Experiencing Religion: Post-Colonial Views for Religious Education

Framed within religious historicism, the present study reviews, through historical and empirical insights, the lessons that Philippine RE can learn from the liberating function of religion and liberated religious undercurrents parallel to institutional religion in the Philippines. The liberating function of religion is often overlooked in post-colonial discourses while religious undercurrent views seem neglected due to pre-occupations with untangling power imbalances submerged in the voices of institutional religion in post-colonial analysis. Hence, in this presentation, I give particular attention to the liberating role of contemporary religion in contrast to the post-colonial thrust to rid institutional religion of power and control and secondly, the liberated religious views of young Filipino audiences from empirical findings I found from my previous studies. For religious undercurrents, I limit myself to current unorthodox religious interpretations of young Filipino audiences departing from conventional assumptions of religion and culture. My analysis of liberating religion and liberated religious views from empirical findings show epistemological shifts from the Christian interpretation in a post-colonial context. These shifts point to de-institutionalized but theocentric religious ideas inspired by moral and communal considerations, which form the basis of RE content.

The cultural turn in Community Interpreting. A brief analysis of epistemological developments in Community Interpreting literature in the light of paradigm changes in the humanities

This essay traces some of the major epistemological shifts in the humanities over the last century, in particular anthropology, which have informed and profoundly altered language- and literary disciplines in Western academia, especially those relating to the subjectivity of the observer (the anthropological ‘gaze ’), the complex interconnectedness of language and the surrounding socio-cultural network, the ephemeral nature of language itself, and the issue of textual authorship-ownership. This paper attempts to put into relief the interface of philosophical issues that arises as a result of these paradigmatic shifts with practical issues of professional ethics and role-definition in community interpreting. The paper also attempts to show that what emerged in translation studies as the ‘cultural turn ’ has already taken place in community interpreting (not necessarily across the board in other forms of interpreting) due both to influences from other related domains and to the specific cross-cultural nature of community interpreting itself.

Psychoanalysis and Interdisciplinarity With Non-analytic Psychotherapeutic Approaches Through the Lens of Dialectics

Psychoanalysis, in its purist mainstream sense, tends to be considered as an isolationist discipline that steers clear of interdisciplinary connections with other psychotherapies. Its drive for purity does not open up to influences that cast as alien and a threat to its core principles. We refer to Hegelian dialectics in an attempt to offer an alternative approach to interdisciplinarity in clinical psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis entertains a complex dialectical relationship with the major theories it opposes. In this dynamic, psychoanalysis begins by negating the non-psychoanalytic theory as a part of self-negation (Hegel calls this phase self-alienation). But in its own process of growth, it negates this negation and reabsorbs the alienated self part. Reabsorbing the negated component, psychoanalysis does not revert to its original identity but becomes sublated into a different, more complex idea. In this epistemological process, psychoanalysis deals with its own practical and theoretical anomalies and lacunas. The paper illustrates this process using three central developments in the history of psychoanalysis: empathy in self psychology (connection with Rogers' humanist psychology), short-term dynamic psychotherapy (connection with short, intensive therapies), and mentalization-based psychotherapy (connection with cognitive-behavioral therapies). In all of these cases, psychoanalysis integrates components it previously opposed and changes these components to their own, specific characteristics. We address the epistemological shifts in the scientific status of psychoanalysis and show their connection to dialectics. Finally, we conclude that dialectical development is what allows psychoanalysis to remain relevant and up to date, to be open to interdisciplinary influences without its identity and tradition coming under threat.

Stratified ontology, institutional pluralism and performance monitoring in Zambia’s health sector

Purpose This paper aims to investigate funding and performance monitoring practices in Zambia’s health sector from an institutional and stratified ontology perspective. Such an approach was deemed appropriate in view of pluralistic institutional environments characterising most African economies that are also considered to be highly stratified. Design/methodology/approach Blended with insights from stratified ontology, the paper draws on institutional pluralism as a theoretical lens to understand the institutional structures, mechanisms, events and experiences encountered by actors operating at different levels of Zambia’s health sector. The study adopted an interpretive approach that helped to investigate the multifaceted and subjective nature of social phenomena and practices being studied. Data were collected from both archival sources and interviews with key stakeholders operating within Zambia’s health sector. Findings The study’s findings indicate the high levels of stratification within Zambia’s health sector as evidenced by the three sector levels that possessed different characteristics in terms of actor responses to donor influence. This study equally demonstrates the capacity of agents operating under highly fragmented institutional environments to engage in enabling and constraining responses depending on the understanding of their empirical world. Originality/value Through blending insights from stratified ontology with institutional pluralism, the study contributes to the literature by demonstrating the enabling and constraining reflexive capacity of agents to exercise choices under highly fragmented institutional environments while responding to multiple demands and expectations to sustain the co-existence of diverse stakeholders. Accordingly, the study advances thinking on the application of institutional theory to critical accounting research in line with recent ontological and epistemological shifts in institutional theory.

Agglomerations, Relationality, and In-betweenness: Re-learning to Research Agency in Digital Communication

As today’s communicative acts are usually irrevocably tied with digital technology, it is important to better understand the resulting ontological and epistemological shifts. The central claim of this article is that humans can no longer be the prime referents of research, either as pure communicators or pure audiences. Instead, research must become sensitive to relational agential flows, whereby different entities interact within ontologically flat agglomerations. For this purpose, the article develops a posthumanist account of the research process that explicitly rejects traditional anthropocentric assumptions in favor of an egalitarian framework that emphasizes relationality and, therefore, constant multidirectional change without linear paths of causation.

Editorial: The Continuity of Change

This, the second edition of the 40th volume of the Strategic Review, straddles a number of these above-mentioned focal areas regional security, epistemological shifts and state making. A number of articles in this edition come from the 2017 Limpopo/Gauteng Colloquium of the South African Association of Political Studies hosted by the Universities of Limpopo and Venda through the able hands of Dr Kgothatso Shai (UL) and Prof Richard Molapo (UNIVEN), and with the generous support of the National Institute for Social Science and Humanities. While most of the articles focus on the geographic area called southern Africa, two articles discuss issues that do not emanate from this area, but whose article on migration and terrorism draws from the experience of West Africa, but its insights should attract the attention of southern Africanists already worried about the rise of terrorism in Mozambique and on the Indian Ocean coast generally. Its arguments about the role of networks, inter-linkages of various kinds and globalisation-induced migration as factors in the changing nature and character of terrorism may help southern African anticipate what seems to be an emerging terror factor in its regional conflict theatre.

Tidalectic Curating

The recent proliferation of exhibitions about oceans calls for an analysis of their curatorial premises. This article identifies curatorial methodologies consisting of procedures and exhibitions that not only speak about, but also through their oceanic subject matter in a performative way. The term ‘tidalectics’, coined by the historian and poet Kamau Brathwaite to articulate a worldview that eschews static land and evolves alongside water and flux, serves as an anchor to analyse curatorial work guided by oceanic thinking. The author argues that through a tidalectic methodology ‐ which takes cues from natural processes such as the ebb and flow of the tide ‐ current ecological, societal and onto-epistemological shifts can be addressed productively.