Contemporary Orientations Research Articles

The Baptist Union of South Africa’s mission orientation needs transformation: A scrutiny by an insider

This article aims to trigger a process of critical reflexive analysis relative to how colonial perspectives are played out in the contemporary mission orientation of the Baptist Union of South Africa (BUSA). It highlights the fact that the BUSA’ s mission orientation, predominantly evangelism and church planting, is still embedded in the colonial perspectives influenced by the thoughts of the 19th-century missiologists Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson. Hence, the key argument of this article is that the BUSA’s mission orientation should be released from these colonial perspectives in order to give way to the emergence of an authentic and contextual Baptist missional agency in South Africa. A scrutiny of the BUSA reveals that it faces threefold challenges, namely, historical, philosophical and methodological challenges. Failure to address these challenges has (1) robbed the BUSA of imagination to measure up to contemporary contextual issues, (2) made it predominantly otherworldly in worldview and mainly membership-centred in focus and (3) made it embrace and practice on the ground ‘missionary activist’ and ‘conversionist’ reductionist shortcuts. To move forward, the BUSA is called to go through continuous conversions and reflexive process as a prerequisite for a deep transformation experience. This article concludes by contributing three solutions, namely, generating new mission insights befitting the South African context should involve the collective, avoid missionary reductionist shortcuts by opting for an integrated and holistic mission praxis and embrace participatory action research as a way forward for BUSA’s mission agenda.

Timelessness and Precarity in Orientalist Temporality: Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s Aesthetics of Disorientation

The Hourglasses (2015), by French-Moroccan artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, features five large hourglasses displayed artifact-like upon a table. As one would expect of an hourglass, these glass sculptures can be inverted to measure out time. This, though, is where convention ends, as these are filled with couscous, not sand. Unlike sand, couscous cannot measure time consistently and the inversion of any one of these five hourglasses results in a different measurement of time. In effect, they disorient any linear notion of temporality, raising the specter of Orientalism and its fantasy of a timeless East. Mehdi-Georges works in a diverse range of media including performance, sculpture, installation, and self-portraiture. Dealing with race, gender, sexuality, colonialism, identity, and representations of Islam and Catholicism, his work performs the instability in all these categories by critically complicating fantasies of “East” and “West” without relying on a mere binary reversal of meaning. Contextualizing his work within a larger history of Orientalism, my argument begins first with Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” composed in 1817, followed by an analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Orientalist paintings before leading to a concise discussion of contemporary Orientalism in art and art discourse. My analysis then circles back to the artist’s work to insist that Orientalism’s fantastical invocation of the East remains a disabling presence in the contemporary imaginary. Orientalism’s temporality, as glimpsed obliquely from Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s hyphenated identity, is likewise rendered unstable in his work. As seen in The Hourglasses, his work produces what I call “an aesthetic of disorientation,” predicated on the artist’s embodied cultural hyphenation, which renders the Orientalist fantasy of the East absurd through its own tropes of representation. By bringing queer theory and disability studies to bear on his work, I show how his practice engages with Orientalism’s temporality to open up new possibilities of perceiving the world.

Научното ръководство на докторанти по стопански науки – в търсене на продуктивни решения

The research supervision of PhD students (particularly in the fields of economics and business management) in Bulgaria is a process which is not taken care of sufficiently. There are serious loopholes in it that need to be overcome methodically in tertiary education. The purpose of the present article is to summarize the place and the role of the research supervisor in the doctoral level studies of economics and business management, and to outline the opportunities for the improvement of this process. The object of the article is the doctoral study, and its subject are the basic axioms, characteristics and expert assessment of the personality of the academic advisor, the criteria for his or her assignment, the objective focuses of the activity and the contemporary orientation of the academic supervision. These points are organized into two parts: (1) the inventory of the portrait of the research supervisor and (2) the necessary and feasible changes to the academic supervision in the conditions of a knowledge-based economy.

The Subject and the Real: Ethical Implications of A. Badiou’s Philosophy

Alain Badiou’s theory of ethics of the subject implies that the individual interpellation of the symbolic plane could be secondary to the truth process, which grounds the formation of the subject. We arrive at the hypothesis that the subject of the interpellation is already a subject of truth when the symbolic interpellation process starts.In the paper, two contemporary ethical orientations are emphasized: democratic materialism, which comprises the idealism created by market laws, and a materialist dialectic, which opens the possibility of the subject’s formation during the struggles. However, Badiou’s attempts to create an alternative symbolic plane – a historical plane – do not seem reassuring; therefore, one must look at the event-producing-history from the psychoanalytical perspective.The theory of drives opens the possibility to relate Badiou’s subject to the repressed real, to show him as immune to the desire, which may be derived from a symbolical plane, and able to ground his struggles with revolutionary jouissance while not allowing history to end too early.

