Hermeneutic Exploration Research Articles

‘Kukurúùkúù’: ecospiritual implications of the sounds of the cockcrow in Yoruba rural dwellings

This article examines the sound of the cockcrow in Yoruba rural spaces, phonically represented as ‘kukurúùkúù’, with a particular focus on the ecological and spiritual implications. The study highlights the timing functions of the cockcrow which have endured over the years in Yoruba rural societies, thereby foregrounding the interlinking between human and nonhuman forms of life among the Yoruba in Nigeria. Utilising an ethnographic approach through participant observation and key informant interviews conducted with selected Ifá priests, this study engages in a hermeneutic exploration of the Yoruba indigenous religion and literary genres to demonstrate the importance of the cockcrow, time, and nature in traditional Yoruba life and the implications for healthy cohabiting of human and nonhuman forms under conditions of environmental degradation. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘African ecologies: literary, cultural and religious perspectives’, edited by Adriaan van Klinken, Simon Manda, Damaris Parsitau and Abel Ugba.)

Law as Practice: Hermeneutic Insights into Legal Issues in British Civil Courts from Ian McEwan’s The Children Act

ABSTRACT Ian McEwan’s The Children Act serves as a profound narrative inquiry into the intricate legal challenges of British civil court practice. This paper responds to the scholarly omission of the law’s practical portrayal in the novel by foregrounding its hermeneutic dimensions. Beginning with the novel’s illustration of legal contradictions, the study examines law as a form of social praxis. It emphasizes the interpretive nature shared by both law and literature, and applies hermeneutic theory to elucidate the impact of individual subjectivities on the interpretation of law as depicted through the novel’s characters. Concluding with an analysis from the legal practitioners’ standpoint, the research navigates through the paradoxes and pragmatic realities inherent in legal proceedings. By conducting this hermeneutic exploration of The Children Act, the paper enhances our understanding of its thematic underpinnings and provides substantive hermeneutic contributions to the field of legal research.

Unveiling Cultural Wisdom: Hermeneutical Exploration of Sidoarjo Villages' Folklore for Contemporary Relevance


 
 
 
 
 
 This research delves into the rich oral folklore tradition across different historical periods in Sidoarjo's villages, spanning from the Kahuripan Prabu Airlangga era to Islamic and Dutch colonial periods. The study aims to hermeneutically interpret these narratives to uncover their profound philosophical and meaningful content, specifically focusing on their potential as positive role models for the younger generation. The selected villages include Bendotretek, Semambung, Becirongengor, Singopadu, and Trompoasri, which hold symbols passed down since the Kahuripan era. This exploration seeks to present these enduring symbols in a contemporary context, aligning with current generational trends. The research outcome offers valuable insights into the cultural heritage's adaptability and relevance, fostering cross-generational understanding and appreciation.
 Highlight:
 
 Temporal Span: Investigates Sidoarjo villages' oral folklore, spanning Kahuripan Prabu Airlangga, Islamic, and Dutch colonial eras.
 Philosophical Exploration: Utilizes hermeneutical approach to unveil profound meanings and positive role models within the narratives.
 Generational Alignment: Aligns enduring symbols with contemporary trends, fostering cross-generational appreciation and understanding.
 
 Keyword: Folklore, Hermeneutics, Cultural Heritage, Generational Values, Contemporary Relevance
 
 
 
 
 

Shame at the Gates of Medicine: A Hermeneutic Exploration of Premedical Students' Experiences of Shame.

Little is known about the nature of shame in students attempting to enter medical school, despite its potential to impact well-being and professional identity formation during training. In this study, the authors used hermeneutic phenomenology to ask: How do premedical students experience shame as they apply to medical school? From September 2020 to March 2021, the authors recruited 12 students from a U.S. Master of Biomedical Sciences program who intended to apply to medical school. Data collection consisted of each participant creating a "rich picture" depicting a shame experience during their premedical training, a semistructured interview that deeply explored this and other shame experiences, and a debriefing session. Data were analyzed using Ajjawi and Higgs's 6 steps of hermeneutic analysis. Self-concept, composed of an individual's identities and contingencies of self-esteem, was central to participants' shame experiences. Through a confluence of past and future self-concepts and under the influence of external factors and the weight of expectations, shame often destabilized participants' present self-concepts. This destabilization occurred because of events related to application processes (repeat Medical College Admission Test attempts), interpersonal interactions (prehealth advisor meetings), and objective performance measures (grades, test scores). Participants' efforts to restabilize their self-concept catalyzed specific identity processes and self-concept formation. Shame provided a window into the emotional experiences, identity processes, and ideologies that shape students' attempts to enter medical school. The authors discuss the central role of contingencies of self-esteem, the potential origins of performance-based self-esteem in trainees, and the identity negotiation and identity work involved in shame reactions. They call for the adoption of contingencies of self-esteem within current conceptualizations of professional identity formation; training for faculty and prehealth advisors about the nature of shame in premedical learners; and consideration of the consequential validity of standardized tests, which may trigger damaging shame.

