This book is a real-life documentary of two of these challenges, and their eventual successful outcomes and their discoveries; but more than that it is an adventure story in ideas, and the surprising synchronicity that is the Daily Lot of the postmodernist wandering scholar. Read-on and enjoy the journey.

‘Humble Anecdote of the Invisible’ is the final part of my condensed ‘Lebenswelt Studies’, necessarily autobiographical, and centred mostly on what amounted to a ‘mesocosm’ —an intermediary spiritual -world, between the macrocosm and microcosm, by artists, thinkers, poets and dancers who founded an experimental community, the ‘Hill of Truth’ in Ascona, during the early onset of Modernism, and later at Eronos, the intellectual and aesthetic hub founded by Olga Frobe in Ascona in 1933, to discuss the most pressing issues of the times: the nature of body and soul, social norms, religious belief, relationships, value of life, the human spirit, art and creativity; and their eventual making of an alternative spiritual and intellectual history of the twentieth century.

Courses in management research have traditionally focused on quantitative techniques, and no available text adequately covers the many different perspectives within the qualitative model or shows which qualitative techniques work best in different settings. "Crafting Qualitative Research" fills this need. In clear and readable prose, this comprehensive text offers a detailed guide to the rich diversity of qualitative research traditions, with examples and applications specifically designed for the field of management. Each of the book's four main sections includes a descriptive "tree" diagram that lays out the historical origins of that section's traditions. Each chapter is devoted to a specific methodology and includes historical origins and development; techniques and applications; current controversies and emerging issues; and a summary box highlighting that method's utility. With its detailed and easy-to-understand coverage, this will be the text of choice for any instructor who wants to include the qualitative approach in a research methods course, as well as a useful resource for anyone doing research in the post-positivist traditions.

This book provides an overview of qualitative research models and their applications in organization and management studies. Focusing on the philosophical underpinnings and practical implications of diverse qualitative methods, this comprehensive text offers a guided tour of the options available to qualitative researchers, highlighting aspects of research design, execution, and analysis in each tradition. In clear, readable prose, the author offers insight into the ambiguities, tensions, and interconnections of diverse qualitative research traditions without resorting to oversimplification. The book’s four main sections include examples and applications specifically designed for the field of management. Each chapter is devoted to a specific methodology, describing techniques and applications as well as current controversies and emerging issues. Summary boxes and practical examples will help the reader to navigate this terrain and generate research that is both relevant and of high scholarly quality. With its detailed and easy-to-understand coverage, this will be the text of choice for students working with qualitative methods in organization studies, consumer research, public administration, information systems, and media and communication studies. Instructors teaching qualitative approaches in a research methods course and researchers wanting to acquaint themselves with non-positivist traditions will also find this a useful resource.

Based in sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity, this volume describes and critiques key aspects and practices of liquid education--education as market-driven consumption, short life span of useful knowledge, overabundance of information--through a systematic comparison with ancient Greek paideia and medieval university education, producing a sweeping analysis of the history and philosophy ofeducation for the purpose of understanding current higher education, positing a more holisitic alternative model in which students are embedded in a learning commutity that is itself embedded in a larger society. If liquid modernity has left a vacuum where, according to Bauman, the pilot’s cabin is empty, this volume argues that no structure is better positioned to fill this vacuum than the university and outlines a renewed vision of social transformation through higher education.

Based on a Ph.D. thesis (Narrative ethics and intuition of the infinite) -- University of Gothenburg, 2008.

The figure of the medieval “wandering scholar” (Pietsch) has never been as true as today: Academic Mobility and Migration have now become a reality for most people involved in higher education. We also know for sure that they are actively contributing to the postmodern transformation of the “social as society” into the “social as mobility” (Urry). Written by leading and emerging scholars, this volume explores the impact of Academic Mobility and Migration on institutions, people and their social environment. It also considers up-to-date aspects which remain relatively underexplored: Academic migration (vs. mobility), virtual academic mobility, North-South mobility, language policies at a “glocal” level, and questions of identity. The authors examine the personal, social, professional and educational consequences of Academic Mobility and Migration from a variety of disciplinal orientations including sociology, language education, linguistics and education. Some of the chapters also seek to propose alternative ways of analysing these phenomena. This unique book is an invaluable resource for anybody with an interest in educational mobility in the 21st century: researchers, teachers, policy-makers, politicians, administrators, but also college and university students.