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The Meaning of the City
... This view has been shared by Kitchin [12] who highlighted the lack of collaboration and engagement from various stakeholders in contributing to the city in a Smart City approach. These authors are identifying how the Smart City paradigm is being viewed and proposed by corporates as a one size fits all approach, which has been the basis of a long tradition of technology policy and critique [36,37]. Such technology is feared because it begins to control us rather than us controlling it. ...
... However, some studies have warned about the branding exercise being laid out by Smart Cities' suppliers that are essentially promoting a one-size fits all model without considering broader economic development policies. The history of cities often includes technological change being allowed to build the future as a stand-alone policy and finding that serious issues emerged [36,37]. As such, this study proposed a new framework to optimize the use of ICT as part of the solution to problems rather than causing additional challenges. ...
The Smart City concept is still evolving and can be viewed as a branding exercise by big corporations, which is why the concept is not being used by the United Nations (U.N.). Smart Cities tend to represent the information, communication, and technological (ICT) industry alone without considering the values and cultural and historical profiles that some cities hold as legacies. However, the technology inherent in Smart Cities promises efficiencies and options that could allow cities to be more “inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable” as required by the U.N. agenda including cultural heritage. There is a notable lack of Smart City application to cultural and historical urban fabrics. Instead, the modernist new town approach has emerged under this new rubric leading to many problems such as urban decay and unsustainable car dependence. This study therefore presents a review of the literature on the nature, challenges, and opportunities of Smart Cities. A new Smart Cities framework is proposed based on the dimensions of culture, metabolism, and governance. These findings seek to inform policy makers of an alternative viewpoint on the Smart City paradigm, which focuses on urban outcomes rather than technology in isolation.
... Abel as the first victim of his own father's original sin dies at the hands of his brother, despite his own favored position with God. The first death after Adam's first sin, the so-called "fall of man" is a murder (Ellul, 1970). Banished from the presence of God, Cain sets about extending his family through his children and building a city for his security (v 17). ...
... The IPC's willingness to compromise on how disabled people are viewed by the media, or treated in UK society, is for the purposes of extending their longevity, power and reach. This is like the security that Cain sought in building his city and the longevity he sought in extending his family (Ellul, 1970;Gen 4:17). The DPM, by contrast, represent a robust Biblical righteousness in their refusal to compromise for the appearance of success. ...
At the London 2012 Paralympic Games, a controversy arose regarding Paralympic sponsor Atos, the French IT company contracted at £400 million to implement the UK Government's Work Capability Assessment. Atos was accused of falling short of professional codes of conduct, including declaring fit for work persons who subsequently died following removal of their benefits. The disability rights group Disabled People Against Cuts held UK-wide protests at Atos offices in Cardiff, Glasgow, Belfast, and London. I argue that rather than responding positively to the protests, the International Paralympic Committee is causing damage to the Disabled People's Movement. To build the argument within a theological context, the Biblical story of Cain's slaying of his brother Abel is applied to help understand the relationship between the International Paralympic Committee and the Disabled People's Movement, respectively.
... […] Dans les utopies plus subtiles, la puissance de l 'homme s'étend au domaine biologique et psychologique: action sur l'hérédité, le sexe de l'enfant, eugénisme, conditionnement psychologique etc." (Ruyer 1988: 50) Lest we don't forget, from the sociological-theological perspective of Jacques Ellul(2003b) and Eugene Drewermann (1988), the city has a special meaning. This meaning expresses the situation of man after he falls from Eden and his contempt or adversity towards God. ...
The modern world understands itself as being something entirely new in the history of mankind. Modernity describes itself as the age in which mankind reaches adulthood and in which man becomes free and emancipates itself from external constraints and determination. The present-day world was born due duet o a new understanding of man, world, society, and due to the development of technology and afterward sciences. This development is presented as a continuous march toward inescapable progress, and as asteadly increase in rationality which will lead to the complete and total emancipation of man. But modernity is not the product of only reason and technical and supposed moral progress. The tools to understand the real forces behind this development that created modern world can be find in the works of Pierre-Andre Taguieff and in the sociology of Jacques Ellul. The first offers a deep analysis of a concept that undergirds modernity, the concept of emanicpations, and the other author describes the development of modernity as amounting to the total suversion of reality through the technological system.The forces fueling this state of affairs are greed and lust for power. The wish of total emancipation can be seen as another expression of what psychoanalysis called the infantile wish to omnipotence.
