scholarly journals Being and Becoming a Monk on Mount Athos: An Ontological Approach to Relational Monastic Personhood in the “Garden of the Virgin Mary” as a Rite of Passage

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-87
Author(s):  
Michelangelo Paganopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Being And Becoming

AbstractThis paper brings together ethnography as practice research, and theology as experiential theory, towards an ontological interdisciplinary understanding of relational personhood on Mount Athos. The first part of the paper consists of ethnographic data gathered from the field, approaching monastic life as a rite of passage to heaven, and using the anthropological discourse of the “sacred” to represent and interpret this passage in sociological and moral terms. The second part of the essay expands on this empirical material by following the two “fundamental” elements of personhood, Freedom and Otherness, in the respective Christological discourses of Zizioulas and Yannaras. The aim of the second part is to ontologically expand on the experience of relational personhood by approaching theology as a kind of practice [“theoro” as “I-see-God” via practices of faith] that takes us to deeper levels of understanding of being and becoming, in relation both to the invisible God and the visible, material World. In this context, the focus of the paper gradually moves from the Athonian landscape. informed by the energies of God that run through it, to Athonian personhood as defined by the personal and ontological relation of each monk to the landscape, which includes themselves, in an ontologically relational manner. As I argue, this relational ontology extends from the grace received in everyday practices by all the monks to the charismatic personalities, whose individual agency and freedom from nature enabled them to change Athonian history and become emblems of the contemporary ideals of monastic life as a dialectical symbiosis within God and nature.

“The American Prayer”

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-77
Author(s):  
John O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Muslim American ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Behavioral Expectations ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
And Behavior

This chapter details the everyday practices used by the Legendz and their friends to manage a specific cultural dilemma faced by Muslim American youth: how to participate in a religious tradition that carries expectations of deference to external religious authority and obligation within a modern American cultural landscape in which personal agency, autonomy, and reflexivity are core social values and widely held behavioral expectations. The Legendz responded to this challenge by engaging in practices associated with one particular cultural rubric (religious Islam) while applying discourses and behavior associated with the other (American individualism). In this way, they attempted to present themselves as agentive, autonomous, and self-reflexive American youth despite their regular fulfillment of externally imposed Islamic obligations. In altering the specifics of prayer through visible temporal delays, the boys attempted to demonstrate an autonomous yet Islamic self to themselves and each other. By invoking the specter of the “extreme Muslim” in conversation, they presented themselves as self-reflexive Islamic individuals—ones not unthinkingly beholden to strict religious requirements—while protecting the autonomy of their peers by displacing religious authority in interaction. In applying the speech patterns of urban braggadocio when recounting their participation in Muslim moral behavior, they attempted to infuse communally rooted norms with a sense of individual agency.

Deepening the Bonds of Christian Community: Applying Rite of Passage Structure to the Discipling Process in Taiwan

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-313
Author(s):  
Jim Courson
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Inquiry Process ◽  
Critical Issues

Rite of passage structure holds promise for enhancing the effectiveness of Christian discipling. This article explores discipling in Taiwan and proposes a model based on a second-century Roman Christian practice. Research by missionary Allen Swanson provides an introduction to the Taiwan problem. Arnold van Gennep's rite of passage model combined with Victor Turner's emphasis on liminality and communitas informs our understanding of critical issues related to the process of conversion. Then, drawing on practices common to the early church, a model is proposed for an extended inquiry process that engages initiate and community in a rite of passage that facilitates bonding.

scholarly journals Food, Waste and Safety: Negotiating Conflicting Social Anxieties into the Practices of Domestic Provisioning

2012 ◽  
Vol 60 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 102-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Watson ◽  
Angela Meah
Keyword(s):  
Food Waste ◽  
Food Poisoning ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Domestic Practices ◽  
Social Anxieties ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Culinary Uses ◽  
The One ◽  
The Uk

