Conception Of Relationship Research Articles

Roots and Routes: Funeral Practices and Land-based Identities in the Yunnan-Tibetan Borderlands

This article analyses Pumi (Premi) funeral practices and naming customs of social groupings to interpret their idiom of ru, an indigenous notion of ‘bone’ common among Tibeto-Burman groups. I argue that the Pumi ru name marks a land-based identity constituted by the deposition of bones collected from cremation remains and the soul-guiding ritual along the ancestral migration route at funerals. On the one hand, the notion of ru refers to a conception of kinship relations that emphasises a continual connection to the same places fulfilled from birth to death, in addition to the shared bodily substance of bone. On the other hand, this connection to the land articulates both experiences of settlement and movement. Although the local translation of ru is ‘root’ in Mandarin, this form of identity is not ‘rooted’ at the current settlement but embedded in a sense of landscape constituted by past migrations and repetitive ritual journeys of souls.

“Because you love us as much as we love you”: The role of community relationships in facilitating Indigenous engagement in healthcare

Grounded in relational worldviews and ways of being, Indigenous health on Turtle Island once thrived. However, colonization disrupted and sought to delegitimize Indigenous relationships, having devastating impacts on Indigenous health and contributing to persistent Indigenous health disparities. Making matters worse, Indigenous Peoples face barriers to engagement in mainstream Canadian healthcare, including racism and the marginalization of Indigenous relational conceptions of health and ways of caring. Using an Indigenous methodology, we explored Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) relationality between community members and community-based healthcare providers (n=25), and how these ways of relating shaped engagement in community-based care. Our analysis identified three key themes: in Kenhté:ke (Tyendinaga) the concept of health goes beyond western definition and is broadly defined and relational; connectedness and shared experiences are foundational to Kenhté:ke identity and ways of caring; and relationships that reflect community connection foster more engagement in healthcare than otherwise in western care settings. These findings have critical implications for western norms of healthcare professional training and practice and the need to include Indigenous relational ways of caring and conceptions of health.

Psyche-soma and polis in Castoriadis and beyond: A new conception of an inextricable relation

Abstract The essay1 examines the relationship between ‘psyche-soma’ and ‘polis’ in Castoriadis’ work and shows its irresolvable aporias. These aporias are due less to his shortcomings than to what I call the aporetic unity of psyche-soma. This aporetic unity consists in the fact that the ‘psychic monad’, which tends towards fantasies of omnipotence and hubris, is existentially as well as formally bound to the body, which it simultaneously seeks to split off as its other. This phenomenon also makes the socialization of human individuals an aporetic undertaking. The attempt to link the tension between psyche-soma and political body-imaginary with the tension between autonomy and heteronomy makes it possible to better understand these difficulties and those inherent to the ‘project of autonomy’. The final section of this paper links the reality principle with body consciousness and opens the gaze to the material boundaries of our overheated planet.

Knowledge popularization in a technocratic-populist context, or how the Israeli state shaped media coverage of large-scale urban plans

In this study, we examine recent actions taken by the Israeli state to naturalize technocratic understandings of land-use plans through the mass media, and assess the implications of this for power-knowledge relations between the state, planners and citizens. Our research focuses on the years 2013–2018, when state planners and officials began working with PR agents to promulgate state-generated, pro-growth representations of plans through mainstream media outlets. We focus on coverage of three types of large-scale plans, all of which involve complex and varied knowledge contents: city master plans, new neighborhood plans, and urban renewal plans. Using critical discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews with key planners and journalists, we examined what kinds of knowledge and information about these plans were conveyed, and how. We found that a significant percentage (some 40%) of the articles published during this period were based directly on state-issued press releases, and exclusively conveyed state-sanctioned perspectives. We interpret this as an attempt by the state to highlight its own role in planning and housing, while taking advantage of journalists' lack of planning knowledge and pressure to publish in order to construct ‘citizen-technocrats’ whose knowledge mirrors that of state-affiliated actors. We situate these findings within the emerging academic discourse on “technocratic populism,” a form of governance in which populist regimes communicate technocratic knowledge directly to citizens, and show how mis/disinformation tactics usually associated with populist discourse now appear in planning communications in Israel. This practice, we argue, has served to entrench a shift toward a centralized form of neoliberalism, while promoting illiberal conceptions of state-citizen relations in the planning context.

