C Strau
Biographic Data
| ID | 15751 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Strau |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Strau |
| SIGNATURE | STRAU C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pitzer College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7641-6120 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 391 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Small work pleasures and two types of well-being
Does wage labor contribute to well-being beyond providing an income? Well-being can be understood in eudaimonic terms as the happiness derived from a socially valued life or in hedonic terms as the experience of pleasure. The eudaimonic-hedonic divide is replicated in competing progressive visions of the place of work in a good life. Laborist theories stress the centrality of paid work for a meaningful life. By contrast, for post-work theories, p…
Naomi R. Quinn July 22, 1939–June 23, 2019
Naomi R. Quinn
Introduction: Person-Centered Approaches in the Study of Culture and Poverty
This introduction to a special collection of articles on the theme of poverty and personhood provides an overview of the collection's response to recent calls for a reconsideration of culture in urban poverty studies. We argue that such a reconsideration must confront two theoretical problems if it is to be successful. First, the analyses must make a sustained effort to define clearly the theoretical model of "culture" used in the analyses and wh…
"It Feels So Alien" or the Same Old S: Attachment to Divergent Cultural Models in Insecure Times
Instead of conceptualizing poor people as a group with a fixed culture, we need to understand diverse, shared frameworks for responding to economic adversity. Over half of all Americans of working age can expect to be in a poor or near-poor household at some point. Differing interpretations of their low incomes under flexible capitalism are illustrated by the responses of two unemployed middle-aged sisters from a white working-class family in now…
Roy D'Andrade
Psychological Anthropology
Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs
Questions about immigration and social welfare programs raise the central issues of who belongs to a society and what its members deserve. Yet the opinions of the American public about these important issues seem contradictory and confused. Claudia Strauss explains why: public opinion on these issues and many others is formed not from liberal or conservative ideologies but from diverse vernacular discourses that may not fit standard ideologies bu…
How are language constructions constitutive? Strategic uses of conventional discourses about immigration
Blaming for Columbine: Conceptions of Agency in the Contemporary United States
Modern Westerners are supposed to embrace a notion of unfettered personal agency. An analysis of public commentary (interviews, editorials, and online message boards) in the United States about the Columbine school shootings shows that the voluntarist cultural model of persons as autonomous agents, while certainly very important, is just one of a number of cultural models Americans use to explain human action and has particular political and inte…
Commentary: Borders as Sites of Pain
I consider Walkerdine's second point that social borders -- especially those of class and work -- are sites of pain. She illustrates that contention with stories of working-class British women who had university educations and moved into the middle class but never felt they fully belonged, of workers in South Wales who are dislocated by the closing of their central mine or manufacturing plant, and of Australian manufacturing workers who are tryin…
A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning
"Culture" and "meaning" are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on "connectionist" or "neural network" models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they const…
The Imaginary
It is common in anthropology now to speak of imaginaries instead of cultural beliefs. This article examines the way Cornelius Castoriadis, Jacques Lacan, Benedict Anderson, and Charles Taylor analyzed this concept. For Castoriadis, the imaginary is a culture's ethos, for Lacan, it is a fantasy, for Anderson and Taylor, it is a shared cognitive schema. Then Marilyn Ivy's application of these theories to Japanese 'national-cultural imaginaries' is …
Introduction to Special Issue on The Missing Psychology in Cultural Anthropology's Key Words
It is common practice in anthropology to use terms with implicit psychological content (such as embodiment). This is consistent with contemporary developments in anthropological theory and practice that lead to a focus on individuals' voices and practices. Nevertheless, many cultural anthropologists are critical of psychology. This introduction considers and responds to some of the usual criticisms. As this introduction describes, the articles th…
Cultural standing in expression of opinion
This article explores an underappreciated pragmatic constraint on the expression of opinions: When expressing an opinion on a topic that has been previously discussed, a speaker should correctly indicate the cultural standing of that view in the relevant opinion community. This Bakhtinian approach to discourse analysis is contrasted with conversation analysis, politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and analysis of epistemic modality. Finally…
Is Empathy Gendered and, If So, Why? An Approach from Feminist Psychological Anthropology
