Search Results (456)

In 19th-century Hungary, the German-language press provided an important intellectual platform for Jewish journalists, many of whom became significant actors in political communication and cultural transfer. This study examines the Pester Lloyd (founded in 1854) as an institutional case through which the mediating role of Jewish journalists in a multilingual press culture can be explored. By analyzing editorial strategies, journalistic networks, and forms of cultural mediation, the paper explores how Jewish intellectuals operated between Hungarian- and German-language cultural and political spheres. Methodologically, the study combines historical press research with institutional and intellectual–historical analysis, drawing on editorials, feuilletons, autobiographical writings, and contemporary press material. Special attention is given to Miksa Falk, whose editorial leadership embodied the ideals of liberal constitutionalism and linguistic and cultural mediation. The article situates the Pester Lloyd as both a product of and an important medium for journalistic modernization and the participation of Jewish journalists within Hungary’s evolving media landscape. Full article

Adolescents with intellectual disabilities are often excluded from mainstream sexual reproductive health education and services. This exclusion is due to stigma and systemic barriers further increasing their vulnerability to exploitation, unintended pregnancies, and limited contraceptive access. Additionally, adolescent childbearing has been linked to an increased risk of long-term health and functional limitations. This study explored contraceptive awareness and decision-making among caregivers of adolescent learners with intellectual disabilities in selected Special Care Centres in Tshwane District Gauteng province. This exploratory, descriptive qualitative research utilised a purposive sampling method to select caregivers from five Special Care Centres to participate in focus group discussions. The sample size was 29 participants. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis on NVivo15 software and halted after reaching saturation. Intercoder reliability was achieved with consensus agreement among researchers. Three overarching themes, supported by two sub-themes emerged: (1) Caregivers’ understanding of contraception: (1.1) Perceived benefits and disadvantages of contraception; (1.2) Early exposure to contraceptive information. (2) Socio-economic influences on contraceptive decision-making: (2.1) Financial burden; (2.2) Preference for permanent contraceptive method. (3) Negotiating cultural expectations and practical caregiving realities: (3.1) Community acceptance of contraceptive use; (3.2) Willingness to forgo biological grandchildren. Caregivers’ awareness and decisions about contraception reflect not only their health knowledge but also the socio-economic pressures they face and the practical realities that shape choices within their communities. This study recommends disability-inclusive sexual reproductive health education that provides contextually relevant insights for strengthening community-based interventions among adolescents with intellectual disability. Full article

The rapid development of Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) has transformed digital models of historic buildings from design-support tools into long-term information assets used for documentation, conservation, and heritage management. Despite their growing importance, issues related to copyright protection, intellectual property rights, and data exchange remain insufficiently addressed in both research and professional practice. This study examines the legal status of HBIM models under European Union, especially Polish, copyright law and identifies challenges associated with licensing and interoperability in BIM environments. The research combines a doctrinal analysis of copyright legislation, a review of BIM and HBIM literature, an examination of information management standards, and a case study of an HBIM project developed for a listed historic property of the University of Wrocław. The findings indicate that HBIM models may qualify as copyright-protected works, most often of a joint authorship nature, requiring clear regulation of economic rights, derivative works, and model updates throughout the lifecycle of a heritage asset. The study also reveals a gap between technical and legal interoperability, as the IFC format does not consistently preserve information concerning authorship, licensing conditions, and revision history during data exchange. The results highlight the need to integrate copyright considerations into contractual arrangements, Common Data Environment (CDE) management, and metadata structures to support the lawful and sustainable long-term use of HBIM models in cultural heritage conservation. Full article

Chinese translations of the Bible are an important case in the dissemination of texts across cultures and religions. One of its core challenges lies in how to convey the textual personification of God in the Bible through translation within the context of traditional Chinese thought. Through a longitudinal empirical analysis of Jingjiao (景教) texts, Catholic translations from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the Protestant Chinese Union Version, this article proposes an interpretive framework of “dual mediation,” revealing how Confucian and Daoist thought interact through distinct cultural pathways to influence the representation and local reconfiguration of the divine personhood. Through its concept of “naturalization,” Daoist thought removes the element of coercive will from the expression of divine action, emphasizing instead the process of spontaneous generation from within. Confucianism, on the other hand, through a process of “ethicalization,” relies on the relational network and moral system of the “father-son” to transform God into an educational agent endowed with personal characteristics and moral responsibility. Through these two pathways, God is not only expressed in Chinese translations as a Revealer, Creator, and Redeemer, but His personhood is also adapted during the translation process to align with the divine subject within the Chinese intellectual system and ethical order. Based on this, the “dual mediation” framework presented in this article offers a new perspective for understanding cultural adaptation and theological expression in the translation of the Chinese Bible. Full article

