36 research outputs found
Growing Up Wireless: Being a parent and being a child in the age of Mobile Communication
No full textDigital Literacy: Tools and Methodologies for Information Society strives to define a conceptual framework for understanding social changes produced by digital media and creates a framework within which digital literacy acts as a tool to assist younger generations to interact critically with digital media and their culture, providing scholars, educators, researchers, and practitioners a technological and sociological approach to this cutting-edge topic from an educational perspective. Caronia' contribution concerns contemporary changes in parenting and in parent/children relationship related to the diffusion of mobile communication devices.
According to a phenomenological theoretical approach to culture and everyday life, individuals are constantly engaged in constructing the meaningful dimensions of the world they live in. Every day life needs thus to be conceived as a never ending cultural work through which social actors produce the meaning, structures and social organization of the world they live in, as well as the identities of themselves and the people they interact with. Everyday language and interaction are the primary tools of such a work of culture construction. However the material features of everyday life contexts are more then an inert background for culture construction. Things, whether technological or not, participate in such a process: as cultural artefacts, they both are domesticated into already existing patterns of meaning and create new ones. This is even more so with information and communication technologies: their progressive introduction into people’s everyday life, the multiplication of possible new courses of action, ways of communicating and getting information, hypothetically expand the range of tools through which individuals construct culture and identities. Overcoming the “subject-object” duality, we need to rethink the relationship between humans and technologies in term of reflexivity that is a mutual construction of meaning and a reciprocal sense making.
The process of mutual construction among technologies, culture and society may be analysed at the macro level of patterns of diffusion and uses, as well at the micro level of ordinary everyday interactions.
In this chapter the author will focus on the role of mobile communication in the construction of family social organization and inner culture.
How does the introduction of mobile phones affect family life and intergenerational relationships? How does mobile contact contribute in the construction of new cultural models of “being a parent” and “being a child”? How it contributes in the creation of new forms of family education and peer socialization?
Drawing upon data from recent research, the author analyses the role of mobile phone in the rise of new cultural models of parenting and its domestication by teenagers as a tool for group membership and peer culture construction
How 'at home' is an ethnographer at home? Territories of knowledge and the making of ethnographic understanding
No full textThis article proposes to consider “at home ethnography” and “abroad ethnography” not as labels standing for different kinds of fieldwork "out there" but rather as the poles of a continuum identifying the ethnographer’s situated, relative and ever changing epistemic status. Building on data from a recent fieldwork in an Intensive Care Unit, the author identifies the different epistemic circumstances that originate from the entanglement of the multiple territories of knowledge at stake in any ethnography of complex organizations. The analysis shows how the participants’ relative access to knowledge and rights to claim it vary according to the circumstances and the unfolding of the interaction. The discussion advances that the ethnographer oscillates between “being abroad” and “being at home” as if he was constantly moving between the two classical positions of ethnographic work: making the familiar strange as it is typical of ethnographies focusing on the “very ‘ordinariness’ of normality” (Ybema et al. 2009, p. 2), and making the strange familiar as it is typical of anthropologists studying exotic communities.
The article contributes to the still ongoing debate on “at home” organizational ethnography, by addressing the limits of the “insider doctrine” (Merton, 1972) that still pervades contemporary ethnography and proposes cognitive oscillation as the challenging mind-set of any ethnographer-in-the-field
Representing dialogues-in-the-field: The shared responsibility of scientifc aesthetics
No full textContemporary researchers can rely upon a wide repertoire of different and legitimized ways of representing field dialogues in scientific texts. This article addresses the issue of the crucial role these ways of reporting dialogues play in creating different data from the ‘same’ raw material and in the construction of very different kinds of scientific understanding of the phenomenon the original dialogues supposedly enlighten. By empirically illustrating this point, the author concludes by arguing in favor of the unavoidable rhetorical roots of scientific understanding. This typical relativistic claim does not lead to some kind of nihilistic stance. Rather, it delineates a clear zone of distributed responsibility.
By defining what kind of knowledge they expect from a scientific account, the scientific community and, in a less visible way, the readers are crucial agents in orienting the researcher’s rhetorical choice as to represent dialogues-in-the-field. The researcher’s choice is, therefore, a profoundly dialogical decision.
