Education is commonly considered to be a transformational practice that contributes both to forging the personality of individuals and to promoting social entanglements. For this reason, education always has a normative character that rests on a particular concept of what humanity and society should be. However, educational policies and practices are frequently unaware of these theoretical presuppositions, and for this reason, they frequently appear to act in a naïve and superficial manner. This is particularly the case for citizenship education, which, (...) if superficially implemented, risks being distorted into a form of civic education that reproduces established norms and social relations, without promoting any meaningful social change. Thus, the first part of this article aims to deepen the notion of citizenship, in particular by studying what the concept of ‘consensus’ means, conceiving of it not as a synonym of social resignation, but rather as a collective conspiracy towards a common political project. Accordingly, the article defines the basic characteristics that education should always possess to effectively promote a democratic and participative citizenship education. In particular, it identifies five constitutive contrasts in relation to the ways in which information is transmitted, reasoned, emotionally perceived, and then discussed and countered both by individuals and society. The article therefore presents an overall theory of education, seen as a momentous practice of dialogue and common action that opens the way for a democracy in progress. (shrink)

The African church has been identified by many as a key factor in the struggle against HIV/aids. Not only are international funding organizations and Christian NGOs looking to partner with the local church, but some northern churches are also looking to bypass NGOs and enter into a direct relationship with the African church. This article fuses political and theological theories and analysis such as participatory development theory, democratic administration and transformational development in a case study of partnership between a Canadian (...) church and a Zimbabwean church. (shrink)

It may be that the process of socialization is generally thought to depend upon the development of the slave consciousness. It appears that at present the type of indoctrination a child receives when he or she is socialized by parents and teachers is the general way in which a society makes sure it transmits its values from one generation to the next. If this is so, the analysis of the slave consciousness we have been pursuing would fundamentally call into question (...) the benefits that are to be expected from this most pervasive and fundamental social practice. The development of the heteronomous conscience does not simply guarantee that the citizen will comply with the standards of society; it also guarantees that individuals will develop (some to a greater extent than others) such socially disruptive attitudes as a revengeful sense of justice and a psychological predisposition toward envy. Furthermore, given the massive amounts of social inequality and injustice characterizing many contemporary societies, the combination of economic and psychological factors almost guarantees a tacit or explicit level of frustration which will often erupt into violence. This violence is senseless, repeated, and pervasive because it is nothing but the nourishment needed by the slave consciousness to maintain itself in power. Exploitation, murder, rape, war, the nuclear weapons contest, the polarization of groups against each other, etc., are manifestations of a consciousness that always has to outdo itself vis-à-vis the other. As Nietzsche (1966, p. 140) observed, “Thus the will, the liberator, took to hurting; and on all who can suffer, it wreaks revenge for its inability to go backward [to a condition of autonomy].” With the liberation of imagination and memory, and a combined dedication to fighting all forms of social injustice, however, one can begin to transform society in ways that will confirm rather than deny the human aspiration for harmony and freedom. (shrink)

The article argues that feminist emancipation, understood as practices and discourses of self-development and of solidarity as empowerment, has become entangled with the neoliberal project. Indeed, emancipation as self-improvement has become synonymous with moral regulation projects that seek to adapt women to global capitalism. The article explores the relation between emancipation and neoliberal regulation from a situated approach by addressing the experience of Latin American feminisms, with a particular focus on Chile. This approach recognizes by implication that Latin American feminisms (...) are co-extensive, or coeval, with North American and European ones, and are not merely derivative forms. (shrink)

Science and technology, as rational approaches to problem solving, are driving forces in the promotion of democracy at home and abroad. Science based decision-making is increasingly global as countries share technology, research results, and engage in joint studies on common problems. The widening rift between global wealth and poverty diminishes for many the opportunity for exposure to science, technology and social science based decision-making on issues that directly affect them. This paper outlines a model for democratizing science by utilizing the (...) interactive tools of the social sciences in a process that enables information-marginalized people to engage with the language, methods and results of social science for purposes of community empowerment and voice in science policy. The paper offers examples of approaches to implementation, citing various forms of research partnerships with communities, and discusses challenges including ethical considerations, the conflict between “local” and science-based knowledges and power differentials in practice. (shrink)

