Relational Worldview Research Articles

Beyond different levels: embodiment and the developmental system

The value of studying a phenomenon at multiple levels of analysis is often emphasized in psychology, but a lack of clarity about the nature of levels and the relations among them remains an impediment to progress. The suggestion here is that an approach combining the tenets of embodiment with the construct of the developmental system provides a way forward. Embodiment opposes the splitting off and elevation of a level of mechanisms that has characterized much of cognitive science. In contrast, a constructivist embodied approach places a level of mechanisms in the context of a formal or systems level of analysis, with developmental process framing the interpenetrating relations between levels. Such an approach stems from a relational worldview that opposes conceptual splits and posits that levels of structure and process comprise an indissociable complementarity. The combination of embodiment and developmental systems within a relational worldview is discussed and elaborated through outlining the integrative approach of relational developmental systems, which has been proposed as a scientific paradigm within which formulations of the interrelations among brain, body, and mind can be advanced.

Meaning and Mind from the Perspective of Dualist versus Relational Worldviews: Implications for the Development of Pointing Gestures

Worldviews consist of preconceptions about the nature of mind, knowledge, and meaning, and these assumptions influence theorizing about human development and the interpretation of research. We outline two contrasting worldviews - dualist versus relational - and explicate the implications of such preconceptions for studying the development of pointing gestures. Pointing is a pivotal social skill that is an aspect of social understanding, as well as a foundational form of interaction for language. In studying the development of pointing it is possible to observe how infants develop the social skills required to convey meaning in human ways. Thus, this is an area in which to examine the nature and development of meaning, and an adequate conception of meaning is necessary for theories of language and cognition. We argue that dualist approaches have problems that can be avoided by adopting a relational worldview and the relational developmental systems framework that follows from it, which we suggest is a fruitful approach to theorizing about human development.

A Case Study of a Stepfamily’s Relationship Experiences Before and After the Death of a Custodial Biological Parent

Over the past two decades, the traditional family of mother, father, and shared biological children as the dominant structure of a family has been replaced by the modern family—the stepfamily. The present study explored a stepfamily for the purpose of understanding a phenomenon, that is, a stepfamily’s experiences before and after the death of a custodial biological parent. This article, therefore, presents the findings of the examination of the stepparent–stepchild relationship and the effects of the death of the custodial biological parent on the stepfamily as individuals and as a family unit. Findings demonstrated the premises of Minuchin’s structural theory and Bowlby’s attachment theory as theoretical frameworks and Social Constructionism as the philosophical framework, respectively. Family counselors in their role as clinicians will be informed of a stepfamily’s relational associations, interactions, and cultural worldviews, thereby providing direction for clinical interventions from an empirically based perspective. Moreover, the findings will inform better practice through the understanding of how the death of a custodial biological parent affects continued association between a stepparent and stepchild (children).

Birds, Liminality, and Human Transformation: An Animist Perspective on New Animism

In many pre-modern, non-Western, and indigenous cultures, birds mediate between humans and a divine realm. In mythology and lore they are widely associated with the survival of death. Edward Tylor’s definition of animism identified a belief in spirits that survive death as a key conceptual error to be rectified by the advance of scientific rationality. Recent reconfigurations of animism as an ecological and relational worldview treat the notion of discarnate spirits as a projection of Western assumptions that locate mystery and divinity beyond the natural world. This essay responds by arguing for a degree of continuity between new animism and the spiritualist traditions denounced by Tylor. An autobiographical account of a sequence of encounters with the Common Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) and other birds appears to confirm their reputation as psychopomps.

