Welcome to Indications

Created and managed by Besnik Pula, Ph.D.

Theorist, social scientist, and Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech.

Areas of expertise: political economy, social theory, phenomenology, and regional specialty in Central and Eastern Europe.

Current explorations: the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz, critical realism, knowledge and society, social histories of computing.

Indications is so named inspired by the phenomenologist Alfred Schutz and his distinction between four forms of social communication: marks, indications, signs, and symbols. Marks are traces of one’s own subjective life. Signs and symbols reference other lives and transcendent realities. Indications, by contrast, are traces of the acts of others whose meaning is only partially transparent to the observer. Indications are indeteminate, multivalent, and imply real limits to knowledge. The only meaning possible of indications is what the observer makes of them. I see my products here as mostly dealing indicatively with the world, i.e., providing partial interpretations given the indicative nature of the objects dealt with. At times, the themes dealt with in writing may be a tad more concrete (e.g., a book review).

For my research and academic publications, please visit www.besnikpula.com.

I can also be found on Twitter, where I post sporadically.

Box icon in logo is created by Kiranshastry - Flaticon.