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In organization studies, there is a cleavage in the literature that separates 'questions' and 'questioning' at a very fundamental philosophical level. On the one hand, the objective notion of 'questions' has already been well addressed. On the other hand, the process of 'questioning' remains under-researched. Although questioning the process of questioning is challenging, this is precisely where American pragmatism can be helpful. As we explore in this essay, the forward-looking quality of pragmatist inquiry is what motors the process of questioning. Our pragmatist-inflected argument is that questioning does not always have to serve critique and position building in the organization studies field. Rather, questioning out of curiosity can build new dialogue and open up new methodological avenues. This will help change the habitual ways in which we explore ideas, problems and situations in organization studies as well as lead to more democratic forms of organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In classical American pragmatism, fallibilism refers to the conception of truth as an ongoing process of improving human knowledge that is nevertheless susceptible to error. This paper traces appearances of fallibilism in Jewish thought in general, and particularly in the halakhic thought of Eliezer Berkovits. Berkovits recognizes the human condition's persistent mutability, which he sees as characterizing the ongoing effort to interpret and apply halakhah in shifting historical and social contexts as Torat Ḥayyim. In the conclusion of the article, broader questions and observations are raised regarding Jewish tradition, fallibility, and modernity, and the interaction between Judaism and pragmatism in the history of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Gatekeeping appears central to creative industries. To better understand gatekeeping, this article introduces a distinction between discovering and justifying the selection of cultural goods. Most research deals with legitimation and justifications for selecting cultural goods. This article draws on American pragmatism to elucidate gatekeepers' discovery of cultural goods under conditions of uncertainty and abundance. The article focuses on the discovery of publishable unsolicited manuscripts. Publishers learn to act upon particular kinds of experiences associated with publishable manuscripts. Gatekeepers learn to abandon preformed ideas of what to look for and instead use either an aesthetic or an efferent reading strategy. In aesthetic reading, a reading flow experience becomes the means to discover manuscripts. Through efferent reading, gatekeepers identify manuscripts as participating in a literary convention and view them either as exceptional within that convention or as adding something to the convention. The qualities of these experiences create the realization of a publishable manuscript; acting on this realization moves the process to the next phase, in which gatekeepers make justifications for selecting or rejecting the manuscript. Gatekeepers discover cultural goods when they have been professionalized and sensitized to produce the "right" type of experiences and creatively act on the qualities of these experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, a response to MacKendrick (2017), I examine the dilemma that recent science activism poses for sociologists of science. How can we maintain their critical integrity while condemning the anti‐science actions of the Trump administration? I propose that sociologists of science engage in two exercises to marshal a qualified defense of science. First, we should unpack what we might mean by the “science” we wish to defend. Then, we should begin to articulate grounds for defending that science commensurate with the urgency of the moment. I draw inspiration from American pragmatist philosophy to develop one such defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore knowledge sharing in light of a pragmatist understanding of organizational learning. This takes us beyond knowledge as cognition and into an encompassing understanding of what it means to share knowledge. We draw upon a case study on knowledge sharing amongst management consultants, and transcend the idea that knowledge sharing is a matter of either codification or personalization. We do so through an understanding of learning that begins in the embodied experiences of work, and in which inquiry into uncertainties is the pathway to learning and knowing. This also means that we widen the issue of knowledge sharing beyond participation in practice because we include an explicit learning aspect in participation. In the concrete case of management consultancy, some of the impeding issues were working alone, tight time schedules, and insufficient knowledge sharing systems, while some of the facilitating issues included social gatherings, play, and working together on projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Bromley argues against Oran Young's FIT model as a basis for environmental governance, on the grounds that humans cannot manage nature and that attempts to do so are based on a scientistic, modernist conceit. At issue is the role of natural and social scientists in adjudicating questions about what we ought to do to close governance gaps and address unsustainable behaviors. If Bromley is right, then the lessons of the American pragmatist tradition recommend against attempts to "fit" social institutions to the natural world. The first objective of this paper is to argue that Bromley's view is not in keeping with the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, which actually places a high value on natural and social scientific modes of inquiry in the service of social ends. I argue that Young's proposal is in fact a development of the pragmatist idea that social institutions must be fit in the sense of fitness, i.e., resilient and able to navigate uncertainty. Social institutions must also evolve to accommodate the emerging values of the agents who operate within them. The second objective of this paper is to examine the role of social science expertise in the design of social policies. Governance institutions typically rely on the testimony of natural scientists, at least in part, to understand the natural systems they operate within. However, natural systems are also social systems, so it seems pertinent to ask whether there is a role for social systems experts to play in helping to design environmental governance institutions. I argue that