic containing an implicit framing assumption that the default is for patients not to be religious. Topics include examines he cites and endorses the worry expressed by Lori Beaman, that this risks automatically biasing discourse against those who are religious by implying that some people's religious views.

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study examines when and why high performers may fail to obtain supervisory career mentoring (SCM). Although high performance by protégés often makes SCM more efficient and successful, we argue that supervising mentors may be reluctant to offer SCM due to the victimization of high performers that has been shown by recent findings in the supervision literature. We further propose that high performers should be high in perspective‐taking, a core relational competence and a key individual factor that moderates the relationship between protégé performance and SCM. Findings from a multi‐source multi‐time survey (Study 1) and an online experiment (Study 2) consistently show that when high performers are low in perspective‐taking, they are less likely to receive SCM. Moreover, the findings from Study 2 also show that low perspective‐taking by high performers significantly reduces supervisors' expected benefits from mentoring them, which in turn leads to the supervisors having low willingness to mentor. Our research therefore highlights the importance of taking into account the interaction between task and relational competence in understanding how protégé characteristics may influence SCM in organizational settings. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications. Practitioner points: At workplace, employees tend to focus on improving their performance and task competence and believe that high performance can help them receive more resources to develop their career. However, if they cannot imagine oneself in another's shoes, high performance can lead to less positive results.High performers should take others' perspective to understand what others feel and think to reduce potential threats seen by the supervisor and their colleagues. Therefore, task and relational competence are equally important.Organizations can help their employees develop this perspective‐taking, including creating more opportunities (e.g., informal social events or formal training) for employees and their supervisors to understand each other's work roles, perspectives and values, which can help employees to understand their supervisors' views and stand in their supervisors' shoes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon studies employing a syllabi‐based methodology that suggest a tendency for critical geographic information science (GIS) courses to emphasize reading/discussion about GIS without actually doing GIS, and for traditional GIS instruction courses to emphasize the technical capacities of GIS software without incorporating critical theory in substantive ways. However, through ethnographic evidence we reveal that there is likely more innovative theory‐practice transcending pedagogies being utilized than would necessarily show up in such a syllabi‐based methodology. There are also very real and differentially manifest pragmatic, departmental, and institutional barriers in place to effectively incorporating critical social theory into courses that actually do GIS. We first catalogue these barriers as a means of ascertaining what can (and cannot) be done to overcome them through GIS pedagogic innovation. We then outline the (often‐veiled) pedagogic strategies deployed by critical GIS scholars today to navigate and circumvent these barriers. Key Messages: Many traditional GIS courses do little to teach GIS critically and critical GIS courses are relatively rare.Several scholars are interviewed to identify key barriers to teaching GIS critically.Pedagogic strategies are presented to navigate and circumvent these barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between mainstream development policy (and perhaps also development studies) and postcolonial theorists has often been characterized as a dialogue of the deaf. Rather like in the old ‘debates’ between adherents of modernization and neo-Marxist theories, the protagonists are often thought to be talking at or past one another, rather than with each other. This paper reassesses some firmly held views on both sides of the schism. On the one hand, many official development agencies appear to promote business as usual (often quite literally, as a recent War on Want report attests in the case of the UK's DFID using its aid budget to promote profitable opportunities for British corporations). On the other hand, some postcolonial purists rely on surprisingly modernist, totalizing discursive techniques while claiming post-structural credentials, or baulk at the prospects of practical engagement. Discrepancies between theory, discourse, policy and practice are not the preserve of one side. However, the middle ground is firmer and better trodden than most believe. Considerable progress has been made and the paper assesses examples of productive engagement and concludes with suggestions for carrying forward the challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to breathe a little life into one of the most moribund corners of the methodological literature, namely the 'debate' on interview strategy and the supposed opposition between 'structured' and 'unstructured' approaches. From the very beginning, we tend to learn about interviewing as an issue concerning the pros and cons of each respective strategy. The choke of interviewing style is thus presented as a matter