Contemporary Crisis Research Articles

Concerning Science

Concerning Science David K. Hecht (bio) Andrew Jewett,Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020. 356 pp. Notes and index. $42.00 Science matters. In his impressive Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America, Andrew Jewett skillfully explores a variety of different critiques of science across twentieth-century United States history. These critiques do not always align in their particulars: some are based in religion, while others are secular. Some come from the political right, others from the left. Some seem to originate from the cultural margins, whereas others were mainstream. Moreover, as Jewett acknowledges, there is no consistent definition of science that runs through all the critiques. What unites them is a sense that there is something amiss in the world—modernity, secularism, amorality, dehumanization, totalitarianism, materialism, technocracy—and that science is to blame. Science matters, for these critics, and in all the wrong ways. Science under Fire can be profitably read as a comprehensive treatment of science skepticism in modern U.S. history. Jewett effectively distills the essences of a staggeringly wide range of thinkers and writers across many decades. “Although a concern with science’s corrupting cultural effects has never been the dominant strain in American thinking about science,” he writes, “it has been persistent, influential, and consequential for nearly a century—above all, in the post-World War II ‘golden age’” (p. 16). Having accelerated after 1945, such skepticism has become entrenched in recent decades and one of its most prominent manifestations—climate change denial—is proving to have planetary implications. However, Jewett, counterintuitively but powerfully, scarcely mentions climate change. While some readers might wish for a greater engagement with our contemporary crisis, I welcomed Jewett’s more historical focus. After all, we have any number of thoughtful analyses concerning the origin and nature of climate change denial.1 What we don’t have is exactly what Science under Fire provides: a synthesis of science skepticism before the current era. Like all good history, this book demonstrates that its subject is far more complicated than we might assume simply by considering its most recent form. [End Page 389] This is an important contribution. But science also matters here in a deeper and more methodologically novel way. Jewett uses “science” as a tool with which to explore American intellectual history more broadly. This is not a history of science, but rather an account of the many ways in which American thinkers, writers, clergyman, and educators mobilized science as a rhetorical concept in defining and pressing their social visions. Jewett explains: “this book explores conceptions of science as a social and cultural force, rather than a method or a subject” (p. 5). Precisely because these actors’ ultimate concerns lay outside of science, the stakes of the debate were monumental. Jewett writes, for example, of the concerns of many American Catholics that teaching evolution was just one more expression “of a materialistic, self-divinizing form of rationalism that had plagued the West for centuries” (p. 61). Similarly, he contends that after World War II “it became a matter of simple common sense for many scholars that the Western world was experiencing an epochal modern crisis and that scientism lay at its root” (p. 123). Few of the critics who populate the pages of Science under Fire saw their concerns in narrow, policy terms; even those who offered political critiques did so with an eye toward epic battles between democracy and freedom on one hand with totalitarianism and repression on the other. Science under Fire is thus an intellectual history of (perceived) cultural and intellectual crisis. As such, it should be read alongside such books as Andrew Hartman’s A War for the Soul of America (2015), Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s The Ideas that Made America (2019), or Daniel T. Rodgers’ Age of Fracture (2011). All three of these books—and there are certainly others—are ambitious and impressive syntheses of much intellectual history (and historiography) in the service of understanding the grand sweep of American culture and ideas. Jewett’s contribution to this literature is to focus on science. Of course, he is not the first intellectual historian...

Neo-liberal ideology and the New World: An Interview with Marcel Gauchet

Abstract This interview was initiated by Natalie J. Doyle in Paris, a few months only after the publication in 2017 of Le nouveau monde, the last volume of Marcel Gauchet’s four volume history of liberal democracy, published over the course of ten years. It was then continued via email over the course of the following four years. Le nouveau monde offers a wide-ranging historical and theoretical analysis of the contemporary crisis of Western liberal-democratic culture on which the 2020 pandemic has thrown more light because of the neo-authoritarian management of the heath crisis in the Western world. In 2021, it was thus seen necessary to extend the interview to include questions about this reassertion of the political in Western societies but in an illiberal form.

