Interdependence Of Life Research Articles

WORKING BY THE NUMBERS

The performance artists Florian Feigl and Fjóla Gautadóttir engage with production conditions of artistic work through their ways of managing time in performances. Informed by Marxist and feminist theories on affective and reproductive work, and with references to the history of performance art, I demonstrate how, contrary to myths of inspiration and virtuosity, production conditions co-create artistic authorship. Thereby, I reexamine what traditionally is termed as the aesthetics of production. An aesthetics of production is, I suggest, not about natural talent and originality of the soloist artist genius but is founded on the interdependency of life and work, and what enables the artist to do work. Feigl and Gautadóttir’s performances include what has been excluded as disturbances by idealist aesthetics of production: the sociality, temporality and economy of the artistic work. By proposing a feminist-materialist aesthetics of production, I claim that the artist’s work is not only working by the numbers of the present production conditions, but is also performing and intervening within the infrastructures of art.

Death in the Zhuangzi: Themes, arguments, and interpretations

AbstractThis paper distinguishes three major themes in the philosophy of death of the Zhuangzi. It shows that, while these themes are often intertwined in the text, they offer different outlooks on the nature of death and, correspondingly, different arguments about the significance of death and strategies for coping with death. The first sees death as a natural and inevitable part of the process of cosmic transformation that we have to accept or embrace. The second emphasizes the unity, continuity and interdependence of life and death, and advises us to appreciate death from this holistic perspective. The last strand of thought challenges our ability to know about death's nature and value. In addition, the paper reviews a few competing interpretations of the Zhuangzi in recent Anglophone literature and suggests that, first, they can be seen as attempts to articulate and develop different themes in the text, and second, they fail to offer a strong rational ground for the Zhuangist attitudes toward death, in part because they all rely on critical assumptions that are questionable or at least insufficiently defended.

The Fate of the Extended Genome

The Fate of the Extended Genome

GIS in the jungle: Experiential Environmental Education (EEE) in Panama.

A University of Redlands travel course to Panama builds on Monty Hempel’s legacy in environmental studies, Experiential Environmental Education, and geographic information systems (GIS) instruction at the University of Redlands. It follows his experience developing social relationships in Panama, and nearly 20 years leading an EEE travel course to Palau. This Panama course, nicknamed “GIS in the Jungle,” tasks students with activities such as trail mapping, gathering original data with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), landcover mapping of pastures and forests, and visualizing the distribution of above-ground forest carbon content. These GIS activities help students construct an understanding of rainforest conservation that integrates their experiences living, hiking, and collecting original data in that environment. UAV and GIS also provided a platform for interacting with indigenous peoples struggling to defend their rainforest territory from colonist deforestation. As Monty Hempel observed about this course, students use GIS and UAV to integrate their direct experience with ground-level fieldwork in the rainforest with a birds-eye view of the interlocking ecosystems and human impacts. Combined with direct rainforest experiences, GIS projects help students develop an understanding of nature’s interlocking systems and the interdependence of life on Earth.

Resilience and Meaning-Making Amid the COVID-19 Epidemic in China

The COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful border experience awakening us to our existential predicament. Such a predicament includes transience and impermanence, unpredictability, emptiness (existential vacuum), and the interdependence of life and death. The anxiety aroused by the pandemic can awaken us to an ontological mode of existence in which we are authentic, aware, responsible, and transcendent. The Chinese idiom reminds us that crises contain both danger and opportunity. Thus, this article explores how out of this awareness can emerge resilience, creativity, and meaning-making in the midst of confinement, isolation, and suffering.

Moral Bioenhancement through An Intersectional Theo-Ethical Lens: Refocusing on Divine Image-Bearing and Interdependence

This article begins with a brief interrogation of the meanings of moral and virtue. Next, an intersectional Christian theo-ethical lens focusing on humans as divine image-bearers is used to generate critical insights regarding the influence of extreme individualism on approaches to moral bioenhancement. This alternative lens emphasizes the interdependence of life, and the contextual character of moral dispositions. The questions of what it means to be creatures bearing the imago dei and making moral choices, is at the center of this exploration. The author concludes that while there may be justifiable exceptions, for now moral bioenhancements are unwarranted. Moral improvement will be better achieved through more effective educational strategies, and possibly spiritual enhancements, that are geared toward appreciation for the interdependence of all life.

What’s happening in Taranaki? Social workers and the environment

Climate change is altering our physical world (Alston 2013; Gray, Coates & Hetherington 2013; Dominelli 2012; Hetherington & Boddy 2013; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 2012) and forcing us to consider the way we live with Papa-tūā-nuku. Globally, nationally and locally we are forced to consider 'green’ issues as a result of climate change (Alston 2013; Coates 2004; Coates 2003; Gray, Coates & Hetherington 2013; IPCC 2012). The International Federation of Social Workers (2013: 4) state, ‘…the last twenty years has demonstrated as never before the inter-dependence of life on the globe’, and advocate for social workers recognising the importance of the natural world in their work. This article considers what this means for social workers in Taranaki.

