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The central question of this chapter is how Plotinus accounts for the fact that two seemingly quite different kinds of plurality arise at the level of Intellect: a duality of subject and object of thought and a plurality within the object of thought. It is proposed, with support from some central passages, that for him the thought of Intellect is first‐personal in the sense that its basic form is ‘I am F’. It is further argued that this kind of thought involves the merging of the two kinds of plurality, which coincide in the self‐thought characteristic of Intellect.

In their introductory chapter, De Schutter and Pistor argue that in light of increasing absolute and relative scarcity of land and fresh water there is urgent need to improve the governance of these and other essential resources. Emphasizing “essentiality” shifts the debate from allocative efficiency to normative concerns of equity and dignity. Essential resources are indispensable for survival and/or for meaningful participation in a given community. Their allocation therefore cannot be left to the pricing mechanism alone. It requires new parameters for governance. The authors propose Voice and Reflexivity as the key parameters of such a regime. Voice is the ability to collectively choose the rules by which social groups wish to be governed; and Reflexivity to recognize competing claims as legitimate and the willingness to accommodate them. Essential resources are not mere commodities. How they are governed must respect their special place in a dignified society.

This chapter focuses on transmigrants, a particular kind of transnational personhood derived from the idea that identity is not fixed and people can act in reflexive, agentic ways to craft their sense of self based on context. It then compares and contrasts this approach to personhood with existing notions of identity and self in the diversity and cross-cultural management research fields. Specifically, diversity literature that acknowledges and examines dynamic aspects of identities does so by focusing on identity formation and using intersectional lenses. Similarly, attempts to capture the multi-faceted and dynamic nature of people in the cross-cultural management field are dominated by concerns over whether individuals are blending national culture and economic ideology in ways that converge or diverge in organizations as a means to understand how individuals may be crafting their own set of values beyond culture. Based on these trends, the chapter provides comparative critique on existing approaches in the diversity and cross-cultural management field that aim to speak of a diverse and globally-mobile subject. The chapter concludes with the implications of such a mobile understanding of self for work and organizational life.

Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine provides an extended critique of the notion that technoscientific facts should function as impartial arbiters in international conflicts. Chapter 6, “The Geographic Production of Knowledge”, draws on this overarching motif to explore its significance for broader research on knowledge and expertise. In particular, it highlights the need for researchers to materially alter the process of research in order to enable more heterogeneous landscapes for knowledge production. Returning to the themes of internationalism, landscape, and symmetry from chapter 1, this chapter also critically draws on the work of iconic poets and social justice activists like Mahmoud Darwish, Audre Lorde, and Nawal El Saadawi. It explores the following questions: How can researchers reflexively reshape landscapes in order to allow for more socially just forms of knowledge? What are the challenges to solidarity and cooperation due to geographical imbalances of power? The resulting analysis returns to the overall notion of geographic production, while also indicating a further layer of reflexivity for critical theory: the practice of material reflexivity, or awareness of one’s own situated position in landscapes with respect to power asymmetries—asymmetries that include international and economic hierarchies within academia itself.

This chapter assesses the key theoretical presuppositions of ethnomethodology: that social order – interpreted as the intelligibility of coordinated patterns of action - is the central focus of sociological (and perhaps even of all social scientific) inquiry; that Parsons’ ‘analytical realism’ is false because order is observable routinely in everyday situations; that the meanings of social actions are locally variable and context-dependent (‘indexical’ and ‘reflexive’), rather than being determined by a semantic code; and that they are intelligible because they are self-identifying – their meaning is displayed and recognised by actors via shared methods or practices, in other words they are ‘accountable’. Ethnomethodology also involves some important methodological commitments: that for inquiry to be rigorous it must avoid reliance upon unexplicated resources, appealing only to what is observable or intersubjectively available; and the aim of rigorous social analysis must be literal description, rather than explanation or the production of theory: the task should be to ‘make visible’ members’ methods for the production of social phenomena. The conclusion reached in examining these arguments is that, while they relate to significant issues for social science, they exaggerate the intractability of the problems they identify. Moreover, ethnomethodology itself does not escape them.