When We Fail to Understand Ourselves

The mobilization of Christian discourse by versions of nationalism, na­tivist populism, and champions of "Western civilization" puts new pressure on the question of how theologians should relate Christian resources for imagining communal identity to the general processes of representation in society at large. In this article, I analyze the contemporary crisis of rep­resentation as a problem on the symbolic level of societies: as a crisis of social intelligibility. I do so in order to develop a theological perspective on how churches can respond to these crises and what resources theol­ogy may offer to the larger project of understanding our contemporary political crises. In particular, I suggest that we develop a theological analysis of the limits of representation, which will, among other things, involve attention to the times and places of social unintelligibility.

Teacher Entrepreneurship, Co-Creation Strategy, and Medical Student Entrepreneurship for Sustainability: Evidence from China

The volatile and changing healthcare landscape, heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and other contemporary crises, poses challenges to the sustainable development of medical education, and integrating innovation and entrepreneurship into medical education is the avenue by which to address the current and future medical challenges. Medical student entrepreneurship education (MSEE) contributes to the individual and social sustainable development of students in terms of their future careers. To investigate the effect of teacher entrepreneurship on MSEE, a hypothesis model of MSEE that includes teachers’ entrepreneurial competence (TEC), teachers’ entrepreneurial behaviors (TEB), and co-creation strategy (CCS) was constructed on the basis of symbolic interactionism. A total of 714 samples were collected from entrepreneurial teachers in Chinese medical universities for quantitative analysis. This study confirmed our hypothesis that TEC and TEB have a positive and statistically significant direct impact on MSEE. As demonstrated in the mediation effect test, when CCS was added as the mediating variable, TEC and TEB had a statistically significant indirect effect on MSEE. With empirical evidence from China, the study provided a new perspective for deepening the research on MSEE and laid the foundation for interdisciplinary research on medical education and entrepreneurship education. The findings contribute to entrepreneurial learning and pedagogical practices in medical education for the sustainable development of medical students.

Corfu General State Archives from Local to Global: Knowledge, Innovation and Creativity as Key Factors in the Sustainable Management of Our Cultural Heritage

The article aims to present the importance of archival institutions not only for local history and culture, but also for the history of a broader geographical area. As repositories of historical documents, archives furnish valuable insights into many topics. The Ionian Islands form the best example of social, economic, political and cultural osmosis in the Mediterranean world. This uniqueness makes the Archives of Corfu an invaluable asset for research. Since the contemporary crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic, has served to illustrate that cultural institutions should explore new avenues of cultural management, the article also suggests that the level of innovation and creativity achieved during the crisis should be maintained to ensure that our new normal is part of a brighter future.

Borders, Belonging, and Refugee Memory since the Greco-Turkish War and Population Exchange

What cultural, historical, institutional, and legal paradigms have the Greco- Turkish War and Population Exchange bequeathed to national and trans-national practices of border-making, border-crossing, and heritage-claiming over the past century, and how have subsequent experiences reshaped the original paradigm? We approach this question through four distinct categories: namely, the historical trajectory of refugee identity and its different political and cultural legacies in Greece and Turkey; the racialization of religion, which has helped to rewrite the boundaries of citizenship and belonging over the past century; the paradigm of peacekeeping by partition that the Population Exchange handed down to the international diplomatic norms of subsequent decades, along with the widespread regime of unseeing on which it depends; and, finally, memory practices that establish templates for remembering refugee pasts as well as making sense of contemporary crises.

Design and Responsible Innovation. Ethics and Caring as Keys to Addressing Contemporary Crises

Current global crises have generated profound environmental, social and economic instability, exacerbating the so-called “North–South divide”. To cope with increasing uncertainty and complexity, design has faced profound structural changes and reviewed its approaches. Design has come to the Responsible Innovation concept to define perspectives on how to develop products and services with a positive impact and create new forms of individual and collective knowledge. Based on ethical values of caring, Responsible Design focuses on ideas and practices that enable designers to address complex eco-socio-political wicked problems. At the intersection between Responsible Innovation and design cultures and practices, several examples of local and global initiatives can be identified. To better understand the state of the art and envision possible developments of Responsible Design, a selection of case studies was analysed, and action research was carried out. Thus, two perspectives emerge: 1) Design for Responsible Innovation; 2) and Responsible Innovation applied to Design. In both views, design becomes ethically responsible, empowering people to take care of themselves, their communities and the environment.

