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The psychology of everyday life is one of the actively developing areas of modern Russian psychology. The leading theoretical and methodological sources of its development are history, anthropology and sociology of everyday life at the general scientific level of knowledge. Sources at the specific scientific level are the psychopathology of everyday life by Sigmund Freud, the field theory of Kurt Lewin, and the psychological concept of Hans Thomae. The demand for the ideas of Lewin is determined today by transformations of modernity, bringing to the fore the issues of socio-cultural dynamics and polymotivation of an individual, the clash of values and the subject’s conscious choice of a life path, formation of identity in changing life situations, and diversity of lifestyles in a complicated society. Everyday life is multi-layered, variegated, and heterogeneous. It presents the dynamics of the visible and invisible, real and surreal, modern and archaic. To detect gradual and imperceptible changes, it is often necessary to change the methodological toolkit. Lewin’s construct of “life space” in the context of the psychology of everyday life allows one to configure various aspects of human development in a situation of sociocultural transformations where social space can be both supportive and suppressive, and the spheres of private and public, personal and professional, mix. This results in a loss of normative boundaries. Cultural-psychological time in a common geographic space flows differently for people and communities, which not only creates risks of potential conflicts by drawing fault lines in the social fabric, but also poses the problem of a description language capable of combining nomothetic (revealing trends and patterns) and idiographic (directed analysis of unique cases) discourses. Lewin solved similar methodological and socio-political problems. It seems that his approach is very productive for the diagnosis and treatment of cultural and psychological trauma in Russian society. In the article, it is emphasized that the strategy of Lewin’s “action research” is close to the social constructivism of the Russian intellectual tradition, which makes it possible to comprehend the work of a psychologist as a solution to the problems of humanizing society and the education system.

Consumer complaining behavior (CCB) is an important stream of research and practice, as it links the domains of service failure and service recovery. CCB research, although extensive and temporally wide, exhibits a lack of concern for the underlying assumptions of scholarly inquiry. Researchers neither explicitly mention, nor consciously indicate their ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions. We systematically identify the extant CCB literature and map it to two well-accepted paradigmatic classifications (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Deetz Organization Science 7(2): 191–207, 1996). Normative or functionalist paradigm with the assumptions of an objective external reality, a positivist epistemology, a determinist view of human nature, and nomothetic methodology emerges as the dominant CCB research paradigm. The implications of this dominance are discussed as a barometer of the future of CCB research and practice.

My aim in this paper is to articulate and challenge a Foucauldian critique of scientific naturalism, and, in particular, a Foucauldian critique of the nomothetic framework underlying the Placement Problem. What I hope to achieve is to bring Foucauldian post-structuralist theory into the conversation concerning scientific naturalism and the Placement Problem. My Foucauldian post-structuralist critique of scientific naturalism questions the relations between our society’s imbrication of economic-political power structures and knowledge in such a way that also effects some constructive critical alignment between Foucault and Habermas, helping to undermine the traditional view of their respective social critiques as incompatible. First, I will outline a brief genealogical backstory for the rise of scientific naturalism, and I will then reconstruct the Placement Problem. In the second part of the paper, I introduce Foucault’s notion of pouvoir-savoir (‘power-knowledge’), namely his account of the interconnection between power and knowledge. I then go on to articulate the Foucauldian critique of scientific naturalism by arguing that the levelling nature of nomothetic rationality and its conservative naturalistic vocabulary involves regulative discourse: anything that resists placeability/locatability is labelled ‘odd’. By being thus visibly marked, ‘odd’ phenomena become ‘queer’ phenomena, which then become ‘problematic’ phenomena. They are, thereby, construed in need of discipline (and even punishment). Understood in this Foucauldian way, the most pressing problem with the disciplinary framework of scientific naturalism is that the erasure of the sui generis features of the normative space of reasons amounts to a debilitating variety of alienation in which humanity is estranged from its pluralist matrix of sense-making practices. Thus, scientific naturalist disciplinarity produces subjected and practised minds, ‘docile’ minds.

Often, contemporary studies maintain that mediaeval thinkers regarded money as a commodity, a metal valuable only according to its intrinsic value; however, a thorough textual examination reveals that they were first and foremost concerned with its institutional dimension as a nomothetic moment of community building. This contribution aims at clarifying the late mediaeval conceptualisation of the nature of money as it emerges from the commentaries of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to Aristotle's Ethica, V.8. "Talis fluxus et refluxus gratiarum commanere facit civitatem", notices Albert the Great, portraying money as an institution that guarantees this flow of mutual reciprocation. Money was then seen as the institution which brought together the different parts of the productive community, whose perpetuation was ensured via the government of the monetary system, allowing for balance among the interests of debtors and creditors, producers and rentiers, merchants and labourers.

Description of the research – The following paper analyses the methodology of economic sciences and hence has a meta scientific character. From the point of view of the general methodology of sciences, it is simultaneously descriptive and nomothetic and, in the light of the universal methods of inference, the deduction prevails in it. The inspiration to undertake meta scientific analysis was the controversy over the efficiency of the modern economy, strategy and economic policy as well as methodological incoherence and insufficient implementation effectiveness of economic sciences. Professional analysis of the research method of a specific area (field) cannot be limited to the creative invention itself, omitting both the subject and functionality of the theories created. And this is the nature of the attempts to undermine the efficiency paradigm of economic sciences. The problem is the methodological coherence (incoherence) of the economic sciences and, in a wider context, of the entire field of social sciences, consisting in the inability to conduct workshop research and leading to the multiplication of erroneous statements about the social process. In order to make the analysis more in-depth, two specific problems were identified: 1) the problem of the subject of economic research; and 2) the problem of coherence of the workshop economy, which often comes down to the unconscious crossing of the limits of economics.

