Pragmatic Recognition Research Articles

Ecocentric Living: A Way Forward Towards Zero Carbon: A Conversation about Indigenous Law and Leadership Based on Custodianship and Praxis

This paper reflects on leadership shown in Venda, Southern Africa to protect the lungs of the planet and draws out key themes on the way Indigenous wisdom — underpinned by a sense of the sacred and the profane – expressed in solidarity with nature - are vital for protecting forests. It explores indigenous wisdom on their kinship with organic and inorganic sacred totems (plants, animals and features of the landscape) which are protected through relationships that inform governance. The ongoing community of practice and related projects make a case for standing together to address climate change. The paper was developed as part of a University of South Africa project together with the named authors. Mphatheleni Makaulule has developed an a priori and a posteriori approach to Ecosystemic governance that resonates with the work of Wangari Maathai. Makaulule’s leadership in Venda that is discussed with fellow project members who are exploring how the agendas for COP 26 could be attained by fostering law informed by Bateson’s concept an “ecology of mind – which means an understanding of human beings’ place within living systems and our need for both education and laws to protect ecosystems such as forests (which are the lungs of the world) and the water systems (which are the life blood of all living systems). The governance approach in Venda emphasised the need to think in terms of our relationships with all living systems. The idea of extending a sense of solidarity to others is explored deeply with Makaulule and colleagues by considering similar approaches in other places, such as the Amazon where Makaulule spent time learning from shamanic leaders, Ghana (where Akwasi Achemfuor has undertaken research), Northern Territory and South Australia (where McIntyre was mentored by Peter Turner and Olive Veverbrants). The paper also refers to the work of Widianingsih based on an in-depth discussion on the Kasepuhan Ciptagelar community in West Java that has also been protecting the forests for more than 300 years. The authors explore whether attributing personhood to nature, could be regarded as limiting a notion of mystical and pragmatic recognition of interbeing or even a form of colonising the notion of interbeing? We suggest that a community of practice approach (Wenger, 1999, Wenger et al., 2009) to support learning organisations and communities could support two-way education to enable cross cultural, cross disciplinary and transnational learning to support steps towards wellbeing through sharing our understanding of interbeing in dialogue, it became clear that transcendence through totemism, dreams and shamanistic rituals support a sense of oneness with nature, relationality as well as a sense of awe, solidarity and responsibility for others which is being increasingly recognised in the arts and sciences.

“DNA Evidence and the Islamic Law of Paternity in Light of Maqāṣid al‐Sharīʿa”

AbstractThe protection of progeny (nasl) is one of the five universal ends (al‐maqāṣid al‐kulliyya al‐khams) of Islamic law. Despite this principle, classical Islamic law (fiqh), with very limited exceptions, barred affiliating a child conceived through illicit intercourse to the child’s biological father, even if his identity was known. Was this based on a pragmatic recognition of the impossibility of identifying the “true” biological father of any child or a commitment to a deeper principle? If the former, the reliability of DNA testing would require a change in the rule, but if the latter, DNA’s reliability would be irrelevant. Using primarily examples drawn from the Mālikī school of law, this paper argues, based on a purposive reading of those rules, that biological paternity, while important to Islamic law’s juridical conception of paternity, was not always the most important legal value at stake. Rather, preserving a child’s presumptive affiliation to the mother’s legitimate sexual partner was also a crucial legal value that could carry greater weight than biological paternity when the two conflicted. The tendency to entrench the biological mother’s legitimate sexual partner as the child’s lawful father in all but the most obvious cases of adulterous conception suggests that for pre‐modern Islamic law, the best interests of the child weighed heavily in the law of paternity. In modern circumstances, therefore, DNA evidence of biological paternity, while it should be admissible to establish paternity of illegitimate children born to unmarried women, should not be admissible in cases involving children born to married women. Muslim states could also use DNA evidence of paternity to establish the monetary responsibility of adulterous fathers for their illegitimate children while denying them the benefits of legal paternity. Muslim states, in recognition of the importance of the well‐being of the child, might also reconsider their laws on adoption, by introducing distinctions between adoptive parents and children, on the one hand, and parents and children related by nasab, on the other hand.

