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This paper proposes a qualitative methodological framework grounded in the interpretation of skeuomorphs. Scholarly attention to this phenomenon has largely come from the spheres of archaeology and design/technology. Drawing on Benjamin's ideas about the interpretive scope of objects, I propose that skeuomorphs reflect the social conditions of their creation and can therefore be the starting point for generating a series of contemporary sociological insights. The proposed framework is applied to two case studies for the purpose of clarification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tsenay Serequeberhan's hermeneutics has been crucial to the development of African philosophy. Initially employed as a pathway through the ethno- and professional philosophical debates, scholars have engaged how Serequeberhan's hermeneutics grapples with one's own place within a socio-historical world in service of liberation/self-determination. However, this scholarship mainly has focused on his adaptation of Gadamer's 'effective-historical consciousness' for his own concept of heritage. This consequently leaves his concept of a 'lived existence' – which is equally crucial – under-examined. This paper probes what a 'lived existence' entails and its essentiality when explicating how one even begins to authentically think, which is the groundwork to Serequeberhan's hermeneutics. This deepens why his concept of heritage matters as a starting point for self-determination. Addressing this lacuna, this article asks, where does philosophy begin and where should it go, particularly when rationality has been historically denied? Serequeberhan's point of departure to answer this question proposes Heidegger's concept of thinking itself to arrive at a notion of existence; contrariwise to most African scholars who employ a Sartrean existentialism via Frantz Fanon. As such, this paper gives an in-depth exploration of Serequeberhan's initial reading of Heidegger, and then unfolds how he appropriates Heidegger to craft his notion of 'lived existence'. The upshot this is twofold: First, a broader understanding of Serequeberhan's project, its non-existentialist view of existence; Second, it describes how he specifically tailors his 'lived existence' to undergird his hermeneutical approach to heritage as a prescriptive, activist project which dynamically addresses the postcolonial situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article has two aims: firstly, it provides a holistic account of Zygmunt Bauman's oeuvre, and secondly, it presents an extensive up-to-date and multilingual bibliography of his published writings. The authors discuss Bauman's prolificacy, as well as the stylistic, formal and substantive heterogeneity of his work. Taking this into account, they reflect on the curious reception of his oeuvre in the wider disciplinary field of sociology. The bibliography attached to the paper provides the most complete account of Bauman's writings. Building on previous bibliographies, and drawing on archival research in the Janina and Zygmunt Bauman Papers at the University of Leeds, the bibliography spans 63 years from his first publication to his most recent. Many of these papers – both in English and Polish – are presented for the first time in the list of his works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle released a feature article about a man who chose to resurrect his deceased fiancée by training a chatbot system built on OpenAI's GPT language models on her old digital messages. He then had emotional conversations with this chatbot, which appeared to accurately mimic the deceased's writing style. This case study raises questions about the communicative influences of thanabots: chatbots trained on data of the dead. While thanabots are clearly not living conversational partners, the rhetoric, everyday experiences, and emotions associated with these system have very real implications for living users. This paper applies a lifeworld perspective to consider the hermeneutics of thanabots. It shows that thanabots exist in a long lineage of efforts to communicate with the dead, but acknowledges that thanatechnologies must be more thoroughly studied for better understanding of what it means to die in a digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to connect Stiegler's reflections on theoretical computer science with his practical propositions for the design of digital technologies. Indeed, Stiegler's theory of exosomatization implies a new conception of artificial intelligence, which is not based on an analogical paradigm (which compares organisms and machines, as in cybernetics, or which compares thought and computing, as in cognitivism) but on an organological paradigm, which studies the co-evolution of living organisms (individuals), artificial organs (tools), and social organizations (institutions). Such a perspective does not compare human capacities to machine performances but studies the way in which the evolution of material and technical supports affects and transforms psychological, cognitive or noetic faculties (intuition, memory, understanding, imagination, sensibility, reason, etc.), as well as the constitution of different kinds of knowledge. This new theoretical paradigm implies a new 'design' for digital technologies, which considers their social role and their impact on psychological, cognitive or noetic faculties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In focusing mainly on Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana, this paper discusses three major characteristics of his hermeneutics. First, he understands the Scriptures as signs that point to the transcendent reality of God. This understanding of the Scriptures anticipates today's reader response theories and