In the critical tradition, environmental education discourse interrogates how knowledge constructs experience. But environmental education also emphasises perceiving, understanding and responding to “more-than-human” beings and processes. These two motivations are in tension. One problem is that the epistemological orientation driving the critique of knowledge seems to render access to something more-than-human a priori impossible. But environmental education squanders its promise and its dream if only ever permitted to talk about the natural world with scarequotes. Our field urgently needs to develop a realism robust against epistemologies that construct impassable barriers between humans and the rest of creation. I propose that this starts with radically reconceiving the nature and relationship between similarity and difference, interpreted in this article as the dynamic between theme and variations. Reworking Windelband’s distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research, I suggest that the relationship between theme and variation manifests a fundamental ontological pattern that pervades all things. “Theme and variation” proposes a unifying metaphysical duality in which the more-than-human reveals itself in how things suggest, conform to, modulate, and violate generalisation. Acknowledging and investigating this is part of restoring to other beings and processes their metaphysical, aesthetic, and ethical status, from the skies to the psyche.

Resumo A partir da investigação sobre os principais fundamentos ideológicos e pressupostos da organização associativa Escola sem Partido (ESP), com sede na cidade de São Paulo, este trabalho busca analisar as implicações das perspectivas e pautas defendidas pela associação para a educação e à sociedade brasileira na última década, abrangendo, mais especificamente, seus desdobramentos no âmbito do ensino da Sociologia no nível médio da educação básica. A pesquisa documental ocorreu junto aos meios de comunicação, eletrônicos e impressos, websites e redes sociais vinculadas ao ESP e abordadas a partir de contribuições da análise crítica do discurso. Como resultado, destacamos os conceitos de doutrinação ideológica e neutralidade do ensino propostos pelo ESP, seus temas e pautas que recaem sobre a questão do cerceamento da prática docente e aos componentes curriculares da disciplina de Sociologia, admitida apenas, quando se aproxime dos padrões nomotéticos de um conhecimento sociológico positivista e cientificista, reprodutores do seu projeto societário conservador. Abstract This study examined the main ideological foundations and assumptions of the organization Escola sem Partido (School without Party) (ESP), based in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. This article discusses the implications of the perspectives and guidelines regarding education and society defended by the organization in the last decade, highlighting, more specifically, the developments of the debate in sociology teaching in high school. Documentary research collected electronic and printed material from the press, websites, and social media linked to ESP, which was studied using critical discourse analysis. The results highlight the concepts of ideological indoctrination and neutrality of teaching proposed by ESP, as well as the topics and agenda related to the issue of the curtailment of teaching practice and curricular components of the discipline of sociology. For the ESP, sociology could only be admitted when reflecting nomothetic standards of a positivist and scientific sociological knowledge, reproducing the organization’s project of a conservative society.

In many respects, Discourse Analysis is deeply rooted in inter- and trans-disciplinarity, and researchers have gradually acknowledged the relevance of post-disciplinarity to discourse studies. Regardless of the specific methodological frameworks which may aim to understand, explain, or substantiate discourse phenomena, and despite the approaches adopted (be they more nomothetic or idiographic, quantitative or qualitative, descriptive or prescriptive, contemplative or action-oriented), the analysis of discourse can benefit from the overcoming of static disciplinary categories. Post-disciplinarity perspectives do not necessarily equal but do, to some extent, enhance the reconciliation of diverse epistemic communities and the aggregation of isolated specializations. From this viewpoint, this approach should not be confused with eclecticism or a lack of systematicity, but is intended here as a plurality of views transcending fixed categories in order to integrate more dynamic and fluid frameworks which can be adapted to the peculiarities of different phenomena.

This chapter outlines five ideas that I have been working on for the last two decades through the dialogue with Jaan Valsiner and on the grounds of his semiotic, dynamic view of meaning: (A) abstraction - the need of general theories to model psychological phenomena, (B) emergence - meaning as coming from sensemaking, (C) dynamic holism - sensemaking requires to be modeled as a field dynamics, (D) affective semiosis - the affective grounds of sensemaking, and (E) abduction - idiographic and nomothetic knowledge are complementary, linked by abduction. In the conclusion, I will point out three main challenges drawing the future of cultural psychology: the formalization of semiotic dynamics, the bridge between functional and computational levels of analysis, and the development of a general theory of sociocultural change and intervention.

This article maps a controversy in network science over the last 15 years, dividing the field about the epistemic status of a central notion, scale-freeness. The article accounts for the two main disputes, in 2005 and in 2018, as they unfolded in academic publications and on social media. This article analyzes the conflict, and the reasons why it reignited in 2018, to the surprise of many. It is argued that (1) the concept of complex networks is shared by the distinct subcultures of theorists and experimentalists; and that (2) these subcultures have incompatible approaches to knowledge: nomothetic (scale-freeness is the sign of a universal law) and idiographic (scale-freeness is an empirical characterization). Following Galison, this article contends that network science is a trading zone where theorists and experimentalists can trade knowledge across the epistemic divide.

Purpose By undertaking a detailed review of the Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) discourse, the purpose of this paper is to uncover and explicate the power differentials embedded in the social structure of organizations and suggests ways to reconcile them. Design/methodology/approach Methods used are thematic review, content analysis, and inductive theorizing, with Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical analysis style as the overarching framework. Findings At the methodological level, the authors demonstrate the application of Foucault’s twin methods: archaeological and genealogical analysis. At the substantive level, the authors have two contributions. First, the authors critique and analyze the various themes of power that emerge from the SHRM discourse as well as the hybridized overlaps of SHRM with other organization studies topics of interest such as organizational learning, network studies, control and postmodernism. Second, the authors propose a “Power” theory based nomothetic, typological synthesis for crafting the business-facing human resource (HR) function. The power lens manifests as the meta-theory to guide a much required streamlining of constructs and “value laden” synthesis of the literature. Research limitations/implications The potential of critical theory in crafting situated and context-sensitive research propositions is demonstrated. Practical implications Organizational strategists and HR managers can utilize the proposed typology to better understand their current ideological positions and decide future aspired images. Originality/value This is a conversation between two paradigms, SHRM and power theory, that are epistemologically at two opposite poles.

