Humanistic Ethos Research Articles

The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism

The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism

Who cares?-The unrecognised contribution of homecare nurses to care trajectories.

Organisation of patients' trajectories is a critical element of nursing practice. However, nursing practice is mainly expressed in terms of direct patient care, while the practices through which care is organised have received little attention, are poorly acknowledged and lack formal recognition. To examine the management of care trajectories as provided by homecare nurses. We conducted focus group interviews with 29 Danish homecare nurses. The analysis drew on the evidence based and theoretically informed framework care trajectory management. Care trajectory management is conceptualised as comprising of three organisational components: (1) Trajectory awareness, (2) Trajectory working knowledge and (3) Trajectory articulation. The organising work of homecare nursing is both complex and unpredictable requiring advanced organisational, collaborative and clinical competences to secure concerted actions in alignment with the needs of the individual patient. Without having any formal obligation homecare nurses took on the responsibility for the coordination of the different activities of the professional actors, and for securing concerted actions. Care trajectory management as provided by homecare nurses reflected a high degree of commitment for patients and illustrated that this type of organising work was driven by the values of the humanistic ethos of nursing. The study highlights the strength of the invisible and ongoing organising work of homecare nurses. Care trajectory management in homecare reflects the moral foundation of nursing. Consequently, the professional logic of nursing reflected as direct patient care alone is too narrow. We need to acknowledge the organising work of patients' trajectories as a core task equal to direct patient care. Our study highlights the need for articulating the organising work of homecare nurses and for presenting problematic organisational structures to policymakers and managers. If not, the important organisational work of homecare nurses is at the risk of remaining invisible.

Review: Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History, by Charles L. Leavitt IV

Review: <i>Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History</i>, by Charles L. Leavitt IV

Pioneering political ecology: perceptions of nature, Indigenous practices and power relations during Alexander von Humboldt's travels in Latin America

This article is an attempt to discuss the image of Alexander von Humboldt as a pure natural scientist with a humanist ethos, and to highlight that he was in fact one of the first thinkers who anticipated positions known today as political ecology. We outline that his universal knowledge obviously has contradictory perspectives, and was interpreted in several directions. On the one hand, there is the position taken by post-colonial critics that Humboldt showed Eurocentric and imperialist thinking during his travels to the Americas, as Pratt has advocated. On the other hand, and in explicit contrast to the post-colonial critique, Humboldt has been regarded by Sachs as a founding figure of American environmentalism and as "perhaps, the first ecological thinker." Furthermore, Wulf's biography titled The Invention of Nature tries to show that Humboldt wanted to bridge the gap between the emerging natural sciences and Romanticist aesthetics. However, based on his writings, we argue that his perception of nature has been misread and that his position was shaped by a view akin to open and critical political ecology, as opposed to pure nature constructivism without including local humans. We show this by focusing on his research methods that were open to local Indigenous ecological knowledge, his appraisal of Indigenous socio-cultural systems, his perception of nature as Indigenous cultural landscapes degraded by colonial and early capitalist market forces, his openness towards Indigenous ontologies of what we call nature, and finally his focus on local institutions for the sustainable governance of resources.

The Vanishing Point of World Literature

Abstract In the field of world literature, questions about the temporal versus spatial nature of worlding persist. One reason is the problematic nature of this dichotomy. Taking up Pheng Cheah’s calls for the temporal worlding of indeterminate becoming, my paper complicates the fate of spatiality in this move toward ontological open-endedness. With discussion of the vanishing point, I postulate that imaginative distancing in its relation to memory involves a spatialization that need not be circumscribed by global flattening of the humanist ethos central to the worldliness of world literature. In response to the connection Cheah draws between literature and worldliness, I claim that the latter is characterized by a spatiotemporal elasticity born from the proliferation of meaning in the former. At the extreme, this movement gestures toward the infinite held by the vanishing point, and there, indeterminacy appears absurdly paradoxical in our search for world value, as consciousness loses itself in the repeated and necessary attempt to transcend distance that cannot be measured.

