Seminari sobre elecció escolar d’Isaac González a Xile

Es pot veure sencer la ponència d’Isaac González al seminari “Eligiendo escuela en Chile. El cliente ¿tiene la razón?” del passat 3 de juny al Centro de Investigación Avanzada en Educación de la Universidad de Chile.

 

Greti Iuliana Ivana PhD

This December, 5th, Greti Iuliana Ivana successfully defended her PhD READ ME LIKE AN OPEN (FACE)BOOK! A Social Phenomenological Approach to the Relation between Meaning Constructions on Facebook and the Construction of Ties between Users. 

This is the summary of the thesis:

The aim of this PhD. thesis is to explore the relation between the meanings emerging from the exchanges of information on Facebook and the continuous construction of ties between the users who engage in these exchanges. In other words, my focus is on the link between the interpretative processes that unfold in punctual situations on Facebook and the underlying bond between those who are part of an exchange. Assuming the methodological standpoint of grounded theory, I have conducted 40 open ended interviews and observed the Facebook timelines of the interviewees.

From this broad thematic statement, some of the main concepts can already be distinguished. In order to preserve the structure of the thesis, I will provide brief definitions and theoretical guidelines about the ways in which I use these concepts, so that afterwards I can continue with the main threads of the fieldwork. By Facebook users, I mean individuals who have a Facebook profile which they access daily and in which they have published contents at least once after joining. Celebrities, collective pages, product pages etc. are not part of my research. By exchanges of information occuring on Facebook, I understand all types of contents that are shared by one user and received by another, whether it is publicly or privately, commented upon or only viewed. Out of these exchanges, I distinguish two categories: social interactions and non-interactional exchanges. This distinction is based on my approach to social interactions. Drawing on Simmel, Weber and Schutz, I define social interactions as reciprocal action and effects which 1) imply a interconnectedness of lived experiences and a reflective gaze upon those experiences 2) on the basis of the taken-for-grantedness of the other as an intelligible meaning producer and communicator, and 3) are directed towards the other and/or interpreted as such. From this definition, it follows that all Facebook public posts which are not directed towards particular users are non-interactional. The public and private sharing of information that is aimed at someone and interpreted as such is a social interaction.

The two other main concepts I use are “meaning construction” and “ties”. Meaning construction is the process through which subjects make sense of their experiences, both intuitively as part of lived duration, but especially reflectively by turning their gaze towards what “just happened”. This process is conditioned by social regularities and by unique life courses.

Ties are general modes of togetherness, consisting of first hand experiences of social interactions, their meanings for the subject, memories, projections, interpretations of information about the other from other sources etc.

The application of this conceptual apparatus has generated a series if insights into the research theme that are supported by the fieldwork. In Facebook exchanges, the users live in different worlds within reach. Then, the exchange of information can function in two ways: one is the construction of an imaginary about one’s world within reach for the other who does not have access to it, and the other is the construction of a common here and now of the interaction. The common here and now can only emerge on the basis of common experience (i.e. listening to the same song), whereas the imaginary about the other’s here and now emerges as a result of an experience that is lived first hand by only one of the users.

In relation to the actual meaning construction, in non-interactional exchanges, I have made an analytic distinction between strong ties and weak ties, despite the actual fluidity of the categories. Strong ties are: close friends, romantic partners, close friends and partners with whom the subject had a conflict. Weak ties are: acquiantances from one’s past, new contacts and current constant ties lacking depth. In strong ties, meaning constructions are centered around the reconstruction of the other’s lived experience when he/she was apart from the subject (either by continuation of a known plot or the elaboration of a new one). In weak ties from one’s past, contents are read mostly from a panoramic perspective on life courses. With other weak ties, especially if there is a projected strengthening of that tie, information is used for typifications and evaluations. Over viewing and clandestinity are also addressed in this chapter.

In social interactions, more elements come into the meaning construction. In public interactions, the assumed directionality of posts, entitlement, institutionalization of reactions, public complicities, and negotiations of closeness are all attributed meaning in relation with tie strength. In private interactions (particularly with strong ties), the accent falls on the construction of a shared experience in a common here and now.