Two significant realms of social anxiety, visible in the discourses of media and public policy, potentially pull practices of home food provisioning in conflicting directions. On the one hand, campaigns to reduce the astonishing levels of food waste generated in the UK moralize acts of both food saving (such as keeping and finding creative culinary uses for leftovers) and food disposal. On the other hand, agencies concerned with food safety, including food-poisoning, problematize common practices of thrift, saving and reuse around provisioning. The tensions that arise as these public discourses are negotiated together into domestic practices open up moments in which ‘stuff’ crosses the line from being food to being waste. This paper pursues this through the lens of qualitative and ethnographic data collected as part of a four-year European research programme concerned with consumer anxieties about food. Through focus groups, life-history interviews and observations, data emerged which give critical insights into processes from which food waste results. With a particular focus on how research participants negotiate use-by dates, we argue that interventions to reduce food waste can be enhanced by appreciating how food becomes waste through everyday practices.

scholarly journals Ontology of Semantics in Information Technologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-275
Author(s):  
P. M. Kolychev
Keyword(s):  
Information Technologies ◽  
Numerical Range ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Textual Information ◽  
Modern Approach ◽  
Subsequent Processing ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
Numerical Order ◽  
Mathematical Formalization

The article analyzes ontological possibilities of the meaning of information setting. For this, a modern approach of information technologies is considered in relation to setting the meaning of textual information. At the same time, the problem of setting the meaning of number and the meaning of word (text) is formulated, which is discussed from the perspective of an ontological approach based on the solution of the problem of being, where the ontology of semantics is the result of such a solution. As the ontology itself, a relational ontology is chosen, the initial position of which is the thesis: “to be” means “to be distinctive”. Based on this, information is defined as the result of ontological distinction, which allows mathematical formalization through the operation of subtraction, which expresses the essence of ontological distinction. This in turn allows to build constantly a numerical order of the meanings of any information, including textual, while the meaning of the information is its place in such a numerical range. Such a method, called Relational method, leads to an exact numerical specification of the meaning of any information, and by dignity of this numerical form, the meanings of any information can be easily input into a computer with subsequent processing and operation of these senses.

scholarly journals Meditation in Contemporary Monastic Life

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Role Function ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Experiences Of Women

This chapter examines the multiple roles that meditation plays in the lives of contemporary Buddhist monastics. Specifically, and drawing on rich ethnographic data, it focuses on the experiences of women who have taken Buddhist ordination within six different Buddhist groups and lineages in the British Isles. This chapter provides a brief history of the lived experience of meditation among emerging and established Buddhist monastic groups in Britain and an analysis of the role, function, and value of meditation practices, particularly among women. It makes comparisons between women of different Buddhist traditions in their approach to meditation and considers the implications of this for understanding the function of meditation in the Buddhist monastic tradition. Underpinning this approach is a challenge to assumptions about the individualistic nature of meditation in the contemporary West, emphasizing its communal role among monastic women in Britain.

scholarly journals 21st Century Child and Youth Care Education: An Ontological Relational Turn in Teaching and Learning

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
Gerard Bellefeuille ◽  
Ahna Bekikoff
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Youth Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Child And Youth Care ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
Essential Components

The pedagogical challenges in preparing child and youth care (CYC) students for 21st century CYC practice, global citizenship, and life cannot be rightfully addressed by an antiquated higher education system predicated on a Newtonian/Cartesian ontology that assumes a mechanistic view of the materialistic world and a solitary view of the “self” as completely autonomous, ego-based, and self-enclosed. In this article, we propose an alternative ontological stance for teaching and learning in higher education, one that is informed by the growing body of relational ontology scholarship in theology, philosophy, psychology, nursing, political theory, educational theory, and even information science. The basic contention of a relational ontology is that all relations between entities are ontologically more fundamental than the entities themselves. Within this perspective, the “self” is not so much a personal possession as it is a process of relatedness and a reflection of one’s relational experiences. This view of the self has enormous implications for teaching and learning. A relational ontological approach to education will employ more holistic, collaborative, and experiential methods of teaching and learning in which the learner’s (i.e., the self’s) mind, body, emotions, spirit, and environment are all considered essential components of the learning process. The conversation presented in this article is an invitation to rethink the ontological foundations upon which CYC education is currently constructed and to explore the potential of an ontological revolution in CYC teaching and learning pedagogy. In CYC, as in other disciplines, it is the visionaries operating at the edges of the discipline’s philosophical, theoretical, and practice boundaries who provide the critical reflection and creativity of thought to nudge the field forward. Please join us in this adventure.