DNA Evidence and the Islamic Law of Paternity in Light of Maqāṣid Al-Sharīʿa

The protection of progeny (nasl) is one of the five universal ends (al-maqasid al-kulliyya al-khams) of Islamic law. Despite this principle, classical Islamic law (fiqh), with very limited exceptions, barred affiliating a child conceived through illicit intercourse to its biological father, even if his identity was known. Was this based on a pragmatic recognition of the impossibility of identifying the “true” biological father of any child or a commitment to a deeper principle? If the former, the reliability of DNA testing would require a change in the rule, but if the latter, DNA’s reliability would be irrelevant. Using primarily examples drawn from the Maliki school of law, this paper argues, based on a purposive reading of those rules, that biological paternity, while important to Islamic law’s juridical conception of paternity, was not always the most important legal value at stake. Rather, preserving a child’s presumptive affiliation to the mother’s legitimate sexual partner was also a crucial legal value that could carry greater weight than biological paternity when the two conflicted. The tendency to entrench the biological mother’s legitimate sexual partner as the child’s lawful father in all but the most obvious cases of adulterous conception suggests that for pre-modern Islamic law, the best interests of the child weighed heavily in the law of paternity. In modern circumstances, therefore, DNA evidence of biological paternity, while it should be admissible to establish paternity of illegitimate children born to unmarried women, should not be admissible in cases involving children born to married women. Muslim states could also use DNA evidence of paternity to establish the monetary responsibility of adulterous fathers for their illegitimate children while denying them the benefits of legal paternity. Muslim states, in recognition of the importance of the well-being of the child, might also reconsider their laws on adoption, by introducing distinctions between adoptive parents and children, and parents and children related by nasab.

Form follows function in evidence-based public policy: the pragmatic alternative to the positivist orthodoxy

For quite some time now there has been a push for more evidence-based public policy. The premise has been that policies informed by reliable data and analysis will achieve their expected results. In great measure, this demand has been answered by evidence built on the dominant approach in science: «positivism». In this paper, it is argued that positivism has important shortcomings which make it detrimental to that project. Thus, it makes the case for pragmatism as a plausible alternative. The argument departs from the philosophy of science, establishing the principles underlining each approach and then elaborates how they translate to the production and evaluation of evidence. The abandonment of the positivist pursuit of certainty for a pragmatic recognition of the plurality of human experience and the diversity of contexts allows to set a clearer scope for the use of evidence, potentially enhancing the effectiveness of policies based on it.

Doing pasts: authenticity from the reenactors’ perspective

This article investigates how authenticity is construed and negotiated in four different fields of reenactment practice in Denmark (Iron Age, Middle Age, World War II and Francis of Assisi). It first outlines some key theoretical positions within recent international academic debate on reenactment and living history. Taking the viewpoint of the reenactors themselves, the article explores and compares how they create, experience and negotiate authenticity in the very process of imitating and embodying pasts. It transpires that authenticity is articulated, construed and evaluated differently, according, inter alia, to whether the primarily purpose is to learn about the past or rather to learn from the past. For some reenactors, the attempt to get as close as possible to the past connects to an ideal of historical accuracy, a standard from which all replicas and performances are measured. Yet a pragmatic recognition that the past can never be recreated completely is constantly present. For other reenactors, the doing of pasts is a way of accessing experiences and values that are felt to have been lost in modernity. At the same time, however, it is all-important to them that the world they imitate is a past that actually existed and not a fictional universe.

What Counts and What Gets Counted (2nd Edition)

Management reporting systems are like power tools. They help you improve performance quickly and effectively, but one careless moment can cause irreparable damage and serious injury. For years, my students have been asking permission to send this book of best practices and safety tips to colleagues, friends and family. This revision provides a comprehensive introduction to management reporting systems, complete with links to nearly 100 videos, written to be appropriate for students and practitioners of any background, across all areas where people organize their efforts to improve performance. Examples include business, charities, governmental agencies, education, sports, and family life. Each of its 28 essays can be read separately, making the book well-suited to use as supplemental reading.Drawing extensively from current research and classical philosophy, the book encourages both deep skepticism about performance measures and pragmatic recognition of how useful they can be. Thoughtless adherence to performance measures leads many to decry bean counters, and emphasize that Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted Yet something gets counted whenever we need to make critical decisions throughout the workplace, politics and daily life.This book will help readers interpret the performance measures generated by the managerial reporting systems most pervasive in modern organizations, design systems that generate more useful measures, and make better use those measures — even though what gets counted often paints a misleading picture of what counts.