Scientific Methods in Social and Humanitarian Researches

The article analyzes the importance of methods of scientific disciplines for the research methodology of social and humanitarian processes, and discusses interdependence of life and culture sciences in terms of the complexity theory. It emphasizes that cognition in a social human sphere is based on polyparadigmatic principles which provide both the necessary completeness of the cognitive process and cross-case analysis of the subject under inquiry taking into account specific characteristics of different explanatory models. Quantitative estimations and integral values in scientific methods of social and humanitarian studies provide an opportunity of modeling and predicting social processes and tendencies of political development. The article particularly focuses on the scientific tools for studying micro- and macro-politics in the framework of psychological theories of communication and forms of interaction among influential politicians in the complex multilevel political processes. The author comes to conclusion that an analytical set of research mechanisms based on the principles of naturalistic philosophy can be a basis for system analysis and models of interaction among the main antagonists, taking into account their basic resources and behavior tactics, which in its turn, lets us identify the most likely scenario of development of a situation in a certain time period and on a certain territory. System analysis of structural elements of the social community under inquiry or a certain event line will allow us identifying sources of disfunctionality and latent development of low-intensity conflicts which can involve escalation of confrontation among political actors at the micro and macro levels, which can break down stability, integrity and dynamic equilibrium of the system. The article considers contemporary importance of transformative technologies and engineering capabilities of social theories as a functional problem of the scientific discourse.

Relationships in Time and the Life Course: The Significance of Linked Lives

Life’s strongest storylines are punctuated by and enmeshed with other people. The principle of “linked lives”—that the lives of individuals affect and are affected by the lives of others—is repeated as a mantra in life course literature. And yet this stands in direct contrast to the state of research, which largely treats individuals as if they exist in isolation of others. This author’s wish for the study of human development is to take more seriously the interdependence of lives. To say that lives are “linked” says nothing about their nature, length, purposes, or consequences. The author illustrates the significance of social relationships in time—probing the beginnings, middles, and ends of relationships—and in shaping the life course. It is the author’s hope that developmental science will get better at revealing the intensity and complexity of human life as a social experience.

A life course perspective on polycystic ovary syndrome.

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a major public health problem in the US. Worldwide, the public is largely unaware of the condition and health care providers do not seem to fully understand it. Research on PCOS has primarily focused on its etiology and clinical characteristics and less on the psychosocial aspects of human development associated with PCOS. This paper posits that a life course perspective provides a framework for further understanding the psychosocial experiences of women with PCOS and the contexts in which they live. The paper discusses how life course principles of human development, constraints on agency, interdependence of lives, time and place, and timing of events and experiences are relevant to the management of PCOS and prevention of its complications.

The Loseable World: Resonance, Creativity, and Resilience

The Loseable World: Resonance, Creativity, and Resilience

An Examination on the Interdependence of Life in an Age of Ecological Crisis

An Examination on the Interdependence of Life in an Age of Ecological Crisis

Individualitat in Goethes Wanderjahren

Schwamborn, Claudia. Individualitat in Goethes Wanderjahren. Paderborn: Schoningh, 1997. 187 pp. DM 63.00 paperback Claudia Schwamborn's Individualitat in Goethes Wanderjahren is a decidedly modernist and predominantly ethical interpretation of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Despite its claim to problematize individuality, it neither considers alternative conceptions (e.g., a link in a chain of signifiers or an illusory manifestation of supra-individual forces or currents) nor takes up Goethe's point that Erscheinung und Entzweien sind synonym (Gedenkausgabe 17: 700.). The book mentions the Auswanderers' lamentation about the isolation of the individual (112) but, except in saying that Wilhelm is an outsider (165), does not explore this germane topic (see, by contrast, Heinz Politzer, No Man is an Island: A Note on Image and Thought in Goethe's Iphigenie, The Germanic Review 37 [1962]: 42-54). It does not question whether such an essence as unfractured individuality can be identified in its Einmaligkeit, Unverwechselbarkeit und Wurde (106) or how this is subject to Bildung (114-115-there is a discussion of Bild and Bildung, 144-47). Rather, it takes for granted that Goethe's novel both affirms the autonomy of its characters and addresses the stable if dynamic individuality of its readers, confronting them with multiple perspectives and challenging them to leben und sich [zu] entfalten (171). The primary issue for Schwamborn as for earlier students of the Wanderjahre, here explored on the basis of Blankertz's Die Geschichte der Padagogik (1982), is that of the claims of the individual versus those of society. Schwamborn's book is not about the problem of individuality alone, but also about the relationship between fiction and reality and the novel and the reader (58). It observes that at times the reader is drawn into the novel itself-made to wander with Wilhelm Meister-- though prevented, the author believes, from identifying with him (141). For much of the way, the unparticularized, almost impersonal Wilhelm of the Wanderjahre is recognized as a reader of the texts that are framed by the story of his travels. The painter whom Wilhelm meets in the Lago Maggiore episode knows Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and Wilhelm knows the beautiful widow from reading Der Mann von funfzig Jahren (137). Schwamborn's dissertation announces its divergence from a still dominant view of the Wanderjahre as Roman der Gemeinschaf ten (11) according to which the work is said to narrate, in the categories of the Bildungsroman, the movement of a central character away from egocentrism and toward integration in a congenial group, to whose purposes, in an act of Entsagung, he learns to subordinate his own private desires. Schwamborn's thesis is die Wanderjahre Individualitat im Horizont des Epochenumbruchs um 1800 problema-- tisieren und diskutieren, und dass dieses Thema ein bedeutendes Ferment der Textstruktur ist (13). Quoting Clemens Lugowski and Hannah Arendt, she posits two types of individuality-that of the Daimon as described in Goethe's first Orphic Primal Word, then an individuality defined by a life trajectory and complete only when the life in question is over. The second is the operative schema in the Wanderjahre, the individuality of whose characters is ablesbar anhand ihrer einzigartigen Lebenskurve (14)-a trajectory that is dynamically interdependent with time and environment (= nature) and whose meaning is subjektives Konstrukt, eine psychische Notwendigkeit (91). The interdependence of life and nature is not simply told or shown in Goethe's novel. Rather, its characters and the reader meet with experiences and materials, e.g., texts in a variety of genres, which challenge them to erarbeiten their individuality (15). Materials for the reader to work through include the interpretations of the manifestly limited Redaktor, who makes a fiction out of the available shards and fragments (17). …