... Ellul narrates that, the worst disease of technology now is probably the ideology of Technological Heroism, to which more and more people willingly cause large-scale effects that they do not foresee and that they cannot control (Ellul, 1997). In addition to Ellul"s words, I would say, we have less time for healthy meals, exercise, and relaxation, just with the aim of becoming technological experts. ...
... This may include systems at societal level. The first biblical example is the tower of Babel, it has numerous similarities with the systems described by Foucault (Ellul, 1970). Foucault provides a thorough analysis of such systems and its inherent reasons for resistance. ...
Standards may be an advantage for a company but employees often resist them because they feel they are forced to behave in a certain way. This chapter uses a philosophical approach to study why staff tend to resist company standardisation initiatives. Foucault and Habermas provide insights into the reasons for this resistance but do not solve the tension between freedom and control. Dooyeweerd's philosophy seems to be more promising. This chapter uses a company standardisation project of an automotive supplier to examine three philosophical approaches to understand resistance to standards and to investigate how this resistance can be avoided by managing in-company standardisation in a more holistic way.
... Cain was the first city builder, substituting God's Eden for his own. For Ellul (1970), the importance of this affirmation is not the veracity of this fact, but rather its significance, which gives a human view of the divine. Under this light, acts of foundation come as the development of a human consciousness of being aside from nature, yet they imitate a celestial archetype. ...
Two unavoidable processes punctuate our century: The unprecedented urbanisation of our planet (United Nations, 2014) and the spread of ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991) and urban data streams. This process of urbanisation corresponds with the process of digitalisation of urban life: while urbanisation acts on a physical infrastructural level, the digital develops as a kind of metastructure above the infrastructure. This metastructural level offers a flexible framework through which information is continuously and operatively being symbolized. Today, Information technology and the availability of abundant urban data streams could be considered as forerunners of our time, having unprecedented impacts comparable to the ones brought by the steam engine at the dawn of industrialisation and the electrification of cities. It is therefore no longer conceivable to think of the physical structure of the city without including its digital counterpart. Against this background, we will explore the role of computational power and information technologies as dominant factors in the formation of computational urban models and normative city theories. We will show how these models and theories, emerging mainly during the 19th and 20th centuries, present leaping correspondences with more ancient conceptions of the city, when observed from a meta-level or episteme (Foucault, 2002) approach. First, and for the sake of clarity, we will deal with some methodological elucidations around the concepts of theory, model and episteme, and how we will refer conceptually to these terms throughout this paper. Secondly, we will review these evolving technological and computational levels of abstraction and their influence on the different conceptions of the city. Thirdly, we will develop the hypothesis of a conceptual gap, between our current technological capacity -- grounded on the abundance and availability of urban data streams -- and the state of the art in urban modelling and city theory. Lastly, building upon Foucault's concept of episteme (Foucault, 1970) and genealogy (Foucault, 1977b), we will explore this gap by speculating around the possibility of an inversion in computational urban modelling and city theory. And above all, we will question the terms in which we can think of the city, in an age where the world can be virtually conceived as fully urban, and the continuity and abundance of urban data streams giving account of it can be taken for granted. How are we articulating the phenomena we call city on top of this generic common ground?
... Over a number of later works, Ellul develops his contention that civilisations, and the attendant technology necessary to enable urban density, draws humans away from nature and portends ecological exploitation. 4 As synthesised by Dunham in his doctoral dissertation covering Ellul's 1975 book, The Meaning of the City (Sans feu ni lieu: Signification biblique de la Grande Ville), the over-zealous 'application' of technique in the development and functioning of the ancient city of Babylon ultimately led to its destruction. 5 This is chronicled from a religious standpoint in the books of Jeremiah and Revelation but has more recently gained considerable archaeological and anthropological confirmation through the excavations of Harvey Weiss' team at Yale University. ...