History and case study are two diachronic research strategies commonly used to study political discourse as it relates to public libraries. Though suitable for some studies, these strategies are inexhaustive. A new, blended research strategy is therefore needed to accomplish what history and case study alone cannot. This hybrid strategy, historical case study, must analyze cases from the distant past to the present, using eclectic data sources, in order to produce both idiographic and nomothetic knowledge. To develop historical case study, the universal components of diachronic analysis are first identified. A general research design for historical case study is then introduced. Finally, historical case study is tested in an actual research project. Findings from this project reveal that historical case study is a successful diachronic research strategy. Historical case study is a new and valuable research design suitable for addressing questions related to change, continuity, development, and evolution.

In this piece of provocation we focus on the words of people who we view as increasingly powerful institutional actors in the field of organization theory and what they signify about ‘what needs to be done’ and ‘how it needs to be done’ in order to rectify the many failings they identify. We suggest that their actions reflect a desire for an integrated, general theory of organizations and the conception of organization studies as a nomothetic science to which they (and perforce we) are philosophically and ideologically committed. These are seen to be intellectual and ideological forces at work on both sides of the Atlantic. We provide a critique of this emerging orthodoxy within contemporary organization theory, briefly drawing on Swift’s metaphor of Lilliputian ‘big enders’ and ‘little enders’ but also offer contemplation of the architectural metaphors of ‘cathedral’, ‘mystery house’ and ‘the tower of Babel’ (conceived of as ruination) to consider the alternative imaginary edifices that may influence the structure of our studies. Finally, we specify an alternative research agenda for organization theory which focuses upon ‘the organization of destruction’ rather than ‘the organization of production’ or ‘the organization of consumption’. Rather than seeing any contestation of intellectual traditions, analytical frameworks and methodological strategies as mental manacles and shackles which we need to ‘throw off’ to rediscover our true vocation as organization scientists, we contend that organization theory needs to reignite a fierce dialogue over ‘organization’ and its relation to order and disorder that has stretched over, at least, two millennia and still speaks to our lives today and tomorrow.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report a study of targets’ experiences of cyberbullying on online labour markets (OLMs). In addition to highlighting the link between targets’ coping and power and control, the paper compares conventional and digital workplaces. Design/methodology/approach The method of critical hermeneutic phenomenology is used in the inquiry, bringing political and applied dimensions into the study. Targets’ lived experiences, developed as case studies, were explored via conversational interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken ideographically, followed by ideology-critique at a nomothetic level. Adopting the psychological/behavioural lens of coping theory, ideology-critique identified micro-level schemas and macro-level ideologies that perpetuate target disenfranchisement. Critical hermeneutic phenomenology illuminates the mutuality between individual and social processes, opening new doors to address power inequities through emancipation. Findings Hermeneutic phenomenology uncovered the core theme of “pursuing holistic and long-term well-being”, capturing targets’ attempts at working through their experiences of bullying without jeopardising their position on the OLM. Ideology-critique went beyond highlighting problem-focussed and emotion-focussed coping strategies that empowered targets to indicate how participants’ mindsets, anchored in ongoing circumstantial discourses and long-standing social cognitions, inhibited them from questioning the status quo and exploring alternative coping strategies like legislation and collectivisation, thereby curbing their agency. The findings were theorised in terms of power and control vis-à-vis the unique attributes of workplace cyberbullying, comparing and contrasting conventional and virtual workplaces. Research limitations/implications The inquiry is limited to the Upwork platform. Including other OLMs will enhance theoretical generalisability. Practical implications The study feeds into praxis by alerting digital workers in general and targets in particular about their circumstances, setting the stage for mobilisation. Originality/value The study makes several pioneering contributions. First, it reports the first empirical inquiry examining bullying in digital workplaces, importantly, also extending knowledge on cyberbullying across conventional versus digital workplaces. Moreover, OLM research on abuse and harassment has not been undertaken so far. Second, methodologically, the inquiry illustrates the combination of hermeneutic phenomenology with ideology-critique, taking the rare steps of joining ontological perspectives conventionally viewed as divergent and of incorporating a largely neglected micro-level focus into ideology-critique. Third, it furthers theoretical insights into power and control in workplace bullying while drawing links with coping.

Comparative criminology has long struggled with the concept and object of culture while advances in culturally oriented criminologies have been ignored. Likewise, culturalists have ignored attempts at comparison for transcending milieu and are mired by theoretical and methodological eclecticism. Comparative criminology will benefit from engaging with conceptualisations of culture found in culturalist works and culturally oriented criminologies will benefit from an expanded focus beyond localised contexts to reveal and grapple with greater varieties of (sub)cultural variation. After bringing a qualified cultural criminology to comparative criminology I draw on the philosophy of science known as perspectival realism to address some epistemological and methodological problems in each camp. I argue an interpretive comparative criminology focused in identifying and generating conceptual variation is better suited to understand and grapple with the political-cultural dramatisations that are indicated by the statistical data of interest to those wedded to the comparative, nomothetic orthodoxy.

