Egalitarian Partnerships Research Articles

Philosophical Perspectives on International Aid and Development

Purpose: The general objective of this study was to explore the philosophical perspectives on international aid and development. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The findings reveal that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to the philosophical perspectives on international aid and development. Preliminary empirical review revealed that international aid is a moral obligation based on justice and equity, rather than optional generosity. It critiqued the effectiveness and motives of aid distribution, emphasizing the need for strategic approaches that empower recipients and address root causes of poverty. The study highlighted the importance of aligning aid with social justice and human rights, advocating for development that integrates economic, social, and political dimensions. It also called for reevaluating power dynamics in aid relationships, promoting egalitarian partnerships based on mutual respect and shared goals. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Utilitarianism, Deontology and Postcolonial Theory may be used to anchor future studies on the philosophical perspectives on international aid and development. The study recommended that theoretical models of international development incorporate ethical principles such as justice, equity, and human rights, shifting from a purely economic focus to a more inclusive approach. Practitioners were encouraged to engage in continuous ethical reflection, build genuine partnerships with local communities, and prioritize capacity-building initiatives. For policymakers, the study advocated for integrating ethical considerations into development policies, adopting a rights-based approach, and promoting sustainable practices. These recommendations contributed to theoretical discourses by challenging traditional paradigms, provided practical guidelines for more effective interventions, and offered a roadmap for creating ethical and sustainable development policies.

“A male feminist walks into a bar, because it was set so low: The pedestal effect and the economy of gratitude in feminist spaces”

AbstractMen in feminist spaces often find themselves the recipients of disproportionate gratitude and attention—along with other persistent effects of male privilege that I have elsewhere termed the Pedestal Effect—despite this running counter to both prevailing feminist ideologies and the desires of the men themselves. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild described a similar economy of gratitude wherein low expectations led to heightened valuation of married men's household contributions, smuggling inequities from the wider society into the marriage and inhibiting progressive change even if both parties desired a more egalitarian partnership. By applying Hochschild's framework to interview data from 52 men and 12 women active in the field, I show that the same process explains the troubling continuance of male privilege in feminist spaces: while interviewees of all genders problematize the imbalanced economy of gratitude and many have attempted specific counterstrategies, it nonetheless persists in importing inequalities, undermining men's accountability, and inhibiting desired progressive change. This suggests that the economy of gratitude may be a ubiquitous interactional process that reproduces inequalities across a wide range of social contexts. I emphasize that the economy of gratitude is in fact intersectional, not only gendered, and introduce the idea of a “low bar” to more fully account for the broad range of social influences on expectation‐setting.

Place-based civic science-collective environmental action and solidarity for eco-resilience.

Educating children and young people (CYP) from marginalized communities about environmental crises poses a unique dilemma as educators strive to prepare them to deal with the climate crisis without compounding the stressors and fear of an unlivable future many already face. We explored how place-based civic science (PBCS) can provide opportunities to engage youth in environmental understanding and action through teamwork in which youth feel that they belong to a group larger than themselves and gain a sense of hope from working with others toward shared goals. We argue that combining PCBS pedagogies of collective action and collaborative learning spaces can help to buffer against distress as CYP grapple with global environmental crises. We drew from qualitative responses (student reflections and public presentations) of 486 6-12th graders (majority students of color) on what they learned from participating in PBCS projects. Projects involved egalitarian partnerships between adults from environmental organizations, teachers and student teams studying and acting together to mitigate problems and presenting their efforts in public venues. Students' qualitative responses revealed an identification with their team and its goal forged through the work, respect for their voice, belief in their capacity and confidence to take collective action and even enjoyment of working together to address community concerns. PBCS through collective learning/action in student teams and nonhierarchical intergenerational partnerships, and connections that CYP forge with organizations in the broader community, can help to build CYP's agency and efficacy while addressing "emotionally heavy" issues such as climate change.