Many facets of globalisation are contested on ethical or humanitarian grounds but the defence of local food and agriculture often borders on the spiritual. In particular, the decline or homogenisation of local food and agriculture is often acutely felt because it embodies a spiritual violation of cultural identity and sacredness of the land. The essence of this crisis has been newly characterised in Pope Francis’ latest encyclical Laudato si’, which captures the spiritual relevance of agriculture by characterising the human response to contemporary ecological decline and culinary shifts. In trying to understand how we arrived at our present state, sociologists of faith, such as the late Jacques Ellul have long described how technology comes to dominate over nature in processes such as agricultural development. In his argument, by incrementally drawing humans away from nature and into technological spheres (by engineering tractors, producing agri-chemicals, and genetically modifying plants), alienation from nature is amplified and the scope of ecological crisis broadens. This phenomenon is not new; indeed, most religious texts and creation myths caution against this alienation through parables and commandments. In light of the new public attention being drawn to the spiritual dimension of the ecological crisis, this chapter explores content from Judeo-Christian texts and Cambodian myths that specifically speaks to this phenomenon. The valorisation of the land found, for example, in the book of Exodus referencing Israel as the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’, is typical of religious and pseudo-religious narrative that are integrated with political narratives such as nationalism and cultural patrimony. In this chapter, I address how national metanarratives built on these spiritual-historic characterisations play a role in shaping agriculture and food policy and evaluate the spiritual dimension of a few Cambodian initiatives that attempt to moderate the alienation brought about by industrialisation and globalisation.
... This may include systems at societal level. The first biblical example is the tower of Babel, it has numerous similarities with the systems described by Foucault (Ellul, 1970). Foucault provides a thorough analysis of such systems and its inherent reasons for resistance. ...
Standards may be an advantage for a company, but employees often resist them because they feel they are forced to behave in a certain way. Even a broad approach like TQM seems to have to too little focus on the “human aspects” to prevent resistance and failure during change projects like in-company standardization. This chapter uses a philosophical approach to study why staff tend to resist company standardization initiatives. Foucault and Habermas provide insights into the reasons for this resistance but do not solve the tension between freedom and control. Dooyeweerd's philosophy seems to be more promising. This chapter uses a company standardization project of an automotive supplier to examine these three philosophical approaches to understand resistance to standards and to investigate how this resistance can be avoided by managing in-company standardization in a more holistic way.
... It resonates almost immediately with the concept of Greek hubris, which forbids excess and surfeit of any kind, advocating instead the principle of meden agan: all in moderation. Jacques Ellul (1970) contends that Babel did not crumble under the lightning flash; the problem was spiritual and Babel was only a symbol. It symbolized the desire of humans to make a name for themselves, to transcend, and the city and the tower were merely vehicles toward that end. ...
By Way of Interruption presents a radically different way of thinking about communication ethics. While modern communication thought has traditionally viewed successful communication as ethically favorable, Pinchevski proposes the contrary: that ethical communication does not ultimately lie in the successful completion of communication but rather in its interruption; that is, in instances where communication falls short, goes astray, or even fails. Such interruptions, however, do not mark the end of the relationship, but rather its very beginning, for within this interruption communication faces the challenge of alterity. Drawing mainly on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Pinchevski explores the status of alterity in prevalent communication theories and Levinas's philosophy of language and communication, especially his distinction between the Said and the Saying, and demonstrates the extent to which communication thought and practice have been preoccupied with the former while seeking to excommunicate the latter. With a strong interdisciplinary spirit, this book proposes an intellectual adventure of risk, uncertainty and the possibility of failure in thinking through the ethics of communication as experienced by an encounter with the other.
... It resonates almost immediately with the concept of Greek hubris, which forbids excess and surfeit of any kind, advocating instead the principle of Meden Agan: all in moderation. Jacques Ellul (1970) contends that Babel did not crumble under the lightning flash; the problem was spiritual and Babel was only a symbol. It symbolizes the desire of humans to make a name for themselves, to transcend, and the city and the tower were merely vehicles towards that end. ...