In this paper, we will discuss the possibility of understanding experimental studies on cultural transmission processes from an articulation between the particular–general relation in the construction of knowledge, with an approximation between the notions of Nomothetic and Idiographic science. For this, we discuss data collected from an experimental project about the cultural transmission process drawing our attention, as much to the continuities as the discontinuities present in the process. Our discussions pointed to the need to consider, in experimental studies, the particular actions and significations of research participants, as well as the generalization that is dialogically constructed in the collectivity. With this in mind, it is proposed that at least three theoretical-methodological aspects cannot be lost sight of when considering the experimental study of the cultural transmission process: (1) the relation between Idiographic and Nomothetic science; (2) interdependent relational processes that occur between particularities and generalities; and (3) the need to appreciate continuities and discontinuities as part of the process of construction and analysis of experimental projects.

PurposeIn the wake of the ongoing financial crisis, US managerialism has been denounced as a professional caste that has slowly served to erode the competitiveness of the US economy. In light of this, there is an increasing search for possible alternatives to US managerialism, with some authorities putting forward that one enviable alternative is “Confucian management”, which they claim is a means of organising in Chinese institutions that gets things done by pulling on the rich heritage of Ancient Chinese philosophy. The purpose of this paper is to interrogate “Confucian management”.Design/methodology/approachThis paper questions the common view of “Confucian management” through an ethnography of Baiyun University (a pseudonym) in South China, where the author worked as a “foreign” English lecturer for one academic year, and in order to do this the author draws on participant-observation and semi-structured interviews. Ethnography has long been associated with colonialism and has more recently been connected with post-colonialism, so in an attempt to decolonise the methodology, the author analyses the generated research data through a Chinese sensitive cultural framework.FindingsThis paper argues that “Confucian management” offers a confused and epistemologically questionable view on Chinese management. It points to some of the limitations of management and organisation studies brought about by claims being made without sufficient empirical evidence.Research limitations/implicationsThe focus is on “Confucian management” at Baiyun University so findings are specific to this empirical research site. It is also acknowledged that universities have a divergent form of management to other institutions. The paper’s intent is ideographic rather than nomothetic; therefore, no claims to generalisation are made.Originality/valueThe paper makes three substantive contributions. First, the empirical contribution is an ethnographic description of “Confucian management” at Baiyun University. Second, the methodological contribution attempts to decolonise methodology by analysing the generated research data through a Chinese sensitive cultural framework. Third, the epistemological contribution queries to what extent “Confucian management” as an idea that is enunciated from the Global North is able to effectively speak about a practice that is supposedly performed in the Global South.

In a recent paper, Chris Haufe paints a provocative portrait of the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. His principal aim is to resolve a “paradox” arising from a prima facie inconsistent pair of commitments: (a) Gould believed that the biological facts could have been otherwise (the Replay Thesis), and (b) Gould believed that there are evolutionary laws. In order to resolve this paradox, Haufe makes two substantive claims: (1) Gould was aware of the challenges that the Replay Thesis posed for a law-centered science of evolution, even early in his career, and (2) Gould endeavored to meet these challenges by deploying the “species-as-particles approach.” In this paper, I put pressure on both of these claims. By examining the goals and methods of Gould’s first “nomothetic research program,” the science of form, I show that it does not fit the picture of nomothetic science that Haufe illustrates. Additionally, I show that no straightforward connection exists between Gould’s understanding of contingency and his (short-lived) adoption of the species-as-particles approach. I propose that Gould’s career can be usefully split into three periods, each of which employed a distinct strategy for establishing distinctively paleontological contributions to evolutionary theory.

Monism or plurality as a theoretical foundation of psychology? Traditionally, the sciences have been divided into the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Natural sciences consider objective, i. e. thirdperson entities, whereas the humanities concern subjective intentional processes that depend on first-person interpretation. This leads to a dualistic dichotomy of nomothetic versus idiographic approaches. Now what about psychology, the science of (first-person) experience and (third-person) behavior? The development of this discipline has put forward dualistic and monistic, mental and physiological theories in rapid succession, which is perpetuated in today’s (dualistic and pluralistic) cognitive-behavioral psychology on the one hand and the (monistic) neuroscience reductions on the other. Some reductionists, particularly in clinical psychology, even favor the monistic approach of social constructivism. Thus, the discussion in the discipline of psychology has remained at a clearly pluralistic, possibly pre-paradigmatic, stage. We argue that no reductive solution is in sight - so that psychology should openly acknowledge its dual aspects of mind and body. This dual-aspect approach should be supported by a structural science foundation. The structural-mathematical science of complexity and synergetics can offer concepts and laws that are valid in both the physical and mental domains - analogous pattern formation schemes govern both physical-behavioral and mental-intentional processes.

This chapter begins by describing the first stage of a line of reasoning (that continues in Chapters 2– 5) wherein Identity Structure Analysis (Weinreich, 2003) is offered as a method that can generate information for the creation of professional development plans for entire schools and mentorship advice for individual teachers. Illustrative nomothetic Identity Structure Analyses follow the opening argument of this chapter. The first nomothetic analysis is of a faculty of education class and the second combines identity data across 3 schools. The first identity analysis is offered as proxy for a faculty of education and the second as proxy for a school board or local education authority. Both analyses illustrate that ISA can generate advice for professional development that is specific to the needs of the institution to hand. The use of ISA to develop such advice is offered as a ready way to augment current approaches to teacher professional development. The chapter closes with description of ways that governments and boards might use nomothetic reports to monitor schools across and within nations, regions and boards so that professional development resources might be better spent.

This chapter will consider the nomothetic capabilities of ISA. That is, focus will be placed on ISA analyses at the level of the individual school. Links between school identity and current and future approaches to professional development will be explored as will consideration of how summaries of ISA analyses can be implemented within professional development procedures to mentor a school’s teachers in a structured and informed manner.