The triangular relationship in platform gig work: Consumers, platform beneficence and worker vulnerability

AbstractPlatform gig work is created and contested in dynamic, triangular relationships between platforms, workers, and consumers. Compared with the first two groups, however, evidence about the role of the third—consumers—is sparse. In this paper, we investigate consumers' changing perceptions of work in the platform gig economy and argue that their perspective warrants greater attention in sociological analyses. Using data from two Australian public opinion surveys conducted 5 years apart (2017 and 2022), we explore how consumers' views of platform gig work evolved during a period of rapid change that includes the first 2 years of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We find that while overall platform use increased markedly, many consumers felt conflicted about gig workers' conditions and key features of platforms' typical labour practices. There is a pronounced, enduring, and consequential tension in consumers' views of the merits and drawbacks of this work; between, on the one hand, an acceptance that platforms do benefit workers to some extent and, on the other hand, misgivings about workers' vulnerability to harm. In centring consumers, our paper empirically enriches current triangular conceptions of labour relations in the platform gig economy, by showing how consumers mediate the interests of platforms and workers, to shape how gig work manifests and who benefits from it. We also contribute useful new practical knowledge, by elucidating the prevailing concerns of consumers that could be developed into resonant themes for campaigns aimed at improving platform gig workers' rights.

John Bale, Imperial Monarchy, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract The episcopal mission of Englishman John Bale to Ireland in 1553 provides historians with a unique window into the interconnected British and Irish histories of the early English Reformation. Scholarship on Bale has long explored his life and theology in all European theatres of the Reformation in which he was involved. Yet, key features of his mission and theology remain underappreciated. Building on recent work that has contextualized Bale’s Irish mission and ecclesiology within the imperial outlook of the Edwardian regime and Reformation, the article examines Bale’s mission against the worlds of English evangelical and continental Protestant political theology he inhabited, and the mingling of Henrician and Edwardian ‘reformist’ energies in Ireland with which it intersected and clashed. It argues that, under conditions of English colonial rule and empire in Ireland, Bale expressed a political theology that, imperial by circumstance and implication, turned his spiritual vocation modelled on Christ into a receptacle for divine and princely sovereignty that set rival conceptions of royal authority, idolatry, and Anglo-Irish constitutional relations against each other. Evangelical political theology thus acquired different hues on either side of the Irish Sea, with important implications for how we understand the early English Reformation across England and Ireland.

The entangled human being – a new materialist approach to anthropology of technology

AbstractTechnological advancements raise anthropological questions: How do humans differ from technology? Which human capabilities are unique? Is it possible for robots to exhibit consciousness or intelligence, capacities once taken to be exclusively human? Despite the evident need for an anthropological lens in both societal and research contexts, the philosophical anthropology of technology has not been established as a set discipline with a defined set of theories, especially concerning emerging technologies. In this paper, I will utilize a New Materialist approach, focusing particularly on the theories of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, to explore their potential for an anthropology of technology. I aim to develop a techno-anthropological approach that is informed and enriched by New Materialism. This approach is characterized by its relational perspective, a dynamic and open conception of the human being, attention to diversity and the dynamics of power in knowledge production and ontology, and an emphasis on the non-human. I aim to outline an anthropology of technology centered on New Materialism, wherein the focus, paradoxically, is not exclusively on humans but equally on non-human entities and the entanglement with the non-human. As will become clear, the way we understand humans and their relationship with technology is fundamental for our concepts and theories in ethics of technology.

Pluralism and the unity of science: physics and political epistemology in Cassirer’s phenomenology of knowledge

In this article, we analyse how Ernst Cassirer’s approach of a phenomenology of knowledge deals with the general question of disunity in science and society. By elaborating on the concept of functional unity, which presupposes difference, Cassirer’s work helps to revise foundational concepts of modern science and society, such as pluralism and truth. Relating Cassirer’s approach to the current interest in political epistemology, we show the implications of Cassirer’s theory of knowledge and analyses of modern science, particularly physics. In these analyses, Cassirer carves out the relational logic of scientific knowledge and its consequences on epistemological and ethico-political levels. While this logic of relations relativises absolute claims on either level, it entails its distinct normative criteria as elements of the scientific ideal. Cassirer’s project defends this ideal and thus can simultaneously defend plurality in science (including the humanities) in terms of methods, perspectives and aims, and preserve the unity of science as a normative ideal and symbolic form in constant interaction with other forms. Thus, Cassirer’s pluralism must be distinguished from mere historicist or relativist conceptions.

