The tree of community knowledge and engagement

Deep-seated educational discourses have blamed low-income communities for their youth’s lack of high school completion. These deficit discourses reflect top–down knowledge hierarchies and a lack of knowledge democracy in education (de Sousa Santos 2007; Hall & Tandon 2017; Visvanathan 2009), and they are in need of critical and diverse knowledge reckoning by low-income communities themselves. This article relays how a community-university participatory action research (PAR) partnership became a dynamic site of knowledge democracy from which to counter and transform deficit-based knowledge systems imposed on economically disadvantaged communities. Steeped in the generative enactments of PAR, storytelling, ecological metaphor, strength-based approaches and the arts, this article explores a low-income/social housing community’s knowledge practices that are energising and growing its community power to support the success of their youth in school. These seven knowledge practices are narrated through the ecological metaphor of trees, specifically via a co-constructed PAR team narrative called the Tree of Community Knowledge and Engagement. In the telling and retelling of this counternarrative-in-the-making, this article embodies knowledge democracy. Here, community members’ energising knowledge practices are recognised as invaluable forms of everyday educational knowing and leadership for their youth. This article further explores three broad ways of knowing that reside within and across community members’ seven knowledge practices: lived knowing, interconnected knowing and participatory/power-in-relation knowing. The three community ways of knowing illustrate how the community is growing its power to support youth’s success via a transformative educational worldview, from which other schools and universities could learn and, indeed, thrive.

Discursive constructions on Spanish languages

The analysis of the different ideological constructions around the languages of Spain shows two main metaphors that support the linguistic conflict experienced in the last three or four decades: the container metaphor (languages conceived as entities that are completely independent of each other) and the ecological metaphor (each language occupies a specific niche for historical reasons). The study of complexity provides a new metaphor as a new solution for this conflict, i.e. the eco-biosociological metaphor, which is based on the assumption that what is human cannot be explained exclusively by biological factors, but instead by communicative action in cooperation with others above all. To illustrate the first two metaphors, in this paper we consider the linguistic position of two new parties: En Marea and En Comú-Podem.

Psychology’s Potential for Reconciliation with Spiritual and Religious Traditions

In exploring psychology’s relationship with spirituality and religion, I argue that natural-science psychologists have tended to repress their discipline’s spiritual and religious heritage. History of psychology textbooks sharply distinguish “objective” psychology from “subjective” philosophy, theology, religion, and spirituality, while glossing over historical anomalies such as natural-science psychologists’ ambivalent stance regarding psychoanalysis. Psychologists’ scientism (“worship” of the experimental model, technology, scientific progress, and materialist conceptions of the soul) militates against resolving persistent, disciplinary tensions between objectivity and subjectivity. Rather than emulating psychology, social workers should turn to their own traditions and develop a human-science orientation for their profession. When theorizing, they could connect empowerment and the ecological metaphor with these concepts’ spiritual base. When researching, social workers could foster more active roles for their participants and could write their research articles in more personalized, inter-subjective, and contextualized ways. When educating, they could incorporate critical education in process and content.

Ecology, Wicked Problems, and the Context of Community Interventions

The concept of ecology has, over time, become increasingly important as a frame for conducting community interventions. While multiple ecological frameworks have been proposed both within and outside public health, most have drawn on Bronfenbrenner’s work and the concern with multiple levels of the ecological context. The present article presents an ecological metaphor for community intervention developed in community psychology over the past 50 years. This perspective was specifically developed to conduct community research and intervention in the spirit of community development. The article begins with a brief discussion of social problems as “wicked problems” defying preordained and prescribed solutions. It then organizes the presentation of the ecological metaphor around five Cs that, together, provide an overview of the main points of the perspective: contextualist philosophy of science, community as a multilevel concept, culture and diversity as critical community-defining concepts, collaboration as a fundamental part of the ecology of intervention, and commitment (to community over time). Each of these five Cs adds to an appreciation of the differing aspects of the community intervention process as an ecological enterprise. Embedded in the five Cs are four ecological processes drawn from field biology that are metaphorically useful in providing a cognitive map for understanding community and assessing community impact: interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession. Together, this ecological perspective both reflects and differs from extant perspectives in public health and, as such, is intended to contribute to furthering ecological thinking and acting more generally in community interventions.

EKOLOGI INFORMASI DALAM IMPLEMENTASI PERPUSTAKAAN DIGITAL DI INDONESIA : ANTARA HARAPAN DAN KENYATAAN

Digital library services in the implementation creating an ecological metaphor of information technology perspective. An ideal ecological information will create an ideal interaction between people, technology, values and activities. In the implementation, in Indonesia, the paradigm of the library problem where it presence is still underestimated, so that the implementation of a digital library is only done half-heartedly. The existence of a state to resist change may be one of the causes of this situation. Or maybe not.

Leksikal Ekologis dalam Parno Adat Kerinci (Kajian Makna Metafora)

This article examines ecological metaphor, a branch and specification of studies in ecolinguistic science (interdisciplinary study between ecology and linguistics). The author observes the traditional Kerinci parno document delivered in a traditional wedding procession. From the collected data, the author finds that the parno contains ecological lexical with metaphorical traits parno. In accordance with the parno context that the author chose, the parno of marriage, the meaning of the metaphor in ecological lexical is the advice from ninik mamak (the custom leders) for the bride and groom. It also conveys the description of single men, and the description of agreement between the couple.

Theorizing Hybridity and Identity: The “Edge-Effect” and “Dynamic Nucleus” in Bharatanatyam-Inspired Contemporary Dances of Two Choreographers

Dancer-choreographer Nova Bhattacharya uses the ecological term “edge-effect” to describe her experience within the choreographic process where her bharatanatyam training and her contemporary dance creativity overlap to create a lingua franca. Hari Krishnan, dancer-choreographer and scholar, describes his work as “constantly ruptured” within his “post-post-modern experience.” This paper argues that the creative processes underlying the respective contemporary dance-making practices of Nova Bhattacharya and Hari Krishnan are cultural ecosystems demonstrating the rich dynamic of the edge-effect at the intersection of bharatanatyam and contemporary dance aesthetics and themes. Within the edge-effect, both reception and rupture occur as artistic identities evolve. Furthermore, reception and rupture occur within the performance venue as the performers' and audiences' worlds overlap—another negotiated edge-effect. While the ecological metaphor of the edge-effect helps to conceptualize these interactive spaces, the sociological metaphor of a “dynamic nucleus” (Lloyd Wong) helps us to theorize the nature and energy of the critically reflective exchanges occurring, between contemporary and bharatanatyam sensibilities, in both the studio and concert theater. The edge-effect and dynamic nucleus metaphors build on Homi Bhaha's concept of the “cultural interstices” within which individual and communal identities are initiated and culture is located. Additionally, these metaphors expand on Guillermo Gômez-Peña's theory of “multihybrid identities, in a constant process of metamorphosis” as today's “border-culture” becomes tomorrow's institutional art. This paper provides dance scholars with a way of conceptualizing the energy of dance as a cultural force influencing experiences of hybridity and identity for performers and audiences within intercultural contexts.