Passions in Context

Linda Price

Eric Arnould

AMA Doctoral Consortium Summer 2002

"You mean they pay you to do that?"

Ski

River raft

Visit Uganda nature preserves

Football games

Visit Century farms

Go shopping in Budapest

Passions

Any kind of feeling by which the mind is powerfully affected or moved

An eager outreaching of the mind toward something

Pleasurable passion

Our Anti-Passionate Organizational Culture

Work v. leisure

Labor v. fun

Control v. chaos

Atomization v. plenitude

Passionate Positions

Mathematics

"A Beautiful Mind"

Architecture

"The Fountainhead"

The Arts

"Lust for Life"

Physics

"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out"

What Contexts Can Do

Inform your lifeworld

Inspire passion

Stimulate discovery

Invite description

Provoke comparison

Frame difference

Surprise and elude

What Contexts Can’t Do

Transcend description

Guarantee scientific merit

Substitute for theory

What Makes a Good Context?

Varies perspective

Overturns theoretical assumptions

Facilitates unlikely phenomena

Speaks to evolving interests

Qualities of Good Contexts

Accessible

Presence of natural boundaries

Varying range of phenomena

Culturally, socially, existentially rich

Studying in, not Studying

"Oh, you’re the one who studied white water river rafting"

"What do hair dressers have to do with relationship marketing?"

"Studying old people—that must be depressing"

"You studied the Florida Classic?"

Generalizing: Howie Becker’s Trick

Tell me what you’ve found out

Use none of the identifying characteristics of the actual case

Instead of using particulars use social science constructs

Deriving Theory from Context

Bulk up on theory

Decompose theory

Pay attention to clues in data

Know what constitutes evidence

Build/orchestrate a story

Iterate

Passions and Contexts

Pursue your passions

Question much, obey little

Make rules don’t follow them

Someone’s already studied that

Nobody’s ever studied that

Everyone already knows about that

That’s trivial