Paul Ricoeur
In times of disasters and adversity, children are among the most vulnerable. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) highlights the importance of protecting children from harm and making decisions in their best interests—matters that become heightened in an adverse context. From 2020 to 2023, the government of Aotearoa New Zealand employed strict lockdown and vaccination requirements to ensure that such rights were upheld during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article reports on a small-scale research study conducted during and after the first COVID-19 lockdown, involving children aged 3–8. The article extends the discussion of children’s rights in a disaster or adverse context, such as a pandemic, to include Articles 12 and 13 of the Convention, which focus on children’s rights to express their views and to express them freely. Using the conduit of stories about a toy bear, along with willing parents, the research gained insights into children’s understandings, emotions, and experiences of this time. The study revealed children at home navigating a new identity in which they displayed connection, autonomy, responsibility, and compassion. A parallel finding was the way in which parents in the study used a “pedagogy of care” to make these informal learning situations ones in which children could freely and openly express their feelings, ideas, and opinions.
Soil erosion has become a critical problem leading to land degradation and environmental risks globally. To grasp the rates of soil loss and identify the main factors driving these issues, it is vital to examine the specific impacts of soil erosion across different locations. Therefore, between 2021 and 2023, a research initiative was undertaken to assess, rank, identify, and map sections of the watershed that are particularly susceptible to soil erosion. The RUSLE components for factors R, K, L, S, C, and P were integrated using the ArcGIS 10.4.1 spatial analyst's raster calculator tool to calculate and create maps that illustrate the risk and intensity of soil erosion in the Dhumuga watershed. The Dhumuga watershed was categorized into five groups based on average annual soil loss: 0-5 ton/ha-1 year-1 (very slight), 5-10 ton/ha-1 year-1 (slight), 10-20 ton/ha-1 year-1 (moderate), 20-50 ton/ha-1 year-1 (high), and > 50 ton/ha-1 year-1 (very high). The assessment of soil erosion severity was influenced by factors such as rainfall, soil type, DEM, land use, and land cover, employing the GIS-based RUSLE equation. The spatial risk of soil erosion was sorted into five categories based on severity, with 11.58% of the area categorized as very high risk (>50 ton ha-1 year-1), and 54.2% in the very low to low-risk category. On average, the watershed yielded an annual sediment production of up to 13.94 tons/ha/year, which is within an acceptable range. Considering these research findings, GIS-based analyses can be utilized to pinpoint areas at risk of soil erosion and identify vulnerable zones, offering crucial insights for future soil conservation and model enhancement.
This chapter presents an autoethnographic and narrative study of a female English language educator, academic and leader in Vietnam in the context of the growing importance of English in higher education. The study focuses on a narrative created by Author 1 about her experiences of being a female tertiary English educator striving to find her place in the complexities that surround being female and having a family but also having strong career ambitions. The chapter offers an inductive analysis of the narrative, together with explorations based on key ideas from the French philosopher, Paul Ricœur, especially his notions of a changing and unfolding self, language realised in action and the potential of generative creative action. The study points to the growing importance of understanding the stories and lived experiences of English educators and illuminates, in the circumstances of change in Vietnam, the tensions around the role and ambitions of women.
This paper explores the plausible approach of interreligious dialogue in a secular world. It first examines Taylor’s account of the immanent frame in his A Secular Age. This helps us to grasp the moral spiritual outlook of the modern world and the underlying moral concerns of the controversies between the religions and secularists. I then examine Taylor’s claim regarding the indispensability of transcendence in achieving the fullness of human life which is criticized by non-transcendentists and naturalist mundane transcendentists. I argue that the phenomenon of these controversies, on the one hand, is consistent with Taylor’s account of the Nova effect in the secular world, and, on the other hand, that assessing these different versions of transcendence via Taylor’s historical hermeneutical approach or Wainwright’s inference to the best explanation may raise the problem of Christian-centric or epistemic circularity. Furthermore, as we are now living in the immanent frame, interreligious dialogue cannot be implemented without the practical concerns of ordinary life. Inspired by Ricoeur’s idea of testimony and narrative identity, I argue for a kind of interreligious testimonial dialogue which integrates morality, actions, thought and experience into communication, so that it can enhance mutual sympathetic understanding, broaden the life vision between participants, no matter whether religious or nonreligious, and break through the limitation of epistemic circularity.
Este ensayo tiene una mirada epistemológica en dos sentidos. En la primera parte del texto, se hace referencia a cómo el positivismo ha influenciado la forma en que pensamos hoy, en particular en el campo de la traductología. También se señala, de forma más breve, la influencia que el post-estructuralismo ha tenido en el cambio de paradigma en la disciplina, denominado El giro cultural en la traductología. Desde ambos paradigmas, los investigadores han intentado dar un estatus científico a la disciplina. En la segunda parte, se describe el método de investigación utilizado por el filósofo Paul Ricoeur para explicar su idea de sentido, en su recorrido hacia la comprensión.