The Daily Grind of Living With Chronic Pain: An Applied Hermeneutic Exploration

The purpose of this research is to explore the philosophy regarding understanding the complex experience of living with chronic pain. As well, this article addresses a person’s suffering as an evolving process of learning to not only manage pain but to learn how to live well through exploring their suffering narrative. A hermeneutical interpretive approach was used to engage participants in this research and to offer a philosophical reinterpretation of living with chronic pain from a humanistic and tacit perspective. This work is offered to invite and extend our discussions about the complexity of living with chronic pain. It can also be understood as a process of rewriting oneself from a lived chaotic state of pain into a new affective historical consciousness. This transition from acute to chronic pain explored through a philosophical context can provide insight into the ways in which patients learn to live well with their condition.

Book Review: The Annotated Passover Haggadah Edited by Zev Garber and Kenneth Hanson

The Annotated Passover Haggadah, coedited by Professors Zev Garber and Kenneth Hanson, is a meticulous collaboration that incorporates a set of essays by various authors. The book offers unique reflections from myriad vantage points to the well known and often repeated story of the Jewish ritual. The essence of The Annotated Passover Hagaddah lies not only in the central theme of celebration of the Haggadah but also in the numerous ways in which it can be celebrated in other traditions, as well as how it has evolved through times. It is this renewed prospect that imparts multiple connotations to the Jewish Passover ritual. The book has an eclectic prominence that manifests through a careful hermeneutical exploration of the Passover Haggadah from the Judeo-Christian prism. With significant overlaps between the Christian and Jewish liturgy, this culturally rich interfaith volume transcends the scope of the Jewish ritual of Passover and Haggadah.

” Being mutually involved in recovery”. A hermeneutic exploration of nurses’ experiences of patient participation in psychiatric care

ABSTRACT Purpose This study aims at exploring how psychiatric nurses’ experiences of patient participation could be understood from a caring science perspective. Methods The design was inspired by clinical application research., which is a hermeneutic approach developed within caring science research. . In this study data were co-created during four reflective group dialogues where five participants’ experiences of patient participation were reflected on in the light of caring science theory and research. The transcribed dialogues were subjected to a thematic, hermeneutic interpretation. Results The interpretation gave rise to three themes; giving room for the patient to find his/her own pathway, strengthening personhood, and being in a balanced communion. From these themes an underlying pattern of the meaning of participation as being mutually involved in the patients’ process of recovery arose. Conclusion From a caring science perspective the meaning of psychiatric nurses experiences of patient participation could be understood as an interpersonal process reflecting the reciprocity in human relationships. This means a shift in understanding of patient participation from procedures related to the planning of nursing care, to understanding participation as a process focusing on the mutual involvement of patients and nurses in the patients’ process of recovery.

A Hermeneutical Exploration of the Revelatory Text of John 4:1–42, in a Performative Key

This article makes a case for the use of music in biblical interpretation and theological method. It places the hermeneutical approach to Scripture developed by Sandra Schneiders from the work of Gadamer and Ricoeur into dialogue with theopoetical approaches to theological thought. Musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s method for analyzing musical meaning frames the analysis of an original piece of music, offered as a second naiveté, transformative interpretation of the Johannine narrative of the Samaritan woman in John 4:1–42.

Nurses' experiences of busyness in their daily work.

The purpose of this study is to explore and illuminate the phenomenon of busyness as experienced by nurses. The daily work of nursing practice is often characterized by a hectic pace in the execution of tasks. Previous research shows that busyness can potentially lead to a reduction in the quality of nursing. Little has been explored about nurses' own experiences of busyness. This study has a qualitative design. The method chosen is a phenomenological hermeneutical exploration of personal experiences. Results reveal that busyness is experienced as a disparity between perceived necessary tasks and time available to accomplish them. Busyness has an outer dimension of events and a dimension of internal processes. Busyness is experienced as acceptable to some extent, but feels strongly uncomfortable if important tasks remain undone. The intolerable busyness raises negative emotions, steals energy and weakens health. Coping with busyness seems to be a personal and individual struggle, even though health service enterprises are a collective matter.

Why Are We Reading This? Hermeneutic Inquiry into the Practice of Teaching (with) Literature

Drawing upon my own experiences as a high school English Language Arts teacher, I seek a satisfying response to offer students when they ask, “Why are we reading this?” Such a query often leads teachers and students to consider broader questions of the purposes of literature. This paper presents a hermeneutic exploration of the practice of teaching (with) literature in the high school classroom. Using the writings of Gadamer (1989/2013) and Sumara (1996, 2002), and their conceptualizations of aesthetic (literary) experience, I outline a process of engaging with students in their desire to understand their roles as readers in the classroom. In doing so, I make an argument for playful and dialogic interactions between reader and text – an approach that both retains the integrity of aesthetic experience, and also invites a relational pedagogy among those who share a literary reading.