Globally, one in eight people lacks access to potable water; more people die from unsafe drinking water than from all forms of violence, including war. A substantial body of research documents that the privatization of water – led by global financial institutions working in collusion with governments and corporations – does not lead to more people gaining access to safe water. In fact, the opposite is true: privatization leads to both higher cost and lower quality water. For the past century, (...) the dominant focus of transnational organizing has been “from the West to the rest,” and the frequent attention to movements in the global North has led to the neglect of transnational linkages between movements. Drawing on fieldwork conducted on three right to water movements that span three continents, this paper examines effortsto reclaim the water commons,and how struggles have been driven by grassroots movements demanding that democracy, transparency, and the human right to water are prioritized over corporate profit. As feminist scholars have pointed out, the “standpoint” offered by marginalized actors offers important insights into the operation of systems of power and the strategies of survival and resistance that less powerful actors adopt in order to survive and thrive. This paper explores how transnational movements around water and other basic rights engage with and learn from each other. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel and John Dewey share commitments to philosophical theory and practice aimed at addressing human problems, democratic modes of inquiry, and progressive social reform, but also maintain productive differences in their fundamental starting point for political philosophy and their use of the social sciences. Dussel provides a corrective to Dewey’s Eurocentrism and to his tendency to underplay the challenges of incorporating marginalized populations by insisting that social and political philosophy begin from the perspective of the marginalized and excluded. Simultaneously, (...) Dewey encourages a modest experimental and fallibilist approach to social transformation that promises more feasible social reforms than Dussel’s approach rooted in phenomenology and the critical social sciences. (shrink)

The wicked problems that constitute sustainability require students to learn a different set of ethical skills than is ordinarily required by professional ethics. The focus for sustainability ethics must be redirected towards: (1) reasoning rather than rules, and (2) groups rather than individuals. This need for a different skill set presents several pedagogical challenges to traditional programs of ethics education that emphasize abstraction and reflection at the expense of experimentation and experience. This paper describes a novel pedagogy of sustainability ethics (...) that is based on noncooperative, game-theoretic problems that cause students to confront two salient questions: “What are my obligations to others?” and “What am I willing to risk in my own well-being to meet those obligations?” In comparison to traditional professional ethics education, the game-based pedagogy moves the learning experience from: passive to active, apathetic to emotionally invested, narratively closed to experimentally open, and from predictable to surprising. In the context of game play, where players must make decisions that can adversely impact classmates, students typically discover a significant gap between their moral aspirations and their moral actions. When the games are delivered sequentially as part of a full course in Sustainability Ethics, students may experience a moral identity crisis as they reflect upon the incongruity of their self-understanding and their behavior. Repeated play allows students to reconcile this discrepancy through group deliberation that coordinates individual decisions to achieve collective outcomes. It is our experience that students gradually progress through increased levels of group tacit knowledge as they encounter increasingly complex game situations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to underscore the possible dangers of abstraction, objectification and reification as roots of human domination over other human and non-human beings; and to suggest that, as one possibility, place-based education, can counter these dominating patterns by pulling up their roots through fostering relational ontologies based on care and emotional/sensuous experience. The author will foreground the work of Henri Lefebvre, Neil Evernden, and R. D. Laing in the abstraction discussion, while the discussion of place-based (...) education will draw largely on the writings of David Gruenewald. (shrink)

Dialogue is a seminal concept within the work of the Brazilian adult education theorist, Paulo Freire, and the Russian literary critic and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin. While there are commonalities in their understanding of dialogue, they differ in their treatment of dialectic. This paper addresses commonalities and dissonances within a Bakhtin-Freire dialogue on the notions of dialogue and dialectic. It then teases out some of the implications for education theory and practice in relation to two South African contexts of learning that (...) facilitate the access to education of disadvantaged groups, one in higher education and the other in early childhood education. (shrink)

In this article I posit translation as philosophical operation that disrupts commonsense meaning and understanding. By defamiliarising language, translation can arrest thinking about a text in a way that assumes the language is understood. In recent work I have grappled with the phrase 'ways of knowing', which, for linguistic and conceptual reasons, confuses discussions about epistemological diversity. I here expand this inquiry by considering languages in which more than one equivalent exists for the English verb 'to know'. French, for example, (...) has both savoir and connaître , and German has wissen and kennen . This interlinguistic translation thus allows for a reconsideration of the inquiry into the phrase 'ways of knowing': do problems arise with 'ways of knowing-in-the sense-of connaître ', or with 'ways of knowing-in-the-sense-of savoir ', or both? Displacement is, more generally speaking, a method used by philosophers. Shifting the concept or phenomenon under consideration into a different context or discursive register allows one to defamiliarise it and see it in terms of something else. Through translation, whether interlinguistic or interdiscursive, philosophers ask what questions and understandings become possible when we see A in terms of B. (shrink)