"I don't feel like a Genius": David Foster Wallace, Trickle-Down Aesthetics, and the MacArthur Foundation

Considering the novels and essays of David Foster Wallace alongside the history of the MacArthur Foundation offers a methodology for analyzing the effects of institutional philanthropy on American literature. The receipt of a MacArthur "Genius" grant after the publication of Infinite Jest catalyzed Wallace's thinking about the relationship between the individual artist and the institutions of American modernity. Wallace was ambivalent about institutions, which seemed to enclose and stifle the free play of creativity, yet open up sites of social engagement and world-making. Counter the MacArthur's neoliberal philanthropic ideology of "trickle-down aesthetics," Wallace sought to move beyond both romantic geniusworship and ironic critique by re-imagining the relationship between institutions and individuals. In The Pale King and his essays in the '00s, Wallace depicts a synthesis between individual and collectivity with the pragmatic recognition that, in the conditions of modernity, institutions are vehicles to help individuals overcome isolation and build community.

Metapragmatic instruction (6Rs) versus input-based practice: a comparison of their effects on pragmatic accuracy and speed in the recognition and oral production of English refusals

ABSTRACTRecent findings in the field of pragmatics have revealed that pragmatic accuracy (knowledge) and pragmatic speed (processing ability) function as two distinct and non-parallel components of pragmatic competence. Anderson’s adaptive control of thought–rational (ACT-R) model, which emphasises the development of skill through repeated practice, offers a useful framework for understanding how pragmatic speed can be enhanced. This study set to examine the impact of an ACT-R based form of instruction, input-based practice, on the development of pragmatic recognition and oral production of English refusals in a group of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. It compared the results from that pedagogic treatment with those from a similar group following ‘6Rs’ metapragmatic instruction, which does not include repeated activities. A total of 115 Iranian EFL students took part in the study. The findings suggest the value of both input-based practice and metapragmatic instruction in developing different aspects of L2 pragmatic competence; input-based practice was found to impact more on language learners’ pragmatic speed while the 6Rs approach had a more consistent impact on pragmatic accuracy.

Caring for the patient, caring for the record: an ethnographic study of 'back office' work in upholding quality of care in general practice.

BackgroundThe quality of information recorded about patient care is considered key to improving the overall quality, safety and efficiency of patient care. Assigning codes to patients’ records is an important aspect of this documentation. Current interest in large datasets in which individual patient data are collated (e.g. proposed NHS care.data project) pays little attention to the details of how ‘data’ get onto the record. This paper explores the work of summarising and coding records, focusing on ‘back office’ practices, identifying contributors and barriers to quality of care.MethodsEthnographic observation (187 hours) of clinical, management and administrative staff in two UK general practices with contrasting organisational characteristics. This involved observation of working practices, including shadowing, recording detailed field notes, naturalistic interviews and analysis of key documents relating to summarising and coding. Ethnographic analysis drew on key sensitizing concepts to build a ‘thick description’ of coding practices, drawing these together in a narrative synthesis.ResultsCoding and summarising electronic patient records is complex work. It depends crucially on nuanced judgements made by administrators who combine their understanding of: clinical diagnostics; classification systems; how healthcare is organised; particular working practices of individual colleagues; current health policy. Working with imperfect classification systems, diagnostic uncertainty and a range of local practical constraints, they manage a moral tension between their idealised aspiration of a ‘gold standard’ record and a pragmatic recognition that this is rarely achievable in practice. Adopting a range of practical workarounds, administrators position themselves as both formally accountable to their employers (general practitioners), and informally accountability to individual patients, in a coding process which is shaped not only by the ‘facts’ of the case, but by ongoing working relationships which are co-constructed alongside the patient’s summary.ConclusionData coding is usually conceptualised as either a technical task, or as mundane, routine work, and usually remains invisible. This study offers a characterisation of coding as a socially complex site of moral work through which new lines of accountability are enacted in the workplace, and casts new light on the meaning of coded data as conceptualised in the ‘quality of care’ discourse.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-015-0774-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Courts in American Public Culture

In American public imagination, courts are powerful but also impotent. They are guardians of citizens' rights but also agents of corporate wealth; simultaneously the least dangerous branch and the ultimate arbiters of fairness and justice. After recounting the social science literature on the mixed reception of courts in American public culture, this essay explains how the contradictory embrace of courts and law by Americans is not a weakness or flaw, nor a mark of confusion or naïveté. Rather, Americans' paradoxical interpretations of courts and judges sustain rather than undermine our legal institutions. These opposing accounts are a source of institutional durability and power because they combine the historical and widespread aspirations for the rule of law with a pragmatic recognition of the limits of institutional practice; these sundry accounts balance an appreciation for the discipline of legal reasoning with desires for responsive, humane judgment.