By outlining the nuances of meaning construction and their relation with different levels of togetherness, I believe this thesis sheds light upon Facebook uses as part of a relational universe.

I+D sobre Futurs quotidians

Els GRECS comencem, conjuntament amb els col·legues del Urban Transformations in Knowledge Society (T.URBA), un nou projecte de recerca I+D sobre “Futurs quotidians: vides urbanes en temps d’austeritat i canvi”. Aquí teniu una descripció genèrica del projecte, que durarà els propers tres anys i forma part de la Convocatoria de ayudas a Proyectos de I+D «EXCELENCIA» — SUBPROGRAMA DE GENERACIÓN DE CONOCIMIENTO 2013.

DESCRIPCIÓ

We are facing a time of crises: economic, political, social and environmental. A time in which the most of what we had taken for granted seems to be vanishing in front of our eyes, and in which we look towards the future searching for answers. Thus the future becomes an insecure and somewhat risky place towards which we are walking, the uncertain horizon at which we look when we make our decisions today. However, the future that we anticipate, wish for or fear in our imaginaries does not have a single version. We cannot speak of “a” future, but of contested futures. There are different imaginaries and horizons of the future guiding us in different directions, and sometimes, even paralysing us, thus not letting us go anywhere.

This research project focuses precisely upon these conflicting imaginaries and horizons of the future. We need to know them as they are the shaping forces of our present, and we need to know their contradictions, as our society depends on holding them somehow together. To do so, we define

a.’Imaginaries of the future’ as the overarching forms that combine images and figures of the future, ‘images as the concrete objects, moments or relationships that we expect or hope for in the future, figures as the archetypes that give meaning, inform and shape the contours of our future imaginations, and imaginaries as the weaving together of the figures and images in a narration of our own life story in future tense, relating these imaginaries to other cultural practices.’
b.’Horizons of the future’ as the combination of these imaginaries of the future with the time line that expands in our minds when we picture these imaginaries, as well as with the landscapes we materially create, plan, dream, fear or expect in our minds, when we picture them.

From this perspective, therefore, we aim at exploring the imaginaries and horizons of the future that shape/are shaped by our present quotidian lives and experiences. In order to analyse the imaginaries and horizons of the future, we will focus upon three thematic issues, that are, in our view, crucial to understanding our late modern imaginaries of the future and that, if they are analytically brought to dialogue with each other, allow us to trace the shapes of these imaginaries and horizons of the future, which are so difficult to grasp in a more direct way. Thus, we will investigate how these three issues appear in the imaginaries and horizons of the future in autobiographical individual narratives, in media, and in urban planning. The three topics we will focus upon are:

1) The practices of consumption/production
2) Inequality/ies
3) Intimate/ Public Space (thereby understanding space as relational space)

Moreover, we will approach our object of study (i.e. the imaginaries and horizons of the future in these times of crises) and the three selected zooms (topics) with the perspective of the sociology of emotions and experience on the one hand, and the perspective of the geographies of political economy of urban transformations on the other hand.

Workshop Emotional Ties. Taming the Future Between Trust and Imagination

Aquest 28 i 29 de novembre el GRECS va organitzar el Workshop internacional Emotional Ties. Taming the Future Between Trust and Imagination, amb la voluntat d’explorar les formes a través de les quals les emocions ens vinculen uns als altres i donen forma a com entenem i donem sentit al nostre temps viscut i imaginat.

Durant dos dies, 20 investigadors d’arreu d’Europa, vam poder discutir la recerca empírica i teòrica al voltant dels conceptes de futur, emocions, confiança i imaginació.

Programme

28 November, 2013

3 pm    Welcome and Opening

Session 1: Love as a Bond, Love as an Emotion

Chair  Roger Martínez
 3:15 pm Francesc Núñez, Swen Seebach & Natàlia Cantó
Forms of Commitment and Expression of Emotions in Times of Internet

3:50 pm  Rebecca King O’Riain
Love as the ‘Audacity of Hope’: Is the Future of Love ‘Solid Enough’?

