Search Results (322)

This paper argues for the necessity of psychoanalysis in the North American field of spiritual care. More specifically, the essay argues that at a time of social unrest, despair, and authoritarian rule, the work of interiority that psychoanalysis and African religious cosmologies emphasize is especially suited to the current moment in U.S. history. An integrative sampling of black psychoanalytic thinkers and black religious scholars will be highlighted as possible examples of interdisciplinary praxis for the work of spiritual care in a world where freedom and democracy are in peril. As the voices of many black and brown scholars in this area have been overlooked, disregarded, or ghettoized as only being relevant to ethnic minority populations, this essay reflects on how the symmetry between psychoanalytic thought and African spirituality and cosmology can function as a formidable psychospiritual framework for spiritual care in the 21st-century authoritarian state. Full article

This article challenges conventional understandings of secularization in the Arab world by arguing that significant forms of secularization can emerge even in the absence of institutional secularism. Drawing on data from the Religion in Public Life survey, conducted in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Tunisia with approximately 5400 respondents, the study develops the concept of partial practical secularization from below. Rather than focusing on state-led separation between religion and politics, the article examines how ordinary citizens negotiate the boundaries between religious and secular spheres in everyday life. The findings reveal widespread religiosity across the four countries, yet also demonstrate growing differentiation between religion and other domains of social life. This differentiation is reflected in five areas, as follows: the prioritization of moral reasoning over ritual observance in social relations, critical engagement with inherited jurisprudential traditions, increasing tolerance toward religious diversity, distinctions between civil affairs and religious authority, and the rise of individualized forms of religiosity. The article identifies four ideal types of religiosity—institutional/traditional, revivalist, post-Islamist, and popular religiosity—each associated with distinct orientations toward pluralism, democracy, and public life. Building on these findings, the article proposes the concept of religious congruence, understood as the relationship between religious beliefs, practices, ethical dispositions, and their interaction with political, social, and economic spheres. The Arab world, it argues, is experiencing a form of “soft yet unhappy” secularization characterized by a pragmatic coexistence between religious moral frameworks and civil institutions. This process neither privatizes religion nor eliminates its public significance, but instead reconfigures its role within increasingly pluralistic post-secular societies. 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

Artificial intelligence (AI) governance has converged around transparency, accountability, safety, privacy, fairness, human rights, human oversight and risk management. However, this vocabulary remains limited when AI is understood as a sociotechnical force shaping agency, work, truth, democratic trust, meaning and long-term human futures. This article is a critical conceptual review, with a structured Scopus-based mapping of 48 peer-reviewed articles, a critical documentary analysis of six international AI governance frameworks and a supplementary interpretive engagement with Magnifica Humanitas. Using a PRISMA-informed flow diagram for transparent reporting and abductive thematic synthesis, the study identifies four fragmented literatures: AI ethics and governance; anthropological accounts of dignity, autonomy, agency and vulnerability; spiritual and theological approaches to meaning and moral formation; and civilizational analyses of democracy, war, transhumanism and existential risk. The findings do not suggest that these concerns are absent from AI ethics; rather, they show that they remain dispersed and are not consistently translated into governance criteria. This article proposes the Anthropological, Spiritual and Civilizational (ASC) Framework as a diagnostic heuristic for extending trustworthy AI toward dignity, truth, social justice and humane futures. The framework is conceptual and requires future empirical and expert validation. Full article

This article offers a point-by-point overview of the concept of Christian education as understood by popes Francis and Leo XIV. It could be argued that the writings of these recent popes return to the early Christian idea of paideia Christi. Pope Leo XIV refers directly to the term ‘paideia’ by using the phrase ‘Christian paideia’. Francis’s educational anthropology, on the other hand, is theologically and pedagogically consistent with the tradition of Christian paideia. Although Francis does not use the term ‘paideia’, his understanding of education is also centred on the human person and their integral development. In this theoretical framework, education is no longer viewed merely as a tool for achieving salvation. However, it serves to enable the human person to grow in their humanity and thereby attain integral maturity, the pinnacle of which is union with God. It is within this theoretical perspective that the significance of education for building peace and social order should also be understood. In this view, peace emerges as the result of a humanistic education; hence, to achieve genuine peace among people, the emphasis must be placed on a genuinely humanistic education. The idea is rooted primarily in the ancient Greek understanding of paideia. It has also been taken up throughout history, for example, by Comenius in Pampaedia, Dewey in Democracy and Education (1916), Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968/1970), and, more recently, by Nussbaum in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010). Pope Leo XIV also sees this perspective of internal coherence between authentic personal development. From the very beginning of his pontificate, one can observe in his teachings a linking of these two issues. In one of his earliest addresses, Pope Leo XIV emphasised that the concern for peace amongst people does indeed stem from the Christian faith. It could be said that building peace within human society is a Christian imperative, arising from the sharing of the gift which the Church has received from Christ himself: ‘Peace be with you!’. In this context, it is worth noting that the mission of bringing about peace is not merely the result of specific human activity, although this is, of course, important, and Leo indicates how it should be carried out. Nevertheless, what is crucial to the fulfilment of this mission is that the surest guarantee of its success is a personal relationship with Christ, from which flows the transmission of Christ’s gift of peace to the world. The Pope addressed the Italian Bishops’ Conference with the following words: “the relationship with Christ calls on us to develop a pastoral focus on the theme of peace”. Pope Leo thus points out that the path to building authentic peace in the world, which “is not the absence of conflict”, is the path of personal growth in one’s relationship with Christ, who is the source of peace. In this way, the maturing of a person of faith is the surest way of building—though in this context it would be more accurate to say: conveying—peace in the world. Full article

