Este artículo presenta a Weber y Habermas como los umbrales o polos de una modernidad que tiene al progreso como horizonte teórico-práctico. El diagnóstico weberiano sobre la modernidad y su proceso de desencantamiento del mundo y la injustificada reducción de la actividad racional a una actividad utilitario-estratégica desprovista de su carácter veritativo y de su orientación valórica, Habermas la utiliza para justificar su propuesta teórico-crítica respecto a la modernidad y la "paradoja de la racionalización", distinguiendo "sistema" y "mundo vital". Aquí (...) "desencantamiento del mundo" y "consenso del proyecto de lamodernidad", se encuentranThis article presents Weber and Habermas like the thresholds or poles of a modernity that has to the progress as theoretical- practical horizon. The diagnosis weberiano on the modernity and his process of disenchantment of the world and the unjustified reduction of the rational activity to a utilitarian-strategic activity devoid of his character of truth, Habermas uses to justify his theoretical-critical offerwith regard to themodernity and the "paradox of the rationalization", distinguishing "system" and "vital world". Here "disenchantment of the world" and "consensus of the project of the modernity", they are. (shrink)

In this book I examine various forms of indeterminacy in the law and scrutinize (i.a. by way of game theoretical models) the conditions under which they can be strategically used. In particular, I analyze the advantages and disadvantages of indeterminacy in the wording of laws, contracts, and verdicts. Legal texts are particularly interesting insofar as they address a heterogeneous audience, are applied in a variety of unforeseeable circumstances and must, at the same time, lay down clear and unambiguous standards. I (...) argue for the claim that semantic vagueness is less relevant than commonly supposed in the debate, while other forms of indeterminacy (in particular, polysemy and standard-relativity) are underrated or altogether ignored. This misconception is, as I argue, due to a systematic confusion between semantic vagueness and these forms of indeterminacy. Once it is resolved, the value of indeterminacy can be clearly shown. (shrink)

In contested areas of environmental research and policy, all stakeholders are likely to claim that their position is scientifically grounded but disagree about the relevant scientific conclusions or the weight of the evidence. In this article, I draw on a year of participant observation and over 110 in-depth interviews, with the case study of controversial chemicals used as flame retardants in consumer products. I develop the concept of strategic science translation, the process of interpreting and communicating scientific evidence to (...) an intended audience in order to advance certain goals and interests. Engaging in selective, interpretive, or inaccurate SST allows competing stakeholders to bolster their arguments, strengthen their authority, and inspire change regarding a policy-relevant issue. Because stakeholders deploy imbalanced resources when they participate in contested environmental fields, their actions in those fields and the resulting policy outcomes often reduce not to the settling of scientific truths but to power differentials. (shrink)

The author gives an analysis of the strategic manoeuvring in the justification of legal decisions from a pragma-dialectical perspective by showing how a judge tries to reconcile dialectical and rhetorical aims. On the basis of an analysis and evaluation of the argumentation given by the US Supreme Court in the famous Holy Trinity case, it is shown how in a case in which the judge wants to make an exception to a legal rule for the concrete case tries to (...) meet the dialectical reasonableness norm by seeing to it that his standpoint is sufficiently defended according to the requirements of the burden of proof of a judge in a rational critical discussion and how he tries at the same time to be rhetorically convincing for the legal audience by presenting the decision as a choice that is in line with the argumentation schemes and starting points that can be considered as accepted by the legal community in the US and by the US community as a whole. (shrink)

In legal decisions standpoints can be supported by formal and also by substantive interpretative arguments. Formal arguments consist of reasons the weight or force of which is essentially dependent on the authoritativeness that the reasons may also have: In this connection one may think of linguistic and systemic arguments. On the other hand, substantive arguments are not backed up by authority, but consist of a direct invocation of moral, political, economic, or other social considerations. Formal arguments can be analyzed as (...) exclusionary reasons: The authoritative character excludes—in principle—substantial counterarguments. Formal arguments are sometimes used to conceal value judgements based on substantial arguments. This paper deals with reconstructing problems regarding this strategic use of formal arguments in legal decisions, with a focus on linguistic argumentation. (shrink)

This article explores the discursive behaviour of professional male team sports players in post-match interviews from a social identity construction perspective. Drawing on a data set of 160 televised post-match interviews from two different team sports and two different regions of the world, this article identifies stances players orient to when presenting themselves in these media interviews. A supplementary data set of ethnographic semi-structured interviews with professional team sports players is also used to develop insider perspectives on the discursive behaviour (...) of professional team sports players when speaking to the media. What is argued is that the acts and stances employed by team sports players can be interpreted as indexing a media self, or media identity, one that professional team sports players construct in order to strategically negotiate a public version of self that presents them positively to their audience and maintains their relationships with other members of their team. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyze the relationships between theories of strategic design and participatory design, in multiple commercial alliances between local entrepreneurs from different sectors and their integrated application in the urban context. Various authors have dealt with these strategic issues in isolation and less frequently have addressed them from the entrepreneurial experience. A review of the specific literature allows us to account for the main concepts involved in this approach. The case being analyzed refers (...) to a fitness-related venture in the city of La Plata, which articulated, together with other local actors, a collaborative strategy that led to the application of a superior business model for its sector. In addition, he capitalized on his role as an influencer on the social network Instagram, as a way to enhance the project’s comprehensiveness. The topics that are addressed synthesize the key concepts that allow us to interpret the praxis relieved. And from them, create a model that can be applied in other markets and territories to promote young local development. And in this way, different actors, complementary products and services serve to jointly promote a co-productive and self-managed culture. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to give an account and a rational reconstruction of the heuristic advice provided by Aristotle in the Topics and Prior Analytics in regard to the difficulty or ease of strategic planning in the context of a dialectical dialogue. The general idea is that a Questioner can foresee what his refutational syllogism would have to look like given the character of the thesis defended by the Answerer, and therefore plan accordingly. A rational reconstruction of (...) this advice will be attempted from three perspectives: strategic planning based on the acceptability of Answerer’s thesis, strategic planning based on the predicational form of the thesis, strategic planning based on the logical form of the thesis. In addition, we will provide an illustration of the potential of this heuristic advice as we apply it to the interpretation of a fragment from Plato, presuming that, in a similar way, a reading of this kind might be more generally applicable in the interpretation of the Platonic dialogues. (shrink)