Keywords: accountability, agency, dialogue, epistemic responsibility, epistemic object, textualism, truth-building, writing scienc
Pharmacogenetic studies in osteosarcoma and breast cancer to identify genetic variants involved in treatment efficacy and toxicities
No full textTesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Biología Molecular. Fecha de lectura: 1-12-201
A comparative analysis of Pancoast tumour resection performed via video-assisted thoracic surgery versus standard open approaches
No full textOBJECTIVES: The aim of the present paper was to conduct a comparative analysis of outcomes after thoracoscopic resection versus standard thoracotomy approach in the treatment of Pancoast tumours. METHODS: All consecutive patients with Pancoast tumours undergoing surgical treatment from March 2000 to November 2012 were enrolled. Patients were divided into 2 groups according to whether a thoracoscopic or standard thoracotomy approach was adopted. In addition to morbidity and mortality, (i) intensity of pain; (ii) respiratory function focusing on the postoperative value and its variation with respect to the predicted value (Delta); (iii) analgesic consumption at different times during the postoperative course; and (iiii) survival rate were recorded in both groups and the inter-group differences were statistically compared. RESULTS: Of the 45 enrolled patients, 34 (75%) were included in the final analysis (18 in the thoracoscopic group and 16 in the standard group). Eleven (25%) patients were excluded because they (i) were unfit for surgery after induction therapy (n = 4); (ii) refused the operation (n = 1) or (iii) had unexpected pleural involvement (n = 6). Compared with the standard group, in the thoracoscopic group we observed less pain (P = 0.01), better recovery of forced vital capacity (P = 0.01) and forced expiratory value in 1 s (P < 0.001), and a reduction in opioid (P = 0.01) and analgesic consumption (P = 0.02). The median survival for all patients was 15 months. Patients with N0/N1 disease had better median survival than N2 patients (47 vs 9 months; P = 0.009). One local recurrence in the standard group was observed 1 year after operation, whereas 2 local recurrences, 1 in the thoracoscopic group and another in the standard group, were registered 2 years after the operation (P = 1.0). Finally, 4 (22%) extrathoracic metastases in the thoracoscopic group and 5 (31%) in the standard group (P = 0.8) were found over the 2 years following the procedure. CONCLUSIONS: In the management of Pancoast tumours, a thoracoscopic approach is safe and may be an effective adjunct to standard surgical resection in selected cases. Such an approach enabled surgeons to explore the pleural cavity and avoid exploratory thoracotomy in cases of unexpected pleural involvement. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. All rights reserved
The Role of the Setting in Controlling Anxiety and Pain During Outpatient Operative Hysteroscopy: The Experience of a Hysteroscopy Unit in North Italy
No full textPersonal effects essays on memoir, teaching, and culture in the work of Louise DeSalvo
No full text"Celebrating one of the most important Italian American female authors of our time, Personal Effects offers a lucid view of Louise DeSalvo as a writer who has produced a vast and provocative body of memoir writing, a scholar who has enriched our understanding of Virginia Woolf, and a teacher who has transformed countless lives. More than an anthology, Personal Effects represents an author case study and an example for modern Italian American interdisciplinary scholarship. Personal Effects examines DeSalvo's memoirs as works that push the boundaries of the most controversial genre of the past few decades. In these works, the author fearlessly explores issues such as immigration, domesticity, war, adultery, illness, mental health, sexuality, the environment, and trauma through the lens of gender, ethnic, and working-class identity. Alongside her groundbreaking scholarship, DeSalvo's memoirs attest to the power and influence of this feminist Italian American writer".
