Maureen Donnelly’s (2016) relative positionalism correctly handles any fixed arity relation with any symmetry such a relation can have, yielding the intuitively correct way(s) in which that relation can apply. And it supplies an explanation of what is going on in the world that makes this the case. But it has at least one potential shortcoming — one that its opponents are likely to seize upon: it can only handle relations with fixed arities. It is unable to handle relations with (...) variable arities. I argue that, all else being equal, relative positionalism ought nonetheless to be preferred to its closest competitors — at least to the extent that the explanation it supplies of relational application is plausible — even though those competitors can handle variable arity relations in addition to fixed arity relations. (shrink)

Various philosophers have raised compelling objections to the standard assumption that relations hold of their relata _in a particular order_. Positionalism is an alternative to the standard account, according to which the distinction between the claims made in ‘Abelard loves Eloise’ and ‘Eloise loves Abelard’ is explained by differences in the _positions_ attributed to the relata. The former claim posits Abelard in the position of _lover a_nd Eloise in the position of _beloved_. The latter claim reverses this assignment. This chapter (...) proposes a revised version of positionalism, _Relative Positionalism,_ based on a broadly Aristotelian notion of _relatives_. It is argued that Relative Positionalism can overcome common objections to positionalism and, unlike rival accounts, has the right structure to explain differences in the symmetry properties of arbitrarily complex relations. (shrink)

Positionalism and antipositionalism, two apparently opposing views on relations, give different answers to the question how things can be arranged one way rather than another. In positionalism, relations come with positions to which objects may be assigned; in antipositionalism relations have no positions, but relations consist of a network of complexes interrelated by substitutions. In this paper, a new version of positionalism is proposed, and it is shown that—contrary to what the names suggest—positionalism and antipositionalism are essentially two sides of (...) the same coin. (shrink)

Around one-third of the science and engineering workforce in the US and UK are recorded as “foreign-born,” and more than half of the doctoral degrees in computer sciences are awarded to international students in the US. Despite this, studies of scientific fields often stabilize, fix, and take national and geographic categories for granted by assigning and assuming citizenship or institutional affiliation. This chapter reflects on transnational encounters in technoscientific fields, arguing for the importance of attending to the historical power dynamics (...) inherent in the (global) positionalities of both the actors within these fields and the researchers studying them and how they understand, navigate, negotiate, or disregard their situatedness. Drawing on my multi-sited fieldwork on the “global supercomputing race” and my experience as a female “foreign-born” sociologist affiliated with an institute in the US, I explore the challenges and insights of studying a male-dominated field and casting my ethnographic gaze upon the Global North. Focusing on three different encounters with the question, “Where are you from?” I discuss how positionalities complicate the generally accepted power differentials in studying scientific fields in the context of “studying up,” where “up” comprises multiple, primarily contingent hierarchical locations. (shrink)

Despite the high prevalence of individuals with disabilities in the Global SouthGlobal North/Global South, disability-related issues remain significantly under-investigated. Early conceptualisations of disability in these regions were mostly influenced by Western religious and cultural traditions, often leading to exclusion and stigmatisation (Grech, 2021). Furthermore, the dominance of Western researchers employing Western research paradigms has resulted in critical gaps in how researchers’ power dynamics and positionality influence research outcomes. We conducted a large-scale study that examined the status of people with (...) disabilities in Botswana; in the same study, we also explored the challenges women with disabilities face in accessing healthcare. However, this study does not focus on experiences of these women; instead, it analyses our own experiences as ethnically diverse researchers and the positionality of non-disabled male researcher working within this research context. Collaborative autoethnography provides an alternative tool to challenge traditional Western knowledge, which often promotes unidirectional top-down research approaches. In this chapter, we critically reflect on our experiences as non-disabled male researchers researching with women with disabilities in Botswana. Intersectionality was used as a theoretical framework to understand the complexities of power and positionality of non-disabled male researchers while conducting research with women with disabilities in the Global South. In this study, we used collaborative autoethnography to reflect on how we neutralise our power and positionality between researchers. Our reflections served as data for the analyses, and we confronted biases related to masculinity, ethnicity, and sociocultural privileges. By independently reflecting and engaging in joint reflexive discussions, we sought to dismantle power asymmetries and cultivate a more participatory research space. Throughout the chapter, we advocate for a fundamental shift from researching on to researching with. Guided by principles of Botho (such as mutual respect, importance of togetherness) we framed our approach through intersectionality and autoethnography, we found that power, privilege, and positionality intersect in collaborative research. (shrink)

Melisa Vivanco objects to my theory of the Arabic numerals in Roads to Reference that the reference fixing procedure that I postulate doesn’t exploit the morphological structure of the Arabic numerals, but it should. Against Vivanco, I argue that the procedure in question does exploit the morphological structure of the numerals in an essential way.