Gender and Pan-Species Democracy in the Anthropocene

There are diverse historical trajectories in human societies’ relationships with the non-human world. While many small place-based groups have tried to retain egalitarian partnerships with other species and ecosystems, larger societies have made major transitions. In religious terms, they have moved from worshipping female, male or androgynous non-human deities, to valorising pantheons of deities that, over time, became semi-human and then human in form. Reflecting Durkheimian changes in social and political arrangements, movements towards patriarchy led to declining importance in female deities, and the eventual primacy of single male Gods. With these changes came dualistic beliefs separating Culture from Nature, gendering these as male and female, and asserting male dominion over both Nature and women. These beliefs supported activities that have led to the current environmental crisis: unrestrained growth; hegemonic expansion; colonialism, and unsustainable exploitation of the non-human world. These are essentially issues of inequality: between genders, between human groups, and between human societies and other living kinds. This paper draws on a series of ethnographic research projects (since 1992) exploring human-environmental relationships, primarily in Australia, the UK, and New Zealand, and on a larger comparative study, over many years, of a range of ethnographic, archaeological, theological, and historical material from around the world. It considers contemporary debates challenging Nature-Culture dualism and promoting ‘rights for Nature’ or—rejecting anthropocentricity to recognize an indivisible world—for the non-human communities with whom we co-inhabit ecosystems. Proposing new ways to configure ethical debates, it suggests that non-human rights are, like women’s rights, fundamentally concerned with power relations, social status, and access to material resources, to the extent that the achievement of ‘pan-species democracy’ and greater equality between living kinds goes hand-in-hand with social, political and religious equality between genders.

The principles and practices of psychoeducation with alcohol or other drug use disorders: A review and brief guide

OverviewIn the current work, we build upon a small body of literature that delineates cross-cutting factors, or processes, of evidence-based alcohol or other drug (AOD) therapies. Here, we discuss Psychoeducation. We define psychoeducation as a brief process of therapy focused on the communication of varied aspects of disease- and/or treatment-related information. MethodThe authors conducted a literature review and qualitative content analysis to derive a set of principles and practices of psychoeducation. The review used source documents (i.e., literature reviews, therapy manuals, and government-issued practice guidelines) and videos (i.e., therapy demonstration videos), and we performed analyses in NVIVO. ResultsThe review identified nine principles and 21 practices. Together, the principles suggest that psychoeducation in evidence-based addictions therapies can be characterized as a collaborative approach to teaching, education, or other provision of information. The term collaborative denotes a shift in emphasis from compliance to a more egalitarian partnership focused on meeting individual health needs. Specific practices included ways to transition to psychoeducation (e.g., provide rationale and promote expectancy), teaching methods in psychoeducation (e.g., use plain language), tailoring content in psychoeducation (e.g., to learning style, to cultural worldview), and methods for facilitating a dialogue about the information (i.e., five question types), for facilitating understanding and retention of the information (e.g., tailor to individual needs, use of varied teaching modalities), and how to end psychoeducation and engage in related goal-setting, where applicable. ConclusionsWe frame psychoeducation as a collaborative approach to teaching where client engagement, understanding, and utilization of the information provided is the central goal. We offer a novel resource with pragmatic value to trainees, providers, and clinical supervisors who do not consider themselves aligned with a single evidence-based modality but who may benefit from training and proficiency assessment in core, behavioral health counseling competencies.

Reclaiming Khadija's and Muhammad's Marriage as an Islamic Paradigm: Toward a New History of the Muslim Present

Using masculinities studies and a history of the present framework, Shadaab Rahemtulla and Sara Ababneh examine the marriage of Prophet Muhammad and Khadija (d. ca. 620) to question hegemonic narratives on "ideal" Muslim marriages. Muhammad's marriages—and, by extension, his masculinity—are often portrayed as expressions of power disparity, with Muhammad marrying multiple wives who were significantly younger in age. Due to the normative place of "prophetic practice" (sunna), these historical narratives have exerted a lasting impact on marital ethics and law. Yet the example of Khadija paints an alternative prophetic practice/masculinity: she was a powerful businesswoman fifteen years Muhammad's senior, and their monogamous marriage lasted twenty-five years. In this article, the authors ask, what can we, as Muslim feminists committed to gender egalitarian partnerships in our own contexts, learn from this premodern marriage, and how can we reclaim it as a model for contemporary Muslim masculinities?