This chapter considers the influence of ethnomethodology on qualitative research methodology, one of the main areas of mainstream social science where it has had an impact. The reception of Cicourel’s (1964) book Method and Measurement in Sociology is discussed, and also how conversation analysis shaped the work of many discourse analysts and some ethnographers. Cicourel’s argument is outlined: that sociology needs to be re-founded methodologically on an empirical theory that respects the complex and contingent character of human action and communication, along lines suggested by ethnomethodology. His early work encouraged the rise of qualitative research and reflexive attention to the processes by which data are produced; though these developments often tended to go in directions that were at odds with his conception of rigorous analysis. Later, conversation analysis encouraged the use of electronic recordings and transcriptions as data, raised doubts about the traditional uses of interviews, and encouraged the micro-analysis of patterns of social interaction. Furthermore, like Cicourel’s work, it facilitated the spread of social constructionism. It is argued that these effects have been beneficial in many respects but more negative in others.

This chapter begins by summarising what have been identified in the book as the main principles guiding ethnomethodological work: rigorous analysis, meaning as indexical, reflexive, and accountable; the socially constituted character of the world; capturing the phenomenon, its haeccicity; an appreciative stance; naturalism; foundationalism. While these are open to different interpretations and by no means uncontested, they have influenced much ethnomethodological work and the rationales presented for it. There is then a discussion of the problems associated with these principles, as they relate to ethnomethodology’s criticisms of conventional sociology and the alternative form(s) of work it proposes. A series of antinomies that appear to be intrinsic to ethnomethodology are identified. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the prospects for resolving the debates between ethnomethodologists and conventional sociologists.

This chapter shifts the frame from connections across the places of young people’s lives to connections or disconnections over time. We inquire into the pathways set out for the class by their school and homes, the trajectories they follow in practice, and the factors that facilitate or block them. While our observations permitted an analysis that spans the fieldwork year, our interviews with the young people looked backward and forward over a longer timescale. By the age of 14, many of the young people were reflexively self-aware of the pathways and possibilities that faced them, and they were coming to terms with rather more mundane futures than the popular hyperbole of the digital age would suggest. As in other longitudinal sociological and social psychological studies, the effects of social reproduction were clear. Here we struggle to reconcile an optimistic recognition of the possibilities still open to our class of young people with the body of research on the lack of social mobility in Western societies that suggests a more pessimistic future for many of them.

This chapter focuses on the positionality and ethical challenges faced by the author. As a Buddhist and an anthropologist, the author struggled with how to be faithful to her beliefs, her scholarship and her advocacy work all at once. This chapter speaks to the complexity of participant observation, advocacy anthropology and ethnographic writing.

In chapter 6, “‘Heal Thyself’: Holistic Women Healers in Middle America,” Elaine J. Lawless profiles a local “healing community” of women in or near Columbia, Missouri, who regularly meet and share knowledge about and practice together various healing modalities. In addition to learning from each other, she notes, the women in the group also learn new healing practices offered by healers who were visiting from other areas, so mouth to mouth and hand to hand learning take place all the time. They all claim a holistic approach, which guides their daily lives as well as their healing practices, and includes attention to complex understandings of how mind, body, and spirit work in conjunction within the human body. Through the stories of these women, Lawless offers a unique glimpse into their shared corpus of knowledge and the traditional healing beliefs and practices they espouse, as well as her own place within the healing community.

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical and methodological approaches that were used to conduct an ethnographic study of natural gas drilling activism in the Barnett Shale, a natural gas field located beneath the populated Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Included is discussion of conceptualizations of the environment and how those conceptualizations impact human relationships in the natural environment. Also included are details about the ethnographic practice of this project, data collection and analysis, reflexivity, and the ethical considerations that went in to this work.

This concluding chapter summarises the analysis presented in the preceding chapters, and charts a path for the lexicography project to take over the coming years. The chapter begins by distilling the core features of the three meta-categories that together form the overarching theory of wellbeing introduced here, representing the main ways it is experienced (feelings), influenced (relationships), and cultivated (development). In a spirit of reflexivity, it is acknowledged that the analysis in the book has its limitations, including being influenced by the situatedness of the author. However, it is argued that these very limitations can provide the basis for a future research agenda. It is anticipated that this could have two main strands: an empirical strand (aimed at improving the lexicography), and an applied strand (involving initiatives to help people cultivate familiarity with the phenomena signified by the words). Together, these two strands will allow the potential of the lexicography to be fully realised and harnessed in the years ahead.