Ubuntu

AbstractIn this article I am arguing that the concept of Ubuntu which means humanness was articulated against a situation of the dehumanization that was meted to the Africans during the eras of slavery and colonialism. It is further argued that since Ubuntu implies character qualities such as compassion, kindness, courtesy and respect for other persons, the ethic of Ubuntu remains indispensable to the reconstruction of post-colonial African societies. Ubuntu is indispensable to the post-colonial African quest for an identity in the spheres such as the public sector and the business sector because Ubuntu is mostly valued as the ideal for human conduct in all spheres of life. Lastly, I have also argued that because of its relational worldview and individual ontology, Ubuntu connected with the concept of Ukama implies that human existence cannot be separated from the generality of existence.

L'Ubuntu

In this article I am arguing that the concept of Ubuntu which means humanness was articulated against a situation of the dehumanization that was meted to the Africans during the eras of slavery and colonialism. It is further argued that since Ubuntu implies character qualities such as compassion, kindness, courtesy and respect for other persons, the ethic of Ubuntu remains indispensable to the reconstruction of post-colonial African societies. Ubuntu is indispensable to the post-colonial African quest for an identity in the spheres such as the public sector and the business sector because Ubuntu is mostly valued as the ideal for human conduct in all spheres of life. Lastly, I have also argued that because of its relational worldview and individual ontology, Ubuntu connected with the concept of Ukama implies that human existence cannot be separated from the generality of existence.

Our Saving Grace: A Relational Mode of Being

Our Saving Grace: A Relational Mode of Being

The Future of Monetary Reform and the Real Economy: A Problem of Trade Versus Interest

The prologue is our starting premise. The Qur’an (2: 275) declares, “As for those who devour interest, they behave as the one whom Satan has confounded with his touch. Seized in this state they say: ‘Trade is but a kind of interest’, even though Allah has made trade lawful, and interest unlawful”. Keynes (1930, p. 368) picked up such wisdom of the inverse relationship between trade and interest and wrote, “The strenuous purposeful moneymakers may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance. But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.” Such are the messages of moral highness and wisdom picked up in this paper. The fundamental point here is to establish the fact that the only way of phasing out interest rate from Islamic activities is to understand and implement the formalism of the inverse relationship that permanently exists between trade in the good things of life and the rate of interest as the impediment to the free flow of resources into such tradable activities. The central bank and commercial banks and fi nancial intermediaries as practitioners must understand this organic relational concept of intellection in relation to money and the real economy. The monetary system and the real economy with the financial instruments between would thus be shown to formalize the intellection paradigm – which indeed is a truly scientific revolution. The result is replacement of the fractional reserve requirement monetary system by the 100 per cent reserve requirement monetary system backed by the gold standard. Likewise, the organic relationships of such a monetary arrangement including its monetary policy and transmission mechanism would structurally change the nature of markets and its institutional relations and individual preferences. The result at the end will be a phased down interest rate regime into a trade-related one by the rise of the tradable relationships that are generated. The foundational methodology that enters this kind of organically relational worldview with the episteme of unity of knowledge (the divine law in Islam) provides the functional ontology of the socially and morally constructed money, production and real economy circular causation. It models the legitimacy of trade as the resource mobilization instrument, while rejecting interest as the permanent impediment of resource mobilization. Keywords: Monetary economics, Islamic economics and finance, Islamic political economy and world-system, social economics, ethics and economics.

Life and Temporality: The Place of Biosemiotics within Peirce’s General Semiotics

Abstract I would like to present some new perspectives on the reciprocal foundational links which are discemable between Peirce's general semiotics on the one hand and anthroposemiotic and biosemiotic inquiry on the other. To this end I offer an examination of the peculiar place occupied by temporal relations within the relational framework of Peirce's semiotics. I support these considerations by drawing on previous work about a relational world-view presently emerging as a unifying perspective within diverse fields of inquiry (biology, quantum physics, philosophy of inquiry, and mathematics), which I have previously characterized as a "relational tum". A common, positive feature of these developments is the recognition of the relational nature of physical reality. This portends an implicit repudiation of the traditional nominalistic bias of the physical sciences and removes an important obstacle to the acceptance of semiotic ideas. However these new approaches have, up to now, failed to consider any relations other than dyadic relations or their dyadic combinations. I argue for the need to supplement the Peircean elucidation of semiosis in terms of triadic relations with other equally unique relational features, which I characterize as " radical temporality" and selfreference. A brief sketch of the different roles played by relations of temporality in organisms in general ( biosemiotics) as opposed to organisms immersed in a historically constituted culture of symbols and artifacts (anthroposemiotics) serves to disclose the relations of mutual epistemic dependence that underlie these disciplines.