Growing Up Wireless
No full textThis chapter illustrates the role of the mobile phone in the rise of new cultural models of parenting. According to a phenomenological theoretical approach to culture and everyday life, the author argues that the relationship between technologies, culture, and society should be conceived as a mutual construction. As cultural artefacts, mobile communication technologies both are domesticated by people into their cultural ways of living and create new ones. How are mobile phones domesticated by already existing cultural models of parenting? How does the introduction of the mobile phone affect family life and intergenerational relationships? How does mobile contact contribute in the construction of new cultural models of “being a parent” and “being a child”? Analysing new social phenomena such as “hyper-parenting” and the “dialogic use” of mobile phones, the author argues upon the role of mobile communication technologies in articulating the paradoxical nature of the contemporary cultural model of family education. </jats:p
Perché leggere Towards a Phenomenological Axiology. Discovering What Matters di Roberta De Monticelli. Appunti di una volpe che voleva diventare un riccio
No full textThis article reviews the outstanding and thought-provoking work by Roberta De Monticelli (2021), Towards a Phenomenological Axiology. Discovering What Matters. The article addresses the reasons why it should be read by everyone but especially by help professions practitioners. Although we all deal with morality and value judgments on on mundane, everyday bases, the professional life of education and care practitioners is namely a series of morally-loaded practices and decision-making informed by morally oriented (expert) knowledge. Beyond the thesis advanced in the book, its major contribution consists in making the reader think the inescapability of morality in everyday thinking and acting and the need for a reflective positioning towards this issue. By aligning with “the hedgehog vs. the fox” struggle proposed by the author as the framework of her theoretical proposal, the article advances what would be the doubts and counterarguments of a fox-like scholar in education. It illustrates why her “professional vision” cannot but notice what appears to be under-thematized by the hedgehog, i.e., the unavoidable mediation of language and social interaction that precedes and therefore impacts the constitution of what the hedgehog convincingly notices: the entanglement of fact and value. The conclusion is dedicated to the (underestimated?) place of social sciences in such a debate, their tension between implicit normativity and presumed descriptivity, as well the challenges of the increasingly explicit normativity of applied social sciences.Questo articolo è incentrato sull’importante e stimolante lavoro di Roberta De Monticelli (2021), Towards a Phenoenological Axiology. Discovering What Matters. L’articolo spiega i motivi per cui questo lavoro dovrebbe essere letto, soprattutto dai professionisti della cura. Benché moralità e giudizi di valore impregnino la vita quotidiana di ciascuno di noi, essi impregnano - spesso invisibilmente - anche le conoscenze esperte e le pratiche professionali di chi si occupa di cura e di educazione. Al di là delle tesi contenute nel volume, il suo contributo più significativo consiste nel rendere il lettore consapevole dell’inevitabilità della morale nel pensiero e nei gesti di ogni giorno e della necessità di un posizionamento riflessivo a riguardo. Accogliendo la metafora della polemica tra “il riccio e la volpe”, scelta da Roberta De Monticelli come cornice della sua proposta teorica, l’articolo espone quali sono i dubbi e le controargomentazioni da parte di una studiosa dell’educazione che proprio perché tale non riesce – suo malgrado – a diventare un riccio. Spiega perché la sua “visione professionale” non può non farle notare ciò che il riccio sembra trascurare, ossia l’inevitabile mediazione del linguaggio e dell’interazione sociale che precede e quindi informa la costituzione di quel che il riccio rileva in modo convincente: l’intreccio tra fatti e valori. L’articolo si conclude riflettendo sul posto (sottovalutato?) delle scienze sociali sulle posizioni in gioco in tale dibattito, la loro tensione tra normatività implicita e presunta descrittività, nonché le sfide inaugurate – ma non tematizzate – dall’attuale viraggio delle scienze sociali verso una normatività sempre più esplicita
Growing Up Wireless
No full textThis chapter illustrates the role of the mobile phone in the rise of new cultural models of parenting. According to a phenomenological theoretical approach to culture and everyday life, the author argues that the relationship between technologies, culture, and society should be conceived as a mutual construction. As cultural artefacts, mobile communication technologies both are domesticated by people into their cultural ways of living and create new ones. How are mobile phones domesticated by already existing cultural models of parenting? How does the introduction of the mobile phone affect family life and intergenerational relationships? How does mobile contact contribute in the construction of new cultural models of “being a parent” and “being a child”? Analysing new social phenomena such as “hyperparenting” and the “dialogic use” of mobile phones, the author argues upon the role of mobile communication technologies in articulating the paradoxical nature of the contemporary cultural model of family education.</jats:p