This essay attempts to mobilize some key concepts developed in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas into communication thought framework. The main argument is that Levinas's speculation on ethics as first philosophy provides an alternative perspective from which to view the relation between communication and ethics. At its core is the concept of interruption. It is suggested that ethical communication may lie in the interruption of communication—in instances where lateral exchange or concurrence between minds are troubled. Such interruptions, however, do not mark the end of concern for another, but rather its very beginning, for it is in such instances that communication faces the challenge of alterity. While bringing one to the verge of discursive possibilities, interruption gives rise to communication otherwise conceived, to exposure and vulnerability, and thereby to the possibility of responding to the Other.
... A recovery of a Christian vision of the good life, and one which is able to contest the pathological nature of the religion of technology, thus involves the renewal of these four conditions: of the church as an alternative political community, of a trinitarian understanding of God, of the centrality of the creation as part of the Christian story, and of Jesus as the one who truly images God within the creation. This is not a 'utopian' vision, an ideal of how society might possibly be restructured, but rather an incarnational faith based on a confidence that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is the axial event of human history: the founding of a alternative city whose fulfilment will come through a dialectical interaction with the processes of human history 36 . Such a vision is enacted symbolically within the communal ritual of the eucharist, which theologian David Ford has described as a 'condensed enactment of the Christian habitus' 37 . ...
In a recent report on focus group discussions of GMOs in Britain, Celia Deane Drummond et al observed that public anxieties about emerging biotechnologies often reflect concerns that are ultimately theological in nature. Such concerns (whether in relation to biotechnology or other areas of technological development) may be easily dismissed as peripheral or irrelevant to the core secular issues of health, safety, environmental impacts, the politics of commercialisation and research integrity. However, I shall argue that theological questions are actually integral to the ongoing development of technology and that there is a need for a public discourse which enables such questions to be articulated and debated.
The concluding Chap. 12 then reprises the overall conviction animating the book, framed in nomad witness, giving rise to metropolitan culture. Bedouin suffering in conjunction with the 2023 Israeli grotesquery visited on Gaza and Palestine in general, earmarks the “land without a people” deception giving rise to Zionism already in the late nineteenth century. Pastoral nomadism does not fit within the legibility demands of either nation-state insistence on borders or the UN attempt to secure Indigenous rights but rather hints a different land-tenure relationship. Once more tracking from Deloria’s notion of an inchoate “Watching,” haunting topography and intimating no-go zones of wild sanctuary, we trace by way of Kimmerer’s treatment of the Anishinaabe “cannibal myth” and Long’s deployment of Otto’s Tremendum, what happens as those “boundary-omens” are violated. But here we especially focus on the usurpation of such land-watching as the core concern of city-organization seeking to render labor- and crop-production entirely legible and thus taxable, in ever-intensified armatures of extraction and surveillance (a la James C. Scott’s “seeing like a state”). The characterization of this urban monitoring by French scholar/theologian Jacques Ellul—exegeting the Hebrew word for “city,” ‘iyr—as a modality of “Watcher Angel,” embodying both fear and anger from a nomad point of view, anchors the final exposition. It is tellingly supplemented by David Wengrow’s work on ancient urban production of “monster-emblem” seals and statues to “watch over” trade goods and palace buildings. Within such a purview, Luke’s version of “shepherd flock-watching by night” juxtaposed to “Roman census-taking by means of city-of-origin roll-calling” (Lk 2:1-20), gives provocative hint of the historic struggle that culminates in gospel messaging about apocalypse whose ultimate and reiterated counsel is to “Watch” (Mark 13 and correlates in Matthew and Luke)! And John’s book-length version of such a vigilance-keeping going by that very name (“Apocalypse”) deepens the wondering about wandering in forecasting Great City (Babylon) demise brought on by an advent of Horsemen (Rev chapters 18 and 6). The chapter and book concludes in positing that such a comprehension of city-character could further be queried as a kind of incarnation of “evil eye” premonitions whose mobilization of an eviscerating “envy” has now gone global and increasingly irresistible in the social media fetishization of selfies in search of “likes.” The eye is now panoptical in the I-phone, and the metropolitan monster-maw is planet-wide. But if not checked, its final meal will be itself.