Possibility Studies are an emerging interdisciplinary field concerned with how individuals, groups and societies engage with possibilities, including imagined futures, unrealised alternatives and transformative forms of action. Drawing on psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, creativity research, futures studies and related disciplines, it examines how possibilities are perceived, constructed, negotiated, constrained and enacted within cultural, social and material contexts. Central topics include imagination, agency, anticipation, creativity, counterfactual thinking, hope and social transformation. What distinguishes Possibility Studies is their focus on possibility itself as an object of inquiry. Rather than concentrating on a single domain such as creativity, innovation, futures, identity or social change, the field investigates the conditions under which alternatives become imaginable, the factors that enable or constrain them, and the processes through which they are explored and realised. Possibility Studies therefore serve as a cross-disciplinary framework for understanding how people and societies engage with uncertainty, openness and the not-yet-realised dimensions of life. Although the term is relatively recent, the field builds on longer intellectual traditions concerned with imagination, becoming, human potential and the open-ended nature of social reality. It has gained increasing relevance in response to contemporary challenges such as ecological crisis, technological transformation and political uncertainty, all of which raise fundamental questions about alternative futures and the capacity to shape them. Full article

Over the past two or three centuries, some influential scientists and theologians have claimed the mantle of science to promote human inequality. They have achieved this by arguing that science provides support for racism, eugenics, and even euthanasia. Scientific racists not only claimed that science demonstrated the inequality of the human races, but also argued that the extermination of allegedly inferior human races was a natural, inescapable process. The eugenics and euthanasia movements have claimed that people with some disabilities are inferior, and thus, should be restricted from reproducing or even killed. The Nazi regime committed horrific atrocities in the name of these allegedly scientific ideas. Since the mid-twentieth century, most people in Western societies have rejected racism and compulsory eugenics and euthanasia. However, some prominent intellectuals are once again insisting that science demonstrates human inequality, and they do not consider killing those deemed inferior to be immoral. As Western culture becomes increasingly secular, religious voices are having less impact in countering these views. Full article

This study presents a bibliometric and thematic analysis of intercultural intelligence research in digitally mediated contexts. Using a dataset of 92 journal articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection between 2006 and April 2026, the study maps the intellectual structure, collaboration patterns, and thematic evolution of the field. Data were analyzed using the Bibliometrix R package (version 5.3.0) and Biblioshiny through performance analysis, science mapping, co-citation analysis, collaboration networks, and thematic mapping techniques. The findings indicate that research output has expanded considerably since the mid-2010s, reflecting the growing importance of intercultural competencies in digitally connected environments. The intellectual structure of the field remains strongly anchored in cultural intelligence theory while increasingly incorporating themes related to communication, trust, global virtual teams, leadership, and digitally mediated collaboration. Thematic evolution analyses reveal a gradual shift from traditional cultural intelligence constructs toward broader concerns associated with virtual interaction, digitally mediated collaboration, and emerging AI-supported communication environments. The results also demonstrate a highly collaborative and internationally connected research landscape, although notable geographical imbalances remain. By providing a systematic overview of the field, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how intercultural intelligence scholarship is evolving in response to digital transformation and offers directions for future interdisciplinary research. Full article

Commissioned for West German public television, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s hotly debated 1972 series Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day was Germany’s first working-class family drama. Centering on the growing class consciousness of a crew of toolmakers in Cologne, the show provoked an explosion of criticism and debate among conservative critics, leftists, and trade unionists alike. Westdeutscher Rundfunk—a leader in high-quality, non-commercial, socially engaged television—sought to meet the cultural demands of the New Left by embracing the “worker film” (Arbeiterfilm) that aspired to bring the lives and dreams of the working class, WDR’s target audience, to the screen for the first time. What they got instead was a radical call for the abolition of capitalism—a TV-show that did not condescend to workers through representation of their everyday struggles, but rather radicalized them into the knowledge that employers need workers, not the other way around. Within a remarkably intersectional framework that appoints the lone non-straight, racialized worker and female characters the intellectual vanguard of the mobilizing workers, the show takes the contradictions between the factory workers’ interests and those of their management as its dramatic motor, converging on the anticapitalist insight that eight hours do not, in fact, make a day. Unsurprisingly, despite its popularity, Fassbinder’s show was cancelled five episodes into an eight episode series. In this article, I consider its potential in terms of two great thinkers of abolition—Mario Tronti, a founding figure in the Operaismo movement, and Mario Mieli, a gay communist organizer who asserted that the “liberation of Eros and the achievement of communism” were two sides of the same coin. Full article