Catholic Church and a ministry of spiritual assistance in the dimension of sexuality development

In view of the omnipresent contemporary crisis of truth, it seems a purposeful and valuable activity to approximate, clarify, as well as correct or recify the vision of the Catholic Church's teaching regarding treatment of man as a sexual being. The purpose of the article is to attempt to present selected elements of the teachings of the Catholic Church on sexuality, considering the ways in which sexual education is understood and identifying persons who are most acccountable for that dimesion of education. The inquiry is conducted from the point of view of an educator. The source literature of this study consists of selected documents of the Catholic Church. Other studies on the topic were also analysed. Based on the analysis of the documents, it may be conculded, that the Catholic Church attaches great importance to the issues connected with sexuality and sexual education. Such education should be based on integral vision of man. It is emphasized that this sphere should be considered in the context of the development of the whole human being, whose fundamental taks in life is love understood as the gift of self. Sexual education is therefore tantamount to education for love. It involves assisting children and youth in their search for the answer to the most important questions concerning the meaning and purpose of life, as well as the ideas and values which determine the trajectory of human existence on Earth. An element of the analysed dimension of upbringing is both the introduction of young people to issues related in a strict sense to the biological functioning of man as a being endowed with sex, and the formation of views and attitudes towards himself and other people. Given the strength and primordiality of the natural family bonds, this responsible task should be delegated mainly to parents. It is parents who are to the greatest degree responsible for the formation of children to whom they have passed on their lives. All other educational instituations should conform to the principle of subsidiarity and respect the precedence of parental rights and obligations. The ministry of spiritual assistance in the delicate sphere of the development of sexuality is the task of parents, who are the most important educators. All parents are obliged to undertake that difficult task, which requires creation of the climate of trust, closeness and mutual respect in the family, as well as gentleness and respect for the intimate shpere of children. It is essential, that all information be conveyd in a clear way and reach children in proper time.

A decisive moment: human rights or authoritarianism? It is a choice

The VUCA is a well-known business concept capturing that we live in an ever changing global and local landscape defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The convergence of profound changes brought about by new technologies and global crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the NATO defeat in Afghanistan constitute the root of the VUCA world. With the outset in these two contemporary crises I will explore what sort of change and lessons learned can be derived from what they caused. This historically defining moment may be the time where human rights are either marginalized for a long period of time or they take another step forward realizing the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of all rights in addressing global in-equalities.

European History in the Shadows of Crisis

AbstractThis article situates the practice of history in the commemoration and experience of contemporary crises. It argues that the current preoccupation with crisis reflects a failure of historical imagination produced by short‐term thinking that increasingly also governs higher education. The concept of crisis often falls short as a tool for understanding both the past and the contemporary world. Histories and accounts that emphasise sudden crisis or triumphal narratives of resolution fail to account for the deep structures and long‐term struggles that can be illuminated by historical research.

Migrants, Vagrants, and the Making of the Anthropocene

Migrants, Vagrants, and the Making of the Anthropocene

16Science and Medicine

Abstract This review considers three monographs that use innovative archival recovery techniques to expand our understanding of the connections between the history of science and medicine and sociopolitical and cultural phenomena across the early modern period to the present. Divided into three sections, our review first considers Kalle Kananoja’s Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa: Medical Encounters, 1500–1850, which demonstrates the ways that Atlantic African healers resisted colonial influence and adapted their practices to reflect innovative uses of global plant-based medicines. Part 2 of this review, Black Reproductive Health, examines Sara Clarke Kaplan’s The Black Reproductive: Unfree Labor and Insurgent Motherhood, which, importantly, revises longstanding assumptions about the ways that we understand and document reproductive health and justice, especially in the American Black community. Part 3, ‘Healthy’ Eating, discusses Elizabeth A. Williams’s Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750–1950, which deconstructs the so-called connection between appetite and wellness in science and medicine. We have chosen to focus on these works both for the important new insights that they offer to the field of the history of science and because they each speak to contemporary crises in public health and health inequity that continue to affect our local and global landscapes. We suggest that works such as these have the capacity not only to expand our field but also to counteract narratives of white supremacy and other cultural beliefs that stigmatize and oppress; these works show us how expanding our understanding of the origins and current practices of medical knowledge beyond our traditional Western narratives can help provide healthier and more equitable forms of care and wellness.