of inclination towards standardization versus sensitivity, enumeration versus emancipation, anonymity versus ardour, and so forth. All such distinctions are essentially method-driven and have resulted in extensive technical literatures on how to achieve the chosen ends. Forgotten, therefore, in most of the literature is the very purpose of the interview - namely to advance data in order to inspire/validate/falsify/modify sociological explanation. This paper proposes a theory-driven approach to the construction of the interview. It takes on board two contemporary approaches to sociological understanding, namely a realist theory of explanation and a structurationist theory of social being, and attempts to incorporate their principles into the basic structure of the interview. The paper is illustrated with examples from the author's research with prisoners, and so hopes to inspire a dons and cons approach to the interview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out an approach to the analysis of political power in terms of problematics of government. It argues against an overvaluation of the 'problem of the State' in political debate and social theory. A number of conceptual tools are suggested for the analysis of the many and varied alliances between political and other authorities that seek to govern economic activity, social life and individual conduct. Modern political rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically linked to developments in knowledge and to the powers of expertise. The characteristics of liberal problematics of government are investigated, and it is argued that they are dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy. The analysis is exemplified through an investigation of welfarism as a mode of 'social' government. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of neo-liberalism which demonstrates that the analytical language structured by the philosophical opposition of state and civil society is unable to comprehend contemporary transformations in modes of exercise of political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a considerable amount of literature on embeddedness as part of sociological theory of economic action. Cultural and structural embeddedness often work together to shape the framework of economic relations, but, in an analysis of rural solicitors, we find unevenness between cultural and structural embeddedness. There are strong traits of the former, through a sense of place and belonging, but much less evidence of the latter with the structural relationships appearing relatively weak and underdeveloped. In a discussion supported by empirical data from a recent survey of rural legal practices in Wales, a number of causes are identified. The paper concludes that trends towards increasingly specialized rather than generalized legal service provision, set alongside the increasingly differentiated nature of rural space, suggest that the longer-term sustainability of rural legal practices may require both greater investment at the level of structural embeddedness alongside continuing reinvestment at the cultural level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I seek to document and substantiate the notion of the production of socio-natures by elaborating how Spain's modernization process after the Civil War became a deeply and very specific scalar geographical project, articulated through the production of a specific technonatural hydraulic edifice. I shall focus on the momentous transformation of the hydraulic environment during the Franco period (1939–1975) and seek to reformulate Spain's socio-hydraulic reconstruction in the context of a double and partly contradictory ‘scalar’ politics. Two theoretically interrelated arguments guide this endeavour. On the one hand, Franco's ideological-political mission was predicated upon national territorial integration, the eradication of regionalist or autonomist aspirations, and a concerted discursive and physical process of cultural and material national(ist) homogenization and modernization. On the other, the production of the technonatural material infrastructures of this modernizing programme was predicated upon re-scaling the ‘networks of interest’ on which Franco's power rested from a national visionary to an internationalist geo-economic and geo-political imagination, articulated through Spain's integration in the US-led Western Alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggle for independence in East Timor, which came to fruition in 1999, illustrates both that agency can be exercised in ways that change social structures and that changing structural relations are necessary for the effective exercise of agency. This paper presents a basic Marxist theoretical framework for analysing structural power, contrasting this with the understanding of structure developed by structurationists. It then examines the Timorese independence struggle at two crucial turning points, showing how differing structural contexts enabled different outcomes at those turning points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the application of Foucauldian perspectives within sociology. While Foucault's epistemology has generated novel historical and philosophical interpretations, when transposed to sociology, problems arise. The first of these concerns the association of knowledge and power, and the concept of 'discourse'. Foucault suggested that there are 'rules' of discursive formation which are extraneous to the 'non-discursive' realm of 'reality'. This formulation is consequently both deterministic and incapable of supplying explanations of