We found a body: The intrabody of human, technology, narrative and environment as postqualitative inquiry

This paper explores the potential for a mode of postqualitative inquiry as generative knowledge-affect by looking towards the practice-led in-progress intermedial project, We Found A Body. The project functions as a form of urban play in a way that decentres and reconstructs participants so that their bodies, their technology and the environment they ‘play’ in become intertwined. I use a posthumanist queer reading of performativity (Barad, 2003, 2011) coupled with an affect-focused study of world-making (Harris & Jones, 2019) alongside a politics of affect to analyse how We Found a Body, in its potential for intraaction of human, technology, narrative and environment, can reconfigure and intertwine bodies and matter in a dynamic and embodied way. I argue that creative intermedial practice can produce counternarratives where new modes of belonging within space and time exist, and where extended ways of being human are at play (Myers, 2020). This is a space where the artwork acts as a performative call to action where iterative materialisation creates an intrabody of the human and more-than-human and opens up future methods within postqualitative inquiry.

Queer futuring: an approach to critical futuring strategies for adult learners

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop queer futuring strategies that take into consideration adult learners’ needs in support of transformational and sustainable change for social justice and equity. Design/methodology/approach This paper develops the construct of queer futuring, which engages queer theory perspectives in a critical futures framework. Adult learning theory informs queer futuring strategies to support adults and inform education to sustain transformational changes for social justice and equity. Findings With social justice in mind, queer futuring opens spaces and supports opportunities for adults to engage in learning activities that address historical and layered forms of oppression. Building on learning needs of adults to create meaning and make a difference in the world around them, queer futuring strategies provide tools for activism, advocacy and building new relationships and ways of being-with. Research limitations/implications The sustainability of our current system of growth and financial well-being has already been called into question, and the current pandemic provides tangible evidence of values for contribution, connection and concern for others, even in the midst of political strife and conspiracy theories. These shifting values and values conflict of society point to the questions of equity and narrative inclusivity, challenging and disrupting dominant paradigms and structures that have perpetuated power and authority “over” rather than social participation “with” and harmony. Queer futuring is just the beginning of a bigger conversation about transforming society. Practical implications Queering spaces from the perspective of queer futuring keeps the adult learner and queering processes in mind with an emphasis on affiliation and belonging, identity and resistance and politics and change. Social implications The authors suggest queer futuring makes room for opening spaces of creativity and insight as traditional and reified rationality is problematized, further supporting development of emergentist relationships with the future as spaces of possibility and innovation. Originality/value Queer futuring connects ethical and pragmatic approaches to futuring for creating the kinds of futures needed to decolonize, delegitimize and disrupt hegemonic and categorical thinking and social structures. It builds on queer theory’s critical perspective, engaging critical futures strategies with adult learners at the forefront.

Enlarging sustainability learning through integrative thinking with a focus on cultivating virtues

Purpose In the African context of business practice, the authors face two interrelated challenges. First, executives need to deal strategically and sustainably with growing levels of inequality, under-employment and declining levels of wellness and safety. Second, executive development needs to develop virtues to help executives to address these problems. This paper aims to articulate an integrated, sustainable business education approach that aims to prepare executives to practice integrative thinking while simultaneously cultivating virtues that enhance their lives, thereby enabling them to make ongoing sustainable impacts to their worlds. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a mixed method analysis including both quantitative and qualitative data from student course feedback evaluations from Business Model Innovation (BMI) and Phronesis Development Practice courses run over four consecutive years between 2018 and 2021 at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business as part of the Executive Masters of Business Administration degree. Findings The program’s pedagogical approach integrates a philosophical habituation process with a core course on BMI practice. This philosophical integration is one in which there is a sustainable focus on cultivating specific “process” and “practice” virtues which foster awareness amongst executives of their everyday mundane skilful coping in the world. This leads to candidates becoming attuned to ways, in which they can strive for more authenticity and to step into newer ways of being, that allow them to reflect their values and evolve cultural practices. Originality/value As the first business school in Africa to base a BMI course on the affordances of the phenomenon of being-in-the-world and a philosophical habituation process, the authors hope to inspire more business schools to adopt holistic, sustainable approaches to executive development that goes beyond the competence paradigm.

Narrative Inquiry as a Relational Methodology

The authors present an overview of narrative research and focus primarily on narrative inquiry, highlighting what distinguishes this approach from other research methods. Narrative inquiry allows scholars to go beyond positivism and explore how research can be conducted based on participants' stories, rather than using a purely scientific methodological approach. This research method acknowledges and honors narrative truths and provides a scholarly framework that makes space for voices often marginalized or excluded when dominant narratives and/or data hold a prominent place in a research agenda. As such, narrative inquiry can be used in academic research to challenge the status quo, thus harnessing research to stretch beyond hegemonic ways of being and knowing. The authors provide a robust overview and conceptualization of this approach, along with foundational concepts and exemplars that comprise this method of research.

Weaving Together a Decolonial Imaginary Through Design for Effective River Management: Pluriversal Ontological Design in Practice

Looking at how we, as designers, can move beyond charges of neo-colonialism in social design, this article uses the empirical example of a design project focused on the restoration of a riverine system in New Zealand to provide an outline of ways that pluriversal ontological design can occur in practice. Exploring how the use of design tools and frameworks (e.g., boundary objects and infrastructuring) can help build out a decolonial imaginary, the article demonstrates how— through our design practice— we are able to successfully acknowledge, and work with, different “ways of being” in the world.