Much has been written in recent years over the need to disclose the 'positionality' of geographical researchers. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that such positionality, however much disclosed, can never fully express the complexities underpinning a research relationship. This essay explores these issues through a retrospective review of research carried out into the economic geographies of the Economy of Sharing. It argues that the issues surrounding positionality can be much more than a question (...) of hidden agendas, power relations and conflicts of interests. In some cases, confronting positionality means negotiation of conflicting worldviews-different understandings of reality rooted in philosophical principles distant from the dominant orthodoxies. Such conflicts, if engaged in creatively, have the capacity to challenge beliefs, values and thought patterns. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a reflexive account of fieldwork in out of school clubs in a range of localities across England and Wales. By reflecting upon our personal experiences of researching with children aged between 5 and 12 years, we examine the impact of the positionality of the researcher on the research encounter, and highlight the ways in which relationships between adult researchers and child subjects are gendered. Finally, we identify a number of issues for researchers to consider (...) when working with children in the field. (shrink)

This case study explores the use of collaborative book clubs and word sorts to influence teacher positionality in an undergraduate social studies methods course for pre-service teachers. Drawing upon existing literature that suggests the effectiveness of dialogue as a means of navigating prior beliefs and the benefits of collaborative spaces for teachers to engage in collegial discussions, the study utilized books surrounding socio-political themes and educational inequalities to prompt conversation among participants. Results of the study suggest that dialogic and (...) collaborative activities like word sorts and book clubs provide productive opportunities for pre-service teachers to (re)negotiate their positionalities and grapple with their existing assumptions as they learn and co-construct meaning from and with one another. At the same time, the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of privilege and identity seem to remain somewhat unexamined and the teachers remain hesitant about the practical reality of working to dismantle inequalities in their own classrooms. (shrink)

OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OURSELVES and our place in nature constitutes, if not the central, at least a central problem of metaphysics. Yet, faced with this question, modern philosophical thought has for the most part swung helplessly between an empty idealism and an absurd reductivism. It is time we overcame our narrow factionalism and learned not only to think more independently ourselves about persons, minds, and living nature, but to profit from the efforts of those who have already given us concepts (...) and arguments which could help us along this road. Among such writings, Helmuth Plessner's major work, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, seems to me outstanding, in that it provides both a firm rational basis for the biological sciences, in their many-levelled structure, and for the sciences of man. (shrink)

A new vocabulary has prominently entered the discourse of comparative philosophy. Such philosophy, and philosophy as such, is often supposed to be “global,” “cosmopolitan,” “fusion,” or “post-comparative.” The intention is to have a more global scope in what counts as philosophy and to be more inclusive of standpoints. A key term is “positionality.” In this article, I first translate a tension between globality and positionality into the problem of the possibility of a non-relativist perspectivism. Based on Borges’s Funes (...) el memorioso and The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, I explore hard-to-reconcile variants of perspectivism, particularly as to whether perspectives add up epistemically. I then turn to the example of sovereignty, questioning what the addition or juxtaposition of perspectives means for the practice of global post-comparative philosophy. In conclusion, I revisit my equating the issue of positionality with perspectivism and inquire into the possibility of meaningful fusion. (shrink)

Contributing to the critical human rights education scholarship, this article explores how situated assessments such as the Critical Response Paper, Opinion Piece, Human Rights Report & Strategic Plan, Medea Mock Trial, and Human Rights Council Simulation center positionality to invite students to grapple with the potentialities and limits of human rights. Situated assessments first ask students to employ critical feeling and thinking and active reflexivity to make sense of how their lives are intertwined with broader political structures. Then, they (...) guide students to apply these dispositions to experience how different actors - individuals, activists, social movements, non-governmental organizations, states, and the United Nations, practice human rights globally. As a result, they foster knowledge from multiple perspectives about the ethos, mechanisms, processes, and institutions that circumscribe human rights, prompting students to consider power structures and historical contingencies while imagining radical futures. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a reflexive account of fieldwork in out of school clubs in a range of localities across England and Wales. By reflecting upon our personal experiences of researching with c...