Gender, LGB status, and attitudes toward traditional wedding practices

ABSTRACT Historically, traditional wedding customs reflected marital values and gender power dynamics. Though preference for egalitarian partnerships and marriages is growing, patriarchal and heteronormative wedding traditions remain popular. This study aims to understand the dissonance between marriage values and wedding traditions by comparing college students’ ideals and intended practices regarding traditional heterosexual wedding customs, such as the bride being given away by the father and taking the groom’s last name. Based on a survey of 291 college students in the southeastern U.S., we find that students, particularly straight women, generally have more egalitarian ideals than intended practices. LGB individuals have a weaker preference for wedding traditions as ideals and as intended practices. While those who think marriage should always be egalitarian are less likely to support certain traditions, they are no different from their less egalitarian counterparts in ideals or preferences about the proposal, suggesting this tradition may be particularly engrained in social expectations regarding weddings.

Lomé et la coopération industrielle CEE-ACP en 1975: entre Nouvel ordre économique international et poursuite des intérêts industriels européens

In 1975, the Lomé Convention, which manages relations between the EEC and the countries of the ACP (Africa Caribbean Pacific) group, introduces a chapter on "industrial cooperation". This new policy aims to develop production sectors (industry, agriculture, mining and tourism) in the ACP countries, and embodies the egalitarian partnership discourse specific to the New International Economic Order. Using unpublished archives from the European Commission, the ACP Secretariat, the Centre for Industrial Development and interviews with the administrators in charge in the 1970s, we study the complexity of the networks of internal and external actors at DG- VIII responsible for setting up EEC-ACP industrial cooperation in Brussels. In doing so, we show that industrial cooperation is created out of the political will to rethink relations between European countries and previous African colonies in the framework of the NIEO; we also show the persistence of interests from private European economic circles, which remain close to the European Commission.

How not to scare off women: different needs of female early-stage researchers in STEM and SSH fields and the implications for support measures

Women researchers are underrepresented in almost all research fields. There are disciplinary differences in the phase in which they tend to quit their academic career: in the natural and technical sciences (STEM), it is in the postdoctoral phase, whereas in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) it is during the doctoral phase. This is indicative of disciplinary differences in the barriers women face in their careers. Related studies on these barriers are more numerous in the STEM field, which in turn limits the scope of potential policies and measures that address the needs of women in the SSH field. This article aspires to contribute to an understanding of the obstacles women from different fields face in their careers and to offer a reflection on various support measures. Using qualitative data (interviews, focus groups, workshop notes, evaluation forms) from a Czech mentoring programme for female junior researchers across all fields, the subsequent analysis reveals disciplinary differences in the perceived career path obstacles in research as well as the attitudes held towards it. Furthermore, the analysis points to the reasons for these obstacles and attitudes by using the concept of professional identity, a useful tool for identifying the barriers to the development of professional career ambitions. Additionally, the analysis utilises Becher and Trowler’s categorisation of SSH and STEM fields into rural and urban categories, enabling one to reflect on the social, cognitive and power features of these fields and the influence these features have on the conditions for the start of an academic career. In order to motivate women to complete their PhD and to apply for a job in academia, this article argues that measures should be taken in the SSH field to promote the involvement of women in the academic community right from the start of their PhD, and therefore, along with mentoring, sponsorship is also needed. In the natural and technical sciences, it is crucial to present women in the late doctoral and early postdoctoral phase with positive female role models – not as token superstars, but as young researchers who are just a few career steps ahead and who have managed to balance their career with a family in the frame of an egalitarian partnership. Furthermore, it is necessary to increase the gender sensitivity of these female researchers in order to prevent feelings of scientific inefficacy arising from the discrepancy between their own intended biography and priorities, and the normative notion of the “proper” scientist, which is strongly masculine instead of gender-neutral. Recommendations are also included for transforming this normative notion of the “proper scientist” – a precondition for wider structural changes within the entire academic environment – into a more gender-neutral one.