Looking the contemporary climate emergency in the eye without fantasy compels, for a rampaging species such as ours, a full halt: what does it really mean to be human? Have we always been self-destructive and thus in need of something like a heretofore unattainable (much less unimaginable) revolution? Or did we once know the mutualism inherent in eco-systemic viability over long stretches of time that allowed both human and more-than-human flourishing in a co-communion simultaneously magnificent, but also uncompromising in its enforcements of limits? In exploring such, the résumé of chapter topics herein pursued will wantonly “skip”—with indigenously-provoked curiosity and biblically-exercised exuberance—across seemingly unrelated subjects, ranging from mountains to metals, mules to muck, menhirs to mites. But exercising the writing unrelentingly will be this concern for limitation! How to get our species to stop assuming its supremacy and recommit to a reciprocity with the more-than-human world that might actually have a future? Organizing the inquest here is the trope and reality of monstrosity.
How to approach the world of plants and animals, waters and minerals, peaks and winds as a domain of peers and teachers and even “elders” underscoring the fact that monstrosity is our condition, whether as a now outsized species-terror ravaging all else on the planet and provoking the biosphere to respond in kind, or by recovering our ancestral role as symbiotically embedded collaborator with forces larger than our formulas (such as oceans) and more minutely potent than our microscopes (like viruses)? Patent for the “Christian” leanings of the effort—piqued, schooled, and downsized by indigenous challenge—will be the way these “monster agencies” intersect with the tradition’s fascination with angels both beneficent and “fallen”—as Messengers elaborating wisdom or as powers engendering destruction. In the mix the introductory sketch organizes the venture as “Monsters we need to meet” as well as “Monsters we have mobilized” across many millennia as companions, likewise positing as provocation the idea of monsters musing through us, mentoring all around us, and meddling with us—all “from without” in origin and aim, serving an intention mysterious and beyond our comprehension, but ineluctably involving us (and ultimately “eating” us!), whether or not we would cooperate in kind. And obviously the goal is not tight argument but fecund wonderment.
Urban theologising in South Africa has to solidify its intentionality, commitment, rigour, and outcomes if it is to contribute in liberating, constructive and transformative ways to the shape and content of current and future South African cities. This particular contribution articulates the importance of constructing urban theologies of liberation, reiterating the ongoing importance of liberationist praxis in considering South African cities, as millions of urban dwellers still experience profound "un-freedom." Starting off by charting urban theologies as they evolved over the past 50 years globally, it insists that more needs to be done in the Global South, generally, and in South Africa, to expound our own urban theologies. It then provides the contours of an urban theology of liberation with reference to key elements. It indicates the validity of this approach in the intersections between faith, politics and planning. It suggests that collaborative and synergetic solidarities between different modes of doing urban theology of liberation might hold great promise for breaking cycles of urban misery and exclusion.
"Early Adventism typically advocated the need to flee the cities for simple rural living because cities were regarded as Babylon (Jer 50:1-3; Rev 18:2-3). Consequently, in those regions of the world where the church’s presence has the longest history with sometimes larger congregations, many church properties are located in the countryside or rural areas. A major reason why the Adventist Church is only so lately coming to terms with the exigency of urban ministries is the deficiency of a theological framework for engagement in missions to the cities. Stone (2015) agrees that the failure to develop a theology for the cities is a factor in the inadequacy of mission initiatives in urban areas. The objective of this paper is to present a theological framework for Adventist urban ministries that will provide an impetus for effective and sustained mission programs in urban settings. This framework will be developed from a biblical study of God and the city, an examination of Ellen White’s writings on mission to the cities, and an exploration of contemporary challenges cities pose to the church’s task of taking the gospel commission to all regions of the world. This framework follows Van Engen’s (1994:249) tripartite theology of mission model comprising an interface between the biblical text, the faith community, and the urban context."
"The Adventist engagement in the evangelization of cities has been timid and, for many decades, even discouraged by an anti-urban attitude. This mentality of criticism and resistance to the cities was largely sustained through an incomplete and/or misreading of Ellen White’s writings (Jones 2013:716). This article seeks to describe Adventist rural/urban tension, the historical and social context of its origin, and how it has been softened by a contrasting broader view of Adventist urban mission."