Transmitting Relational Worldviews: The Relationship Between Mother–Daughter Memorable Messages and Adult Daughters’ Romantic Relational Schemata

This study investigates memorable messages that daughters report hearing from their mothers about romantic relationships to examine the development of meaning in the content of parent–child communication and the ways in which these messages may affect and reflect adult daughters’ relational worldviews. Findings from a study involving 149 adult daughters revealed 4 supra-categories of memorable messages: value self, characteristics of a good relationship, warnings, and value the sanctity of love. Moreover, statistical analyses reveal that memorable message types significantly related to daughter's romantic relationship schemata as operationalized by Fitzptarick's (1988) couple types. Both message and couple type predicted intergenerational transmission.

Resisting dominant discourses: implications of indigenous, African feminist theory and methods for gender and education research

In this paper we explore tensions between Western gender theory and research, and post‐colonial and indigenous feminist standpoints, which challenge us to re‐define our roles as feminist‐activist educators and researchers working with formerly colonised and historically marginalised communities. We discuss how African and Black feminist approaches can enable the construction of context‐specific knowledge of African women’s power via relational world views of motherhood, family, sisterhood and friendship. In contrast, the application of Western gender theory and policy in Botswana has tended to reduce women and girls’ experiences to the categories of ‘victim’ and ‘other’. We illustrate how Western male hegemony enters the school through subjects such as religion and can be typically reinforced through Tswana culture, embodied in language and rituals, generating multiple centres of oppression for girls/women in the education system and the public space. The paper explores ethical and transformative ways of approaching this complexity that can account for how girls and women negotiate and resist patriarchal power. Through analysis of empirical research narratives from several gender‐ and education‐focused studies, we explore strategies for decolonising Euro‐Western archival knowledge and challenging dominant, patriarchal, colonial research methodologies. Finally, we outline the role of the activist feminist researcher as transformative healer, who resists dominant research discourses in order to develop processes of social justice and healing in the community.

Being Known by a Birch Tree

Animism, as derived from Ojibwa philosophy and articulated by anthropologists of religion, begins in a relational worldview and implies ways of knowing that challenge a Cartesian framework. Beginning with a story of my relationship with a weeping birch tree at my childhood home in northwest Ohio, I examine elements of an animist epistemology using Indigenous philosophers such as Carol Lee Sanchez, Vine Deloria, Donald Fixico, and Makere Stewart-Harawira. But to trouble the dichotomy between indigenous and Western ways of knowing, I draw also on Nonindigenous scholars such as Donna Haraway and ‘situated knowledges’; Karen Barad and ‘intra-acting,’ and Val Plumwood and ‘spirituality of place.’ My goal is to situate humans as but one extension of Earth’s ability to know and to explore how we might take our places in a community of knowers, only some of whom are human.

Deliberation, Reason, and Indigestion: Response to Daniel Dombrowski’s Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism

Deliberation, Reason, and Indigestion: Response to Daniel Dombrowski’s Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism Zandra Wagoner (bio) Democracy requires a rather large tolerance for confusion and a secret relish for dissent. —Molly Ivins, Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead1 I. Introduction I am delighted to respond to Daniel Dombrowski’s book Rawls and Religion. Dombrowski and I share a number of what he would call comprehensive doctrine, such as the ethical treatment of animals, the relational worldview of process thought, and the idiosyncratic love of pacifism. So, immediately I was drawn in and claimed Dombrowski as a kindred spirit. With so many commonalities, including an interest in political philosophy and religion, I approached this book with a built-in desire to engage with and respect his thinking. To be honest, I wondered if I would be able to critically engage Dombrowski’s book given our common worlds, but of course, in a pluralist world of free and equal citizens, our comprehensive doctrines can only overlap to a certain degree. And as Dombrowski rightly cautions, “too much unity leads to monotony.”2 It is in the spirit of both deep appreciation and necessary contrast that I offer the following comments. My comments are structured around four themes: A difference in emphasis, religious participation in politics and public reason, political liberalism and inequality, and reflective equilibrium. II. A Difference in Emphasis “Democracy requires a rather large tolerance for confusion and a secret relish for dissent.” This quote comes not from a political philosopher but from writer and columnist Molly Ivins. Ivins captures my political sensibility and helps [End Page 179] to foreground a difference I perceive between Daniel Dombrowski’s political theory and my own. Dombrowski’s understanding of politics, significantly shaped by John Rawls, leads to an emphasis on the “well-ordered society,” optimistically poised in the direction of “over-lapping consensus,” “reasonable agreement,” and “rational deliberation.” By way of contrast, my understanding of politics, significantly shaped by Chantal Mouffe’s “Radical and Plural Democracy,” and other closely related theory’s like Isabel Stengers’s “Cosmopolitics” and Bruno Latour’s “issue-oriented politics,” foregrounds a different constellation of terms, such as “conflictual consensus,” “antagonism,” “dissent,” and “power.”3 I want to focus on this difference as a way to engage with Dombrowski’s important book in political philosophy, Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism. I share a great deal with political liberalism’s goal, most significantly, its desire to preserve a pluralistic democracy where a pluralism of cultures, subjects, individual choices, and conceptions of the good are assumed and assured in our collective life together. As Chantal Mouffe explains, “Pluralism lies at the very core of modern democracy; if we want a more democratic society, we need to increase that pluralism and make room for a multiplicity of democratically managed forms of associations and communities.”4 In Rawls and Religion, Dombrowski presents John Rawls’s political liberalism as the most promising political philosophy for creating a just, pluralist democratic society. In particular, Dombrowski argues that political liberalism is best suited to address the problem of how to create a well-ordered society in a context of pluralism where citizens are divided, often in profound ways, by incompatible comprehensive religious and philosophical doctrines. The aim of political liberalism is not to present an alternative comprehensive doctrine, [End Page 180] but to suggest a method for adjudicating in a fair way the disputes that arise from a pluralistic society of competing comprehensive doctrines and to do so in a way that recognizes, respects, and affirms citizens as free and equal. According to political liberalism, citizens are free to subscribe to any number of comprehensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, as long as they do not violate the key virtue of any democratic society—justice—and its corresponding notions of equality and freedom. For Rawls and Dombrowski, the centrality of justice is a common sense claim that is drawn not from any one comprehensive doctrine, but from the heritage of democratic societies. As the key virtue of any pluralist democracy, “justice as fairness” is a minimal vision of the good life that provides a horizon for our political life together...

Agricultural Extension Ideologies and the Quest for A Sustainable Agriculture: Some Thoughts and Speculations