Keys to Human Development: The Baltic Miracle

The three Baltic republics—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—are the only units of the former Soviet Union to deal effectively with the complex challenges of transitioning to free market democracy with advancing levels of human development. These countries have developed high levels of societal fitness—defined in complexity science as the ability to cope with multifaceted challenges and opportunities. What are the sources of these achievements? Many factors intertwined to produce what some call the “Baltic miracle.” One key element has been the three revolutions stemming from the Protestant mandate to read and discuss the Bible: mass literacy, free thought and repression, and respect for individual dignity. Protestant influences were strongest in what is now Estonia and Latvia, but they reached Lithuania as well. Religiosity in now low in the Baltic republics, as in the Sweden that once nurtured both Christianity and literacy in its Baltic provinces. But the sparks it ignited in centuries past have shaped the rationalist and humanistic ethos of the region. Religion, of course, is just one of the European influences that conditioned economic and other cultural development in the region. But the dates when the Bible reached all of Europe in the vernacular are strong predictors of human development today. Balts also gained from not being occupied by the Golden Horde. On the other hand, they had to overcome several centuries of Russian and then Soviet domination. Fifty years of Communist rule dimmed but did not extinguish the positive qualities that reemerged with great vitality in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The Baltic transformations were not "managed" from above or from outside—not from Brussels, not from Washington. They were encouraged and supported by Sweden and other European powers, but each transformation emerged from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down or from outside-in. Balts acted synergistically to contribute to the self-organization that is crucial to meeting complex challenges.

Honoring Life After Death: Mapping the Spread of the Pause.

Health care is a high-risk environment for clinicians and patients. The risk of burnout increases with increased patient acuity and workload demands. The Pause is a contemplative intervention that has been deployed to foster honor and self-care. We aimed to reveal how clinicians and educators use The Pause and how it changes systems of thinking or practice. Using a modified Delphi method, we interviewed 11 participants who had used The Pause or intend on using it. The Pause is being used in 4 continents and many countries. It is most widely learned about by the bedside in practice settings. Participants believe it is malleable and has a powerful systemic effect in fostering a culture of support and honor. The Pause should continue to be taught in clinical scenarios to foster a broader humanistic ethos in health care.

Modernism as Postnationalist Politics:

After completing architectural studies in the United States in 1952, Muzharul Islam returned home to Pakistan to find the country embroiled in acrimonious politics of national identity. The young architect began his design career in the midst of bitterly divided notions of national origin and destiny, and his architectural work reflected this political debate. In Modernism as Postnationalist Politics: Muzharul Islam's Faculty of Fine Arts (1953–56), Adnan Morshed argues that Islam's Faculty of Fine Arts at Shahbagh, Dhaka, embodied his need to articulate a national identity based on the secular humanist ethos of Bengal, rather than on an Islamic religious foundation. With this iconoclastic building, Islam sought to achieve two distinctive goals: to introduce the aesthetic tenets of modern architecture to East Pakistan and to reject all references to colonial-era Indo-Saracenic architecture. The Faculty's modernism hinges on Islam's dual commitment to a secular Bengali character and universal humanity.

The theory of caritative leadership applied to education

Within caring science, the concept of caring leadership is well established. The aim of this study is to introduce Bondas’s theory of caritative leadership into education. The theory of caritative leadership is a theory of caring leadership with the ‘caritas’ thought of human love and mercy at its core. The article considers a hypothetical testing of the transferability of a nursing leadership theory, with its roots in caring science, into the field of education. The material consists of about 90 sources from the disciplines of nursing, education, management, and psychology. A caritative leadership would support Bildung – a comprehensive view of the edification of life, personal growth and maturity – as an ultimate goal of education. In the emerging model of a caritative leadership in education, a humanistic ethos of love, trust, and forgiveness shapes the culture of the educational organisation. The pedagogical leader supports the process of human becoming by implementing the idea of human beings as vulnerable, moral, dignified and unique individuals. The leader develops an ability to know which objectives to measure and which experiences of others to learn from, while performing such tasks as planning, reporting and directing in accordance with the mission of the organisation.