Специфіка моралі доби плинної сучасності

The author reveals specifics of the phenomenon of morality in socio-cultural circumstances of liquid modernity. Theoretical constructions of H. Arendt became the methodological grounds for the inquiry. Arendt represented the process of spinning of the web of moral interactions in the concreteness of time and space. The key value transformations of liquid modernity as conditions for the possibility of moral interactions of our time, are defined in the paper. Transformations in the field of economics (labor, employment, consumption) and public space (media, entertainments, discipline) predetermine value changes that define social and moral life of the epoch. These are: freedom from different Modernity-generated restrictions and commitments, opportunity to escape responsibility, and distance from those who were traditionally comprehended as a neighbor. After, contemporary orientation of an individual on happiness is consid- ered as well as the moral qualities necessary for human interactions. The contemporary direction of an individual on happiness is assigned by a hedonistic lifestyle and factor of luck with the emphasizing of contingency of the “hit of jackpot” and the directive on success with brightly expressed elements in the use of chance. Also, transformations of the quality of interactions in the process of concretization of abstract others as neighbors and distants are examined. In liquid modernity others, neighbors and distants, are defined not spatially, but axiologically. At the interpersonal level, where neighbors act, the Other manifests oneself through humanity and activates the virtue of responsibility. At the social level, others are distant people and their interaction is correlated with activation of the virtue of trust. The logic in this research derives the analysis of value grounds of interactions of distant people. Then, the general outline is specified in the defining of moral interactions of distant people in global information networks as a symbol of liquid modernity. Today, the basic moral virtues are qualities unknown till the mid of the 20th century (responsibility) or latent for spiritual space of the Western individual till the end of the previous century (trust). These qualities are necessary for interactions of neighbors and distants in the conditions of liquid modernity alongside the virtues of active life, sacrifice, mercy in interpersonal interactions beyond the daily bustle as well as honesty, trustworthy are actual for social interactions.

A critique of western representations of ISIS: deconstructing contemporary Orientalism

ABSTRACTThe meteoric rise of the group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) has been accompanied by an equally stunning effort to explain from where the organisation emerged, what it is, and why people have been attracted to it. What this article identities, is that despite what appears to be a veneer of intellectual heterogeneity, a deep Orientalism permeates knowledge production about ISIS. Adopting a hybrid-postcolonial lens, the analysis in this article demonstrates that due to a particular Eurocentric-Orientalist schema and disposition, ISIS and its horrendous crimes have been dehistoricised, depoliticised and decontextualised. Additionally, in the process ISIS has been reduced to the Muslim’s fundamentalist dispositions; its innate tendency to incorporate Islamic theological methods, medieval Islamic scholarship, Islamic culture into all forms of politics. Instead, we argue in conclusion, for ISIS to be understood there needs to be a re-reading of the emergence of Islamist violence and terror through a historicised, materialised and politicised methodological framework.

Transnational intervention and its limits: the case of interwar Poland

ABSTRACTThis article reassesses the efforts by western Jews to rescue their imperilled European brethren in the years before and during the Second World War. It goes beyond the conventional question, “Could more have been done to rescue European Jewry?” Rather, the article explores what Jewish leaders learned about the global practice of philanthropic relief during the decades before the rise of European fascism and hyper-nationalism. It then asks how this accumulated knowledge may have informed their decisions once they understood the dangers faced by Jews in Germany, Poland, and Romania. This holistic analysis of actions taken by transnational leaders accounts for operational precedents, geo-politics, migration regimes, diaspora networks, organizational history, intra-communal relations, and economics and contemporary orientations toward aid. All these create a realistic reckoning of the strengths and limitations of Jewish transnationalism at the time, allowing us to transcend value-based judgements of this painful chapter in Jewish history.

Race Counts: Racial and Ethnic Data on the U.S. Census and the Implications for Tracking Inequality

This article is a critical review of racial and ethnic categories on the U.S. Census with a focus on how the census categories affect opportunities to track racial and ethnic inequality. The authors summarize how motivations behind the census categories changed from a historical basis in controlling people of color and protecting Whiteness toward a contemporary orientation around equity. Yet, many issues remain that confound the racial and ethnic census data, which are then used in research. A look at these issues and possible changes for the upcoming 2020 census serves as a critical reminder of the limitations of the census data. Taking this information into account, the authors conclude with comments and suggestions on the principles underlying racial and ethnic data collection on the census and the implications for tracking inequality.