In response to Helmut Heid's critique of domesticated philosophical critique, I focus on the metaphor of domestication, which is central to his article. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, I offer a deconstructive critique of the opposition between domesticated and undomesticated critique, arguing that a clear conceptual demarcation between the two is impossible, and that ‘domesticated’ and ‘undomesticated’ critique always carry each other's traces. I explore connections between the undomesticated and das Unheimliche (Freud's ‘Uncanny’), as well as differences between (...) Helmut Heid's and Paulo Freire's interpretation and use of the concepts of ‘domestication’ and ‘liberation’. Lastly, I examine how educators might go about a pedagogy of critique. I argue that critique can and should be understood and taught as a tradition, but one that is heterogeneous rather than monolithic. A careful reception of this translated and metonymic tradition of critique will enable students to see the spaces in which new critique—and critique of critique— is possible. (shrink)

The work of Paulo Freire, while remaining important to many educators, has been challenged by some postmodernist arguments. In particular, the pursuit of justice becomes difficult, or at least more complicated, when the concept of difference is taken seriously. This paper reconsiders the Freirean commitment to justice in the light of ideas from Young and Pavlich and Ratner, Critical theory, poststructuralism and the social context, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press). How might the work of Paulo Freire accommodate these ideas and what (...) demands do they place on his philosophy? In addressing this question, I focus on three key themes in contemporary debates over pedagogy and justice: the notion that the individual is produced; the significance of difference; and the idea that justice is context dependent and multiple. I argue that given Freire’s emphasis in later publications on the produced and unfinished self and his recognition of the multilayered nature of oppression, Freirean theory continues to have much to offer to these debates. (shrink)

Michel De Certeau’s scholars have rarely explored the pedagogical potential of the French thinker’s thought. This paper aims at reconstructing the question of the teaching practice in De Certeau’s works and, building on such reconstruction, it proposes a possible ‘heterological’ comprehension of teaching. Moving from an early writing dealing specifically with the teacher’s identity, the paper shows how the famous dyad of strategies and tactics exposed in The practice of everyday life can be usefully applied to teaching and studying and (...) helps further elaborate the question of teaching. From this analysis, the teacher will emerge as the owner of a strategic knowledge that, if he wants to teach, needs to be altered by the uncanny and tactical presence of the student. Teaching will finally be shown as the practice of alteration of knowledge operated by the other of such knowledge, namely, the student. In such alteration of knowledge lies the potential of a heterological comprehension of teaching. (shrink)

Participation has been widely touted as “the answer” to a number of problems facing sustainable development programs. It is not enough, however, to involve rural people as workers and informants in research and planning endeavors defined by outsiders. A truly collaborative approach will depend upon our ability to broaden our definitions of research and participation, to accommodate a wide spectrum of land users and local knowledge, and to expand our repertoire of research methods. This paper presents a critique of facile (...) approaches to participation, outlines a more inclusive framework for who participates on what terms, and reviews a variety of methods that address the complex realities of rural livelihoods and landscapes. The final section of the paper suggests a multi-institutional model that combines the complementary strengths of several types of organizations in participatory field research and planning. (shrink)

The Journey to the East is Hermann Hesse’s most deeply personal book. This enigmatic novel, with its deceptively simple narrative structure, lends itself well to multiple interpretations. To date, however, little attention has been paid by educationists to the book. This paper attempts to address this lacuna in the literature, beginning with an examination of the autobiographical and dream-like qualities of the novel. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the ritual of confession undertaken by H.H., the narrator and (...) central figure in the book. H.H. lives in despair following the apparent dissolution of the League of Journeyers to the East. He seeks to overcome his despair, and learns the League is alive and well, through the character of Leo. At the end of the book H.H., having confessed his ‘sins’ and faced both his League brothers and himself, believes he has found the answer to his troubles. This paper argues that in his solution, H.H. fails to grasp of the importance of education, questioning and critique in self understanding and development. This being so, it is suggested, he will be unable to make the most of the knowledge available to him through the League archives, and his reflections on himself, Leo and the purpose of his existence will have only limited lucidity. He will, the paper concludes, have a long way to go on his journey to ‘the East’. (shrink)

