Collective Unity Research Articles

Fighting Smart: Living Systems Theory in the US Army's Strategic Thought

This article analyzes the relationship between living systems theory (LST) and the army's military doctrine in the 1980s. General Donn Starry, Colonel Mike Malone, and Major James Cary worked with James G. Miller, the founder of LST, to make the army more efficient at fighting a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. LST conceptualized that living organisms organized matter and energy and that its components could function because they worked as a part of the whole to adapt to their environment. The article reveals how these officers employed LST as a framework to model a reciprocal relationship between individual agency and collective unity in the army's hierarchical organization. Situating this doctrinal reform in the years after the end of the draft and the mainstreaming of neoclassical economics in the 1980s, it finds that the army officers were using LST to replace Robert McNamara's mechanical strategic paradigm used in the Vietnam War.

In Search of Actual Border in The Shadow Lines: A Geographical and Psychological Study

This qualitative research delves into the psychological demarcations within Amitav Ghosh’s “The Shadow Lines” by an intensive study of the characters’ intricate relationships with each other, creating a sense of internationalism. Set against the backdrop of the Indian subcontinent’s partition, the novel explores the artificial divisions of caste, nation, and identity, and their profound impacts on human relationships. This study examines both primary and secondary sources to dissect the intricate relationships among the characters, highlighting the devastating effects of psychological borders compared to physical ones. While geographical demarcations physically separate people, the psychological borders ingrained in individuals’ minds create deeper, more enduring divisions. This research underscores how these mental boundaries perpetuate alienation, contrasting with the moments of collective unity despite physical separations. Through a meticulous analysis of character dynamics, the paper argues that psychological borders are more harmful, influencing emotions and identities on a fundamental level. The study offers significant insights into the themes of identity, trauma, and demarcation in literature, contributing to a deeper understanding of how mental and social divisions shape human interactions and societal structures.

Transforming culture through “communication” (rituals): The “banality” of public creativity in Belarus

ABSTRACT This article investigates how culture is transformed via public creative endeavors in modern-day Belarus. From ethnographic observations and analyses of cultural discourses, it shows how public creative practices facilitate the conditions for social and cultural change – not necessarily change to the political regime – but change that leads to the processes of creation and adaptation, or a “banalization” of recurring daily practices. These practices can facilitate new social and cultural forms that become a part of common, everyday life. To illustrate this process of change, we highlight two instances of public creativity: a hybrid state and a grassroots event called Poetry Yard, and a public meeting at an independent grassroots event, CreativeMornings Minsk. They show how collective unity is constructed via “communication” rituals and how new cultural forms are created, maintained, and routinized.

RELIGIOUS PLURALITY AND THE URGENCY OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN INDONESIA

This article elucidates the crucial significance of cross-cultural communication in the context of religious diversity. Religious diversity is an established reality that can be attributed to the genesis of each religious tradition in a multicultural milieu. Inadequate handling of the diverse array of global religions may give rise to potential issues of instability and disharmony among heterogeneous religious communities. This article examines plausible behavioral trends that may be employed to foster amity and collective unity among religious groups that possess inherent diversity. The present article utilizes Luc Reychler's indicator formula as a novel methodology for addressing issues. As mentioned earlier, the indicators encompass a diverse range of components deemed essential for promoting peaceful outcomes. The variables mentioned above include but are not limited to, efficient communication methods, a robust conflict resolution mechanism, a conducive environment for integration (also known as bridging social capital), a sufficient number of leaders who prioritize peace, and unbiased frameworks.

Affective Cartographies of Collective Blame

Abstract In both Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia, COVID-19 lockdowns were enforced through public scrutiny of the movements of supposedly ‘irresponsible’ individuals. Denouncing their impact on public health created an affective cartography of collective blame uniting State and society in shared moral indignation. Produced through assemblages of mainstream and social media and government statements, such mediated spectacles engendered a sense of collective unity and shared purpose at a time when both collective cohesion and narratives of individual responsibility were of particular interest to the State. Spatio-temporal maps and diagrams of culpable contagion helped materialise the invisible movement of the virus but also enabled identification of the sick. Some bodies more than others were made to carry the morality of the collective enterprise of stopping the virus.