Relevancia de la hermenéutica diatópica de Boaventura De Sousa-Santos para la enseñanza de la cultura en las clases de lengua

Se presenta una relectura de la hermenéutica diatópica de De Sousa-Santos en cuanto ejercicio de traducción de saberes de sistemas culturales diversos con la finalidad de establecer diálogos entre ellos. Ese enfoque hermenéutico resulta de particular relevancia en la enseñanza de la cultura, tanto en cursos de educación superior como en aquellos dirigidos a estudiantes internacionales. Por ello se expone una experiencia pedagógica en la que se trabajado el tema de manera exitosa. La experiencia consiste en el análisis crítico de una unidad contenida en un libro de texto. De ello se obtuvo que la clase llegara a conclusiones relevantes en la formación de un ethos humanístico en el proceso de aprendizaje de la lengua extranjera. La idea es contribuir con la comunidad académica para un abordaje holístico de la lingüística aplicada.

The Professione di Architetto in Renaissance Italy

The Professione di Architetto in Renaissance Italy shows how Renaissance Italian architects used the concept of the professione di architetto as a way to affirm and delineate the character of their occupation. Drawing inspiration from antiquarian models and taking advantage of the humanist ethos, these architects equated “profession” with manual and theoretical expertise, social authority, and the fulfillment of artistic, civic, and moral ideals. Elizabeth Merrill places the origins of architectural professionalism in early modern Italy—rather than in the nineteenth-century movements frequently cited by social historians—and describes the theoretical context for the architect's professional rise. Positioning themselves alongside university-educated professors, architects of Renaissance Italy crafted didactic treatises about their work and created academies for its instruction, foreshadowing a long history of architectural discourse that continues to this day.

The ‘religion of the child’: Korczak’s road to radical humanism

This paper explores the biographical and cultural sources that inspired the decision of Janusz Korczak (Warsaw, 1878; Treblinka, 1942) to make his life’s vocation the education of young children from dysfunctional families. This decision emerged out of the radical version of humanism he embraced. His identification of children as the population his humanist ethos must serve, distinguishes it from other versions of humanism. The paper explores the role his sense of self and his identification with Poles, Jews, and humanity play in the composition of this humanism. It identifies the hybridity of his cultural identifications as its heart. It proposes that the tensions between these identifications in general, and his non-Jewish Jewish identification that situated him as being ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’ Polish society in particular, induced Korczak to create a universal religion of children in which religious, ethnic, or physical distinctions do not generate prejudice, intolerance, and violence.

Understanding Humanistic Management

Humanistic management is a people-oriented management that seeks profits for human ends. It contrasts with other types of management that are essentially oriented toward profits, with people seen as mere resources to serve this goal. This article reviews the historical development of humanistic management and the ever-increasing body of literature on the concept as well as the different meanings that scholars attribute to it. It then explores what form a genuine humanism might have by presenting seven propositions labeled as: 1) wholeness, 2) comprehensive knowledge, 3) human dignity, 4) development, 5) common good, 6) transcendence, and 7) stewardship-sustainability. Next, it looks at four characteristics of a humanistic ethos for managing business: the view of the individual and human work, the role of the individual in the society and in interacting with nature, the business firm, and the purpose of business in society. Finally, it presents some insights for the practice of humanistic management.

Applying the ‘least dangerous assumption’ in regard to behaviour policies and children with special needs

Children with special needs and disabilities (SEND) in mainstream schools have a wide range of complex conditions rendering it impossible for teachers to fully understand all the complexities of their needs. Difficulties with understanding and self-control lead to much of the behaviour that is considered unacceptable within schools and that can ultimately lead to the large numbers of children with SEND who are excluded. Schools often wish to provide a behaviour policy where everyone is treated equally despite people’s needs and abilities being different. Government guidance in relation to behaviour policies is that they should comprise a mixture of sanctions and rewards, but this behaviourist view leads to a lack of equity of response to behaviour, again feeding into disproportionate numbers of children with SEND being excluded. The move from sanctions and rewards to the operation of a relationships policy where students’ actions yield consequences, within a humanist ethos of understanding, would far more effectively support all children to learn to moderate and control their behaviour and would allow staff to apply the ‘least dangerous assumption’ when dealing with challenging students.