the hermeneutical concept, the 'surplus of meaning'. It also rules out biblicism, by reminding us that the role of Scripture is provisional and instrumental. Second, Augustine's hermeneutics has existential and moral tendencies. He emphasizes the essential connection between interpretation of Scripture and the interior attitude and moral quality of the interpreter. In this regard, Augustine's hermeneutics anticipates and has influenced contemporary hermeneutical theory according to which a life-relation to the subject matter is essential to understanding. Third and finally, the rule of charity and the rule of faith are the most important criteria in Augustine's hermeneutics. Such an emphasis on the rule of charity and the rule of faith is consonant with contemporary hermeneutics, which underscores that understanding takes place in a particular tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The methodological reading of the Lukan parable reveals some contrasts. While Asian liberationists see the victim in the parable as the primary agent who embodies Jesus Christ, Asian theologians who focus on the intercultural hermeneutics treat the Samaritan as the primary agent who embodies Jesus Christ. This paper argues against emphasizing only one agent without embracing the other. In order to apply a fuller contextual meaning of the Lukan parable for our contemporary context, this paper argues that we should use the middle ground as the methodological tool that reads one text through the two lenses of the Samaritan and the victim. The paper first explores the Samaritan-oriented cross-cultural hermeneutics and then the victim-oriented liberative hermeneutics. Finally, the paper examines both Samaritan-oriented and victim-ordinated hermeneutics from the christological perspective and then offers five proposals for reconciling two different models for an Asian cross-cultural and liberative mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some texts appear more than once across the corpus of Zygmunt Bauman's work. This has led to accusations of self-plagiarism and a lack of scholarly rigour. This paper is an explanation of why texts reappear. It pays attention to a number of frequently overlooked texts from the 1970s which are of fundamental importance for any understanding of Bauman's work. It is contended that if: (a) there is an understanding of the stakes and purpose of sociology as it is framed in Bauman's work; and (b) attention is paid to the argument of Hermeneutics and Social Science; then (c) the repetition of texts across the work becomes explicable and unproblematic. The paper argues that dealings with Bauman's work need to be more aware of the less well-known texts. They also need to be alert to different – and incommensurable – ways of practising sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a historical ethnography of how Brazil's post-dictatorial psychiatric reforms have shaped young people's lives, this paper builds on Eve Sedgwick's analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion to show that narrow applications of Foucault's biopower concept nurture forms of resistance to bio-reductionism centred primarily on epistemic deconstruction. To unsettle this hermeneutic, I put young people's theories of power into conversation with Georges Canguilhem's concept of the milieu and with feminist scholars' work on prefigurative politics. I introduce the concepts of threading and unthreading to consider how one subject of biopower, the child-like biobehavioural figure, was continuously being threaded within a specific milieu and in relation to another key figure: the elite angst-ridden 'storm-and-stress' adolescent. Young people's subsequent unthreading and reweaving politics, flourishing in co-construction with what I call the politicizing clinic, illustrate how decolonial pedagogies can incrementally change the patterning of social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper sets out to offer social-psychological and phenomenological constructs of spirituality in the culture of dhikr in eastern Ethiopia at a micro-ethnography of faith based therapy (FBT). For analytical purpose, the paper draws on hermeneutics. This is the theory and method that places greater emphasis on the way humans deploy linguistic and cultural symbols to represent, organize and frame religion and other complex experiences. The paper focuses on how dhikr producers deploy various interpretive repertoires to construct the psychological, interactional, emotional, behavioural, imaginative and perceptual dimension of spirituality. The paper indicates that the Hararghe Oromo’s dhikr culture is a hermeneutic exercise that involves cognitive and analytical engagement with the exoteric meanings as well as the esoteric meanings of the world. One can thus take dhikr as a socio-cultural site for analysing the nature of hermeneutically conveyed social–psychological constructs of religion and spirituality. The paper offers also the epistemological and conceptual implications of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with a rise of populism seemingly in all corners of the globe, the need to facilitate meaningful communication between different world-views and to resist the closing down of dialogue is pressing. In this paper, I argue that Zygmunt Bauman's sociological method has always been concerned with this problem and that a better appreciation of his writings on hermeneutics provides us with a vital strategy for resisting fundamentalist thinking in today's dark times. To begin, I briefly explore the relationship between hermeneutics and fundamentalism before moving on to elaborate Bauman's method of sociological hermeneutics. In the final section of the paper, I assess the implications that Bauman's method has for the discipline of sociology at a time