Click to Connect: Participation and Meaning in an Online Church

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Christian Harwig ◽  
Johan Roeland ◽  
Hijme Stoffels
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Personal Contact ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Everyday Context ◽  
Online Church

This study is a qualitative study into the meaning that visitors derive from participating in the Dutch online church Mijn Kerk (litt. My Church). By focusing on the experience of the individual visitors, the everyday context of visitors is taken into account. What people are looking for online is determined by their relationship with the local church as well as further offline circumstances. This can be roughly divided into two categories: connectedness (with other people) and sustenance (inspiration for everyday life). Within Mijn Kerk visitors both offer and search for fulfillment of these needs, resulting in four typical behaviors: to vent, to encourage, to inspire and to recharge. Being very approachable, relatively anonymous and non-committal, while at the same time offering stability, real personal contact and durable relationships, Mijn Kerk is a unique community online in which people try to overcome the tension between individualism and the desire for connectedness.

scholarly journals From an ethnography of the everyday to writing echoes of suffering

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Rechtman
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Collective Modes ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
The Individual

Veena Das has introduced a major shift in our contemporary conception of ethnography. While she brings forward a new way of looking at everyday life, which is already a major achievement, she also offers a conceptual resolution to a classical unresolved opposition between the individual and the collective, and between idiosyncratic psychology (subjectivity) and collective modes of thinking, through a challenging debate on what makes one a member of a group and yet radically distinct from all others. The ethnography in her book Affliction stands on three major pillars: The first is the ethnographer’s subjective position in the field regarding the issues of lives, testimony, and research. The second is the neighborhood as the site of fieldwork, with all of its heterogeneity, rather than the group, such as an ethnic or racial group or one cohering around another criterion of belonging. The third and final pillar is the focus on the ordinary through ethnography of the everyday. I then illustrate Veena Das’s perspective on subjectivity with my own fieldwork with survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

scholarly journals Skrifgebruik en samelewing die Apostoliese Geloofsending van Suid-Afrika

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Wessels
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spontaneous Interaction ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Church

This article is an attempt to describe the use of the Bible in the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM). From the early stages of the church's humble beginnings, the use of Scripture changed in accordance with the social and intellectual development of its members. In the early stages there seemed to have been a more spontaneous interaction with the Bible which later made way for a more argumentative approach. Factors like the development of a centralised church system and the need to be accepted in the local church society in the country had a definite influence on the use of Scripture. Although strong emphasis was placed on the experiental aspect of faith, some of the leading members felt the need for theological training. Those who felt this need studied mostly at Reformed faculties which undeniably influenced their new of Scripture. From a spontaneous application of the Bible in the everyday life of the believer, a more formal attitude has developed towards the Bible and its application. From the research it is clear that there is a noticeable correlation between the use of Scripture in the AFM and the society in which the church finds itself

scholarly journals The The Daily Life of Contemporary Mothers – Between Social Expectations, the Sense of Duty and the Individual Experience of Motherhood

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (54) ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
Monika Lewicka
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Narrative Interview ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Ideal

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to present the dilemmas of everyday life of contemporary mothers related to society’s expectations of motherhood and their individual experiences. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The research problem was the (re)construction of everyday life of modern mothers during a pandemic. The narrative interview technique was used in the research. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: This article analyzes how mothers experience motherhood during a pandemic against the background of social transformations. The issue of everyday life as an important category was presented in the considerations contained in the article below. Then, the methodological assumptions and research results focused on the issues of the multiplicity of choices in the present day and the difficulties associated with them, as well as the everyday life of mothers, were presented. The article ends with reflections on the situation of mothers in the context of contemporary challenges. RESEARCH RESULTS: A conclusion can be drawn about the positioning of motherhood between the traditional and modern pattern of the ideal mother. First of all, mothers feel tired of the seriousness of the role they play, and from fulfilling which many people can “hold them accountable”. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The conducted research shows interesting conclusions pointing to changes related to the perception of the role of the mother in modern times. They contribute to the undertaking of more extensive research on the need for (re) construction of motherhood.

scholarly journals Mary’s Reincarnation and the Banality of Salvation: The Millennialist Cultus of the Lady of All Nations/Peoples

Numen ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 486-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jan Margry
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
New Age ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Universal Salvation ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Modern Cosmology ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Near Future ◽  
Religious Crisis

Abstract This article deals with the transnational Dutch-Canadian apparitional cultus of our Lady of All Nations/Peoples. It analyses how contemporary visionary Catholicism is influenced by religious eclecticism, esotericism, and New Age spiritualities, and how this devotion has shifted into an autonomous millennialist movement. Finding fertile soil in modern societies in socio-economic, political, and religious crisis, and due to the dwindling of existential certainties at the individual level, its ideology of “progressive millennialism” has shown itself to be a successful religious format that mobilizes devotees, even when its deviation brings the movement into conflict with the formal Church. The movement’s prophetic and millennialist views fit into a salvific system of conditionality according to which the visionary, unveiled as the reincarnation of Mary herself, will realize the new millennium if her party will fulfill certain conditions. With its new theology the Quebec movement tries to appropriate the whole Lady cultus as a vehicle for universal salvation. In this way the means for revelation and salvation are taken from the hierarchical ecclesiastical powers-that-be and situated in the “banality” of the everyday life of the reincarnated Mary. In the providential Marie-Paule Giguère, the devotees involved find an appealing prophet who is both Mary and a co-redeeming messiah, and who in the near future is supposed to realize the second millennium, framed in a new, modern cosmology, for all peoples and faiths.