Objective This article analyzes how the extremely authoritarian nature of the Iraqi regime affected scholarship of Iraq and shows how regime opacity and brutality constrain social science research. Methods The article examines scholarly output on Iraq using qualitative and quantitative metrics from the Saddam Hussein era and the post-2003 period after his removal from power. Results The article finds a dramatic increase in the quantity of publications on Iraq after 2003 and a shift toward more nomothetic, theory-building research involving Iraq. New forms of research on Iraq, including field research, embedded observation, interviews, surveys, and archival research, also became prevalent after 2003. Conclusion The progress of social science research depends both on regime transparency and regime stability. Researchers can adjust techniques to address the absence of transparency or stability, but without the combination of both, the overall venture suffers.

Risk in society is a pertinent concept of late modernity. Most elements of our social and interpersonal lives are in some way linked to concerns about safety, security and fear of harm. As a consequence, we spend a great deal of time engaged in emotional, physical and economic processes that facilitate our safety. Whether this be through purchasing anti-theft devices, or subscribing to self-defense training courses; participating in neighbourhood-watch schemes or altering our behavior to prevent susceptibility to victimization, all demonstrate an inherent pre-occupation with risk and perceived danger. The work presented in this paper offers an in-depth socio-criminological analysis focusing on the issue of citizens insecurity, and proposes an original interpretative paradigm emerging from findings on the INNES (Intimate Neighborhood Strengthening) European Project. A presentation of the idiographic and nomothetic motivations and conditions influencing and predicting social fears and insecurities over the last two decades is discussed, with the presentation of the new interpretative model, ‘Social Cobweb Theory’. This model focuses on solidarity and on the strengthening of intimate neighborhood bonds and argues that these aforementioned concepts function as an effective approach in lowering citizens' perceptions of individual insecurities and risk.

The study of civil war has increased exponentially during the post-Cold War period. This has not, however, resulted in greater levels of consensus with regard to the causes and nature of this phenomenon. Indeed, as Jonathan Goodhand has shown, the conflict studies discipline is currently experiencing something of a ‘crisis of theory as well as a crisis of practice’ (2006, 29). This article aims to show, however, that this situation can be alleviated by drawing on the critical realist approach to the philosophy of science. This is the case, in short, because critical realism provides conflict studies authors with a more sophisticated and coherent understanding of causality than has previously been available to them. More specifically, it has developed a mechanism-based understanding of causality which transcends the persistent split between (1) nomothetically-oriented (or ‘universal law-oriented’) approaches, predominantly associated with the work of various neo-positivist authors, and (2) idiographically-oriented (or ‘single case-oriented’) approaches, associated with the work of a much more diverse group of authors. By making the case for this mechanism-based approach, however, this article also aims to show that critical realist philosophy paves the way for an alternative approach to social science. An approach, that is, which – rather than consistently abstracting from (historical/geographical) context in the way that neo-positivist studies do – systematically engages with the context in which civil wars take place.

The categories of social success­unsuccess are examined, the critical going is offered near this binary opposition as to the out­of­date form of social discourse and systems of self­presentations and self­definition. In exchange nomothetic principle, principle of ideographic allowing more exactly to describe a subject in the systems of social cooperation is offered. General aim hired – to show, whatever the usual, standard, generally accepted, popular formulas of success have and can not have no universal value on the essence. In this connection it is necessary to subject to criticism so widespread conception of binarism, that in an obvious or hidden kind is in grounds to the traditional, conservative culture and philosophy. This position can come forward as founding for new social epistemology, in that binarism not abolished, but becomes one of possible variants, that is suitable for description of a limit number of social cooperations. General aim hired – to show, whatever the usual, standard, generally accepted, popular formulas of success have and can not have no universal value on the essence. In this connection it is necessary to subject to criticism so widespread conception of binarism, that in an obvious or hidden kind is in grounds to the traditional, conservative culture and philosophy. This position can come forward as founding for new social epistemology, in that binarism not abolished, but becomes one of possible variants, that is suitable for description of a limit number of social cooperations. The modern theories of alternative sociality do not suppose the presence of single criteria of estimation of different, extraordinarily various vital scenarios. What be more, all possible vital scenarios can be described out of scopes of paradigm approach and considered as a single multivalent structure is the semantic field, where any certain choice depends only on individuality of everybody. By the result of consideration of binary opposition «success­failure» the radical rethinking must become, if pleasingly, destruction and de­construction of principle of binarism and orientations on initially set, and in fact, constructed public ideals, understanding of that circumstance, that these values are not that another, as a result of fully certain historical type of public device. It is thus impossible not to notice that society in the motion constantly products the new forms of social practices and sociocultural discourse, that even if does not change him fully, then in any event, substantially influence on his development. The account of this circumstance must be related to abandonment from traditional research receptions and creation by new social epistema, as only in this case social knowledge is able to save the heuristic potential.

This paper takes as its starting point the recent interventions of Jock Young (2011) on the contemporary state of criminology. In adding to these observations those made by Connell (2007) and Aas (2012), the case will be made, following de Sousa Santos (2014), for a criminology of absences. In endeavouring to uncover these absences, the paper will consider how the ‘bogus of positivism’ (Young 2011, chapter 4), its associated presumptions and related conceptual thinking, manifest themselves in two substantive areas of contemporary concern: violence against women and violent extremism. With the first of these issues I shall consider the ongoing controversies in which the bogus of positivism is most apparent: the powerful influence of the criminal victimisation survey as the data gathering instrument about such violence. In the second area of concern, this bogus of positivism is most apparent in its ‘nomothetic impulse’ (ibid: 73). Both of these discussions will expose different, but connected absences within criminology. In the final and concluding part of this paper, I shall return to the questions posed by the title of this paper: whither criminology, and in the light of this discussion, offer some thoughts on the place of Asian criminology within criminology’s global future(s).

