The Environment and Health: An Alternative Perspective

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lewis

A theoretical approach which may be used to increase understanding of the dynamics of environmental and health policy is outlined. The approach deals with conceptualisations or 'ways of knowing', and, as such, tends to raise questions for debate, rather than advance policy solutions. First, it considers ways in which people have thought about and 'known' the world around them and traces how this has been important in shaping our attitudes and values in relation to it, especially in influencing environmental and health policy. Three aspects are considered: the legacy of Enlightenment and Romantic philosophical frameworks, the significance of underlying contradictory assumptions within these frameworks, and some of the implications of this for public policy. Second, it advances a specific theoretical approach ? the dialectic ? as a means of exploring the relationship between ways of thought and providing insight into the complex dynamics of policy making. It looks briefly at the example of sewage disposal policy before arguing that a dialectic approach may be applied to a range of environmental and health policy situations.

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-141
Author(s):  
Helene Fisher ◽  
Elizabeth Lane Miller ◽  
Christof Sauer

Abstract Emerging understanding of gender-specific religious persecution in some of the world’s most difficult countries for Christians offers timely insight into complex dynamics in which the church and missions have too often been unwittingly complicit due to limited visibility of the components contributing to these wounds. Fresh research into these deeply wounding global phenomena stands as both a warning and a pointer towards an avenue for effective ministrations by churches and Christian ministries that are working in the most severely affected areas of the world. Drawing on the latest trends identified by World Watch Research, outcomes of the Consultation for Christian Women under Pressure for their Faith, a contemporary case study from Central African Republic, and a biblical narrative, we will explore practical opportunities for a holistic approach to bring preparedness, healing, and restoration for communities under severe pressure for their Christian faith.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Sissons

Van Meijl is right to insist that epistemology must be about active, socially contested ‘ways of knowing’ and that understanding the relationship between such ways and their products is as much an ethnographic problem as it is a philosophical one. Ways of knowing, as social practices, are also, more generally, ways of being or becoming and so are not, in my view, radically distinct from the ontologies they produce and reproduce. Phillipe Descola argues strongly that his four ‘ontologies’ are also schemas of practice, fundamental ways that people know, experience and inhabit the world. I think Van Meijl is mistaken, therefore, when he characterises the ontological turn in anthropology as being about different relations between mind and matter. For me, it is most significantly about the different ways that personhood or subjectivity can be understood and embodied.<br>


2018 ◽  
Vol III (I) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Muhammad Rizwan ◽  
Manzoor Ahmad ◽  
Syed Asif Anwar Bukhari

Soon after its creation, Pakistan confronted many issues including refugee problem, scarcity of able political leadership, absence of mutual consensus between both wings of the country and confusing nature of the relationship between Islam and state etc. took almost nine years to frame the permanent constitution for Pakistan. Constitution, the basic document of a state, determines the shape of its laws, structure of governance and system of rights and duties. The effectiveness of a constitution is judged by its practicability in the given area where it is enforced by the state machinery. Although, all civilized states of the world do possess a constitution, yet a good constitution is one which must protect the basic human rights by ensuring the independence of judiciary. Due to countless hurdles at the beginning of its journey, Pakistan’s constitutional development in the right direction could not take place. The main objective of the present study is to provide deep insight into the events and factors causing a delay in the constitution-making for the newly created state of Pakistan. The various events which took place from 1947 to 1956 have been analyzed in a subtle way.


Author(s):  
Rachel Elior

Mysticism is one of the central sources of inspiration of religious thought. It is an attempt to decode the mystery of divine existence by penetrating to the depths of consciousness through language, memory, myth, and symbolism. By offering an alternative perspective on the world that gives expression to yearnings for freedom and change, mysticism engenders new modes of authority and leadership; as such it plays a decisive role in moulding religious and social history. For all these reasons, the mystical corpus deserves study and discussion in the framework of cultural criticism and research. This book is a lyrical exposition of the Jewish mystical phenomenon. Its purpose is to present the meanings of the mystical works as they were perceived by their creators and readers. At the same time, it contextualizes them within the boundaries of the religion, culture, language, and spiritual and historical circumstances in which the destiny of the Jewish people has evolved. The book conveys the richness of the mystical experience in discovering the infinity of meaning embedded in the sacred text and explains the multivalent symbols. It illustrates the varieties of the mystical experience from antiquity to the twentieth century. The translations of texts communicate the mystical experiences vividly and make it easy for the reader to understand how the book uses them to explain the relationship between the revealed world and the hidden world and between the mystical world and the traditional religious world, with all the social and religious tensions this has caused.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-199
Author(s):  
Agnes Kovacs ◽  
Tamas Doczi ◽  
Dunja Antunovic