Care ethics takes as central the discerning of needs in those being cared for and attempts to meet those needs. Perceptive caring agents are more likely to be able to identify needs in those for whom they are caring. The identification of needs is no small matter, not least in teaching encounters. This paper modestly proposes that at least some of the needs a caring agent should attempt to meet are a function of the identity of the patient of caring action. Taking Nel Noddings’ account of care ethics as representative, I shall present it in outline. This leads to the needs-identification problematic. Following this I turn to Soran Reader’s account of needs. I interpret this to offer what I designate as identity as ‘what-ness’. Such an understanding of identity-based needs is a starting point for the caring agent but a more nuanced account, of identity as ‘who-ness’, will be argued to be preferable. Identity as ‘who-ness’, drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s work, moves the discussion along a great deal, culminating as it does in his concept of the ‘capable human being’. Having brought this aspect of Ricoeur’s thought into conversation with care ethics, I offer an account of identity-based needs conducive to the broader aims of the care ethical project. Finally, I consider what this bolstered account of care ethics might say about a brief and illustrative teaching encounter.
Paul Ricoeur is a philosopher of wide ranging interests whose main concern is hermeneutics. His hermeneutics is self-reflexive, an existential appropriation that eventually gives way to self-understanding. Questions pertaining to self-identity, the problem of the other and intersubjectivity are presented by him in a tensive style, keeping the scope of interpretations wide open. While discussing the question of self-identity, he moves towards intersubjectivity which is centred on self-esteem. It provides a context for self-constancy which gives to a moral identity, an attestation of Here I am. Here arises the basic issue, how the narrative identity which is hermeneutical give rise to an ethical relation. If so, Ricoeur must be ready to see that there is an asymmetric relation between the same and the other which can be termed ethical. Though he says that conscience contains an injunction to attest ourselves to say, Here I am, it is a statement of “said” and not one of “saying”. Only a statement of “saying” can interrupt ontology and enact the movement from the same to the other which is ethical. Hence, Ricoeur stands at the hemeneutical level which cannot abandon ontology. But the polysemic nature of alterity posed by him never closes the possibilities of an ethical interpretation.
Kavramsal metafor kuramı, son yıllarda kognitif dilbiliminin metafor sahasına kazandırdığı iddialı teoriler-den biridir. Kuramın temel iddiası metaforların kelimeden ziyade kavramlar/tasavvur düzeyinde meydana geldiğidir. Burada tür-cins, nakil ve benzerlik ilişkisini bir kenara bırakılarak metaforların kelimelere değil tecrübeye dayalı tasavvura ait olduğu ortaya konulmuştur. Bu kuram, son yıllarda Kur’ân çalışmalarıyla ilgi-lenen pek çok araştırmacıların da dikkatini çekmiştir. Bunun neticesinde Kur’ân’daki mecâzları ve metafor-ları bu kuram penceresinden inceleyen bir literatür ortaya çıkmıştır. Ancak, kavramsal metafor kuramı, me-tafor çözümlemesini gündelik beşerî dil üzerinde gerçekleştirir. Bu nedenle kuramın kutsal metinlerde yer alan metaforların tahliline yönelik bir yaklaşımı bulunmamaktadır. Buna ek olarak, belagâtta mecâz lafız ve mana ilişkisi üzerinden açıklanırken, bu kuram metaforu tecrübeye dayalı düşünce ve dil ilişkisi üzerinde temellendirir. Bu farklılıklara rağmen, Kur’ân ayetlerini bu kuramla ele alan çalışmaların sayısı gün geçtik-çe artmaktadır. Kuramı, Kur’ân’ı yorumlama aracı olarak tatbik eden araştırmaların ayetleri tefsir usulü ve belagâtın desteğinin uzağında inceledikleri ve metaforların vahyin bir parçası olduğunu dikkate almadıkları tespit edilmiştir. Bu çalışma bahsi geçen literatürü, literatürün takip ettiği metodu, kuramı nasıl tatbik ettik-lerini, Kur’ân çalışmalarına katkılarını ve temel eksikliklerini değerlendirmektedir. Bu bağlamda, çalışma-mız kuramın alana katkısını ve eksikliklerini sorgulamaktadır.
In this article, we indicate some examples of the possible contemporary return of the mind-body dualism. Aspects of contemporary culture, like the influence of brain-computer interface (BCI) or brain-machine interface (BMI), neuroscience projects, and the popularity of sci-fi series and movies that visualise the separation of consciousness from our bodies, are discussed. Only a few of these examples are indicated as introductory to emphasise the need to think again about the importance of some of the strongest philosophical arguments against this dualism. It is in this regard that we will focus on the philosophies of Gabriel Marcel and Paul Ricoeur. Of specific concern for us in this article is Marcel's influence on Ricoeur in his fundamental rejection of the mind-body dualism. This article's unique contribution lies, then, in the fact that it analyses and reveals this influence of Marcel on Ricoeur, especially with regards to their shared understanding of embodied being, or incarnate existence, as opposed to a body-mind dualism. This investigation of how Marcel influenced Ricoeur provides a better understanding of: i) Ricoeur's account of embodied being; ii) Marcel's philosophy and concept of incarnate existence as being; and finally, iii) the importance of rejecting a mind-body dualism for our contemporary thought and living.
This chapter explores Deborah Lutz’s The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects (2015) in the light of a renewed interest in Victorian material culture and through an analysis of the material side of the trace of the Victorian past, objects and things in contemporary culture. The growing interest in objects and sensory experience in Victorian scholarship provides the broader context for a neo-Victorian burgeoning fascination with objects, bodies and the sense of touch. In her biography of the Brontë sisters, Lutz considers the objects that the sisters possessed and follows their lives through those objects and things present in their daily activities, some of them belonging to their childhood (the miniature, for instance). By paying a heightened attention to things, Lutz not only illuminates the Brontë sisters’ lives but also provides a nuanced reading into Victorian material culture. These Victorian traces prove the affective power invested upon objects and texts which clearly mediate between an absent Victorian past and a contemporary present; therefore, Lutz’s text (Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture, also published in 2015) demonstrates the relevance of affective encounters with the past through collecting and the complex relationship between subject and object.