Difference feminists have argued that women have special virtues. One such virtue would seem to be empathy, which has three main components: imaginative projection, awareness of the other's emotions, and concern. Empathy is closely related to identification. Psychological research and the author's own study of women's and men's talk about poverty and welfare use in the United States demonstrate women's greater empathic concern. However, some cros…
Meanings Of Welfare Reform
The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire
The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire. Charles W. Nuckolls. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. xliv. 306 pp., illustrations, photographs, references, index
A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning
'Culture' and 'meaning' are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on 'connectionist' or 'neural network' models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they const…
Partly Fragmented, Partly Integrated: "An Anthropological Examination of "Postmodern Fragmented Subjects
It has become commonplace for anthropologists, historians, and other researchers to discuss the cultural and historical construction of "selves." One now-classic description of this sort is the historian E. P. Thompson's account (1963, 1967) of the way industrial capitalism created a greater time consciousness among English factory workers. More recently, the literary critic Frederic Jameson has written about the psychological effects of late-20t…
New Directions in Psychological Anthropology
Models and motives
Why do people do what they do? To address this question the papers in this volume take a new look at the nature and sources of human motivation. Human motivation has to be understood as the product of interaction between events and things in the social world and interpretations of those events and things in people's psyches. In this introduction I argue that models of motivation need to reject not only psychobiological determinism but also socioc…
Human Motives and Cultural Models
A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivates people to do what they do. For too many years studies of motivation and of culture have drawn from different theoretical paradigms. Typically, human motivation has been modelled on animal behaviour, while culture has been described as pure knowledge or symbol. The result has been insufficient appreciation of the role of culture in human motivation and a truncated vie…
Tradition as Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse
Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life
A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning
'Culture' and 'meaning' are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on 'connectionist' or 'neural network' models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they const…
The Imaginary
It is common in anthropology now to speak of imaginaries instead of cultural beliefs. This article examines the way Cornelius Castoriadis, Jacques Lacan, Benedict Anderson, and Charles Taylor analyzed this concept. For Castoriadis, the imaginary is a culture's ethos, for Lacan, it is a fantasy, for Anderson and Taylor, it is a shared cognitive schema. Then Marilyn Ivy's application of these theories to Japanese 'national-cultural imaginaries' is …
Who gets ahead? cognitive responses to heteroglossia in American political culture
Theories of social practice too often ignore the mediating role of cognitive schemas. This is especially the case in studies of blue‐collar workers, whose discourse, taken out of context, seems so inconsistent as to suggest the absence of organized beliefs. This article analyzes the discourse of some Rhode Island workingmen and proposes that they internalize conflicting social ideologies in one of three ways. These three forms of cognitive organi…
Partly Fragmented, Partly Integrated: "An Anthropological Examination of "Postmodern Fragmented Subjects
It has become commonplace for anthropologists, historians, and other researchers to discuss the cultural and historical construction of "selves." One now-classic description of this sort is the historian E. P. Thompson's account (1963, 1967) of the way industrial capitalism created a greater time consciousness among English factory workers. More recently, the literary critic Frederic Jameson has written about the psychological effects of late-20t…
Cultural standing in expression of opinion
This article explores an underappreciated pragmatic constraint on the expression of opinions: When expressing an opinion on a topic that has been previously discussed, a speaker should correctly indicate the cultural standing of that view in the relevant opinion community. This Bakhtinian approach to discourse analysis is contrasted with conversation analysis, politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and analysis of epistemic modality. Finally…
The 1983 Stirling Prize Essay: Beyond "Formal" versus "Informal" Education: Uses of Psychological Theory in Anthropological Research
Is Empathy Gendered and, If So, Why? An Approach from Feminist Psychological Anthropology
Difference feminists have argued that women have special virtues. One such virtue would seem to be empathy, which has three main components: imaginative projection, awareness of the other's emotions, and concern. Empathy is closely related to identification. Psychological research and the author's own study of women's and men's talk about poverty and welfare use in the United States demonstrate women's greater empathic concern. However, some cros…