In the original article, the section heading was incorrectly published. The heading of Section 8 should read as “Nomothetic and Idiographic Principles” rather than “Omothetic and Idiographic Principles”.

Discussing from a phenomenological stance the distinction between hyletic and expressive conceptions of norms, I stress that phenomenology is able to develop an analysis of nomothetic intentionality that can surmount the opposition presented by Alchourrón and Bulygin. However, this entails a revision of the Husserlian analysis of the relationship between judgments and norms, namely of his thesis concerning the foundation of every intentional act in objectifying acts. I highlight the specificity of normative intentionality, its non-dependence on objectifying acts, and I propose to name the quality of normative acts as “ductive force”. Then, I take distance to the classical analysis of normative judgments as having the ought-form, outlining a more detailed analysis of them, namely stressing that the juridical propositions must have a richer content in order to describe norms. Then, I propose my own account based on the concept of “ductive force”. I affirm that the ductive force of norms cannot be identified only with coercion. I show that there is, even inside the juridical sphere, a variety of ductive forces, going from sheer coercion to council and recommendation. Finally, I stress the centrality of the concept of “ductive force” for a phenomenology of the social world.

It has become essential and urgent that significant actors in the management field of research become aware of the current rejection of previously accepted philosophical caricatures. The unrealistic though “tidy” paradigmatic dichotomy, positivism/quantitative/deduction versus interpretivism/qualitative/induction, is being rejected. Instead, a growing and “untidy” consensus is emerging that helps to position grounded theory (GT) in the research landscape. This growing consensus includes perspectives that range from nomothetic to idiographic and highlights data-driven exploratory approaches in opposition to theory-driven confirmatory approaches. While the foundational pillars of GT (emergence, theoretical sampling, and constant comparison) have to be respected when conducting a GT study, there certainly is plenty of room for creativity in the implementation of a data-driven exploratory GT approach. GT is not limited to an all-encompassing method for qualitative or interpretive research: It is much broader and may be applied from various philosophical perspectives that range from nomothetic to idiographic.

Recognizing that design is at the core of information systems development has led to a design-science research paradigm where differing kinds of knowledge goals give form to differing kinds of knowledge processes within a single study. This paper analyzes knowledge production in design-science research to explain how an endogenous form of pluralism characterizes such studies, making it problematic to associate any design-science study with a single view of knowledge production. Instead, a design-science research study exhibits up to four different modes of reasoning, called genres of inquiry. These genres are derived from two dualities that contrast differing knowledge goals and differing knowledge scope in the knowledge production process. The first duality arises from the sometimes seemingly contradictory knowledge goals of science versus design. The second duality reflects the contradiction between the scope of the knowledge produced, which may be idiographic or nomothetic. The evolutionary and iterative nature of a design-science study compels different knowledge goals and scope at different moments throughout a project. Because of this momentary nature, a single design-science study can be associated with multiple genres of inquiry. This understanding of the variety in the genres of inquiry advances the discourse on the nature of design-science research and the justification and evaluation of its outcomes. Consequently, a corresponding set of criteria for knowledge justification and evaluation is provided for each genre of inquiry.

The article brings about an analysis of major conceptualizations of processes leading to the emergence and development of social complexity and inequality, which have been formulated within major paradigms of contemporary archaeology. The most significant contribution to these issues was offered by archaeologies inspired by functionalism and neoevolutionism. These attempts corresponded with an attempt to turn archaeology into a nomothetic discipline. Of different character were works inspired by Marxism, Neomarxism, and poststructuralism. They offered a valuable contribution to the conceptualization of the means of achieving social goals and performing social roles by different actors.

The purpose of this contribution is to steer between the idiographic and nomothetic poles, and to present in action the method of structured, focalized and controlled comparisons that are liable to produce “contextualized” “intermediary” theories. I will outline the explanative potential of “chrono-logics” and specific contexts. The emphasis will at first be put on the merits and limits of “particularistic” conceptions of social phenomena, then on underlining the advantages and problems of “covering law,” an ambition of the dominant approaches. Finally, I will demonstrate the focalized and controlled comparison method and will show how it provides a way of analyzing international crises between times of war and peace without misrecognizing the particularity of “cases.”

This paper presents the concept of symbolic resources for apprehending sense-making in learning and instruction. It first reminds the centrality of sense-making in learning and instruction from a sociocultural perspective, and proposes a pragmatist approach to examine what sorts of knowledge people use when they face situations that matter. The paper then presents two series of studies of symbolic resources. The first studies, led in informal situations, allow to define the concept of symbolic resources and a model of its uses. The second series is focused on school situations, and examines how school knowledge can be used as symbolic resources, and also, how symbolic resources can support learning in educational settings. This leads into a discussion on the role of institutional and social dynamics in the relations between learning in and out of school, at the heart of sense-making, as well as on the central role of imagination in learning and development. The paper ends by underlying the centrality of sense-making in learning and development, and the need to complement nomothetic studies with a more idiographic understanding of the complex dynamics involved.

“Interdisciplinary Cases and Disciplinary Knowledge: Epistemic Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research” provides a conceptual framework of interdisciplinarity in the context of contemporary philosophy of science and social epistemology. It describes a widespread tension between the interdisciplinary commitment to complex real-world problems and the disciplinary strategies to build simplified models. While real-world problems call for highly specific and context-sensitive solutions, disciplinary problems serve as exemplars of more a general type. The epistemological challenge of interdisciplinarity is to relate knowledge about complex and singular cases with knowledge about generalized concepts and causalities. This relationship calls for a combination between the “humanistic” ideal of understanding the individual case, and the “scientific” search for common features of different cases. In practice interdisciplinary projects find ways to bridge causal explanation and the concern for the case. An epistemological attempt is made to conceptually integrate the search for universally applicable knowledge and idiographic richness.

