Relational Worldview Research Articles

Healing-Centered Restorative Justice

This concept paper maps out an approach to restorative justice that enriches current trauma-informed understandings and promotes healing and repair. The paper draws upon many sources, including qualitative research undertaken between 2021-23 in Israel/Palestine and New Zealand/Aotearoa, and an ongoing collaborative research project in the U.S. It also incorporates gathered wisdom on trauma and healing from leading experts across many disciplines. The paper begins by delineating different understandings of trauma, including personal, collective, historical, and structural forms. It then highlights three critical perspectives that offer useful insights into how the field of restorative justice can more effectively achieve its transformational potential: (1) Indigenous/collectivist perspectives; (2) positive psychology-related perspectives; and (3) transformative justice/abolitionist perspectives. The paper goes on to reframe these critical perspectives as core features of healing-centered restorative justice: first, a contextualized, multi-dimensional understanding of trauma; second, a strengths orientation toward human behavior; and third, a relational worldview grounded in interconnectedness, mutuality, and shared responsibility. By adopting this holistic and humanistic framework, restorative justice scholars and practitioners can develop effective and culturally sustaining conflict transformation processes that contribute to healing and repair at individual, interpersonal, and systemic levels of society.

Storytelling dreams and life: Traveling across worlds in the Amazon of Ecuador

In response to the expansion of the mining frontier in the Ecuadorian Amazon, rural and Indigenous women are leading processes that resist mining-related violence while reconfiguring colonial power dynamics. Although women's efforts have become visible through regional grassroots organizing, public protests, marches, political manifestos, and bodily organized resistance to mining, little is written about the long-term processes, social relations, and epistemologies women use to contest power. This article illuminates “Storytelling Dreams and Life,” a Kichwa epistemology aimed at communicating and networking across colonial differences while building support networks across scales. It relies on dreams and testimonies that speak of women's relationships with the forest, including more than humans: animals, insects, and bodies of water. Women understand their bodies and livelihoods as intrinsically tied to the forest. Defense struggles are about upholding relational forest interdependences and politicizing domestic and reproductive care practices that make life possible. Women's storytelling provides us with an epistemology and a decolonial and communications methodology that requires sharing intimate accounts of mining-related violence and resistance. The sharing is emotional and vivid as it aims at bringing interlocutors as close as possible to the teller's experience. I argue women's epistemic practices enable intersubjective understandings of each other's experiences and, therefore, a way to travel into each other's worlds across bodies while furthering women's support networks across scales. Women's storytelling adds to Communitarian Feminisms and its efforts to decolonize hierarchization in organized struggles, and it adds to Body-Territory epistemology by specifying how knowledge and struggles both shaped and are shaped by forest relational worldviews.

Rethinking Water Governance in the Saskatchewan River Delta Through Indigenous Relational Worldviews

Abstract This study critically examines the implications of integrating Indigenous relational worldviews into the water governance framework of the Saskatchewan River Delta. Using a relational theoretical framework and community-based participatory research methodology, both Indigenous community members and non-Indigenous researchers collectively examine the negative impacts of Western water governance policies and practices on the Métis community residing in Cumberland House, located in northeast Saskatchewan, Canada. Through Indigenous traditional water story-sharing methods with Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers, our focus centres on Indigenous interpretations and ways of knowing the Delta. The community highlighted the pervasive influence of power dynamics and political agendas in the governance of the Delta. As such, we emphasise the necessity of challenging settler colonial systems and structures and reinvigorating Indigenous worldviews for water governance. By doing so, we advocate for the advancement of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in their relationship with land and water, thereby promoting the meaningful implications of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action.