when the certainty of things is the most avid of dreams dreamed by people harassed and oppressed by the uncertainty of liquid modern life, apparently whatever the human consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates Günther Anders's diagnosis of a shift in the modes of human self-production from hermeneutic and educational practices to techno-scientific interventions in the broader context of observations concerning posthumanism and biopolitics (e.g. Peter Sloterdijk, Giorgio Agamben). It proposes to reframe the problem of human self-production within the philosophy of media and traces a common anti-hermeneutic trajectory to which both technoscientific transhumanism and certain strands of posthumanism belong, insofar as they are based on an ontology that exclusively considers causally effective agency. With Anders and Martin Heidegger it is argued that such a focus on agency neglects the dimension of meaning that irreducibly guides technoscientific interventions. The paper claims that, with regard to the escalating dynamics both of human enhancement and of the Anthropocene, neither a truly critical theoretical stance nor a practical subversion is possible without taking the horizons of meaning into account that drive these dynamics. The last section sketches an outline of the complex interrelations of humans, technologies and meaning that cannot be mapped in terms of causally effective agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hans Blumenberg is celebrated for demonstrating that metaphors have had a more foundational influence than concepts on European intellectual history. Many acknowledge that his insights might have achieved even greater impact if he had articulated a more explicit theory of metaphor. In 1960 Blumenberg discusses the historical formation of metaphors that have given rise to meaningful discourses on metaphysical abstractions, like God, existence, or Being, but he does not develop a general model of metaphoric language, and his work rarely engages with other contemporary theories of metaphor. During Blumenberg's lifetime, French and German postwar philosophers rarely cited one another. Yet French hermeneutics, and the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur in particular, may have strongly influenced Blumenberg's research group, Poetik und Hermeneutik. This paper is an attempt to recuperate intellectual affinities between Blumenberg and Ricoeur, in order to demonstrate that Ricoeur's claims about metaphor provide the theoretical background for a fuller appreciation of Blumenberg's metaphor analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to draw a parallel between music and theology as performance activities, through an examination of the role of ‘text’ in each discipline, and of their inherent commitments to improvisation. By drawing upon the ways in which musicology has begun self-consciously to turn its attention towards the task of performance, this paper explores the ways in which Christian faith, and its scholarship, should afford a self-conscious turn towards its own performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the expression of certainty in a set of high- and low-rated Geography argumentative essays. Using one aspect of Hunston’s (1989, 2000) concept of the evaluation of status, the paper compares the statement types used to construe the writer’s expression of certainty in the construction of arguments. Drawing on the framework, linguistic expressions that use different statement types are presented in the light of their rhetorical functions to illustrate their role in the development of arguments. Generally, high-rated script writers make more frequent use of particular statement types, including a type of factual statement, interpretation-support and interpretation-mean statements. The latter two categories are used to reinforce the importance of evidence provided in an argument. Implications for the teaching of certain statement types and their linguistic expressions are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because citizens of diverse and pluralistic democracies possess different values and interests, deliberative democratic theory founds legitimate decision-making in non-coercive deliberations among free and equal citizens who appeal to public reasons or, in other words, to reasons that can be accepted by ‘all who are possibly affected’. Yet it is not clear that what stymies democratic justification is the failure to offer or accept public reasons. Can we not agree on them while understanding them in different but equally compelling ways? Indeed, might it not be that what stymies justification is our failure to acknowledge this possibility? The first part of this paper explores these questions as they relate both to the original formulations of deliberative theory and to certain revisions. The second part of the paper investigates a hermeneutic alternative that not only acknowledges but also value differences in the ways we can plausibly understand the public reasons to which we agree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents a careful interpretation of Adorno’s classical text The Essay as Form, published in 1958 as the introduction to his Notes on Literature. Since it thickly condenses many of Adorno’s general views, the Essay poses great hermeneutic challenges to readers. The paper, first, elaborates on the essay more broadly as a genre and identifies a spectrum between science and art each individual essay draws from to forge its particular hybridity. Second, the example is discussed as an epistemologically potent trope oscillating between subsumption and singularity. This internal tension renders the example particularly qualified to serve as the conceptual basis on which interpretative themes in the essay can be discovered. Three lines