The Massachusetts Bay Company and New England Company (1640–1684): Exportation, Revaluation and the Demise of Corporate Theocratic Governance

Returning to Massachusetts, this chapter focuses on communal responsibility and identity in decline of the MBC’s theocratic governance between 1640 and 1684. Firstly, this chapter investigates the transportation of political knowledge and ideas through corporate membership, assessing the role of individual MBC members such as Hugh Peters, Stephen Winthrop and Henry Vane Jr., in the formation of religious governance in England in the years surrounding the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The chapter also assesses the evolution of corporate evangelism in England and America, with the formation of the New England Company (NEC). It analyses several evangelical works including Roger Williams’s A Yet More Bloody and John Cotton’s The Bloudy Tenent, in order to understand the conflicted development of evangelism within the company, and how it became used to justify territorial expansion and further encroach on English and Native American religious and governmental identity and rights. The chapter concludes by offering an analysis of the downfall of the MBC, emphasising how models of governance strengthened and established out of corporate flexibility could, at the same time, be made brittle and weakened.

Thinking with Doors and Perspectives: Reimagining Early Childhood Spaces

This paper explores, through a posthumanist lens, child care as a communal responsibility, taking into account varied partial perspectives produced through human and more-than-human intra-actions. Multiple narratives illustrate embodied and experienced complexities within child care spaces allowing us to reflect on uncomfortable truths to enact affirmative ethics as a way to transform the ways we care for children, their families, each other, and the spaces of child care. Specifically, we think with actual and virtual doors as producers and enablers to create spaces where early childhood educators might collaboratively interrogate how materiality and socially constructed hierarchies are embedded in the inequities that separate us, inequities further exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

TEACHING SETSWANA PROVERBS AT THE INSTITUTION OF HIGHER LEARNING IN SOUTH AFRICA

The paper sought to investigate how first year University student’s-teachers understand and instil appreciation of the beauty of Setswana language. Since the proverbs are carriers of cultural values, practices, rituals, and traditional poetry, they are rich in meaning, they can be used to teach moral values for the sake of teaching character building among the students and teaching Setswana at the same time. Proverbs contain values of wisdom, discipline, fairness, preparedness, destiny, happiness, and efforts. Proverbs are short sayings that contain some wisdom or observation about life and or role-play and to use a few of the proverbs to reinforce the meaning, using proverbs as a pedagogical strategy, the researcher has observed that student teachers find it difficult to learn and teach learners at school. Students-teacher’s think and feel about how they conceptualize proverbs, how they define their knowledge and use of Setswana proverbs. The lecturer observed how the nature of proverbs are linked to the culture embedded in the language. In Setswana language there is a proverb that says, “Ngwana sejo o a tlhakanelwa” (A child is a food around which we all gather) which implies that the upbringing of a child is a communal responsibility and not an individual responsibility. Put in simple terms, a child is a child to all parents or adults, since a child’s success is not a family’s success but the success of the community. In doing so, the paper will explore on how student-teachers could make use of proverbs to keep the class interested in learning Setswana proverbs. As a means of gathering qualitative data, a questionnaire was designed and administered to student-teachers and semi-structured interviews were conducted with student teachers. The findings revealed that despite those students-teachers’ positive attitudes towards proverb instruction, they did not view their knowledge of Setswana proverbs as well as the teaching of proverbs. The paper displays that proverbs constitute an important repository of valid materials that can provide student-teachers with new instructional ideas and strategies in teaching Setswana proverbs and to teach different content, which includes Ubuntu and vocabulary and good behaviour. Proverbs must be taught and used by teachers and learners in their daily communication in class and outside the classroom in order to improve their language proficiency.

Inequitable access to healthcare in Africa: reconceptualising the “accountability for reasonableness framework” to reflect indigenous principles

Background The “Accountability for Reasonableness” (A4R) framework has been widely adopted in working towards equity in health for sub-Saharan Africa (SAA). Its suitability for equitable health policy in Africa hinges, at least in part, on its considerable successes in the United States and it being among the most comprehensive ethical approaches in addressing inequitable access to healthcare. Yet, the conceptual match is yet to be examined between A4R and communal responsibility as a common fundamental ethic in SAA. Methodology A4R and its applications toward health equity in sub-Saharan Africa were conceptually examined by considering the WHO’s “3-by-5” and the REACT projects for their accounting for the communal responsibility ethic in pursuit of health equity. Results Some of the challenges that these projects encountered may be ascribed to an incongruity between the underpinning ethical principle of A4R and the communitarian ethical principle dominant in sub-Saharan Africa. These are respectively the fair equality of opportunity principle derived from John Rawls’ theory, and the African communal responsibility principle. Conclusion A health equity framework informed by the African communal responsibility principle should enhance suitability for SAA contexts, generating impetus from within Africa alongside the affordances of A4R.

Inequitable Access to Healthcare in Africa: Reconceptualising the “Accountability for Reasonableness Framework” to Reflect Indigenous Principles

BackgroundThe “Accountability for Reasonableness” (A4R) framework has been widely adopted in working towards equity in health for sub-Saharan Africa. Its suitability for equitable health policy in Africa hinges, at least in part, on its considerable successes in the United States and it being among the most comprehensive ethical approaches in current literature in addressing inequitable access to healthcare. Methodology/FindingThis article considers applications of A4R towards health equity in sub-Saharan Africa – including the WHO’s “3-by-5” and the REACT projects – and ascribes some of the challenges that these projects encountered to an incongruity between the underpinning ethical principle of A4R and the communitarian ethical principle dominant in sub-Saharan Africa. These are respectively the fair equality of opportunity principle derived from John Rawls’ theory, and the African communal responsibility principle. ConclusionA health equity framework informed by the latter, we contend, should be more suitable for African contexts, generating impetus from within Africa alongside the affordances of A4R.

