Abstract
The notion of “vulnerability” occupies a central role in academic literature, policymaking, humanitarian debates, and everyday discourses on migration and asylum. Its popularity has led some academics and practitioners to use “vulnerability” as a self-explanatory condition or phenomenon. However, a common and systematic understanding of the concept is still missing, and the moral and political meaning often ascribed to this notion may have (un)intended detrimental consequences for those migrants deemed vulnerable. Thus, this paper sets out to critically unpack and highlight the complexities hidden behind this notion in order to provide a conceptual analysis of vulnerability in the context of migration. We do so by (1) providing an overview of definitions of vulnerability across different fields of research, (2) identifying common conceptualizations or types of vulnerability and discussing their implications, and (3) highlighting possible negative societal and psychological consequences of its implementation in the context of migration. Finally, we propose (4) a new conceptual model for understanding vulnerability in the context of migration, showing how this notion can become a useful analytical tool in migration research.
AbstractLeadership is inherently social. Being grounded in the Lewinian framework of field theory, I am instancing the diverse understanding of social leadership: Uncertainty reduction, making choices, assuming responsibility, and contributing to an orchestral interplay between followers are important functions of social leadership. But this is not sufficient. Organizations are built by concrete agents with concrete needs and overreaching goals. These needs and goals structure the environment (personal culture) of various employees including the leader. Drawing on an empirical case from a bakery as well as on Lewinian cases from the past, I am showing how group atmosphere alone is not able to cover the full range of the follower’s reactions: Here, we need to rely on basic concepts of culture: Employees live and work in their related life spaces. Complexity arises in organizations if the goal pursuit between followers themselves is contradictory, thus if their life spaces are a barrier for each other. The leader needs to realize here that this is not a disadvantage; his role is neither to solve these contradictions nor to present a potential solution. The leader needs to emphasize the interdependence of his followers; s/he can do so by letting them experience the issues and difficulties of the social other encountered in their respective life spaces. Here, followers are getting a glimpse into the life space (personal culture) of a colleague. Such border experiences play a key role for the following democratic exchange of how two previously contradictory life spaces are turned into conciliatory ones.
AbstractIn the present article, I am examining, expanding, and re-evaluating a Lewinian kind of cultural psychology for cultural-psychological informed practitioners. Originating from Lewinian field theory that behavior is a function of a person and environment, B(f) = P,E, I am introducing a specific equation wanting to illustrate Lewin’s theory about cultural psychology. A person is driven by specific needs and goals that develop while him relating to his very own environment. Yet, how these needs and goals are pursued and satisfied (I call that trajectories) depends to a large degree upon his social environment showing him not only which goals are worth pursuing but also which ways to choose in order to attain them. Culture is thus a function of a person’s needs and goals that develop while him relating to his environment and henceforth to the life space of the social other—such as to one’s family—but also implying a specific unique social situatedness within the environment that can alter the culturally accepted way how to reach a specific goal. It is within such a perspective that I deduce a normative appeal character of cultural psychology grounded within Lewinian field theory that can be made fertile for people identifying as cultural-psychological practitioners. In the second part of the article, I am comparing a Lewinian (normative) understanding of cultural psychology with other prominent theories such as the one of Boesch, Bruner, and Valsiner reaching the conclusion that such a Lewinian understanding of cultural psychology is in accordance with their theories.