Cities played a major role in human civilization, but there have been major changes in their forms. Throughout their long history, they have exhibited characteristics that contradict each other. Historians, noticing the differences in the properties of cities, pointed to their many types. The decisive division assumed that "oriental" cities are ruled by autocratic regimes, while "western" cities are liberal and democratic. This kind of division was often questioned, especially because it seemed that liberal-democratic systems had finally dominated world politics in the late 20 th century. The turn of the 21 st century showed that such predictions were not correct. Rem Koolhaas' theory of Generic Cities demonstrates that there has been an unexpected change and that city forms in which Western culture values are irrelevant are now gaining importance.
The use of the term "strange" as here applied to Jerusalem personified as YHWH's wife, covers several meanings. It first implies that she is of foreign and pagan origin, as stated in Ezek 16:3.45. It also means that she is an estranged wife and mother whose behavior is criminally guilty, since she is doing things contrary to the usual course of things; instead of nurturing her children she kills them, turning murder into a religious sacrifice thus perverting the essence of the bond with YHWH: nurturing a progeny and ensuring a future for the people. As a brothel boss, instead of fostering life, she is spreading death; even as a matron prostitute she inverts the usual behavior by paying her clients instead of being paid. The article tries to spell out the different aspects of her strange behavior, arguing that as the backdrop of the metaphor one could detect the reminiscence of the grandiose, orgiastic and aberrant Ishtar cult that the prophet and the golah people might have seen in the Babylonian exile. The prophet and his redactional epigones drew freely on various aspects of the Ishtar festival with its radical inversion of values in the elaboration of their metaphorical description of religious infidelity and apostasy of the people called to be a nation of priests. Instead of focusing unilaterally on Jerusalem the adulteress as an abused woman harassed by an abusive God, as most modern studies tend to do, in the perspective of the Hebrew Bible the marriage metaphor places the emphasis on the progeny. Therefore, the reading here proposed calls for a systemic approach. The real victims of the toxic mother are the children, symbol of the nation, killed, mislead and offered up to aberrant and murderous pagan cults. Moreover, Jerusalem as YHWH's estranged wife should be seen in conjunction with texts dealing with "Mother Zion."
Chapter 5 intensifies the exploration by probing a new “rite of spring” created (in 2009) by white gentrifiers of the Car City’s urban core, problematically re-enacting the settler mythology of Detroit’s 1701 founding under the French “explorer” Cadillac, in the legendary account of his dismissive encounter with a part Norman dwarf/part Native trickster deity defending the river bend. The Celto-Gallic strand of this tortured amalgamation is followed back to the European theater itself by sustained attention to the Gaelic epic, the Táin Bó Cuailnge (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”) in supplying a rich tapestry of herder memory of water-fords as sites of border struggle, conflict reduction, and hero-initiation. In amplifying the perspective yet further along the lines of 1492’s global reach, Afro-diasporic practice in Voudou of reclaiming dead souls from abysmal waters by way of a “tight-rope” of sound and possession and of reconfiguring the Atlantic as portal of spirit-traffic from Western World to home continent by way of “feeding” the great ocean spirit, Agwé, an elaborate re-past, will mark perhaps the most audacious water-rite construction ever attempted by our species.
Smart Cities are increasingly hailed as the potential solution for growing urbanisation, coupled with the demanding needs of efficiency and performance. Nonetheless, the Smart City paradigm is still evolving. However, it seems to be a branding or marketing competition between ICT consortiums where the key focus is implementation of their smart technologies. This is perhaps the reason why it is not being adopted or even used by the United Nations. There is a conspicuous gap in knowledge when it comes to understanding how the promised efficiencies of Smart Cities can lead to a range of desired outcomes such as the Sustainable Development Goal 11 referring to ‘inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ cities including issues of cultural heritage. Smart Cities appear to be focusing on modernist development in green-fields sites. Moreover, there are issues with emerging cities if their priority to emphasise Smart Cities is not given adequate economic transparency.