Crucial components of strategic communication include the audience, which plays a decisive role in how any conflict plays out. Strategic narratives are seen as means by which political actors attempt to construct a shared meaning of international politics to shape the behaviour of domestic and international actors. The article analyzes the news discourse of the Russian media sources RT, Pervyj Kanal, and NTV on Russia’s coronavirus aid to Italy in spring 2020. In the context of media coverage, some (...) methodological questions arise: How should the intentional structuring of narratives, targeting of audiences, and the manipulative intentions of the strategic actor be studied? For this purpose, the article combines strategic narrative theory with Umberto Eco’s concepts of the Model Reader and the Model Author. Analysing the aims and intentionality of the strategic narratives, we postulate the Model Reader as an analytical category that organizes the study of the audience’s interpretation process. The function of the Model Reader is to actualize the codes and intertextual references that the author has strategically planned in the news message, in order to achieve the geopolitical aims of the strategic narratives in question. The analysis of constructing the Model Reader and the Model Author of strategic narratives is complemented by Greimas’ semiotic theory of the narrative and the composition principles of Lotman’s discrete/non-discrete texts. (shrink)

The article deals with the theme of updating of Cuba’s economic model mainly from the perspective of economic and political philosophy and its interdisciplinary contexts. First, it examines the historical origins of Cuba’s socialist model and the subsequent changes after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Second, it analyses the actualization of Cuba’s model in the first two decades of the 21st century, that is, mainly the introduction of market and private ownership to complement planning and public ownership. Third, it (...) explains the codification of these changes in the new constitution. Forth and finally, it focuses on an interpretation of international cooperation both in Latin America, especially within the framework of the two pink tides, and with other partners in global interactions, particularly China. This will make it possible to understand the updated Cuba’s model, which the author has coined strategic socialism with Cuban characteristics. (shrink)

The ability of managers to identify and interpret challenges in the external environment is one of the micro-foundations of dynamic capabilities. The underlying literature on strategic issue interpretation suggests that interpreting environmental challenges as opportunities rather than threats is more likely to lead to proactive and innovative responses, but there are also potentially positive effects of threat interpretation, for instance high levels of commitment and risk-seeking behaviour. In this paper, I use the context of climate change to (...) explore the link between threat interpretation and innovation in more detail. I use exploratory cluster analysis and illustrative case studies to develop a set of propositions to explain when threat interpretation can in fact encourage innovation. I identify two ethical mechanisms that positively mediate the relationship between threat interpretation and innovation: enlarged concept of responsibility to society and moral legitimacy. The paper contributes to the literature by identifying the importance of ethics in linking managerial interpretation to innovation, particularly in the context of global environmental and social challenges. (shrink)

We develop a multi-agent deontic action logic to study the logical behaviour of two types of deontic conditionals: (1) conditional obligations, having the form "If group H were to perform action aH, then, in group F's interest, group G ought to perform action aG" and (2) conditional permissions, having the form "If group H were to perform action aH, then, in group F's interest, group G may perform action aG". First, we define a formal language for multi-agent deontic action logic (...) and a class of consequentialist models to interpret the formulas of the language. Second, we define a transformation that converts any strategic game into a consequentialist model. Third, we show that an outcome a* is a Nash equilibrium of a strategic game if and only if a conjunction of certain conditional permissions is true in the consequentialist model that results from the transformation of that strategic game. (shrink)

In a Bayesian dialogue two individuals report their Bayesian updated belief about a certain event back and forth, at each step taking into account the additional information contained in the updated belief announced by the other at the previous step. Such a process, which operates through a reduction of the set of possible states of the world, converges to a commonly known posterior belief, which can be interpreted as a dynamic foundation for Aumann’s agreement result. Certainly, if two individuals have (...) diverging interests, truthfully reporting one’s Bayesian updated belief at every step might not be optimal. This observation could lead to the intuition that always truthfully reporting one’s Bayesian updated belief were the best that two individuals could do if they had perfectly coinciding interests and these were in line with coming to know the truth. This article provides an example which shows this intuition to be wrong. In this example, at some step of the process, one individual has an incentive to deviate from truthfully reporting his Bayesian updated belief. However, not in order to hide the truth, but to help it come out at the end: to prevent the process from settling into a commonly known belief—the “Aumann conditions”—on a certain subset of the set of possible states of the world, and this way make it converge to a subset of the set of possible states of the world on which it will be commonly known whether the event in question has occurred or not. The strategic movement described in this example is similar to a conversational implicature: the correct interpretation of the deviation from truthfully reporting the Bayesian updated belief thrives on it being common knowledge that the announced probability cannot possibly be the speaker’s Bayesian updated belief at this step. Finally, the argument is embedded in a game-theoretic model. (shrink)

