{"id":191,"date":"2012-08-28T09:56:31","date_gmt":"2012-08-28T13:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/?p=191"},"modified":"2012-08-28T09:56:31","modified_gmt":"2012-08-28T13:56:31","slug":"non-dualistic-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/08\/28\/non-dualistic-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"(Non) Dualistic Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, for the first week of the first semester for our first year PhD students, I assigned a reading that made my students cry.\u00a0 Or at least whimper.\u00a0 Or perhaps merely curse my name.\u00a0 The article was Feldman and Orlikowski\u2019s (2011) Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory<\/a> in the journal Organization Science<\/em>.\u00a0 I must admit that it produced a bit of mental pain on my part knowing that the students would understand this paper a boatload better in their third year than in their first, but we were reading it now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My objective in assigning the paper was to demonstrate the outcome of transdisciplinary<\/a> research, which is an overarching goal of our Organization Science PhD program<\/a>.\u00a0 The problem is that it\u2019s difficult to understand the ins and outs of a particular research problem if you have not yet been \u201cin\u201d or \u201cout\u201d of a couple of them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NONETHELESS, the students and I were able to get excited about the paper by discussing the authors\u2019 call to reject dualisms.\u00a0 The example the students and I were able to coalesce around the common duality of agency vs. structure.\u00a0 The students have agency (\u201cchoice\u201d) in where they sit in the class along with what and how they respond to the discussion questions.\u00a0 However, we also discussed the (possibly unacknowledged) structure in the classroom in that no one was sitting in the chairs in the corner of the room, that I sat at the head of the table, and that discussions and topics tended to be generated around the ones I thought were most interesting from the readings.\u00a0 The authors rejection of duality (as we interpreted it) means that to understand what is actually happening in the class (or in \u201ceducation\u201d), we need to understand how WE actually live (ENACT) the CLASS within our space\/time\/culture.\u00a0 The rejection of dualism means that agency and structure cannot be separated from each other to understand human behavior. Mind-body, objective-subjective, individual-institutional, and free will-determinism dualities should not be separated, either.\u00a0 (Yes, practice theory extends structuration theory<\/a> and you should read Feldman and Orlikowski\u2019s article to learn more about it, if you are so inclined.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our discussion became lively, light bulbs went off over students\u2019 heads (always a goal in class), and I think we all developed an understanding of this article as moving the discipline forward by challenging old ways of theorizing and presenting new ways to understand human and organizational behavior.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine, then, my surprise when I picked up a theology book I had put down a few months before and started reading about this author\u2019s call to reject dualistic thinking<\/a>.\u00a0 ((cue the spit take<\/a>))\u00a0 I then recalled a talk I heard by Gary Alan Fine<\/a> at the last INGroup<\/a> conference in which he discussed his new book Tiny Publics<\/a>, in which he proposed that we can understand organization as well as society by understanding the routine small group interactions in situ<\/em> (i.e., not unrelated to the rejection of dualistic thinking).\u00a0 Dr. Fine is a sociologist quite apart from Feldman and Orlikowski as well as the theologian I was reading.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I may be going out on a limb here (or I may not!), but I think we are in the midst of a revolutionary new way of thinking about human (and organizational) behavior: one that is more holistic and difficult than before.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got to stop thinking in dualities (i.e., opposites) and realize that \u201cboth\u201d sides are necessary, equal, and essential in understanding What Is Going On.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the part of the essay in which I am supposed to explain how we do that, how we stop thinking in dualities and start researching and theorizing non-dualistically.\u00a0 HA! The best the students and I came up with was that we should take Fine\u2019s approach and study repetitive small group behavior, checking our biases for dualities, and extrapolating to the research question from there.\u00a0 We also decided this was going to be a lot easier for researchers 50 years from now (when we\u2019ve already worked through these issues) than it is for us now.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, for the first week of the first semester for our first year PhD students, I assigned a reading that made my students cry.\u00a0 Or at least whimper.\u00a0 Or perhaps merely curse my name.\u00a0 The article was Feldman and Orlikowski\u2019s (2011) Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory in the journal Organization Science.\u00a0 I must admit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67nDP-35","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":180,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/04\/20\/writing-and-thinking-thinking-and-writing\/","url_meta":{"origin":191,"position":0},"title":"Writing and Thinking: Thinking and Writing","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"April 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It has taken me forever to get this post up on my blog! \u00a0I am finally being shamed into finishing up this post after drinks, snacks, and dinner with my students last night. \u00a0Why so hard to write? \u00a0I think it's because one becomes very self-conscious about writing when one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":259,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2014\/02\/21\/writing-and-thinking-and-theorizing\/","url_meta":{"origin":191,"position":1},"title":"Writing and Thinking and Theorizing","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"February 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"So I'm teaching my Writing And Thinking in the Organizational Sciences graduate class again. \u00a0(Wow! \u00a0My academic blog is two years old. \u00a0I really need to post more often) \u00a0This is a course that I took with Allan Wicker many years ago and is based upon Allan's (1985) paper on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":143,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2011\/09\/14\/sabbatical\/","url_meta":{"origin":191,"position":2},"title":"Sabbatical","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"September 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I am on sabbatical this semester, although at UNCC, we call it reassignment of duties leave. \u00a0(I think it's illegal to call it sabbatical in NC. \u00a0WHOOPS!) \u00a0So I tell people that I'm on leave this fall, which of course makes them think I'm sitting around eating bonbons and watching\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":262,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2014\/05\/13\/writing-by-hand\/","url_meta":{"origin":191,"position":3},"title":"Writing By Hand","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"May 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"So \u00a0sometime during the last semester, a study came out demonstrating that taking notes by hand (i.e., writing) helps students retain more information than typing notes on their keyboard. \u00a0I posted that to both my undergrad and graduate class online pages. \u00a0But it ended \u00a0up sparking a discussion a few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":416,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2020\/07\/15\/how-to-science-who-should-we-trust-as-experts\/","url_meta":{"origin":191,"position":4},"title":"How To Science: Who Should We Trust as Experts?","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"July 15, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"So, I saved this as an idea to blog about in April. Who should we be able to trust as \"experts\" in whatever field we need information? Here is the conundrum I start with: We should most\u00a0trust the people who are experts in their field.\u00a0 I am not an expert\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":217,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2013\/02\/22\/time-in-organizations\/","url_meta":{"origin":191,"position":5},"title":"Time in Organizations","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"February 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went back to school after working in the \"real world\" for 4 years, one of the differences that struck me was differences in time in the organization. \u00a0I have not studied time in organizations, which is an important area of research. \u00a0What I want to talk about is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}