Papers by Svend Brinkmann
A Conversation about the Past, Present, and Future of Qualitative Inquiry
Qualitative Inquiry—Past, Present, and Future, 2016
In what follows, I shall address a seemingly very simple question: Could we, by means of qualitat... more In what follows, I shall address a seemingly very simple question: Could we, by means of qualitative research interviews, gain knowledge? A first reaction to this question is likely to be: “What an insult! What do you think we have been doing all these years, talking to people about their experiences, desires, and opinions? Do you have the nerve to question whether we have gained knowledge along the way? Of course we have!”
Emotions and the Moral Order
Dynamicity in Emotion Concepts
Qualitative Inquiry, 2018
The authors involved in the creation of this text collaborate on a research project called The Cu... more The authors involved in the creation of this text collaborate on a research project called The Culture of Grief, which explores the current conditions and implications of grief. The authors mostly employ conventional forms of qualitative inquiry, but the present text represents an attempt to reach a level of understanding not easily obtained through conventional methods. The group of authors participated as members of the audience in an avant-garde theatrical performance about grief, created by a group called CoreAct. The artists of CoreAct create their art through systematic research, in this case on grief, and we as researchers decided to study both the development of the play and its performance, and to report our impressions in fragments in a way that hopefully represents the nature of grief as an experienced phenomenon. We use Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s concept of presence to look for understanding beyond meaning in grief and its theatrical enactment.
Nordic Psychology, 2017
As one commentator has recently argued, "diagnoses have become part of how we make sense of ourse... more As one commentator has recently argued, "diagnoses have become part of how we make sense of ourselves, each other, and the world" (McGann, 2011, p. 343). It seems that this applies in particular to psychiatric diagnoses. Not long ago, lay people's understandings of psychiatric categories were limited to a few general terms such as depression and anxiety, which also have common uses in everyday language, but now many people recognize and make use of diagnostic categories such as ADHD, OCD, bipolar, autism, panic anxiety, and many others. Psychiatric terminology has traveled from the clinics and diagnostic manuals and into society as a whole. In a country like Denmark, we can now watch television series with protagonists, who suffer from psychiatric problems (e.g., Broen), we can read similar novels and poetry, we can join patient organizations that work to increase public knowledge about specific diagnoses, and we can see how diagnosed people even become part of quiz-like shows where experts are supposed to guess who have which psychiatric diagnoses (Mad or Normal?) (Brinkmann, 2016a). In short, this development signals what I, together with colleagues, refer to as diagnostic cultures. In our diagnostic cultures, diagnoses are no longer just medical, biological and psychological concepts, but also bureaucratic, social and administrative entities (Rosenberg, 2007, p. 5). Partly for that reason, we need to address cultures in the plural. There is not just one monolithic use of diagnostic categories, but numerous ones in different corners of society. What ADHD is, for example, is not necessarily the same for the diagnosed child as for the parents, the teachers, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, the social worker, the ADHD association, the pharmaceutical industry, or the public at large. We should pay attention to Bowker and Star, who, in their classic sociological account of how classifications work in society, argued that diagnoses (like other significant categories) operate as "boundary objects, " i.e., objects of knowledge which "inhabit several communities of practice and satisfy the informational requirements of each of them" (Bowker & Star, 2000, p. 16). Diagnoses as boundary objects enable very different communities of practice to communicate about something designated by the category, even if this something has quite different meanings to actors in different contexts. Concerning human suffering and distress specifically, Bowker and Star also pointed out that "classification has become a direct tool mediating human suffering" (Bowker & Star, 2000, p. 26). This should be a key point for studies of human suffering: As human beings, we do not simply suffer in a simple, physical way, but are also capable of understanding our pains and miseries in and through the languages and vocabularies we have (Brinkmann, 2014a). The most powerful tool to mediate our understanding of suffering today has arguably become the psychiatric diagnoses, serving as a widespread "language of suffering. " This language is of course rooted in
Travelogue from the 22nd International Human Science Research Conference
Psyke Logos, Jun 1, 2007
Svend Brinkmann, cand. psych., ph.d., adjunkt i social-og personlighedspsykologi på Århus Univers... more Svend Brinkmann, cand. psych., ph.d., adjunkt i social-og personlighedspsykologi på Århus Universitet.
Psykolog Nyt, Jun 1, 2012
Rewriting stress: Toward a cultural psychology of collective stress at work
Culture & Psychology, 2015
The aim of this article is to contribute theoretically to the development of a cultural psycholog... more The aim of this article is to contribute theoretically to the development of a cultural psychological, i.e. dialogical and distributed, understanding of stress. First we challenge established cognitivist notions of stress and discuss philosophical and epistemological implications tied to this perspective. Then we introduce a dialogical, distributed and situated understanding of stress and rewrite central concepts from cognitive stress research such as appraisal and coping. This new orientation is related to a recent metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes are embedded in and possibly even extend into the environment. This philosophical position is known as externalism and holds that the mind needs to be understood not just by intrinsic mental features such as physiological or cognitive processes, but also in light of what either occurs or exists outside the organism. With reference to empirical examples, we argue that this framework can contribute to a ne...
An Epistemology of the Hand: Putting Pragmatism to Work
Learning, Work and Practice: New Understandings, 2012
Western philosophy has been greatly influenced by visual metaphors. Knowing something has commonl... more Western philosophy has been greatly influenced by visual metaphors. Knowing something has commonly, yet implicitly, been conceptualized as seeing something clearly, learning has been framed as being visually exposed to something, and the mind has been understood as a “mirror of nature.” A whole “epistemology of the eye” has been at work, which has had significant practical implications, not least in educational contexts. One way to characterize John Dewey’s pragmatism is to see it as an attempt to replace the epistemology of the eye with an epistemology of the hand. This chapter develops the epistemology of the hand on three levels: a level of embodiment and metaphors, of craftsmanship and social practices, and of schooling and education.
Hvad vi taler om, når vi taler om kreativitet
Kvalitative metoder: Empiri og teoriutvikling
Afslutning: Psykologi mellem modernisme og romantik
Om den bløde og hårde styring af det udviklende selv
The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization
The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization, 2016
International Journal of Qualitative Methods
For more than 15 years, I have been an active qualitative researcher, working in particular with ... more For more than 15 years, I have been an active qualitative researcher, working in particular with semistructured qualitative interviews, both in empirical research projects and as an author of textbooks on interviewing. In this state of the method article, I first articulate an approach to qualitative inquiry based on the fundamental idea of the conversation on ontological, epistemological, and methodological grounds. I then diverge a bit from standard methodological approaches to qualitative research and introduce the notion of gifts of chance: As conversational creatures, we sometimes stumble upon interesting and thought-provoking conversations that we may analyze in a knowledge-producing process, even if this process has not been carefully planned and designed. As an example, I refer to an ongoing research project I now conduct with a woman in her 90s, which began when she contacted me unexpectedly as a veritable gift of chance.
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Papers by Svend Brinkmann