of interpretation are suggested: (a) poetological for the essay/Essay’s definition, goal, and method; (b) critical/dialectical for its treatment of concepts and in relation to content; and (c) epistemic for the modern separation of art and science. The conclusion comes back to the issue of exemplarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an entry-level approach to Lacanian Discourse Analysis. Along the way it considers crucial issues for textual analysis, arguing that Lacan’s insights provide an important collection of tools and concepts in dealing with textual research in a manner which is neither blind to the intrusion of interpretation nor deaf to the call of creative engagement. The paper is, however, a beginning, never more than a beginning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by attempting to define midrash as a distinct genre of classical rabbinic literature in order to understand the significance of the term in contemporary discourse. It will then examine what Jewish feminists mean when they apply the term, midrash, to their work and consider the extent to which such appropriation is useful or reasonable. The paper will then outline, with my own suggestions, how midrash might be usefully appropriated for feminist ends and the paper will conclude with a concrete example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavior is rational to the extent that it optimizes actions, beliefs, and information collection subject to various constraints. It is intelligible to the extent that it makes sense to an interpreter. The two concepts are connected because interpretation ordinarily proceeds on the assumption that others would do what we do under the same circumstances, mutatis mutandis. And because we of necessity understand our own behavior as being as rational as possible given the constraints we face, we must interpret the behavior of others in the same way. This paper develops the concepts of rationality and intelligibility, and applies them to the problem of interpretation. It does so by relying upon Jon Elster's recent work upon the same concepts. Like Elster, moreover, this paper concerns both the interpretation of real behavior and that of fictional characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To examine the heuristic value of a work of fiction in an international relations classroom, students in an upper-level political science course were asked what stood out to them about international political economy in the Barbara Kingsolver novel, The Poisonwood Bible. Student papers were analyzed in a phenomenologically informed hermeneutic study, for which they received no extra credit. Collective thematic analysis of responses identified three meanings common to student experiences of the book. These themes included the relative power of international political economy theories to explain the Congo's underdevelopment during the period covered in the novel, the salience of interpersonal skills in international relations, and holism in knowledge and politics. Underlying theoretical implications and study results are discussed in terms of the pedagogical implications for the ongoing debate within international relations as a discipline of explaining versus understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some of my research into the historical medical collection acquired by and on behalf of the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853–1936). Specific aims of the paper are to consider how historico-geographical factors and the agency of objects influence the collection and re-collection of material cultures across time and space. I trace the movement of 30 000 objects in 1965–66 from the original Wellcome Collection in London to what is now known as the Fowler Museum at UCLA. I pay particular attention to the 'Wellcome Year' celebrations that marked the arrival of the 'great gift' in California, and explore the networks through which the travelling objects moved. From these starting points, and positing an active interpretation of material forms, the article demonstrates how people–object–place relations and shifting systems of value shape the ongoing history and geography of collections within and between certain places. I also explore how sites can be changed as a result of collections' geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A psychological understanding of interpersonal processes in terms of complementarity is not new. It is enough to mention Buber (the title of our paper refers to an expression of his), as well as Bateson and his definitions of double description, binocular vision and complementary and symmetric relations. We would like to clarify the nature of complementarity, and to point out the presence of this framework in some philosophical and scientific discourses about the person. Moreover, we think that the adoption of a framework of complementarity becomes a metaphysical necessity within what we have called 'hermeneutic constructivism', and that other constructivisms fail to acknowledge it, thereby losing much of their metatheoretical, revolutionary potential. We will document the possibility of adopting a framework of complementarity with respect to different pairs of poles, which specify as many phenomenal domains: (1) the relation between any entity and its environment; (2) the relation between modes of description; (3) the relation between the person and the world; and (4) the relation between people. In the final part of the paper we outline some implications of a consideration of complementarity for the psychotherapy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meaning of interpretation in the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist and intellectual. As a performing art, music illustrates the cognitive and practical dimensions of