why some practices become discursive which others do not. This determinism is reflected in some sociological analyses of embodiment, offering a model of the 'body' which is passive, and incapable of resisting power/knowledge. Secondly, Foucault's notion of the 'self' moves to the other extreme, inadequately addressing the constraints which affect the fabrication of subjectivity. Sociological accounts do not always recognize the ambiguities which consequently result from efforts to use Foucauldian positions. It is argued that post-structuralists other than Foucault may offer more to sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Intrinsic-Extrinsic (I-E) framework has provided the dominant conceptual and measurement paradigm for the psychology of religion over the last two decades, research in this tradition suffers from a number of serious limitations. This paper details a variety of theoretical and methodological criticisms of contemporary I-E research, many of which have been noted by previous researchers but have yet to be adequately addressed. Theoretical problems include lack of conceptual clarity in the definitions of I and E; confusion regarding what I and E are supposed to measure (namely, intrinsic-extrinsic what?); the value-laden "good-religion-versus-bad-religion" distinction underlying the framework; the problems inherent in defining and studying religiousness independently of belief content; and the thorny issue of how I and E are conceptually interrelated (namely, Allport's original bipolar continuum versus the modern two-factor theory). Criticisms of the measurement of I and E concern the factorial structure, reliability, and construct validity of the I and E scales, as well as the empirical relationship between the scales. Although the I-E paradigm has clearly been successful in terms of generating research data, it is our view that much of this work is theoretically impoverished and has really taught us very little about the psychology of religion. Only a few years after the Allport-Ross I-E scales appeared on the scene, several researchers argued that it was time to move beyond a simplistic I-E framework to more theoretically and psychometrically sophisticated approaches. Nearly 20 years later, we believe this admonition bears repeating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to uncover the mytho-symbolic parallels between the social-psychological theories of noted sociologist W.I. Thomas and the vision of moral-religious transformation recorded in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Thomas' emphasis on the "definition of the situation," precise stages of moral development, and the four wishes are seen to be derived from Bunyan's themes of spiritual instruction along Christian's journey, his progress through various stages of sanctification, and the various spiritual polarities established by Bunyan as structuring principles of his text. Thomas is understood to have distorted Bunyan's vision of ultimate transcendence by equating salvation with adoption of the Protestant ethic and its institutional context of the American political and economic status quo.
The present essay attempts to demonstrate that W.I. Thomas' classic analysis of the cultural life of Polish immigrants, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, similarly devalued traditional peasant morality and called for its complete transformation in the direction of middle-class Protestant moral strictures. Furthermore, Thomas' analysis will be seen to have utilized John Bunyan's classic narrative of religious conversion, The Pilgrim's Progress, as its implicit structural myth, adopting specific themes and symbols from The Pilgrim's Progress to characterize the Polish immigrant, like Christian, as abandoning a morally retrograde milieu, undertaking a dangerous journey in search of moral improvement and, according to specific stages of conversion, discovering a morally higher way of life in a new place. As with Watson's behaviorism, Thomas' analysis sought to enhance the moral stature of an increasingly defensive Protestant elite even while denigrating the moral character of the new immigrant life in the new American cities.
In this analysis we have tried to uncover the extensive mytho-symbolic connections between W.I. Thomas' sociology of... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the generally neglected place of Lorenz yon Stein in the paradigmatic bifurcation of social theory during the nineteenth century. As a student of Hegel who rejected the idealist approach of his teacher, von Stein anticipated the major arguments of historical materialism; but, unlike Marx, he did not postulate an inexorable proletarian revolution which would ultimately resolve societal contradictions. Instead, he proposed a fundamentally reformist political strategy in which the state guides the distribution of economic resources in a form that would prevent the class polarization envisioned by Marx. While yon Stein is little known by contemporary social scientists in the English literature, he has been recognized in Europe beyond his time as a theorist and as a governmental consultant whose ideas became materialized in social reforms, offering a ‘political realism’ that was designed to prevent the consequences seen by Marx in the development of capitalism, as well as to avoid the fallacies of the liberal belief in free and unregulated pursuit of individual self-interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematics provides a set of tools and a language by which sociologists can precisely develop and express an abstract theory of society. Simulation