GOGSoc Episode V: The GOG Strikes Back

Got it on my shelf, but haven't read it yet. Eco's a pain to read. Arguably more so than Foucault, which is quite an achievement

I do find some of his stuff heavy going, but love the above two.

Incidentally: is there some trick to multi-quoting across pages? I can't seem to do it.

This is all a bit cryptic for me, but if I understand correctly, the difficulty is an aversion to hard work, possibly coupled with an attitude of 'I pay good money to be here- it is your responsibility to make sure I do well'.

If so, I heard a very nice analogy the other day- we are not providing a service to students, but we have a coaching role. If you think of fitness trainers, for example, they provide guidance and support but in the end, it's down to you to make a difference and, if you don't put the effort in, there won't be a return, and that is not your coach's fault. Time for a few home truths in my view and apologies if I have totally misunderstood.

Indeed, I am. I love Eco - that and The Name of the Rose are two of my favourite books.

I am coming to the end of my work contract. I had three days of leave to take, the first of which I am using tomorrow, which means I only have three days left (Friday, Monday and Tuesday) before I finish on the 31st.

The woman whose maternity leave I have been covering has been back for a few weeks now as the manager wanted to try to transition over the two of us as smoothly as possible. I have tried to get her up to speed but progress has been slow for a number of reasons: she has been off sick; she has reduced her working hours, and taken off the most important day of the week (for the job); she seems hesitant to work independently; and she is just plain lazy.

Tomorrow is the first time she will be left on her own to complete a task to deadline, which affects the whole prison. I have shown her how to do it every week since she came back, and went over it three times today, and emailed her instructions before I left this afternoon. I have absolutely no faith in her ability to do the job when I am not there, and that is because I am there doing it. I am not sure what to do (i.e. whether or not to speak to the manager). I am in the process of writing absurdly detailed instructions for her that I will send to a number of staff on the day I leave so she should be able to carry on doing things my way, which was a vast improvement on the way things were done. But I have a feeling most of this will go out of the window by the end of next week. I think it is best if I just keep quiet to be honest...

Tomorrow is the first time she will be left on her own to complete a task to deadline, which affects the whole prison. I have shown her how to do it every week since she came back, and went over it three times today, and emailed her instructions before I left this afternoon. I have absolutely no faith in her ability to do the job when I am not there, and that is because I am there doing it. I am not sure what to do (i.e. whether or not to speak to the manager). I am in the process of writing absurdly detailed instructions for her that I will send to a number of staff on the day I leave so she should be able to carry on doing things my way, which was a vast improvement on the way things were done. But I have a feeling most of this will go out of the window by the end of next week. I think it is best if I just keep quiet to be honest...

Are there any GoGS who are, perchance, staff members at Bristol Uni? If so, I'd be grateful for a pm

Habitus = a theory about the nature of human agency. Its principle points are:
a) We are all affected by our cumulative experiences throughout life which shape our world view, preferences, etc.
b) From a young age we pick up dispositions which are really strong instinctive tendencies that we aren't fully conscious of, which motivate us to like certain things, dislike others, and generally influence all of our choices.
c) A lot of our orientation towards the world is calculated on an intuitive, unconscious level, and this has to be taken into account when explaining human behaviour because our behaviour doesn't always make sense in light of our professed explanations/views/attitudes.
d) We also have a lot of conscious attitudes and views about our life, decisions, selves, etc. which also influence things but aren't the only thing shaping our behaviour.
e) Our embodiment is an important aspect in our experience of and orientation to the world. We mustn't ignore the influence that physicality has on our ideas, emotions and attitudes, especially as quite often we are unaware of how our physical state is affecting our behaviour and frame of mind. (this principle is really interesting as it opens the way for trying to bring in neuroscience into social theories about human behaviour).

So that's it in English.

I'm not French, so I wouldn't know whether 'capitol' was the correct English translation or not. All I know is that all of Bourdieu's work that has been published in English uses capital instead, and that this is the usage circulated in any english research referring to Bourdieu.

Aye, I understood it mostly. Go me.

Yeh, I tend to assume when people struggle that it just hasn't been explained carefully and patiently enough. And obviously his terminology might get in the way. I find lots of people close themselves off to theory because they think its harder than it is and assume they won't get it.

Maybe that's because most theorists are experts at making their ideas sound a great deal harder than they actually are?
A couple of weeks ago, I had to read a book on editing theory that was supposedly relevant to my argument, but I spent half an hour just poring over the bloody preface, which was so obscurely written it made no sense at all. It was extremely frustrating. Luckily I persisted and started reading further and then eventually went back to the preface. At the second attempt I could finally figure out what the guy meant, and his ideas turned out to be perfectly sensible and straightforward (and they actually were relevant to my argument), but it was all but impossible to get through the language, and the introduction was worst of all.

Just came across this - another move towards open access - in the US, a petition to require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. (Seems an eminently reasonable request to me? )

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ

No, you can't generalise. That is true of literary theory, and continental philosophy more broadly. However analytic philosophy, by contrast, prides itself on its clarity.

That guy was American, actually. But the book read as though it had been translated from French.