Search results for ""Author Ivana Marková""

Creating a stimulating social theory with long-lasting influence for generations of scholars is driven by multiple interacting factors. The fortune of a theory is determined not only by the author's creative mind but also by the ways in which principal concepts are understood and interpreted. The proper understanding of a social theory requires a good grasp of major historical, political, and cultural challenges that contribute to its making. Considering these issues, Marková explores Serge Moscovici's theory of social representations and communication as a case study in the making of a dialogical social theory. She analyses both the undeveloped features and the forward-moving, inspirational highlights of the theory and presents them as a resource for linking issues and problems from diverse domains and disciplines. This dialogical approach has the potential to advance the dyad Self–Other as an irreducible intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic unit in epistemologies of the human and social sciences.

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This fascinating book makes an important contribution to the history of the social sciences. It tells the largely hidden story of how social psychology became an international social science, vividly documenting the micro-politics of a virtually forgotten committee, the Committee on Transnational Social Psychology, whose work took place against the back-drop of some of the most momentous events of the twentieth century. Overcoming intellectual, institutional and political obstacles, including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the military coups in Chile or Argentine, the committee struggled to bring social psychology to global recognition, not as part of a programme of intellectual imperialism, but motivated by a mixture of intellectual philanthropy and self-interest. Few authors could tell this unique story. Serge Moscovici is undoubtedly the best-placed insider to do so, together with Ivana Markova providing a lucid, erudite and carefully documented account of the work of this remarkable group. This book will be an essential resource for any scholar interested in the history of social psychology, as well as upper-level students studying the history of the social sciences.

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In contrast to a vast literature that provides information and guides about focus groups as a methodological tool, this book is an introduction to understanding focus groups as analytical means exploring socially shared knowledge, e.g. social representations of AIDS, biotechnology or democracy, beliefs and lay explanations of social phenomena. The main emphasis of the book is to examine how to analyse interaction and ideas expressed in focus groups. The book considers, first, different kinds of dynamic interdependencies among participants who hold the diverse and heterogeneous positions. Second, it explores circulations of ideas and contents in focus groups. More generally, the book is concerned with: language in real social interactions and sense-making, which are embedded in history and culture; the ways people draw upon and transform social knowledge when they talk and think together in dialogue; the ways people generate heterogeneous meanings in the group dynamics; and communicative activities and genres represented by different kinds of focus groups. This original approach to understanding focus groups will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in social sciences, communication studies, psychology, and language sciences.

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In contrast to a vast literature that provides information and guides about focus groups as a methodological tool, this book is an introduction to understanding focus groups as analytical means exploring socially shared knowledge, e.g. social representations of AIDS, biotechnology or democracy, beliefs and lay explanations of social phenomena. The main emphasis of the book is to examine how to analyse interaction and ideas expressed in focus groups. The book considers, first, different kinds of dynamic interdependencies among participants who hold the diverse and heterogeneous positions. Second, it explores circulations of ideas and contents in focus groups. More generally, the book is concerned with: language in real social interactions and sense-making, which are embedded in history and culture; the ways people draw upon and transform social knowledge when they talk and think together in dialogue; the ways people generate heterogeneous meanings in the group dynamics; and communicative activities and genres represented by different kinds of focus groups. This original approach to understanding focus groups will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in social sciences, communication studies, psychology, and language sciences.

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