This paper makes an attempt at reviewing agricultural extension ideologies or perspectives and their influence on stakeholder’s world-view in relation to sustainable agriculture. Specifically, the paper brings together several perspectives that have been suggested to encourage farmers to do things differently in the interest of a sustainable agricultural industry. Judging from the amount of resources spent on agricultural extension by developing countries, one comes to the conclusion that it is considered to be very important. There have been numerous attempts to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural extension worldwide, hence the perspectives described and discussed in the paper are but a drop in the bucket full of perspectives. The common factor among all the extension perspectives is the desire to bring about a productive agriculture today and tomorrow, which in essence, is the writer’s simple definition of sustainable agriculture. The perspectives discussed embrace both hard and soft systems. The transfer of technology (TOT) and the earlier farming systems perspectives are discussed as examples of hard system perspectives. In the group of soft systems, the paper discusses the actor oriented perspective, the network perspective, the agricultural knowledge information perspective (AKIS) or simply the knowledge information system perspective (KIS) and the rapid appraisal of agricultural knowledge system (RAAKS) perspective (which is an offshoot of AKIS). The paper concludes by pointing out that this multiplicity of perspectives (ideologies) may bring confusion to the technology developer, disseminator and user. But so long as the perspectives increase understanding about how people develop their world views in the area of agricultural development, they are worth the effort. This is especially crucial to such an important theme as agricultural sustainability. How do we bring about rapid adoption by farmers and others, technologies that ensure the sustainability of the industry through the agency of agricultural extension? The perspectives described and discussed in the paper attempt to answer this precise question. The problems associated with ‘the tragedy of the commons’ (despite claims to the contrary) are all real to us all. Overgrazing, deforestation, forest and range fires, cultivation down steep slopes, disregard of laws protecting catchment areas, over-dependence on chemicals in agriculture, are some of the problems that have attracted a lot of scientific and political attention, for a long time. The results of agricultural extension and research are quite often not commensurate with the effort expended, when measured against various criteria of agricultural success including sustainability. Therefore, this paper’s small contribution is to get agricultural scientists, extension practitioners and other stakeholders thinking more deeply as to “why we continue to get low production and productivity responses from the majority of small farmers in developing countries despite considerable efforts on the part of technology producers and disseminators to improve the sector’s performance? Why do we continue to experience degradation of the land resource despite our efforts”? These are vexing questions that will continue to exercise our minds in the 21st century as they did in the 20th century.

Climate change, economics and Buddhism — Part 2: New views and practices for sustainable world economies

The evidence of impending and serious climate and other consequences of an expanding world economy based on fossil carbon energy continues to accumulate. This two-part paper examines the potential contribution of the world view and insights of Buddhism to this search. It presents both a conceptual and practical case that Buddhism can help shape and move towards an alternative and effective paradigmatic basis for sustainable economies — one capable of bringing about and maintaining genuine, high welfare levels across the world's societies. The first paper outlined a comprehensive analytical framework to identify the fundamental nature of anthropogenic climate change. Based on the integration of two of the most influential environmental analysis tools of recent decades (the DPSIR model and IPAT equation), the framework was then broadened to facilitate ideas from the Buddhist world view by injecting two key missing aspects — the interrelated role of (1) beliefs and values (on goals and behavior) and (2) the nature of well-being or human happiness. Finally, the principal linkages between this climate change analysis framework and Buddhism were explored. In this concluding paper, the systems framework is used to demonstrate how Buddhist and related world views can feed into appropriate and effective responses to the impending challenges of climate change. This is undertaken by systematically presenting a specific, if indicative, list of relevant strategies informed by the understanding of interconnectedness and other basic principles about the nature of reality and human well-being as proposed in Buddhism.

Chinese pragmatism and the learning organisation

PurposeFor 40 years, it has been widely believed in the West that learning organisations would be healthier, flexible and more competitive than other organisations. By now, one might expect them to be widespread. However, fully developed learning organisations are rare in the West. In contrast, Chinese organisations seem naturally to be learning organisations. The paper aims to explore the impact of Eastern (largely Chinese) and Western (largely US) philosophies upon the development of learning organisations and suggests that for learning organisations to develop in the West a different philosophical approach may be needed.Design/methodology/approachThe Chinese worldview, and Chinese pragmatism in particular, are discussed in the context of learning organisations. A link is made with the American pragmatism of Dewey. These philosophical traditions are compared to the prevailing worldview and philosophical tradition in the West, which may help explain the rarity of the learning organisation in the West.FindingsA pragmatic philosophy and a relational worldview allow the development of natural learning organisations in China. The recovery in the west of pragmatism and a relational worldview might allow Western organisations to move towards becoming learning organisations. Without this philosophical underpinning, it is unlikely that there will be more than visionary glimpses of utopian ideas for learning organisations.Originality/valueThe significance of pragmatism in the development of learning organisations needs to be considered as a factor in the failure to develop widespread learning organisations in the West.