interpretation. While emphasizing the pre-interpreted character of musical reception and performance, both authors point to the fact that difference, alterity, and negativity lie at the heart of creative interpretation, cultivation and self-knowledge. The notion of ecstasy, understood as a type of self-forgetfulness that represents a radical form of encounter with alterity, provides the basis for a conception of subjectivity as grounded on linguistic, historical and cultural conditions, albeit not reducible to them. I maintain that the notion of ecstatic subjects is a powerful alternative to both the self-centred notion of subjectivity and its anti-humanistic counterpart in accounting for human agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of how to access and estimate the proliferation of receptions of Ludwik Fleck’s work in domains as diverse as social geography, history of clinical medicine, and cognitive sociology has long remained vexing. The approach suggested in this paper combines the hermeneutics of effective-historical reception with a version of epistemic reconstruction of intellectual history. Special emphasis is placed upon the forms of political contextualization of Fleck’s comparative sociology of thought styles. The author argues that the heterogeneity of receptions is essentially informed by the specificity of the ‘implicit reader’ Fleck assigned to his work. Interestingly enough, it is a ‘reader’ congruent with the post-metaphysical turns in the social sciences. This claim is defended by analyzing particular trajectories of reception of Fleck’s work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worlds of therapeutic interactions, and especially the worlds of our everyday social exchanges, as portrayed in the conceptualizations and theories proposed in research papers, are in fact very different from the worlds within which we all actually live our everyday lives. This is not because I think the conceptualizations and theories offered are in fact inadequate, but because as identifiable and nameable causal process they can only be seen as having been at work in people’s activities after they have been performed. ‘Something else’ altogether is guiding people in the performance of their actions than the nameable things whose nature we seek to discover in our inquiries, something in their relations to the larger circumstances of their involvements with the others and othernesses around them, rather than merely in their actions and utterances exclusively. Conceptualizations relate to observed events after the fact of their occurrence, whereas, much occurs in the experience of participants before the fact of their happening. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we employ a conceptual repertoire from philosophical hermeneutics and literary aesthetics to examine people’s expectations of and trust in interactive media. Drawing on data from two projects, first, with young professionals on their perceptions of the informational value of various media, and second, with youthful users of the online genre of social networking sites, we present findings on perceptions of authorial presence and constructions of an imagined author. We conclude that an (imagined) author plays a key role in media users’ ability to critically use interactive media and evaluate the relevance and reliability of media content, rather than functioning as an authoritative originator of the meaning. We argue that this is important not only for contemporary research in critical digital literacies, but also for the intrinsic importance of trust in any act of communicative engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses attempts to think historicity in the work of the theologian Rudolf Bultmann and the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. It then draws on the work of the Jesuit theologian Robert Doran in order to suggest how an historical pragmatics without historicism might be relevant to a future theology with social import. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ethnography and hermeneutics help us think of the clinical encounter as a meeting of cultures. In this paper, we examine Ernesto De Martino’s concept of critical ethnocentrism and its relevance for psychiatry, arguing for the necessity of a cultural self-assessment on the part of the clinician as a means of optimizing analyses of the patient’s culture. Conceptualizing the clinician as an “ethnologist,” we argue that clinicians should be able to describe and acknowledge patients’ cultural backgrounds, while remaining aware of their own culturally rooted prejudices. Focusing on the case of persons affected by schizophrenia, we suggest that De Martino’s work invites an openness to hermeneutic dialogue that aims for the coconstruction of shared narratives by clinician and patient. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper theorizes how ancient literature can be used to inspire contemporary psychological understanding. We articulate a critical presentism that reads ancient literature symbolically without losing sight of important differences of meaning over time. Although ancient literature may inspire understanding of our present-day concerns, historical text cannot be used to explain contemporary understandings without charges of naïve presentism. A hermeneutics of archetypes is used to theorize a way of using ancient literature that remains critical of presentist claims to knowledge. Without losing sight of important socio-historical differences, the story of The Bacchae is used to illustrate how literature from the past can engender psychological understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a personal reflection on the author's experience as a translator in the translation project Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English. These reflections aim to make intelligible the author's experience of translating Bonhoeffer as a hermeneutic engagement on three interrelated levels. They include the translation of words, the translation of ideas, concepts, paragraphs and sections, and the translation of Dietrich as a person.