The rise of the non-religious, especially the young “nones”, will increasingly affect the way US culture views war, but with what result? The key to approaching this question is not only what the nones are advocating, but establishing what mixture of prominent topical ideas history has handed them. To get at the nature of this mixture by beginning with a general question: what is the most desirable mental attitude among free states with which to attend to the preparation for war? If the nones were to respond to this question, what ideas from other sources and, for the young nones, from older generations do they have to work with? What intellectual historical trends have come down to them? Classical thinking on war and justice continues to recede, so what has been proposed that would take its place? Lethality has been injected more recently into the milieu the young nones are entering. However, lethality is more an attempt to resolve tensions among contradictory agendas. A second, older possibility is a total war mindset, subsuming the state’s entire resources to warring. A third, likewise older option, is prosecuting wars of ideology that seek to crush antagonistic ideas and the political systems that hold them. The author argues the nones will not necessarily choose any of these, but will enable cultural receptivity to each of these three constructs. Alternatively, what about the contributions of classical philosophy to this question? This bypassed fourth avenue, with its emphasis on what constitutes a healthy polis, may provide a richer basis for leading militaries and cultures. The goal here, which the rise of the nones unintentionally imperils, is to secure the State and the soul of the warfighter by constituting or restoring the classical sense of the military’s reason to exist: not as a temporary inherent evil merely to serve state interests, but as a permanent dimension of society in service to the common good, as classically understood. Full article

Cultural heritage is a critical pillar of identity, social cohesion and continuity within ethnocultural communities. However, the preservation of cultural heritage across Southern Africa is largely constrained by fragmented colonial policy implementation, and limited community engagement. This study critically examines the application of the Evidence-Based Policy and Practice (EBPP) model as a decolonizing framework for sustainable management of cultural heritage. The study conducts a structured scoping review of literature to explore the integration of EBPP with the principles of Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics (CARE), and the principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) to support inclusive and ethical governance. The findings of the study reveal that sustainable management of cultural heritage is dependent upon community-led governance, alignment between research, policy, and practice, and strengthening of intellectual property protections. The study identifies persistent gaps in the operationalization of indigenous knowledge policies and highlighted the need for participatory approaches to ensure the long-term sustainability of cultural heritage. The study argues that the integration of EBPP, alongside the principles of CARE and FAIR, significantly enhances accountability, fosters data sovereignty, and supports the decolonization of knowledge systems. Thus, the study makes a significant contribution to the growing global discourse on sustainable development by positioning cultural heritage as a dynamic resource for social transformation. Full article

Heritage management has traditionally been shaped by what Laurajane Smith termed the “authorized heritage discourse,” wherein a narrow group of professionals determines values and meanings on behalf of broader communities. This article argues that a more inclusive, socially responsible model of heritage management is both possible and necessary. Drawing on three convergent intellectual traditions—heritage interpretation as originally formulated by Freeman Tilden, eco-museums and the new museology born from the Santiago de Chile Round Table of 1972, and the human-rights-based framework for cultural heritage enshrined in the Council of Europe’s Faro Convention of 2005—the article proposes “heritage literacy” as a conceptual synthesis which can bridge these streams. Heritage literacy denotes a form of socially responsible heritage management that empowers citizens to understand the processes through which heritage is constructed, to participate actively in its interpretation, and to direct their own development through it. The article demonstrates that heritage literacy operates simultaneously as knowledge/wisdom management and as a democratic practice, arguing that it should be recognized as an essential dimension of (cultural/heritage-related) human rights. By tracing the theoretical genealogy of each contributing tradition and synthesizing them into a unified framework, this article offers both a conceptual contribution to heritage studies and a practical orientation for heritage professionals and policymakers seeking to move beyond top–down models of heritage governance. Full article

The Liezi constitutes an important link between the Lao-Zhuang tradition and later Daoism, yet it has long remained marginal in scholarship due to controversies surrounding its provenance. Moving beyond debates over textual authenticity, this article examines Liezi’s reflections on life and death through a comparative dialogue with Plato’s account of the soul’s journey with you 游 as a bridging notion. In the Liezi, life is construed as a temporary wandering and death an inevitable return. This understanding weakens fixed subjectivity and normative structures, articulating a mode of cultivation that emphasizes accommodation, detachment, and the coexistence with the myriad things in a quasi-religious cosmos. In Plato, by contrast, the soul persists as a moral subject journeying between the sensible and intelligible worlds. It is integrated into a religious cosmic order that unites epistemic with ethical dimensions and is ultimately oriented toward its purification and return to the intelligible world. The comparison reveals a structural divergence between the two thinkers in the ultimate placement of human existence, while also demonstrating how cross-cultural comparison can generate mutually illuminating insights and reopen reflection on the Liezi’s place in intellectual history. Full article

