Background and aims Research into the social aspects of set and setting have demonstrated that race is a significant factor in psychedelic experiences for racially marginalized populations. Yet, many studies of psychedelic-induced experiences continue to proceed without collecting data on or considering the influence of race or other social categories. These approaches abstract subjectivity from its embodied and historical conditions, isolating consciousness in ways that do not accord with lived experience. -/- Methods This article draws on critical phenomenology, anthropology, and (...) treatments of race in the field of psychedelic studies to outline how social categories mediate subjective experience in historically specific ways through the framework of embodiment. -/- Results I argue that consciousness is fundamentally intersubjective, including during psychedelic-induced experiences. Intersubjectivity is an existential condition that makes possible meaning, communication, and socialization, processes which rely on and are perpetually (re)enacted through social categories. Therefore, studies of psychedelic-induced experiences must account for the foundational role that social categories play in constituting such embodied experiences and their effects. -/- Conclusions This approach makes embodied differences matter to the study of psychedelic-induced experiences, opening new avenues of inquiry that foreground identity, power, and context in both clinical and naturalistic research. (shrink)

The combination of COVID-19 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought an unprecedented new normal, which has affected all aspects of human life, including religious activities. As a consequence, church mission and different ministries have found themselves more dependent on media. Furthermore, the convergent digital technology continually develops augmented reality and virtual reality, in which churches are planted and continue to carry out their mission and ministries. Although virtual reality churches are new mission frontiers in the digital age, there are (...) several theological issues from the conventional perspective of church ministry and mission. This paper aims to address the controversial theological issues and reflect on them from an ecclesiological perspective to explore a theological possibility to overcome the issues and to justify their mission and ministries in virtual reality. (shrink)

Based on insights of phenomenology, this article aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of embodied space and place of and for leader- and followership in organisations. From an interrelational perspective, the “spacing” and implacement of leadership and followership will be interpreted as local-historical and as local-cultural processes. Linked to questions of distance of leadership, embodied face-to-face interaction will be critically compared with distant, non-localised, displaced relationships and tele-presence mediated by information and communication technology. In addition to outlining some links (...) to “potential space” and place-responsiveness by concluding some implications, problems and perspectives on research of embodied space and place forleadership in organisation are discussed. (shrink)

Based on a nuanced understanding of immersion and sense of presence as two key aesthetic effects that the application of virtual reality to cinema is believed to innovate, this paper develops the concept of synthetic vision as fundamental to understanding the visual experience of VR media, particularly VR documentaries. The concept contends that viewers’ experience in VR is based on two visions that seemingly contradict each other: first, a disembodied vision that transports them to a simulated world, and second, an (...) embodied vision guaranteed by the freedom to control kinesthetic movement and direction of gaze. This serves to advance the idea that immersion and SoP are not unified but rather multifaceted concepts premised on a nuanced understanding of the varying relationships between the technological system of VR, its media content, and its user. For the concept of synthetic vision points to the paradoxical coexistence of viewers’ presence in the virtual world and their structural absence from the world that lays the groundwork for their immersive experience. By classifying three generic categories of contemporary VR documentaries, and by examining the aesthetic and ethical underpinnings VR brings to each of them, I argue that it hinges upon what kind of cinematic conventions and genres are remediated to determine the effective synthesis of the two visions. The varying effects of synthetic vision in the three subgenres of VR documentary stress that immersion and SoP have different political and ethical consequences of media witnessing. In the conclusion, I recapitulate multiple implications that the concept of synthetic vision has in regards to both the studies on VR and the recently flourishing investigation into cinematic VR artifacts. (shrink)