This article engages the considerations of imagination in Kierkegaard and Ricoeur to argue for a moral dimension of the imagination and its objects. Imaginary objects are taken to be mental representations in images and narratives of people or courses of action that are not real in the sense that they are not actual, or have not yet happened. Three claims are made in the article. First, by drawing on the category of possibility, a conceptual distinction is established between imagination and fantasy, (1) I claim that imagination has a moral dimension because it is engaged in considering real-life possibilities. Second, (2) drawing on Kierkegaard and Ricoeur, it is argued that mental representations of selfhood in imagination have a moral dimension because they essentially allow people to understand the development of agency in human selfhood by means of representations of would-be selves and narrative figurations of the self. Third, (3) mental representations of human selves have a moral dimension because they form important points of reference for moral orientations in the field of human praxis (moral pointers).
N.T. Wright, who represents the New Perspective on Paul, applies philosophical construct of critical realism to the study of the New Testament text. This article explores how N.T. Wright approaches the study of the person of Jesus Christ and his teaching in the context of ancient Judaism, and Apostle Paul’s theology and its application in the early Christian communities. A special attention is paid to the essential works of N.T. Wright, in which he describes epistemology applied to the New Testament studies. This article synchronously explores two main concepts – worldview and history – in the theory of cognition according to critical realism. By studying several methods and approaches to the biblical text (or their totality), a contemporary Christian can choose for herself the method that most illuminates the truth of the meanings of the Gospel of Jesus and Paul’s preaching.
This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola’s La Faute de l’abbé Mouret (The Sin of Father Mouret) (1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republican discourses compete. Using Paul Ricœur’s theory on Christianity’s original sin, this article compares Mouret’s sickness with physical evil and illustrates how Zola redeploys the traditional religious symbols of the heart, the blood, and the Word to the secular realm. It will show that original sin is a Christian myth inscribed on the body, and that Zola’s reformulation of a core religious doctrine and its supporting framework can and must be dismantled for the fledgling secular Third Republic. The article shows an attempt by Zola to forge a republican self, and thereby offers a new perspective on the nature of the Zolian body which merits further study under the field of Medical Humanities. Through the construction of the religious body, the article also contributes to wider critical discussion on mythology in Zola’s work.
"Not the Only Story: Narrative, Memory and Self-becoming in Julian Barnes’ Novel. Julian Barnes’s The Only Story depicts the affair of the narrator, Paul, with an older, married woman, Susan. Yet while the obvious subject matter may be trite, the writer’s treatment of it is noteworthy. More specifically, the present paper aims to explore the manner in which this story is remembered by the narrator. Using Paul Ricoeur’s work on the narrative self, we suggest that the protagonist does not wish to deliver an accurate account of the events that shaped his life, but rather he attempts to come to terms with the latter through storytelling. Thus, “the only story” is not necessarily that of Paul’s first love. It is, rather, the only story that matters to him, which must include all others and which he must tell in order to shape and understand his own process of becoming. Keywords: The Only Story, Julian Barnes, Paul Ricoeur, memory, storytelling, self-becoming, identity "
This chapter discusses the diary from a formalist angle, setting the diary apart from other genres of life writing such as the autobiography and the letter. Drawing on canonical as well as more recent narrative theory (Genette, Cohn, Fludernik, Lanser), the chapter addresses the specific temporal make-up of the diary, its mode of composition, and communicative structure. Furthermore, it explores how the diary navigates between life and writing, drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s concept of mimesis. It concludes with a discussion of the trope of secrecy associated with the diary.
A consistent finding of research into mobile learning guides and outdoor learning games has been the value of audio as a medium of communication. This paper discusses the value of location-based and movement-sensitive audio for learning. Three types of audio learning experience are distinguished, based primarily upon differing levels of narrative cohesion: audio vignettes, movement-based guides and mobile narratives. An analysis of projects in these three areas has resulted in the formulation of guidelines for the design of audio experiences. A case study of a novel audio experience, called ‘A Chaotic Encounter,’ delivers an adaptive story based on the pattern of movements of the user.
‘Historically informed performance’ (HIP) has become standard practice for the performance of ‘early music’ composed before 1800 and is increasingly applied to more recent compositions. The approach provokes controversy for the tension between its claims to replicate historical performance practice, the observation that the resulting ‘period’ style often reflects present-day stylistic preferences and the inference that its attribution to the past is more imagined than real. Musicians who practice HIP identify dilemmas which relate to questions of historical evidence and interpretation. The philosophy of music currently neglects the dilemmas that performers identify as problematic for HIP. In contrast, the philosophy of history makes scant reference to musical performance but extensively examines the understanding and interpretation of historical texts. Musicians share with historians the need to engage with the past. Musicians should find it instructive to consult the philosophy of history on how historians construct an account of the past. Historians may find informative the way in which the nature of music and the HIP of older music highlight performative aspects of the historical account, allow comparison between parallel debates in historiography and musicology and suggest how changes over time in audience reception affect the comprehensibility of the historical account.