Transformative ‘cultural shifts’ in nursing: participatory action research and the lsquo;project of possibility’For some time scholars have called for changes in nursing in order to address the subjugated position of nurses within health care. This paper argues that through an engagement with participatory action research, nurses open up a possibility to bring about transformative shifts in nursing culture. The motivation for nurses to engage with this research process arises out of an acknowledgement that they can no longer live with the (...) sense of pain and crisis endemic in much of their nursing practice, and a desire to take action to bring about transformative change within their local ward cultures. However, their participation in critical reflective and collaborative processes that underpin action research exposes an array of minor scattered nursing practices which frustrate possibilities for transformative change. Drawing on empirical accounts from research conducted by the author, the paper argues that once made explicit, these minor practices and the regimes of truth that nurture and sustain them, can be reconstructed and the possibility of transformative cultural shifts in nursing will then emerge. (shrink)

This article explores the contemporary ‘symptomatic’ position of radically excluded social groups through a critical engagement with the work of Žižek, Deleuze and Guattari. It begins with a presentation and critique of Žižek's theorisation, arguing that while he correctly perceives the symptomatic status of certain social groups and issues, his approach is insufficiently radical because of its reliance on inappropriate structuralist assumptions and metaphysical negativity. It then compares this theory to Deleuze and Guattari's theory of minoritarianism, viewed as a similar (...) attempt to engage with the symptomatic effects of exclusion. A political trajectory is derived from Deleuze and Guattari's theory which reconceives the politics of the excluded in terms of emancipatory lines of flight rather than gestures of identification. The article then explores social movements arising from the growing phenomenon of global exclusion in neoliberalism, looking at examples such as Somalia and Bolivia, and proposing autonomy and networked approaches to social life as responses to exclusion which reconfigure social space in affirmative ways. (shrink)

Paulo Freire's concept of conscientisation has been the subject of considerable debate since the early 1970s. The interpretation of conscientisation as a process of ‘consciousness raising’, whereby individuals move through a sequence of distinct stages, is widespread. This article critiques the ‘stages’ model and advances an alternative perspective on conscientisation. Rejecting an individualist view of critical consciousness, the author concentrates on the link between conscientisation and praxis, and reassesses Freire's ideal in light of the postmodernist notion of multiple subjectivities.

This paper addresses the issue of political correctness from a Freirean point of view. An identification of the range of areas to which the label ‘political correctness’ has been applied reveals a confusingly multifaceted term. The author concentrates on the key characteristics of intolerance, conformity, the impeding of questioning and criticism, the stifling of debate, and the denial of alternatives. Thus defined, ‘political correctness’ has no place in Freirean education.

Jacob Neumann provides a thoughtful reading of Paulo Freire in the 21st century: Education, dialogue, and transformation. His comments on the importance of contextualising Freire’s work and the value of openness in engaging Freirean ideas are insightful and helpful. His use of the term ‘apolitical’ is, however, rather more problematic. Drawing on points made in Paulo Freire in the 21st century, and with links to Freire’s wider philosophy and pedagogy, this article argues that education from a Freirean perspective is always (...) political. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of political correctness from a Freirean point of view. An identification of the range of areas to which the label ‘political correctness’ has been applied reveals a confusingly multifaceted term. The author concentrates on the key characteristics of intolerance, conformity, the impeding of questioning and criticism, the stifling of debate, and the denial of alternatives. Thus defined, ‘political correctness’ has no place in Freirean education.

In today’s world we appear to place a premium on happiness. Happiness is often portrayed, directly or indirectly, as one of the key aims of education. To suggest that education is concerned with promoting unhappiness or even despair would, in many contexts, seem outlandish. This paper challenges these widely held views. Focusing on the work of the great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, I argue that despair, the origins of which lie in our reflective consciousness, is a defining feature of human (...) life. Education, I maintain, should not be seen as a flight from despair but as a process of deepening our understanding of suffering and its potentially pivotal role in our humanisation. In developing these ideas, I draw on Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations, among other sources. (shrink)

In the past fifty years, hundreds of definitions of 'literacy' have been advanced by scholars, adult literacy workers, and programme planners. This paper analyses three major approaches to the problem of defining literacy: quantitative, qualitative and pluralist. The pluralist perspective, while not without its difficulties, appears to have the most to offer in understanding literacy in the contemporary world.