Teacher ownership versus scaling up system-wide educational change: the case of Activity Based Learning in South India

A significant challenge for large-scale system-wide educational change is reconciling the importance of teacher ownership with the work of scaling up successful innovations. This article explores this dilemma in the context of a remarkable statewide transition to Activity Based Learning (ABL) in the government schools of Tamil Nadu, India. ABL, a pedagogical approach grounded in child-centered philosophies of learning, was developed by classroom teachers and educational leaders seeking to reach children disengaged from school. Advanced by reformers who respected teachers and understood the importance of teacher ownership in educational change efforts, ABL reached every primary-level government school in the state through a rapid scale-up. Drawing primarily on interviews with teachers, reform leaders, and other state-level officials, we explore the roles and forms of participation made available to teachers at different stages of the reform initiative. We also discuss how leaders built responsiveness to teacher feedback into each stage of scaling. We argue that the case of ABL in Tamil Nadu illustrates a powerful rethinking of system-level change, one that promotes teacher ownership through a movement-like approach in which leaders build egalitarian partnerships with classroom teachers and invite them into the educational change process, even through rapid and extensive scaling.

Narrative Identities and the Egalitarian Norm Among Hungarian Elite Couples

Our article aims to study the attitudes of the elite to family life and gender equality. This is a social group who still experiences significant gender imbalances. We focus on attitudes to family life, which has thus far been underresearched in elite literature. With the help of the analysis of 34 individual interviews with members of the Hungarian political, economic, and cultural elite, we identify and present three types of narrative identities: dominant, deferential, and egalitarian. The main finding from our qualitative content analysis is that egalitarian partnership norms which were discussed in every narrative and gender equality appear in most cases as a norm among the elite. However, there is a narrative tension between this norm and the couples’ actual experiences of their family life. We conclude our article with some comments on how the ideology of egalitarian essentialism strengthens gender inequalities reinforcing the underrepresentation of women in elite positions.

“Engaging Race”: Teaching Critical Race Inquiry and Community-Engaged Projects

This article argues for a purposeful, racial justice–focused framework for community-engaged projects in rhetoric and composition so that faculty, students, and community partners work together to understand and overcome the myriad ways racist and racial discourses perpetuate injustice. The author explores critical race inquiry in community-engaged projects by presenting analyses of successes and missed opportunities of an ongoing multi-year partnership with a small, local, all-volunteer, collector-based museum and the local branch of the NAACP. These projects reveal insights about pedagogy and disciplinary knowledge and suggest possible forward paths that may lead to more egalitarian partnerships, multi-perspectival knowledge, and impactful antiracist writing instruction in our classes and communities.

Mental Health Technologies: Designing With Consumers.

Despite growing interest in the promise of e-mental and well-being interventions, little supporting literature exists to guide their design and the evaluation of their effectiveness. Both participatory design (PD) and design thinking (DT) have emerged as approaches that hold significant potential for supporting design in this space. Each approach is difficult to definitively circumscribe, and as such has been enacted as a process, a mind-set, specific practices/techniques, or a combination thereof. At its core, however, PD is a design research tradition that emphasizes egalitarian partnerships with end users. In contrast, DT is in the process of becoming a management concept tied to innovation with strong roots in business and education. From a health researcher viewpoint, while PD can be reduced to a number of replicable stages that involve particular methods, techniques, and outputs, projects often take vastly different forms and effective PD projects and practice have traditionally required technology-specific (eg, computer science) and domain-specific (eg, an application domain, such as patient support services) knowledge. In contrast, DT offers a practical off-the-shelf toolkit of approaches that at face value have more potential to have a quick impact and be successfully applied by novice practitioners (and those looking to include a more human-centered focus in their work). Via 2 case studies we explore the continuum of similarities and differences between PD and DT in order to provide an initial recommendation for what health researchers might reasonably expect from each in terms of process and outcome in the design of e-mental health interventions. We suggest that the sensibilities that DT shares with PD (ie, deep engagement and collaboration with end users and an inclusive and multidisciplinary practice) are precisely the aspects of DT that must be emphasized in any application to mental health provision and that any technology development process must prioritize empathy and understanding over innovation for the successful uptake of technology in this space.

