Shifting Horizons - A Line and Its Movement in Art, History and Philosophy

What happens when horizons shift? More specifically, what occurs when that line, which in everyday experience appears so consistent and omnipresent, reveals itself to be contingent? And if the horizon line is mutable, what does that imply about the systems of knowledge, order, and faith that the seemingly immutable horizon appears to neatly delimit and order? These are the questions that the volume of essays addresses, offering perspectives from multiple historical periods and disciplines that tackle instances in literature, history, and art in which shifts in conceptualizing the horizon made themselves manifest.

RE-CLOSED BORDER AS AN EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE. EXPLORATORY RESEARCH OF POLISH-GERMAN TWIN CITIES IN THE FIRST MONTHS OF A COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Borders’ closure during the COVID-19 pandemic had a particular impact on the everyday life of borderland residents. As part of the research on bordering processes carried out since a few years, during the closure of the state borders in 2020, qualitative interviews on everyday life in the COVID-19 pandemic have been conducted. In this paper, we present the results of the exploratory study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Polish-German border twin cities. We indicate at what levels borders’ closure affected the border landscape, border practices of the inhabitants of the researched territories, and their notion of the border. We also suggest how border relations were shaped due to differences in the management and perception of the pandemic situation in two countries. The results obtained indicate that the closure of borders has made life more difficult in an area under examination and has also affected the identity and specificity of the place. This issue is worth exploring further to establish the true extent of the impact of the pandemic in the borderlands.

Leadership Development Return on Investment: The Influence of Followership

<p>In this research paper the role of followers in a leader's development is explored. The research findings show that leadership development remains a “slippery” subject and in spite of all the commitment made by organisations to develop leadership, the return on this investment, as viewed by followers is poor. Even though followers are the indirect recipients of leadership development and without them the role of leader does not exist, they are largely excluded from the process. Leaders see the important contribution they could have if provided the opportunity. Moreover, the development of followership is not evident even though both followers and leaders alike see the critical role of followership in a leader's success. The focus of leadership and followership is dominated by the leader's views. While not researching sensemaking in depth, this research presents evidence that the sensemaking of followers is accurate, insightful and meaningful. The research begins to explore the reasons for the low return on leadership development and highlights harmful aspects that can arise where care is not taken to consider a leader's maturity and situational context. The research shows how organisations are not actively encouraging authenticity and inner development of followers. Where this occurs it is largely a passive process and takes place through mimicry. Given the imbalance of resource allocation to be almost totally to the benefit of leadership, authenticity awareness and development is seen to be reserved for those that desire the title of leader. Finally, the research suggests that implementing followership development in a similar way to that which occurs in leadership would be positive although limiting. The current commoditisation of leadership results from the way mainstream thinking considers the leader's role and encourages a relational and dualistic view between the leader and follower. This view does not align to the everyday experience of people who share conversation, who create meaning together and who together help construct the leader role.</p>

Leadership Development Return on Investment: The Influence of Followership

<p>In this research paper the role of followers in a leader's development is explored. The research findings show that leadership development remains a “slippery” subject and in spite of all the commitment made by organisations to develop leadership, the return on this investment, as viewed by followers is poor. Even though followers are the indirect recipients of leadership development and without them the role of leader does not exist, they are largely excluded from the process. Leaders see the important contribution they could have if provided the opportunity. Moreover, the development of followership is not evident even though both followers and leaders alike see the critical role of followership in a leader's success. The focus of leadership and followership is dominated by the leader's views. While not researching sensemaking in depth, this research presents evidence that the sensemaking of followers is accurate, insightful and meaningful. The research begins to explore the reasons for the low return on leadership development and highlights harmful aspects that can arise where care is not taken to consider a leader's maturity and situational context. The research shows how organisations are not actively encouraging authenticity and inner development of followers. Where this occurs it is largely a passive process and takes place through mimicry. Given the imbalance of resource allocation to be almost totally to the benefit of leadership, authenticity awareness and development is seen to be reserved for those that desire the title of leader. Finally, the research suggests that implementing followership development in a similar way to that which occurs in leadership would be positive although limiting. The current commoditisation of leadership results from the way mainstream thinking considers the leader's role and encourages a relational and dualistic view between the leader and follower. This view does not align to the everyday experience of people who share conversation, who create meaning together and who together help construct the leader role.</p>

Individualization and Individualism: Facets and Turning Points of the Entrepreneurial Self among Young People in Italy

The aim of this article is to show how young people in Italy deal with the structural injunction to become individuals. While there is a substantial number of works on how institutions converge in promoting individualization and an ‘entrepreneurial self’, in this article we investigate how young people give shape and meaning to social relations in the framework of the injunction to become autonomous entrepreneurs of themselves. The research presented here was conducted in Milan, from 2017 to 2019. We carried out 40 in-depth interviews with young people in order to explore (1) how individualization as a structural historical process becomes an ongoing accomplishment, a part of the ‘common sense’ that people use to interpret their everyday experience; and (2) the extent to which individualization and individualism intertwine and conflict with each other.

Background Feelings of Belonging and Psychological Trauma

Reports of not feeling understood are frequent in testimonies of psychological trauma. I argue that these feelings are not a matter of a cognitive failure but rather an expression of the absence of a more pervasive background feeling of belonging. Contemporary accounts of we-intentionality promise but ultimately fall short in explaining this sense of belonging. Gerda Walther offers an alternative account of communal experiences. Her notion of “habitual unification” can explain the background feelings of belonging that are woven through the individual’s everyday experience of being in a shared world. Having unified with another person, the world feels different. It is now experienced in light of a “we.” This is not only the case in actual, singular person-to-person encounters. Unification with others becomes habitual: it retreats into the background of the individual’s awareness, colouring their experience of the world. Thus sedimented, it forms a background sense of belonging to a shared world. Unification is enabled by experiencing others as being similar in a significant way, such as having the same experiences, values, or basic attitude: in Walther’s words, as being a “human, who also….” This, I shall argue, is impacted through traumatizing experiences. Trauma survivors struggle to experience others as “humans, who also…,” resulting in a failure of unification and thus impeding feelings of belonging. Trauma testimonies also suggest that actively seeking out recognition of similarities and shared aspects of experience may once again enable experiencing others as “humans, who also…,” thus enabling unification and re-establishing a sense of belonging.

The Desire to Disappear in Order Not to Disappear

This article tells a story of the aftermath of the ‘failed revolution’ in Egypt through the prism of sound and gendered political prisoner bodies. It created embodied reactions among Cairene men—years after their lived prison experiences—in which depression, sorrow, stress, paranoia, rage, or painful body memories are prevalent. Affect theory shows how sonic vibrations—important stimuli within everyday experience, with a unique power to induce strong affective states—mediate consciousness, including heightened states of attention and anxiety. Sound, or the lack thereof, stimulates, disorients, transforms, and controls. The sound of life is transformed into the sound of death; the desire to disappear in order not to disappear again produces ‘ghost bodies’ alienated from the ‘new Egypt’, but from the family and the self too.