The long standing debate over how to interpret Galatians 3:28 gets bogged down in two main ways. The first is disagreement over whether it only applies to our justification with God, or if it also has implications for our relationships with each other. In other words, is this passage just about our vertical relationship with God – soteriology - or does it also include the horizontal relationship we have with others – ecclesiology? The second problem hovers around an associated question: the nature of ‘equality in being’ but ‘difference in function’. Can a person be inherently equal if they are disqualified from certain roles they are capable of doing, and that disqualification is entirely based on their gender? This paper argues that the full context of Galatians demonstrates that Galatians 3:28 is in fact relevant for egalitarian social interaction as well as equality with God through justification. It then demonstrates how ‘equality in being’ but a ‘different function imposed on some people because of their essential being’, is self-contradictory and unsustainable. This discussion is critical for a more confident acceptance of the egalitarian position in church life today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article follows the recurrent theme in Friedrich Kittler’s 40 years of prolific academic writing, which is of course the media-related production of discourse. Five heuristic principles are identified in his work: enabling, reduction, historization, the abolishment of the ‘two cultures', and post-hermeneutics. The paper closes with criticism of the intrinsic limits of Kittler’s point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author argues that the contemporary cross-discipline of Discourse Studies have gone beyond the impressionistic interpretation of texts as traditionally practiced in hermeneutics. He provides his early research experiences to better understand his comments on Allan Bell's paper on the role of hermeneutics in contemporary discourse studies. He points to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a social movement of sociopolitically committed discourse analysts.

Addressing integrative possibilities between psychology and anthropology, this paper aims to design conceptual linkages between semiotic-cultural constructivist psychology and the anthropological theory of Amerindian perspectivism. From the psychological view, it is the interdependence between the structural and processual dimensions of the personal culture that makes parallels with Amerindian perspectivism fruitful. This anthropological frame proposes an experiment with native conceptions, which I argue similar to what Baldwin (1906) called sembling. Hence, it can be considered an active imitation of otherness’ viewpoint in order to approach indigenous worlds. It is supposed that this procedure leads to the emergence of new symbolic elements configuring the cultural action field of each agency in interaction. It is proposed that ‘‘making-believe’’ the Amerindian is convergent with the dialogic-hermeneutic approach of semiotic-cultural constructivism. As a result of the present integrative effort, is designed a meta-model that multiplies the genetic process of concrete symbolic objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strongly constitutive sociocultural perspectives in psychology have become more developed and influential in recent decades, particularly during the past 15 years. These approaches include constructionist, discursive, relational, dialogical, and neo-Vygotskian theories. They diverge from one another in some respects, but are alike in that they all consider psychological processes, such as mind and self, to emerge out of social, cultural, and historical contexts. This paper explores some central themes and commitments that inhere in these approaches, particularly with regard to how subjectivity is historically and relationally constituted. It emphasizes the importance of further legitimizing them within psychology and adjacent disciplines. It also points out some current limitations, suggesting that they risk what social theorist Dennis Wrong called an “oversocialized” conception of human beings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper explores the ways in which narrative theories of identity may serve to interpret particular contextualized practices, working developmentally with South African youth. By locating narrative theories of identity in relation to two other theoretical frameworks, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of textuality, we create a new theoretical approach for thinking about the possibilities and constraints for understanding sociohistorical questions of identity. As opposed to postmodern discursive deconstructions of the self or identity, we argue that the contextual imperatives of the developing world necessitate and demand the active interpretation and articulation of our-selves in stories and texts. It is suggested that this theoretical nexus offers a productive framework for practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I argue for an approach to critical psychology that is strongly foundationalist and radically anti-fundamentalist. By laying foundations for psychology in the historical and social conditions of its subject matter, the paper works against the psychological fundamentalism that has become a remarkable feature of postmodern societies. The general framework for my approach is that of modernity understood as a project of self-foundation. Within