This book develops a framework for analysing strategic rationality, a notion central to contemporary game theory, which is the formal study of the interaction of rational agents and which has proved extremely fruitful in economics, political theory and business management. The author argues that a logical paradox lies at the root of a number of persistent puzzles in game theory, in particular those concerning rational agents who seek to establish some kind of reputation. Building on the work of Parsons, (...) Burge, Gaifman and Barwise and Etchemendy, Robert Koons constructs a context-sensitive solution to the whole family of liar-like paradoxes including, for the first time, a detailed account of how the interpretation of paradoxical statements is fixed by context. This analysis provides an understanding of how the rational agent model can account for the emergence of rules, practices and institutions. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the moral status of sport through a conceptual structure borrowed from Jürgen Habermas's philosophy and social theory. Habermas distinguishes between communicative and strategic action as two ways in which social action may be coordinated. While the former relies on the building of mutual understanding between social agents, the latter entails one agent manipulating others, as if they were mere objects to be treated instrumentally. In an initial model of sporting practice, it (...) is suggested that sport primarily involves strategic action and in particular encourages the undermining of one's opponent's autonomy. This model is subject to criticism, by scrutinising Habermas's interpretation of the Wittgensteinian notion of a language game, and thus the relationship between communicative language-use and strategic games playing. It will be suggested that games playing has more in common with language-use than Habermas acknowledges, thereby opening up a space for genuinely communicative and expressive action within sport. In conclusion, it will be suggested that the moral significance of sport lies in the fact that its communicative and expressive potential can only be exercised against the moral threat of the dominance of strategic action. (shrink)

This essay offers an experimental interpretation for Mengzi’s 孟子 ren-yi 仁義 discourses, reading them as strategic prescriptions akin to those presented in classical strategic manuals. However, rather than arguing that it is the correct interpretation of Mengzi, I use it to highlight the ambiguity of Mengzi’s discourses. This ambiguity, I argue, motivated Zhuangzi’s 莊子 criticisms of moral language abuse and rationalizes some early narratives about Mengzi.

This article focusses on corporate attitudes to stakeholder environmental pressures in Argentina. It uses a cross section survey of 505 CEOs of Argentinean firms to gather information on environmental attitudes and a stakeholder theory framework to design and interpret the statistical analyses. It is underpinned by theoretical and empirical findings in the literature on stakeholder management, targeting in particular studies that deal with corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Latin America. Its general aim is to gain a deeper empirical understanding of (...) the coherence between managers' perceptions of stakeholder pressures and the importance they are given in corporate CSR strategies through an empirical investigation of environmental management (EM) decisions. In doing so, it uncovers general differences in the way firms perceive and treat groups of stakeholders. It also detects variations across firms, observing that some are typically proactive in their response to stakeholder pressures whilst others are less responsive. Profiling the various stakeholder networks and the corporate response strategies in this way encourages the development of stakeholder-focussed policies and corporate strategies that emphasise communications, awareness and a clear sense of direction. It concludes that CSR appears to be more effective in the protection of the environment than previously reported. Although this study focusses on EM in Argentina, the findings are more generally applicable. (shrink)

A network of think tanks—the ASEAN-Institutes of Strategic and International Studies and their researchers—have played a proactive and sometimes influential role in regional debates on Asian economic integration and security cooperation through informal diplomacy. This paper contributes to the literature on knowledge utilisation, specifically debates on the role of policy research institutes in policy-making. Paying attention to the debates and research on economic and security cooperation which preceded attempts at institutionalisation drives analytical attention to scholars, think tanks and others (...) in the ‘interpretive community’ who were engaged in a long term learning activity to shape domestic and regional agendas and institutionalise discourses of regional cooperation. (shrink)

This article arises from selected issues on interpretation raised in a session entitled ‘Danto on Margolis/margolis on Danto’ at the Eastern Division meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, April 25, 1989, at the University of Arts, Philadelphia. In Part I, principally for dialectical purposes, I recapitulate some of Arthur Danto’s and Joseph Margolis’s points in an attempt to idealize two opposing views: constructionist and realist. It should be said at the outset that the constructionist and realist positions need (...) not be opposed, as Margolis ramifies the matter in his extensive writings. Also, as Danto expounds in numerous places, his theory of art is anti-realist. Nevertheless, as regards the practice of art history and art criticism he is realist—at least as represented in the present exchange. So the idealizations of constructionism and realism here presented should be understood to range over designated concerns and should not be read as idealizations of these authors’ more developed positions as presented elsewhere. In Part II, I adjust the initial characterizations, offer some criticisms of each of these positions, and indicate some points at which there might be some promise for reconciliation between them. In Part III, I shall make some strategic suggestions to advance the discussion. (shrink)

