New Possibilities For Action Research Articles

Crafting knowing-sensitivity as an intercultural innovation skill: a practical knowledge and knowing approach

The current conceptual article explores the crafting and refining of a foundational non-technical skill for intercultural innovation efforts, through a practice-based approach: the knowing-sensitivity. Knowing-sensitivity is a refined situational perception and judgement capacity necessary to get a maximum understanding of a situation, reach deeper insights, new forms of intelligibility, and new possibilities for action. It involves the capacity of seeing situations different configurations, potential and propensities, hidden meanings, silent changes, subtexts and interdependencies, and make creative connections that others do not or cannot, which is central to intercultural innovation interactions. The purpose is to explain a practice-based approach to craft knowing-sensitivity. Such approach re-educates our perceptive attention and judgment, decluttering, redirecting, and anchoring them in practical experience, beyond the sphere of intellection and the interference of our rigid, uncritical and simplifying clinging on generalisations, stereotypes, preconceptions, and dogmas. It enables us to see new possibilities, yet-unidentifiable and innovative combinations and responses.

Speeches and consumption of sexualities - plotting new possibilities for action in psychologies

Currently we experience what many authors call transition’s period from disciplinary societies to control societies, in this complex scenario, the subjectivation’s processes are crossed by molar lines and molecular lines, micro and macro political and many other phenomenas composed by device of power and control situations that produces truths and normative discourses about sexualities and genders. In the face of the devaluation and impracticability of subjectivities considered to be dissidents, the naturalization of biopower and the identity crisis, the psychological sciences are challenged not to turn into another one of the normative and standardizing devices that produces reproducing bodies and to favor the maintenance of the production system of capitalistic subjectivities.

Making sense of the EU’s response to the Arab uprisings: foreign policy practice at times of crisis

ABSTRACTThe Arab uprisings of 2011 put into question previously held understandings about the stability of authoritarian regimes in North Africa as well as the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with countries in its southern neighbourhood. Despite early calls on behalf of the EU to change its policies, the Union’s responses in the early stages seemed mostly characterised by continuity. This article claims that certain dispositions and background knowledge developed over several decades vis-à-vis EU’s Mediterranean policies served as a baseline from which EU officials and diplomats acted. Drawing on insights from practice approaches, the article argues that the practical understandings on what the EU can (and cannot) do vis-à-vis partner countries in North Africa create a kind of power politics of practical dispositions. The article focuses on the European Neighbourhood Policy - the EU’s flagship initiative - and builds on a unique set of data that combine policy documents and interviews with about 30 EU officials and national diplomats from before and after the Arab uprisings. In this way, it illustrates how practice relates to change in that even though the EU’s responses drew on an established repertoire of practice, enacting it in a new context opened up new possibilities for action.

AFFECTIVE ETHOLOGIES

:Recent attempts to engage and develop modes of ethological practice that avoid deterministic and mechanistic accounts of animal action have often relied on affect as a way of articulating how animal bodies affect and are in turn affected by the animate and inanimate bodies around them. In this context affect has often functioned as an instigating site of change that opens up the experience of a particular animal to new possibilities for action and relation. This paper seeks to bring the significant role that affect has played in opening up new directions in ethological theory and practice in contact with a discussion of two currents in affect theory – one shaped by the genealogy of philosophical thought that stretches from Spinoza, through Gilles Deleuze, to contemporary thinkers such as Brian Massumi, and the other emerging from the reception of the American psychologist and cybernetics thinker Silvan Tomkins, in the context of queer theory, through the work of Eve Sedgwick and Adam Frank. The locus of intersection for these different modes of theoretical practice is the site-specific case study of monk parakeets (Myopsitta mona-chus) who have drawn on and incorporated the ornamental elaborations of human architecture into their own complex architectural nest constructions at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Tao of Poiesis: Expressive Arts Therapy and Taoist Philosophy