Session 2:  Sentiments and Emotions Holding Society Together

Chair  Natàlia Cantó-Milà
5:00 pm   Christian von Scheve
Mapping Sentiments of ‘Authority’ and ‘Community’ Across Society

5:40 pm  Sylvia Terpe
Between certainty and doubt: epistemic feelings and morality

6:20 pm   Simone Belli
Sharing trust: A social meta–emotion

29 November 2013

Session 3: Intimate Relationships and Emotions

Chair: Swen Seebach
10:30 am   Isaac Gonzàlez & Roger Martínez
Generational and age-based discourses on the digital mediation of affective relationships

11:10 am    Jacqui Gabb
Meanings and experiences of trust in long-term couple relationships

11:50 am  Mary Holmes
Trust, optimism and the future in intimate relationships

 

Session 4: Conflict

Chair: Greti Ivana

1 pm    Tova Benski
Emotion maps of participation in protest: The case of women in black against the occupation

1:40 pm   Poul Poder
Conflict resolution: Emotions and Imagination

Session 5: On Imaginaries

Chair: Natàlia Cantó-Milà
3:20 pm    Hug March & Ramon Ribera
Barcelona as a Self-sufficient City: an Urban Political Ecology of Urban Smart Futures

4:00 pm  Asa Wettergren
Reflections on Emotion and Imagination by Adam Morton – imagining the future and images of the past

4:40 pm   Debate and Closing

Baby Boom i el mite de la heroïcitat sacrificial femenina

Isaac Gonzàlez

Baby Boom és un nou programa de La Sexta que copia un format que ha tingut un notable èxit en el context televisiu anglosaxó. La particularitat principal d’aquest reality show és que s’hi fa el seguiment del moment en què neixen diferents nadons en un hospital, tot focalitzant-se en les emocions, pors i anhels que genera aquest esdeveniment tan especial en els pares i familiars. En teoria es tracta d’un reality“blanc”, que cerca més la comunió emocional entre l’espectador i les històries relatades que no pas l’exposició d’elements morbosos de la privacitat de les persones. Certament, no seria difícil posar en qüestió aquesta pretensió, però en aquest comentari vull endinsar-me en una qüestió molt concreta: la dimensió mitològica del programa.

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Virtual Love

Sociology of Emotions

‘And when I knew… when I realized… it was too late. My life was broken. I was in love.’ (Anna, 39, comemo3’s translation from Catalan)

An interviewee used these words to tell us about her love story with a work colleague who lived miles away, and with whom she had started to chat and exchange emails on a regular basis. Those messages that had once been plain work messages turned slowly and half unconsciously into more and more private emails in which both parties seductively exposed themselves, letting more and more personal issues, fears, hopes, experiences and desires come to the foreground. The emotions that moulded and were moulded by this process evolved from surprise, to joy, to expectation, to dependency, to love; the shifts between them were subtle, quick, uncontrolled. The realization that, at the other end of the line, someone special was holding one’s existence culminated a process…

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La corrupció de l’autenticitat: nota de lectura de tres llibres

Roger Martínez

L’autenticitat és el Sant Grial del nostre temps. Tots la volem, perquè ens eleva, ens fa tocar la veritat, sòlida i preciosa, en una època d’incertesa, aparences i canvi. Per això és essencial per entendre fenòmens tant contemporanis com les xarxes socials a Internet, el moviment dels Indignats o l’entronització de Josep Guardiola. Però com passa amb totes els grans conceptes que marquen època, l’autenticitat és tan important com difícil d’atrapar. Si intentem definir-la, inevitablement topem no només amb la dificultat de posar-li paraules, sinó amb polisèmies i grans paradoxes que ens deixen perplexos, perquè ens situen davant les contradiccions del nostre moment històric.