The nature of freedom has been discussed extensively by Paul Ricoeur in his book Freedom and Nature. This article critically engages with this notion of freedom in the context of survivors of sex trafficking and their lack of experience of freedom. We indicate to what extent Ricoeur’s notion of freedom, as the reciprocal relationship between the voluntary and the involuntary, offers a relational and dynamic understanding of freedom which is highly relevant in the context of survivors of sex trafficking. A mere bodily freedom, an escape from captivity, as often found in reductionist definitions of freedom, does not warrant freedom as volition for survivors of sex trafficking. The development of the full possibilities of freedom remains lacking in this context. This compels one to reconsider freedom as “voluntary-involuntary” freedom and to develop a much more complex, holistic and relational notion of freedom. Aspects like imagination, the affective, fear, desires and human dignity, should all be incorporated in the concept of freedom, which remains bodily, but does not exclude volition in the abstract or even idealistic sense. Such a comprehensive understanding of freedom is paramount for survivors of sex trafficking, but also for further philosophical considerations of freedom.
Paul Ricoeur declares that “being-entangled in stories” is an inherent property of the human condition. He introduces the notion of narrative identity—a form of identity constructed on the basis of a self-constructed life-narrative, which becomes a source of meaning and self-understanding. This article wishes to present chosen instances of life writing whose subjects resist yielding a life-story and reject the notions of narrative and identity. In line with Adam Phillips’s remarks regarding Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975), such works—which I refer to as fragmentary life writing—emerge out of a profound scepticism about any form of “fixing” oneself and confining the variety and randomness of experience to one of the available autobiographical plots.
The primary example of the genre is Joe Brainard’s I Remember (1975)—an inventory of approximately 1,500 memories conveyed in the form of radically short passages beginning with the words “I remember.” Despite the qualified degree of unity provided by the fact that all the recollections come from the consciousness of a single person, the book does not arrange its content in any discernible order—chronological or thematic; instead, the reader is confronted with a life-in-fragments. Although individual passages could be part of a coming-of-age, a coming-out or a portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man narrative, Brainard is careful not to let any of them consolidate. An attempt at defining the characteristics of the proposed genre will be followed by an indication of more recent examples of fragmentary life writing and a reflection on its prospects for development.
This article recognises that for increasing numbers of teachers with no faith, religion may seem alien, and this may impact their choice of subject content knowledge. Teachers may, subconsciously, choose to teach aspects of religion(s) and non-religious worldviews which adhere to their own worldviews but ignore aspects with which they disagree. This theoretical article aims to examine the relationality between teachers’ personal worldviews and their choice of subject content knowledge for inclusion into their RE teaching. Current literature on worldviews and RE, alongside research into teachers’ professional knowledge, is examined to investigate this relationality. Implementing a Ricoeurian lens provides theoretical insight into the relationality between teachers’ personal worldviews and their professional knowledge, in particular, their subject content knowledge. For teachers lack of subject content knowledge may be viewed as an insurmountable problem for effective RE teaching. Yet what constitutes teachers’ professional knowledge itself is questionable as is the relationality between personal worldviews and choice of subject content knowledge. This article recommends the provision of support for teachers to become worldview conscious to illuminate these (un)conscious omissions of religion(s) and non-religious worldviews and challenge any unexamined bias.
The paper deals with the problematic relation between literature and sociology. The use of literary sources has generally been intended as a sort of embellishment of the often inelegant sociological speech. The author argues that literary narratives may be also adopted as an appropriate source of data, provided that social scientists take into account the methodological paradox of fictional texts used to understand non-fictional social phenomena. By confronting with an essay by Peter Laslett, in which a cautious use of literary sources is advocated, the paper attempts to show the truth value of literary texts, by chiefly making reference to Paul Ricœur’s concept of mimesis. The paper underlines, moreover, that the use of literary sources by social scientists entails a sociological translation and an unavoidable reduction of the complexity of the literary work.
This paper analyzes Abuddin Nata's book of tafsīr tarbawī (Qur'ānic educational interpretation) entitled Tafsīr Ayat-Ayat Pendidikan ("Interpretation of Educational Verses") on the basis of Paul Ricoeur's ideas of hermeneutics. It does so through its main postulation of distanciation and appropriation through the dialectics of understanding or comprehension (verstehen) and explanation (erklären), using two primary stages: from naïve understanding to explanation through guessing; and from explanation to comprehension (deep understanding) through contextualization. This paper claims that the still contested methodology of tafsīr tarbawī is reflected in the dominance of the author's subjectivity vis-à-vis the objectivity of the text. Such a claim is based on its minimal distanciation using the original verbal meanings of the Qur?ān, while the appropriation is dominated by the author's own horizon. The implication is that Tafsīr Ayat-Ayat Pendidikan does not reflect the correct degree of fusion between the texthorizon and the author's horizon as Paul Ricoeur suggested should be the case.
This chapter analyses a series of narratives constructed by and between ‘Chad’, a post-Access student, and one of the authors, an educational researcher. Chad’s narratives represent some of the experiences she had during her textiles degree. It is argued that how well students use their practical wisdom is partly dependent on the quality of the education they have received. A key question here is the extent to which mature adults sometimes continue to make poor decisions and to act in ways that perpetuate their sufferings because they do not exercise their potential to act with phronesis or practical wisdom? This discussion recounts some noticeable elements of Chad’s story that sometimes are linked to phronesis while at other times point to the absence of it.
