Download or read book Practice Theory and Research written by Gert Spaargaren and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been an upsurge in scholarship concerned with theories of social practices in various fields including sociology, geography and management studies. This book provides a systematic introduction and overview of recent formulations of practice theory organised around three important themes: the importance of analysing the role of the non-human alongside the human; the reflexive nature of social science research; and the dynamics of social change. Combining a rich variety of detailed empirical research examples with discussion of the relevance of practice theories for policy and social change, this book represents an excellent sourcebook for all academic and professional researchers interested in working with practice theory.
Download or read book The Body Multiple written by Annemarie Mol and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-17 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Body Multiple is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one medical condition appears to be many other things. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment, to the next, a slightly different “atherosclerosis” is being discussed, measured, observed, or stripped away. This multiplicity does not imply fragmentation; instead, the disease is made to cohere through a range of tactics including transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences, and conducting doctor-patient conversations. The Body Multiple juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol’s analysis of her ethnographic material—interviews with doctors and patients and observations of medical examinations, consultations, and operations—runs a parallel text in which she reflects on the relevant literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object relations, boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one another, Mol’s two texts meditate on the multiplicity of reality-in-practice. Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice through vivid storytelling, The Body Multiple will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and medicine.
Download or read book Heidegger Ethics and the Practice of Ontology written by David Webb and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heidegger, Ethics and the Practice of Ontology presents an important new examination of ethics and ontology in Heidegger. There remains a basic conviction throughout Heidegger's thought that the event by which Being is given or disclosed is somehow 'prior' to our relation to the many beings we meet in our everyday lives. This priority makes it possible to talk about Being 'as such'. It also sanctions the relegation of ethics to a secondary position with respect to ontology. However, Heidegger's acknowledgement that ontology itself must remain intimately bound to concrete existence problematises the priority accorded to the ontological dimension. David Webb takes this bond as a key point of reference and goes on to develop critical perspectives that open up from within Heidegger's own thought, particularly in relation to Heidegger's debt to Aristotelian physics and ethics. Webb examines the theme of continuity and its role in the constitution of the 'as such' in Heidegger's ontology and argues that to address ontology is to engage in an ethical practice and vice versa.
Download or read book The Theory and Practice of Ontology written by Leo Zaibert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides close examination of ontology and the work of Professor Barry Smith, one of the most prolific philosophers of the modern day. In this book numerous scholars who have collaborated with Smith explore the various disciplines in which the impact of his work has been felt over the breadth of his career, including biology, computer science and informatics, cognitive science, economics, genetics, geography, law, neurology, and philosophy itself. While offering in-depth perspectives on ontology, the book also expands upon the breadth of Smith’s influence. With insights from renowned and influential scholars from many different countries, this book is an informative and enlightening celebration of all Smith has contributed to numerous academic schools of thought.
Download or read book Ontology Or the Theory of Being written by Peter Coffey and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology written by Robert Arp and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-08-28 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the field of applied ontology with examples derived particularly from biomedicine, covering theoretical components, design practices, and practical applications. In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that is of particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies.
Download or read book Practice Theory Work and Organization written by Davide Nicolini and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume provides a rigorous yet accessible introduction to this emerging area of study.
Download or read book A Practice Sensibility written by Stephen Kemmis and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces readers to the theory of practice architectures and conveys a way of approaching practice theory through developing a practice sensibility. It shows that, in order to change our practices, we must also change the conditions that make those practices possible. The book draws on everyday life to illustrate how we can see the world by watching it unfold in practices: it argues that life happens in practices. The theory of practice architectures takes the ontological nature of practices seriously by recognising that practices take place in the real world. Consequently, the book offers a new perspective on how practices happen amidst a vast world of happenings; on how we participate in the "happening-ness" of the world through our practices. It invites us to consider whether our practices reproduce or aggravate the contemporary environmental crises confronting the Earth, and whether we can transform our current practices to ameliorate these crises. Given its focus and scope, the book will benefit master's and doctoral students in social and educational theory, early career researchers, and established researchers new to practice theory.
Download or read book Handbook on Ontologies written by Steffen Staab and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. The concept is important for the purpose of enabling knowledge sharing and reuse. The Handbook on Ontologies provides a comprehensive overview of the current status and future prospectives of the field of ontologies. The handbook demonstrates standards that have been created recently, it surveys methods that have been developed and it shows how to bring both into practice of ontology infrastructures and applications that are the best of their kind.
Download or read book Ontology Representation written by Rinke Hoekstra and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on author's thesis from the Dutch Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems.
Download or read book Postdevelopment in Practice written by Elise Klein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postdevelopment in Practice critically engages with recent trends in postdevelopment and critical development studies that have destabilised the concept of development, challenging its assumptions and exposing areas where it has failed in its objectives, whilst also pushing beyond theory to uncover alternatives in practice. This book reflects a rich and diverse range of experience in postdevelopment work, bringing together emerging and established contributors from across Latin America, South Asia, Europe, Australia and elsewhere, and it brings to light the multiple and innovative examples of postdevelopment practice already underway. The complexity of postdevelopment alternatives are revealed throughout the chapters, encompassing research on economy and care, art and design, pluriversality and buen vivir, the state and social movements, among others. Drawing on feminisms and political economy, postcolonial theory and critical design studies, the ‘diverse economies’ and ‘world of the third’ approaches and discussions on ontology and interdisciplinary fields such as science and technology studies, the chapters reveal how the practice of postdevelopment is already being carried out by actors in and out of development. Students, scholars and practitioners in critical development studies and those seeking to engage with postdevelopment will find this book an important guide to applying theory to practice.