Creative Arts Educ Ther (2015) 1(1):15–25DOI: 10.15534/CAET/2015/1/4 The Tao of Poiesis: Expressive Arts Therapy and Taoist Philosophy 創造之道：表達性藝術治療與道家哲學 Stephen K. Levine The European Graduate School, Switzerland Abstract This paper outlines some of the similarities between the theory and practice of expressive arts therapy (EXA) and the philosophy of Taoism. EXA is grounded in the concept of poiesis, the Greek word for making in general and art-making in particular. The traditional conception of poiesis is of a productive activity guided by the consciousness and will of the artist. However, in EXA, poiesis is conceived of as a process that can only be beneficial if the client and therapist both let go of knowing and willing, and instead “let it be.” This notion is similar to Heidegger’s concept of Seinlassen (letting something show itself as it is in itself), and to Shaun McNiff’s injunction to “trust the process.” The concept of poiesis in EXA is like that of wu-wei in Taoism – a “non-action” which nevertheless brings benefits to the one who engages in it and to others. The therapist is like the Taoist sage who leads by non-doing. In addition, the process of “decentering” into the alternative world of the imagination takes the client and therapist into a realm of non-ordinary reality in which resources can be developed and new possibilities for action discovered. The seemingly aimless attitude of wu-wei can lead to effective change in the client’s life. The idea of wu-wei sheds light on the central phase of an expressive arts therapy session and is an essential attitude for the EXA practitioner. 摘要 這篇文章概括了表達性藝術治療（EXA）與道家哲學在理論和實踐上的異同。表達性藝術治療是建立在Poiesis，希臘語“創造”一詞概念基礎上的，包含了一般性的創造和特殊的藝術創造。傳統概念上的Poiesis是在藝術家的覺察和願望指導下的生產性活動。但是，在表達性藝術治療中，Poiesis包含著一種進程，只有當來訪者和治療師都放下意願、順其自然的時候這一進程才是有益的。這一概念類似Heidegger的Seinlassen（讓事物自然呈現）和Shaun McNiff的trust the process（相信進程）。 Poiesis的概念類似道家中的“無為”，參與其中的個人和其他人都從中受益。治療師如同無為般引領的道家聖人。此外，“離心化”到想像異處的進程把來訪者和治療師帶到了一個非常態的真實世界中，在這裡資源潛力可以被開發，進而行動的新可能性被發現。這種“無為”的看上去仿佛沒有目的的態度，可以導致來訪者生活的有效改變。“無為”的觀念清晰地體現了表達性藝術治療中的中心部分，是治療師需要具備的基本態度。

Del gaucho literario al gaucho "real": un aporte a su construcción en Argentina (1845-1913)

This article analyzes the construction of the Gaucho-figure by the Argentine elites between 1845 and 1913, when it was finally proclaimed as a symbol of “national identity”, and how this construction gave birth to “real” specimens of the traditional dweller of the Argentine pampas. To this end, Ian Hacking’s theses on “interactive kinds of people” are used. By the study of literary sources of the Argentine elites and foreign travelers, it is found that in 1845, the “Gaucho” was not a way of being a type of person; but in 1913, it did mean a composite of experiences and modes of self-understanding and of life in society that some persons, mainly dwellers of the rural areas, attributed to themselves. Two aspects are studied: the trajectory of the term “Gaucho”, which positive connotation allowed its “redemption”; and its extinction as a discursive strategy of travelers and elites, which would allow a group of people to consider themselves as the last examples of the gaucho, thus opening for them new possibilities of action.

Difficult motor skill acquisition in 5 years old children can be modulated by educators

Introduction Expansion of affordances and acquisition of new possibilities for action depend on motor learning and development. Adolph considers affordances as continuous, probabilistic functions, representing an individual's likelihood of successful performance, across environmental increments. With this study we addressed the question of how the relation between educator and child in a difficult motor task, involving a process of expanding affordances, contributes to the acquisition of new possibilities for action [1] , [2] , [3] . Methods Sixty children 5 years old from 2 kindergartens in Treviso (Italy) were studied while performing structured and unstructured physical activity during one hour lessons at a common playground; frequency of lessons was 1/week and the total period of observation was for three months. Children of group A could rely on a teacher to get on a very difficult tool, a bar supported by two mobile springs; the teacher told them that they could jump down if they lost the balance or were scared of walking the bar. After the jump, they were encouraged to go up again at the same point of the bar. Children of group B received no help and were left alone to find out the best strategy to accomplish the task. Time and number of errors were measured and children were video recorded. Results At the beginning no children were able to climb on the bar. At the end of the 10 lessons, 20% only of the children of group B were able to climb on the bar by themselves, and none was able to walk. In group A, 80% of the children climbed on the bar by themselves, 17% requested help and three % could not climb. During free play, only children of group A used the spring bar. Conclusions The data indicate that teacher-mediated experiences promote child expansion of body scale and affordances. The data also suggest that successful experiences encourage autonomous child training thus further expanding perception of motor skill competence.

