Archive Page 22

Language, Meaning, and Mental Representation

Published July 15, 2008 Power, Governance, Governmentality Leave a Comment

When I started working after my trip to Paris yesterday, I made a very intriguing experience. Listening to a dialogue between two people at the institute, it took me at least three minutes to identify that these people were talking German and that I should have understood them from the first second I listened. The same thing happened to me again later on that day. To test if there are other “handicaps”, I chose to solve a sudoku, as mathematical challenges shouldn’t be too closely related to semantic and grammatical ones. I am really addicted to Sudoku and usually can solve them quite quick, but this day I wasn’t able to solve at least an easier one.

As I am not professional psychologist I could have wondered if I was going crazy. No, not really, I suppose, but this led me to some reflections on language, mental representation and meaning.  To me it seems obvious that this incident is related with the fact that I was talking mostly English and French the last week and therefore was tuned in in a really different cognitive framework or script on how to associate meaning with the sounds and words I was hearing, as both are not my mother tongues. Not a really new insight, this can mean that the mental representation of meaning is a) closely connected to language; b) seems to be influenced by different organizational structures of different languages; c ) is interdependent with logico-mathematic thinking.

Linking these rather private experiences ant their implications with theories of social constructivism/ constructionism (e.g. Berger/Luckmann for sociology or Kenneth Gergen for sociopsychology), this underlines the relativity and fuzziness of social experience and research.If I cannot rely on my own perception and attribution of meaning top social phenomena over and across different situations and/or languages, how can I capture reality adequately? If mathematical thinking is closely linked with language systems, how can I produce reliable results from quantitave research and interpret the adequately?

Another problem is the limitation of topics and actors within not only scientific discourses.  As for example Michel Foucault shows, the order of the discourse usually  is strict and harsh in separating legitimate contributions and invisibilizing and delegitimizing non-valid ones. In connection with the order of the respective discourse, the highly encultured and subjective forms of perception (cognition and processing) and expression (arts and languages) construct social constraints of and within language, meaning and mental representation.  These “power/knowledge-blocks” (Foucault) become one foundation to invent and optimize culturally, historically, economically and politically embossed techniques of signification, domination and the self.

Back from Paris, in the French Republic

Published July 14, 2008 Data , Postmodern Society and Consumer Culture , Soße Leave a Comment

Coming back from my visit at the ISPP Conference in the holy halls of french political science at sciences po, paris, I have brought with me a lot ofnew insights and perspectives on the field of political psychology and cognate disciplines. As t was a conference with many panels I wasn’t really able to attend all of the panels I wanted to, but I was amazed how many people for example are doing authoritarianism studies. Another important thing to learn was that political psychology is still an academic discipline heavily relying on quantitative research – or to put it otherwise: Many researchers are concerned with counting the legs of the fly, but by doing this do not really learn much about the fly itself. Despite some really exciting contributions that are approaching phenomena from other sides – philosophy, phenomenology, and qualitative research methods – most of the scholars seem to be stuck in the paradigmatic mud of social sciences following Descartes.

This is not to say that these approaches could not produce interesting insights, but they for sure are not able to capture all the important informations out there. As French Philosopher J.F. Lyotard put it in his study of “postmodern knowledge”, all information not to be encoded in binary codes gets lost and is devaluated: The narrative, myths, fairy tales, witchcraft, imagination, just to name a few.

What I also learned at the conference is that there are at least some people out there in the world that largely share equivalent academic experiences, are reading similar or even the same books, are asking questions and are adressing phenomena that are not really in the mainstream of social sciences, and that are using innovative theories and methods in their fields. This really encourages to keep a “good spirit” and to carry on for a littly while (Thanx to S.). And by the way it is a lot of pleasure and fun to hang around with these people (Thanx to S. and M.).

I am really looking forward to the next ISPP Conference in Dublin and hope to organize atleast one panel or workshop that is concentrating on this “otherness” of perspectives, theories and research methods in political psychology and more general, in the social sciences.

If you are interested in the papers I presented at the conference, please check the publications-page at this blog, where you can load them down as pdf-files. Comments of any kind are welcome.

Weltregionen im Wandel – Lateinamerika

Published July 14, 2008 Politics , Publications Leave a Comment

Within the scientific row “change in world regions” a new volume is just out now concerning Latin America.  Te volume is edited by my dear collegues and friends Patricia Graf and Thomas “Charlie” Stehnken who did a realy good job to give an overview on developments in Latin Americas politics, economies and societies.

As Latin America experienced fundamental transitions not only due to globalization, latin american countries were faced with substantial problems. Part One of the volume analyzes the changes of stateness, mechanisms of political power and governance as well as the results of state reforms. The second part deals with  economic issues reaching from strategic partnerships with the EU to questions of competitive capacities in the international environment. The third part is dedicated to political culturem civil society and the means of populist political leaders to mobilize the masses. As this volume brings together  authors from science and practice, it offers a unique perspective on transitions in Latin America.

  • Patricia Graf/Thomas Stehnken (Hrsg.) (2008): Lateinamerika. Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. (Weltregionen im Wandel Bd. 3), Baden-Baden: Nomos, 244 pp., 45.-€, ISBN 978-3-8329-3432-3

31st ISPP Annual Meeting in Paris

Published July 4, 2008 Data , Postmodern Society and Consumer Culture , Power, Governance, Governmentality Leave a Comment

On Wednesday 9th July 2008, the 31st Annual Meeting of the International Society for Political Psychology will open its doors at Sciences Po, Paris. I am really looking forward to this conference, not only because Paris is one of the most beautiful cities in Old Europe, but also because there will be some very interesting panels. To learn more about the conference program, pleas visit the conference homepage. You can also search all papers presented of the conference there. I will present two papers. One ison an empirical research project about postmodernity and personality conducted in Germany. The other is a bit like selling coals to Newcastle, as it is named “Learning from Baudrillard and Foucault. Consumer Culture, Social Milieus and The Governmentality of Lifestyle” and is presented in Paris.I am looking forward to inspiring discussions.

This also means that I will be out of office most of the next week – sorry.

Brunei Darussalam / Vorschau

Published June 19, 2008 Data , Politics Leave a Comment

In der Reihe “Politik ist überall reloaded” wird heute abend Patrick Theiner referieren über “Brunei Darussalam, oder: DIe GEschichte von 1932 Autos und den Parteien, die keiner wählen darf”. Aus aktuellem Anlass beginnt die Veranstaltung schon um 19 Uhr c.t. Im Anschluss wird das EM-Viertelfinale Portugal-Deutschland übertragen. Wenn Sie also die perfekte Gelegenheit suchen, Politik und Sport zu verbinden, kommen Sie ins Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Raum 124.

Nächste Woche ist es dann soweit. Das Geheimnis um die Sneak Preview wird gelüftet werden. Nur soviel vorneweg: Das Thema ist echt aufregend und total nah am richtigen Leben. Auch ist die Sitzung total engendered und es wird mehr als einen special guest geben…. Dann auch wieder zur normalen Zeit 20 Uhr c.t, Donnerstag, 26.Juni.

Wie immer gilt: Der Weg zum IfP lohnt sich, für Getränke (gegen einen kleinen Obulus) ist gesorgt.

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