social scientists can make a unique contribution as experts on social institutions, and as such, are necessary to bring about a transformation of the unsustainable institutions that are preventing us from achieving stated sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I discuss contemporary disputes within communication theory over the Dewey-Lippmann 'debate' as symptomatic of a broader inability to treat classical pragmatism as an intellectual tradition. If we return historicity to the relationship of classical pragmatism and communication, and if we develop a fuller understanding of the distinctive aspects of pragmatist theories of inquiry, we can better understand the contributions of John Dewey and Walter Lippmann to a novel conception of democracy as problem-solving. In this way, we recover what is distinctive about pragmatist approaches to democracy and acquire a more differentiated sense of politics that refuses to reduce classical pragmatist writing to deliberative or dialogic conceptions of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcomes of urban redevelopment projects are never predictable, nor do they conform perfectly to any single ideological expression of contemporary development approaches, whether that of rational master planning for the public interest, a market-driven neoliberal approach in the name of the competitive world class city or some other vision of utopia. We argue here that a critical pragmatic analytical lens can be applied usefully to improve our understanding of the justifications, qualifications and compromises that contribute to shaping such projects in their contexts. The critical pragmatic approach, deriving from the work of Laurent Thévenot, Luc Boltanski and others, is offered here with illustrative applications to the case of a major redevelopment project in Vancouver, Canada. The approach is situated within planning theory related to governmentality, communicative action theory and American pragmatic philosophy. We establish the utility of studying disputes in the public sphere surrounding development projects, in terms of the objects and actors involved in particular contexts (as opposed to a pure discourse approach) and in terms of the nature and trajectory of compromises attempted and attained in the process (as opposed to consensus-seeking or governmentality approaches). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that Darwin'sOn the Origin of Speciescan be interpreted as the culmination of an extended exercise of what Kant called ‘the reflecting power of judgement’ that issued in a form of reasoning that Hegel associates with inference by analogy and that Peirce associates with hypothesis and later assimilates to abduction. After some exegetical and rationally reconstructive work, I support this reading by (1) showing that Darwin's theory of natural selection gave us a way of understanding the purposive character of organic generation and growth that does not rely on an analogy with intentional agency and (2) outlining some of the uses to which this new understanding was put in reasoning about mind and society by American intellectuals in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the process I hope to shed some light on the relationship between mechanistic and purposive explanation in judgements of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper entitled Collapse of Values as Picturised in John Updike's Novels, Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux attempts to picturise how values collapse in American culture and society. John Updike is one of the most prolific and important American Novelists. The Former Novel Rabbit, Run is unified around Rabbit's impulse for the natural and the consequences of this impulse. Rabbit, as a "Noble" urban savage, images modern man's traditionless character and portends his concomitant problems. The latter novel Rabbit Redux deals with the Collapse of values as depicted in itself. It is an attempt to depict the tumult of the era as it happens in contemporary American culture. The apocalyptic interpretation of twentieth century life is presented in Rabbit Redux through the annihilation resulting from the loss human values. Updike devised for himself a style of narration, an intense, present tense and free indirect style. The Rabbit novels were written by Updike in the present tense. Updike vividly portrays the collapse of values in American culture and society through his novels Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Bromley argues against Oran Young's FIT model as a basis for environmental governance, on the grounds that humans cannot manage nature and that attempts to do so are based on a scientistic, modernist conceit. At issue is the role of natural and social scientists in adjudicating questions about what we ought to do to close governance gaps and address unsustainable behaviors. If Bromley is right, then the lessons of the American pragmatist tradition recommend against attempts to "fit" social institutions to the natural world. The first objective of this paper is to argue that Bromley's view is not in keeping with the pragmatism of C. S. Peirce and John Dewey, which actually places a high value on natural and social scientific modes of inquiry in the service of social ends. I argue that Young's proposal is in fact a development of the pragmatist idea that social institutions must be fit in the sense of fitness, i.e., resilient and able to navigate uncertainty. Social institutions must also evolve to accommodate the emerging values of the agents who operate within them. The second objective of this paper is to examine the role of social science expertise in the design of social policies. Governance institutions typically rely on the testimony of natural scientists, at least in part, to understand the natural systems they operate within. However, natural systems are also social systems, so it seems pertinent to ask whether there is a role for social systems experts to play in helping to design environmental governance institutions. I argue that social scientists can make a unique contribution as experts on social institutions, and as such, are necessary to bring about a transformation of the unsustainable institutions that are preventing us from achieving stated sustainable development goals.