Blaming for Columbine: Conceptions of Agency in the Contemporary United States
Modern Westerners are supposed to embrace a notion of unfettered personal agency. An analysis of public commentary (interviews, editorials, and online message boards) in the United States about the Columbine school shootings shows that the voluntarist cultural model of persons as autonomous agents, while certainly very important, is just one of a number of cultural models Americans use to explain human action and has particular political and inte…
A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning
"Culture" and "meaning" are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on "connectionist" or "neural network" models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they const…
How are language constructions constitutive? Strategic uses of conventional discourses about immigration
Introduction to Special Issue on The Missing Psychology in Cultural Anthropology's Key Words
It is common practice in anthropology to use terms with implicit psychological content (such as embodiment). This is consistent with contemporary developments in anthropological theory and practice that lead to a focus on individuals' voices and practices. Nevertheless, many cultural anthropologists are critical of psychology. This introduction considers and responds to some of the usual criticisms. As this introduction describes, the articles th…
New Directions in Psychological Anthropology
Introduction: Person-Centered Approaches in the Study of Culture and Poverty
This introduction to a special collection of articles on the theme of poverty and personhood provides an overview of the collection's response to recent calls for a reconsideration of culture in urban poverty studies. We argue that such a reconsideration must confront two theoretical problems if it is to be successful. First, the analyses must make a sustained effort to define clearly the theoretical model of "culture" used in the analyses and wh…
Small work pleasures and two types of well-being
Does wage labor contribute to well-being beyond providing an income? Well-being can be understood in eudaimonic terms as the happiness derived from a socially valued life or in hedonic terms as the experience of pleasure. The eudaimonic-hedonic divide is replicated in competing progressive visions of the place of work in a good life. Laborist theories stress the centrality of paid work for a meaningful life. By contrast, for post-work theories, p…
The 1983 Stirling Prize Essay: Beyond "Formal" versus "Informal" Education: Uses of Psychological Theory in Anthropological Research
Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life
Who gets ahead? cognitive responses to heteroglossia in American political culture
Theories of social practice too often ignore the mediating role of cognitive schemas. This is especially the case in studies of blue‐collar workers, whose discourse, taken out of context, seems so inconsistent as to suggest the absence of organized beliefs. This article analyzes the discourse of some Rhode Island workingmen and proposes that they internalize conflicting social ideologies in one of three ways. These three forms of cognitive organi…
Models and motives
Why do people do what they do? To address this question the papers in this volume take a new look at the nature and sources of human motivation. Human motivation has to be understood as the product of interaction between events and things in the social world and interpretations of those events and things in people's psyches. In this introduction I argue that models of motivation need to reject not only psychobiological determinism but also socioc…
Human Motives and Cultural Models
A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivates people to do what they do. For too many years studies of motivation and of culture have drawn from different theoretical paradigms. Typically, human motivation has been modelled on animal behaviour, while culture has been described as pure knowledge or symbol. The result has been insufficient appreciation of the role of culture in human motivation and a truncated vie…
Tradition as Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse
New Directions in Psychological Anthropology
Partly Fragmented, Partly Integrated: "An Anthropological Examination of "Postmodern Fragmented Subjects
It has become commonplace for anthropologists, historians, and other researchers to discuss the cultural and historical construction of "selves." One now-classic description of this sort is the historian E. P. Thompson's account (1963, 1967) of the way industrial capitalism created a greater time consciousness among English factory workers. More recently, the literary critic Frederic Jameson has written about the psychological effects of late-20t…
A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning
'Culture' and 'meaning' are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on 'connectionist' or 'neural network' models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they const…
Meanings Of Welfare Reform
The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire
The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire. Charles W. Nuckolls. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. xliv. 306 pp., illustrations, photographs, references, index
Cultural standing in expression of opinion