Development of Professional Concepts Through Work Analysis: Tech Diving Under the Loop of Activity Clinic

This article deals with conceptual development in an emerging activity, Technical diving. Tech divers are equipped with innovative, complex machines (the “rebreathers”) to perform deep dives. The developmental methodology of cross self-confrontation was used to investigate the psychological dimensions of safety in diving with a group of volunteers (divers and instructors). One sequence of these data helps us analyze carefully the development of one concept in use in this milieu, the “confidence in the machine.” Building on 30 years of French-speaking research in work analysis on conceptualization in the work activity, we highlight the conflicting nature of the professional concepts as well as their multifunctionality. In the sequence analyzed in this article, the conceptual development takes the form of the discursive discovery of this complexity, which may open new possibilities for action (here, through the transmission of renewed concepts to other practitioners). The argumentative logics of the dialogical framework requires from the participants that they go beyond well-established knowledge to be able to convince both the researcher and their colleague. However, the stabilization of the concept emerging in this debate is related to its double anchoring: anchoring both in the emotions of the participants and in the professional genre of the milieu. This article shows the potential of the developmental methodology of cross self-confrontations in conceptual development: combining careful observation of routine behaviors, comparisons of personal habits, and thorough discussion of convergences and discrepancies, the methodology encourages reflexive practice and conceptual renewal.

La dispensation pharmaceutique de médicaments en France. Partie II : les responsabilités pénales, civiles et disciplinaires

The pharmacist working in the dispensary, in PUI or in other dispensation structures, is exposed to several types of legal actions for negligence and/or damage. Like all others, the pharmacist is subject to common law allowing her to seek civil or criminal liability. Also as a member of an organized profession in professional, the pharmacist is also subject to an ethics designed to seek its moral responsibility to his peer's pharmacists. For a decade, the pharmacist has acquired through its pivotal role between the different health professionals, new possibilities for action (therapeutic education, status of matching pharmacist, pharmacist referent status of residential homes for elderly dependents…). This leads to increasing research responsibility of the practitioner during actions in justices. Of the large number and scattered texts that regulate the service of dispensing pharmaceuticals, the pharmacist often has difficulty in understanding the scope and limits of its responsibilities in a dispensation. It therefore seemed appropriate to produce a summary as complete as possible civil liability, criminal and disciplinary related to the pharmacist dispensing the drug.

Vulnérabilité du territoire littoral guyanais aux maladies infectieuses à transmission vectorielle : esquisses de problématiques et perspectives de recherches pluridisciplinaires

Vulnerability is a concept increasingly mobilized for understanding the emergence of situations of risk regardless of their nature (Beck, Glatron, 2009; Bogardi, 2004, D'Ercole, 1991; D'Ercole et al., 1994; Fabiani, Theys 1987; Fabiani, 2010, Leone 2007, Leone, Vinet, 2007, Pierrat, 2011). The use of vulnerability for the knowledge of conditions for the emergence risk of vector-borne diseases (VBD) opens a way for systemic and multidisciplinary analysis of risk that exceeds the knowledge of traditional social criteria such as age, gender, social class or level of income taken into account in epidemiological studies. If since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the anglo-aaxon work on the risks of VBD (Cohen, 2000; Daszack et al., 2000 and 2001; Hong, Lee, 2005; Midley, Thuiller, 2005, Plowright et al., 2008 ) take into account the vulnerability assessment, however the France lags behind the Haut Conseil de la santé publique wishes to catch up (Leport and Guégan, 2011). The study of territorial vulnerability of French Guiana to VBD opens new possibilities of action for the management of health risks.