Much scholarship on boundary-making focuses on dyadic relationships between “us” and “them.” Yet the presence of multiple categories within societies allows for complex interactions among more than two potentially relevant groups. To capture this phenomenon and its dynamics better, we develop the concept of leveraging: the strategic manipulation of social distance among three or more constructed groups for political gain. The use of one group as a lever against another may involve stigmatizing or elevating categories of people along boundaries (...) of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, class, sexual orientation, or other salient social markers. We theorize these processes and identify the motivations of the initiators of leveraging as well as the range of possible responses to it. We use a pair of empirical case studies drawn from contemporary Europe and additional examples from other settings to demonstrate the relevance of the concept. Conceptualizing leveraging both improves our scholarly understanding of group-making processes and offers political actors tools for interpreting and responding to a common set of strategic practices. (shrink)

The interpretation and the indirect reporting of a speaker’s communicative intentions lie at the crossroad between pragmatics, argumentation theory, and forensic linguistics. Since the leading case Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., in the United States the legal problem of determining the truth of a quotation is essentially equated with the correctness of its indirect reporting, i.e. the representation of the speaker’s intentions. For this reason, indirect reports are treated as interpretations of what the speaker intends to communicate. Theoretical (...) considerations, aimed at establishing the pragmatic meaning of an utterance and differentiating between presumptive and non-presumptive interpretation, are thus interwoven with the practical legal need of distinguishing a correct indirect report from an indirect one or a misquotation. An incorrect report or a misquotation has the dialectical effect of attributing to the misquoted party commitments that he never held, which the latter needs to rebut. This shifting of the burden of persuasion can be increased by using strategically the conflict between the presumptive interpretation of an utterance and the non-presumptive one, i.e. the different types of pragmatic ambiguity. When an interpreter is confronted with an utterance taken out of its dialogical context, his interpretative process is not guided by the actual context or intention, but rather the most frequent or prototypical dialogical setting or the most typical individual purpose that it could have served to achieve. This presumptive reconstruction can be used to provide a prima facie case that the other party needs to reject. The stronger the interpretative presumptions a speaker needs to rebut, the more effective the misquotation strategy. The conflict between the systematic and the presumptive process of interpretation can be represented as an argumentative mechanism of reconstruction of the individual intention, which allows one to assess the reasonableness of the interpretative reasoning. (shrink)

Since his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau's reputation as a thinker has steadily grown both in France and throughout the English-speaking world. His work is extraordinarily innovative and wide-ranging, cutting across issues in historiography, literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, theology, philosophy and psychoanalysis. This book represents the first full-length study of Certeau's thought. It is organized around the central theme of interpretation and alterity, which Ahearne uses to illuminate Certeau's work as a whole. The author also examines (...) Certeau's theory and practice of historiography; his reflection on the relations between changing historical forms of writing, reading and orality; and his distinction between the "strategic" programmes of the politically powerful and the "tactics" of the relatively powerless. Ahearne places Certeau's work in its general intellectual context, relating it to the views of important contemporary thinkers, such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, and demonstrating the decisive importance to Certeau's thought of the writings of the early modern mystics and travellers. This book constitutes an excellent critical introduction to Certeau's work, while also providing a comprehensive and nuanced reading for those already familiar with his thought. (shrink)

We examine a special case of inquiry games and give an account of the informational import of asking questions. We focus on yes-or-no questions, which always carry information about the questioner's strategy, but never about the state of Nature, and show how strategic information reduces uncertainty through inferences about other players' goals and strategies. This uncertainty cannot always be captured by information structures of classical game theory. We conclude by discussing the connection with Gricean pragmatics and contextual constraints on (...) interpretation. (shrink)

Discourse-based interpreting research has determined that interpreters are participants within interaction. Grice established that conversation participants conform to a cooperative principle. With respect to interpreting, what is the cooperative principle? How do sign language interpreters and deaf people work together to negotiate meaning in interpretation? The aim of this article is to present a case study of a deaf presenter and two sign language interpreters and evidence of their strategies for cooperation in interpreter-mediated monologic talk. Drawing on a framework (...) of interactional sociolinguistics, naturalistic data from a seminar presentation was analysed, focusing on the use of pauses, nods and eye contact as contextualization cues in the interpreter-mediated event. It was found that these three participants used these cues deliberately and strategically for signalling comprehension, marking episodes, clarification and controlling the pace of the presentation; drawing on their frames of reference. Thus, the data suggest that the cooperative principle of interpreting involves the establishment of particular cues for communication. (shrink)