This chapter offers a framework for understanding how practical wisdom can be enabled or disabled in an educational context. It provides a theoretical lens with which to bring the experiences of post-Access students into focus. Aristotle described practical wisdom as being gained through a long life of experience. Post-Access students often have rich life experiences which potentially can help them make good judgements about their education that contributes towards living a good life for themselves and their families. Narratives of their experiences can be understood as the art of representing and capturing decision-making, actions and consequences. It argues that students as well as educators can use practical wisdom to act well for others: their peers; their families and for the common good.
This chapter is one of two conceptual chapters that set up the analytical foundation for the remaining empirical case studies which are mainly historical in character. The first chapter focuses on the question: what is death? The secondary question: when death occurs, depends on what we think death is. This chapter addresses a number of questions: What and when is biological death? Can biological death be understood as an absolute state and/or is it partially present in the process of dying? What is social death? When is social death co-terminus with biological death? When is it not? How can we characterise the meaningful similarities and differences between biological and social death? Why should this matter?
This article revisits Jean-Louis Comolli's “Historical Fiction: A Body Too Much” (1978) in the spirit of film-philosophy's various efforts to reassess the field's seminal texts, and it recasts Comolli's attentive analyses of film acting in terms of the original interpretations they produce. In short, I look to “A Body Too Much’ for its subtle disclosure of an underappreciated substratum of hermeneutics in so called “1970s film theory.” Comolli's study of the discord between actor and referent, I argue, is surprisingly consistent with Paul Ricoeur's pioneering contemporaneous work on metaphor and interpretation, and it leads him to understand the meaningful deployment of film actors in very particular ways. I provide an extended analysis of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) to further demonstrate how the distinctive utilization of actors constitutes both a redescription of the historical past and a spur to interpretation. When critically apprehended as a solution to the broadly construed problems of creating historical fictions (pragmatic filmmaking problems, but also the significant matter of making meaning), the calculated deployment of film actors can reveal a manner of thinking about the historical past – simply put, it can tell us what a film is thinking and how it regards its historical characters and events. In the final analysis, I claim, our attention to – and critical interpretation of – the embodiment of such filmic thinking permits us to grasp the imaginative form of historical knowledge on view in such films.
This article compares Habermas’s and Taylor’s approach to the role of religious language in a liberal democracy. It shows that the difference in their approach is not simply in their theories of religious language. The contrast lies deeper, in their incompatible moral theories: Habermas’s universal discourse ethics vs Taylor’s communitarian substantive ethics. I also explore William Rehg’s defence of discourse ethics by conceding that it is based on a metavalue of rational consensus. However, I argue that Habermas’s and Rehg’s discourse ethics and translation proviso are untenable. While Taylor rightly argues that there is no reason to exclude religious reason from the formal political sphere, his proposed fusion of horizons to generate a new hybrid framework is also problematic. I suggest that Taylor’s historical hermeneutics should be extended to include the narrative approach to ethical deliberation as conducive to mutual experiential understanding, and hence to achieving a fusion of horizons of the diverse worlds of citizens in a liberal democracy.
Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for ‘transformative pedagogy for global citizenship’ remain under-theorized and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for ‘engaged global citizens’. It considers the political and philosophical framings of the self and other, citizen and world, that underlie this empirical work, especially with reference to reflexivity, hermeneutics, democratic engagement and co-production. The resultant pedagogical framework, based upon concepts of transformative learning, attempted to undercut the homogenizing tendencies within global citizenship education (GCE). This discussion highlights the tensions and reifying effects of educational frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK and the proposed framework for ‘global competence’ in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Evidence is presented that frameworks which attempt to make explicit educational phenomena and processes are overdetermined by efficacy and metrics that become perverse ends in themselves. While the anticipated project output here was the framework itself, the substantive output was, in fact, practical: namely the ongoing deliberation and reflection upon the discourses that both do and undo the task of locating the transformative dimension of GCE.
Aim:
To explore parents of preterm infants' experiences of caring for their preterm infants with the grandmother as their primary support after discharge.
Background:
Preterm delivery is the major cause of high neonatal mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is poor neonatal health outcome in the Ghanaian community with some illnesses culturally classified as not-for-hospital. In the community, grandmothers or elderly women provide support for new parents and decide treatment options for sick infants. However, there is paucity of research on how parents of preterm infants experience this support in the Ghanaian community.
Method:
Qualitative narrative inquiry methodology was utilised. Face-to-face interviews using semi-structured interview guide was used to collect data from 21 mothers and nine fathers. Participant observation and field notes were used to complement interview data. Thematic content analysis of data within the three dimensional narrative space was employed. Analysis focussed on the relationship of time, place, person and cultural practices affecting the care of preterm infants in the community.
Results:
Three themes emerged from the data namely; (1) Grandmother's prescriptions, (2) Fighting for the wellbeing of the infant and (3) Being in a confused state. Cultural practices mainly initiated by grandmothers resulted in adverse health problems for preterm infants and disruption in parents' mental health.