Disability Enterprises have the potential to address employment barriers that people with an intellectual disability experience as they move into open employment. Disability Enterprises are able to facilitate this transition through strategic organisational design, but it is unknown the extent to which organisations are following what could be considered best practice. Utilising a survey and interview approach, we aimed to understand how well organisations align with the ‘WISE-Ability’ model and the ongoing challenges they face in supporting open employment pathways for people with a disability working at the enterprise. Staff (94) from Disability Enterprises completed a survey where they rated their own organisation against a number of criteria related to organisational design and operation related to transitioning supported employees to open employment. After completing the survey, organisational staff (19) participated in a semi-structured interview. Disability Enterprises provide training and life skills development options with the end goal of employment transition. Training is adapted to the needs of individuals and there is flexibility in the pace of learning and rostering of shifts. Disability Enterprises develop industry-specific work skills and independent life skills. Pathways to employment are offered in most cases; however, there is variation in the success and scale of employment pathways. Organisations continue to face challenges that exist in the disability service system and open labour market. Organisations are confident that they are able to offer a culture of support and respect, choice and variety of employment options, busy and quiet spaces, and areas for rest and accessible workspaces where individuals feel empowered and safe to try new tasks. Many organisations developed relationships with external stakeholders and employers to facilitate financial sustainability and employment pathways. However, organisations face challenges in the following areas: resourcing pathways to employment and offering certified training options for people working in a Disability Enterprise. Employment pathways were often carved out on a case-by-case basis relying on significant staff support and after-hour work. Full article

This article re-examines the formation of early Dilun Buddhism in Luoyang era Northern Wei China by foregrounding the role of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (Ch. Da banniepan jing). While previous scholarship has emphasized Yogācāra-related texts such as the Daśabhūmika-śāstra (Ch. Shidi jing lun), this study argues that the Da banniepan jing constituted an important component of the intellectual and exegetical environment within which early Dilun thought emerged. Drawing on prosopographical evidence, this article examines the recurrent presence of the Da banniepan jing among early Dilun-associated figures and situates it within the broader intellectual environment of early Dilun Buddhism. It further proposes that Nirvāṇa-related doctrinal concepts may have provided one important conceptual framework through which the graded bodhisattva path was interpreted: the concept of universal Buddha-nature renders progressive cultivation intelligible as the gradual actualization of an inherent potential. The study also situates this doctrinal convergence within the broader hermeneutical culture of Northern Buddhism, characterized by text-centered exegesis, and traces several layers of interaction among court patronage, monastic scholarship, and lay devotion in which Nirvāṇa-related learning remained visible. On this basis, the formation of early Dilun Buddhism is associated with a Northern scholastic culture in which Nirvāṇa-related learning constituted an important intellectual layer. Full article

From the period of the Anatolian Seljuks onward, Iranian culture and civilization exerted a strong influence over Anatolia. As a result of this interaction, Persian gradually became the region’s administrative and literary language; it was spoken in major cities, taught as a subject in madrasahs, preferred in official correspondence, and played a central role in the production of literary works. The Anatolian Seljuk sultans and amirs of Anatolia, who possessed a profound mastery of Persian, supported this cultural exchange by patronizing Iranian poets, scholars, and intellectuals. The effort to preserve and promote Iranian culture, the Persian language, and its poetic tradition continued under the Ottomans as well. During this era, numerous poets and writers from Iran came to Istanbul, and the imperial courts became literary centers where Iranian artists gathered. In fact, those who arrived from Iran were often expected to possess poetic talent. Among the Ottoman rulers who encouraged Persian poetry were Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, Sultan Selim I, and Sultan Murad III—each of whom composed Persian divans (collected poems). Poets who flourished during both the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman periods composed Persian poetry to demonstrate their literary mastery and to prove that they knew Persian as proficiently as Iranian poets. Those with only a few Persian poems interspersed them within their Turkish divans, whereas those who produced many compiled them into independent divans. This study aims to identify the Persian divans written in Anatolia during the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman periods and to present detailed information about these works. By systematically classifying the Persian divans of these eras, this study serves as a fundamental bibliographic reference for researchers. Full article