Gordon Mitchell mixes scholarship and polemics in a deliberate attempt to intevene “in present‐day missile defense controversies” . His book operates on three levels. First, he presents three case studies of recent missile defense activities in which the United States government has misled the American public. The failed promise of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” has lured countless industry representatives and government officials into rigging tests, falsifying results, and withholding information. The government used secrecy and intimidation, (...) trying to suppress the assertion of MIT professor Ted Postol that claims for the Patriot missile's success rate in the Gulf War vastly exceeded the evidence. Similar techniques were employed in the mid 1990s to discredit a study done by Postol and other colleagues suggesting that the government's proposed Theater High Altitude Air Defense might violate the Anti‐Ballistic Missile Treaty. Mitchell relies primarily on secondary sources to document these accounts; readers familiar with the issues will find little that is new in his treatment.The second level at which his book operates is more original. He subjects statements by government officials to rhetorical analysis. He hopes, thereby, both to reveal the misinformation and to create something of a taxonomy of dissimulation. He notes, for example, that President Reagan's rhetoric in proposing strategic defense was to equate it with disarmament. Volume 7 of the so‐called Fletcher report on ballistic missile defense revealed the system's vulnerability to countermeasures; the volume was withheld from publication. The Rumsfeld report, which purported to establish that rogue states posed a ballistic‐missile threat to the United States, was used instead to validate the claim that existing missile defense technology could work. When Ted Postol succeeded in demonstrating that a government‐sponsored rebuttal of the study he coauthored on THAAD was fatally flawed, the head of Ballistic Missile Defense, who sponsored the study, chose to represent the difference as a “healthy scholarly debate.” When the government is on the rhetorical offensive, it polarizes debate: to oppose Star Wars was to oppose disarmament. When the government is on the rhetorical defensive, it obfuscates: refutation of evidence is simply scholarly disagreement. In the end, Mitchell's exploration of rhetorical techniques provides some illuminating insights, though it does not seem to add up to a model that one might apply in other cases. Nor is it clear that these rhetorical strategies are anything more than ad hoc responses to the politics of the issue at hand.On the third level, epistemology, the inherent conflict between scholarship and polemics becomes manifest. Though Mitchell promises to focus on “the interpretation of controversy” , in practice he places “strategic deception at the center of attention” . He is less interested in locating “the stages of the dispute” than in demonstrating that the critics were right and the government was lying. Even his title, Strategic Deception, confuses his focus. This term usually refers to counterintelligence designed to deceive the enemy, not polemics designed to persuade the public. Most of the deceit he describes is ad hoc and banal; only the special claims of secrecy and national security distinguish it from the practices of other government agencies and programs. One can see most of them, for example, in the controversy surrounding the creation of energy policy within the current Bush administration.Those who do not know the details of his case studies will find this a useful, if somewhat wordy and redundant, introduction. Those who want to understand how government officials and contractors cross over the line from rhetorical flourish to abuse of power and blatant misrepresentation will be disappointed. The value that might have been added to this familiar material by a scholarly analysis is compromised by the polemics. (shrink)

While it is uncontroversial that the slave revolt in morality consists in a denial of the nobles as objects of value, Nietzsche’s account in the Genealogy’s first essay invites ambiguities concerning its origin, ressentiment’s relationship to value creation, and its meaning. In this paper, I address these ambiguities by analyzing the morality of good and evil as an historical artifact of Judeo-Christian tradition, and I argue for a two-stage, non-strategic interpretation of the slave revolt, according to which Judaism (...) and Christianity each made essential and different contributions. The inversion of values began with the Jewish prophets, who claimed the poor were holy and ‘good’ and the rich ‘evil’, and it was sustained throughout the Second Temple period by the Jewish priests in relation to a ‘priestly-noble’ conception of the virtuous person as holy and pure. Christ, through his espousal of egalitarianism, negated the pathos of distance essential to noble values, thus beginning the second phase of the slave revolt where goodness became associated with a distinctly slavish conception of virtue. (shrink)

This conceptual article draws on structuration theory and social identity theory to isolate firm-internal institutionalization processes as antecedents and drivers of corporate political strategizing. Path dependencies in corporate routines and actors' knowledgeability about these path dependencies are singled out as primary factors structuring strategic decision making within the firm. The concepts of path dependency and knowledgeability, respectively, refer to the institutional and cognitive dimension of corporate political strategizing. These two dimensions come together in actors' identities. Identities on their turn (...) shape managers' recognition of policy issues and the interpretation of issue salience relative to corporate interests. Thus, the article argues that institutional features of competitive environments precipitate in processes of identity building and preference formation and are reproduced through organizational routines and practices within the firm. (shrink)

I argue that altruistic behavior and its variation across cultures may be caused by mental cognitive mechanisms that induce cooperative behavior in contract-like situations and adapt that behavior to the kinds of contracts that exist in one's socio-cultural environment. I thus present a cognitive alternative to Henrich et al.'s motivation-based account. Rather than behaving in ways that reveal preferences, subjects interpret the experiment in ways that cue their social heuristics. In order to distinguish the respective roles of preferences and cognitive (...) processes that determine economic behavior, we need more ethnography of strategies “in the wild.”. (shrink)

I believe that Wright’s constructivist account of intention is funda- mentally flawed [Wright 1984, 1986, 1987a, 1987b, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1991, 1992]. To understand why it fails it is necessary first to locate the account in its broader strategic context. That context is Wright’s response to Wittgenstein’s account of rule following. When so located the diagnosis of the account’s failure is clear. Wright’s account of intention is a species of the interpretative approach to mental content which is explicitly rejected (...) by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Fanon’s insistence that the oppressed retain their ability to resist and (re)configure their subjectivity has political, ethical, and philosophical import, as it highlights the fact that the subjugated are not mere things determined from the outside. To the contrary, just as several contingent factors coalesced to create the historical situation in which the colonized subject finds herself, other equally contingent factors can emerge and help to bring about socio-political transformations. Like Aimé Césaire, Fanon understood that the process of decolonization would (...) occur over time and in various stages. By studying Fanon’s complex relationship to the Négritude movement, his resistance tactics come into sharper focus. In short, I argue that Fanon’s employment of essentialized narratives can be interpreted as a variant of “strategic essentialism” (Spivak). Consequently, Fanon’s historically attuned strategy signals a movement beyond a mere reactionary response trapped within an abstract Manichaean binary. (shrink)