Ethics, profession, and rational choice

Human development can be seen as the process of giving more effective expression to human values. Modern business philosophy has a certain viewpoint or perspective on human potential based on the secular humanistic values of the west and the scientific theories on the nature of man and his evolution. We are bound to welcome the New Paradigm in Business because it opens the path for a decisive step forward in evolution from an authoritarian, mechanistic, Taylorian era to a freer and a more humanistic ethos in business.

‘We are not who we are’: Lovecraftian conspiracy and magical humanism in The Cabin in the Woods

Abstract Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s film The Cabin in the Woods (2012) conflates the two genres of slasher horror and conspiracy theory in such a way that articulates a trenchant critique of two totalizing grad narratives: religion and instrumental reason. Indeed, in the suturing of the story of a vast, technocratic conspiracy onto a Lovecraftian mythos about ancient gods demanding blood sacrifice, Cabin effectively dramatizes the central thesis of Dialectic of Enlightenment, by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (2002), insofar as blind adherence to rationality (manifested in the hyperadvanced technology of the conspiracy) is transformed into the madness of unreason. In marrying the supernatural and the technological, however, the film opens a space in which to articulate a humanist ethos, one best described as ‘magical humanism’.

Rereading David Grossman's &lt;em&gt;See Under: Love&lt;/em&gt;

Rereading David Grossman’s See Under: Love Naomi Sokoloff Upon its publication in 1986, David Grossman’s See Under: Love was hailed as a masterpiece that introduced innovative treatment of Holocaust themes to Hebrew literature.1 This path-breaking novel caused a sensation on the Israeli literary scene through its focus on the second generation, as well as through its use of the fantastic and of postmodern narrative techniques.2 The novel’s clamorous (mostly positive) reception from critics and the general public was in part a reaction to Grossman’s exuberant prose and enormous imaginative creativity. It was also a function of the ways See Under: Love spoke to a particular era. The author tapped into many issues that had begun fermenting in Israel in the mid-1980s and that subsequently entered public discourse with explosive force. Grossman identified and articulated a cluster of questions that in the coming years achieved increasing prominence in the arts and in psychology, history, and education. In addition, some of the issues highlighted in the novel were beginning to engross more and more audiences far beyond Israel. See Under: Love garnered international acclaim as it grappled with trauma, catastrophe, and memory—topics that were gaining global attention in the late 1980s and 1990s. In short, Grossman’s success at home and abroad aptly illustrates the Hebrew saying: Mihu ḥakham? Haro’eh et hanolad. Who is wise? He who has foresight, who sees what is coming next. How has this novel held up over time? Now, at a distance of some thirty years, it is possible to reread and reassess this important text by asking how artistic responses to the Holocaust have evolved since 1986 and by considering whether Grossman’s novel was indeed prophetic of emerging trends in Holocaust studies. The essays collected here address such issues as they take a look at See Under: Love [End Page 1] in view of later developments—with a focus on Israeli contexts, but with an eye to literary trends elsewhere, too. Or Rogovin examines Grossman’s representations of Nazis and measures them against increasing attention to Holocaust perpetrators in subsequent Hebrew fiction. Mia Spiro looks at monsters and ghosts, a growing phenomenon in Holocaust literature worldwide, to explore how the motif of the “Nazi Beast” plays out in Grossman’s hands. Iris Milner analyzes the humanist ethos of See Under: Love, showing how it fit in with societal outlooks that prevailed in Israel for a period of time, but that ultimately proved short-lived. She also compares Grossman’s novel and its depiction of survivors to a precursor text, Yoram Kaniuk’s Adam Resurrected (1969). Milner points out how nationalist elements of that novel contrast with universalist values characteristic of the later period in which Grossman was writing. Rogovin and Spiro likewise shed light on earlier literary works and cultural assumptions. They thereby suggest how See Under: Love emerged as a pivotal text, heralding new directions in artistic considerations of the Shoah. Rounding out this collection of essays is a piece by Sheila Jelen that focuses pointedly on See Under: Love as a pivotal text: at once a harbinger of a new era and a novel that reflects on literature of the past. Jelen discerns Yiddish elements in Grossman’s work, suggesting how they are indicative of a now burgeoning Israeli interest in Yiddish culture, and she offers the term salvage poetics to explain how Grossman engages voices from a bygone era, thus summoning ghosts from a world destroyed in the Holocaust. These three essays resonate with but also diverge from one another in a number of compelling ways. Through distinctive approaches, they all examine Grossman’s refusal to settle for reductive or simplistic engagement with the aftermath of catastrophe. Rogovin, Spiro, and Milner, dealing with the literary treatment of victims and victimizers, gravitate toward discussion of difficult moral ambiguities. All four essays contribute to an understanding of how See Under: Love dismantled a once widespread supposition that sabras and Diaspora Jews (especially survivors of the Shoah) were binary opposites. Each of these essays thereby underscores how Grossman’s novel marked a watershed moment. See Under: Love challenged established views of sabra heroism and toughness...