Cultural Diversity, Ecodiversity, and Music Education

Diversity discourses in music education tend toward anthropocentrism, focusing on human cultures, identities, and institutions. In this chapter, we broaden conceptualizations of diversity in music education to include relationships between music, education, and ecology: understood as interactions among organisms and the physical environment. Diversity in music education can be realized by attending to the ongoing interrelationships of local geography, ecology, and culture, all of which contribute dynamically to local music practices. We situate our analysis within specific Indigenous North American cultures (e.g., Western Apache, Nuu-chah-nulth, Stó:lō, and Syilx) and associated perspectives and philosophies to shed light on the multiple forms of reciprocity that undergird diversity. Indigenous knowledge, in combination with new materialism and political ecology discourses, can help us come back down to earth in ways of being and becoming that are ecologically sustainable, preserving the ecodiversity that exists and grows in place, forging egalitarian relationships and a sense of communal responsibility, fostering reverence for ancestors along with nonhuman lives and topographies, and cultivating musical practices that are one with our respective ecosystems.

Romanticism and Medicine

Is there such a thing as Romantic medicine? The literary classification of Romanticism and the practice of medicine might initially appear to be incompatible; the former being a cultural form that encompasses ideas about originality, imagination and experience, the latter concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. However, the medical historian Roy Porter suggests that while there was little development in the practice of medicine in Britain during the Romantic period (‘those years [did not] bring a revolution in medicine and in health’ –1999, 170) there was a transformation in the understanding of the body. Although the Romantic era neither transformed the practice of medicine nor drastically altered life expectancy, addressing ‘the experience of the body and of suffering was an essential component in that journey into the self that constitutes … the Romantic interlude’ (ibid., 177). Porter suggests that there was a shift from an earlier view of the body as an ahistorical entity responding to the universal laws of physics to one which detected a symbiotic relationship between the self, society and sickness. The body and its suffering can be read as socially constructed entities, the consideration of which intersects with the larger cultural concerns of Romanticism such as personal and political liberty, the conflict between that which is natural and that which is socially constructed, and the distinction between individual solitude and communal responsibility.

Kafāla: The Qur’anic-Prophetic Model of Orphan Care

This article seeks to outline a Qurʾanic-Prophetic model for orphan care by presenting and analyzing some of the Qurʾanic and Prophetic concepts related to this critical topic of kafāla. By attempting to understand the Qurʾan on its own terms and tracing its words’ derivation(s), this essay proposes a Qurʾanic framework of orphan care, one that is strictly centered on kafāla and was exemplified by Prophet Muhammad throughout his life. Based on the Quranic framework of orphan care and the Pro-phetic example, which prioritize protecting the orphan’s interest, I argue that the responsibility of kafāla for orphaned and abandoned children falls on each and every one of us. This essay concludes with specific recommendations that Muslim communities can take on the community-level to fulfill our collective responsibility and alleviate the grievances of orphans. This article applies the methodology of al-waḥda al-binā’iyya lil-Qur’ān (The Qurʾan’s Structural Unity), to analyze and discuss Islam’s approach to or-phan care. The holistic method reads the Qurʾan as a unified text through its linguistic, structural, and conceptual elements. In other words, the divine text, when read in its entirety, represents an integrated whole. In addition, this approach highlights how the meaning of a specific term changes, but never to the extent that its original meaning is violated. Tracing how the relevant terms are derived from their root leads to constructing the Islamic framework for orphan care. As the Qurʾan refers to itself as al-Muṣaddiq (the confirmer or verifier of truth) and Muhaymin (overseer, protector, guardian, witness, and determiner of the truth), it, therefore, judges us by the truth. Consequently, we should seek its judgment when making a decision: “And We have revealed to you, [O Prophet], the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a cri-terion over it” (5:48). Therefore, applying a Muṣaddiq-Muhaymin methodology allows us to trace a term or a concept’s use, how it developed or changed over time, and how these changes impacted its implementation in a given society’s so-ciocultural, legal, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical spheres. For this discussion, the terms analyzed are, in order of appearance: insān (hu-man being), khalīfa (representative on Earth), yatīm (orphan), al-waḥda al-binā’-iyya li-l-Qur’ān (The Qurʾan’s Structural Unity), ‘umrān (cultivating our planet’s balance, peace, justice, and sustainability), tazkiya (holistic purification), taqwā (Allah-consciousness), ‘ibāda (worship), iṣlāḥ (improve, reform, and rectify), fasad (corruption, mischief, ruin, and spoil), tughyān (to go beyond the ḥudūd [limits set by Allah]), ibtilā (test), karam (dignity, honor), karāma (honor), ta‘āruf (getting to know one another), ‘urf (local custom), ma‘rūf (doing what is right, just, and fair), ‘amr bi al-ma‘rūf wa nahiy ‘an al-munkar (enjoining the right/ honor-able and forbidding the wrong/dishonorable), laqīṭ (abandoned child), kāfil (legal guarantor), tabanni (adoption), da‘īy (to be claimed as sons), āwā (a holistic de-scription of an ideal shelter with a mission to improve a displaced person or or-phan’s life), nasab (original lineage), and farḍ kifāya (communal responsibility). Reading the Qurʾan as a “unity” ensures that the divine text will remain rele-vant, for this approach enables scholars to continue developing its ability to pro-vide answers to difficult contemporary questions and challenges.