Inclusive marketing: Muslims’ influence on marketers' behaviour in non-Muslim majority country: evidence from New Zealand

PurposeEmerging public discourses on Islam and Islamophobia in Western countries have led to religious discrimination among this group. This exploratory study aims to understand how marketers promote anti-discrimination efforts against Muslims on the notion of future collective unity.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study uses Social Identity theory to explain the behaviour and attitude of vulnerable Muslims. The dimension of racialisation, the Whiteness theory, the oppression model and the ethnocentrism theory were synthesised to explain the practice of racism and oppression. The theory of customer diversity, equity and inclusion was synthesised to understand the importance of inclusive marketing. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 15 senior marketing executives.FindingsThis study observed how the minority Muslims had influenced the marketers' behaviours in combating anti-religious discrimination through various tactics such as extending the corporates' products and services offerings, being inclusive and avoiding stereotyping in their marketing communication styles and shifting the company's processes and systems to meeting this group's cultural needs.Research limitations/implicationsWhile this study sample's demographics were motivated by senior marketing executives' profiles, most of the participants were highly educated, had similar cultural backgrounds and were mainly from the West.Originality/valueThis study attempts to shed light on the understanding of Muslims’ discrimination or Islamophobia in non-Muslim majority countries. It is hoped that this study acts as a catalyst for collective unity and would galvanise communities, including marketers to tackle discrimination through a better understanding of a targeted group like Muslims in the marketplace. In this current time of racial and religious tension, business leaders and marketers can act as mediators of social change to normalise more positive relations between minority and mainstream consumers.

Co-CEP: A co-designed community engagement protocol as a catalyst for cybersecurity research in Africa: The case of northern Namibia

Through technology, the world has become a global village, connecting geographically distant people into virtual neighbors. This presents many opportunities for individuals, businesses, and remote communities. The advantages of this connectivity have been brought to the fore by COVID-19, as technology and the Internet kept the world connected and functioning. However, in Africa, although much has been done on connecting the unconnected, there remains rural underserved communities. Notwithstanding the benefits of technology and the Internet, the cyber-safety and cybersecurity of those communities living on the fringes of society – rural underserved communities – is unknown. Consequently, many researchers, noting the benefits of technology, have embarked on ICT for Development projects (ICT4D). However, community based ICT4D projects have been failing due to myriad of factors. Some such factors are engagement misalignment, cultural faux pas’, communication, power dynamics and community-buy-in of end-products. With the propensity to circumvent the shortcomings indicated above, Participatory Design (PD) processes may be utilized. Co-design extends PD by allowing researchers and participants to be equals in the creation of solutions to problems contrary to traditional research approaches, that abstract researchers from the community within which they work. As an effort to address these challenges, we present a co-designed community engagement protocol (co-CEP) for rural underserved communities in Northern (Oukwanyama), Namibia. This study was qualitative, guided by Ubuntu and Uushiindaism tenets of trust, neighbourliness, respect, familiarity, hospitality, and collective unity as pillars of fostering communication within 4 villages in Oukwanyama, Namibia. The aim was to understand the concepts of how information flows in order to get engagement from community members for cybersecurity research. We held 4 co-design sessions in 4 villages, with each feeding into the next. The presented co-CEP comprises of 13 elements that are key to successful community engagement within community-based technology projects, especially cybersecurity research. The co-CEP is part of a research study on co-designing cybersecurity practices with rural underserved communities.

Embracing Te Ao Māori to Rebuild a Sustainable Future for Chefs in Aotearoa New Zealand

The professional kitchen is a fast-paced environment often founded on hierarchical structures and stressful working conditions. Within this environment, tensions often run high resulting in aggressive behaviours, and at times, bullying and violence towards junior chefs. For the last decade the hospitality sector has been struggling to recruit and retain aspiring chefs into the professional kitchen. Compounding the recruitment issue is the social narrative that the hospitality industry is a poorly paid profession that works long and unsociable hours. Due to the global pandemic the hospitality sector has suffered significant upheaval resulting in significant numbers of its workforce choosing to leave the industry. Like other countries around the globe, the hospitality sector in Aotearoa New Zealand is having to rethink and reset the way it operates in a new post covid landscape. Central to this is the questioning of established modes of practice and reimagining a new hospitality future. In response to the changing landscape of hospitality, the Bachelor of Culinary Arts programme at Te Kura Matakini ki Otago (Otago Polytechnic), Aotearoa New Zealand developed a bicultural pedagogic framework that embraces te ao Māori values. As a strategy to educate chefs into alternative workplace behaviours and cultures the values of manaakitaka (care and integrity towards self and others), whānaukataka (integrity of relationship), and kotahitaka (a sense of collective unity and ownership) are deliberately integrated into the programmes pedagogy and the courses learning outcomes. In doing so, this pedagogic framework upholds the world views, values, and mana of Aotearoa’s takata whenua (Indigenous people), while also attempting to rebalance the historical practices of the professional kitchen.

