Salutogenesis as a Framework for Social Recovery After Disaster

This chapter has its starting point in 2013, when a train carrying crude oil derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada. Research on the aftermath of this tragedy indicates that the adverse psychosocial impacts resulting from the rail tragedy decreased over time. The authors explain that although the tragedy certainly has left its mark, the local community is gradually adapting to its new reality. The asset-based approach to recovery that has been encouraged seems to have contributed to the “new reality,” emphasizing the importance of social capital to activate individual and community resilience in post-disaster contexts. The authors identify and discuss success factors supporting the recovery of citizens and the social reconstruction of the community, and they document the positive development of the psychosocial situation in Lac-Mégantic, commenting also on the importance of developing a shared understanding of risks and working together in finding solutions.The authors conclude by discussing the importance of long-term initiatives to promote understanding, preventing, and reducing psychosocial risks in the months and years following a disaster, and the need to move from disaster management to risk management logic in response to disasters.

School Leadership and the Experience of Education Under Oppression

Background: This qualitative study examined apartheid-era South Africa, from 1948 to 1994, which established social and administrative policies that deliberately curtailed the education of Indigenous and other South Africans as a means of oppressing non-European ethnic groups. Analysis: In lieu of face-to-face interviews, the experience of education under apartheid is examined through stories and interviews submitted to the Apartheid Archives Project, curated by the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The central question asks how the personal experiences of an oppressive school system, as interpreted through the framework of Freirean education, informs school leaders. Conclusion: Oppression infiltrates school systems, impinges on the educational process, and robs students of learning opportunities. In recognizing this, educators engage their responsibility as school leaders, and embrace the pivotal role education plays in social reconstruction, liberation, and humanization.

An Afrasian Entanglement

The establishment of the Phoenix Settlement and the Gandhi Development Trust (GDT) in South Africa was an experiment in self-sufficient communal living and the promotion of the values and principles of Mahatma Gandhi and South Africa’s democratic Constitution, respectively. While both entities are the result of Gandhi’s South African connection, they serve to embody, through the Mahatma, an Afrasian Entanglement. Gandhi’s time in South Africa made a remarkable impact on him and the country, transforming his political and social positions and influencing its struggle for freedom. In post-apartheid South Africa, the shared mission of both organisations is to advance a culture of nonviolence, peace and social responsibility through a range of transformative programmes. This article details Gandhi’s South African journey, his evolving ideas of passive resistance and social reconstruction there, and the resultant legacy programmes that resonate with the spirit of Ubuntu and the South African Constitution to reinforce democracy.

Educational futures: Conflicting visions for Acirema “The Possible”

The year is 2070, yes, the 50th anniversary of the Roaring Year 2020. The United States of Acirema (Williams, 1997) was dealing with political discord, a struggling economy, a pandemic, and social unrest. Schiro (2013) published a book titled Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns, which focused on four curriculum ideologies/visions: scholar academic, social efficiency, learner centered, and social reconstruction. Aciremas became very adamant on the futures of education and society, and the country quickly became known as the Divided States of Acirema with citizens being divided by their beliefs/visions for education and society. The four visions are best understood through the lens of four former high school friends who each live in different states. To begin with, George treasures the cultural values and knowledge from the past, wants to end the political discord, and unite the United States of Acirema. In contrast, Wally is learning new skills based on society needs, which enables him to be marketable in a struggling economy and the age of artificial intelligence. Next, Covid, who is the narrator, loves his state and is able to learn and live based on his personal interests and beliefs; therefore, this allowed him to conduct an ethnographic study (Fetterman, 1998; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995) during the pandemic with the goal of uniting Acirema. Last, Justice is committed to ending social unrest by focusing on equality in her state and improving society for all. As Schiro (2013) clearly states in his thesis, these ideologies have conflicting visions for educational futures and are struggling with the ideal of syncretism (Berner U, 2001; Ezenweke and Kanu, 2012). After taking the ideology survey (Schiro, 2013) and discovering your beliefs and values, Covid, the narrator, will ask you to join him by using the Public Values Model (Rogers, 2020) to create syncretism where we can all live together as the United States of Acirema.

