Search Results (265)

Sustainability education has produced four major traditions, Environmental Education, Climate Education, Education for Sustainable Development, and Climate Justice Education, that have developed largely in parallel. This fragmentation prevents cross-tradition comparison and leaves the most transformative dimensions of the field systematically underdeveloped. This article proposes a four-dimensional Taxonomy of Sustainability Education Design, organized around Educational Approach (D1), Cognitive Depth (D2), Disciplinary Integration (D3), and Real-World Connection (D4), for diagnosing dimensional gaps across educational programs and traditions. The taxonomy was constructed inductively from a critical literature review and interpreted through Edgar Morin’s philosophy of complex thought, whose seven principles explain why dimensional underdevelopment is paradigmatic rather than merely programmatic. The framework is illustrated through two contrasting cases: the UNESCO Associated Schools Network and the Brazilian National Environmental Education program. The mapping suggests a structural asymmetry: the dimensions most consistently underdeveloped, D1 Criticality and Advocacy, D3.5 Community and Indigenous Knowledge, and D4 Systemic and Political, are those most closely associated with transformative and epistemically plural education. The normative and policy implications of these gaps are examined in relation to the geopolitics of epistemological authority, climate-displaced communities, the historical production of colonial vulnerability, and the risk of epistemicide at algorithmic scale in AI-mediated education. Full article

My essay draws attention to several little-known texts by Wittgenstein in which he addresses the processes which may precede a genocide. I seek to demonstrate that Wittgenstein’s thought contains resources that may be drawn on in confronting such ethical and political problems, and more specifically, in addressing issues that arise in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The resources I locate in Wittgenstein’s work include techniques for shifting attitudes and for redirecting attention, for unsettling interlocutors from their complacency and for leading them to transform their ways of seeing the problems they confront. In this connection, I reflect on the ethical and political efficacy of experiences of the uncanny. I also find in Wittgenstein the suggestion that moral philosophy calls for a mode of engagement which is essentially first-personal, and refuses to separate the biographical from the philosophical. In order to put this suggestion to the test, the essay is written in the idiom of autotheory. Full article

This article explores the topic of digital sovereignty from the vantage point of the theory of politics, maintaining that AI disrupts the traditional Westphalian principle of state sovereignty. Drawing on the normative frame of Roberts and the comparative analyses of Larsen and Kurbalija, it illustrates the three competing philosophical models of digital self-determination: the liberal market model (United States), the techno-legal rights model (European Union), and the cyber-sovereignty model (China), and evaluates the normative presumption. It furthermore assesses these models in light of emerging legislative patterns in Vietnam, arguing that true digital sovereignty requires more than technical infrastructure but a philosophically cohesive conception of collective self-determination in an increasingly interconnected world. The article concludes with an outline for a relational account of digital sovereignty incorporating autonomy/interdependence. Full article

African immigrant men in the United Kingdom (UK) experience forms of suffering that transcend both the clinical framework of acculturation stress and the political narrative of racial victimhood. Existing scholarship frequently overlooks how race, religion, and gender historically entangle to construct diasporic identities. This paper investigates how African immigrant men in the UK navigate the constitutive forces of race, gender, and religion in constructing and resisting diasporic identities. The paper develops “Ntu Fracture” as a theological–anthropological framework to diagnose the wounding of diasporic masculine personhood at the level of vital relationality. The framework draws upon Bantu philosophy (Ntu, ubuntu) and Yoruba cosmology (àṣẹ), placing them in critical dialogue with Fanon’s sociogeny and Butler’s concept of precarity. Utilising a qualitative desktop methodology, the findings suggest a fractured subjectivity among African men in the UK driven by three main mechanisms: (1) institutional racism as recognition-severing, (2) immigration enforcement as obligation-interruption and (3) parenting surveillance as domestic colonisation. The paper concludes that the lived experiences of African religious communities within the UK’s hostile environment stem from historical constructions of race, religion, and gender, categories experienced as unified entities that collapse conventional distinctions between the sacred and the secular. Full article

This article will offer a comparative analysis between Latin American Liberation Theology (LALT) and Islamic Coalition Theology in the broader literature on liberation theology. The purpose of this comparison is to highlight a fundamental structural divergence in their political and theological orientations. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran is elaborated in this conceptual context to situate the debate in a recent practical example of the Islamic Coalition Theology that led to a political revolution. Whereas LALT developed as an autonomous Christian critique of structural injustice and Western capitalist domination, Islamic Coalition Theology, as also reverberated in the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran evolved through a coalitional paradigm—what was contemporaneously described as the ‘red and the black reaction’ (ertejāʿ-e sorkh o siyāh in Persian)—in which Islamic, non-religious, and even irreligious ideologies temporarily converged to confront a shared adversary: Western imperialism and its domestic expansionism worldwide. Under the broader intellectual influence of twentieth-century global leftist movements, Iran’s revolutionary Islamism absorbed and adapted elements of Marxist and anti-capitalist discourse, and indeed merged with them without relinquishing its theological core. This study argues that such ideological hybridity reveals a distinctive pragmatism within Islamic political philosophy, wherein the pursuit of liberation is not confined to doctrinal purity but is instrumentally open to external alliances and ‘coalitions’ that lead to a common political goal. Through a comparative theological and political hermeneutic, the article will situate Islamic Coalition Theology within the global genealogy of liberationist thought, demonstrating how its strategic inclusiveness contrasts with LALT’s predominantly intra-Christian reformism. The article will build on the argument that Islam primarily encompasses a comprehensive normative and political and jurisprudential order grounded in the Quran; therefore, its coalition theology is charged with its political openness to be chaperoned with any political agenda that too pursues the common political goal. Full article