_ Source: _Volume 46, Issue 2, pp 277 - 295 In this paper I argue that in Husserl’s _Ideas I_ there is a seeming contradiction between the characterization of pure consciousness as the _residue_ of the performance of the phenomenological reduction and the claim that in the natural attitude consciousness is taken to be an entity is the world. This creates a puzzle regarding the positional status of consciousness in the natural attitude. After reviewing some possible options to solve this (...) puzzle in the existing literature, I claim that the positional status of conscious experiences in the natural attitude is best characterized as _unsettled_. The act that _settles_ the positional status of conscious experiences is reflection. In reflection, experiences are posited as beings, either in a psychological or in a phenomenological key. I conclude by arguing that the problem of positing is of paramount importance to understand correctly Husserl’s claim that phenomenology is _voraussetzungslos_. (shrink)

While Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) provides a better alternative to the usual ‘banking’ model of education, questions have been raised regarding its applicability in non-western contexts. Despite its adherence to the ideals of democratic dialogue, not all members of a Community of Inquiry (COI) will be disposed to participate in the inquiry, not because they are incapable of doing so, but because they are positioned inferiorly within the group thereby affecting their efforts to speak out on topics that are meaningful (...) to them. In this article, I claim that it is essential to integrate positionality in P4wC research/practice. Aside from its role in helping a practitioner/researcher choose the appropriate method and materials that match the unique contexts of children, it also increases one’s awareness of the subtle forms of epistemic injustice that could leak in the COI, as well as the other subtle ways in which children are marginalized. In this regard, a P4wC researcher/practitioner must have a higher degree of sensitivity towards her positionality as this inevitably gets entangled with the positionality of children. I present some ‘areas’ in which the importance of positionality in the COI manifests, namely, restructuring classroom power relations, navigating a multi-ethnic classroom, facilitating meaning-making, and modeling reflective thinking. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop two versions of naı̈ve positionalism, the view that an n-adic relation has at most n positions and applies to some objects under an assignment of its positions to these objects. I argue that both versions can escape the problem of limited symmetries, raised by Kit Fine and Maureen Donnelly against naı̈ve positionalism. More specifically, I show that the problem of limited symmetries assumes that each application of a relation to some objects corresponds to one relational (...) state, and I develop many-one positionalism, according to which many applications correspond to just one state whenever the nature of the relation determines that they are necessarily co-obtaining. Moreover, I develop a second version, localist positionalism, according to which, even though the number of applications and of relational states are the same, the identity of applications is determined locally by a symmetry structure that is part of the nature of the relation. Orthogonal to the distinction between the two views above, I also draw a distinction between structuralism and platonism about the identity of positions, and I argue that even though structuralism can provide a distinctive account of the symmetry of some relations, to account for all relations, any of these views on positions is better if combined with one of the two versions of positionalism above. (shrink)

As a Korean migrant woman in the US academy, I was marginalized at the intersection of race, gender, language, and migration status; my commitment to intersectional feminism grew directly from that experience. But returning to South Korea has changed the map of my privilege: I am now part of the racial-ethnic majority, a native speaker, and a professor with institutional standing. Gender marginalization remains real, but the xenophobic racism I faced in the US is no longer directed at me. What, (...) then, grounds my responsibility to challenge intersecting oppressions in a world where I am no longer their primary target? Drawing on María Lugones’s concept of world-traveling, I conceptualize this experience through what I call “shifting positionality”: the way one’s relation of privilege and marginalization changes as one moves between worlds. I examine three models for grounding the responsibility of world-travelers like myself. The Shared Struggle Model, drawing on Chandra Talpade Mohanty, grounds responsibility in shared marginalization across contexts. The Culpability Model, drawing on Ee Ling Quah, grounds it in our implication in sustaining unjust systems. Both models offer important insights, but each faces decisive objections: the former erases privilege and contextual differences, while the latter conflates implication with culpability and risks blaming marginalized subjects for navigating structural constraints. I then defend a modified version of Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model, arguing that our participation in social-structural processes that produce oppressive outcomes grounds our responsibility to address intersecting oppressions—across shifts in positionality, whether we are on the more marginalized or more privileged side. This account speaks not only to my particular trajectory but to world-travelers with shifting positionality more broadly, extending the intersectional feminist framework to account for how the intersection of privilege and marginalization changes as one moves across worlds. (shrink)