Representation of the world as other’s play in the cosmic horror literature

Cosmic horror is a type of horror literature concerning itself with anthropocentrism rejection and depicting the universe as unknowable, indifferent and epistemologically anomalous. In the context of cosmic horror, man is often described as a plaything of unknown forces, which may seem a contradiction: the concept of play in itself is arguably all-to-human; moreover, a playful attitude is by no means indifferent and thus not exactly compatible with cosmic horror. Nevertheless, according to evolutionary biology, the evidence of play behaviour is not restricted to humans – accordingly, such behaviour is hypothetically an appropriate attribute of transcendent superhuman entities as well. One thus may logically conclude that a non-anthropocentric world still allows depiction in terms of play. Such a depiction is not necessarily equal with conspiratorial one – they differ in perceived motivation and, in some cases, in scope – yet the-world-as-the-other’s-play and conspiracy theories are closely related worldviews and, as such, can over-lap. Demonstrating the importance of the existential in question in the works by H.P. Lovecraft, the key author in the field, the study proceeds to examine the fiction by T. Ligotti, L. Barron, M. Podlewski, and D. Wong (J. Pargin), showing the variety of representations of the-world-as-the-other’s-play in the cosmic horror literature.

Thinking Like a Rat: Grotesque Interspecies Relations, Narrative Hospitality And Posthuman Assemblages in Katherina Hacker’s Die Gäste

This article analyses how Katharina Hacker’s 2022 novel Die Gäste experiments with interspecies relations that upend the anthropocentric view of planetary life to bring into view an ethics of narrative hospitality. Focusing on the role of the animals, especially the rat protagonists, I argue that the novel employs anthropomorphism to refute the reductive view of the rat as a lower-order animal without cognition and emotions, while also rejecting the common allegorization of the animal protagonist as a human actor in animal disguise. Drawing on the Kayser versus Bahktin debate of the grotesque in dialogue with posthumanist theories, the article shows how Hacker combines the carnivalesque strand of the grotesque with anecdotal rendition as narrative modes that make possible the kind of interspecies assemblages that posthumanism advocates. By inviting the reader ‘to think like a rat’, the novel explores ways of overcoming speciecism and human exceptionalism in favour of an entangled and relational world view.

THE ROLE OF LIBRARY IN THE FORMATION OF TEACHERS’ INFORMATION NEEDS

In this article, an attempt is made to identify the place of the library in the process of forming information and reader interests and needs of various subject teachers in Izhevsk schools. According to a number of researchers, in the modern world there is a "global disintegration" of the traditional system of values, which inevitably leads to the transformation of relations in society. And this process begins not only in the family, but also at school. There is a need to study each factor influencing the position of the library in the system of teachers' value attitudes, which will give an understanding of the general picture of the ways of formation of their value orientations. Therefore, it is necessary to study this aspect of sociology in order to rid society of existing prejudices and stereotypes associated with ideas about the exclusively "passive" role of the library in the process of value formation and identification of needs. The views on the priorities of society were changing. Over time, the school begins to play a dominant role in the life of modern youth. This leads to problems of insufficient training of teachers to answer a wide variety of questions that are not always related to their professional activities. It was important for researchers to find out the reason for the change in the value orientations of modern teachers in order to identify the specifics of their worldview in relation to working with libraries. It was supposed to identify the possibilities and limitations of interaction between schools and city libraries. The basis for this article was a study conducted by the forces of the centralized library system of Izhevsk in 2023 on the basis of Izhevsk schools. Thanks to the results obtained, specialists working with youth and with schools will be able to improve the culture of serving visitors of different socio-demographic groups and plan their professional activities more carefully.

Mechanistic or Relational Worldview for Talent Identification Research in Sport Science? Both-But With a Preference!

This paper situates talent identification research in sport science within the broader context of developmental science, offering a conceptual framework informed by two (meta-)theoretical worldviews: the Cartesian-split-mechanistic and processual-relational worldviews. Although these worldviews are not explicitly named in the field of talent identification research, we demonstrate their implicit adoption through theoretical and methodological discourse. After comparing applications, benefits, and limitations of each worldview, we briefly discuss whether their bodies of knowledge are incompatible, competitive, or complementary. We suggest each worldview provides complementary insights with a penchant for generating nomothetic and group-specific and type-specific and idiographic knowledge, respectively.

Recognizing Relational Interactions with Social Institutions in Refugee Children's Experiences of Intertwining Vulnerability and Agency.