The Democratic Shaping of Technology: Its Rise, Fall and Possible Rebirth

In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Langdon Winner was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Sharon Traweek. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. This essay comprises Winner’s acceptance speech and is followed by a short postscript written in 2021. The postscript captures a brief reflection on the upheavals of the COVID-19 pandemic and the US election results which shifted the US to a Biden administration. In their award statement, the Bernal Prize committee noted: “Winner’s most cited article “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” of 1980 has inspired a wide spectrum of critique and analysis of technological arrangements as, among other things, political orderings of our society. Since then, his career has focused on the political dimensions of science and technology, technology policy and the politics of technology. Winner has addressed key intellectual questions of classical and modern political theory in order to debate how order, power, freedom, authority and justice had resonance within technological devices. More specifically, he has brought a new dimension into the field by addressing how these classic questions in political theory are often deeply embedded in technical and material frameworks. His work emphasizes that “because technological innovation is inextricably linked to processes of social reconstruction, any society that hopes to control its own structural evolution must confront each significant set of technological possibilities with scrupulous care.”

The place and the role of sport in the war-torn society of Afghanistan

For Afghanistan, security is one of the last things the country can be associated with. Despite the efforts that have been made over the last decade, it is still too early to speak about political, economic, and institutional stability. Against this background of uncertainty, and despite the lack of legislation, funding, and investment tools, Afghanistan's flag is being played in the finals of many international events. Тhis is the phenomenon that provokes our research interest. The present aims to give a brief overview of the country's national sporting achievements and to examine the views of two key experts in the field to identify how the development of sport in the country influences the peace-making processes from a social perspective. The used methodology includes a semi-structured interview conducted independently with both respondents in 2019 which is analyzed in the context of social reconstruction of a war-torn society. The results show that national success in elite international sports events has a high potential to be an effective tool in neutralizing some of the negative social effects of war on the society (like distancing, hatred, identity restructuring, etc.) by bringing hope, creating role models, changing perceptions, uniting people under one flag, creating heroes.

An ‘ingenious system of practical contacts’: Historical origins and development of the Institute of Child Welfare Research at Columbia University's Teachers College (1922–36)

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the expansion of private foundations and philanthropic initiatives in the United States converged with a comprehensive, nationwide agenda of progressive education and post-war social reconstruction that situated childhood at its core. From 1924 to 1928, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was the main foundation behind the aggressive, systematic funding of the child development movement in North America. A pioneering institution, the Institute of Child Welfare Research, established in 1924 at Columbia's Teachers College, was the first Rockefeller-funded programme of its kind at an American university. The Institute was influential in helping set up a nationwide network of child welfare institutes at other universities. Twelve years later, it would also be the first of those institutes to close. Nonetheless, the Institute's context, emergence, and development have been overlooked or misrepresented by previous scholarship, which calls for a new, critical historical analysis. By drawing on a number of archival sources and unpublished materials, this paper offers a critical reconstruction of the Institute's internal, often unstable history, emphasizing its origins, members, and administrative changes. I argue that the demise of the Institute should be understood in the context of both the revision of philanthropic policies in the late 1920s and the Institute's singular emphasis on teaching and training over research. The resulting narrative allows for a deeper, more informed understanding of both the Institute's origins and its eventual folding.

THE REFLECTION ON THE CONCEPT OF UNIVERSALS AND ITS SOCIAL-HISTORICAL VERIFICATION

In this article, the author reviews the concept of singular and general. The analysis focus on the problem of universals during social-historical transformation. The author illustrates the manifestation of universals as a category during the Antiquity and the Modern era. The author argues that the shift in perception of Natural law, making an individual the central unit of analysis, happened during the Modernity. This shift leads to the creation of the concept of the social contract and the development of the idea that the will of individuals within a given society has to be the state's law. Therefore, a historical paradox occurred, where private property and laissez-faire economic doctrine simultaneously became the causes for development and a foundation for objection to the conceptional-nominalist paradigm. The consecutive historical development was connected with mass attempts of different social groups to implement individual freedom, anti-etatism, rationalism. This led to shaping the social paradigm of modernity as well as to moderate conservative way of thinking and recognizing the practical falsity of extreme forms realism and nominalism. This influence of various social groups resulted in the establishment of moderate conservatism in the contemporary social paradigm and the invalidation of radical realism and nominalism. This fact is confirmed by the dominance of liberal-conservative consensus in Modern Europe. Synthesizing the different approaches to the historical experience of formation and evolution of realism and nominalism, it also explores the role and significance theoretical reflection on Universals in the process of social reconstruction.