Conclusion:
As grandmothers perform their traditional role of supporting new parents to care for preterm infants after discharge, they give both positive and negative advice which can adversely affect the health of vulnerable preterm infants in the community. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
The development in Ricoeur’s concept of time did not receive as much attention as his move from eidetic to hermeneutic phenomenology and his Time and Narrative, with which it coincided. This paper attends to the lacuna, specifically departing from Ricoeur’s Husserlian eidetics and moving towards the influence of Augustine’s discussion of the main aporias of time. Initially, Paul Ricoeur’s philosophic approach can be described as a Husserlian eidetic phenomenology, which influenced the way in which he understood time. This changed somewhat when Ricoeur moved from eidetic to hermeneutic phenomenology. Ricoeur has developed his understanding of the concept of time since his initial writings up to the end of his academic career of 70 years. This article focusses on Ricoeur’s initial eidetic approach in Freedom and Nature and, in more existential terms, in Fallible man, but also focusses on the initial phase of his turn to hermeneutics in Volume 1 of Time and Narrative with his exposition of Augustine’s views on time. His eidetic approach stems from his appreciation for and extension of the work of Husserl, Marcel and Kant, while he also drew much from Heidegger and Gadamer after his hermeneutic turn. His initial arguments on the hermeneutic phenomenology of time flow from Augustine’s discussions of the aporias of time. The later extension of his understanding of time to include emplotment was a logical next step.
In the opening section of the book, I listed the following five research questions: (1) What are some of the prevalent features of EFL education in Japanese secondary schools? (2) How is ICC addressed in Japanese secondary school EFL education, and how do classroom actors
engage with this aspect of EFL education? (3) What elements of Japanese secondary school EFL education can be said to enable and/or constrain the development of ICC
? (4) Assuming that nihonjinron and native-speakerism are potential impediments to learners’ development of ICC, what can be said about the presence and importance of these two ideologies in Japanese secondary school EFL education? (5) What are the challenges involved in ICC-oriented education in Japanese JHS?. In the three previous chapters, I provided background information and theoretical grounds upon which the task of answering these questions becomes possible. In this chapter, I discuss methodology-related themes and issues pertaining to the study of nihonjinron and native-speakerism in observed EFL practices in Japanese JHS conducted in Chaps. 5 and 6. Together, these methodological issues center on the question investigating the presence and importance of the two ideologies
in observed EFL practices. Specifically, I survey a range of issues pertaining to the critical study of ideology in both written and spoken discourse
. Since Chap. 5 looks at traces of nihonjinron and native-speakerism in recent MEXT policy discourse, I begin this chapter by developing a CDA-oriented methodology
for the study of ideology in written text
. I then develop an approach in line with CCDA, or as I see it the study of ideology in text primarily of a spoken nature, to ground the work in Chap. 6. As will be shown, these two perspectives on ideology research share many similarities, although some important differences will become evident as the current chapter progresses.
According to the post-structuralist critique of the subject, we can no longer properly understand ourselves as a unified, sovereign subject, insofar as the overriding experience we have of ourselves is that of a decentred self, a subject that is constantly in process of becoming. While many feminists support this claim, others argue that endorsing it makes it impossible to develop an account of autonomy or political emancipation.
Realist and Marxist critiques of humanitarian intervention are distinctively materialistic in scope. The IR literature has already described this scepticism as a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, a term associated with the work of Paul Ricoeur, which aims to unearth the intervenors’ material and geopolitical interests hypocritically hidden behind the pretext of humanitarianism. The article first notes the decontextualised misappropriations of the term as an iconic and omnipotent instrument of doubt, as well as the limitations of the social constructivist response on the matter. By contextualising Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion as developed in his life work, the article then calls for an extension of critique from a hermeneutics of suspicion to a hermeneutics of naïveté. Applied in the critique of the ideology of humanitarian intervention, the article thus calls for a shift of focus from the examination of the distorting (Marxism, realism) and legitimising (social constructivism) functions of this ideology to its integrating function that has allowed the evocation of humanitarian principles as international norms, and uncritically vindicates this arrangement. The article proposes that this hermeneutical detour could allow critique to proceed to a greater analytical depth, opening up a set of critical questions.
This chapter examines religious education in primary and junior Catholic schools in Canada from the perspective of the development of curriculum structures and methodology in teaching. It focuses on the emergence of a practical hermeneutics and how it inserts itself in the religious education curriculum and applies itself to the Canadian cultural context. It draws examples from Canadian religious education resources to demonstrate how a practical hermeneutical approach functions on an integral level in the design and use of catechetical texts in Catholic school classrooms. The chapter investigates the relational power and transformative contribution of narrative hermeneutics with an emphasis on the aesthetic dimensions of teaching and the imagination as an invaluable ingredient in religious education. Overall, the chapter supports a narrative hermeneutical structure as occasion for revelation in curriculum and teaching in religious education.
As a Protestant writing in the second half of the twentieth century in western Europe, Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) could not ignore the recent legacy of theological liberalism despite his predominant philosophical interests. Although he did not share the “classical” liberal interest in Christology, Ricoeur was intensely concerned with the problematics of anthropology, hermeneutics, and hence biblical interpretation. These are all closely related to his notion of fallibility as the possibility of the existence of moral evil in the constitution of humanity, in close connection with some fundamental issues such as myth, symbolism, symbolism of evil, human reality, freedom, and transcendence. The significance of Ricoeur’s idea of fallibility is presented mainly in connection with contemporary radical Catholicism and especially with reference to the works of Edward Schillebeeckx. Ricoeur’s concept of fallibility and its satellite notions—myth, symbolism of evil, human reality, freedom, and transcendence—are analyzed in close relationship to Schillebeeckx’s anthropological idea of humble humanism. Then Ricoeur’s notion of fallibility is compared to Don Cupitt’s philosophical nonrealism, which posits the existence of God as merely a conceptual reality embedded in man’s consciousness.