What Counts and What Gets Counted

Management reporting systems are like power tools. They help you improve performance quickly and effectively, but one careless moment can cause irreparable damage and serious injury. For years, my students have been asking permission to send this book of best practices and safety tips to colleagues, friends and family. This revision provides a comprehensive introduction to management reporting systems, complete with links to nearly 100 videos, written to be appropriate for students and practitioners of any background, across all areas where people organize their efforts to improve performance. Examples include business, charities, governmental agencies, education, sports, and family life. Each of its 28 essays can be read separately, making the book well-suited to use as supplemental reading.Drawing extensively from current research and classical philosophy, the book encourages both deep skepticism about performance measures and pragmatic recognition of how useful they can be. Thoughtless adherence to performance measures leads many to decry bean counters, and emphasize that Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted Yet something gets counted whenever we need to make critical decisions throughout the workplace, politics and daily life.This book will help readers interpret the performance measures generated by the managerial reporting systems most pervasive in modern organizations, design systems that generate more useful measures, and make better use those measures — even though what gets counted often paints a misleading picture of what counts.

Novel ecosystems in ecological restoration and rehabilitation: Innovative planning or lowering the bar?

Stemming from a special symposium at the 2012 inaugural meeting of the Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia in Perth, Western Australia, this special issue editorial addresses novel ecosystems in ecological restoration and the inherent challenges of maintaining the highest standards of environmental stewardship and biological conservation in the face of increasing urbanization, agricultural expansion, and industrialization. Echoing others, we (the Guest Editors) view novel ecosystems as offering opportunities for conservation and restoration in the coming years and a pragmatic recognition that it may not always be possible, or desirable, to overcome adverse consequences of environmental degradation to reinstate historical systems. Being mindful of hubris and taking into account difficulties with identification, novel ecosystems may be viewed as a temporary or interim stage on the way towards the evolution of other future ecosystems able to supply a variety of ecosystem services, while attempting to maintain and enhance biodiversity, function and resilience. Here, a concise summary of contributions to the special issue and their significance to the field of restoration ecology is provided noting that authors were tasked to answer whether novel ecosystems are innovative planning or lowering the bar in ecological restoration. Core themes shared by the manuscripts are elucidated leading to guiding principles and, more importantly, an assessment of how and why restoration priorities are changing in the 21st century.

Assessing the reset: successes and failures in the Obama administration's Russia policy, 2009–2012

Critics of the Obama administration's ‘reset’ with Russia claim that it has failed to improve bilateral relations and has conceded too much to Russia at the expense of American interests. In fact, the reset has delivered significant improvements in key areas and established the institutional basis for continued cooperation in the future, benefiting both states. Although disagreements remain on several important issues including missile defence, humanitarian intervention, and democracy, the reset has been broadly successful on its own terms, which were always limited in scope and based on a pragmatic recognition of the limits of possible cooperation. Future progress is uncertain, however – obstacles include differences of national interest; the complicating effects of relations with third party states and the impact of domestic politics. A continuation of the pragmatic approach underpinning the reset represents the best chance for stability in the US–Russia relationship.

Using Qualitative Methodologies to Evaluate Randomized Controlled Trials: An Ontological and Epistemological Paradox or a Pragmatic Recognition that Context Matters?

Using Qualitative Methodologies to Evaluate Randomized Controlled Trials: An Ontological and Epistemological Paradox or a Pragmatic Recognition that Context Matters?

Ann Zulawski, Unequal cures: public health and political change in Bolivia, 1900–1950, Durham, NC, and London, Duke University Press, 2007, pp. x, 253, £53.00, $78.95 (hardback 978-0-8223-3900-7), £13.99, $21.95 (paperback 978-0-8223-3916-8).