The pedagogic signature of special needs education

The goal of the following study is to identify a pedagogic signature, according to LS Shulman, for working with students who have special educational needs. Special educational needs are defined as significant limitations in personal development and learning which require particular educational measures beyond regular education. The development of a pedagogic signature should create an identity and provide guidance, particularly for teachers who are working in the context of inclusive schools with no prior knowledge or training in this regard. The study is carried out against the background of the structural uncertainty of the teaching profession and takes into consideration existing normative, theoretical and empirical approaches in education. Existing research regarding demands is largely theoretical, while empirical research is rudimentary. The present study used a multi-method approach to identify demands for working with students with special educational needs. Experts in the areas of learning disabilities and emotional/behavioural disorders completed an instrument from the field of industrial and organisational psychology, quantifying and weighting professional demands on teachers according to their importance. The results were added and validated through group discussions, creating a demand profile. By combining the results with the dimensions of a signature pedagogy, according to Shulman, it is apparent that surface structure and deep structure play a minor role in the perceptions of special needs teachers. The central importance of the implicit structure is characteristic of the pedagogic signature. This importance is represented by the target group’s emphasis on demands such as having an appreciative leadership or authenticity. An even greater emphasis is placed on the aspect of attitude – this is having a humanistic ethos. The demand profile and the resulting consequences for the practice of teaching will be considered with a view towards current problems and questions in research and practice, and particularly with regard to inclusion.

The Struggles of the Interculturalists: Professional Ethical Identity and Early Stages of Codes of Ethics Development

Ethicalisation processes that partake in the construction of a firm or a professional group’s ethical identity are often described as a relatively linear combination of several components, such as policies (starting with the development of a code of ethics), corporate practices, and leadership. Our study of a professional community dealing with the topics related to cultural diversity indicates a more reciprocal relationship between ethical identity and ethicalisation processes. We argue that a tangible form of ethical identity can pre-date the ethicalisation process of a professional group, and additionally, can impact this process at the start. We highlight that, despite the absence of official ethical statements in the community, a form of ethical professional identity is already present among the interculturalists of the international organisation Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research. Using critical discourse analysis, we identify the proclaimed humanist ethos in the discourses that interculturalists co-produce and diffuse during conferences, on on-line discussion forums, and in the mission of their professional organisations. This study contributes to the literature on ethical identity development by showing how a pre-existing form of ethical identity can influence the early stage of the development of a code of ethics. In addition, we indicate that, similar to organisational identity construction, ethical identity construction uses self-other identity talks, thus, defining an ethical other (or less ethical other) in its development.

Slovenska kratka vojna proza v periodiki (1919−1929) na ozadju ideje svetovne književnosti

The paper examines the issue of how world literature on the Great War is “localised” in Slovene short prose published in periodicals between 1919 and 1929. It attempts to investigate how the texts are imbued with a nationalist mindset and how they reflect the cosmopolitan universal humanist ethos. It also deals with the question of the short prose models that are represented in this production – realist, symbolist in the manner of New Romanticism, expressionist, avant-garde or syncretic – and explores how short prose on war is infiltrated, through the realisation of these models, by Modernism.