Query: "meaning making" theory

title: Meaning making, self determination theory, and the question of wisdom in personality.
abstract: Self determination theory (SDT) has advanced the most comprehensive model of motives for human flourishing in the field of personality psychology and beyond. In this article, we evaluate SDT relative to the process of meaning making, particularly from a narrative perspective, showing what SDT can and cannot explain about the construction of self identity and its relation to human flourishing. On the one hand, SDT explains how subjective assessments of need fulfillment drive the process of self determined living. The internal motives that follow such fulfillment serve as important themes in people's life stories that predict several markers of hedonic and eudaimonic well being. On the other hand, SDT's focus on subjective fulfillment limits what SDT can explain about how wisdom, which is a canonical good of both eudaimonia and meaning making, helps people make sense of life's more difficult or unfulfilling events. SDT may facilitate a facet of wisdom that is more subjective and experiential but not the critical facet of wisdom defined by objectively more complex structures of interpretation.

title: Meaning making theory and traditional culture

title: Meaning making in the course of action: affordance theory at the pilgrim/tourist nexus
abstract: The primary objective of this article is to review the potential of affordance theory for interpreting visitor interactions at sites with multiple and overlapping uses, including pilgrimage and tourism. Research at the nexus of tourism and pilgrimage is often limited by approaches that seek to categorize and differentiate visitors on the basis of intention, ideology, or identity. One implication of this divide is that research on sites of such visitation is also subject to binary interpretation, as sacred or secular. This author proposes an ecological approach to the pilgrim/tourist nexus, taking as its starting point the inter relationship between site and visitor, drawing on affordance theory to explore visitor action, interaction, and meaning making. Following a description of previous approaches to the interpretation of sacred space, affordance theory is outlined and applied to a heritage site that attracts pilgrims and tourists, as well as recreational visitors: Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, USA. The theory of affordances is suggested as an opportunity to approach research and interpretation of sacred sites with a focus on the agency of place, the locus of meaning making and the pilgrim/tourist nexus.

title: Goffman's theory of frames and situated meaning making in performance reviews. The case of a category management approach in the French retail sector
abstract: Following the scholarly view of accounting as a social practice, this research explores the role of accounting in managers' ongoing efforts to effectively understand and influence organizational change in the course of a series of review meetings. To study the role of accounting in meaning making processes i.e. collective processes of ascribing meanings to experienced social situations we develop a processual and semiotic view of Goffman's theory of frames. Central to the paper's argument is the concept of framing, defined as an ongoing social process of context production in an unfolding situation. In this perspective, accounting numbers are viewed as signs mediating situated interactions. This theoretical framework is applied to complex situations of negotiation between a retailer and sixteen suppliers, under a category management approach. The crucial finding of our research, illustrated empirically, is the plurality of competing frames and the occurrence of frame shifting episodes, the process by which one frame is suddenly replaced with another frame that has a deeply different way of narrating the situation: this process is triggered by a specific event, and the frame shift has potentially significant effects on practices. The case study highlights the mediating role of frames, and the plasticity and vulnerability of framing processes. It exemplifies the dual nature of accounting numbers in situated meaning making: they can be viewed simultaneously as generic models parts of social frames and singular events parts of the current situation. Due to this dual nature, they can act as mediators between a singular situation and socially constructed, generic classes of meaning.

title: From Theory to Practice: A Quantitative Content Analysis of Adult Education's Language on Meaning Making
abstract: Translating theory to practice has been a historical concern of adult education. It remains unclear, though, if adult education's theoretical and epistemological focus on meaning making transcends the academy. A manifest content analysis was conducted to determine if the frequency of meaning making language differed between the field's U.S. scholarly journals, practitioner journals, and federal policy writings. This study found the field's leading U.S. practitioner journal and its federal policy agencies used meaning making language less so than the field's leading U.S. scholarly journals. Scholarly and practitioner journals, however, showed increased use since 2003. Implications for increasing meaning making language in practice and policy are discussed. Limitations for generalizing findings and interpreting authors' intentions are addressed.

title: The career meaning making of a single highschool learner living with a sibling with a learning disorder a Systems Theory Framework for career development
abstract: This article explored the career meaning making of the participant and the perceived impact on his career trajectory caused by his living with a sibling with a learning disorder. The meaning making of this participant confirms previous research findings, namely that living with a sibling with a learning disorder propels the non disabled sibling towards making certain holistic adjustments. In particular these adjustments have career related implications as highlighted by the themes of responsibility towards the sibling, pressure to become independent and meaning making in a spiritual way. A qualitative, single case study approach was utilised. A postmodern approach towards career development within the framework of the Systems Theory was applied to explicate the career assessment and counselling of the participant living with a sibling with a learning disorder.

title: Why meaning making matters: the case of the UK Government's COVID 19 response
abstract: Through analysis of the UK government's management of the COVID 19 outbreak, this paper offers an empirical demonstration of the principle of culture's relative autonomy. It does so by showing how the outcome of meaning making struggles had impacts on political legitimacy, public behaviour, and control over the spread of the virus. Ultimately, these impacts contributed to the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of UK citizens. Dividing the crisis into phases within a secular ritual passage or 'social drama' it shows how each phase was defined by struggles between the government and other actors to code the unfolding events in an appropriate moral way, to cast actors in their proper roles, and to plot them together in a storied fashion under a suitable narrative genre. Taken together, these processes constituted a conflictual effort to define the meaning of what was occurring. The paper also offers more specific contributions to cultural sociology by showing why social performance theory needs to consider the effects of casting non human actors in social dramas, how metaphor forms a powerful tool of political action through simplifying and shaping complex realities, and how casting can shift responsibility and redefine the meaning of emotionally charged events such as human death.

title: The Contribution of Theory and Experience to Generic Meaning making: A Reflection on Participatory System Dynamics Modelling
abstract: Research aims at producing generic insights, transferable across different contexts. In other words, it aims at producing insights at a higher level that can be re applied and therefore have broader value.  (2017) examines how participatory modelling can create generic insights beyond a specific case. Their ambitious inquiry describes a process for generating generic knowledge among a diverse group of stakeholders who possess rich experience.

title: A Case of a Bereaved Couple Spiritual Care and Meaning making Theory for Bereavement

title: Are Logics Enough? Framing as an Alternative Tool for Understanding Institutional Meaning Making
abstract: Understanding institutions requires attending both to their social fact qualities and to the bidirectional nature of institutional processes as they influence and are influenced by actors. We advocate for frames and framing as tools to elucidate meaning making activities, and to explain whether and how meanings subsequently spread, scale up, and perhaps become widely institutionalized. Frames as cognitive structures provide resources for actors and shape what they see as possible, while framing as an interaction process is a source of agency that is embedded in the everyday activities of individuals, groups, and organizations. In making the case for the framing approach, we consider how the extensive use of the logics approach in organization theory research has created confusion about what logics are and how they accommodate both structure and agency. We conclude with a discussion of the phenomenological and ontological potential of frames and framing.