the modernity project, critique was developed in two forms: as reconstruction (of conditions) and as criticism (of constraints). The foundational approach to critical psychology combines both forms of critique. Reconstructing the conditions of possibility of its subject matter in social and therefore necessarily hermeneutic terms, it avoids the fundamentalist temptations of psychologism. At the same time, it lays foundations for its critical attitude to society. The possibility and necessity of critique of both psychological conceptualizations and social order are founded in the very idea of critical psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dialogical self, defined as a dynamic multiplicity of I-positions, has been taken up in multiple ways in psychology generally and cultural psychology specifically. As a self unfolding dynamically with others in a world, the dialogical self is at its foundation ethical. Self scholars have recognized the ethical nature of the dialogical self, but have not yet described how the self navigates its course in light of the demands and considerations of others. We examine this by turning to the phenomenological and hermeneutic account of self offered by Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur provides a dialectical and cultural theory of the self that shares important similarities with the dialogical self, meriting a theoretical comparison. Most importantly, Ricoeur gives a detailed description of the self's ethical framework. We employ his insights in the current paper to reveal the manner in which the dialogical self is oriented toward the good in lived experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to reassess the role of judgment in hermeneutics. Beyond considering the different modes of judgment involved in interpretation, a topology of contexts that can orient understanding is proposed, starting with the way Kant distinguishes among a field, a territory and a domain. Other relevant contexts are also considered. One of the main tasks of hermeneutics is to be able to coordinate various interdisciplinary contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role that fiction in the broad sense might play in psychology, as a tool both for theoretical understanding and for individual self-understanding. Using Hans Vaihinger's Philosophy of 'As If' as a point of departure, I attempt to show that theoretical understanding and personal meaning making in psychology are based in fundamental ways on fictions, that is, on imaginative or counter-factual constructions that we operate on using a hypothetical or as if mode of thinking. I identify and give examples of four broad types of fictions that seem especially to inform psychological theorizing and personal meaning making. Each of these exemplifies the characteristics of counter-factual thinking and imaginative engagement that are taken to be criterial for fictional thinking in general. Some implications for hermeneutic and narrative inquiry in psychology are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we suggest that agents engage in life history dialogue prior to discourse as a way of enhancing mutual understanding and overcoming impediments to genuine consensus. We furthermore claim that life history dialogue fits well with Habermas' concern regarding the hegemony of technical rationality. Habermas asserts that norms and normative institutional arrangements are just or valid if and only if they represent genuine consensus arrived at in discourse under ideal speech conditions. A requirement of genuine consensus is that discourse participants understand each other and have a shared understanding of normative terms. Three impediments to understanding threaten genuine consensus. We propose that encouraging participants to engage in life history dialogue prior to discourse will diminish these impediments. As a form of hermeneutic dialogue, life history dialogue serves as a model for how we come to understand ourselves, know each other, and may serve as a forum for cultivating understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When processing the initial segment of a sentence, readers may favor an interpretation that will turn out to be incorrect as more words are read. In these cases, a reanalysis process is necessary in order to correct the mental representation built up to that point. It has been previously proposed that readers obey a minimum change restriction, as they prefer to change the mental representation as little as possible. The present paper reports two experiments in Japanese suggesting that a minimal change restriction is unnecessary to characterize reanalysis. It is proposed instead that the present data and previous observations are more naturally explained by a constraint-driven model in which revisions are performed only when required by parsing constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lukács' mature theory of Hegelian Marxism has been criticized for the determinacy with which it predicts utopia as a possibility for the future. This paper instead examines Lukács' early, pre-Marxist thinking, which asserts utopia only as the grounding concept for a procedure of cultural criticism, and not as the outcome of any foreseeable process of social change. I attempt to evaluate this non-Marxist utopianism of the young Lukács by focusing in particular on ‘The Foundering of Form Against Life: Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen’, a 1910 essay in which Lukács criticizes Kierkegaard for failing to articulate any concept of utopia and for focusing instead on private ‘faith’ as a potential solution to the endemic problems of modernity, such as alienation and reification. Because young Lukács himself thus sets up Kierkegaard as a dystopian rival for his own utopian thought, I use a comparison