Outlines. Critical Practice Studies

Editorial

Eduardo Vianna; Mike Rifino — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 21:57:20 +0200

Former Right-Wing Extremists' Continued Struggle for Self-transformation After an Exit Program

Tina Wilchen Christensen — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0200

This article discusses the identity formation process former right wing extremists go through, during and especially after being involved in an exit program for those leaving right wing extremist environments. Based on an ethnographic investigation (and practice theoretical approach), the article argues that participation in culturally defined worlds - such as the extremist right - develops sensitivities and sensibilities that endure. This enables them to engage in social actions, gain a position and develop a correlated identity, but it is also the reason why it can be very demanding for the individual to leave an extremist environment. Perceived from the (re)integrating into society by those stigmatized by a criminal and extremist past. It explores how individuals leaving a right wing extremist group handle themselves in a new world when their embodied knowledge and habitual responding are no longer appropriate, and investigates the many aspects individuals struggle with years after their engagement, when they do not know who to become and how to act.

The Aesthetic as an Aspect of Praxis

Erik Axel, Janni Berthou Hermansen, Peter Holm Jacobsen — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 15:51:49 +0200

Commonly the aesthetic is understood as sensuous private pleasure, which other people cannot experience, but maybe talk about, and on the other hand as created by individual artists' talents. We will attempt to bring the aesthetic back into praxis by arguing that aesthetic experience is tied to Gibson’s notion of perceptual systems. The article builds on observations of a design project for a community center in a Danish village. We argue that the aesthetic is shared pleasure resulting from struggles by participants in praxis, where aesthetic, material, functional, ethical, political, and economic aspects are formed by each other in a dialectic process. The struggles are found in the community council's reasons for starting the process, in the design and construction process and the use of the results. This means that descriptions of the aesthetic appearance of buildings should incorporate relevant discussions and struggles of the design, construction and use of the building, and that aesthetic experience is enriched the more aesthetic experience it is based on. It also means that the key to a fruitful ongoing collaborative process producing good aesthetic designs comes from managing together the many aspects of praxis in an open way.

Critique as locus or modus? Power and resistance in the world of work

Torben Bech Dyrberg, Peter Triantafillou — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0200

How and from where can power be criticized and resisted? The advent of new managerial forms of power has brought the question once more to the fore. One of the salient issues is whether the ubiquity and apparent omnipotence of contemporary forms of managerial power renders critique and resistance difficult. This article compares the critical potential of French pragmatic sociology and Foucauldian-inspired genealogy. We argue that both approaches offer viable critiques of contemporary forms of power. Yet, whereas the critique of pragmatic sociology hinges on the position (locus) of those who exercise critique and/or resist, genealogical critique depends on the concrete form (modus) of power that is being scrutinized. We argue that even though we see critique as modus as more convincing than critique as locus, the two approaches can inspire each other in order to advance effective critique.

Modelling Undergraduate Research and Inquiry – Why Enculturation matters

Ines Langemeyer — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0200

Within the last ten to fifteen years, models emerged for describing and developing undergraduate research and inquiry. This article discusses four examples of modelling didactical issues around undergraduate research and inquiry. The aim of the first part of this article is to scrutinize the epistemological and the didactical purpose of these models. As essential dimensions of undergraduate research and inquiry are neglected, two new models are developed. The first puts the coordination of theory and evidence in the centre and determines three different horizons of significance in the field of science. In relation to these horizons, the second model highlights the broader societal context of scientific practices. The role of research and science in society is recognized here on the one hand as an affirmative process of institutionalization of approved knowledge, and on the other, as practices of criticizing and breaking away from established forms of knowing, testing, evaluating, and approving. Concomitantly, the education (’Bildung’) of students through and within scientific practices of research and inquiry (’Bildung durch Wissenschaft’) is interpreted against the backdrop of two opposite trajectories influencing students’ ambitions to engage with problems of science. Didactics of higher education therefore need to distinguish between long-term and short-term goals. It is argued that the latter concretizes the former. This understanding of teaching is corroborated against the backdrop of the concept of learning as ‘enculturation’ in science. The argumentation refers back to insights by Lev S. Vygotsky, Ludwik Fleck and Michael Polanyi.