Collaborative governance (CG) is becoming the common currency of decision‐making, able to surmount existing institutional constraints to effectively address challenges related to sustainability and social and environmental corporate behavior. CG approaches may however result in institutional complexity. As an illustration of CG in the domain of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the ISO 26000 standard is a legitimate point of reference for organizations worldwide. The standard represents a pluralistic institutional logic that resonates several tensions arising from the domain it tries to (...) standardize, the nature of its development process, its interpretation of CSR and the type of standard it represents. This article aims to identify and examine strategic responses to ISO 26000 by various standards‐related organizations (including national standardization institutes, certification organizations, and service providers) and to contribute to the understanding of strategic responses of organizations to pluralistic institutional logics that result from CG. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to find out whether Gadamer is entitled to hold together his finitist commitment to the heteronomy of art and thought, and his advocacy of an "endless conversation with itself" of humankind. We focus on three texts: Gadamer’s dismis­sal of Carl Schmitt’s outside-in account of the heteronomy implied by the "irrup­tion of reality" in the play Hamlet and, as Archimedean point, Shakespeare’s "excision of reality" according to Stephen Greenblatt, and its inside-out heteronomic consequences. The results: (...) Schmitt’s approach restricts Gadamer’s argument on the "endless dialogue", Gadamer’s rejoinder aggravates his own argumentative fragility, and Greenblatt’s perspectivation discloses a non-sequitur. The inspection of these texts attests that heteronomy per se does not entail any openness to "creative" interpretations, that a universalized logos endiéthetos is a chimera, and that there cannot be any "infinite conversation" which would sustain the Gadamerian interplay of question and answer. (shrink)

The application of the death penalty for perpetrators of riddah by fuqaha is a problematic violation of human rights. This is because there is no good reason to show that the punishment for riddah is the death penalty. The existence of the hadith which is considered to be the legitimacy of riddah punishment turns out to be very different from the reality of its application in the history of Islamic criminal law. This article aims to answer academic anxiety about the (...) death penalty for perpetrators of riddah as a result of the ijtihad of fuqaha as well as to confirm the construction of its historical reality in state life. This article finds that some verses of the Qur’an and the hadith which are used as legal basis by fuqaha are only understood textually and treated as absolute theological verses and hadiths, but not based on historical evidence. The history of the application of criminal punishment during the time of the Prophet shows that there is no application of the death penalty to the perpetrators of riddah, except riddah which is followed by criminal acts. So it is not solely because of the act of riddah itself, but because of a greater crime against Islam. The implementation of the death penalty for the perpetrators of riddah which is based on textual interpretation of the hadith, thus has the potential to conflict with the principles of human rights and religious freedom which have been regulated in the Qur’an. Contribution: This study enriches perspectives on the meaning of riddah as one of the strategic issues in Islam and shows that a new interpretation of riddah has become an important idea to promote a peaceful and inclusive society and provide access to justice for all. (shrink)

Most accounts of the Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935) emphasize its negative aspect, namely, that in particular situations, processing of an irrelevant stimulus dimension interferes with participants' performance of the instructed task. In contrast, this paper emphasizes the fact that, even with that interference, participants actually can (and usually do) exert enough control to perform the instructed task. An Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) model of the Stroop task interprets this as a kind of learned strategic control. Specifically, the concept (...) of utility is applied to the two processes that compete in the Stroop task, and a utility‐learning mechanism serves to update the corresponding utility values according to experience and hence influence the competition. This model both accounts for various extant Stroop results and makes novel predictions about when people can reduce their susceptibility to Stroop interference. These predictions are tested in three experiments that involve a double‐response variant of the Stroop task. (shrink)

This article challenges key aspects of theories on norms evolution, transnational advocacy, and social movements. It demonstrates that the “emergence” phase of the “norms life cycle” model (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) is more internally contested than currently interpreted. It develops two alternatives to the “boomerang” model of transnational advocacy (Keck and Sikkink 1998). It highlights and explains differences—rather than similarities—in the framing strategies of actors involved in globalized protests. It explores the influence of several key “microsociological factors” (Giugni 2002) on (...) the evolution of those stragegies. Empirically the article focuses on the World Trade Organization's Third Ministerial meeting at Seattle in 1999. It analyzes why and how social movement actors framed different interpretations of the human rights at stake in the context of international trade. Framing innovations may have had short-term strategic value at Seattle, but did not lead to a unified understanding of human rights, either among activists themselves or among the government and corporate actors they sought to influence through protest. (shrink)

In this paper, we show how game theoretic work on conversation combined with a theory of discourse structure provides a framework for studying interpretive bias and how bias affects the production and interpretation of linguistic content. We model the influence of author bias on the discourse content and structure of the author’s linguistic production and interpreter bias on the interpretation of ambiguous or underspecified elements of that content and structure. Interpretive bias is an essential feature of learning and (...) understanding but also something that can be exploited to pervert or subvert the truth. We develop three types of games to understand and to analyze a range of interpretive biases, the factors that contribute to them, and their strategic effects. (shrink)