In this paper, we examine relational interactions between refugee children and social institutions, building the case for the recognition of the co-occurrence and intertwining of vulnerability and agency in children's experiences in diverse refugee situations. This developmental relational approach offers refinement of a general relational worldview by specifying how vulnerable and agentic experiences are co-constructed by children and adult individuals and institutions. We analyze the conceptual roots of vulnerable and agentic experiences, and use the concept of co-construction to specify the processes and outcomes of interactive relational experiences. Evidence from example studies of the intertwining of vulnerability and agency in specific refugee situations demonstrates how refugee children contribute to power-oriented experiences. Due recognition of the relational co-construction of intertwining vulnerable and agentic experiences provides a basis for refining generalized relational observations, and a fine-grained basis for developing policies and procedures to dispel ambivalence to refugee children and to change inequitable policies and practices.

Human Rights Penality and Violence Against Women: The Coloniality of Disembodied Justice

AbstractDespite the persistence of violence inside and around prisons, and the dubious adequacy of criminal law to respond to victim–survivors, international human rights (IHR) discourse increasingly promotes the mobilisation of the state’s penal apparatus to respond to human rights violations, including violence against women (VAW). Using an anticolonial feminist approach, this article scrutinises the ontological and epistemological commitments underlying ‘human rights penality,’ by analysing features of the Western-colonial register vis-a-vis more relational worldviews. Separateness, abstraction, and transcendence broadly underpin the exclusion of embodied experience, context, and material reality from the juridical field. In the second part, through discourse analysis of Inter-American and European case law, the author shows the deployment of human rights penality, the displacement of experience, and the disregard of context in IHR discourse. VAW is construed as a procedural and penal matter: it is the absence of a penal process that courts regard as failure to protect women, rather than the state’s inability/unwillingness to address structural subordination. Moreover, the ‘virtues’ attributed to the penal system justify its expansion, which facilitates the continuity of penal violence and debilitates alternative approaches to justice. Finally, the author posits penal abolition as an anticolonial praxis, pointing at examples of anti-carceral feminist work.

Las dimensiones ontoepistemológicas de la minería aurífera ancestral en Colombia: evidencias del Resguardo Indígena Cañamomo y Lomaprieta / The Onto-Epistemological Dimensions of Ancestral Gold Mining in Colombia: Evidence from the Cañamomo and Lomaprieta Indigenous Reservation

The emergence of non-dualist ontologies, in combination with a renewed interest in relational worldviews of indigenous peoples, has forged new analytical frameworks that seek to reevaluate worldviews and knowledge systems of marginalized peoples in the Global South. An important project to recover this “pluriverse” is the Epistemologies of the South framework, which is used in this article to analyze the geography of conflicts in the Cañamomo and Lomaprieta indigenous reservation in the department of Caldas, Colombia. Based on an analysis of qualitative interviews that were carried out in this indigenous reservation during the period 2018-2020, we argue that the struggle for ancestral gold mining is not only an ontological struggle for ancestral territory, but also an epistemological struggle in defense of ancestral mining knowledge and practices. These onto-epistemological dimensions serve as inputs for an emerging definition of ancestral gold mining. As such, the contribution made in this article has a dual purpose: on the one hand, it seeks to provide knowledge that stimulates debates from the Global South on ontological struggles and the construction of alternative territorialities in mining areas while, on the other hand, it contributes to current debates on ancestral mining in Colombia.

Worldviews, values and perspectives towards the future of the livestock sector.

The livestock sector is under increasing pressure to respond to numerous sustainability and health challenges related to the production and consumption of livestock products. However, political and market barriers and conflicting worldviews and values across the environmental, socio-economic and political domains have led to considerable sector inertia, and government inaction. The processes that lead to the formulation of perspectives in this space, and that shape action (or inaction), are currently under-researched. This paper presents results of a mixed methods exploration of the influence of environmental worldviews, values, and demographic factors on perspectives towards the future of the livestock sector. The approach combines survey and interview data derived from a sample of livestock representatives (N = 307). Respondents with higher pro-environmental, ecocentric and relational worldviews and values favour more behaviour-oriented solutions. Those with lower pro-environmental and higher techno-centric worldviews and values favour technological solutions to improve the efficiency of production and to enable continued patterns of meat consumption. Demographic variation and qualitative data emphasise the need to recognise cultural and geographic nuance in narratives. This study improves our understanding of the processes that lead to the formulation of perspectives, enabling the development of more holistic solutions that acknowledge all voices in an increasingly polarised debate. Adopting more pluralistic, relational methodologies will therefore be paramount in developing solutions for sustainable livestock futures.