The Collective Unity of Reason in the FirstCritique

AbstractUnity is a central concept in theCritique of Pure Reason, since it is only through the unifying act of our spontaneous faculties that an experience can emerge, according to Kant. However, the faculty of reason brings forth a different unity than that of the understanding: Kant characterizes the former as a collective unity, while the latter as a distributive unity. This article aims to explain the meaning of these terms, with reference to theNachlasson metaphysics and the writings on right where Kant employs them in a clearer manner. This explanation can provide a basis to understand the difference between the faculty of understanding and the faculty of reason within the firstCritique, a difference rather neglected by scholars, who have focused mainly on Kant’s distinction between sensibility and understanding.

Becoming authoritarian for the greater good? Authoritarian attitudes in context of the societal crises of COVID-19 and climate change

Authoritarianism is widely conceived as destructive phenomenon that threatens liberal societies. However, some scholars suggest that authoritarianism is beneficial both for individuals' sense of control and goal attainment within groups. In line with this reasoning, collective problems, such as the COVID-19 crisis and climate change, may go hand in hand with increased levels of authoritarianism. While individuals may generally reject the abstract ideas of authoritarian rule and intolerance, societal threat may require individuals to weigh liberal values against needs for collective unity and action. Thus, individuals are expected to show less support for abstract authoritarian ideas compared to authoritarian ideas that are directed at dealing with a specific societal crisis (crisis-related authoritarianism). Following the notion that authoritarianism serves as an antiliberal means for achieving collective goals, relative increases in crisis-related authoritarianism hinge on the rejection of the means being outweighed by the perceived importance of the goal. While authoritarian disposition captures general tendencies to accept the means, trust in science serves as a proxy for the perceived importance of COVID-19 and climate change mitigation. The relative increase in crisis-related authoritarianism should be particularly pronounced among individuals who are not predisposed to authoritarianism and who trust in science. Findings from a cross-national survey experiment in Germany (N = 1,480) and Spain (N = 1,511) support this reasoning. Participants answered four items covering authoritarian submission and aggression either on an abstract level (control condition), or applied to the COVID-19 crisis or the climate change crisis. Participants were more supportive of authoritarian ideas targeted at a specific collective problem as compared to abstract authoritarian ideas. Furthermore, the differences in authoritarianism between the control condition and the two societal crisis conditions decreased with authoritarian disposition and increased with trust in science. Exploratory analyses suggest that the main differences across experimental conditions are driven by authoritarian submission while the interaction effects are rather driven by authoritarian aggression. The study underlines the role of authoritarian ideas for collective goal attainment that exists above and beyond stable personal dispositions. As such, it sheds light on the conditions under which citizens conceive authoritarianism as justifiable.

Identifying Khizr: On the Paths of Goethe and Iqbal

Abstract Through an analysis of the legendary Islamic figure Khizr in the works of Norman O. Brown, Muhammad Iqbal, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, this essay proposes world literature as a methodology for deriving possible alternatives to existing worlds. By tracing the dialectic of individual and collective selfhood in the figure of Khizr, the author delineates the fault lines that the encounter with this elusive figure portends for bourgeois imperialist regimes of identity. The counterpoint conveyed through the figure of Khizr is one that unveils paths toward practices of self-de-particularization and a symbolism of collective unity. Even in the twenty-first century, the figure of Khizr continues to serve as a potential for reawakening a linkage between Marxism, Islamic mysticism, the poetics of prophecy, the politics of nonidentity, and the philology of cultural contact zones.