This paper considers Hermann Hesse’s novel, The Glass Bead Game, in the light of Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy. The Glass Bead Game is set in Castalia, a “pedagogical province” of the 23rd century. It is argued that the central character in the book, Joseph Knecht, undergoes a complex process of conscientisation. Knecht develops an increasingly critical understanding of Castalian society, questioning some of its most cherished assumptions while nonetheless deepening his appreciation of the beauty of the Glass Bead Game. He (...) becomes less certain of his certainties as he grows older, and eventually decides to give away his prestigious post as Magister Ludi to pursue a quiet life as a tutor. Dialogue plays a key role in the development of Knecht’s critical consciousness. Freirean theory is seen to provide a robust framework for the analysis of key themes in Hesse’s text. At the same time, The Glass Bead Game is helpful in demonstrating the meaning and significance of conscientisation and dialogue for educational lives. (shrink)

This article considers key differences and similarities between Freirean and Taoist ideals. I limit my focus to the Tao Te Ching (attributed to Lao Tzu), paying brief attention to the origins of this classic work of Chinese philosophy before concentrating on several themes of relevance to Freire's work. An essay by James Fraser (1997), who makes three references to the Tao Te Ching in his discussion of love and history in Freire's pedagogy, provides a helpful starting point for investigation. A (...) summary of Fraser's account is followed by a more detailed discussion of the meaning of ‘action’ and ‘non‐action’, the nature and role of knowing and knowledge, and the relations between ignorance, happiness and education for Freire and Lao Tzu. I conclude that while the differences between these two systems of thought are significant and must be acknowledged, reflection upon these differences has the potential to be educationally productive. (shrink)

This article is concerned with Ngarrindjeri nation building in the ‘contact zone’ with the Australian settler state by decentring the colonizer within a range of bureaucratic regimes. Ngarrindjeri engagement with natural resource and cultural heritage management will be used to illustrate the relationship between globalization, community governance, education, sustaining ‘culture’, Indigenous well-being, and reconciliation and its links to the Australian government Closing the Gap initiatives. This article connects Ngarrindjeri lived experience to the theorization of processes for self-recovery and social transformation (...) that open possibilities for broad-based local and global coalitions, which include political solidarity in the interests of just Indigenous ‘reinhabitation’ and decolonization. (shrink)

This essay works to bridge conversations in philosophy of education with decolonial theory. The author considers Margonis’ ( 1999 , 2011a , b ) use of Rousseau ( 1979 ) and Heidegger ( 1962 ) in developing an ontological attitude that counters social hierarchies and promotes anti-colonial relations. While affirming this effort, the essay outlines a coloniality of being at work in Rousseau and Heidegger through thier reliance on the colonial conceptualization of African Americans and Native Americans as savage and (...) primitive. The essay turns to decolonial theory and the work of Maldenado-Torres (Cult Stud 21(2–3):240–270, 2007 , 2009 ) to highlight how a decolonial attitude complicates, yet enriches Margonis’ philosophical framework. (shrink)

In 2007, Song-Ming Ang initiated Guilty Pleasures, a series of listening parties dedicated to sharing beloved “bad songs” and facilitating critical discussions about complex desires and hierarchies of taste. In this article, I extend on these discussions and offer a theory of guilty pleasures. Informed by queer and critical approaches to affect and minor aesthetic categories, I argue that guilty pleasures are characterized not by a specific medium or style, but rather by their ability to evoke pleasure interrupted by a (...) meta-response of guilt. This experience is activated by the outmoded, saccharine, or naff qualities of an object. I contrast guilty pleasures with good-bad art, painful art, and objects that foster akrasia, and provide an extended examination of naff, another minor aesthetic category with roots in Polari that intersects aspects of camp, heteronormativity, and Lauren Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism.” I ultimately argue that guilty pleasures are far from a simplistic category of low art enjoyed with indifference. Instead, I perceive guilty pleasures as always enjoyed with a degree of criticality or skepticism that is tethered to the beholder’s taste, life experiences, and values. (shrink)