POLA RELASI PENCAMBUK-PENANGKIS DALAM TARIAN CACI DAN SUMBANGANNYA PADA ELEGANSI DIALOG DI INDONESIA

This paper aims to explore the intersubjective relationship between the whipper (paki) and the parrier (ta’ang) in caci, a traditional dance from Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara Province. For that purpose, this study applied the phenomenological method. In this method, caci is described based on what actually transpires during the performance when the researchers made direct observations. As a native Manggarai, the researcher has watched the dance for many years. Data from the phenomenological study were analyzed using Armada Riyanto’s philosophical concept of intersubjective relationality. This study found that the relationship between the whipper and the parrier in caci is not a subject-object but intersubjective one. The intersubjectivity of the whipper-parrier relationship is demonstrated by several facts. First, there is subjective identity of the whipper and parrier in the form of their names. Second, there is affirmation of identity and its confirmation during the dance. Third, the act of whipping and parrying does not involve a large group of people, but only the whipper and parrier as individual actors. Fourth, the whipper and parrier are aware of the other party’s presence and role. Fifth, the whipper is aware of the presence and role of the parrier and vice versa. Sixth, the whipper and parrier are encountering each other with mutual respect. The intersubjective element of the whipper-parrier relationship is highly relevant to the promotion of elegant intercultural dialogues in Indonesia.

Moral nexus of unmet needs and care in person-centred care for patients with advanced dementia in a multicultural society.

Patients with advanced dementia experience multifaceted vulnerabilities because of their diminished capacities for decision making. The dominant versions of person-centred care (PCC) emphasise patient preferences and autonomy, which often undermines a recognition of their distinct unfulfilled needs. Determining whether an individual autonomy conception of personhood applies to patients with advanced dementia is morally problematic from various theoretical perspectives and leads to the one-approach-fits-all problem when caring for this patient population. The availability of patients' advanced directives varies depending on their cultural backgrounds. The goal of the study is to argue that PCC, with a focus on relational autonomy, should be the first step for caring for patients with advanced dementia. The study engages in a critical exploration of inclusivity and diversity in ethical thinking within a framework of PCC and uses philosophical argumentation to assess the viability of a relational autonomy conception of PCC. By taking relationality seriously, especially in caring for patients with advanced dementia in a multicultural society, and by considering the moral nexus of unmet needs through the perspective of PCC, we can resolve the problem of one-approach-fits-all in dementia care.

O conceito de território na perspectiva dos estudos agrários sobre povos e comunidades tradicionais: Diálogos e reflexões

The paths taken by the concept of territory in the field of the history of geography are marked by social, political and theoretical-methodological influences that affected the ways of thinking about geography and the role played by territory in social dynamics. In this sense, authors such as Haesbaert (2019), Saquet (2020), Gottmann (2012), Claval (1999), Andrade (2004), among others, discuss in depth the paths taken by the concept of territory in geography, bringing elements that help us understand the approaches that the concept has obtained throughout the history of geography, which are influenced by more structural conjunctures, such as the epistemological changes and transformations generated in the scope of social reality, as Claval (1999) points out. That said, the objective of the present research is to analyze the approaches to the concept of territory in research that discusses indigenous peoples and quilombola communities in selected texts. In the methodological scope, we highlight that the research is based on the content analysis, according to Bardin (2022), of works published in the annals of the International Symposium on Agrarian Geography (SINGA), between the years 2003 and 2019, totaling nine editions analyzed. In the field of research results, we identified the presence of different approaches to the concept of territory in the research, notably from multidimensional, relational and integrative conceptions of the concept of territory proposed by different geographers, such as Rogério Haesbaert, Claude Raffestin, Marcos Aurélio Saquet, Milton Santos, Ariovaldo Umbelino de Oliveira, Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, Joël Bonnemaison, Maria Geralda de Almeida and Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves, among others. Finally, in the framework of the conclusions of the research, we detected that within the research framework adopted, there is a centrality of the concept of territory as an important element in the study of indigenous peoples and quilombola communities, a fact that, in a way, reflects the importance that the concept has been gaining in the field of agrarian studies.

Religious Buildings, Cultures, Spatiality: New Urban Narrations Between Semiotics and an Intercultural Application of Law

AbstractIn a society marked by transnational migration and religious globalization, spatial factors are assuming a central role in the understanding of social relations. This is most prominent in urban areas, where the coexistence of culturally and religiously diverse subjects imposes a forced sharing of territory. Starting from a study of the semiotic concept of the city, the contribution aims first of all to explore the claimed right of the other to use public space through the creation of aedes sacrae. It will show how the construction of a place of worship of a ‘minority’ religion can alter the pre-existing urban geography, leaving its imprint on space. Through a brief examination of the Italian constitutional jurisprudence on the so-called “anti-mosque” legislation, the paper will also outline a semantically relational conception of the religious building, offering a starting point for a rethinking of spatial organisation. An intercultural application of law is then needed insofar as the aim is towards a non-hegemonic polyphonic rewriting of urban territory.

