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Since the mid-1990s, the social model of disability has come under scrutiny. Several researchers have examined the role of ontology (philosophical ideas about the nature of what it means to be human) in relation to disability. In this paper, we situate this burgeoning understanding of disability within the set of post-cartesian ontologies, which disrupt the separation of the mind from the body and its attendant dichotomies. Furthermore, we seek to show how such a change can carry through to the research paradigm and therefore affect tangible outcomes of disability research.

A commitment to an embodied ontology requires first and foremost that researchers rethink what is being studied by focusing on the diverse characteristics of being and its actualization within the world. This will involve an emphasis on the lived experience of the body, including issues of affect, identity and movement, as well as broader issues of embodied being.

Using a research program currently underway at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation and Social Integration (CIRRIS) as a detailed example, we draw on the ontological framework to help articulate the way research can be re-organized. We show how projects at different scales can be brought to work together, and highlight how a focus on embodiment issues facilitates such multi-disciplinary, inter-project collaboration. We note that adopting such an ontology-based framework will accomplish three major outcomes: (1) increase the relevance and effectiveness of new projects with regard to the overall vision; (2) enhance cross-project synergies and ensure stronger ties between research and practice; and (3) contribute to shifting the underlying ontology from a more cartesian approach to a post-cartesian embodied perspective.

The new ontologies embrace, integrate and extend the earlier social and biomedical perspectives, and offer a critical perspective on technology. The embodied approach recognizes not only the embodiment of research subjects, but also the embodied experience of the researchers themselves. In addition, the approach leads to a more holistic organization of research within a global, interconnected structure of projects rather than simply a collection of separate projects organized into thematic areas, as was done in previous decades. This reorganization of research enhances the ability to engage academic researchers with practitioners not just in the hospital and clinical settings, but also within the wider community.

This chapter offers a critique of the affirmative forms of thought that attempt to ground the ontology of social being through subjective-idealist terms. Some recent examples came in the form of notion of truth grounded in subjects' experience and in rationality of language and discourse. The first part of the chapter demonstrates the perilous implications of such an approach for social theory tasked with ontology and for the conception of truth necessary for its task. The second part scrutinizes the paradigm of society that stems from this subjective-idealist notion of truth and social ontology that adopts discourse, language, and literary metaphors to comprehend social being. As an alternative, the final part of the chapter offers a preliminary sketch of the relation of ontology, normativity, and mediation, as well as the notion of critique necessary for social theory tasked with ontology.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

This chapter develops a sketch of a critical social ontology and contrasts it to a theory of sociality as presented in the work of Michael Brown. I argue that the ontology of our social forms requires categories for understanding them descriptively, functionally as well as in evaluative terms. I contend that a theory of power is needed for an understanding of the ontology of our social forms and that this can contribute to the construction of a more critical social ontology. I argue that a critical social ontology is a more attractive and satisfying paradigm for critical theory than current post-metaphysical approaches that emphasize discourse, recognition or other neo-Idealistic aspects of human sociality.

Cities’ population growth goes in hand with the development of new technologies that are becoming the key factor of the Smart City (SC) concept. It allows the implementation of efficient management solutions, operation, and sustainable development of a city to face the challenges of urbanization and improve the services for the citizens and visitors.

The concept of the SC 5.0 was first presented in Svítek, Skobelev, and Kozhevnikov (2020), where the problems of the complexity of current cities due to rigid management processes, variety of infrastructure, and SC modules, systems, subsystems, and applications were described.

To prove the concept, several practical examples were developed to cover the topics: modeling in SCs, practical implementation of multiagent technologies, the approach of creating city ontology and the city knowledge base as the instrument of semantic interoperability, and visualization possibilities of Smart Evropská as a SC Testbed used for teaching purposes.

The new organizational structure is proposed based on knowledge graphs, and practical examples are shown. The applicability of knowledge graphs to be used in combination with data management platforms for monitoring SC key performance indicators (KPIs) and providing interoperability of services is presented.

The atmospheric turn can be understood as a departure from the occidental dominant thing and event ontologies and opens the way to a situation ontology, in which subjective-bodily felt being-in is at the centre. The focus shifts from objective things or events to subjectively experienceable facts of being within situations and atmospheres. Atmospheres have an affective content, a peculiar non-dimensional spatiality and a hybrid status beyond the typical occidental dualisms, such as subject and object or inner and outer world. If the philosophical potential of the atmospheric turn is highlighted and taken seriously, then fundamental new perspectives in thought and action can reveal themselves.

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

We explore the significance of social ontology and its capacity to inform the specification of organizational status, architecture and capacities. We consider how different conceptions of social ontology are critical for explicating a range of epistemological and socio-economic questions concerning organizations and develop a research agenda oriented to studying these issues from the perspective of management and organization studies.

To advance a critical ontology of the social as a form of normative social theory.

The goal of critical ontology is to comprehend social reality not simply in terms of a positivist notion of “facts,” but in terms of its diverse processes of becoming, and through questions that are simultaneously theoretical and normative.

After providing a brief account of the positivist permeation of social theory and its implications for the relationship between theory, critique, and practice, the contemporary moment of capitalist modernity – global neoliberal transformation – is being examined as a form of social objectivity that presents fundamental challenges for the possibility of social theory with normative ends. A close reading of Lukács’ reconstruction of Hegel facilitates the foundations of critical ontology as social theory in Hegel’s philosophy. One such critical ontology presents itself as a critique of the “commodity form” as expounded by Marx in his mature theory.

In illuminating the socio-ontological determination of objectivity, critical ontology as normative social theory promotes the recognition of processes of domination and conditions of unfreedom not only within the structured economic inequalities of globalizing capital but also within and through the forms of mediation that are at work in the present. It is only through such recognition that contemporary social theory may overcome the entrenched rift between theory and practice.

This chapter points out and tries to describe the (missing) link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social ontology/ontology of the firm. The author believes that this gap in the literature hinders the progress of CSR theoretical/empirical understanding and effectiveness; therefore, the following question is addressed: is a social theory-focused approach to the ontology of the firm relevant to CSR studies? While currently many disciplines are seeking to clarify CSR theory and practice, the role of social ontology has relatively been under-explored despite its foundational importance.

This chapter provides rationales for identifying a set of interrelated themes to be included in future research projects. A literature review is carried out, and further analysis and desk research can be drawn from the key notions identified.

This viewpoint conceptual chapter suggests that social ontology can be an important subject of inquiry in order to bridge the existing gaps in CSR/Business Ethics studies. A possible conceptual agreement for a realist and social theory-focused approach to CSR is illustrated.

While encouraging more effort and commitment in this emerging and fascinating field, this chapter concentrates on some selected key aspects such as the meaning of corporate moral agency and the ontological status of social collectives (e.g. firms).

This chapter lays the ground for future pilot exploratory research, and could be instructive for the construction of specific research methodologies/theoretical tools seeking to explore not so much the ways CSR is defined (indeed, there seems to be a broad consensus about it) but rather how CSR is socially constructed, implemented and carried out.

This chapter can potentially help grow knowledge about the nexus between CSR, social ontology and the underlying metaphysical issues, thus facilitating a comprehensive inter-/multi-/pluri-disciplinary understanding and giving a contribution to the relevant ongoing scientific and practical debates.

This chapter, while uncovering and exploring the aforementioned novel connections, can enrich the study of CSR with respect to the current mainstream approaches, for example, stakeholder management and engagement, social accounting and reporting, socially responsible investment (SRI).