The Robin Hood Folk Plays of South-Central England

The British folk plays have been given considerable attention since their discovery in late eighteenth century, l Comment on plays has concentrated heavily upon their origins; according to current theory, plays are vestiges of an archetypal play.2 Because of this emphasis on origins, as well as co-ordinate assumption that texts are either hopelessly corrupt or purely a matter of latter-day accretion, has been a tendency to avoid detailed study of many texts which have been recorded;3 it is action of play which is considered important.4 Accordingly, Revesby Sword Play, 5 or some other atypical text, 6 has been examined in great detail because it manifests some trait which supports current assumption made about origins of tradition. Although Roger Abrahams has argued that the interdependence of life and death was [not] dominant theme of seasonal festivities and that there does not seem to be any evidence for existence of any 'original folk drama' involving this total life-cycle perspective, 7 theory is still maintained by a significant group of British and Irish folklorists8 and should not too readily be discounted. In all probability British folk play tradition is a set of traditions which differ among themselves, not merely because of oral change, but because in different areas have been different influences, and to sort out which influence influenced original origin produces arguments of more heat than light. Besides, although one may be interested in origins of a tradition, it must be remembered that even certain knowledge of an origin might shed very little light on tradition as it exists centuries or millennia later. The

Tennessee Williams Enters Dragon Country

IN THE BAR OF A TOKYO HOTEL (1969) seems a conscious expansion and reworking by Tennessee Williams of one of his earliest one-act plays, I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix (1941). Seen side by side in a new collection of his work, Dragon Country, the two plays - the former an account of an American artist's death abroad, the latter an account of D. H. Lawrence's death in France - make clear what has been frequently overlooked in Williams' work: a continuing preoccupation with the relationship and interdependence of life and art. That the dramatist has allowed them to be published together suggests that the two plays span the distance of Williams' entire career-journey, from its explosive beginnings in his belief in the life-force of the Lawrence an artist-hero to its whimpering end, or at least temporary rest-stop, in disillusion and even doubt concerning the validity of his art.

British West Indian Folk Drama and the ‘Life Cycle’ Problem

There is a strange contradiction in studies on British folk drama. On the one hand, remarkable work has been done in bringing together the numerous records of traditional dramatic performances from Great Britain (and more recently, from Ireland and Newfoundland') and in analysing them in terms of the distribution of traits on a thoroughly empirical basis.2 On the other hand, there is a continuing adherence to the explanation of these dramas as vestiges of some archetypal 'life-cycle play', through which it is argued, the tradition-oriented peasantry once expressed its agrarian vision of the totality of man's experience in the seasonal cycle and in the interdependence of life and death. It is this interpretation of British folk drama which I would like to confront in this paper, for if these plays are viewed from the perspective of performance, they reveal other recurrent preoccupations on the part of the folk. Though there seems to be little doubt that seasonal passage has consistently provided the major metaphorical reference for seasonal festivities, there is nevertheless great doubt in my mind that the year was ever viewed as the totality of passing seasons, or that the interdependence of life and death was the dominant theme of these festivities. Also, there does not seem to be any evidence for the existence of any 'original folk drama' involving this total life-cycle perspective; rather, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary. We have reports from a great many peasant com-