Norms And Practices

We spend a great deal of time learning our vocations and avocations as we work at jobs, participate in home life, and take part in civic activities and politics. In doing so, we engage in practices that consist of complex bodies of norms. These practices themselves are bodies of knowledge-often acquired from others-about what we take to be good ways or right ways to do certain things. As we learn how to solve problems and act on this knowledge, the practice itself changes. In Norms and Practices, James D. Wallace shows that norms of all kinds, including ethical norms, are intensely social constructs learned through constant interaction with others. Wallace suggests that ethical norms have long been misunderstood as practice-independent prescriptions for behavior; he regards them instead as items of practical knowledge that are constituents of practices. We are given the luxury of learning from others' mistakes and successes, often in a very informal way. Such lessons from collective or individual experience often carry more weight than do pronouncements from an external source. Wallace shows that practices and norms, including ethical norms within such spheres as biomedical research, family life, and politics, continually change as practitioners face novel problems.

This edited volume examines the relationship between collective intentionality and inferential theories of meaning. The book consists of three main sections. The first part contains essays demonstrating how researchers working on inferentialism and collective intentionality can learn from one another. The essays in the second part examine the dimensions along which philosophical and empirical research on human reasoning and collective intentionality can benefit from more cross-pollination. The final part consists of essays that offer a closer examination of themes from inferentialism and collective intentionality that arise in the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Groups, Norms and Practices provides a template for continuing an interdisciplinary program in philosophy and the sciences that aims to deepen our understanding of human rationality, language use, and sociality.

This edited volume examines the relationship between collective intentionality and inferential theories of meaning. The book consists of three main sections. The first part contains essays demonstrating how researchers working on inferentialism and collective intentionality can learn from one another. The essays in the second part examine the dimensions along which philosophical and empirical research on human reasoning and collective intentionality can benefit from more cross-pollination. The final part consists of essays that offer a closer examination of themes from inferentialism and collective intentionality that arise in the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Groups, Norms and Practices provides a template for continuing an interdisciplinary program in philosophy and the sciences that aims to deepen our understanding of human rationality, language use, and sociality.

Challenging readers to rethink the norms of women's health and treatment, Prescribed Norms concludes with a gesture to chaos theory as a way of critiquing and breaking out of prescribed physiological and social understandings of women's health.

Examines the involvement of local actors in conflicts over global norms at the intersection between international relations and international law.

Large scale behavioral interventions work in some social contexts, but fail in others. The book explains this phenomenon with diverse personal and social behavioral motives, guided by research in economics, psychology, and international consulting done with UNICEF. The book offers tested tools that mobilize mass media, community groups, and autonomous "first movers" (or trendsetters) to alter harmful collective behaviors.

This book examines the social codes and practices that shape the literary culture of a combined fifth/sixth-grade classroom. It considers how the social and cultural contexts of classroom and community affect four classroom practices involving literature--read aloud, peer-led literature discussions, teacher-led literature discussions, and independent reading--with a focus on how these practices are shaped by discourse and rituals within the classroom and by social codes and cultural norms beyond the classroom. This book's emphasis on intermediate students is particularly important, given the dearth of studies in the field of reading education that focus on readers at the edge of adolescence.