Sustainable development is often framed as a social issue to which corporations should pay attention because it offers both opportunities and challenges. Through the use of institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm, we shed some light on why, more than 20 years after sustainable development was first introduced, we see neither the adoption of this business model as dominant nor its converse, that is the total abandonment of the model as unworkable and unprofitable. We focus on multinational (...) corporations (MNCs) because they were among the organizations first called to take action. In order to illustrate the institutional pressures MNCs face and their strategic response to these pressures, we analysed four major oil and gas multinationals subject to similar sustainable development pressures – climate change, biodiversity, renewable energy development and social investment. We argue that normative and coercive isomorphism does not occur at the global level because sustainable development is largely a stakeholder-driven rather than a broad social pressure. That is, host country interpretation of sustainable development pressures varies across an MNC’s subsidiary network. Based on the analysis of the four major MNCs’ annual reports from 2000 to 2005, we argue that mimetic isomorphism may occur, but since it implies the use of complex and intangible resources, mimetic processes are slow, rare and discretionary. (shrink)

The term ‘sustainability’ is vague and open to interpretation. In this paper we analyze how firms use the term in an effort to make the concept their own, and how it becomes a premise for further decisions, by applying a bottom-up approach focusing on the interpretation of ‘sustainability’ in the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. The study is based on a strategic selection of informants from the industry and the study design rests on: 1) identification of the main drivers (...) of sustainability, and 2) the application of five different discursive strategies to analyze how the firms maneuver to legitimize ‘sustainability’ in their conduct. We employ the Critical Discourse Analysis framework, which emphasizes how discourses provide different concepts of meaning. The sustainability concept is assessed based on how sustainability is brought into action by social actors in a legitimate way, and how this action results in sustainable practices. The empirical case of the study is the verbal justification of sustainability practices among representatives of the Norwegian salmon-farming industry. We aim to find out how these representatives translate the rather vague directives of the sustainability concept into legitimate choices that resonate with the firms’ contextual environment, hence, how the salmon farmers perceive, explore, interpret, explain, enact, and defend the diverse landscape of sustainability when implementing professional decisions. We found a trend of passive adaptation to external requirements, such as public regulations and regulative requirements from certification bodies. At the same time, there are progressive forces that attempt to improve the sustainability of the farming practices by involvement in research and innovation projects or cooperation with other firms, e.g. the contribution from offshore engineers in developing high seas farms. The strategies outlined and discussed cannot be seen as a typology to categorize the firms. More than one discursive strategy may be involved in one firm’s choice, and the strategies may work on different levels. (shrink)

P3 is the most prominent of the electrical potentials of the human electroencephalogram that are sensitive to psychological variables. According to the most influential current hypothesis about its psychological significance [E. Donchin's], the “context updating” hypothesis, P3 reflects the updating of working memory. This hypothesis cannot account for relevant portions of the available evidence and it entails some basic contradictions. A more general formulation of this hypothesis is that P3 reflects the updating of expectancies. This version implies that P3-evoking stimuli (...) are initially unexpected but later become expected. This contradiction cannot be resolved within this formulation. The alternative “context closure” hypothesis retains the concept of “strategic information processing” emphasized by the context updating hypothesis. P3s are evoked by events that are awaited when subjects deal with repetitive, highly structured tasks; P3s arise from subjects' combining successive stimuli into larger units. The tasks in which P3s are elicited can accordingly be classified in terms of their respective formal sequences of stimuli. P3 may be a physiological indicator of excess activation being released from perceptual control areas. (shrink)

Plato’s political philosophy is for the sake of directing people towards the good life: this purpose is manifest from his theory of the Good. Nevertheless, Platonic scholarship has often criticized this theory for being impractical. Against this criticism, I argue that this theory has a practical aspect because of its strategic and methodological nature. This essay reconstructs Plato’s induction towards the absolute Good, through his justice theory and educational recommendations, with a view to the intended practicality of the theory (...) of the Good. The major conclusion is that the theory of the Good provides a formula to achieve the greatest good in an everchanging, sensible world. (shrink)

The first book-length study devoted to FromSoftware games, On Soulsring Worlds explores how the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring are able to reconcile extreme difficulty in both gameplay and narrative with broad appeal. Arguing that the games are strategically positioned in relation to contemporary audiences and designed to tap into the new forms of interpretation afforded by digital media, the author situates the games vis-à-vis a number of current debates, including the posthuman and the ethics of gameplay. The (...) book delivers an object lesson on the value of narrative (and) complexity in digital play and in the interpretive practices it gives rise to. Cross-fertilizing narrative theory, game studies, and nonhuman-oriented philosophy, this book will appeal to students and scholars of game studies, media studies, narratology and video game ethnography. (shrink)

In recent years, the responsibility of corporations has been widely discussed. However, there is no general agreement as regards what CSR is exactly. Due to the indefinite nature of CSR, the term actually embraces several ideas and different contents. A very widespread understanding of CSR defines the subject as (strategic) corporate philanthropy, including operations such as corporate giving, corporate volunteering, corporate foundations, etc. The philanthropic approach to CSR implies that corporations must take responsibility beyond their core business activities. This (...) article argues that a philanthropic approach to CSR is problematic. Moreover, such a conceptualisation strengthens the perception that making Profits is immoral; therefore, it endangers the basis of corporations' license-to-operate in the long run. (shrink)