This new monograph on the history of medicine and health care in Latin America is a welcome addition to a rapidly evolving historiography. Where most of the literature on the subject addresses the major and intermediate countries of the continent, this examines a minor republic that was the poorest in South America in the period covered. Building on the ground-breaking work of Nancy Leys Stepan, the author broaches both issues that have been tackled by scholars in other contexts, like the role of the Rockefeller Foundation and the relationship of women and the public health apparatus, and themes barely touched on elsewhere, especially the medical crisis caused by the one major international war in the continent in the first half of the twentieth century—the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay—and the history of mental illness, especially at the Manicomio Pacheco, located in the city of Sucre. Ann Zulawski gives a largely convincing account of the ideological and social changes that altered medical thinking between the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Revolution of 1952, which presaged the beginnings of universal suffrage, together with the nationalization of the tin mines—the main source of export revenues—and the onset of an agrarian reform designed to benefit the indigenous and mixed-race rural poor. Bolivian medical elites and their allies were influenced by conflicting international trends ranging from socialism and reformist liberalism to various kinds of thinking rooted in eugenics. By the late 1930s and 1940s an expansion of provision of public health care that was fostered by a modernized and enlarged profession of medical doctors became essential to the consolidation of a state that was still fragmented, weak and insecure, even by the standards of most of Bolivia’s neighbours. Entrenched racial and gender prejudices, however, made for and exacerbated inequalities in health care, with women and the indigenous poor often being the victims of low-quality care and concentration of access in the major urban centres. The book makes a useful contribution on diverse issues. One example is the ways in which Bolivian physicians saw contracts from the Rockefeller Foundation as means of avoiding political interference and overcoming political rivalries between national and departmental officials. When the Foundation left the country in 1952 it was the object of criticism from outside that it had failed to act comprehensively on its assumption that health care was a right for all Bolivians, and from within that its resources were spread too thinly over too many health issues to be effective. Another example is the analysis of the role of midwives and of the attempts of professional physicians to limit their professional independence. Pragmatic recognition that in some rural provinces a shortage of physicians meant that doctors aiming to proscribe prescription of medication by midwives had to accommodate local realities that graduate physicians were unable to supply all the obstetrical services needed. Zulawski’s discussion of mental health contains the tantalizing paradox that in the 1930s the most frequent cause of admission to the mental hospital at Sucre was epilepsy, even though it was no longer considered a mental illness. Fierce debate about psychoanalysis and its uses in the 1940s had only a slender impact because policy innovation was inhibited by the extreme poverty of Bolivia and by competing pressures on budgets, especially in the aftermath of the Chaco War. The significance of questions of race and ethnicity in health uses gives rise to a similarly rewarding discussion. Bolivian intellectuals argued strongly that the behaviour of Amerindians made them both susceptible to disease and resistant to conventionally prescribed treatments, and went on to acknowledge the structural causes of ill health—poverty and inequality—while never fully relinquishing racial explanations of the diseases suffered by specific indigenous groups. The book makes a valuable contribution to the subject, but is published prematurely. It is marred by some looseness of expression: for example (p. 76): “If people in Bolivia were eager to disassociate themselves from the Indians, from the poor …”, were the Indians and the poor not people? More significantly, it is regrettable that the author follows the social history conventions of the 1980s in dismissing “the older institutional history” (p. 14) so lightly and so casually. Had she shown more alertness to it, she would have used such terms as “democracy”, “oligarchy”, “authoritarianism” and especially “populism” with more care and rigour, and to sharper effect. She would also display a more nuanced grasp of complex relationships between branches of government, especially at national, provincial and local levels. A greater alertness to recent literature on social policy would also have helped considerably.

Landscape Planning and Conservation Biology: Systems Thinking Revisited

Both conservation biology and landscape planning are fields enriched by their solid grounding in professional practice and the real world. Practicing conservation biologists know that landscape planning processes affect biodiversity on the ground, and practicing landscape planners know that biodiversity issues can decisively influence acceptance of planned change. Such pragmatic recognition, however, is not enough to advance the fields. Enormous ecological and public benefits could accrue if the two fields were to actively inform and change each other. Their similar aspirations to affect landscape change are shared with very few disciplines, and that should be a powerful incentive for collaboration, but their roots and cultural imperatives are sufficiently different to distract them from each other. Whereas conservation biology starts with inquiry into the relationships between species and habitats, landscape planning starts with questions about human occupancy of places and regions. While conservation biology depends on the cultures of basic and applied sciences, landscape planning depends on the cultures of professions: design, planning, real estate, and law. Whereas conservation biology is accountable to habitat as an outcome, landscape planning is accountable to human quality of life as an outcome. That habitats and quality of life rest on the same substrate of ecological quality is rather obvious to those who begin planning for places by inquiring into their ecological foundations. Even in this time of burgeoning approaches to sustainable design, however, the systemic, multiscale character of ecological functions clashes with the more piecemeal character of professional, political, and market mechanisms for landscape change. Conservation biology and landscape planning could be engaged in a dynamic exchange beyond these differences, in which each refines the definition and effect of the