Immanuel Kant is synonymous with modernity, enlightenment and secularity. This reputation is earned through the incredible influence of his three weighty critiques, which have laid the intellectual, moral and aesthetic foundations for modern philosophical thought. Despite this reputation, many scholars in recent years have argued that Kant’s intellectual contribution to secularism, moral universality and political republicanism ought to be approached more critically. The ‘other’ Kant is also one of the progenitors of the modern concept of race. Kantians have defended Kant against charges that race is essential to his entire critical project. This essay moves beyond the stalemate between race scholars and Kantians by reading his concept of race together with his philosophy of religion. Drawing on critical approaches to religion, race and secularism, this essay argues that race is constitutive of his philosophy. More specifically, it demonstrates how race and religion are deeply entangled in Kant’s construction of Jews and Judaism as the constitutive outsiders of Euro-Christian modernity. Full article

Marriage remains a central social institution among the Vatsonga, functioning not merely as a union between individuals but as a cultural institution through which gender identities, kinship relations, ritual obligations, and communal belonging are constructed and transmitted across generations. While scholarship has extensively explored marriage and gender in African societies, limited attention has been paid to the genealogical processes through which Vatsonga marriage rituals have historically shaped gender identities within changing social, political, and religious contexts. This article examines marriage as a site of gender construction by analysing the relationship between ritual practices, identity formation, and social belonging among the Vatsonga of Southern Africa. Using the genealogical approach of Michel Foucault and the theories of African feminists and decolonials, this study employs interpretive qualitative methodology, which entails the analysis of interdisciplinary literature in African philosophy, anthropology, gender studies, theology, and ritual studies. As a result of this analysis, it becomes evident that marriage rituals continue to play a great role in constructing masculinity and femininity, as well as kinship and community. At the same time, however, these rituals are dynamic and have undergone changes in light of colonialism, Christianity, urbanization, migrations, constitutional democracy, and modern concerns regarding gender equality. This article does not present marriage rituals of Vatsonga as static and monolithic practices, but rather shows their historical contingency, cultural dynamism, and continuous negotiation amid social change. Therefore, this study calls for critical engagement with marriage rituals in order to protect culture as well as to ensure gender equality and the dignity of all parties involved. With regard to the application of genealogy to marriage practices of Vatsonga, this article brings new perspectives to current debates on ritual, gender construction, African epistemologies and the decolonisation of marriage studies. Full article

This article offers a novel reading of Gulliver’s Travels that argues Jonathan Swift’s analysis of religion and politics is more daring and philosophically profound than is generally recognized. Focusing on Lilliput in Part I, I show that Swift treats sectarian disputes as trivial, while at the same time he demonstrates the enduring political necessity of religion for social and civic order. Through Gulliver’s encounters, Swift presents a range of alternative political arrangements structured by their relation to religious belief, thereby advancing a sustained inquiry into the problem of organizing political life in light of religion. By interpreting the Lilliputian controversies and their underlying theological implications, the article contributes to ongoing debates about Swift’s religious outlook and situates Gulliver’s Travels as a work of political philosophy concerned with the limits of toleration, the persistence of sectarian conflict, and the conditions of a stable political community. Full article

Public Relations (PR) is the strategic role of communication between an organization or public actor and the publics on whose recognition, trust and consent its operation depends. The field encompasses media relations, internal and employee communication, public affairs and government relations, crisis and reputation management, community relations and corporate social responsibility, investor relations, marketing communications, political communication, digital and platform engagement, and the communication of activist and non-governmental organizations. PR scholarship draws on sociology, political philosophy, organizational studies, rhetoric and media studies to examine how organizations construct, sustain and contest their legitimacy in the public sphere. The dominant theoretical framework of the late twentieth century, the Excellence Theory developed by James Grunig and colleagues, defined PR as the symmetrical management of relationships with strategic publics; the field has since broadened to include relational, dialogic, rhetorical, situational, contingent and critical approaches, alongside frameworks grounded in stakeholder theory, institutional analysis and emerging work on public legitimacy. Contemporary PR operates within a hybrid media environment shaped by digital platforms, algorithmic visibility, generative artificial intelligence and the structural erosion of institutional trust. It is simultaneously a professional industry of significant global economic scale and a contested civic function whose democratic role, ethical foundations and disciplinary boundaries remain the subject of active scholarly debate. 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