Ragnar Kjartansson and the Art of Pleasure

Ragnar Kjartansson and the Art of Pleasure

Los sueños del mundo, una interpretación del cine desde la psicología analítica

Analytical psychology proposes an analysis of the cinema that is completely different from other areas of psychology and very distant from the proposals of classical psychoanalysis. The difference between refers to the presence of symbolic interpretation versus semiotics, two opposing perspectives that represent radically different ways of seeing and standing before art and the world. Jungian cinematographic analysis defines the symbols as living messages constituting the cinematographic contents a kind of projected psyche. The origin of the images is located in the collective unconscious, in its archetypes, which will access consciousness from the active imagination. By experiencing the cinema, we recover images or myths that complete our personal and collective unity, stabilizing our psychic functioning and finding a kind of balance for the community. The creative process arises from the unconscious, both that of the director who creates, and that of the viewer who relives the plot, or of the actors who join the narrative with their interpretive force, all participate in the same state of connection with the unconscious contents and with the archetypal world

The Idea of Life as the First Form of Truth and Freedom

In Hegel’s philosophy, both truth and genuine freedom belong to the domain of the Idea. Life, as it is categorized in the Science of Logic, is the first form and stage of the Idea, and is therefore essential for a comprehension of truth and self-determination. In this paper, I explore why and to what extent Life is self-determining and true. Considering what Hegel considers to be the three fundamental features of all life, I explain how life is self-determining with respect to its organic unity, relationship with the other, and reproductive process. I explicate how the living individual develops and sustains the collective unity of its objectivity, distinguishes itself from its other, yet sustains and regenerates itself through it, and how it raises its universal identity beyond its particular existence through reproduction.

Bench Reflections on Healing and Patient Care.

Benches are a metaphor for a shared place of rest and reflection for patients and their loved ones as well as for physicians and other health care clinicians. The Healing Bench artwork thus represents the collective unity of communal decision making and reflections, as clinicians deliver compassionate patient care from bench to bedside.

Dimensions of Sense of Membership in a Sport Fan Community: Factors, Outcomes, and Social Capital Implications

Through developing the Sport Fan Sense of Community (SFSC) scale, this study examined the factors that would constitute a sense of membership in a sport fan community, the impact of these factors on behavioral and psychological outcomes of membership, and their influence on the creation and maintenance of social capital through membership in the sport fan community. Sport fans ( N = 525) were surveyed and data were analyzed through a two-step confirmatory factor analysis and subsequent structural equation model analyses. A total of 17 items under five key factors were resulted for the SFSC scale, including Collective Unity, Positivity, Inclusivity, Social Opportunities, and Knowledgeable Members. These factors significantly ( p < .05) contributed to the psychological outcomes related to cognitive and affective benefits, as well as behavioral outcomes of increased game attendance, merchandise sales, and positive word of mouth. An individual’s sense of membership in the fan community also contributed to his/her bridging and bonding of social capital. This study built on previous conceptualizations of sport fan communities and developed the SFSC scale to delineate, specify, and measure one’s sense of membership in a fan community. The findings help further the theoretical understanding of sport fan communities and also provide evidence for sport organizations to identify operational areas in which they can communicate with consumers in order to create, channel, and sustain stronger communities.

The Dialectical Illusion in Kant’s Only Possible Argument for the Existence of God

AbstractThe nature of Kant’s criticism of his pre-Critical ‘possibility proof’ for the existence of God, implicit in the account of the Transcendental Ideal in the Critique of Pure Reason, is still under dispute. Two issues are at stake: the error in the proof and diagnosis of the reason for committing it. I offer a new way to connect these issues. In contrast with accounts that locate the motivation for the error in reason’s interest in an unconditioned causal ground of all contingent existence, I argue that it lies in reason’s interest in another kind of unconditioned ground, collective unity. Unlike the conception of the former, that of the latter directly explains the problematic ontological assumption of the possibility proof, the existence of intelligible objects as the ground of possibility. I argue that such Platonic entities are assumed because they are amenable to the kind of unity prescribed by reason. However, since the interest in collective unity has a legitimate regulative use when applied to the systematic unity of nature, the conception of God entailed by the possibility proof is retained as a regulative idea of reason.

Gendered isolation, idealised communities and the role of collective power in West Bengal self-help groups

Empowerment and power have long been fervently contested in feminist theory and geography. Much debate focuses on whether empowerment is mainly monetary or more holistic and emancipatory. In both cases, most of the literature centres on individual empowerment and internal ‘power within’. Much less attention, however, has been given to the idea of ‘power with’ and how friendship, solidarity and emotional connections are fundamental to empowerment and yet are highly vulnerable to outside influence. Drawing on field research from Self-Help Groups in West Bengal, this article highlights how the formation of ‘power with’ is particularly important in contexts of gendered isolation, where patriarchy is enacted through the spatial control of women and removal of women from the public sphere, illustrating that communities in the Global South are not necessarily sites of collective unity and cohesion. These findings contest both idealised notions of community and mainstream theories of power and empowerment and in turn, provide crucial insights for feminist geography and power theory.