Natural and Epistemological Pragmatism: Democracy and Environmental Problems

In this analysis, a pragmatic model of the human relationship to nature is presented. Parallels are drawn between the epistemological pragmatism used by humans to experience large‐scale environmental problems and the natural pragmatism by which all species evolve to meet the challenges of their environment. It is argued that powerful stakeholders have the ability to shift the short‐term consequences of environmental problems to less powerful political entities, thus delaying the pragmatic recognition and remediation of these issues. A synthesis of the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz provides the foundation for a reappraisal of solutions to environmental problems and suggests that rational humanism does not provide realistic solutions to environmental threats.

‘The Ties that Bind’: Feminist Perspectives on Self–Help Groups for Prisoners’ Partners

Recent research has recognised the role of self–help groups in helping women cope with the imprisonment of a male partner. However, little research has explored the benefits of membership, beyond the pragmatic recognition that the groups meet an unmet need for support and information. With reference to the findings of recent qualitative research conducted by the author in the UK, this article integrates interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from criminal justice research, family theory and gender studies to construct a gendered theoretical framework for understanding the significance and value of group membership, exploring gendered ideologies of caring and questioning the role of self–help groups in empowering women.

The Great Betrayal? European Socialists and Humanitarian Relief During the Spanish Civil War

Compared to communist commitment or fascist intervention in the Spanish Civil War the reactions of European socialists to the conflict have often been described as tentative, ineffective or even a deliberate betrayal of their Spanish comrades. Such criticisms have minimised the international humanitarian aid campaign launched across Europe by socialist parties and trade unions which became one of the conflict's largest relief efforts. The dimensions of that humanitarian appeal and its changing character over time were a product of international and local debates within the labour movement. Socialist efforts to fashion their own independent relief operation in Spain were considerably undermined by poor communication with the war zone, the divergent national policies of their memberships and by the changing events of the war itself. At the heart of these tensions was whether aid for Spain was to be an expression of radical internationalism extending across the left or a pragmatic recognition of parties' and...

Mutual Developmental Benefits for Teen Volunteers and Persons at the End of Life

113 THE AGE-OLD QUESTIONS posed by Paul Gauguin in his 1897 masterpiece depicting the life cycle, “D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous?” [Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?], are particularly compelling for two groups of people: adolescents and those facing the end of their lives. Adolescents are moving out of childhood and into the wider world of adulthood with the key task of developing an identity. While family continues to be important, peers and the values of the larger society become equally salient as adolescents work to find their place in that society. For a person nearing the end of life, at a time when the larger society has no commonly held answers to these questions, the questions themselves can regain personal urgency. Given these existential and developmental challenges, bringing individuals from these two groups together for companionship can offer an opportunity for growth and discovery on many levels. In this issue, we are featuring The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast’s Hospice Teen Volunteer Program, which recruits teens to support the activities of the hospice in a variety of ways, including matching teens with patients near the end of life for companionship, practical help, and conducting life reviews. Sandra Mahood and other staff at The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast in Pinellas County, Florida, have collaborated with teachers and administrators at area high schools to create opportunities for service-learning through the hospice’s programs. Sandra Mahood describes the genesis of that program, which now has 250 adolescent volunteers who serve in nursing homes and the hospice residences or mentor children who have experienced a loss. They also do office work and participate in fund-raising events. Ms. Mahood reflects on the particular conditions that have led to this program’s growth, as well as what sustains it, and the elements that others need to consider when planning intergenerational hospice volunteer efforts. Such efforts are born out of the pragmatic recognition of the resilience and durability of the grandparent-grandchild alliance as well as a sense that these two groups have untapped talents that could be mined for their mutual benefit. Developmental psychology offers a theoretical framework that can inform efforts to train adolescents to work with people at the end of their lives. If we assume, as recent developmental theory does,1–3 that interdependence among people is the goal of healthy development—rather than a caricature of independence that devalues relationships and any sign of vulnerability—it makes room for recognizing how much people who are dying may have to offer others. This framework expands the one-dimensional image of dying patients as those who are solely the recipients of care.