Prolegomenon for Fazang’s Essay on the Golden Lion

ABSTRACT Fazang is a seminal figure for the tradition of Huayan Buddhism. Essay on the Golden Lion is the most widely translated into English of his writings. Yet systematic English-language scholarship on Fazang’s Essay is relatively sparse. Scholars agree that the central focus of the Essay is the relation between principle and thing — a relation akin to the one between emptiness and form and, according to Fazang, also akin to the relation between the golden substance of a lion statue and the statue itself. Scholars disagree about what principle is. They also disagree about how Fazang conceptualizes the relation between principle and thing. This paper develops a novel interpretation for Fazang's conception of the principle-thing relation. The methodology involves situating Fazang's metaphor of the golden lion in relation to prior efforts, by Chinese Buddhists, to conceptualize the emptiness-form relation and using theoretical considerations, from some of Fazang’s other writings, to interpret various remarks Fazang makes about his metaphor of the golden lion.

Civilizational turn and metatheoretical reconfiguration in contemporary sociology

The article offers a reconstruction of contemporary sociological theory, which gives a central position to civilizational analysis. In the late 20th century, attempts to solve the agency-structure problem led to the formation of a new metatheoretical dilemma of “mutual constitution vs. analytical autonomy”, which overshadowed the traditional dilemma of individualism and holism. The constitutivist solution removed the agency/social structure dichotomy in the relational conception of power, while the autonomist solution mediated it by relying on the analytic conception of culture. The civilizational turn brings together these two lines of metatheoretical reconceptualization of sociological problematic, focusing on the relation of culture and power to each other. The model of the relationships between “dimensions” and “spheres” of social life developed within the sociological version of the civilizational approach combines the metatheoretical positions of analytical autonomy and mutual constitution.

Socialism and non-domination: a relational egalitarian approach

ABSTRACT In recent literature on the philosophical foundations of socialism a growing number of theorists have endorsed the claim that freedom as non-domination is a fundamental normative commitment undergirding socialist politics. On this sort of view, a broad range of traditional socialist claims can be explained and justified by reference to freedom as non-domination. In this paper, I argue that even if these theorists are right that opposition to domination is a core socialist normative commitment, it is not clear that that opposition is best understood in terms of a commitment to a particular conception of freedom. Instead, socialist opposition to domination can be more fruitfully understood as flowing from a commitment to a relational conception of equality, according to which relationships with a substantially egalitarian character have a special value. I argue, first, that a relational egalitarian construal of socialist opposition to domination can retain all of the benefits of the freedom as non-domination construal, and, secondly, that a relational egalitarian account will have benefits that a freedom as non-domination approach will lack. I conclude that there are still significant benefits to retaining a place for equality in our considered account of the normative foundations of socialism.

Transformative and therapeutic benefits of digital storytelling: a phenomenological lifeworlds study of Patient Voices participant experiences

ABSTRACT Background References to transformative and therapeutic benefits of digital storytelling are often made, yet this remains an under-explored area, which we foreground in this study. Methods A phenomenological research design was adopted to explore through interview how a purposive sample of Patient Voices storytellers experienced participation in more than one digital storytelling workshop. Analysis was through thematic coding, linguistic analysis and use of van Manen’s lifeworld existentials framework. Results We find that for this particular group, the therapeutic and transformative experiences that re-centre and re-frame personal meaning do so through inter-personal connections and can be understood as a process of social learning. The lifeworld existentials analysis demonstrates that a pluralist and relational conception of wellbeing holds and there is a close relationship between this and Yalom’s 11 therapeutic factors. Conclusions Drawing on group analytic literature, we suggest the concept of a social learning methodology as useful in grounding further research that seeks to understand the beneficial impacts of digital storytelling methodologies in healthcare and in contributing evidence in this field with fidelity to the lived experience as central.

"We are not the person we will be when these things happen:"Reflections on personhood from an ethnography of neuropalliative care.