Źródła myśli Iwona z Chartres o salus animarum jako celu prawa kanonicznego

Autor opracowania twierdzi, że w dyskusji podejmowanej w kanonistyce w ubiegłym stuleciu, dotyczącej rozumienia zbawienia dusz (salus animarum) jako celu prawa kanonicznego, nie było zbyt wyraźnych odniesień do założeń, które doprowadziły Iwona z Chartres do takiego stwierdzenia. Ujmuje je zatem w następujących punktach: wykształcenie i wiedza Iwona wyniesiona ze szkoły Le Bec w jego działalności duszpasterskiej; sakrament jako źródło normy kanonicznej; biblijny fundament normy kanonicznej (ratio auctoritatis); miłosierdzie i sprawiedliwość jako zasada hermeneutyki prawnej Iwona; zbawienie dusz jako element koncyliacyjny norm. Uważa, że Iwon jest prekursorem historiozbawczej orientacji w podejściu do prawa kanonicznego jako wymiaru porządku zbawienia.

Terminal anticipation: entanglements of affect and temporality in living with advanced cancer

Narrative approaches within the social sciences have tended to privilege narrative coherence, with the thematic and sequential progression of one’s story from beginning through middle to end often seen as a virtue and as a hallmark of strong narrative identity. Illness narratives, however, often disrupt this temporal order insofar as they render the future—and thus the narrative’s end—uncertain. Advanced cancer calls the duration, even possibility, of one’s future into question, challenging the normative construction of temporally coherent narratives. In this paper, we draw on recent work theorising contemporary orientations towards the future under the rubric of ‘anticipation’ to analyse the illness narratives and embodied experiences of people living with advanced cancer. We show how the lived experience of precarious selfhood produced in relation to uncertain futures resists coherent narrativisation. We argue that attending to the affective presence of the future in the present and challenging the normativity of narrative coherence are important dimensions of contemporary cancer narratives.

Directing the senses in the contemporary orientations to cancer disease control: Debating symptom research

This paper discusses ongoing changes in orientations to cancer disease control in the Global North, particularly health promoter attempts to identify the early cancerous body. The paper suggests that the emphasis on early diagnosis of cancer aligns ideas on a symptomatic management of the public with a process in which ‘what counts as cancer symptoms’ is steadily being subdivided, classified and expanded. This alignment, the paper suggests, is an example of how biomedicine potentially extends its boundaries into everyday forms of embodied, social life by changing the social and moral value placed on bodily sensations. Also, the paper echoes ongoing conversations in medical anthropology on symptom experiences; suggesting that symptom experiences may be a suitable analytic axiom for exploring the relationship between biomedical knowledge production and embodied experience. It is suggested that an anthropology of sensations is a useful analytical framework for such explorations.

Prediction of the present-day stress field in the Australian continental crust using 3D geomechanical–numerical models

ABSTRACTThe Australian continent has an enigmatic present-day stress pattern with considerable regional variability in maximum horizontal stress (SHmax) orientations. Previous attempts to estimate the Australian SHmax orientation with geomechanical–numerical models indicate that plate boundary forces provide the major controls on the contemporary stress orientations. However, these models do not satisfactorily predict the observed stress orientation in major basins throughout eastern Australia, where the knowledge of the present-day crustal stresses is of vital importance for development and management of different types of geo-reservoirs. In addition, a new comprehensive stress-data compilation in Australia, which contains 2150 data records and is the key dataset for model calibration, provides motivation to construct a new geomechanical–numerical model for Australia. Herein, we present a 3D geomechanical–numerical model that predicts both the SHmax orientation and the relative stress magnitudes throughout the Australian continent. Our best-fit model, with mean absolute deviation of 15°, is in good agreement with observed SHmax orientations and the stress regime in most areas, and shows a much better fit in areas where the stress pattern was unable to be predicted by previous published attempts. Interestingly, the best-fit model requires a significant push from the western boundary of Australian continental model, which is possible supporting evidence for the east–west-oriented mantle drag postulated by state-of-the-art global convection models, or may be generated by the excess of gravitational potential energy from Tibetan Plateau, transferred through the Indo-Australian Plate. Hence, our modelling results provide a good first-order prediction of the stress field for areas where no stress information is currently available and can be used to derive initial and boundary conditions for local and reservoir-scale 3D geomechanical models across Australia.