Moral commitments to community: mapping social responsibility and its ambiguities among small business owners

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to map the different moral positions articulated by small business owners in relation to social responsibility (SR) commitment and practice.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study utilized collaborative action research with 25 small business owners in two Canadian provinces and used combined methods of group dialogue, personal semi‐structured interviews, and thematic analysis through researcher triangulation.FindingsWe found that the morality underpinning business owners' social responsibility tended to be embedded in a sense of relationship with and commitment to the well‐being of the local geographic community. However, this was threaded with felt ambiguities, revealing their understanding of a spectrum of SR practices.Research limitations/implicationsThrough an ethical analysis, we argue that this moral commitment to community is connected to a relational worldview as part of a distinctive ethical vision while, at the same time, the small business owner‐managers were continuing to pursue business within an environment of orthodox economic ethics and practices. This substantially impacted the shape of their commitment as social change agents and their engagement in collective activities with like‐minded peers.Practical implicationsFurther research is needed to reveal how much the lack of engagement in collective social change activities and collective promotion of social responsibility is related to the practical issues of time famine, maintenance of a business niche, or an individualist ethos.Originality/valueThis study contributes several original findings by identifying a range of SR practices and the ethics behind each, from the perspective of small business owners, how they position themselves, as well as the paradoxical constraints they experience.

Imagining the World: The Significance of Religious Worldviews for Science Education

This article begins by examining whether ‘science’ and ‘religion’ can better be seen as distinct or related worldviews, focusing particularly on scientific and religious understandings of biodiversity. I then explore how people can see the natural world, depending on their worldview, by looking at two contrasting treatments of penguin behaviour, namely that provided in the film March of the Penguins and in the children’s book And Tango Makes Three. I end by drawing some initial conclusions as to what might and what might not be included about religion in school science lessons. Science educators and teachers need to take account of religious worldviews if some students are better to understand the compass of scientific thinking and some of science’s key conclusions. It is perfectly possible for a science teacher to be respectful of the worldviews that students occupy, even if these are scientifically limited, while clearly and non-apologetically helping them to understand the scientific worldview on a particular issue.

The question remains: what is a ‘spiritual’ world view in relation to a secular or a religious world view? A reply to comments made about my letter questioning the ‘spirituality’ concept [1

The question remains : what is a 'spiritual' world view in relation to a secular or a religious world view? A reply to comments made about my letter questioning the 'spirituality' concept [1].

Differential geographies: place, indigenous rights and ‘local’ resources

Abstract Over the last decade a number of human geographers have advocated relational perspectives on place. These perspectives are currently influential within and beyond geography. In this essay they are subjected to a constructive critique. Three shibboleths of place are identified and scrutinised. Taking the writings of Michael Watts, Doreen Massey and David Harvey as a focus, it is argued that these shibboleths possess important but nonetheless limited value as explanatory and normative tools. Working within the broad parameters of a relational worldview, the essay proposes a more nuanced approach to place than that offered by Watts, Massey and Harvey. The second half of the essay explores this approach in relation to debates about the global indigenous peoples movement. For some indigenous groups, the right to ‘differential geographies’ is synonymous with the right to erect new border controls around places. This is controversial, not least because non-indigenous groups—locally and translocally—can lay equal claim to occupancy of, or at least a stake in, those places. Rather than criticising such arguments for the geographical apartheid that seemingly underpins them, I argue for a more subtle reading of ‘strong’ indigenous claims to territory, cultural artefacts and informational resources. The result is a plea for left-leaning critics to deploy more supple understandings of place that can accommodate the complexities of variegated real world place-projects.