Engaging Neighbourhoods: Interrogating urban geometries and the implications on community

<p>The urban geometries of New Zealand suburbs do not encourage social and cultural engagement amongst contemporary communities. In 2017, New Zealand is ‘Home’ to people from over 30 nations, however the planned suburban layout is still tailored for a bi-cultural ideal implemented in a country that had never experimented with suburban living design before and now struggles to break away from it. The planning of future neighborhoods in New Zealand is crucial at this time of housing crisis, where the priority is given to the quantity of dwellings that can be produced to house families, when focus should be on the quality of life that is being provided and the healthiness of the context in which communities exist. This thesis explores how New Zealand suburbs can be adapted through architectural and urban design interventions to allow for more immersive, healthy and sustainable living environments that facilitate cultural and social exchange.</p>

Engaging Neighbourhoods: Interrogating urban geometries and the implications on community

<p>The urban geometries of New Zealand suburbs do not encourage social and cultural engagement amongst contemporary communities. In 2017, New Zealand is ‘Home’ to people from over 30 nations, however the planned suburban layout is still tailored for a bi-cultural ideal implemented in a country that had never experimented with suburban living design before and now struggles to break away from it. The planning of future neighborhoods in New Zealand is crucial at this time of housing crisis, where the priority is given to the quantity of dwellings that can be produced to house families, when focus should be on the quality of life that is being provided and the healthiness of the context in which communities exist. This thesis explores how New Zealand suburbs can be adapted through architectural and urban design interventions to allow for more immersive, healthy and sustainable living environments that facilitate cultural and social exchange.</p>

The Cultural Master Narrative of Personal Growth

This chapter first examines the enduring, cultural ideal of growth, providing a historical context for the modern transformative self. The chapter then introduces cultural master narratives as story prototypes that a culture cherishes in part because they provide individuals with examples of how to live a good life in that culture. The transformative self has a cultural master narrative in the bildungsroman genre of literature—stories that extol character development, personal growth, and self-actualization as the path to happiness, love, and wisdom. Generally speaking, the bildungsroman protagonist rejects the materialistic values of society’s mainstream and forges a personal path of humane growth. On this path, the protagonist learns how to resolve internal conflicts such as money versus meaning, self-discovery versus self-invention, individuation versus interdependence, and playing roles versus living authentically. The chapter introduces characters from a handful of bildungsroman novels that will serve to illustrate concepts throughout the book.

Alcohol and the Masculine Ideal

This chapter explores the connections between the perpetrators' consumption of alcohol, their acts of violence, and the use of celebratory ritual as expressions of camaraderie and manifestations of masculinity. It investigates how membership in paramilitary organizations like the SS, the SA, and the police shaped and informed masculinity constructs. The chapter also discusses how the relationship between alcohol, martial identity, and entry into manhood was anchored in “leave-taking rituals.” The glorification of martial virtues and violence as “the highest manifestation of manhood” emerged as defining characteristics of the National Socialist ideal of hypermasculinity, especially within the SS and the police complex. For this reason, the chapter highlights the linkage between hypermasculinity and militarism. It analyses the concept of martial masculinity or an exaggerated belief in the necessity for merciless brutality against one's enemies, and it defines the concept of radicalized hypermasculinity by the practice of racial war. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the importance of masculinity as a cultural ideal within political and social organizations.

Embodying Kairos in Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists

Philostratus' Lives of the Sophists (VS) is not usually understood as a text with much relevance for rhetorical theory. But this omission cedes theory to the handbooks and reinforces the dichotomy between theory and practice. I argue that Philostratus' theory of efficacious performance—implicit as it may be—has much to offer scholars of rhetoric and classical studies. I demonstrate that Philostratus prizes improvisation not only because it reveals the paideia of the orator, who becomes a cultural ideal, but also because it affords processes of mutual constitution between orator and audience. This occurs when the sophist becomes a physical manifestation of what the moment calls for, which compels recognition from the audience. In the second part of the paper, I focus on Polemo, the most improvisatory of sophists. In the scenes in which he features, Polemo repeatedly emerges as a man and, in recognizing him, spectators come to embody their own masculinity, in turn.

Spiritual and moral values: an anthropological study of the duty and desire categories

The article is devoted to the study of phenomena, such as duty and desire. These phenomena are interpreted in different ways within the framework of various philosophical trends, starting from antiquity and ending with modernity. The authors emphasize the lack of consensus in the philosophical and scientific community in the interpretation of these categories. Thus, R. Descartes believed that the phenomenon of debt arose in the human mind under the influence of social conditions. On the contrary, I. Kant and C. Cordner argued that duty was a priori concept not associated with practice and life. In turn, L.Yu. Nikolaeva understood duty as the basis for forming the national-cultural ideal. Plato explained the phenomenon of desire by the imperfection of a human, whereas Aristotle understood desire as the product of a pleasant sensation. In turn, Spinoza argued that desire was an individual form of cognition of the world. Descartes and J. Locke believed that desire was a need for something that was not currently available. In general, the categories of duty and desire were clearly distinguished. Most philosophers consider duty as a characteristic of the social being of the individual, whereas desire is considered to be an empirical category, i.e., generated by the sensory experience of the individual. However, it is necessary not only to study these concepts more deeply but also to reveal their role in forming spiritual and moral values.

Promises and perils of Guan

This article examines families’ involvement in the care and management of people with serious mental illnesses in China, and focuses on how that involvement is shaped by changing psychiatric institutions and law. Drawing on 32 months of fieldwork, I show that familial involvement is primarily characterised by guan [管], which can mean ‘care’ and/or ‘control’, and which commonly invokes a particular cultural ideal of parenting. Tracing how the language and practice of guan circulate between different realms, I argue that a ‘biopolitical paternalism’ has emerged in contemporary China. It reduces patients to carriers and manifestations of biomedical/security risk and legitimises the state’s policy of population management as a form of paternalistic intervention, while displacing certain paternalistic responsibilities, such as hospitalisation and ensuring medication compliance, onto patients’ families. This biopolitical paternalism produces vulnerabilities and unease within families and aggravates health disparities between patients. The analytic of biopolitical paternalism has conceptual efficacy and practical implications beyond mental health.

Thomé Fang’s Pursuit of a Cultural Ideal

Thomé Fang’s philosophical ideas are largely directed to the possibility of a form of humane enculturation that is somewhat similar to the Greek idea of paideia. His persistent pursuit of a cultural ideal is based on the rediscovery of and reflection on the relevance of Chinese and Western heritage, and a comparison of both. As an illustration of the cultural ideal that is the focus of his concern, it is conducive to examine the pagoda allegory that implies an approach to transcultural transformation or synthesis. In practice, this involves a threefold strategy and a reconsideration of cultural origins through artistic features.

Introduction

Introducing concepts such as hypermasculinity, hegemonic masculinity, and toxic masculinity, this section clarifies the methodological framework the book uses to perform analysis. It discusses how masculinity remains framed as both the norm and the cultural ideal, while femininity, race, and queerness are used to bar Others from masculine social, cultural, and political power. It unpicks the discourse around power hierarchies in American capitalist society, and it explains how these power hierarchies relate to each other in a consumerist system, and to the superhero and what we mean by ‘superhero.’