This paper explores the application of positionality and reflexivity drawing on the experience of a British Minority Ethnic (BME) group senior nurse researching nurses with the same ethnic heritage in an IPA study. It explores how using IPA informed reflexivity and positionality as a researcher who shared the same ethnicity with the research participants. The IPA study allowed for the exploration of Internationally Educated Nurses' (IENs) perspectives on their integration into British healthcare and their navigation of career progression. (...) The central aims of an IPA study are to understand the participant's world, its description, the development of a clear, and open interpretative analysis with a descriptive focus on the social, cultural and theoretical context, and the participant's sense‐making of their lived experience. In this paper, we discuss how the lead researcher employed reflexivity, stated his intentionality and positionality in the conduct of the IPA study. This paper discusses some examples of the effects of positionality and reflexivity in the conduct of research by researchers of different racial background, and explicate the influence of personal and professional experiences of a researcher in using reflexivity and positionality to ensure cross‐cultural validity and reliability of an IPA research. This paper concludes that appropriate use of reflexivity and positionality in an IPA study may recognise the personal and professional influence of a researcher's experiences on the research process, including their ethnicity. (shrink)

Every day, we ask numerous questions about the world. These days, some pressing and very popular questions include: What will be the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our individual and collectiv...

This essay works at the intersection of two trends, one longstanding and one relatively more recent. First, it takes place against the background of the overwhelming influence that the category of ‘identity’ exercises on both contemporary knowledge production and political practice. Second, it responds to what has been called the ‘decolonial turn’ in theory. We compare the work of Gayatri Spivak, Aijaz Ahmad, and Walter Mignolo in terms of the following question: What kind of reflexive method do they deploy in (...) response to their recognition of the politics of knowledge production, that is, the existence of a relationship between social position and epistemic position? We then develop a novel distinction between post-colonial, anti-colonial, and de-colonial perspectives, one based not on backward-looking intellectual genealogies but on forward-looking political practices. (shrink)

What can philosophy learn from social movements? In this volume, authors from various philosophical paradigms and disciplines (sociology, history) highlight the unique theoretical and political importance of social movements, bridging the abstract realm of philosophy with the concrete realm of social reality. Among the movements explored are the Climate Justice movement, the Disabled People’s Movement, and the Chinese antilockdown protests.

Jasna Russo argues powerfully for survivor-controlled narrative research as a counterpoint to ‘conventional narrative research,’ in which a clear dichotomy obtains between the researcher who interprets and the participant whose narrative is interpreted. Russo calls us to an ethic of engagement and a focus on dialogic relationships within the research process as a way to disrupt the potential for ‘epistemic violence’ in conventional narrative research, and toward the development of a survivor owned ‘model of madness.’ Herein I extend the discussion (...) of intersectionality that Russo opened. In particular, I ask: What theoretical resources and scholarship can we draw upon to support the kind of critical... (shrink)

Transnational higher education (TNHE), where students study on a ‘foreign’ degree programme whilst remaining in their home country, has seen exponential development over the last decade. In addition to the increase in students engaged in TNHE across the globe, the involvement of university teachers in TNHE has also risen in response to the demand for this form of international education. Although research into transnational education has doubled since 2006, there is a paucity of research focusing on transnational teacher education, especially (...) outside of North America. The global nature and scope of the expansion of TNHE remains underexplored, and the ways in which different countries are realising TNHE provision is little understood. This book explores the experiences and perceptions of teachers in transnational higher education, interrogating the ways in which university teachers negotiate cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary contexts in order to provide transformative learning experiences for their students. This book was originally published as a special issue of the _Journal of Education for Teaching. _. (shrink)

This paper explores a possible anthropological dimension of place by providing an interpretation of Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical approach which proposes to understand it as a twofold “implacement” of man – discussing both the place of man in the natural world and man’s specific relation to place that makes him take his place in the natural world. The interpretation follows Plessner’s idea of a natural set of stages, developed in his major work Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, leading from (...) inanimate objects to plants, animals, and humans. According to Plessner, each stage differs from the other by virtue of its respective spatial delineation toward, and its position in, the world. With the paradoxical concept of man’s “eccentric positionality”, Plessner accounts for the exceptional position of man without thereby neglecting, on the one hand, his being part of nature, and, without falling prey to naturalism, on the other. Thus, Plessner offers an interesting perspective on place that also points beyond mere anthropocentrism. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Water values serve as an entry point into the intricacies of public policies and management approaches. Values are contingent assessments that emerge out of socio-ecological relations and reflect particular demands, legacies and opportunities. The concept of value positionality is introduced as the synthesis of multiple expressions of worthiness cherished by a social group. Positionality is a metaphor that connects the phenomenological understanding of water value with the politics of everyday life and the broader politico-institutional framework. It entails a (...) cluster of meanings expressed through territorialised interactions across time, locations and scales. Positionalities converge or depart according to value praxis, that is, the clash of competing valuation approaches seeking legitimisation. (shrink)