Eclesiologias digitais em construção

A pandemia do coronavírus trouxe uma grande transformação em todas as áreas da vida humana, especialmente na forma como as pessoas cultivam suas relações sociais. A prática da fé também foi diretamente afetada, com restrições de pessoas nas igrejas, o que ocasionou uma corrida para o único espaço em que elas poderiam continuar convivendo e compartilhando a sua fé sem risco de contaminação: o ambiente digital. Essa aceleração do processo de digitalização da sociedade traz consequências significativas na própria essência, atuação e autocompreensão da Igreja Católica. Em vista disso, esta pesquisa exploratória e bibliográfica apresenta os principais modelos eclesiais encontrados atualmente na sociedade plural e globalizada que vão dos tradicionais aos digitais. Tem como embasamento teórico para as discussões eclesiológicas as obras de Avery Dulles (1978) e João Batista Libânio (1999). Sobre as eclesiologias emergentes da era digital, aponta as ideias de Antonio Spadaro (2012), Landon Whitsitt (2011) e Dwight Friesen (2009), além da eclesiologia do Papa Francisco (2020). Este artigo foi adaptado e ampliado do ensaio “The Diverse Ways of Being Church in the Digital Society and in Times of Pandemic”, originalmente escrito na língua inglesa e publicado pela autora no e-book “Digital Ecclesiology: a Global Conversation”, organizado pela Heidi A. Campbell em agosto de 2020. Sem pretensão de esgotar o tema, esta pesquisa discute as mudanças eclesiais em meio à pandemia que influenciam o presente e futuro da Igreja Católica, a fim de iniciar a construção de eclesiologias digitais coerentes com a fé cristã.

Ways of Being: Hittite Empire and Its Borderlands in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and Northern Syria

In this paper, I take identity as a characteristic of empire in its periphery, denoting the totality of: 1) the imperial strategies an empire pursues in different regions, 2) the index of empire in each region, and 3) local responses to imperialism. My case study is the Hittite Empire, which dominated parts of what is now modern Turkey and northern Syria between the seventeenth and twelfth centuries BCE, and its borderlands. To investigate the identities of the Hittite imperial system, I explore the totality of the second millennium BCE in two regions. First, I explore imperial dynamics and responses in the Ilgın Plain in inner southwestern Turkey through a study of the material collected by the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Project since 2010. Second, I explore the identity of the Hittite Empire in the city of Emar in northern Syria by a thorough study of the textual and archaeological material unearthed by the Emar Expedition. In both cases, I argue that the manifestations of the Hittite Empire were mainly conditioned by the pre-Hittite trajectories of these regions. The strategies that the administration chose to use in different borderlands sought to identify what was important locally, with the Hittite Empire integrating itself into networks that were already established as manifestations of power, instead of replacing them with new ones.

Educar al «animal enfermo». Nietzsche y el problema de la grandeza y la reconfiguración de la intersubjetividad en la experiencia histórica

In this article I am focusing on the problem of greatness and on the social destiny of strong individuals in some moments of Nietzsche’s reflection, investigating the ethical-pedagogical implications of this assumption, without neglecting the importance of the historical experience. On this basis, I value Nietzsche’s attempt to reconfigure subjectivity and intersubjective relations through new models of coexistence (even in democratic contexts marked by decadence), by appealing to the human capacity for self-overcoming, in accordance with the demands of a “concrete reason” which makes explicit the multiple ways of being in the world.

Theatrical Scrawls. The Aesthetic Creations of Young Girls and Young Boys Scribble the Scene

The paper discusses the purpose of early childhood theater, as a possibility to establish horizontal relationships between children and adults. The article thus explores the potential solutions offered by the aesthetic movement of the arts, in the creation of “theatrical scribbles” by tiny young children. In this paper, it is highlighted the training work carried out by the theater Company “La Baracca” together with Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) educators from Bologna, Italy. Much emphasis it is also given to how imaginative approaches through arts are proposed, thus shaping new ways of being an educator, without making use of formal teaching methods.

Good Boy Gone Bad

This chapter details Zayn’s construction of “post boy band masculinity.” His departure from One Direction instigated an extensive reconfiguration of his public identity, and the bulk of the chapter concerns the creation of discursive distance between his solo persona and his boy band past. The chapter opens with a thorough assessment of the prevailing prejudices that characterize boy bands as innocent, immature, and inauthentic. It is in response to such prejudices, it is argued, that Zayn’s transformation was undertaken in a bid to authenticate his solo persona in both musical and masculine terms. This is achieved in the music video, Pillowtalk (2016), wherein a sonic alignment with rock idioms and the audiovisual construction of a seductive dreamscape largely maintains gender norms and affirm his heterosexual virility. At the same time, Zayn’s openness about mental health issues and his devotion to fashion have spurred descriptions of him as ushering in new ways of being masculine. These contradictory facets of his persona indicate that even seemingly heteronormative expressions of identity may contain potentially subversive aspects, and vice versa.