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

This article reconsiders Joseph Levenson’s Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy (hereafter Trilogy) as a modern site for the classification of Confucianism within, against, and alongside the category of religion. Rather than revisiting the question of whether Confucianism “is” a religion, we ask how Levenson’s account makes Confucianism legible through a double movement of de-religionization and partial religionization. On the one hand, Levenson presents Confucianism as an ethical, political, and civilizational order rather than a religion in the doctrinal or ecclesiastical sense; on the other hand, his analysis repeatedly invokes forms of sacralized authority, symbolic centrality, and moral transcendence that complicate any simple secularization of the Confucian tradition. Through a close reading of Levenson’s conceptual vocabulary and historical framing, this article argues that his interpretation does not merely deny Confucianism religious status; it reveals the instability of the modern classificatory boundary between moral philosophy, civil religion, and religious formation. By treating Levenson not simply as an interpreter of Confucian China but also as a producer of modern categories, the article contributes to current debates on rujia (Confucian “school”, 儒家) and rujiao (Confucian “religion”, 儒教) and reflects more broadly on what becomes visible, and what is distorted, when Confucianism is examined through the conceptual toolkit of religious studies. Full article

In the Anthropocene, the environmental crisis necessitates a radical repositioning of the human-nature relationship. This paper examines the sijo poetry in Musan Cho Oh-hyun’s For Nirvana through an interdisciplinary framework bridging Zen philosophy with material ecocriticism. The study elucidates how Musan deconstructs anthropocentric exceptionalism by restoring agency to the non-human world. Textual analysis reveals three arguments. First, elemental forces like wind and waves are subjectified as primordial teachers through mujō-seppō (non-sentient beings preaching the Dharma), dismantling sovereign human scriptural authority. Second, visceral encounters with animals and insects critique logocentric domination, proposing “epistemological silence” and “radical humility” as alternative eco-politics. Finally, bodily decay and trans-corporeal porosity are reframed as generative pathways toward a radical “ecological Nirvana”—a physical matrix of cyclical renewal. By synthesizing Jane Bennett’s vital materialism with Dōgen’s Zen vision of “walking mountains”, this study deploys a Zen materialism lens that enriches Western theory with the Buddhist soteriology of compassion (karuna). Ultimately, Musan reconfigures Nirvana not as an escapist transcendence, but as a profound somatic descent into the material mesh, where ultimate spiritual realization lies in the ego’s total dissolution into the “walking, talking minerals” of a sacred, suffering ecosystem. Full article

In his poem The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare uses ekphrasis—the virtuosic description of a piece of art such as a painting, tapestry, or tableau—to critique the Roman ideal of female virtue. After her husband’s description of her beauty incites Tarquin to rape her, Lucrece processes her wrong and positions herself heroically by identifying herself with the figure of Hecuba in a painting of the fall of Troy. She then commits suicide, and her body becomes a vehicle of political renewal, prompting Roman men to revolt against the Tarquins and found the Roman Republic. Shakespeare’s wronged Roman women imitate Lucrece, ekphrastically orienting themselves to destruction in hopes of effecting political change. Tracing Lucrece-inspired moments of ekphrasis across multiple plays reveals how Shakespeare is in conversation with ancient literary techniques, critiques of Stoicism, and the moral concerns about Lucrece’s suicide raised in the Christian tradition. I argue that Shakespeare’s deliberate omission of ekphrasis from the story of the Stoic Portia highlights her suicide as unnecessary and reveals the self-destructive power of the Roman ideal of female virtue. While we may be tempted to think of ekphrasis as purely decorative, in these ekphrastic moments, poetics, philosophy, and political action are intertwined. Full article

The Social Study of Science (SSS) constitutes an interdisciplinary domain dedicated to examining the profound influence of social, political, and cultural factors on the development of scientific research and practice. Rejecting conceptions of science as an autonomous, self-directed enterprise, SSS posits that scientific knowledge is fundamentally a social product, deeply embedded within specific historical and cultural contexts. This field employs analytical frameworks from sociology, history, philosophy, and anthropology to elucidate the practices, institutions, history, and intellectual content of science. The scrutiny of science’s social dimensions has fundamentally reconfigured understandings of scientific work and methodology. During the 1960s and 1970s, the field was significantly shaped by contemporaneous protest movements, with historical materialism emerging as a critical framework for sociologists and historians of science seeking to critique power structures and alienation inherent in scientific practices. However, a subsequent intellectual shift witnessed a movement away from this materialist approach towards postmodern and constructivist analyses. Recently, a resurgence of interest in Marxian historical materialism has become evident. This is marked by a renewed engagement with pre-World War II Marxist theorists such as Boris Hessen and Edgar Zilsel, whose works are being republished and re-evaluated in light of the ongoing technological revolution in automation and machine intelligence. This paper delineates this development within SSS, highlighting the contributions of these foundational Marxist thinkers to the critical assessment and understanding of the social ramifications of the new technological revolution. Full article