+ veure la ressenya sencera al Bloc d’Humanitats

Doctora Ana Rodríguez

El 2 de maig ens ha portat una nova Doctora al GRECS: la greca Ana Rodríguez ha defensat amb èxit la seva tesi “Teoría y práctica del cine como dispositivo crítico. El alcance de la modernidad y las formas de lo político en el cine de los años treinta”, de la qual aquí teniu com a tast un breu resum.

RESUM DE LA TESI

La investigación se basa en el desarrollo del concepto de Dispositivo Crítico para analizar la dimensión política contenida en las prácticas artísticas modernas y en las producciones cinematográficas realizadas en los márgenes de la industria y en aquellas estructuras organizadas de forma alternativa en el periodo que abarca desde la década de los años veinte hasta mediados de los años cuarenta del siglo XX. El análisis y trabajo historiográfico se centra en visualizar las formas en las que emergen y se organizan los diversos colectivos vinculados a los movimientos de izquierda, como socialistas, comunistas, anarquistas o movimientos cooperativos, en los contextos más relevantes del sistema mundial de entreguerras: la Unión Soviética, la República de Weimar, el Reino Unido, Estados Unidos y Francia. De este modo, se han evidenciado las conexiones de ciertas praxis vinculadas al cine político y el corpus teórico de sus agentes con aquellos procesos y debates que emergen a raíz de la modernidad filosófica de finales del siglo XVIII y a lo largo del XIX, el desarrollo de las ideas estéticas de este periodo y el pensamiento marxista.

El “Cirque du Soleil” i la malenconia

Sociologia de les emocions

Els anuncis de l’últim espectacle a Barcelona del Cirque du Soleil, Corteo”, ens van cridar l’atenció perquè totes les imatges dels personatges que els autobusos de línia passejaven per la ciutat eren cares tristes, melancòliques o així ens van semblar)

Hem fet un cop d’ull a la xarxa per buscar imatges d’algun dels seus altres espectacles, Alegria, Saltimbanco, Mistère … i en tots ells predominen les cares de la malenconia (o sense somriures i rostres alegres). També aquest és el to emocional de la majoria dels seus vídeos (http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/es-es/home.aspx#/es-es/home/europe/spain.aspx). En rares ocasions els seus personatges deixen escapar un somriure i quan ho fan és tan tènue, tan fràgil, que reforça encara més el fons de (d‘aparent) tristesa

Com s’afirma a la seva web, des de 1984 el Cirque du Soleil ha buscat constantment seduir a la imaginació, estimular els sentits i apel · lar a les emocions dels…

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Conferència sobre l’amor i altres dimonis en temps d’Internet

El Francesc Núñez farà avui la conferència “L’amor i altres dimonis en temps d’Internet” al Col·legi de Periodistes de Catalunya a les 19h, on reflexionarà sobre quin és el lloc de l’amor –i de les emocions en general- en la societat digital, sobre quins canvis, transformacions o permanències podem destacar en les maneres d’enamorar-nos i d’emocionar-nos.

L’amor és un vincle important entre persones i està present en la base de moltes relacions socials. No obstant, sigui quina sigui la seva naturalesa, la manera en com l’experimentem, la rellevància que té en les nostres vides i en les nostres relacions, el sentit que li atorguem o com l’expressem està marcat pels temps que corren, per les circumstàncies socials i vitals que ens envolten.

L’amor, com altres emocions, i com la majoria dels dimonis, té moltes cares i dimensions. Es tracta d’un d’aquells temes “personals” que sovint vivim i experimentem una questió existencial, però que té un origen social com passa amb molts des probelmes que patim, i és per això que la solució sovint s’escapa de les nostres mans.

La reflexió que volem fer sobre l’amor es preté genuïnament humanístics. La cultura humanística ha de formar persones que siguin capaces d’acostar-se al seu entorn social i professional amb les competències i les eines intel·lectuals que els facin aptes per desentrellar el món que ens envolta, coprendre l’entorn cultural i gestionar i donar respostes als reptes que planteja.