Archive for the ‘Buber’ Category
Dialogical Self Theory: Positioning and Counter-Positioning in a Globalizing Society
Dialogical Self Theory provides a comprehensive social-scientific theory that incorporates the deep implications of the process of globalization, and its impact on individual development. Hubert Hermans and Agnieszka Hermans-Konopka present a new and compelling view of the historical changes in perceptions of social realities, and how these changes affected motivation, emotion, leadership, and conflict resolution. They detail the improvement of dialogical relationships both within the self and between individuals, groups, and cultures, providing evidence from everyday life. The book addresses a variety of problem areas that are analyzed in new and unexpected ways: the pros and cons of traditional, modern, and post-modern models of self, the role of emotions, power and dominance, motivation, leadership, and conflict resolution. This book will be of interest to scholars in a wide range of fields including psychology and sociology.
Read also: Dialogical self
Beyond discourse: education, the self, and dialogue
Drawing on the works of Martin Buber and Mikhail Bakhtin, the author explores the roles that dialogue, laughter, and spontaneity play in the education of the whole person.
Using Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogue and carnival, and in connection with the ideas of Martin Buber, Sidorkin explores the issues of difference and identity in a very postmodern view of the self. He addresses the questions of what it really means to be human, and, likewise, what truly makes a good school.
He takes dialogue beyond the framework of discourse, making it an end in itself rather than a means toward better education. His sojourn into a fifth-grade classroom shows that basic forms of classroom talk, which are normally thought to be distracting or educationally useless, are proved to be valuable dialogical moments of discovery in schooling.
The rebirth of dialogue: Bakhtin, Socrates, and the rhetorical tradition
Dialogue has suffered a long eclipse in the history of philosophy and the history of rhetoric but has enjoyed a rebirth in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Buber, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Among twentieth-century figures, Bakhtin took a special interest in the history of the dialogue form. This book explores Bakhtin’s understanding of Socratic dialogue and the notion that dialogue is not simply a way of persuading others to accept our ideas, but a way of holding ourselves, and others, accountable for all of our thoughts, words, and actions. In supporting this premise, Bakhtin challenges the traditions of argument and persuasion handed down from Plato and Aristotle, and he offers, as an alternative, a dialogical rhetoric that restructures the traditional relationship between speakers and listeners, writers and readers, as a mutual testing, contesting, and creating of ideas. The author suggests that Bakhtin’s dialogical rhetoric is not restricted to oral discourse, but is possible in any medium, including written, graphic, and digital.
An Ontological Understanding of Dialogue in Education
This dissertation develops an ontological understanding of dialogue that is then used to reconsider the forms and purposes of schooling. Employing the works of Martin Buber and Mikhail Bakhtin, the work departs from the literature on schooling that treats dialogue as merely an instrument in the schooling of children in order for them to become good citizens, to join the work force and the like. Instead it is argued that dialogue needs to be understood as constituting the very essence of human existence. In addition the dissertation offers a critique of monological assumptions of modern and postmodern philosophies and critiques non-ontological theories of dialogue that give it a merely instrumental, as opposed to constitutive value. The notion of a polyphonic self is then introduced, which calls for reconsideration of the notions of identity, integrity, and authenticity. A human self is co-authored by others, and can exist and be known only through dialogue with others. A person of dialogical integrity is defined as being consistently different in different situations; and the authentic self is true to the dialogical situation, rather than one’s inner feelings and self-concepts. The dissertation illustrates the ontological notion of dialogue by analyzing types of discourse in classroom communication. Instances of dialogue are not those where students and a teacher take turn in an orderly conversation, according to rules of “dialogical teaching.” Rather, dialogue appears in some moments of disruption, talking out of turn, and laughter. The dissertation defines a successful school as one fostering dialogue in its ontological sense. Such a school should possess systemic qualities of complexity, civility, and carnival. These qualities create necessary conditions for the emergence of the dialogical relation.
Read also: Beyond discourse: education, the self, and dialogue
Dialogical Schools: Complexity, Civility, Carnival
This chapter explores the macro-implications of the dialogical approach for a school as an organization. It describes a good school from the dialogical point of view. Dialogue does not happen through organization, and yet it is intimately connected to the world of regular social relations. In regard to school as a social organization, this means that the situations of school life that are hospitable to dialogical relations can be created through some specific provisions. I think school is viewed as an institution similar to a production plant, in other words, something with relatively simple and measurable outcome. It is not perceived as similar to a neighborhood or a community, where satisfaction of its members with the quality of life is the most important criterion. The social world of a school should be sufficiently complex for a human life to flourish. Learning in itself is an exposure to complexity.
Read also: An Ontological Understanding of Dialogue in Education