Helmut Plesner’s philosophical anthropology introduces not only the division of the world of the living being into self and environment, but also a superstructure over the zip distribution: eccentric positionality. This reflexive ability of the self to relate to itself allows the formation of personal-relative, i.e., social life. The aim of the article is: to trace the possibilities of methodological renewal of sociotheoretical discourse, which opens for him the principle of eccentric positionality.The study uses historical-comparative and logical-analytical methods. (...) Research results. H. Plesner in the idea of eccentric positionality unfolds the perspective and possible practical consequences of the establishment of human openness in the world, not stopping at the danger of finally breaking the anthropological framework of his philosophy, dissolving it in the concept of personal socialization.Conclusion. Plesner’s «social» is presented as a life phenomenon – it is the highest manifestation of life, and the process of personalization of life manifestations is a process of socialization. Taking the self beyond oneself in eccentric positionality is something more than separating oneself from the environment, opposing oneself to it and establishing an attitude towards it. In the course of establishing the relation to oneself, the self does not form it automatically – the positioning of eccentricity cannot be carried out directly – which enables a special space favorable for the «inter-self» existence of living beings, a specific sphere of «inter-self» relations – the sphere of social existence. (shrink)

Synthetic biology, as an engineering approach to biological systems, has the potential to disruptively innovate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Data accessibility and differences in data-usage capabilities are important factors in shaping this innovation landscape. In this paper, the data that underpin synthetic biology responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed as positional information goods—goods whose value depends on exclusivity. The positionality of biological data impacts the ability to guide innovations toward societally preferred goals. From both an (...) ethical and economic point of view, positionality can lead to suboptimal as well as beneficial situations. When aiming for responsible innovation (i.e. embedding societal deliberation in the innovation process), it is important to consider hurdles and facilitators in data access and use. Central governance and knowledge commons provide routes to mitigate the negative effects of data positionality. (shrink)

This essay focuses on how we embody the language we speak: how an audience "reads" the body of a speaker as it both constructs the positionality of that speaking subject and construes that subject's discursive authority. Building on the work of Linda Brodkey and Michelle Fine, I explore what is at stake when university students harass a faculty member by accusing that teacher of not embodying authority in the proper form (body).

(2005). A Question of Representation in Educational Discourse: Multiplicities and Intersections of Identities and Positionalities. Educational Studies: Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 23-41.

In German discussions over the last twenty years of the difference between what it is to be a body (in German: Leibsein) and what it is to have a body (Körperhaben), many have been concerned to remind us that we owe this conceptual distinction to the philosophical anthropologist Helmuth Plessner. He introduces the distinction in an essay from 1925—written in collaboration with the Dutch behavioral researcher Frederick Jacob Buytendijk—“Die Deutung des mimischen Ausdrucks. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Bewusstsein des anderen (...) Ichs” (“The Interpretation of Mimetic Expressions: A Contribution to Understanding One’s Consciousness of Other Subjects”). Buytendijk later explained that it was Plessner who worked out the .. (shrink)

Feminist theory continues to struggle with the recurrence of the twin-problem of agency and domination: how can gender be conceptualized as a structure of domination that constitutes and restricts agency, without obscuring the possibilities for change and transformation through agency? To address this problem, I draw on the concept of agency developed by Margaret Archer. By elaborating on her notion of the structural shaping of the situation and combining it with elements of Thomas Wartenberg's work, in this article I outline (...) a concept of domination from a broadly critical realist perspective. I thus demonstrate how gender can be understood as a social structure that is constitutive of relations of domination. This framework draws attention to the limitations of ‘undoing’ gender on an interactionist micro level as well as to the concrete possibilities for agency due to situational contradictions and emergent subjective powers. (shrink)

Several initiatives recognize the importance of transforming institutions, not just changing individuals, to diversify STEM fields. Universities and colleges are distinctive gendered work organizations because workers are highly educated and have authority in hiring, evaluation, and policy. This article explores whether feminist sociologists are particularly well suited to guide institutional change to diversify the academy. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 24 feminist academic sociologists at the rank of associate or full professor, I analyze how their feminist and sociological (...) identities intersect with institutional locations to create opportunities to transform the academy. Outsiders within, feminist sociologists revise and use the master’s tools to produce knowledge that improves recognition of, and ability to reduce, structural inequalities. Proficiency with these tools confers insider legitimacy and access to a “seat at the table” where disciplinary expertise and political commitments contribute to institutional change. Inevitably, these professors confront resistance, and in response develop strategies to advance their goals. Insights from feminist sociologists suggest that to transform universities to reflect the diversity of institutions and lived reality of contemporary faculty, it may be more useful to identify a set of commitments and principles that inform policies and practices, rather than specifying actions to support culture change. (shrink)