between these two thinkers as a basis for speculation on the advantages and disadvantages of positing a normative concept of utopia as the basis for social criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proceeding from the debate opened by Beck, Giddens and Lash, this article seeks to clear the way for a more consistent and coherent concept of reflexivity in relation to the cultural-symbolic foundations of society. Seeing that Lash in his contribution to the debate inadvertently raises a key problem, i.e. the broad cognitive problem, the paper develops a critique of his hermeneutic culturalism. ft focuses on the disparity between the position explicitly put forward in the debate with Beck and Giddens and the cognitive position which implicitly comes into play throughout his relevant essays. The disparity first appears in his treatment of the problem of mediation, but it comes to a head in his appropriation of Bourdieu. The argument is supported by elements of a socio-cognitive theory which has been gaining visibility in social theory and in the philosophy of social science. While the article is critical of Lash, its overall aim is to strengthen his contribution to the debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I suggest that an open mind wholly unburdened by preconceptions and prejudgments is a mistaken ideal. Not only is it unrealistic; it deprives us of context and background knowledge relevant to judging well. I begin with two cases that show how the ideal of the “prejudice-free” mind, though appealing, may end up thwarting good judgment: blind assessment and “blank-slate” jury selection (the ideal of empaneling jurors without prejudgments). I then trace the prejudice-free ideal to the Enlightenment, exposing its roots in the subject-object worldview. Drawing on Heidegger, I suggest that the subject-object worldview is misguided and that all judgment involves a prior understanding of the matter we judge. To have an open mind, paradoxically, is to have a stake in defending a prior understanding, to be possessed of an understanding of the good that one wishes (at least provisionally) to promote. I then draw out the implications of this view for how we might make sense of cultural differences, examining the difference between the practice of marriage based on a romantic conception of love, and that of arranged marriage. By thinking through these two practices, seemingly opposed, we can arrive at a conception of marriage and love that preserves both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the prospects for International society' in the face of the twin challenges of resurgent cultural pluralism in world politics and anti- foundationalism in International Relations theory. The paper utilises the philosophical hermeneutics of H.G. Gadamer to critique the 'egg-box' conception of international society which assumes the incommensurability of cultural/social communities. In particular. using Gadamer's conceptions of tradition and horizon. the author challenges the incommensurability thesis advanced by Chris Brown and others. The paper concludes that international society can be reinterpreted as a venue for continuing moral conversation between historically dynamic communities, capable of mutual comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extracts key themes from Heidegger's philosophy and critically applies them to issues of relevance to psychology. A case is made that Heidegger's arguments concerning ontology before the subject/object distinction, his discussion of enframing, his concern with the understanding of being, and his distinction between modes of being are all important for a rethinking of psychological practice. Heidegger's contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism are discussed and clarified in terms of distinctions between truth and correctness, the ontological and the ontic, and Being and beings. The conclusion points psychology towards a `deep reflexivity'. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to demonstrate that hermeneutics is a powerful conceptual tool for exploring the current trend towards theorizing justice as a conversation. Specifically we explore the work of John Rawls in order to describe the particular variety of hermeneu tics at work in both 'political liberalism' and 'justice as fairness' and to critique this hermeneutics from the perspective of the ontological hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Using the critique of Quinean pragmatism found in Joseph Rouse's epistemology, we draw a par allel between the 'hermeneutics as translation' in Quine and Rawls's public reason. This parallel, we argue, helps us better understand the features and the limitations of political liberalism, especially when Rawls's hermeneutics is contrasted with the possibility of a theory of justice inspired by Gadamer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A lively concern for new instruments of knowledge has led sociology, among other disciplines, to collect life stories in order to explore social phenomena. Dialogue and interpersonal communication thus become crucial tools, as well as loci of knowledge. This paper investigates the epistemological suppositions of `the biographical approach': the quest for identity in the narrative, the dialogical relationship between the narrating self and the researcher, the fixation of speech into text and more. The overall effort of the investigation is to reach criteria of analysis which are not simply borrowed from other areas, but are the outcome of reflection upon the constituent features of life stories. This investigation, however, does not widen the gap between `qualitative' and `quantitative' sociology, but rather it contributes to put this division into question. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]