Cooke strives to comprehend the limits and possibilities of the mythographical approach to knowledge production but undercuts questions of methodology through exploration of the metatheoretical conditions of possibility of a mythographical approach. As such, this is an ontological enquiry to an epistemological aporia. Highlighting how myths are understood in terms of the dichotomy mythos/logos, and thereby constituted as ‘the Other’ of logocentric metaphysics, he conducts a deconstructive reading of previous mythographic approaches. Drawing parallels between Dvora Yanow’s incommensurable values and Derridean différance, Cooke argues that ‘to know’ is itself a myth, enabling the potential expansion of myth analysis to all forms of knowledge. This chapter stages a necessary intervention for those who seek to better comprehend myth on its own terms, putting mythography ‘on edge’.
This study examines the structure of entrepreneurial stories in pursuit of mobilizing resources from crowds. Based on a comparative analysis of Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns, we examine in particular how, across different project types, project histories and potential futures are framed and interlinked in narratives to appeal to funders. We find that projects are narrated in different styles—as “ongoing journeys” or “results-in-progress”—to convey project value. The former style narrates projects as longer-term endeavors powered by creative initial ideas and a bold vision, inviting audiences to “join the journey”; the latter narrates projects more narrowly as a progression of accomplishments, engaging the audience instrumentally to support next steps. We find that styles are used and combined in different ways, reflecting the tangibility of project outcomes, the sophistication of technology, and the social orientation of projects. Also, successful differ from unsuccessful campaigns in using narratives more coherently. Findings inform research on narrative processes in entrepreneurship and innovation, and research on the mobilization of crowds.
There is on-going debate in the United States about the best way for higher education to prepare students to become thoughtful world citizens who can compete successfully for jobs in the global environment. Students today must develop creative, critical, analytical, and pragmatic skills necessary to respond to a wider variety of cultural, economic, social, and political variables at a faster pace of change than their peers have faced in the past.
This paper draws on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation to highlight aspects of the existential realities that emerge woven within the narratives of people living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). It aims to give social workers and other professionals involved in inter-disciplinary care insight into the meaning-making process and the existential realities interwoven in accounts of lived experience, thereby validating this aspect of experience. To support this approach it also aims to make explicit the method used and interpretation applied to elicit these features. Ten adults with MS from across the North of England were recruited to tell their story related to the onset of, and adjustment to MS. Two of the narratives are presented, and through these, the method used for interpretation derived from the theory of Paul Ricoeur is demonstrated. What emerge, threaded within the events told in a triptych of past, present and future life envisaged, are glimpses of existential realities that evoke universal recognition such as abandonment, loss, acceptance; solidarity, aloneness, suffering and finally calm. The paper concludes that, given chronic conditions like MS often predispose existential deliberation, it is important that these dimensions of lived experience are acknowledged in professional encounters that seek to manage the condition and support people living well with it.
This article focuses on the transformative power of metaphor in narrative discourse. Narratological concepts are utilized in combination with Anton Boisen’s idea of “living human document”, Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, and Donald Capps’s “reframing”. By reordering plot, the story is recreated. Readers associate or disassociate with the characters in the story—in Ricoeur’s language, they can “appropriate” the story. The narrative example is the autobiography of Lloyd Cele, a young Zulu musician from South Africa, which tells his life story from childhood during the end of apartheid to young adulthood in post-apartheid South Africa. The root metaphor of his story can facilitate others to find their own root metaphor. This can empower them to transform from an “authentic I″ to an “authentic other”.
Using the analytical tools of broadening, burrowing and storying and restorying, this narrative inquiry examines a middle school teachers’ knowledge of her pedagogical practices through the strand of pearls’ metaphor that she employs to explain her teaching to herself, a beginning teacher whom she mentors and ourselves as researchers. Throughout the discussion, careful attention is paid to the pearl metaphor’s emergent, novel qualities and how the metaphor is held and expressed in the teacher’s unfurling practice. In the final analysis, four significant themes are unpacked: (1) the image of teacher as curriculum maker; (2) the idea of pearls, non-pearls and yellowed pearls; and (3) the concept of metaphors and the nature of metaphorical truth. Finally, a discussion of the veracity of the strand of pearls as way to understand teaching practice concludes the article.
Little is known about the experiences of operable lung cancer patients during treatment in a clinical setting based on fast-track surgery. The study aimed to explore (1) the embodied meaning of illness in patients with operable lung cancer during treatment to 4 months after surgery and (2) patterns of change over time that may affect the patients' daily lives. Twenty patients referred for lung cancer surgery were interviewed three times, corresponding to potential critical transition points following surgery: hospitalisation; hospital-to-home transition; and resumption of daily life activities. Data collection, analysis and interpretation followed a phenomenological hermeneutical approach inspired by Ricoeur and the theoretical framework was grounded in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception. The findings reveal the process patients went through in regaining familiarity with their own body after lung cancer treatment. Through the post-operative trajectory the patients' resumption of daily activities involved adjusting to a new awareness of everyday life, physical restrictions and their perception of themselves. The findings are expressed in four sub-themes: (1) perceptions of embodied alterations; (2) transformation of embodied structures in the transition from hospital to home was unexpectedly challenging; (3) embodied perceptions of the intersubjective world; and (4) transforming embodied disruptions into bodily awareness. Patients experienced a smooth treatment trajectory regarding physical consequences of illness and treatment which might be due to the fast-track surgery. Clinicians should be aware of patients' experiences of illness to facilitate patient reconstitution of own identity.