CREATING TARAS SHEVCHENKO’S CULT ON THE TERRITORY OFTHE SUMY REGION DURING THE PERIOD OF THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION (1917-1921)

Within the article, an attempt is made to trace the process of creating quasi-religious Taras Shevchenko’s cult on the territory of the Sumy region at the turning point of history for the Ukrainian nation - national liberation struggle during 1917-1921. The fact is admitted that within Taras Shevchenko’s cult the ways of the reality mythical perception manifest distinctly. Its main methods of functioning are identified: celebrating holidays and holding demonstrations, erecting the monuments, naming natural and cultural objects after the Kobzar, using his image in book publishing. Shevchenko’s holiday phenomenon is reconstructed on the example of celebrations in the towns of Sumy and Konotop, also in the villages of Perekopivka and Vedmezhe (Romny county). The point is stressed that erecting the monuments (busts) to Shevchenko and performing sacred rituals of worshipping nearby constitute a symbolic action of forming the sense of collective unity of Ukrainians. As an example, the history of creating the monument to the Kobzar in the town of Romny and the bust in the township of Voronizh is considered. The attention is paid to the precedents of naming after Shevchenko numerous new points of the cultural landscape during the period of reconstructing the symbolic space at the time of the Revolution on the territory of the Sumy region. Specific examples in the sphere of toponymy are cited. The role of “Prosvita” fellowship centres is emphasized. They played the part of either organizers or participants of the majority of commemorative practices for honoring the figure of Shevchenko. Some facts of establishing the book publishing by “Prosvita” fellowship centers in the Sumy region are given. The Kobzar’s figure and creative heritage were often popularized by means of those books and brochures (Konotop, Okhtyrka, and Pidlypne). The specificities of Shevchenko’s image interpretation within the Bolshevik ideology are covered in the article. Unlike Ukrainians, who paid more attention to the national character of Shevchenko’s creative heritage, the Bolsheviks underscored its class and revolutionary features. The absence of antagonistic differences and the presence of numerous points of agreement in Kobzar’s image interpretation by “nationalists” and communists should also be emphasized. The conclusion is drawn about the importance of Shevchenko’s cult on the territory of the present-day Sumy region for spreading Ukrainian national and Socialist ideologies in broad masses’ consciousness. Keywords: Taras Shevchenko, cult, the Sumy region, national identity

Ecovillages: worldview as an attempt of solving global ecological problems

Introduction, The article is dedicated to the concept of ecovillage as an extremely actual phenomenon in the situation of growing social conflicts and environmental crisis nowadays. The aim of the study is to attempt to analyze the worldview of this environmental movement and the eco-settlers’ ways of changing the world. For this purpose we need to realize the following tasks: 1) to find out what eco-settlements are, what their basic principles and principles are; 2) to distinguish philosophical elements that nourish a special attitude to the environment; 3) analyze what perceptions about eco-habitats exist in the conditions of lack of proper knowledge about them, and to find out what prevents from fully assessing their potential to socialize and improve the environmental situation in the world. Research methods. For this the author will use the observation method as well as the analytical method, involving in the theoretical part a number of practical cases explaining the activity and functioning of ecological settlements. Research results: Particular attention is paid to the model of the «circular economy», examples of its functioning in the world, in particular in the Ukrainian experience, are given. The concept of permaculture as a kind of experimental embodiment of ancient dialectics is also examined in detail. The basis of social relations in ecological settlements is analyzed – the theory of sociocracy, which is designed to create a sense of collective unity. The theory used by ecovillages makes such communities more mature and resilient in conflict situations. The ideology of simplification, as well as the approach to consumption in sustainable communities, which are characterized by conscious minimalism, is considered. Discussion. The article also discusses the widespread concept of ecovillages as a kind of utopia or a consequence of eschatological consciousness. The fallibility of this view is proved. As for conclusion, that is the statement about the possibility of solving the global through the local, because in the world view of eco-settlements, this possibility is embedded in the principles of permaculture. There are two common stereotypes about sustainable communities that allow us to look at our perceptions of this alternative way of living.