scholarly journals Same but different: Polish and Norwegian parents’ work–family adaptations in Norway

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margunn Bjørnholt ◽  
Kari Stefansen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Work Family Conflict ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Cultural Ideal ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Dual Earner ◽  
Enabling Structures ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Work Family

This article explores how families with young children arrive at and live with different work–family adaptations within a welfare state that strongly supports the dual earner/dual carer model – that of Norway. It draws on a qualitative study among Norwegian-born and Polish-born parents, representing, respectively, ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ views on this model. The analysis aims at capturing the dynamic interplay between structures and policies, and everyday practices. We found that both Norwegian and Polish parents embraced the cultural ideal of the dual earner/dual carer model, but that their perceived scope of action differed. Within the Norwegian group, there were differences related to class, however. Among middle-class Norwegian parents, the model was internalized as a moral obligation and part of identity, making it difficult to voice and cope with work–family conflict. Working-class parents in this group varied more in their identification with this model. Across class, Polish parents, in contrast, used welfare state entitlements eclectically to shape new and more gender equal family practices in Norway and to adjust to changing circumstances. The article illustrates how enabling structures may represent both opportunities for and limitation to individual agency, undermining the assumption of a simple ‘fit’ between work–family policies, work–family adaptations and gender equality in the family.

Tensions in Teaching Character: How the ‘Entrepreneurial Character’ is Reproduced, ‘Refused’, and Negotiated in an English Academy School

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 459-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsty Morrin
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
Character Education ◽  
School Setting ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Reproduction ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Reproduction Of Inequality

This article examines ‘character education’ in a school setting. It does so by drawing on ethnographic data collected at Milltown Community Academy, a secondary school in northern England. In this piece I focus on how character education at Milltown materialises and is enacted within the sites and everyday practices of schooling. By analysing the practices of teachers at the school, I show how, on one hand, the character initiative is embedded and complied with, but, on the other hand, teachers’ practice is also littered with instances of ‘refusal’ and non-compliance. Through recent reforms, Milltown Academy now houses an ‘entrepreneurship specialism’. At the school, ‘entrepreneurship’ is embedded in the school’s core ethos and curriculum and as part of this, the ‘entrepreneurial character’ is sold as necessary and progressive and is regularly deployed in narratives of attachment to and detachment from success and failure, respectively. Therefore, I make a claim that not only is a character agenda at place in the school but an ‘entrepreneurial character’ initiative. The analysis in this article is foregrounded in the idea that the Academy’s attempts to instil an ‘entrepreneurial character’ are part of a problematic policy complex that reproduces class-based inequalities, I argue, however, that those tasked with ‘teaching entrepreneurial character’ are indeed part of the process of the socio-cultural reproduction of inequality and dominance, but importantly, they also engage in plural and contradictory practices when it comes to putting the agenda into action.

Being and Becoming A College Student: Pedagogy as Rite of Passage

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-13
Author(s):  
Thia Wolf ◽  
William M. Loker ◽  
Ellie Ertle ◽  
Zach Justus ◽  
April Kelly
Keyword(s):  
College Student ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Being And Becoming

scholarly journals Border and Memory in the village of Koshovice

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Vasilaki ◽  
Maritina Vlachaki ◽  
Nicos Koutsourakis
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Local Perceptions ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Borderland Communities ◽  
The Village ◽  
Inter State

This article focuses on the village of Koshovice, Albania, where its residents are part of the officially recognized Greek minority. The local perceptions of the community are discussed as linked to the Albanian-Greek border and its presence in the collective memory. After the borderline creation in 1913, local residents were divided between the two neighboring countries. The ethnographic data collected underline the experiences and the everyday practices of the villagers of Koshovice, especially during the period of the Albanian socialist state between 1945 and 1991, when the border became almost impenetrable. The article then discusses the changes after the fall of socialism and the opening of the border in the early 1990s, especially showing how the local borderland communities are still connected nowadays to each other despite the inter-state division.

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