The introduction puts forth a vision of critical sociology that moves beyond the divide between empirical research and theory, as well as between scientific analysis and normative critique, by proposing a research agenda organized around three substantive themes: recasting the character of social relations and interactions in contemporary society, uncovering institutional and discursive configurations of socio-economic and political power, and understanding emerging cultural practices and their social implications. Hence, a critical sociology grounded in the themes of society, power, and culture navigates among four conceptual pairings in the human sciences: artistic versus scientific, idiographic versus nomothetic, normative versus analytical, and hermeneutical versus scientific. The chapter then proposes a set of analytical principles to guide critically minded sociological research: sociocentric ontology, social constructivist epistemology, a priori analytical indeterminacy, perspectivalist methodology, and theoretical pluralism.

The tendency to emulate the nomothetic discourse of the natural sciences appeared in the history of genre theory, including that of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. According to both the positivist history of literary genres (Brunetiere) and the materialistic-systemic approach (Moretti), the concept of evolution figures as an epistemic metaphor through which the discipline can re-conceptualize itself and thus achieve a scientific nomothetic character. During the present heyday of social Darwinism and global economism, the epistemological difference between the humanities and hard sciences is escalating into a struggle for the survival of both: the modern branch of literary Darwinism understands the theory of evolution literally and uses it to interpret literature (including its genres) as a phenomenon resulting from remote evolutionary adaptations of the human species. Neo-Darwinists advertise that a full harmonization of literary studies with the natural-science paradigm (“consilience”) will ensure the former’s survival; yet, they practice traditional literary interpretation, seeking in literary texts allegories of the biologically conceived “human nature.”

Approaching the centenary of its establishment as a formal discipline, International Relations today challenges the ahistorical and aspatial frameworks advanced by the theories of earlier luminaries. Yet, despite a burgeoning body of literature built on the transdisciplinary efforts bridging International Relations and its long-separated nomothetic relatives, the new and emerging conceptual frameworks have not been able to effectively overcome the challenge posed by the ‘non-West’. The recent wave of international historical sociology has highlighted possible trajectories to problematise the myopic and unipolar conceptions of the international system; however, the question of Eurocentrism still lingers in the developing research programmes. This article interjects into the ongoing historical materialist debate in international historical sociology by: (1) conceptually and empirically challenging the rigid boundaries of the extant approaches; and (2) critically assessing the postulations of recent theorising on ‘the international’, capitalist states-system/geopolitics and uneven and combined development. While the significance of the present contributions in international historical sociology should not be understated, it is argued that the ‘Eurocentric cage’ still occupies a dominant ontological position which essentially silences ‘connected histories’ and conceals the role of inter-societal relations in the making of the modern states-system and capitalist geopolitics.

Bioarchaeology is the contextual analysis of biological remains from past societies. It is a young and growing discipline born during the latter half of the twentieth century from its roots in physical anthropology and archaeology. Although often associated with the study of ancient diet and disease, bioarchaeology leverages variable temporal scales and its global scope to provide a uniquely comparative perspective on human life that transcends traditional boundaries of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Here, we explore the public face of bioarchaeology and consider the trends in publication practices that reflect diversifying research strategies. Bioarchaeology is a popular topic on web-based science news aggregators. However, we identify a disconnect between bioarchaeology's traditional research emphases, emerging research foci, and findings that actually spark the public imagination. A majority of popular news articles emphasize basic discovery or “natural curiosities.” Publication data indicate the field also remains regionally focused with relatively little emphasis on nomothetic goals. Nevertheless, bioarchaeology can do more to leverage its historical perspective and corporeal emphasis to engage a number of topics with importance across traditional academic boundaries. Big data, comparative, multi-investigator, interdisciplinary projects on violence, colonialism, and health offer the most obvious potential for driving research narratives in the biological and social sciences. Humanistic approaches that explore emotional connections to the past can also have merit. The diversity of research outlets and products indicates the field must embrace the importance of nontraditional activities in its value structure to maximize our potential in public arenas. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 27:51–60, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A co-authored collaboration between a theatre practitioner and a clinical psychiatrist, this paper will examine Rough for Theatre II (RFTII) and Beckett's demonstration of the way records are used to understand the human subject. Using Beckett's play to explore interdisciplinary issues of embodiment and diagnosis, the authors will present a dialogue that makes use of the 'best sources' in precisely the same manner as the play's protagonists. One of those sources will be Beckett himself, as Heron will locate the play in its theatrical context through reflections upon his own practice (with Fail Better Productions, UK) as well as recent studies such as Beckett, Technology and the Body (Maude 2009) and Performing Embodiment in Samuel Beckett's Drama (McMullan 2010); another source will be the philosopher Wilhelm Windleband, whose 1901 History of Philosophy was read and noted upon by Beckett in the 1930s, as Broome will introduce a philosophical and psychiatric context to the exchange. Windelband is now a neglected figure in philosophy; but as one of the key figures of Neo-Kantianism in the late 19(th) century, his work was an important impetus to that of Rickert, Weber and Heidegger. Specifically, Windelband gives us the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic understanding of individuals, an approach that is of relevance to the psychiatric encounter. This academic dialogue will consider tensions between subjectivity and objectivity in clinical and performance practice, while examining Beckett's analysis of the use of case notes and relating them back to Windelband's ideas on the understanding of others. The dialogue took place in 2011 at the University of Warwick, and has since been edited by the authors.