Building on the storytelling, political storytelling, and religious storytelling literatures, I examined the role religious stories play in the formation of revolutionary convictions. This study’s primary sources of data are volumes I, II, and III of The Gospel in Solentiname, a historical record of religious discussions that took place in an isolated campesino community at a seminary-like setting under a growing national revolutionary scenario in 1970s Nicaragua. My analysis of these discussions reveals that religious discourse based on stories of prophecy, (...) Christian virtue, miracles, and social challenges to revolutionary action allowed story-users to assert, explore, and promote models of action and moral orientation consistent with the making of revolution. (shrink)

This paper is a conceptual analysis in methodology. The purpose it fulfils is that of analysing the critical and dialogic pedagogy of Paulo Freire, to arrive at implications of Freire’s philosophy...

The paradox of girls’ academic gains over boys, across race and class, has perplexed scholars for the last few decades. Through a 3-year longitudinal ethnography of two predominantly economically marginalized and racially minoritized schools, I contend that while racially marginalized girls may have made academic gains, school is nevertheless a hostile institution for them. Focusing on the case of Black girls and recent immigrant girls of color, I identify three specific ways in which school functions as hostile institution for them: (...) gendered racial harassment from teachers, erasure of intellect, and estrangement within their communities. Furthermore, the denigration of immigrant girls becomes the conduit for misogynoir. I find that the gains of some racially marginalized girls in school often justify hostility against all of them. Bringing into conversation a feminist analysis of schooling that rejects girls’ educational gains as ubiquitous evidence of a gender revolution with a Black-colonial education framework that emphasizes schooling as a technology of oppression, I explore the current role of school as a hostile institution for Black girls and immigrant girls of color. (shrink)

Paulo Freire is undeniably a prominent figure who greatly influenced 21st century higher education. More specifically, architectural education been greatly affected by Freire’s thinking in relation to producing a design project with dialogue and consciousness. This study aims to implement Freire’s thoughts in contemporary design studios, where the core courses of architectural education occur. This study employs a narrative methodology and in-depth interviews with third-year students from the design studios of two universities, one public and another private. The study investigates (...) the impact of the concept of ‘dialogue’ on student creativity, and ‘banking education’ thought of Freire to determine how this idea affects students’ consciousness of their learning process. Therefore, this research attempts to apply three of Freire’s key thoughts that have been discussed in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed: ‘dialogue’, ‘consciousness’, and ‘banking education’. As a result, banking education applied by local-experienced instructors in the public university has confused students when applying given information to the theoretical part of their projects, which directed them to show fewer creative concepts. On the other hand, the students had greater consciousness of their learning process, awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in regard to the concepts of their design projects, and involvement in their classes when they felt a dialogue by the abroad-experienced instructors in the private university. This study shows that architectural education in that region requires a serious consciousness of Freirean theory. (shrink)

For a variety of reasons, learning should be studied as a cultural phenomenon. The task of the first part of this article is to clear up the terminological questions about various ideal types of learning cultures, and how ideal type analysis may be used to study value and knowledge transfer and knowledge acquirement in various types of organisations. The important task of the second part is to analyse how implementation of environmental management systems, like BS-7750, contribute to a certain learning (...) practice. Moreover the task is to evaluate and discuss supplementing or alternative modes of learning to just formalisation of knowledge transfer. (shrink)

Now more than ever the role of the other has been put into question and marginalized in a redefinition of an “American national self-protective identity” in the current post election climate. In philosophical terms, an identity of a radical other- implies that any change, any difference, any impurity can be conceived as posing a threat to identity. If a specific group of people is identified as preventing the self from being what it ought to be, the other is identified as (...) a security threat. One option is to willingly conform to the assigned role as a threat. The opposite option I argue in my paper is one that can be achieved through the lens of a cosmopolitan framework of hospitality. By exploring the writings of French philosopher, feminist and psychoanalyst Luce Irigary’s cosmopolitan pedagogy of difference rooted in the concept of hospitality from the point of view of education, I hope put forth an alternative phenomenological pedagogy, one that connects issues of positionality with those of an embodied anti-racist philosophy of difference. By using case studies from my own classroom, I hope to elucidate how educators can implement an anti-racist pedagogy in the current post election climate, by creating spaces for dialogue where students are engaging in an authentic discourse on the nature of their positionality. (shrink)