“I’m in contact with foreign languages every day”

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Huhtala ◽  
Anta Kursiša ◽  
Marjo Vesalainen
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

AbstractThe focus of this article is the multilingualism of advanced university students of languages other than English. Our research questions are the following: 1) How many foreign languages do students know and use in their everyday life? 2) In which contexts do they use their various languages? 3) How do they reflect on their multilingualism? The data were collected at the University of Helsinki by means of an electronic questionnaire, through which students were invited to answer open questions about their language use. In all, 53 students of French, German, and Swedish answered the questionnaire. The results of this qualitative study have been presented from a holistic perspective, focusing on the dynamic nature of individual multilingualism (Jessner 2008). In the paper, we also discuss how the languages in the students’ language repertoire could be interpreted as being a part of (or outside) theirdominant language constellation(Aronin and Singleton 2012). The results show that students were aware of their language competence in their various L2s, although many of them did not seem to experience themselves as multilingual. Many students were strongly focused on one specific L2, but in some cases, it could be possible to talk about a more holisticmultilingual identity(Henry 2017) beyond the individual language-specific identifications.

scholarly journals SELF-WRITING IN THE DIMENSION OF EVERYDAY LIFE: DYNAMICS, CHALLENGES, PERSPECTIVES

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-107
Author(s):  
Yuliia Pavlenko
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Xviii Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Text Writing

The article presents a study of the everyday life discourse in writing about the Self of a fictional subject. It seems obvious that involvement of self-writing in everyday practice calls into question the power of self-writing in the context of everyday life for the self-knowledge of the individual. The purpose of this scientific research is to debunk this illusion and explain the connection between the everyday life and self-writing. It transforms the practice of incorporating one’s own «I» in writing into the dimension of constructing the subject’s identity. There are no works on this topic in modern literary criticism and this fact also indicates the relevance and novelty of the research that is unfolding in the following article. Nowadays, the history of everyday life is booming. It is evidenced by a whole array of scientific papers on this issue. The study of self-writing in the dimension of everyday life appeals to the semiotic approach of Y.M. Lotman and G. Knabe for the analysis of the sign-symbolic nature of everyday life, to the sociological studies of A. Schutz, P. Berger and T. Lukman to identify the ways of constructing everyday life as reality or as a «life world», to the works of V.D.Leleko in the field of aesthetics and culturology of everyday life. The works of the philosophical and anthropological school serve the basis for the research. Particular attention is given to the text-letter of the Enlightenment. The protagonists of the Enlightenment Age invest the issues of everyday life in the work of writing that is a daily practice in the XVIII century. Due to its characteristics, the sphere of everyday life is a measure of self-knowledge and self-affirmation of the individual that was first artistically embodied by enlightened characters. The study shows that everyday life asa strong ground for self-affirmation of the subject was discovered with the help of the personal writing in the novel of the XVIII century, but this discovery became a lost testament to the text-writing of the Enlightenment. Changing the picture of everyday life under the influence of new technologies does not interfere with the text-writing. In the dynamic picture of everyday life offered to us by the 21st century, writing about the Self of a fictional subject opens up new facets of the power of everyday life discourse for the anthropological laboratory of literature. The study is illustrated by thesuch texts as: «Robinson Crusoe» by D.Defoe, «Nun» by D. Diderot, «Memoirs of two young wives» by O. de Balzac, «Poison of Love» by E.-E. Schmitt, «Self-portrait of the radiator» by K. Boben.

scholarly journals How Did The First COVID-19 Lockdown Affect Persons With Concurrent Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders in Norway? A Qualitative Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marja Leonhardt ◽  
Morten Brodahl ◽  
Nicola Cogan ◽  
Lars Lien
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Substance Use ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Substance Use Disorders ◽  
Substance Use Disorder ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
The Everyday