This thesis attempts to resolve some of these issues through developing a new Smart Cities Framework and applying it through a case study on Port Louis, Mauritius. The Government of Mauritius has implemented a Smart Cities policy since 2014 which enabled the creation of nine new Smart Cities around Port Louis with a range of positive and negative impacts; the case studies can thus enable perspective to be generated on the Smart Cities concept.
Contextualized in the city of Edinburgh, this paper deploys components of a liturgy of the Eucharist as a way of opening alternative criteria for the development of any city than those confined to an economic paradigm. It reviews the theological literature on urban planning, with reference to the spatial turn that recognizes the epiphanic potential of the built environment. Addressed to Christian professionals in urban planning, campaigners, and faith educators, the article is an exercise in public liturgical practical theology. It explores how a city might express its humility in light of its failures and engage with fears of the often already-marginalized. It considers how a city wrestles with multiple versions of the Common Good, and with resisting the marketization of social relationships. Corporeality and participation raise questions of social justice.
Let me come to the point right away. What kind of culture is this, in which for the first time there exists the possibility of catastrophes which involve the entire world? What is happening when our culture seems to be pulled toward destruction and death?
During the twentieth century, the Christian Church became increasingly aware of a new social milieu and tried to make its message relevant in a progressively secularized culture. The social approach became dominant, with the result that, in the words of one critic, “we have come to see just how the terms ‘social’ and ‘society’ have so insinuated themselves that we never question the assumption that while ‘religious’ is problematic, the ‘social’ is obvious. The idea that the former should be referred to the latter appears like an innocent, genial inspiration” (Milbank 1993: 102).
The purpose of this paper (much of which appeared in a different form in Landgraf 2003) is to construct a reading of the Ten Commandments in terms of Jacques Ellul’s thought in order to facilitate the understanding of his thought as a whole, both theological and sociological. For the most part, this is not an exposition of Ellul’s statements about each commandment but a construction based on his statements about what it means to be human and what keeps societies from being destroyed from within by vicious circles of power. In the space allotted I must paint in broad strokes for entire chapters could be written about each heading here. My thesis is that Ellul’s conception of the space within which life is possible can be delineated by the Ten Commandments, paraphrased in terms relating to his understanding of the orders of truth and reality, and that the outcome of obedience to the commandments so paraphrased is that reality is kept open to truth. A side result is that Ellul’s arguments about the autonomy of technique depend on his belief that fallen human beings have an innate desire to possess reality.
The boundaries between information and entertainment, work and leisure, and professional devices and toys are blurred. This has implications for understanding the ways in which we interact with digital devices. This article argues that these new cultural developments are not adequately addressed in existing theologies of technology and proposes that a theology of play provides an important additional critical perspective. Particular focus is placed upon Roman Catholic teachings, including the past decade's Papal messages to the World Communications Day.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to explore the added value of philosophy in understanding and overcoming resistance to quality control.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper describes a case in which the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd was applied to give advice on a standardisation project within a company. The authors evaluate the project and resistance to it after six years, using the same philosophical approach.
Findings
– Economic goals of quality control were achieved without any substantial employee resistance by addressing non-economic aspects. Apparently, social needs are not necessarily detrimental to economic goals. On the contrary, it is difficult to achieve economic goals if the social aspects are not being addressed.
Research limitations/implications
– Though based on one case study only, the findings suggest that a multi-aspect approach to quality management is very promising.
Practical implications
– The approach is not just a TQM tool but rather a way of addressing various aspects in a systematic and balanced way. Familiarising managers with this approach should help them to balance financial and other aspects without making those other aspects instrumental to achieving financial targets.
Originality/value
– The paper presents a new multi-aspect approach to quality management, based on philosophy in business research. It seems that the value of this approach reaches beyond the area of quality management and can be important to organisation studies in general.