The Olympic Games are among the most followed events in the world, so athletes who participate there are exceptionally interesting for the media. This research investigated Olympians’ social media use, sport journalists’ attitudes about Olympians’ social media use, and the role of social media in the relationship between Olympians and sport journalists in Hungary. The findings suggest that most Hungarian Olympians do not think that being on social media is an exceptionally key issue in their life, and a significant portion of them do not have public social media pages. However, sport journalists would like to see more information about athletes on social media platforms. The Hungarian case offers not only a general understanding of the athlete–journalist relationship, and the role of social media in it, but also insight into the specific features of the phenomenon in a state-supported, hybrid sport economy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-432
Author(s):  
Andrzej Rozwadowski

One of the aspects of the relationship between rock art and shamanism, which has been supposed to be of a universal nature, inspired by trance experience, concerns the intentional integration of the images with rock. Rock surface therefore has been interpreted, in numerous shamanic rock-art contexts, as a veil beyond which the otherworld could be encountered. Such an idea was originally proposed in southern Africa, then within Upper Palaeolithic cave art and also other rock-art traditions in diverse parts of the world. This paper for the first time discusses the relevance of this observation from the perspective of unquestionable shamanic culture in Siberia. It shows that the idea of the otherworld to be found on the other side of the rock actually is a widespread motif of shamanic beliefs in Siberia, and that variants of this belief provide a new mode of insight into understanding the semantics of Siberian rock art. Siberian data therefore support previous hypotheses of the shamanic nature of associating rock images with rock surface.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Wilson

The objective of this practice-based master's research project is to explore how theory on photography, communication, and mythology can be illustrated by the format, layout, and design of a 120 page alternative fashion publication in such a way that it provides insight into the relationship between mythology and the fashion image and an alternative perspective on the fashion image that goes beyond profit-driven motives. This project explores methods of collaboration and creativity by appropriating various works, personal projects, and those of contributors and collecting them into one context: The Phoenix publication. The methods of appropriation, détournement, meta and corpse exquisite are used in the creation of this project in terms of individual submissions, layout, formatting, and the understanding of the publication as a whole.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Wilson

The objective of this practice-based master’s research project is to explore how theory on photography, communication and mythology can be illustrated by the format, layout and design of a 120 page alternative fashion publication in such a way that it provides insight into the relationship between mythology and the fashion image and an alternative perspective on the fashion image that goes beyond profit-driven motives. This project explores methods of collaboration and creativity by appropriating various works, personal projects, and those of contributors and collecting them into one context: the Phoenix publication. The methods of appropriation, détournement, meta, and corpse exquisite are used in the creation of this project in terms of individual submissions, layout, formatting, and the understanding of the publication as a whole.


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Victoria Tudor

In terms of their achievements in the field of learning, Reginald of Durham and saint Godric of Finchale present an enormous contrast. Reginald was a monk of the powerful and wealthy community of Durham and also, naturally enough in the second half of the twelfth century, a priest. As such he was the product of a formal monastic education. He was especially favoured, in addition, because the house which moulded him was at that time passing through a phase when letters flourished to a greater extent than at any other period in its history. Godric, on the other hand, was never anything but a layman. He earned a living as a pedlar and merchant first of all and only later decided to abandon the world and lead the eremitic life. His contacts with learning were thus tenuous at best. Both Reginald and Godric were trying, however, to achieve the same ideal: to live the religious life, and for some years in the third decade of the twelfth century circumstances led them to follow their vocations in close contact with one another. Students of this period are fortunate in having some insight into the relationship that developed between them. In particular one can isolate the part played in the relationship by learning or, more precisely, by Reginald’s substantial education and the hermit’s lack of it.


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