Rethinking Geography in Romanian Schools: Curricular Changes in Geography Learning in Post-Socialist Romania

Once with the fall of the totalitarian regime from Romania, in 1989, this country has recorded many changes in the social and economic life. One of the most dynamic fields has been represented by the educational system that encountered many turns both in the structural and functional perspective. Of these ones, a particular topic currently finds many intense debates in Romania concerning the quality learning in schools. It is about the curriculum that allows many opportunities for a proper instruction in connection with the contemporary requirements of the communities regardless of the scale we refer on (local, regional or national). Considering the geography, more than a descriptive science as well as an important field in human training, this paper tries to analyze the dynamics of the geographical curriculum focusing on two separate sections: the first one is assuming by the imposed national curriculum and the second one is oriented to the school decision curriculum (as optional subjects). These curricular dimensions are open outcomes of the Romanian reform on educational system and reveal quantitative and qualitative changes in teaching and learning geography after two decades of post-socialism. In order to find some accurate results this paper is basing on a particular methodological flow. It is designing on quantitative and qualitative methods as well as on the personal experience of the author regarding the Romanian geographical curriculum. In this regard, the sat problems of this paper occur from the following questions: Which are the most important changes in the Romanian geographic curriculum after 1990? Is the geographic curriculum really adjusting to the European standards of education? Which is the real impact of the geographical curriculum on the Romanian communities? Is efficient this curriculum in quality learning of geography? The findings of this study show contradictory and conflicting aspects that invite for further open researches, debates and discussions. These last ones are able to provide some fair conclusions, in order to offer new possibilities of action to capitalize the strengths of the Romanian curricular reform and, of course, to cancel the negative features of it.

Cameras Everywhere: Ubiquitous Video Documentation of Human Rights, New Forms of Video Advocacy, and Considerations of Safety, Security, Dignity and Consent

Peter Gabriel and other allies created WITNESS nearly 20 years ago – shortly after the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles. At the time, our founders asked: ‘What if every human rights worker had a camera in their hands? What would they be able to document? What would they be able to change?’ Since 1992 WITNESS has engaged with the risks, opportunities and possibilities for action that emerge from the power of moving images – training and supporting human rights activists worldwide to create real change through our methodology of ‘video advocacy’. Yet now an increasing number of people worldwide have cameras. Participants, witnesses and perpetrators are all filming. Videos (particularly mobile video) make it possible to document and publicize human rights struggles – from monks marching for freedom in Rangoon and the election protestors in Tehran, to individual voices speaking out against injustice on YouTube. However, despite the growing online circulation of images of human rights violations, of victims and survivors, there is limited discussion of crucial safety, consent and ethical concerns – particularly for people who are filmed. Issues around consent, representation and re-victimization and retaliation have emerged even more clearly in an open and networked online environment. Video is being reworked, remixed and recirculated by many more people. New possibilities for action by a global citizenry have arisen, but these carry with them real dangers. The human rights and technology communities can help lead the way in confronting these challenges. The article concludes with suggestions for approaches based on norms, technology solutions, and other ideas that could be deployed to begin to address these emerging issues.

Plantão psicológico no CRAS em Poços de Caldas

Acompanhando novas demandas, o Curso de Psicologia da PUC-Minas, campus Poços de Caldas, estabeleceu novas possibilidades de atuação e intervenção, rompendo barreiras do fazer clínico tradicional e indo em direção a uma concepção de "clínica-ampliada" a partir do Plantão Psicológico. Pretende-se aqui descrever a experiência dissidente de atendimento à população no formato de Plantão Psicológico num Centro de Referência da Assistência Social (CRAS), no município de Poços de Caldas. A experiência proporcionou aos alunos um contato com alguns desafios de articular novas práticas em espaços insólitos do atuar do psicólogo, bem como a produção de conhecimento acerca dessas práticas.

Human re‐engineering for action: an enactive educational management program

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show and explain an innovative educational program in management and engineering called “Human Re‐Engineering for Action” that provides the students with different distinctions to make in their observations to allowing to face and manage complex embodied organizational problems and situations.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used in the program is based on the creation of conditions which allow embodied learning and therefore, creating enactive meta‐observers able to open new possibilities of action in different organizational contexts and domains. The program uses labs, maps, workshops, and ludic storytelling sessions structured through an ontological tool called CLEHES© which serves as a facilitator of observations of experience to enhance awareness of constructive possibilities.Findings – Observations made by the graduates of the course over years have shown that the major achievement of the program is that it changes the graduates' paradigm in use...