Method-ising Cognitive Truth: The Paradigm of Subtext in Baz Luhrmann’s Silver-Screen Vision of Romeo and Juliet’s Wedding

A case study of the wedding scene in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann 1996, this article is a hermeneutic exploration of the truth pursuits within the subtext from the empirical perspective of a practicing director and a semiotician, in accordance with the principles of the Method acting technique. The author proposes a new, space-negotiated definition of subtext as a separate cognitive unit, based on the multilayered interdependences within the directorial semiotic triad of word–emotional action–mise-en-scène. In a minute shot-by-shot analysis, the author examines the hermeneutic collocations in-between the elements of the triad, and demonstrates the ways cognitive spaces become subtextual statements within each shot, as well as how the internal subtexts shape the metasubtext of each shot in order to arrive at the megasubtext of the scene — and subsequently the total subtext of the entire story in a cultural text. Aspects of the evolution of the subtext representations are analyzed within the triad of word–emotional action–mise-en-scène, against the backdrop of the epistemological pursuits of the truth. How do we reach the truth in a cultural text? What components of the film language rule the expression of the truth in a cultural text?

Language, Translation, and Commentary in Cuneiform Scribal Practice

Abstract Cuneiform scholarly practices systematized an exploration of meaning potential. In cuneiform scholarship, knowledge making emerged from multiple scribal practices, most notably list-making, analogical reasoning, and translation. The present paper demonstrates how multilingualism stands at the core of cuneiform scholarly inquiry, enabling hermeneutical exploration of possibility and potential. Cuneiform scholarly practices of translation and analogical hermeneutics coupled with an understanding of the cuneiform writing system constituted a system analogous to the medieval artes grammaticae.

Moving Texts: A Hermeneutics of the Gospel According to Hollywood

AbstractThe Hollywood Jesus epics re-visualize the gospel story against the anxious backdrops of secularization, cultural pluralism, and moral skepticism. While these epics are often derided for their lack of theological insight, cultural awareness, or aesthetic taste, this article argues for a re-appreciation of the genre's internal pluralism and hermeneutical significance. Focusing on Cecil B. DeMille'sThe King of Kings(1927) and Nicholas Ray'sKing of Kings(1961), it reflects on the epic as a tradition-forming moment in the Jesus story's reception. Both DeMille and Ray offer competing interpretations of Jesus, thus illustrating how the genre functions as a site of christological and hermeneutical reflection. Against this backdrop, I argue for a reinterpretation of the genre and, further, proffer a hermeneutical exploration of cinema more broadly as a central moment in the dialogue between Christianity and popular culture.

Translation and localization of children’s rights in youth-produced digital media in the Global South: A hermeneutic exploration

Through the study of two UNICEF-supported youth media initiatives from Palestine, this article theorizes and generates new empirical knowledge about the encounter between constructions of youth in rights-based discourses of UNICEF and young people’s digital media narratives. The research encountered instances where the universal discourse of children’s rights did not connect with the local realities of youth (constraints) but found that young people translate children’s rights to construct new meanings to suit their local contexts and experiences (possibilities).

A hermeneutic exploration of how mental health nurses use solution focused brief therapy in clinical practice?

A hermeneutic exploration of how mental health nurses use solution focused brief therapy in clinical practice?

On intersubjectivity in art and everyday aesthetics

ABSTRACTCertain aestheticians attempt to define everyday aesthetics by describing it as radically private, subjective and nondiscursive. The main aim of this article is to counter this restrictive, isolationist approach to everyday aesthetics by pointing to the role of intersubjective, discursive, institutional arenas in fostering meaningful everyday aesthetic experience. To this end, the first part of the article conducts a historical and hermeneutical exploration of how modern subjectivity was initially constructed, later problematised, and how today it is often reconstructed as intersubjectivity by poststructuralism and the Artworld. I then turn to how this issue is playing out in the current discourse on everyday aesthetics. The second part of the article shows that prominent contemporary aestheticians agree that language has the potential to enrich ineffable aesthetic experience in all walks of life. I extend this broad perspective by arguing that differential discourse is particularly appropriate for this task. In conclusion, I suggest that by demarcating everyday aesthetics as private and as the “other” of the contemporary Artworld – by retrogressively defining it in terms of subjective experience – there is a risk of marginalising this important area of aesthetic interest and of impoverishing both art and everyday aesthetic life.