Hart Island, New York City's largest public burial ground, reveals an alternate history of the city through the lens of the interment of the abject. Historically, the state has provided for remains not otherwise cared for through what are commonly referred to as "potter's fields" - municipally owned burial grounds for the poor, the friendless, the alien, and the unknown. The location and lack of iconography act to erase the memories of so-called abject members of society rather than preserve them. New York City houses the country's largest of these municipal burial grounds on Hart Island, remotely situated away from the city. The management of these burials is left to the Department of Correction, which daily ships inmates from nearby Riker's Island to bury unknown members of society. Although since 1869 approximately three quarters of a million bodies have been interred there through the penal system, many of New York's inhabitants are not aware of its existence. A major contributing factor to the absence of public knowledge is the lack of information either about the phenomenon of the potter's field or about Hart Island itself. Reference to Hart Island today is limited to on-line curiosity blogs and op-ed columns in the daily newspapers, but even then references are infrequent. Yet the area of the island is equivalent to fifty New York City blocks - a large swath of land to be ignored in a dense urban context. This thesis addresses the landscape of Hart Island, which acts as a depository for identity shaped through memory. Urban landscapes reveal social and cultural biases in their physical characteristics. Identity is made evident through, or paradoxically denied by, these terrains. Hart Island exemplifies one such landscape of negated identity. By looking at the history of Hart Island and its physical relationship to the constructed city, this thesis uncovers socioeconomic disparities that manifest themselves even in death.
Jacques Ellul’s book, The Meaning of the City, widely recognized as one of the most important twentieth century theological reflections on the city, was also one of his most controversial scholarly contributions. Many urbanists interpreted the book as demeaning the city and diminishing the importance of urban policy, planning, design, architecture, and activism at a time when cities around the world had experience profound crises. This article reexamines The Meaning of the City and its relevance to twenty-first century urbanism.
Professional engineers are under increasing pressure to practice in an environmentally sensitive way. To prepare engineers for this new reality, changes in engineering education are needed. For example, engineering hydrology has traditionally been taught with an emphasis on the interpretation of numerical data bout rainfall and runoff in watersheds. However, to do environmentally sensitive hydrology work, it is necessary to also understand the life forms that share the watershed. In 1997, a project was undertaken in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Toronto to enhance an introductory hydrology course by adding information about how hydrological phenomena affect fish. Through carefully structured assignments and exam questions, an assessment was made of the effectiveness of the enhancements in increasing students’ awareness of the life context of hydrology. The project has resulted in a commitment to increased environmental information in the hydrology curriculum, and the implementation of an assessment process for all students, to monitor changes in their environmental knowledge and attitudes. It has also raised questions about ultimate objectives in engineering education.
This article examines the ministry-ethical implications and meanings of spiritual formation grounded in the so called ‘culture wars’ and then in light of identity, the postmodern condition and the urban context. It highlights the tensions the church faces between being conformed to the world and being conformed to the image of Jesus (Rom12:2; 8:29, NLT). It offers a critical reflection one some of the lessons that I (the author) have learned over the years and attempts to draw conclusions for Christian education and experience.
Jacques Ellul was converted to Marx and then to Christianity 4 years later. He lived with this contradiction until his death in 1994. Marx and the Bible were dialectical in his mind, with his sociological pole rooted in Marx and his religious commitments in Karl Barth. God's otherness and His freedom in Barth are the central components of Ellul's theology and theological method. Thus, he was not a pessimist but dialectically saw God's perfect freedom as the source of human freedom over against technological necessity. For life to be meaningful in high-tech societies, a total personal transformation is necessary. Ellul challenged Christians to prophetic witness—not as fatalists but to confront la technique without compromise.
The belief that high density is stressful and unhealthy has contributed to a decline in urban density in many countries, particularly North America and Australia. Yet many physical planners are calling for an increase in urban density. Many human or individual-oriented studies (which involve ethological models, sociological models, and psychological models) have been used to suggest negative effects of urban density. This article raises questions about these conclusions and presents evidence from recent studies which suggests more positive human aspects of urban density. The physical or systems-oriented studies (which involve economic, ecological, historical, and engineering models) suggest advantages in costs, energy, environment, and transport from increasing urban density. The resolution of the conflict between populace and planner is suggested to include greater awareness of mutual benefits from increased density, better planning and design, and encouragement of the more positive human aspects of higher urban density.
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