Algumas considerações sobre o uso da empatia em casos e situações limite

Este artigo visa contribuir para a construção, por meio do conceito axial de empatia, de uma abordagem teórica e prática que oriente o manejo clínico de casos e situações limite, refratários ao método psicanalítico clássico. O exame da noção de empatia será realizado a partir de três perspectivas: como modalidade de escuta, como forma de comunicação e como fator terapêutico. Nossa proposta é a de dar sustentação à adoção da empatia como ferramenta clínica capaz de ampliar o horizonte de intervenção, incluindo possibilidades de ação que o método interpretativo não comporta.

Tecnologías y ciudadanía

En este trabajo se pretenden realizar una serie de consideraciones sobre el papel que pueden jugar las TICs en la construccion de una sociedad mas integradora e igualitaria al ofrecer nuevas posibilidades de actuacion y participacion para las mujeres. Por tanto, la construccion de una Sociedad de la Informacion democratica tiene que hacerse desde la perspectiva de genero para asi tomar conciencia del potencial de las TICs como instrumento de empoderamiento de las mujeres.

Deconstructing Dingo Management on Fraser Island, Queensland: The Significance of Social Constructionism for Effective Wildlife Management

Wildlife management is based on a range of assumptions about wildlife and expectations about nature. As such, it can be seen as the result of the process of social construction. To ensure the validity and effectiveness of wildlife management, it is necessary to consider the constructions underlying wildlife management and perpetuated through management discourses. This article deconstructs dingo management on Fraser Island, south-east Queensland. It argues that the process of construction in defining environmental problems and possible solutions needs to be recognised, and the nature of the constructions underpinning environmental management acknowledged. Management practices need to be consistent with discourses, reflecting priorities, addressing the problem, and facilitating the fulfilment of expectations. Ultimately, entrenched constructions need to be challenged to create new possibilities for action.

Writing together metaphorically and bodily side‐by‐side: an inquiry into collaborative academic writing

Research discourses are permeated by metaphors. As well, metaphors can be used to create new possibilities for action. In this article, we describe our attempt to apply particular metaphors for writing research gleaned from our study of the research practices of 24 education researchers from Australia and North America. With reference to the metaphor: writing as a piano duet, for example, we explore the experience of writing side‐by‐side with each other for the first time. Our reflexive account not only deals with this writing experience, but also discusses potential benefits and shortcomings of this approach to writing and the application of metaphors to guide research practice. Writing in this way is indicative of the metaphor writing as research.

Evolving capabilities and innovative intentionality: Some reflections on the role of intention within innovation processes

SummaryWe may argue that individual and organisational dynamic capabilities evolve through the interaction of intentions and action goals. Capabilities are renewed and reshaped by the appearance of new action goals. A feedback process between capabilities and goals opens up new possibilities of action. This may happen when agents (organisations and individuals) act towards their goals, transforming capabilities and renewing the spaces where actions are conceived and deployed. Moreover, agents’ goals vary not only in the sense that they are different but also because they are characterised by different transforming intensities. The concept of innovative intentionality synthesizes this idea. Innovative intentionality is defined as the will to conceive or imagine realities which differ from the perceived realities, with the purpose of making them effective. This concept appears to be useful for addressing the divergence of innovative dynamics among organisations and societies.

Trying Out the Wheelchair

Focusing on the interactions between people suffering from neuromuscular diseases and their wheelchairs, the author raises the question of action: how is action made possible for people suffering from neuromuscular diseases? Starting with actor-network theory, the author shows that action not only results from distribution and delegation to heterogeneous entities but emerges from hard and lengthy work that makes the relation between them possible (or not) and transforms the entities involved. The author describes this work, called the process of adjustment, as work on the links making a person, his or her body, and his or her world. Through this work, new possibilities of action emerge for the person, but also new (dis)abilities; the person’s identity is transformed and shaped. This analysis leads to a particular conception of the person as made up through his or her relations to other entities (human and nonhuman).