Stable category meanings act as institutions that facilitate market exchange by providing bases for comparison and valuation. Yet little is known about meaning construction in new categories or how meaning translates into valuation criteria. We address this gap in a descriptive study of these processes in an emerging category: modern Indian art. Discourse analysis revealed how market actors shaped the construction of meaning in the new category by reinterpreting historical constructs in ways that enhanced commensurability and enabled aesthetic comparisons and valuation. Analysis of auction transactions indicated greater intersubjective agreement about valuation over time as the new category institutionalized.
Prior research highlights storytelling as a means for entrepreneurs to establish venture legitimacy and gain stakeholder support. We extend this line of research by examining the role that projective stories play in setting expectations and the dynamics that ensue. Such attention highlights a paradox-the very expectations that are set through projective stories to gain venture legitimacy can also serve as the source of future disappointments. Because of inherent uncertainties that projective stories mask, ventures will likely deviate from their early projections, thereby disappointing stakeholders. This, in turn, can result in a loss of legitimacy. Recognizing that entrepreneurship is an ongoing process, we examine the constraints and possibilities of maintaining or regaining legitimacy through revised storytelling. We conclude the paper with implications for research on entrepreneurial storytelling as an ongoing process.
This article presents a novel interpretive approach to advancing knowledge of how practitioners locate purpose in their practice and how this in turn influences their practice. The approach is formulated by drawing upon and integrating the moral philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre with the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricouer. The article argues that this approach offers insight into the important role of narrative in producing self-understanding, rationalizing judgment, and justifying action. Original empirical material regarding a practitioner’s account of promoting a new planning concept is used to illustrate the elucidatory potential of the approach.
This article is an examination of the power-dynamics represented in two Afrikaans novels set in the Little Karoo region of South Africa; they are Dalene Matthee's Fiela's Child (1985) and Micki Pistorius's Sorg (2006). Both novels are set during the latter years of the nineteenth century, but were written and produced during the late-apartheid and early post-apartheid years. As a result, the novels reflect more of the socio-political concerns of the time in which they were produced than those of the time in which they are set. In telling of the ignoble events of history – small fictionalised stories of simple people and unrecorded, near-forgotten or whispered events – rather than the grand narrative of history, the novels lend themselves to a foucauldian reading of the depiction of docile bodies and the resistance to power: that is, to what Foucault called “an analytics of power”.
ABSTRACT In this article, I analyse "personal experience stories around the homosexual" that entered into the parliamentary debates on the Sexual Offences Act in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and shaped understandings of sexual citizenship in particular ways. Specific attention is paid to the effects of political storytelling involved in the making of British sexual citizens. I explore how the paradoxical figure of the evil homosexual emerges and how politicians, in telling stories of the evil homosexuality, police the border that can effectively separate sexual outsiders from sexual citizens. I conclude with an analysis of these stories, and how their telling is closely linked to the post-war social welfare thinking in Britain.
Purpose
The paper discusses the “narrative practices” utilised by women leading in a small sample of Early Years services in the North East of England. These Early Years settings are presented as an alternative site for studying women's experiences of leadership. It examines the way in which these women use narrative strategies and approaches to work in collaborative, community based services for young children and their families.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is drawn from a larger study into narratives of professional identity and their relation to interactional contexts. The study follows an interpretive paradigm, and used narrative and participative methodology and methods to work with a small number of participants purposively sampled from cohorts of the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL). Participants were involved in reflective conversations about their leadership supported by interactive, visual methods in five extended sessions over the course of twelve months. Data from the larger study which related to the theme of “narrative practices” was subsequently coded and interpreted to inform this study.
Findings
Data coded as “narrative practices” led to the establishment of three high level categories of narrative practice found in the study. These are summarised in the metaphors of “tent making” (creating and using symbolic and narrative space with others), “skilled dancing” (improvising, and remembering with others) and “orchestration” (reflexive attuning). Data suggests that women involved in the study drew on their experience and values to develop sophisticated narrative practices that were particularly adaptive, ethically sensitive and sustainable – often in spite of “official” masculine leadership cultures.
Research limitations/implications
This specific study only draws on narrative accounts of three women leaders in Early Years services and as such is not intended to generate generalizable theory. The intention of the study is to conceptualise women's leadership as narrative practice, and in so doing to direct further study into these practices as aspects of effective leadership.
Practical implications
The study develops new ways of conceptualising and interpreting women's leadership practices and opens up opportunities for further study in this field. Access to this material also provides individuals (including women leading in UK Early Years services) and opportunity for reflection on their own leadership practice.
Originality/value
This study is unique in using a form of highly participative, reflective methodology to consider women's use of narrative in leadership interactions in the UK Early Years sector. The study is the first in this sector to look at this specific topic using aspects of Ricoeur's (1984) narrative hermeneutics and in so doing generates new questions about women's narrative practices.
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