Main Croatian Urban Centres in the European NUTS Regionalisation Context

In the modern architecture of the European NUTS regions, Croatia as a whole represents a NUTS-1 region. Since 2013, two regions have been defned at NUTS-2 level: Continental Croatia and Adriatic Croatia. At NUTS-3 level, the principle applies that each of the 21 Croatian counties represents a NUTS-3 region, although only half of them have more than 150, 000 inhabitants, and there are only eight large, functionally and logistically appropriate regional centres. These clearly demarcated, actual regional foci also exert gravitational influence beyond their counties, i.e. they are regional centers in the true sense of the word, according to NUTS-3 region criteria/ needs. These are: Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, Osijek, Zadar and Slavonski Brod (cities with more than 50, 000 residents, and with signifcant urban regions, generally over 100, 000 inhabitants, 2011: City of Zagreb 688, 724/1, 100, 000, Split 167, 121/280, 000, Rijeka 128, 384/230, 000, Osijek 84, 104/130, 000, Zadar 71, 471/125, 000, Slavonski Brod 53, 531/100, 000), with the seventh, the conurbation complex of Varaždin/Cakovec (38, 839+15, 147=53, 896/100, 000 residents), and the eighth, Pula (57, 460/80, 000) limited mainly to Istria [Istra] County. These centres, influencing broader regional gravity complexes (county and beyond county ; except Pula), with roughly 250, 000 to 550, 000 inhabitants, should form the main pillars and cores of the country’s modern regional structure, because this is already the case in reality. The damaging effects of war, economic recession, transition and privatisation after 1991 have resulted in the fact that most of the former, somewhat stronger centres have been depopulated and economically weakened, while the levels of their central functions have been lowered, reducing their gravitational power practically to the sub- regional level (Karlovac-Duga Resa, Sisak- Petrinja, Sibenik-Vodice, Dubrovnik- Mokosica, Bjelovar, etc.). Only the conurbation of VukovarVinkovci(26, 468+32, 029=65, 497/90, 000, in a demographically relatively prominent county, is potentially developing regional signifcance, however, it is signifcantly restricted, due to the close proximity of Osijek (Osijek – Vukovar 34 km, Osijek - Vinkovci 41 km). Consequently, there is contemporary orientation of the less populated counties: Dubrovnik-Neretva to Split, Sibenik- Knin to Zadar, Lika-Senj to Zadar (to a lesser extent to Rijeka), Požega-Slavonija to Slavonski Brod, Virovitica-Podravina to Osijek, Koprivnica-Križevci and Međimurje to Varaždin, Bjelovar-Bilogora, KrapinaZagorje, Karlovac and Sisak-Moslavina to Zagreb. Given the signifcant demographic corpus and relatively prominent number of counties gravitating to Zagreb, it would be advisable to revitalise the functional equipment of some individual cities in the wider area around Zagreb. This means accepting the necessity of equipping Karlovac/Sisak (two counties), and Bjelovar/Virovitica (two counties) for regional level functions, facilitating the revitalisation of these demographically and functionally weakened areas, which form individual NUTS-3 regions.

Mission-Driven Adaptability in a Changing National Training System

This case study of an adult and community education provider based in far north Queensland describes its capacity to balance various iterations of public policy against its vision for the future of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders. Community-controlled organisations wanting to contribute to economic and social development in regional/remote Australia through the use of formally recognised vocational education and training have adjusted to at least three major sociopolitical changes at the national policy level since the early 1990s. These include redefining equity, marketising the delivery of public services and increased centralisation. The contemporary orientation of vocational education and training as part of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy has become a highly prescriptive and heavily centralised mechanism for the establishment of employment outcomes. This has been framed as an obligation and right of Australian citizenship as opposed to the other wellbeing and personal development benefits of education. This registered training organisation has navigated four burdensome (re)definitions of equity that have made planning and delivery of true lifelong training objectives difficult. The provider has embraced the marketisation of the sector and navigated other policy changes in order to provide the services and knowledge set out in the college mission statement.

O Orientalismo na Origem da Fotografia e do Cinema

O presente artigo explora as relações entre o orientalismo, a fotografia e o cinema, do final do século XIX ao início do século XX. O fato da origem do cinema coincidir com o auge do projeto imperialista no Oriente Médio, marcou a nova forma artística e de produção de imagens e narrativas. Mostraremos como um dos gêneros mais populares dos primórdios do cinema – o gênero de viagem ou travelogues – esteve relacionado ao projeto colonialista, à popularização da ideia do viajante e do turismo a locais ditos exóticos e sagrados. Embora as imagens fotográficas e cinematográficas carregassem uma tradição orientalista de representação que já vinha de outras formas de arte, essas novas mídias inauguraram uma espécie de orientalismo contemporâneo que estará presente em toda uma produção imagética

The Stylistic Development in the Crafts of the Sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat

The present study aims at examining the stylistic development in the crafts of the sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat. It gives answers to the following two questions: what is the nature of the stylistic development? And what are these principles and techniques led him to this development? The researcher has used the descriptive, analytic approach in examining the selected five samples out of the sculptor’s displayed crafts. The observational technique is used as a tool of examination. Among the main findings are: integrating space in the cubic crafts, represented by the existence of holes within this general construction of that space; the evident influence of critical contemporary orientations through the direct insertion of recipients in comprehending the ultimate crafts; a direct reference to Mesopotamia heritage ; the influence of the cultural environment on the stylistic realization; the humanitarian representation; and the expressive orientation as a stylistic procedure in performance

Climate Change Adaptation Pathways in Kolkata

Disaster risk management and wider processes of adaptation are too often understood in isolation from development. Kolkata faces increasing heatwaves, flood hazard and everyday waterlogging as a result of climate change but the social and spatial distribution of impacts will likely be mediated by historic and contemporary development decisions. The paper reports on a study that has combined a scenario workshop method and expert interviews to surface the views of risk and resilience planners, academics and urban professionals on the adaptation–development nexus. Kolkata is experiencing rapid and fundamental transition in its governance regimes and economic structures as state-led development gives way to stronger market forces. Planners welcome an opening of urban governance but are worried by the speed of change. Transition in risk governance is observed in a predicted shift from a contemporary orientation where capacity is limited but focused on protecting development gains, to one which also embraces the flexibility of resilience.

Contemporary orientations in African Cultural Studies

This paper offers a glimpse of work generated by the 2014 John Douglas Taylor conference on ‘Contemporary Orientations in African Cultural Studies’. The conference generated a number of inquiries into the time and place of contemporary African cultural work, many of which theorised beyond the frameworks that postcolonial and globalisation studies frequently offer. Within the shifting paradigms of Cultural Studies, the work of this conference (as well as the current project) moves away from reading the African everyday as exclusively a construction out of a series of colonial histories and relationalities, or global cultural flows. In line with Jean and John Comaroff’s Theory from the South (2011), this issue is instead dedicated to relocating the global centres from which Cultural Studies emanates and to positing African work’s challenge to normative zones of cultural critique. ‘Contemporary orientations’ attempts to relocate the time and space of critique in African studies, but it resists the gesture to posit a stable trajectory through which time moves. Rather, the terms of the contemporary and the orientation depend on how they are read in relation to a multitude of other temporalities, orientations, and objects.

Making Music Together: Discussion of Gianni Nebbiosi’s “The Smell of Paper”

Finding life in our patients is a common goal for analysts. Historically this project had been defined as one of freeing unacceptable impulses from their imprisoning defenses with the analyst, via interpretation, then contrasting the patient’s internal fantasied reality with “actual” reality. Untangling fantasy from reality could free the impulses to provide energy for more realistic projects. This imagery stands in stark contrast to the fluidity of a contemporary relational conceptualization of human experience where our inner experience is now understood to be the lens through which we construct our vision of external reality, always a subjective perception. Clinical change—finding life—now depends more on the activation of a generative intersubjective process between patient and analyst, which contributes to the expansion of the patient’s subjective experience. Gianni Nebbiosi’s use of music and of mime to help him feel his way into his patient’s and ultimately into his own similarly defended experience demonstrates the creativity and idiosyncratic clinical approaches that emerge from a contemporary relational orientation. This orientation recognizes the analyst’s subjectivity as a fundamental tool of clinical change—a vehicle through which any theoretical approach will necessarily be shaped. Differing approaches to a clinical situation do not always simply reflect theoretical disagreements; they may also reflect the expression of the particular subjectivity of the analyst.

The Analysis of the Quranic Discourse for François Déroche

Writing about contemporary Orientalism does not necessarily mean separating the past from the present; on the contrary, knowing more about its recent development, orientations and perspectives which extend from its past, is necessary to better grasp its evolution. Among the Western Studies on the Quran and Islam, which covered a long period of time, our research  is based on the work of a French Orientalist, François Déroche, whose book is entitled "The Quran". The scope of our research covers the most important components of the book to shed light on how the Western World viewed the Quran and Islam in the past and how they consider both of them in the present time. For this purpose, our study falls on four parts. The first introduces the writer François Déroche and his understanding of the Quran. The second part reveals the writer's motives for the study of the Sacred Quran, while the third highlights the important stations and chapters of the book. The fourth part of our research centers on Déroche' approach all throughout his study of the Sacred Quran. It reveals also the writer's background, present in his analysis. Our conclusion includes the main elements of our study.