Ewangelia regułą życia osób konsekrowanych w nauczaniu Kościoła od Pawła VI do Franciszka

This article presents the importance of the Gospel in the life of consecrated persons according to the teaching of the Church from Paul VI to Francis. The teaching of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis point to the Gospel as the norm and rule of consecrated life. There are many points of convergence in the teaching of the post-conciliar popes on the evangelical character of the consecrated life. This issue is a clear example of the continuity of the teaching of the Church. Each of the Popes emphasizes their thought slightly differently, but they all unequivocally demand that consecrated persons be fully faithful to the Gospel. Because of the contemporary crisis of the consecrated life, these recommendations acquire particular significance and constitute a necessary signpost for the future.

Referencing Historical Practices and Emergent Technologies in the Future Development of Sustainable Textiles: A Case Study Exploring “Ardil”, a UK-Based Regenerated Protein Fibre

We are currently experiencing a global environmental crisis. Our waste culture is leading to huge irreversible damage to our planet and ecosystems. This is particularly evident in both the textile and food sectors, with a system-wide restructuring as to how we consume and source materials becoming ever more urgent. By considering our waste as resource, we can access a vast source of raw materials that is now being recognised as such. Viable materials in the form of waste have the potential for conversion into textiles. However, this proposed solution to our contemporary crisis is not new technology. Throughout the 20th century, science and industry have researched and developed materials from food waste to meet global demand for textiles in times of need, with a major development during the world wars being the invention of regenerated protein fibres (RPFs). For various reasons, this research was abandoned, but much of the development work remains valid. This research critically analyses work that has previously been done in the sector to better our understanding of the historical hindrances to the progression of this technology. By applying modern thinking and scientific advances to historical challenges, there is the potential to overcome previous barriers to utilising food waste as a resource. One of the key influences in the discontinuation of RPFs was the rise of petrochemical textiles. Our current understanding of the detriment caused by petrochemicals warrants a further review of historical emergent technologies. This paper uses Ardil fibre as a case study, and shows that there is a clear disparity between the location of historic research and where the research would now be helpful. Ardil was a British-made product, using peanuts sourced from the British Empire as the source of protein. Techniques used in the processing of Ardil could be better utilised by countries and climates currently producing large amounts of peanut byproducts and waste. Through this research, another historical concern that thwarted Ardil’s acceptance as a mainstream fibre was discovered to be its poor tensile strength. However, contemporary garment life cycles are far shorter than historical ones, with built-in obsolescence now being considered as a solution to fast fashion cycles by matching the longevity of the fibre to the expected use phase of the garment, but ensuring suitable disposal methods, such as composting. This research highlights the need for cross-disciplinary collaboration between sectors, with a specific focus on the wealth of valuable information available within historical archives for modern sustainability goals.

The Politics of Intersecting Crises: The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Climate Policy Preferences

AbstractFew contemporary crises have reshaped public policy as dramatically as the COVID-19 pandemic. In its shadow, policymakers have debated whether other pressing crises—including climate change—should be integrated into COVID-19 policy responses. Public support for such an approach is unclear: the COVID-19 crisis might eclipse public concern for other policy problems, or complementarities between COVID-19 and other issues could boost support for broad government interventions. In this research note, we use a conjoint experiment, panel study, and framing experiment to assess the substitutability or complementarity of COVID-19 and climate change among US and Canadian publics. We find no evidence that the COVID-19 crisis crowds out public concern about the climate crisis. Instead, we find that the publics in both countries prefer that their governments integrate climate action into COVID-19 responses. We also find evidence that analogizing climate change with COVID-19 may increase concern about climate change.