Neuropalliative care developed to address the needs of patients living with life-limiting neurologic disease. One critical consideration is that disease-related changes to cognition, communication, and function challenge illness experiences and care practices. We conducted an ethnography to understand neuropalliative care as a phenomenon; how it was experienced, provided, conceptualized. Personhood served as our conceptual framework; with its long philosophical history and important place in nursing theory, we examined the extent to which it captured neuropalliative experiences and concerns. Personhood contextualized complex losses, aligning the impact of functional and relational changes. Cognition, communication, and functional alterations stretched conceptions of personhood, insinuating it can be relational, fluid, adaptive. Although normative conceptions of personhood guided research and decision-making, ethical considerations suggested personhood could be transformed, remade. We consider the implications of our findings through three themes. First, we examine how literature on illness experience fails to integrate the realities of people living with and dying from neurologic disease; we counter this by interrogating the concept of experience. Second, we turn to Ricoeur's work on recognition to illuminate relational conceptions of personhood to inform care practices. Finally, we reflect on how personhood can bridge the gap left by functional changes, enhance relational engagement, and promote dignity at the end of life.

Populist by a distance: a relational framework for unifying ideology, rhetoric, and leadership style in populism studies

ABSTRACT Theories of populism have been troubled by the problem of essentially contested definitions of its basic properties. It is difficult to distinguish populism from conventional political behavior. This produces the problem of ‘degreeism’, while other features of populism are expressed in relationships rather than as specific categories of attitudes and behaviors. These problems cannot be eliminated by redefining or excluding aspects of populism in favor of a more restrictive definition. We argue that, given that conceptual indeterminacy is inherent in populism, it is better conceptualized as a relational concept. The article articulates a new, relational conception of populist ideology, discourse/rhetoric, and leadership style in terms of relative distance from an implicit ‘center ground’. Populism is marked by position-taking of distance away from the center in policy (distal), a wide distance between people and elites and/or outsiders (distal), and close distance between leaders and followers (proximal). A general, relational model of populism is deduced in this form: distal – distal – proximal. Far from being an abstract claim, we illustrate how the relative distance framework offers descriptive and analytical tools for social scientists focused on populism.

Populism at the UN: comparing Netanyahu’s and Abbas’s speeches, 2010–19

ABSTRACT Populism impacts policy choices and may contribute to fuelling crises and limiting the prospects for conflict resolution. This paper applies a multidimensional populism theoretical framework to compare quantitatively and qualitatively 18 speeches by Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly between 2010 and 2019. Our analysis shows that while both Abbas and Netanyahu use populist language—mostly focused on antagonistic, moral and idealised depictions of the ‘people’ and the ‘other’—the latter consistently displayed a greater density of populist references in his UN speeches over the period analysed. Netanyahu’s discourses were both more aggressive and exclusionary and made more allusions to religion and securitisation than those of the Palestinian leader. His framing essentialised the ‘us’ (‘the Jewish people’) as threatened by an ‘enemy’; what he called ‘militant Islam’. By contrast, Abbas referred more to borders as a requirement for statehood. Their different communicative frames and language suggest discrepant worldviews. Abbas’s speeches reflected a more ‘liberal’ conception of international relations, relying more on international cooperation, institutions, and regulation to resolve the Palestinian question, while Netanyahu conveyed a realpolitik stance and stressed his concerns with external threats and willingness to act unilaterally.

The Psychology of Adaptive and Maladaptive Relationships between Parents and Children of Senior School Age

The purpose of this article is: to study the concept of “child-parents adaptive relationships”; to describe The Humanistic Conception of child-parents adaptive relations; to present The Psychoanalytic Model of family adaptive education, The Transactional and The Behaviorist Models of Personality Adaptive Education; to describe the results of the experiment with the aim to explain that a person’s implementation of the feature of aggressiveness in destructive maladaptive behavior. Methods of the research. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks formulated in the article: a categorical method, structural and functional methods, the methods of the analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization. The pilot research was used as an empirical method. The results of the research. We proved, that socio-economic factors of family life (a quality of life, a status of a family, living conditions, monetary income, social status, a level of education of parents) does not have a direct impact on the manifestations of aggression of children, however, its pronounced disadvantage can motivate parents’ aggression towards children, causing the aggression as a response. Conclusions. We proved, that in the typology of a modern family, the main factors associated with manifestations of destructive aggressiveness of children are the influences of the socially disadvantaged microenvironment of the family, which predetermine its manifestations, and the profiles of parental attitudes in it, which determine its manifestations. The influence of the socio-economic characteristics of the family, its structure, composition and number, problems, associated with the health of its members, the culture of their communication, are of great importance in the manifestations of abnormal aggressiveness of children, but to a greater extent these manifestations are mediated by purely psychological family functioning parameters, also parental attitude profile.