Letter in response to Biomedical Services Fit Amongst People with Relational Worldviews

Providentially we have the very first clinical trial in recorded history as part of the Christian story

Learning from COVID: recognising the centrality of the relational in early years practice and research

ABSTRACT The initial aim of this research was to undertake an in-depth study to understand the impact of COVID-19 on early years practitioners. Following a survey and interviews with staff in Kids Planet Day Nurseries, an early years organisation in England, we used thematic analysis to analyse their responses. The findings were diverse, particularly highlighting the centrality of relationships in influencing how people responded to the anxiety caused by the pandemic, but the learning did not stop there. The research team was multidisciplinary, including university researchers and a manager from Kids Planet. It was discovered that the professional role of the interviewer influenced the response to the questions. Similarly, discussions within the research group highlighted the entanglement of knowledge acquisition and ethical practice, with consequent challenges. We discuss the value of explicitly supporting a relational worldview in Early Childhood Education and Care as the foundation for understanding and promoting improved ways of working together.

Ecological Discourse Analysis of UNICEF Environmental Reports

This research is an ecolinguistic study of UNICEF Environmental Reports “Nutrition in Emergencies” (June, 2018) in relation to the Sustainable Developmental Goals. It serves to identify the linguistic structures that highlight the role and responsibility of universal organizations and institutions in shaping the public’s views that are at the heart of sustainable development, and how one can be more socially involved. This research tackles potential influences the study of ecolinguistics can have on significant real-world issues, and how linguists can involve themselves in attending at these issues for a ‘sustainable future’. This research follows Stibbe’s (2015) model of analysis, namely, the framing technique. It attempts to reveal the frames used by UNICEF (June 2018) discourse via identifying the triggering words and then derive the source frames and their target domains. Accordingly, six texts are analyzed and the results show that there are many framings reflected by UN discourse that try to shape the worldview in relation to this report and that these texts are positive and beneficial since they are aligned with the ecological philosophy and ethical consideration to the lives and wellbeing of other species.

Sodalism as Open Worldview: Conspiring to Dismantle the White Franchise

Sodalism as Open Worldview: Conspiring to Dismantle the White Franchise

Attitude of Russia and Mongolia’s student youth towards students with disabilities as a condition for the formation of the inclusive educational environment

The article is devoted to the problem of formation of tolerant attitude to the disabled with special educational needs among students studying humanitarian, social and engineering professions (Trans-Baikal State University, Russia) and medical professions (Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences, Mongolia). The authors reveal the peculiarities of understanding disability as a social problem that must be solved by the modern society. The authors suggest that educational institutions should become the main centers to educate young people to be tolerant to people in need of assistance. The presence of an inclusive educational environment supports the effective cooperation of all students, as well as the integration and socialization of students with special educational needs. In the article special attention is paid to individual, value attitudes of students and their world view in relation to special students. The aim of the study is to determine the comparative features of the attitude of Russian and Mongolian students towards their fellow students with special educational needs. The study was attended by 315 students. The author questionnaire included three sets of questions: socio-demographic, knowledge of disability in countries, comparative indicators of tolerance for the disabled, and willingness to cooperate with groupmates with special educational needs. The average level of students’ understanding of the need to create special educational conditions was revealed. The practical significance of the work is determined by the possibility to use the results obtained in the development of programs and projects related to inclusive education and tolerance.