Paradoxes of mindfulness: The specious promises of a contemporary practice

The growing popularity of Western secular mindfulness programs in recent decades has frequently been criticized by sociologists. Mindfulness in this line of argument is viewed as the quintessential neoliberal and capitalist technology of the self. However, this – quite justified – functionalist critique does not account for how mindfulness is increasingly being used to escape growth driven-based optimization pressure. We therefore show, on the basis of our extensive empirical field research, how mindfulness is negotiated as a response to contemporary crises and social change, how this phenomenon can be understood as a symptomatic, contemporary cultural phenomenon. From our ethnographic data from 121 hours of participant observation in mindfulness courses in Germany and six interviews with mindfulness teachers, as well as analysis of relevant literature, we reconstruct four paradoxes of mindfulness. With reference to this, we show to what extent mindfulness is a program of specious promises. For in the final analysis, the broad accessibility and popularity of the program are based on the fact that its application is just as paradoxical as the social problems to which it promises to be a solution.

El rol transformador de los tribunales constitucionales como ¿estrategia clave y efectiva? para la reducción de las desigualdades y la erradicación de la pobreza extrema

The analysis and justification of inequality and extreme poverty and the need to eradicate or at least overcome them impose historical, ideological, and institutional reasons. Particularly concerning institutions and the new transformations of constitutionalism, this article aims to analyze the transformative role of constitutional courts as a key and effective strategy for reducing inequalities, but mainly for the eradication of extreme poverty. Based on a hypothetical and deductive methodology combined with a technique of indirect documentation analysis, it is concluded that the transformative role of constitutional courts as a key and effective strategy to confront contemporary crises in society, at least in the analysis of deliberative instruments such as public hearings to combat the eradication of extreme poverty, presents apparent effectiveness. The transformative role must recognize limits to the judicial function, especially when judicial decisions involving social rights are projected. Methodological and instrumental outlets of other sciences, together with greater recognition of judicial humility, seem to be a step to begin or, better, to resume the intended path.

BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY AND ITS RELEVANCE IN DIGITAL AGE

How fast the digitalization is affecting all corners of our life and where does it leave our philosophical, ethical aspirations and cherish the ideals of democratic world, equality, privacy protection, trust and societal autonomy is a matter of social concern. Epistemologically we do understand and grasp the phenomenon,the new mediations, and the very fabric of the new processes. Buddha Dharma encompasses to balance between human life and ecology. Though the Buddhism is an ancient wisdom, the core principles and practice can solve the contemporary social, ethical, human problems and crises caused by the intensity of the digital delusion. Mahayana Buddhism believes that this world is constituted by emptiness,everything is in its becoming, which is dependent on everything else following the law of cause and effect. Buddhism advocates practicing meditation and attain wisdom to get rid of hatred, craving and delusion which are origins of Dukha. Knowing the four noble truths in depth and following the Ariya AstangaMarga, and practice of panchasila to get rid of craving, hatred and delusion which finally leads to Nirvana is the core philosophy of Buddhism.

SYNSMASKINEN

SYNSMASKINEN: an inquiry into contemporary political crises SYNSMASKINEN is a new artist-group and an inquiry into contemporary political crises. The project will consist of art projects, each exploring a certain aspect or manifestation of contemporary crisis. Together these visions are attempts to unfold a contemporary cosmology; a new political horizon. SYNSMASKINEN is an artist-group in the sense that each production is made in collaboration between a small group of participants. Each art project will be made by new groups of artists and thinkers. In this sense SYNSMASKINEN will probe the concept of the research-group: What kind of insights does artistic thinking provide? How can collectivity address the political issues of topics in a critical manner? The name, SYNSMASKINEN is taken from the Danish and Norwegian translations of Paul Virilio’s seminal book on the techniques of perception, La Machine De Vision. The name SYNSMASKINEN contains the methodological program: SYN=vision / MASKIN=machine SYNSMASKINEN is the third large-scale research-project at Bergen Academy of Art & Design. Following Re-Place and Topographies of the Obsolete the project offers a continuation of and an addition to the new tradition of kunstnerisk utvikling/artistic research at the core the Department of Art. SYNSMASKINEN is organised by professor Frans Jacobi, artistic-research leader Åse Løvgren and research assistant Benedicte Clementsen. www.synsmaskinen.net

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19.

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19.