games provide relatively limited and controlled contexts in which qualitative observations may suggest insights upon which to build systematic quantitative social theory. James Coleman was one of the strongest advocates for the use of simulation games in developing and communicating social theory; his Democracy game was a valuable tool in the development of his theory of collective action. In this paper, I provide an extended example of the use of observations of simulation games. My observations of two different games suggested ways to reconsider and revise certain aspects of rational choice theory. Building upon Herbert A. Simon's ([1957] Models of Man, Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting, New York: Wiley) and John W. Thibaut and Harold H. Kelley's ([1959] The Social Psychology of Groups, New York: Wiley) theories of rationality in the context of incomplete information, my observations suggested that “frustration behavior” may be a rational response to the failure to meet expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accomplished sciences are distinguished by an active orientation to data. Rather than explaining passive observations or even laboratory results, these sciences put a premium on creating effects or objects never before observed. Theories provide a basic for denying the data, in showing how nature can be better organized to produce some new effect or object. In this paper, a method for constructing these theories is developed A sociological application is carried out to the point where an accomplishment is claimed. A very peculiar object is discovered - a relationship. Though it does not resemble anything we may have ever observed it offers to groping actors a guide to something that works and hence could become something that is commonly observed. Likely scruples are addressed that might block the pursuit of such accomplishments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has several objectives. First, it demonstrates the utility of employing an array of metatheoretical tools (paradigm, paradigm bridging micro -- macro, integrated paradigm, theoretical syntheses) to analyze the recent history of mainstream American sociological theory. Second, it shows that we have moved through three rather well defined epochs in sociological theory over the last three decades and are entering a fourth. Third, it demonstrates that the trend in recent years has been away from theoretical separatism and exclusivity, and toward theoretical synthesis and integration. Finally, and relatedly, the integrated sociological paradigm that I sketched a decade ago, or at least something very much like it, it shown to be now much closer to being a reality, perhaps even a defining reality, in sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most theory and research on organizations assumes that the great diversity of organizational attributes reflects variation in implementation of a relatively small number of forms. Modern conceptions of organizational form concentrate on discontinuities in distributions of either attributes or relationships with other organizations. We argue that this approach be supplemented with an explicitly dynamic one that focuses on processes that create and erode boundaries in the organizational world. This paper discusses some of the advantages of this approach and specifics a number of processes that create and erode boundaries around organizational populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Habermas critical theory stands or falls on the unity of procedural reason. When Stephen Toulmin raised the problem of reason being differentiated by functions and purposes within each field of argumentation, whether law, medicine, science, or politics, Habermas' response was both weak. and vague. This paper proposes how Habermas may concede Toulmin's point, and yet demonstrate that it does not ultimately challenge the unity of procedural reason that grounds his critical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies George Herbert Mead's theory on the sociology of the mind. Mead published very little during his lifetime, and his reputation rests almost entirely on proselytizing by his students, on transcriptions of his lectures and on posthumous publication of unpublished papers. The way Mead expressed himself tells something about his position in the intellectual field, and it reveals a fundamental tension in his creative stance. John Dewey commented that "while mister Mead was an original thinker, he had no sense of being original. Or if he had such a feeling he kept it under." Mead was fundamentally a philosopher. Virtually all his important publications are in philosophy journals, or addresses to philosophical associations. The U.S. philosophy during Mead's career was undergoing two important transformations, that is the emergence of psychology and the resettling of the place of religion. His career was intimately connected with both. Mead admired the scientific and secular movements, and wished to defend a world consisting entirely of nature rather than spirit. At the same time, he had enough exposure to idealism to react against a mechanistic materialism, a reduction of the world to physics, of the sort that he saw among militant atheists. What has made Mead relevant for sociology is the fact that he elaborated a social theory of mind, but his concern was not to contribute to sociology but to bolstering pragmatism at a vulnerable point. Its seeming inability to account for scientific knowledge of the natural world. Pragmatism made most sense when dealing with issues of ethics and of the social world.

