Rewilding systemic practice

This paper is written in the context of the current ecological crisis affecting physical and mental health, social, economic, and political contexts, at local and global levels which calls for the disruption of old ways of thinking, living and moving towards the future through collective action. One way of responding as a systemic and family psychotherapist, has been my experience of rewilding my systemic practice with individuals, couples, and families in the UK since taking therapy outdoors. I will offer some examples of ecotherapy as part of my own personal and professional journey in “coming home” through nature, becoming an outdoor designer of therapeutic space and a minimalist wild therapist. I invite us all to re-think and re-create a therapeutic space which, by its very essence, is wild, meaning boundaryless, infinitely spacious and unpredictable. It can open up opportunities for creativity, for using metaphors to explore meanings beyond words. Nature becomes not only the context in which I practice but my co-therapist or even the primary therapist. Together we can enrich the therapeutic process through moments of magic and facilitate change using a wild reflecting team. In my experience of ecotherapy, voices from the wild carry unique messages, for example, birdsong can provide unexpected voices, useful interruptions or disruptions that can enrich the therapeutic process. Such a wild reflecting team can also be a daring metaphor to welcome the unexpected and unfamiliar into our systemic practices and relationships, to include new emerging and marginalised perspectives which may bring us all more in touch with our wildness, lost indigenous ways of relating and shape our futures through collective action.

Western Racist Ideologies and the Nigerian Predicament

Racism is responsible for discrimination against some citizens in Nigeria. It influences government's policies and actions and militates against equity and equal opportunity for all. It has effaced indigenous values and ebbed the country into groaning predicaments of shattered destiny and derailed national development. Racism hinges on superciliousness and the assumed superiority of one tribe and religion over the others. These bring to the fore two forms of racism in Nigeria: institutional and interpersonal racisms. The Western selfish motive to dominate, marginalize, and sustain economic gains, political expansion, psycho-mental control, and socio-cultural devaluations escalated racism in Nigeria. Racist ideologies were entrenched through the selfish ventures of slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism, which enforced an unprecedented unjust harvest of impugnable systemic practices. Neo-colonial forces continue to promote ethnocentrism, cultural imperialism, and the dehumanization, exploitation, oppression, and suppression of Africans. Adopting a methodical approach of critical analysis, this article spotlights the negative effects of racism on Nigeria's development. However, the bristling challenges of racist ideologies can be resolved within the epistemological compass of gynist deconstruction approach to human thought and action for a better universe of one human race.

Pedagogia Sistêmica: uma Nova Abordagem no Processo de Ensino Aprendizagem

Resumo O século XXI expressa um grande desafio: a educação escolar que não tem conseguido atender a demanda exigida pelas atuais mudanças sociais. A Pedagogia Sistêmica vem ao encontro deste dilema de encontro ao , e não como uma nova metodologia, mas como uma postura do professor: quem ensina é também sujeito que aprende; surgiu enquanto adaptação para a escola, a partir dos trabalhos do filósofo e psicanalista alemão Bert Hellinger, que aborda a visão sistêmica-fenomenológica e os campos morfogenéticos em procedimentos terapêuticos breves. O objetivo deste estudo é compreender a experiência de professores de Cuiabá\MT, que colocaram em prática exercícios sistêmicos, a partir de suas próprias narrativas. A metodologia utilizada foi a história oral, estruturada a partir da leitura de artigos e livros de outros professores nacionais e internacionais, que também utilizaram a Pedagogia Sistêmica nos fazeres pedagógicos, realizando uma triangulação com autores consagrados da Educação mundial. Como resultado se traz um percurso histórico da Pedagogia Sistêmica no Brasil e no Mundo; exemplos de atividades escolares com os quais foi possível sentir a importância de revisão de hábitos e posturas frente aos problemas, em sala de aula, quando se coloca a culpa dos baixos resultados somente nos alunos e suas famílias e se esquece de preconceitos e fragilidades pessoais e docentes. A conclusão é de que há ganhos efetivos do professor, durante o processo da auto permissão do olhar sistêmico, em sala de aula, haja vista que esse profissional estará olhando também para suas questões afetivas\emocionais. Palavras-chave: Educação Holística. Práticas Sistêmicas. Ensino-Aprendizagem. Abstract The 21st century expresses a great challenge: school education that has not been able to meet the demand required by current social changes. Systemic Pedagogy is consistent with this dilemma, and not as a new methodology, but as a teacher's posture: the one who teaches is also a subject who learns; it arose as an adaptation to the school from the works of German philosopher and psychoanalyst Bert Hellinger, who approaches the systemic-phenomenological vision and morphogenetic fields in brief therapeutic procedures. The objective of this study is to understand the experience of teachers from Cuiabá\MT, who put in practice systemic exercises, based on their own narratives. The methodology used was oral history, structured from reading articles and books from other national and international teachers, who also used the Systemic Pedagogy in the pedagogical practice, performing a triangulation with consecrated World Education authors. As a result, there is a historical course of systemic Pedagogy in Brazil and in the world; examples of school activities with which it is possible to feel the importance of reviewing habits and postures in the face of problems, in the classroom, when the blame for the low results is placed only on students and their families and forget personal prejudices and weaknesses and the teachers. The conclusion is that there are effective gains from the teacher, during the self-permission of the systemic perspective process, in the classroom, since this professional will also be looking at his or her emotional\affective issues. Keywords: Holistic Education. Systemic Practices. Teaching-learning.