An Aesthetic of Black

A hermeneutic and poetic exploration of suffering offers a new perspective, or perhaps an ancient one, to understand beauty: an aesthetic of black. Through mythological and alchemical amplification, we are invited to revision a description of descent as one that is both beautiful and good—or at least one that leads to both. Descent and its accompanying nigredo, the initial stage of alchemy, have been considered the most negative, difficult, and dangerous of life's unfolding movements. Read in its characteristic blackening, the depth of ice, isolation, and cold beneath the common fire, intensity, and heat of hell is described as a way toward transformation—a glimpse that is shared through a personal story that is inset within the collective narrative. Descent has also been understood as a journey to the land of the dead, to the ancestors, and to the darkness of humanity—a depth that requires the softening and release of ego's centrality in life. This place is contrasted to the night sea journey because it does not seek to strengthen the ego; it seeks its unthinkable dissolution. Thereby a case is made for enduring this experience as a source of and for creativity—nigredo is an essential part of life and may well be transformed through an aesthetic sensibility. In facing death, in all its literal and metaphorical challenges, surrender is often the only course available, followed by learning to die—both of which enable a symbolic third to evolve into a vital psychological reality. In this way suffering serves and is seen as a way of knowing and a way to be ethically in life.

Calling the Hermeneutic Circle: A Place of Belonging with Pre-Nursing Students

Abstract Caring leads and inspirits the creation of our new baccalaureate nursing program. Tension is recognized in the space where the dominant technical paradigm meets interpretive questions of meaning. The authors create caring pedagogical places, including a Caring Circle, for dwelling together in essential ontological questions. Students' reflections and shared conversations become human science text for this hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of the lived experience of prenursing students. Themes of longing, belonging, vulnerability, and comfort emerge. Being in caring circles offers radical possibilities for a pedagogy of being and becoming in nursing education.

The issue of being touched.

The purpose of this empirical paper is to shed light on the phenomenon of being touched in professional care practice. The study has a qualitative design and is a phenomenological hermeneutical exploration based on the story of a care provider. In her story, she describes how her interactions with a substance abuser touched her. The narrative data stems from dialogue with her colleagues and demonstrates a moral appeal and challenge in practical care. Investigations reveal that being touched is about allowing one's self to be awakened by the suffering of others. Being touched by others' suffering thus provides the ability "to see" what is at stake. Identifying with one's suffering and the awareness of what is at risk may be factors that "tip" a person's decision toward acting in the best interest of another person. Being touched may muster an individual's courage to engage in "risk-taking" actions in care. This process paves the way to care and represent essential practical knowledge for health care professionals.

Eschatological Expression In The Holy Text (A Preliminary Hermeneutical Exploration on Selected Eschatological Narratives in the Qur’an and the Bible)

<p>One of the key concept that lies in almost every religions, as asserted in each holy texts, is eschatological doctrine. The apocalyptic belief in the last day has been existed throughout the history of civilizations with the various expression. Eschatological narrative in the holy texts ought to deemed as a historical text that revealed within its space and time. Accordingly, it is a historizing thing, which contains plenty of stories besides it’s sacred messages. This sense of historical awareness is pointed out – for example – by the eschatological narratives in the Qur’an which strongly influenced by socio-religious circumstances and topographical conditions in Arabian Peninsula at the time of revelation, as the Bible that has cased up its eschatological narratives based on a certain historical event: the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by Roman soldiers. The central purpose of this paper is to explore the connection and influence of the certain historical moments on the style and construction of both, the Qur’an and the Bible eschatological narratives, through a simple hermeneutical analysis. <em> </em></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Abstrak: </strong>Salah satu konsep kunci yang melandasi hampir seluruh agama, sebagaimana tertera dalam kitab-kitab sucinya adalah persoalan eskatologis. Kepercayaan apokaliptik akan adanya hari akhir terdapat hampir di setiap sejarah peradaban dalam beberapa ekspresi yang berbeda. Narasi eskatologis dalam beberapa teks suci hendaknya tidak hanya dilihat sebagai teks suci yang turun di ruang yang kosong. Dalam hal ini, ia menyejarah dan memberikan suatu kisah lain di samping pesan sakralnya. Hal ini terlihat jelas bagaimana narasi eskatologis dalam Al-Qur’an sangat dipengaruhi oleh kondisi sosio-religius dan keadaan topografis semenanjung Arab ketika itu. Begitu juga dengan Bibel yang mengemas narasi eskatologisnya berdasarkan suatu even sejarah tertentu, dalam hal ini penghancuran Yerusalem oleh bangsa Romawi pada tahun 70 M. Tulisan ini mencoba menakar keterpengaruhan narasi eskatologis dalam kedua kitab suci tersebut oleh beberapa entitas historis yang melingkupinya dengan menggunakan suatu analisis hermeneutis yang sederhana<em>.</em></p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Eschatology, Phenomenology, Hermeneutic, Al-Qur’an, Bible</p>