Evolution: Welcome to Symbiont Prison

Can egalitarian partnerships exist in nature? A new study demonstrates how protist hosts use and abuse their algal symbionts depending on their needs. While this relationship allows protists to survive in low nutrient conditions, it leaves little room for algal retaliation.

EU Development Cooperation: A Stock-Taking and a Vision for the Future

EU Development Cooperation has evolved over half a century. In this time, this policy has undergone dramatic change. There can be no doubt that initially, the EEC and its MS started from a paternalistic and in a certain sense also egoistic attitude. By the way, in this attitude the EEC and its MS were not alone. It was a rather common relationship between “donor” countries and recipients. Now, this situation has changed. The respective process has taken place slowly, often even nearly imperceptibly, but over the years these changes were substantial. The focus is now on a truly egalitarian partnership. On a world-wide scale, the EU has now become one of the main actors in development cooperation and this holds true also when it comes to conceiving new instruments and avenues for this policy. At the moment, intense discussions are under way on how to re-conceive development cooperation for the future. In this, important contributions are coming from the EU. The development policy has become a highly valuable asset for the EU, in particular as far as its image on the international scene is concerned.This essay has been conceived as a stock-taking about past discussions and achievements in this field. At the same time, however, a focus is set on possible future developments in this area.

EU Development Cooperation - A Stock-Taking and a Vision for the Future

EU Development Cooperation has evolved over half a century. In this time, this policy has undergone dramatic change. There can be no doubt that initially, the EEC and its MS started from a paternalistic and in a certain sense also egoistic attitude. By the way, in this attitude the EEC and its MS were not alone. It was a rather common relationship between “donor” countries and recipients. Now, this situation has changed. The respective process has taken place slowly, often even nearly imperceptibly, but over the years these changes were substantial. The focus is now on a truly egalitarian partnership. On a world-wide scale, the EU has now become one of the main actors in development cooperation and this holds true also when it comes to conceiving new instruments and avenues for this policy. At the moment, intense discussions are under way on how to re-conceive development cooperation for the future. In this, important contributions are coming from the EU. The development policy has become a highly valuable asset for the EU, in particular as far as its image on the international scene is concerned.This essay has been conceived as a stock-taking about past discussions and achievements in this field. At the same time, however, a focus is set on possible future developments in this area.

Nursing practice in community child health: developing the nurse-client relationship.

Community nursing services to parents with young children have been an established part of child health services in Australia for more than a century. Although the titles vary within states, community child health nurses provide support services for parents with infants and young children and typically their scope of practice includes public health functions such as health surveillance of the developing infant and child up to the age of 5 years and early intervention. More recently state health policies have instituted universal home visiting and emphasized the primacy of psychosocial support for parents. These policies are accompanied by education programs that propose a change in nursing practice to a more egalitarian partnership model of practice. As a consequence greater attention now has to be paid to the processes used in developing a working relationship with the client in the community setting. Whilst there has been little published in the Australian nursing literature on the methods used by community child health nurses to engage their clients, the international literature offers some insights into the nurses' practice. This paper describes the practices of community child health nurses in engaging the parent and developing a complementary and therapeutic relationship that enables the nurse to promote the health of the child and family. Published accounts of community child health nursing practice in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and northern America are described and compared to the Australian context.