RACINE L and PERRON A. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 190–201 Unmasking the predicament of cultural voyeurism: a postcolonial analysis of international nursing placementsThe growing interest in international nursing placements cannot be left unnoticed. After 11 years into this twenty‐first century, violations of human rights and freedom of speech, environmental disasters, and armed conflicts still create dire living conditions for men and women around the world. Nurses have an ethical duty to address issues of social justice and global health as a (...) means to fulfil nursing’s social mandate. However, international placements raise some concerns. Drawing on the works of postcolonial theorists in nursing and social sciences, we examine the risk of replicating colonialist practices and discourses of health in international clinical placements. Referring to Bakhtin’s notions of dialogism and unfinalizability, we envision a culturally safe nursing practice arising from dialogical encounters between the Self as an Other and with the Other as an Other. We suggest that exploring the intricacies of cultural and race relations in everyday nursing practice are the premises upon which nurses can understand the broader historic, racial, gendered, political and economic contexts of global health issues. Finally, we make suggestions for developing culturally safe learning opportunities at the international level without minimizing the impact of dialogical cultural encounters occurring at the local and community levels. (shrink)

The paper examines needs experienced during the late stage of AIDS with reference to a phenomenological explication of unstructured interviews with persons with acute symptoms of the disease. A distinct pattern of health care needs emerged, characterized by a relative emphasis on the psychosocial as distinct from biomedical or economical aspects of the disease and emotion focused coping strategies. Results are compared with those of other studies and implications for palliative care are discussed. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 1, (...) Edition 1 April 2001. (shrink)

Researchers of the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership at Brown University sought to improve an understanding of the ethical challenges of field researchers with place-based communities in environmental studies/sciences and environmental health by disseminating a questionnaire which requested information about their ethical approaches to these researched communities. NEEP faculty sought to gain actual field guidance to improve research ethics and cultural competence training for graduate students and faculty in environmental sciences/studies. Some aspects of the ethical challenges in field studies are not (...) well-covered in the literature. More training and information resources are needed on the bioethical challenges in environmental field research relating to maximizing benefits/reducing risks to local inhabitants and ecosystems from research; appropriate and effective group consent and individual consent processes for many diverse communities in the United States and abroad; and justice considerations of ensuring fair benefits and protections against exploitation through community-based approaches, and cultural appropriateness and competence in researcher relationships. (shrink)

This article excavates a discussion on the mediations that informed the making of the film Aaj Kaal by Asian elders, in a project directed by Avtar Brah and coordinated by Jasbir Panesar with the film trainer Vipin Kumar. It brings this largely unknown and inventive film to the foreground of current developments in participative media research practices. The discussion explores the coming together of the ethnographic imagination and performative pedagogies during the course of an adult education community project centred on (...) South Asian elders making a film. Collaborative dialogic encounters illuminate post-war British front rooms, the seaside and public spheres from what is usually an unlikely vantage point of view in public accounts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the superiority of a critical realist understanding of interdisciplinarity over a mainstream understanding of it. I begin by exploring the reasons for the failure of mainstream researchers to achieve interdisciplinarity. My main argument is that mainstream interdisciplinary researchers tend to hypostatize facts, fetishize constant conjunctions of events and apply to open systems an epistemology designed for closed systems. I also explain how mainstream interdisciplinarity supports oppression and gross inequality. I argue that mainstream interdisciplinarity is (...) not true interdisciplinarity and refer to it accordingly as ‘condisciplinarity’. By way of example, I examine the condisciplinarity of the World Health Organization’s ecological model applied to the issue of men’s violence against women. Specifically, I argue that critical realist interdisciplinarity is preferable because it acknowledges inter alia the empirical, actual and real layers of reality, which allows it to develop depth-explanations of phenomena. In practice, this means that critical realist interdisciplinarity can potentially provide explanations that, compared to condisciplinarity, are broader (include more of the human and non-human context) and deeper (include for example individuals’ conscious and unconscious psychological motivations). In the World Health Organization’s example of the causes of men’s violence against women, condisciplinarity resulted in the absence of historical, global and unconscious aspects of the problem. It is also restricted the analysis to reductive, constant-conjunction based theories of the causes of the problem, specifically ‘risk factors’, thereby providing a relatively shallow explanation for the problem. (shrink)