We examine dialectical tensions between “dialogue” and “narrative” as these discourses supplant one another as the fundamental discourse of intelligibility, through juxtaposing two interpretations of Genesis 38 rooted in changing interpretative paradigms. Is dialogue properly understood as a narrative genre, or is narrative the content about which people are in dialogue? Is the divine–human relationship a narrative drama or is it a dialogue between a god and human beings? We work within parameters laid out by the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer (...) (primarily representing dialogue) and Ricoeur (primarily representing narrative). On the one hand, a feminist approach can develop Tamar as a courageous hero in impossible circumstances, strategizing to overturn Judah’s patriarchal naïveté. On the other hand, Judah seems to be able to be read as a tragic hero, seeking to save Tamar. These readings challenge one another, where either Tamar’s or Judah’s autonomy is undermined. By putting these interpretations into dialogue, our aim is to show that neither dialogue nor narrative succeeds the other with finality, and that we can achieve a fragile integration of the two (dialogue and narrative) despite their propensity toward polarization. (shrink)

Moralising is a venerable last resort strategy. The ancient Melians presented the Athenian generals with a splendid example when in a particularly tight corner. In our Western philosophical tradition moral rhetoric is often couched in the form of reasons for action either external to preference and desire (eg. Kant) or internal to the agent''s calculus of desire (e.g., Hume, Gauthier). A third tradition dismisses such rhetoric as the last recourse of the weak (e.g., Aristotle, Nietzsche) whereas a fourth calls for (...) an examination of the social context (e.g., Socrates, Marx, Wittgenstein, Habermas). This paper reports on an experiment which throws some empirical light on these debates and offers a surprising twist to the interpretation of the Melians'' plea. (shrink)

This article examines Appaya Dīkṣita’s intellectual affiliation to Śivādvaita Vedānta in light of his well-known commitment to Advaita Vedānta. Attention will be given to his Śivādvaitanirṇaya, a short work expounding the nature of the Śivādvaita doctrine taught by Śrīkaṇṭha in his Śaiva-leaning commentary on the Brahmasūtra. It will be shown how Appaya strategically interprets Śrīkaṇṭha’s views on the relationship between Śiva, its power of consciousness and the individual self, along the lines of pure non-dualism. In this context, the hermeneutical role (...) of the daharavidyā doctrine will be considered with reference to Appaya’s Śivādvaita magnum opus, the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā. (shrink)

Nothing I wrote in Is There a Text in This Class? has provoked more opposition or consternation than my claim that the argument of the book has no consequences for the practice of literary criticism.1 To many it seemed counterintuitive to maintain that an argument in theory could leave untouched the practice it considers: After all, isn’t the very point of theory to throw light on or reform or guide practice? In answer to this question, I want to say, first, (...) that this claim is unsupportable. Here, I am in agreement with Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, who are almost alone in agreeing with me and who fault me not for making the “no consequences” argument but for occasionally falling away from it. Those dislike Is There a Text in This Class? tend to dislike “Against Theory” even more, and it is part of my purpose here to account for the hostility to both pieces. But since the issues at stake are fundamental, it is incumbent to begin at the beginning with a discussion of what theory is and is not. 1. See my Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities , p. 370. For a response to the “no consequences” claim, see Mary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: on Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,” Boundary 2 11 : 222. Stanley Fish is the William Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. His most recent contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Profession Despise Thyself: Fear and Self-Loathing in Literary Studies” and “Fear of Fish:”A Reply to Walter Davis” . The present essay is the concluding chapter of Change. (shrink)

The introduction of the concept of strategic maneuvering into the pragma-dialectical theory makes it possible to formulate testable hypotheses regarding the persuasiveness of argumentative moves that are made in argumentative discourse. After summarizing the standard pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, van Eemeren, Garssen, and Meuffels explain what the extension of the pragma-dialectical approach with strategic maneuvering involves and discuss the fallacies in terms of the extended pragma-dialectical approach as derailments of strategic maneuvering. Then they give an empirical (...) class='Hi'>interpretation of the extended pragma-dialectical model in which they report the testing of three hypotheses which formulate preliminary conditions for effectiveness research within the framework of the extended pragma-dialectical theory and the results of the tests they consecutively carried out. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the positive organizational literature in the complex interplay between the positive and negative facets of organizations, individuals, and situations. The concept of courage provides fertile ground to study this interplay, since it is generally understood to be a positive quality that is manifested in challenging situations. The empirical study presented here looks at courage in a strategic decision-making context and takes an interpretive perspective; it focuses on the cognitive structures and subjective understandings of managers (...) and administrators involved in merger projects as a way to understand the dynamics surrounding managerial courage. Our study makes several contributions: it shows that managers consider courage to have a moral dimension, e.g., to be a positive and ethical response to a risky or difficult situation in which there is an interplay between organizational and personal interests; it identifies two kinds of managerial moral courage; it proposes a conceptual model with which to understand how evaluations of what is courageous and what is not are made; and finally, it offers four schemas developed from the data that add to our understanding of moral courage in management. (shrink)