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a constructive criticism of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards. After pointing out a number of benefits and limitations in the effectiveness of CSR standards, both from a theoretical point of view and in the light of empirical evidence, we formulate and discuss a Paradox of CSR standards: despite being well-intended, CSR standards can favor the emergence of a thoughtless, blind and blinkered mindset which is counterproductive of their aim of enhancing the social responsibility of the organization. We analyze three problems that might underlie the Paradox-namely the problem of deceptive measurements; the problem of responsibility erosion and the problem of blinkered culture. We apply the philosophical tradition of American Pragmatism to reflect on these issues in relation to different types of existing standards, and conclude by suggesting a number of considerations that could help both CSR standards developers and users to address the Paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has started to open up for social and political readings of the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who John Dewey once called «the Philosopher of Democracy». The present paper attempts to promote the force and potential of this new Emersonianism for philosophy of education showing that Emerson's notions of self-reliance and aversion to conformity are not inherently anti-social, a-moral or a-political. The paper first argues that Emerson proposes an understanding of self and society which undermines any bipolar opposition of the two concepts already in «Self-Reliance». Secondly, a closer reading of the later essay «Experience» examines his critique of a particular Western conception of thinking in terms of its political consequences. If there is to be hope for the individual self, then, for Emerson, there always has to be hope for a democratic society as well. He tries to remind us that the criterion for a democratic society consists in taking seriously the subjectivity of vision of every single one of its members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary qualitative family research has a rich intellectual heritage that provides researchers with ideas and language that guide them in the procedures of their work and helps them to explain to themselves and to others the traditions on which their work is based. The characteristics of qualitative research that I discuss in this article are understanding experiences in context, immersion, interpretations grounded in accounts that individuals provide of their experiences, and research as action oriented. These characteristics have a strong philosophical base that extends from 19th century German philosophy to American pragmatism and interactionism to contemporary research. This article examines this heritage and shows that today's qualitative family researchers stand on the shoulders of giants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Missouri model of journalism education was transplanted to Chinese universities in the early 20th century. This 'paradigm shift' originated when the US, as an emerging power in Asia, advocated an open-door policy to vie for influence in China with otherWestern powers. Chinese intellectuals, who sawAmerican pragmatism as a powerful vehicle to modernize a weak and poor China, embraced the model of professional journalism taught at America's first journalism school at the University of Missouri, seeing it as an embodiment of the pragmatic values of democracy and progress. This paradigm shift was both philosophical, accepting Missouri's emphasis on ethics and social responsibility, and practical, finding Missouri's vocational orientation to be an easy-to-learn 'exemplar'. Walter Williams, the charismatic dean of the Missouri Journalism School, played a key role in this process, as didMissouri alumni who established most of China's journalism programs following the pattern of their alma mater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purposes of the paper are to provide a historical and thematic review of some of the variants of American philosophical pragmatism (old and new), and to point to its potential relevance for geography. The paper is divided into three sections. The first, discusses the origins of American pragmatism focussing on four figures: John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce. Following the argument of Louis Menand (2001) in The Metaphysical Club, I will suggest that pragmatism took on its peculiar American character as a response to the deep fissures and wounds caused by that country’s Civil War. That war produced a loss of faith, undermining notions of universal progress and absolute truth. Pragmatism was the reaction. The second section brings pragmatism to the present, by focussing on three connected contemporary American pragmatists: Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, and Richard Shusterman. The hallmark of their work, and which justifies treating them as a group, is a willingness to stretch pragmatism: first, by making linkages with other anti-foundational, practice-based philosophical traditions, especially those within Continental European philosophy, and which had been shut out of Anglo-American philosophy after the Second World War by the rise of analytic philosophy; and second, by applying pragmatist ideas to issues like the body and popular culture to which it had never been applied. Finally, in the conclusion the paper reflects on the prospects of tethering pragmatism to the work of human geographers. Given the anti-architectonic impulses of pragmatism, such a project cannot simply be one of holus–bolus transferring pragmatism to geography. A different approach is needed, and which is schematically outlined and briefly illustrated using the idea of place. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper develops a 'third way' of organizational learning (OL) encompassing two metaphors for learning: acquisition and participation. These two metaphors can be found in the learning theories of OL. The 'first' and 'second way' of OL are identified as being, respectively, individuals' skills and knowledge acquisition in organizations as systems, and learning as participation in communities of practice. The 'third way' of OL is defined as the development of experience and knowledge by inquiry (or reflective thinking) in social worlds held together by commitment. One of the practical implications of the 'third way' of OL is to bring intuition and emotion to the fore in organizational development and learning The implication for research is to work with situations and events as units of analysis in order to understand individuals and organizations as being mutually forming and formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]