This chapter looks at the various types of biographical writing that form a substantial part of Koteliansky’s translation work. By reviewing these translations in the context of the modernist interest in ‘new biography’, it shows their relevance not just as biographical portraits, but as alternative methods for negotiating the weight of the past and writing about creative lives creatively. It uses the 1929 study of biography by Maurois as a framework for assessing the translations in terms of their means of expression, their handling of scientific facts and their artistic transpositions of the everyday world. In each case, the translators’ presence can be traced in the translated work, like embedded, refracted portraits of the artist. The main focus here is on the representations of Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Both young children and agrammatic aphasic speakers have difficulty interpreting pronouns, but not reflexive elements. This phenomenon is known as the delay of Principle B effect in language acquisition. The interpretation of pronouns is non-adult-like for children and disturbed in agrammatic aphasia, yet there is evidence that interpretation of pronouns is not always problematic for these populations and that it seems to be governed by linguistic principles. This chapter examines the linguistic principles underlying the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives among children and agrammatic aphasic speakers whose native languages were Dutch, Spanish, and Italian by focusing on two types of sentences: simple transitive sentences and Exceptional Case Marking constructions. It first looks at earlier research on language acquisition and agrammatism before discussing two important linguistic theories, Government and Binding Theory and Reflexivity and Primitives of Binding.

Offering a reading of the famous, yet strangely overlooked, “madman” scene in the early part of the First Meditation that is radicalized later in the dream and evil genius passages, this chapter sets out to thematize schizophrenic hyperbole and phenomenological elasticity as vital components of modern allegories of selfhood. Against the backdrop of Michel Foucault’s read and his pointed debate with Derrida on the issue of the Cartesian “exclusion” of madness, which is, although instructive, rather reductively structuralized, the analysis highlights the aesthetical sharpness and fluidity rather than ideational “clarity and distinctiveness” of images of syncopated madness in Descartes; this further illustrates how the reflexively repressive, inherited views of Cartesian subjectivity end up discounting the reflexological potency of it. This chapter concludes by arguing that Meditations, composed with “a touch of madness,” can be and is to be read rather as a comedy or a fable.

This chapter sees the application of the communicative imperatives to the decision-making process surrounding the use of force in Kosovo. The analysis focuses primarily on deliberations within the Security Council, at the Holbrooke negotiations in 1998, and at the Rambouillet Conference in 1999 and offers an evaluation of the communicative practices adopted to justify the use of force. The interpretive power of the communicative imperatives unsettles conventional interpretations of the military intervention in 1999 through its contestation of the degree to which the communicative practices surrounding the decision to intervene were legitimate. Crucially, the communicative ethics framework challenges the enabling justification of last resort and highlights key moments of illegitimate dialogue which paved the way for the use of force.

This chapter considers the representation of straight girl and queer guy within mainstream film, relating the context of the star persona, or the life world of the star. Initially considering the representation of Kenneth Williams within a range of Carry On films, arguing that his imagined real-life friendship with female characters influences how we might read these films, aspects of camp, fantasy, irony and parody are foregrounded. Later more explicit filmic representations of the straight girl and the queer guy are examined, contextualizing the self-reflexive influence of John Schlesinger and Christopher Isherwood respectively within the landmark films Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger 1971, UK) and Cabaret (Bob Fosse 1972, US). This leads into an examination of the explicitly commoditized representation of queer man in union with the straight girl, in the films My Best Friend’s Wedding (P. J. Hogan 1997, US), The Object of My Affection (Nicholas Hytner 1998, US) and The Next Best Thing (John Schlesinger 2000, US). As part of this the life world and the cultural capital of the female co-star dominates in providing the cultural reading.

This chapter emphasises the role diaries assume in being a useful repository for the practice of critical reflexive thinking; providing an important space for those engaged in conflict based field research to manage expectation, deal with emotion and highlight experience. Based on research conducted in the West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territories, the chapter reveals how meticulously maintained research diaries provided the emotional space needed to continuously evaluate the impact that such research was having upon personal wellbeing as well as the direction of the research as a whole. In the absence of commonly availed of familiar support networks, the research diary, in a conflict setting acts as a cathartic tool in providing the mental and emotional space to document fears and anxieties impacting upon the individual researcher.