2. A COURSE OVERVIEW
1. What Ethogenics is(Introduction)
2. Roots of Ethogenics
3. Ethogenic Theories
4. Critique of Mainstream Social Psychology
5 . Key Theorists
3. What Ethogenics is
• Founder of Ethogenics: Rome Harre
Ethogenics is an interdisciplinary social
scientific approach that attempts to
understand the systems of belief or means
through which individuals attach significance
to their actions and form their identities by
linking these to the larger structure of rules
(norms) and cultural resources in society.
It represents a radical innovation in traditional
psychology, even a completely "new
psychology" that should take its place.
4. What Ethogenics is: continued…
In other words, it is a new paradigm psychology which
is developed in contrast to the linguistic tradition in
which 'syntax', 'semantics' and 'pragmatics' are used in
a way that implies an abstract realm of causally potent
entities shaping actual speech.
Moreover, an explicit distinction is drawn between
synchronic analysis, that is, the analysis of social
practices and institutions as they exist at any one
time, and diachronic analysis, the study of the stages
and the processes by which social practices and
institutions are created and abandoned, change and
are changed. Neither type of analysis can be expected
to lead directly to the discovery of universal social
psychological principles or laws.
5. Let us predict what might these
expression mean…
• Hello
• Waving hand
• Kissing
6. Let us predict…
• Situations provided…
• The person is at distance
• The person is leaving/ coming towards you
• The person is leaving/has won a prize
7. Social interactions
• In social interactions, it is assumed that action
takes place through endowing inter subjective
entities with meaning; the ethogenic
approach therefore concentrates upon the
meaning system, that is, the whole sequence
by which a social act is achieved in an episode.
8. • Let us predict meaning for the following
conversations;
• Teacher (in the class): What are you doing?
• Student: Sorry sir.
• Teacher( in the class): Can you write it without
seeing the textbook or notes?
• Sorry sir, I can’t.
9. • The teacher has assigned the students with a task
to read or write.
• The what question does not mean as
‘what’, instead, it means ‘why’ question. It means
why is the student not doing the assigned task.
• Similarly, the teacher is surprised to see the
student writing without seeing his textbook or
the notes.
• What the student meant with the teacher’s
previous expression , that whether he could
write blinking his eyes.
10. • The ethogenic approach is concerned with
speech which accompanies action. That
speech is intended to make the action
intelligible and justifiable in occurring at the
time and the place it did in the whole
sequence of unfolding and coordinated action.
Such speech is accounting. In so far as
accounts are socially meaningful, it is possible
to derive accounts of accounts.
11. • The ethogenic approach is founded upon the
belief that a human being tends to be the kind
of person his language, his traditions, his tacit
and explicit knowledge tell him he is.
12. Roots of Ethogenics
• The origins of ethogenics social science are in micro
sociology and symbolic interactionism: in
particular, Erving Goffman ‘s dramaturgical sociology
and Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology.Both
Goffman and Garfinkel looked at the particular ways in
which social actors manage authenticity and construct
social order through their performances.
Therefore, micro sociologists working in this tradition
are concerned with the presentation of self in everyday
life.
13. Ethogenic Theories continued…
Rom Harré states:
• All that is personal in our mental and emotional
lives is individually appropriated from the
conversation going on around us and perhaps
idiosyncratically transformed. The structure of our
thinking and our feeling will reflect, in various ways,
the form and content of that conversation. The
main thesis of this work is that mind is no sort of
entity, but a system of beliefs structured by a cluster
of grammatical models. The science of psychology
must be reformed accordingly.
14. Ethnogenic theories cont…
• Methodologically, ethogenics starts with the
social formation as the primary human reality
and then shows how the human self exists
within it via personally modified 'templates.‘
While Harré makes a distinction between
personal and social being, he does not claim
that personal being is prior to social being.
15. Ethogenic theories cont…
• By contrast, John Shotter's approach to ethogenics
analyzes social action with others (as opposed to
individual rule-following and performances), which is
said to give individuals 'social powers.' There is no
cognitive structure of the social self independent of
social context . Therefore, Shotter emphasizes the
practical necessities which bring individuals together in
moral configurations, which it is necessary to
hermeneutically approach. Shotter believes this is a
better way to understand the "accounting practices"
(and resulting consciousness) of individuals than
Harré's methods.
16. Ethogenic theories cont…
• Kenneth Gergen argues that scientific activity
(theories) also play a significant role in
constructing the reality and values of
individuals. Gergen argues that scientific
theories appeal to the common sense within
our everyday symbolic world. Societal power
relations are affected by groups who try to
impose certain frameworks for understanding
selfhood, which then guide action .
17. Critique of Mainstream Social
Psychology
• Ethogenics emerged from a period of crisis in
social psychology, representing a rejection of
experimental methods (Ginsburg 1995). Such
methods apply external "treatments" to
groups of individuals rather than studying the
personal "sense-making" that individuals must
engage in in order to live in society.
18. • The skills that are employed in ethogenic
studies therefore make use of commonsense
understandings of the social world. As such
the activities of the poet and the playwright
offer the ethogenic researcher a better model
than those of the physical scientist.
19. Key Theorists
• The following authors all belong to the
ethogenics school:
• Nicola de Carlo
• David D. Clarke
• Kenneth Gergen
• Rom Harré
• Paul F. Secord
• John Shotter
20. Conclusion
• A central conception in ethogenics is the idea
that spoken conversation as discursive practice
is action, hence, language is action and action is
language.
• Ethogenics or new paradigm psychology
allows us to analyze different kinds of discourse
and offers new methodological approaches to
address and analyze the discourses produced.
21. Conclusion continued…
• Traditionally, discourse had been viewed as
for the syntactic, semantics and pragmatics
use but the case is not so at present rather
with the emergence of a new paradigm for
psychology, or ethogenics, it has introduced
new ways of theorizing about people’s
thinking and actions – and hence discourse
can be analyzed rather different ways.
22. Reference
Davies,B.,& Harre, R.(n.d). Positioning: the
discursive production of selves. Retrieved from
messey.nc.nz.
Porter, J. (n.d). Discourse analysis and
constructionist approaches: theoretical
background.
Subedi, D.(2013).Handouts & class notes:
Kathmandu: Kathmandu University.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . Lecture
9:crowds1: the ethogenic approaches.(a
summary).
23. • Questions ???????
• Thank you very much
for your active participation.
Feedback is welcomed.