Abstract Background: The outbreak of COVID-19 with its severe social restrictions touched the daily life of most people. While everyday social life becomes difficult for citizens with economic and cultural capital, it becomes even worse for vulnerable groups such as persons with mental health and substance use disorders, who are particularly vulnerable to social exclusion. The aim of this study is to investigate how the first COVID-19 lockdown affected the everyday life and health of persons with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.Methods: This qualitative study reports data from 17 individual interviews and one focus group of five participants, all with a self-reported mental health and substance use disorder. Interviews were conducted based on a semi-structured interview guide in September and October 2020 in a medium-sized local authority in Norway. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. A reference group of people with varied knowledge and experiences of the phenomenon were involved in study design, recruitment, data generation and analysis.Results: The analysis identified four interrelated main themes, describing how the first lockdown affected the everyday life and health of persons suffering from a mental health and substance use disorder: 1) The COVID-19 outbreak as a perceived challenge, 2) A decline in mental health and well-being, 3) Increased substance use challenges, and 4) Diverse experiences with health and social services. The results show that people with a co-occurring disorder have challenges with digital tools and/or do not have the appropriate equipment. Further, participants were not concerned about becoming infected themselves, but infecting others.Conclusion:Persons with a mental health and substance use disorder face major challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a need to maintain continuous low-threshold services especially directed towards persons with co-occurring disorders during the pandemic. Furthermore, it is important to improve the digital skills of every service user or offer alternatives to digital consultations and meetings.

scholarly journals The Everyday Life Intersection of Translational Science and Music

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-55
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Kotarba
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Biomedical Science ◽  
Translational Science ◽  
Clinical Services ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Relationship

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical relationship between translational science and music. The relationship between science and music has been of great interest to philosophers, historians, and musicologists for centuries. From a sociological perspective, we argue that science and music are closely linked at the level of everyday life in contemporary biomedical science. Translational science is a scientific movement that aims to facilitate the efficient application of bio-medical research to the design and delivery of clinical services, and a qualitative approach inspired by symbolic interactionism provides the opportunity to examine the place of the scientist in this movement. The concept of the existential self provides a useful platform for this examination insofar as the reflexive nature of the existential self is the way the person’s experience of individuality is affected by and in turn affects organizational change. An ongoing qualitative study of an NIH-funded program in translational science has found that music can serve to help scientists maintain a balanced self in light of new expectations placed upon them and their work. We identify six ways in which scientists can use music to enhance their sense of self and their work.

scholarly journals Narrative citizenship, resilience and inclusion with dementia: On the inside or on the outside of physical and social places

Dementia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 434-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte L Clarke ◽  
Cathy Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
Services And Supports ◽  
The Individual

There has been little research that addresses the importance of place in enabling resilience and citizenship – most to date focussing on these as a characteristic of the individual. This paper reports on findings from a qualitative study that aimed to explore the everyday experiences of living with dementia within rural and semi-urban communities. Data collection included a sequence of four research diaries and interviews with 13 families living at home with dementia and interviews with service providers and commissioners (a total of 57 diaries, 69 interviews with people living with dementia and 6 interviews with service providers and commissioners). Key themes identified included: Others Knowing and Responding; Socially Withdrawing and Feeling Excluded; Sustaining and Changing Activities; Belonging and Estrangement from Place; Engaging Services and Supports. The study found that familiarity with people and place can be supportive, and these factors support a narrative citizenship in which people can tell a story of inclusion and feeling on the inside. However, this familiarity with place may also create a social barrier and a sense of estrangement, or being on the outside. Narrative citizenship allows us to explore how people with dementia position themselves in relation to others and in so doing, negotiate their own and other’s understandings of dementia. It also allows for people to tell stories about themselves in relation to their sense of belonging in a social and physical place, which augment the personal and political approaches to citizenship and thus offers an approach that enhances individualised yet collective understandings of living with dementia.

scholarly journals Experiences managing pregnant hospital staff members using an active management policy—A qualitative study

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. e0247547
Author(s):  
Mette G. Backhausen ◽  
Mette Langeland Iversen ◽  
Margrethe Bordado Sköld ◽  
Thora G. Thomsen ◽  
Luise Moellenberg Begtrup
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Staff Member ◽  
Hospital Staff ◽  
Active Management ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Workplace Culture ◽  
Working Relationship ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual

Background and objective During pregnancy, absence from work increases significantly. Job adjustments have been shown to decrease absences; however, studies show only half of pregnant women who need job adjustments receive them. Little is known about the viewpoints of managers and possible challenges in the management of pregnant employees. The aim of this study was to investigate the experiences and considerations of managers in relation to managing pregnant hospital staff members and to describe the experiences of an active management policy for pregnant individuals. Methods A qualitative study based on five focus group interviews was conducted at five public hospitals in Zealand, Denmark with participation of 19 hospital managers, from 17 different wards, representing six different medical specialties. The interviews took place from February to May 2019. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results Four themes were identified: (1) The everyday management, (2) Managerial dilemmas, (3) Acknowledging the workplace culture, and (4) Dialogue as a means for the working relationship. The managers’ experiences revolved around investing a lot of effort into the working relationship with pregnant staff members by adjusting job tasks and work schedules while balancing work tasks between all staff members. The dialogue was considered central in order to identify the needs of the individual staff member. Conclusions Overall, management dialogue constituted a central tool in order to identify the needs of the individual staff member. A proactive and open approach increased the chances of a fruitful dialogue. The individual staff member, the influence of the workplace culture, and the everyday management of the workplace all shaped the experiences of the managers. The concept of an active management policy for pregnant individuals was perceived to entail useful elements, but also as replicating what managers already did.

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