Extortion and Extortion Racketeering

Extortion as a crime has long attracted the interest of scholars, and much effort has been put into coining a precise definition that would allow distinguishing it from other similar predatory practices such as blackmail, bribery, coercion, and robbery. Academic literature classifies extortive practices according to their degree of complexity and involvement of organized crime. In this sense, the simplest form of extortion displays one offender who receives a one-time benefit from one victim, while the most sophisticated form is illustrated by racketeering, whereby an organized crime group systematically extorts money from multiple victims. Extortion as an organized crime activity can involve both episodic extortion practices and well-rooted systemic practices over a certain territory, where the latter is usually regarded as perpetrated by Mafia-type criminal organizations. Some scholars argue that extortion racketeering as a Mafia crime should be defined as sale and provision of extralegal protection services—protection of property rights, dispute resolution, and enforcement of contracts. However, others contend that extortion by Mafia-type organizations should not be counted as an economic activity but rather be considered as an illegal form of taxation imposed by quasi-political groups. In economic terms, it is a transfer of value and creates no economic output. In contrast with the traditional understanding of extortion racketeering as “defining activity of organized crime,” some scholars have also focused on “extortion under the color of office,” or, in other words, extortion perpetrated by public servants or politicians in their official capacity. Extortion has often been compared with bribery, since both crimes can be defined as an unlawful conversion of properties and goods belonging to someone else for one’s own personal use and benefit. The debate on the differences between bribery and extortion, however, is a contested one, and has followed two lines of argument: respectively, the degree of coercion involved in the crime and the role (or modus operandi) of public officials in the bribery and extortive scheme. The common element for both crimes is the fact that representatives of the state abuse their power and official position for their own benefit.

Conclusions

This chapter draws the themes of the book together and, in particular, reflects on the use of the mapping techniques used by the various authors in the book in helping the research process. It highlights key aspects and outcomes from the case studies, and considers the lessons that may be learned for researching environmental sustainability. It discusses mapping, environmental sustainability, systemic practices, participatory research, and methods and methodology. It concludes that although mapping or diagramming is a valued and valuable parts of research praxis into environmental sustainability, this is not the only or better way to do research. The authors express hope that the book inspires readers to apply mapping in complex environmental situations.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book aims to provide more detail on research processes that involve complex environmental situations than would normally be found in publications where researchers write about their work. It also draws on experiences over time to provide insights into how methodologies and methods have evolved and developed over the years. The book's four interweaving themes are set out in its full title: (1) mapping (2) environmental sustainability: (3) reflecting on systemic practices for (4) participatory research. The remainder of the chapter explains the meaning of each of these themes and how they fit together.

Review Essay

The field of Middle Eastern Studies has seen a recent spate of publications that offer a timely and nuanced look at the intersection of language, ideology, and visual representation in Israel-Palestine. Scholars of cultural studies, comparative literature, history, film studies, and the visual arts will appreciate the breadth of perspective offered by a combined reading of Lital Levy's Poetic Trespass: Writing between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine, Gil Z. Hochberg's Visual Occupations: Violence and Visibility in a Conflict Zone, and Yaron Shemer's Identity, Place, and Subversion in Contemporary Mizrahi Cinema in Israel. This cluster of studies, taken as a whole, offers a coherent critical intervention into the politics of a literary and visual field marked by silences, lacunas, blind spots, and elisions. Poetic Trespass sketches the contours of a Hebrew literary landscape inhabited by a tacit Arabic presence. With a purview that extends to literature, cinema, and the plastic arts, Visual Occupations probes the tension between systemic practices of concealment and strategic modes of lending visibility. Identity, Place, and Subversion, a powerfully articulated analysis of Mizrahi cinema, interrogates the notion that ethnic difference has become irrelevant in the context of a contemporary Israeli melting pot.