This article explores an underappreciated pragmatic constraint on the expression of opinions: When expressing an opinion on a topic that has been previously discussed, a speaker should correctly indicate the cultural standing of that view in the relevant opinion community. This Bakhtinian approach to discourse analysis is contrasted with conversation analysis, politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987), and analysis of epistemic modality. Finally…
Is Empathy Gendered and, If So, Why? An Approach from Feminist Psychological Anthropology
Difference feminists have argued that women have special virtues. One such virtue would seem to be empathy, which has three main components: imaginative projection, awareness of the other's emotions, and concern. Empathy is closely related to identification. Psychological research and the author's own study of women's and men's talk about poverty and welfare use in the United States demonstrate women's greater empathic concern. However, some cros…
Commentary: Borders as Sites of Pain
I consider Walkerdine's second point that social borders -- especially those of class and work -- are sites of pain. She illustrates that contention with stories of working-class British women who had university educations and moved into the middle class but never felt they fully belonged, of workers in South Wales who are dislocated by the closing of their central mine or manufacturing plant, and of Australian manufacturing workers who are tryin…
A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning
"Culture" and "meaning" are central to anthropology, but anthropologists do not agree on what they are. Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn propose a new theory of cultural meaning, one that gives priority to the way people's experiences are internalized. Drawing on "connectionist" or "neural network" models as well as other psychological theories, they argue that cultural meanings are not fixed or limited to static groups, but neither are they const…
The Imaginary
It is common in anthropology now to speak of imaginaries instead of cultural beliefs. This article examines the way Cornelius Castoriadis, Jacques Lacan, Benedict Anderson, and Charles Taylor analyzed this concept. For Castoriadis, the imaginary is a culture's ethos, for Lacan, it is a fantasy, for Anderson and Taylor, it is a shared cognitive schema. Then Marilyn Ivy's application of these theories to Japanese 'national-cultural imaginaries' is …
Introduction to Special Issue on The Missing Psychology in Cultural Anthropology's Key Words
It is common practice in anthropology to use terms with implicit psychological content (such as embodiment). This is consistent with contemporary developments in anthropological theory and practice that lead to a focus on individuals' voices and practices. Nevertheless, many cultural anthropologists are critical of psychology. This introduction considers and responds to some of the usual criticisms. As this introduction describes, the articles th…
Blaming for Columbine: Conceptions of Agency in the Contemporary United States
Modern Westerners are supposed to embrace a notion of unfettered personal agency. An analysis of public commentary (interviews, editorials, and online message boards) in the United States about the Columbine school shootings shows that the voluntarist cultural model of persons as autonomous agents, while certainly very important, is just one of a number of cultural models Americans use to explain human action and has particular political and inte…
Making Sense of Public Opinion: American Discourses about Immigration and Social Programs
Questions about immigration and social welfare programs raise the central issues of who belongs to a society and what its members deserve. Yet the opinions of the American public about these important issues seem contradictory and confused. Claudia Strauss explains why: public opinion on these issues and many others is formed not from liberal or conservative ideologies but from diverse vernacular discourses that may not fit standard ideologies bu…
How are language constructions constitutive? Strategic uses of conventional discourses about immigration
Psychological Anthropology
Roy D'Andrade
Introduction: Person-Centered Approaches in the Study of Culture and Poverty
This introduction to a special collection of articles on the theme of poverty and personhood provides an overview of the collection's response to recent calls for a reconsideration of culture in urban poverty studies. We argue that such a reconsideration must confront two theoretical problems if it is to be successful. First, the analyses must make a sustained effort to define clearly the theoretical model of "culture" used in the analyses and wh…
"It Feels So Alien" or the Same Old S: Attachment to Divergent Cultural Models in Insecure Times
Instead of conceptualizing poor people as a group with a fixed culture, we need to understand diverse, shared frameworks for responding to economic adversity. Over half of all Americans of working age can expect to be in a poor or near-poor household at some point. Differing interpretations of their low incomes under flexible capitalism are illustrated by the responses of two unemployed middle-aged sisters from a white working-class family in now…
Naomi R. Quinn July 22, 1939–June 23, 2019
Sociology (21 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Citation (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Library science (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works)