Biomedical services’ fit amongst people with relational worldviews, and a “middle road”

A critique of the imposition of technical biomedical solutions on cultures with relational worldviews, and some of the pitfalls of international global health solutions are presented from an East African context, toward a "middle road" approach which considers relational and spiritual world views as a localized approach to global health, with examples from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A relational approach to social impact: Moving beyond instrumental and consumer approaches

Social impact can be understood as the real or perceived, intended or unintended, relational and agentic consequences that emerge from organizational decisions or actions for individuals, communities, and societies. Inherent here is the recognition that social impact aligns with consequences, whether it be on individuals, communities, and societies, and that these consequences stem from organizational decisions and behaviors. Drawing on wider social impact scholarship, this paper identifies two approaches—instrumental and consumer—that have provided lenses on how organizations make decisions about social impact and related consequences, and the level of involvement stakeholders have in these decisions. This paper proposes that the understanding of social impact should evolve to reflect the relational worldview advocated in the public relations discipline, which is one that emphasizes the importance of organizations, individuals, and communities contributing to a fully functioning society. A relational lens shows that social impact can be understood as changes—whether they be intended or unintended, anticipated or unanticipated, positive or negative—in the way people live, experience, sustain, and function within their society, resulting from organizational decisions and consequent behaviors as co-determined by organizations and their stakeholders. The relational approach requires the adoption of a relational perspective on identifying, predicting, evaluating, managing, and reporting on social impact, operationalized via the seven-step Relational Framework of Social Impact conceptualized in this paper. While social impact is a relatively new term in the public relations literature, this paper highlights how public relations scholarship is well placed to enrich the social impact discipline due its emphasis on fostering a fully functioning society.

Embedded Action in Disembedded Markets: Restoring Balance Through Indigenous Entrepreneurship

Previous research has shown the positive impacts on nature and society of indigenous venturing from remote contexts. However, tensions might emerge when social and ecological indigenous values drive entrepreneurs within market-based, disembedded settings. These tensions may compromise the maintenance of social and ecological well-being through venturing. To explore this, we conducted a qualitative study with urban Mapuche entrepreneurs from Chile. Key patterns and themes were identified using thematic analysis. We found a mutually reinforcing relationship between entrepreneurship and well-being. This reciprocal interaction allowed for defining entrepreneurship in terms of Mapuche Good-living (and vice versa), as they both sought to balance human, natural and spiritual well-being. Implications on relational worldviews, well-being and spirituality are discussed.

Intersubjectivity as an antidote to stress: Using dyadic active inference model of intersubjectivity to predict the efficacy of parenting interventions in reducing stress-through the lens of dependent origination in Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy.

Intersubjectivity refers to one person’s awareness in relation to another person’s awareness. It is key to well-being and human development. From infancy to adulthood, human interactions ceaselessly contribute to the flourishing or impairment of intersubjectivity. In this work, we first describe intersubjectivity as a hallmark of quality dyadic processes. Then, using parent-child relationship as an example, we propose a dyadic active inference model to elucidate an inverse relation between stress and intersubjectivity. We postulate that impaired intersubjectivity is a manifestation of underlying problems of deficient relational benevolence, misattributing another person’s intentions (over-mentalizing), and neglecting the effects of one’s own actions on the other person (under-coupling). These problems can exacerbate stress due to excessive variational free energy in a person’s active inference engine when that person feels threatened and holds on to his/her invalid (mis)beliefs. In support of this dyadic model, we briefly describe relevant neuroimaging literature to elucidate brain networks underlying the effects of an intersubjectivity-oriented parenting intervention on parenting stress. Using the active inference dyadic model, we identified critical interventional strategies necessary to rectify these problems and hereby developed a coding system in reference to these strategies. In a theory-guided quantitative review, we used this coding system to code 35 clinical trials of parenting interventions published between 2016 and 2020, based on PubMed database, to predict their efficacy for reducing parenting stress. The results of this theory-guided analysis corroborated our hypothesis that parenting intervention can effectively reduce parenting stress if the intervention is designed to mitigate the problems of deficient relational benevolence, under-coupling, and over-mentalizing. We integrated our work with several dyadic concepts identified in the literature. Finally, inspired by Arya Nagarjuna’s Buddhist Madhyamaka Philosophy, we described abstract expressions of Dependent Origination as a relational worldview to reflect on the normality, impairment, and rehabilitation of intersubjectivity.