Where theory and practice of global health intersect: the developmental history of a Canadian global health initiative

ObjectiveThis paper examines the scope of practice of global health, drawing on the practical experience of a global health initiative of the Government of Canada – the Teasdale-Corti Global Health Research Partnership Program. A number of challenges in the practical application of theoretical definitions and understandings of global health are addressed. These challenges are grouped under five areas that form essential characteristics of global health: equity and egalitarian North–South partnerships, interdisciplinary scope, focus on upstream determinants of health, global conceptualization, and global health as an area of both research and practice.DesignInformation in this paper is based on the results of an external evaluation of the program, which involved analysis of project proposals and technical reports, surveys with grantees and interviews with grantees and program designers, as well as case studies of three projects and a review of relevant literature.ResultsThe philosophy and recent definitions of global health represent a significant and important departure from the international health paradigm. However, the practical applicability of this maturing area of research and practice still faces significant systemic and structural impediments that, if not acknowledged and addressed, will continue to undermine the development of global health as an effective means to addressing health inequities globally and to better understanding, and acting upon, upstream determinants of health toward health for all.ConclusionsWhile it strives to redress global inequities, global health continues to be a construct that is promoted, studied, and dictated mostly by Northern institutions and scholars. Until practical mechanisms are put in place for truly egalitarian partnerships between North and South for both the study and practice of global health, the emerging philosophy of global health cannot be effectively put into practice.

The Reversal of the Gender Gap in Education and Trends in Marital Dissolution.

The reversal of the gender gap in education has potentially far-reaching consequences for marriage markets, family formation, and relationship outcomes. One possible consequence of this is the growing number of marriages in which wives have more education than their husbands. Previous studies have found this type of union to be at higher risk of dissolution. Using data on marriages formed between 1950 and 2004 in the United States, we evaluate whether this association has persisted as the prevalence of this relationship type has increased. Our results show a large shift in the association between spouses' relative education and marital dissolution. In particular, we confirm that marriages in which wives have the educational advantage were once more likely to dissolve, but we show that this association has disappeared in more recent marriage cohorts. Another key finding is that the relative stability of marriages between educational equals has increased. These results are consistent with a shift away from rigid gender specialization toward more flexible, egalitarian partnerships and provide an important counterpoint to claims that progress toward gender equality in heterosexual relationships has stalled.

Lording It over the Goddess: Water, Gender, and Human-Environmental Relations

Focusing on human engagements with water, this article steps back from specifically cultural or historical contexts in order to trace the larger patterns of social, religious, and technological change that have transformed most societies’ relationships with their environments. It examines transitions from totemic “nature religions” to male-dominated and hierarchical belief systems, and considers how these intersected with shifts to settlement and agriculture, differentiated gender roles, and stratified sociopolitical arrangements. With developments in farming, enlarging societies moved from egalitarian partnerships with other species and ecosystems to more directive interactions. Irrigation channeled water into human interests. Initially seen as embodying female principles, it became the gift of male religious beings. From being a common good, it became subject to male property rights. Long understood as the substance of social and spiritual regeneration, it was reframed as an economic “asset.” Observing these transformations, the article also considers long-term contraflows: indigenous struggles; subaltern religions; and environmentalist and feminist challenges to sociopolitical inequalities. Through a focus on water and gender, this article considers critical transitions in the historical trajectories of most societies, from animistic and poly theistic “nature religions,” which venerated localized female, male, and A number of my former colleagues in New Zealand provided positive input to this work in its early stages: Kathryn Rountree, Maureen Molloy, Christine Dureau, Mark Busse, and Claudia Gross. In Durham, Douglas Davies, a leading scholar in this area, was immensely kind in providing extensive feedback on a later draft. I am also grateful both to him and to Marilyn Strathern for encouraging conversations about “big-picture” thinking. And I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their encouraging, meticulous, and helpful comments.