Reflecting developments in the broader penological realm, accounts have been advanced over the last number of decades about a ‘punitive turn’ in the youth justice systems of Western democracies. Against the background of this work, this project seeks to identify convergent and divergent trends in the youth justice systems of England, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as well as the rationalities and discourses animating these. The results lend support to research emphasising the continued salience of national, regional and local factors on penal outcomes but also suggest the need to steer an analytical path somewhere between nomothetic (convergent) and idiographic (divergent) accounts.

Chapter 4 introduces some further methodological issues in the context of post-positivism. Research should place interpretive concerns at the center of social inquiry, not at nomothetic inquiry. Instead, we should look for explanations that are historical in character. A critical theory, however, views research as a reciprocal relation between participants and observers. It redefines the relations between experts and laymen. I discuss some attempts and criticisms of the participatory research model. It promotes reflection on the part of both inquirers and participants on the social situation they live and addresses conditions of domination and oppression. This requires rethinking the relation between experts and laymen. This perspective illuminates a recurring problem in the phronetic model. It tends to rely on the virtuoso capacities of the inquirer to intervene to solve crises, not collective action. The neo-Aristotelian model, in addition, is not sufficient to theorize the nature of intersubjectivity in modern societies.

The prevailing belief system, worldview, research tradition, or as it is also known paradigm influences what can be studied, who can study it, and how it should be studied—or using fancier words: the answers to the ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions. In the early days positivism ruled, slowly replaced by postpositivism, and complemented by critical theory and constructivism; the dominating quantitative methods were joined by qualitative methods and the nomothetic focus interspersed by idiographic efforts. As always when different belief systems exist, there is a risk for confrontations, possibly explaining the paradigm wars that some say still rages. The emerging audit culture, where more is always better—more peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals, more and bigger research grants—increases the risk for methodological fundamentalism and a preference for biomedical models of research. Unless we are aware of the danger and take action to prevent that sport and exercise psychology research once again will be conducted in a less than optimal way.

This article proposes an indicator for measuring the hierarchy of academic production in Brazilian political science, based on Qualis, the impact factor and the share of articles on Political Science in selected journals. The dataset comprises 23 renowned national journals. Findings show that disciplinary traditions emphasizing institutional analysis as well as quantitative and nomothetic approaches, based on the proposition and testing of hypotheses and causal arguments predominate. This state of affairs, in turn, is explained by particular parameters for evaluating the academic production, that is, the institutionalization of a specific disciplinary view, a scientific-politological one.

Western public administration as a discipline and practice has been foisted on Africa. In its evolutionary trajectory, the dominant narratives of public administration tend to assume a totalizing, universalistic, nomothetic posture as they both undermine and ignore other worldviews. In Africa the upshot has been public policy that scarcely responds robustly to the continent's "wicked problems." While the dominant corpus of Western public administration has seemingly evolved over time, its ontological underpinnings, securely strapped to Enlightenment ideals, remain intact. However, the current turn to process in the literature and the search for alternative ontologies offer a philosophical opening for an authentic African public administration. Such a project is validated by several African ontological values. Drawing on the work of some of Africa's leading philosophers, this article shows how these ontological values are critical for crafting a new public administration for Africa. It argues that a new Af...

Research should be legitimized and clarified by the philosophical frame by which it metaphorically hangs. Such clarity is important in so far as it helps to provide a foundation for guiding researchers' evaluations of the quality of their research findings. This article focuses on certain philosophical pre-conditions and justifications, that is, the underlying, pre-theoretical or pre-scientific provisos/specifications/provisions for a researcher's thinking and hence for his or her decisions about which methodology to follow and methods to apply when researching a problem. In order to achieve this aim, the authors discuss the four 'sides' or 'panels' of the philosophical frame by which a researcher's research method, in general, tends to hang, figuratively speaking: namely, (a) integrated personality orientation; (b) transcendental orientation; (c) teleological orientation; and (d) nomothetic orientation. Overlooking this 'frame by which a researcher's methodological picture hangs' might have serious repercussions for how one conducts research.

A review of methodological inquiry shows that, from its inception, comparative public administration (CPA) scholarship brushed over important epistemological and ontological questions in favor of searching for broad-based, generalizable theories that subscribed to only objectivist ontologies. This article traces these problematic methodological assumptions in contemporary CPA research back to the mischaracterization of the terms idiographic and nomothetic in CPA research. Revisiting this history is important because the recognition of this distinction allows room in the field for research that highlights the uniqueness of different cultural contexts and constructs.

Interest is growing in community psychology to look more closely at culture. Culture has resided in community psychology in its emphasis on context, ecology, and diversity, however we believe that the field will benefit from a more explicit focus on culture. We suggest a cultural approach that values the community's points of view and an understanding of shared and divergent meanings, goals, and norms within a theory of empowerment. Furthermore, we posit the importance of pluralistic, multi-method programs of research and action encompassing both idiographic and nomothetic approaches, and critical reflexivity of our roles and agendas. Culture can be further incorporated into all the branches and fibers of community psychology.

What are the fundamental factors that promote highly influential creativity? How do these factors differ in Western and Far Eastern civilizations? Many researchers have addressed these questions using historiometrics, a method that tests nomothetic hypotheses about human behaviour by subjecting historical and biographical data to objective and quantitative analyses. These investigations may entail either aggregate-level analyses (e.g., generational time series of creative activity) or individual-level analyses (e.g., cross-sectional studies of creative achievement). Moreover, the empirical findings in each of these two approaches fall into two categories of East-West comparisons: (i) shared variables and convergent results and (ii) shared variables and divergent results. After reviewing representative findings in each of these categories, we discuss what the results imply about the nature of high-impact creativity in the East and West and also explore areas of potential future historiometric research.