Download or read book An Introduction to Ontology written by Nikk Effingham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engaging and wide-ranging new book, Nikk Effingham provides an introduction to contemporary ontology - the study of what exists - and its importance for philosophy today. He covers the key topics in the field, from the ontology of holes, numbers and possible worlds, to space, time and the ontology of material objects - for instance, whether there are composite objects such as tables, chairs or even you and me. While starting from the basics, every chapter is up-to-date with the most recent developments in the field, introducing both longstanding theories and cutting-edge advances. As well as discussing the latest issues in ontology, Effingham also helpfully deals in-depth with different methodological principles (including theory choice, Quinean ontological commitment and Meinongianism) and introduces them alongside an example ontological theory that puts them into practice. This accessible and comprehensive introduction will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as any reader interested in the present state of the subject.
Download or read book Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction written by Ron Scollon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction makes an explicit link between media studies and social interactionalist discursive research where previously the two fields of study have been treated as separate disciplines. This text presents an integrated theory illustrated by ample concrete examples, bringing together the latest research in these two fields. It offers a critique to the sender-receiver model implicit in media studies, and argues for an analysis of media discourse as social interaction, on the one hand among journalists and newsmakers as a community of practice, and among readers and viewers as a spectating community of practice on the other. The book also argues for a coherent and interdiscursive methodology for the ethnographic study of the role of the news media in the social construction of identity and is based on a considerable body of ethnographic and textual analysis of both print and television news media. The theory of mediated discourse presented in this volume will be of great interest to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates studying media studies, sociology of language, discourse analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication and applied linguistics. It will also be welcomed by scholars and professionals involved in research in these areas.
Download or read book Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths written by Fabio Bacchini and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics and ontology feature among the traditional and fundamental concerns of philosophers. Gaining a picture of the world and the kind of objects that exist out there is for most philosophers (past and present) a preliminary aim upon which other theoretical activities depend. In fact, it seems that sound conclusions on topics relevant to ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and common and scientific knowledge can be achieved only after one has been given a picture of that sort. What is worth stressing, though, is that from time to time the tribunal of history has managed to put its finger on some flawed conclusions. To take a time-worn example, who would now accept Plato’s claim that the spatiotemporal world is just an imperfect copy of a world of abstract objects conceived of as perfect unchanging models of concrete things? The picture Plato gave us is nothing but a myth – an account which is too far away from what common sense and science could accept, too detached from the usual ways of conducting a rational discussion. Therefore, pictures of this kind appear to be supported by nothing but dogmas, i.e. uncompromising principles taken as true without any previous critical analysis. And Plato has no shortage of company. Issues of this kind revolving around metaphysics and ontology are tackled in the essays in this volume, which approach a secular debate in fresh and original ways, providing the necessary tools for clearing the field of unpalatable metaphysical and ontological items.
Download or read book Contributions to Social Ontology written by Clive Lawson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a dramatic re-emergence of interest in ontology. From philosophy and social sciences to artificial intelligence and computer science, ontology is gaining interdisciplinary influence as a popular tool for applied research. Contributions to Social Ontology focuses specifically on these developments within the social sciences. The contributions reveal that this revived interest in social ontology involves far more than an unquestioning acceptance or application of the concepts and methods of academic philosophers. Instead as ontology permeates so many new areas, social ontology itself is evolving in new and fascinating ways. This book engages with these new developments, pushing it forward with cutting-edge new material from leading authors in this area, from Roy Bhaskar to Margaret Archer. It also explicitly analyzes the relationship between the new ontological projects and the more traditional approaches. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers alike across the social sciences and particularly in philosophy, economics and sociology.
Download or read book Exploring Education and Professional Practice written by Kathleen Mahon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was written to help people understand and transform education and professional practice. It presents and extends the theory of practice architectures, and offers a contemporary account of what practices are composed of and how practices shape and are shaped by the arrangements with which they are enmeshed in sites of practice. Through its empirically-based case chapters, the book demonstrates how the theory of practice architectures can be used as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource to generate insights that have important implications for practice, theory, policy, and research in education and professional practice. These insights relate to how practices are shaped by arrangements (and other practices) present in specific sites of practice, including early childhood education settings, schools, adult education, and workplaces. They also relate to how practices create distinctive intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another in particular ways (a) in particular semantic spaces, (b) that are realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in particular social spaces. By applying such insights, readers can work towards changing practices by transforming the practice architectures that make them possible.
Download or read book The Practice of Political Theory written by Clayton Chin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent political thought has grappled with a crisis in philosophical foundations: how do we justify the explicit and implicit normative claims and assumptions that guide political decisions and social criticism? In The Practice of Political Theory, Clayton Chin presents a critical reconstruction of the work of Richard Rorty that intervenes in the current surge of methodological debates in political thought, arguing that Rorty provides us with unrecognized tools for resolving key foundational issues. Chin illustrates the significance of Rorty’s thought for contemporary political thinking, casting his conception of “philosophy as cultural politics” as a resource for new models of sociopolitical criticism. He juxtaposes Rorty’s pragmatism with the ontological turn, illuminating them as alternative interventions in the current debate over the crisis of foundations in philosophy. Chin places Rorty in dialogue with continental philosophy and those working within its legacy. Focused on both important questions in pragmatist scholarship and central issues in contemporary political thought, The Practice of Political Theory is an important response to the vexed questions of justification and pluralism.