Some form of communicative understanding is central to all cross-cultural ethnographic research. A Verstehende approach typifies most English- language interpretive social science. At best this involves understanding-in- context, but at worst amounts to little more than an attempt to 'put oneself in the other's shoes'. Charges that this approach discards the informants' discourse in favour of the researcher's narrative are surveyed along with theoretical attempts within sociology to refute these critiques by modifying Verstehen. It is argued that Verstehende methods are unethical by contemporary standards of research ethics. Rather than privileging the understanding of one or another person, whereby one agent (an informant) possesses the truth and other (the researcher) does not, a focus on the interaction between researcher and informant is proposed. This 'dialogical' model, drawn from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, provides a theoretical basis for research on the social and shared nature of understanding. The 'truth' is between the interacting agents. Poetic though this may seem, this view is strongly theorized by ethicists and grounded in both the work of German neo-Kantianism and Hegel, where 'truth' is always aporetic and liminal. Untranslated work by Bakhtin is presented, including his commentaries on the problem of cross-cultural understanding. This paper argues that a 'dialogical verstehen' provides an equitable foundation for field research in the social sciences which avoids the problem of a research 'speaking as' and 'speaking for' discarded and potentially silenced respondents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The `Willis thesis' has two component claims. The first is that class inequalities in educational outcomes occur in part through working-class misbehaviour in schools, and that underachievement is associated with male and female forms of gender traditionalism. The second claim is that this misbehaviour constitutes a working- class cultural resistance. In this paper the first component is operationalized and tested in a statistical model of student plans in Ontario, Canada. Results show that misbehaviour is a weak conduit for differential class outcomes, though expected gender patterns emerge. While noting that findings may reflect British/Canadian differences and that recent de-industrialization may mute traditional class-related student responses, I argue that Resistance theorists have over-extended their claims, and that gender, rather than class background, is a more durable source of cultural reproduction through school underachievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is argued that the feminist critique does not seriously undermine those 'class theories' which seek, in the most general way, to argue that classes are social forces having an impact upon societal development. However, that version of 'class analysis' -- exemplified by researchers such as Wright and Goldthorpe -- which seeks to theoretically identity an empirical ensemble of 'class places' is seriously affected. This approach, which rests upon an analysis of the occupational structure, cannot separate out systematically the impact of 'class' from that of 'gender' (or indeed, of other factors) in this structuring. Although, therefore, such theoretical 'class' schemes retain their sociological utility as descriptive concepts, they do not, as has been claimed, provide uncontaminated measures of 'social class'. An alternative approach to the occupational structure, which stresses its fluid and socially constructed nature, is developed. In the light of this discussion, attempts to establish the theoretical basis of a 'system' of patriarchy are examined. It is argued that although gender relations are universal, they are not necessarily patriarchal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way in which many social analyists conceptualize knowledge and order has been changed by postmodernism. Because sociologists have generally ignored this theoretical development, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the central ideas associated with postmodernism. The author proposes the conception of knowledge advanced by postmodern theorists requires that traditional methodologies and social imagery be abandoned. It is argued that society should be viewed as embodied, or to originate from language games, and, within this context, the exercise of praxis and social control are not contradictory ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have recently debated the general manner in which respondents' accounts should be treated. Should they be regarded as evidence of underlying intentions, objectives and beliefs or should analytical attention focus on the structure of the accounts themselves? This paper reviews this debate from the point of view of the philosophy of social science. While, as critics have noted, the 'accountist' position is subject to major epistemological problems, the 'actionist' view also faces considerable difficulties. These are elaborated through examples from the history of science and artificial intelligence research. Having established the vulnerabilities of both accountist and actionist positions, a pragmatic and mutually supportive rapprochement is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the author's opinion on the article The Family Realm: Theoretical Contributions for Understanding Its Uniqueness. Family researchers have discovered diversity and complexity, and they are disconcerted. In the face of this new-found diversity and complexity in the family researcher's purview, there is manifest methodological restiveness and growing theoretical doubt. Beutler and his associates now joint the fray. To overcome the inherent limitations of mainstream theory, they forcefully argue for the adoption of a family realm perspective, the cornerstone to a proposed famology. Our first error in theorizing about the family, as they see it, was the practice of borrowing theory, most notably from the disciplines of sociology and psychology. Beutler et al assert that the familial part of human experience is unique, differentiating it from all other life experience and presumably distinguishing it from all other group memberships. Family experience is not undifferentiated. In fact, Beutler and his associates do not go far enough in proclaiming its uniqueness. Given the diverse nature of families in industrialized societies, not to speak of those in nonindustrial cultures, it is an image of family life that bears little relationship to everyday life.