Rebetiko, as a musical genre, has a very limited presence in Greek school music education, potentially due to its historical association with social marginalization. This paper describes the development and implementation of the educational project “A Journey to Rebetiko,” conducted by students of the Department of Music Studies at the Ionian University in six high schools in Corfu during the 2023–2024 academic year. The project, with a duration of two academic hours, featured a short musical drama performance, an open discussion between university and high school students, and a set of collaborative group music activities. The primary objective of this research was to investigate how adolescents and university students engaged with rebetiko and how the genre facilitated discussions on issues of social justice, poverty, xenophobia, and refugeeism. Adopting a qualitative methodology, the study was framed by the principles of critical pedagogy, which guided the project’s scope, the dialogue-based activities (focusing on solidarity, democracy, and active citizenship), and the collaborative group work. Data collection was based on: (a) students’ reflective diaries, (b) the researcher’s reflective journal, and (c) an analysis of original song lyrics composed by the students. The research contributes to the ongoing dialogue on whether rebetiko can offer a transformative musical experience for today’s youth and explores how critical pedagogy can foster a more relevant, inclusive, and student-centred music education. Full article

This article examines the utilization of WhatsApp as an alternative communication tool for disseminating visual content among social activists during protests. While WhatsApp is typically conceptualized as an interpersonal or group messaging platform, research on its role as an infrastructure for alternative media and citizen journalism remains limited. The study focuses on the “Tikva” group, established at the onset of the public struggle against the 2023 judicial reform in Israel, which evolved into a nine-month mass protest movement described as one of the largest in the country’s history. Through qualitative thematic content analysis of videos distributed within the group, the article explores how WhatsApp functions simultaneously as a channel for digital activism and as a site of bottom-up, democratic, non-institutional news production. The findings indicate two primary trends: functionally, WhatsApp operates as a mechanism for resource mobilization, calls to action in physical and digital spaces, and the cultivation of belonging and solidarity among activists facing institutional power; in terms of content and production, the videos articulate an anti-hegemonic discourse and challenge mainstream media conventions. The analysis shows how these videos dismantle delegitimizing frames and construct a counter-narrative depicting protesters as citizens defending democracy, thereby sustaining the protest movement’s momentum. Full article

The experiences of 48 U.S. journalists covering Donald Trump’s inaugural year as president in 2017 provide a contemporaneous account of being “enemies of the people” in a highly charged partisan environment. Using snowball sampling, participants were asked to respond via email during a period bookended by a Phoenix, Arizona, rally in which Trump berated news reporters for their coverage of demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, and then, weeks later, posted disparaging “fake news” tweets. The social media barrage followed challenging news coverage of a devastating hurricane in the eastern United States. Responses came from journalists representing 41 news organizations (including broadcast, radio, cable, online, and print) in regions throughout the country. Qualitative reflexive thematic analysis surfaced deeply intertwined personal and professional concerns, suggesting a need to heighten awareness of the influence sustained trauma has on both personal and professional relationships. Their being labeled “fake” and “enemies of the people” might affect content and routine in ways that include self-censorship, sourcing, transparency, and degrees to which one would risk harm or emotional distress to cover a story. Toughing it out in the face of sustained and wounding attacks might create hidden psychological and professional time-bombs, putting journalists, journalism, and ultimately democracy, at risk. Full article

The article examines conservative rhetoric and discourse in Israel toward the LGBTQ+ community from a sociolinguistic perspective that conceptualizes language as an arena of socio-cultural struggle over identity, power, and normativity. Drawing on queer linguistics theory and identity politics, the study explores how language constructs reality through metaphors of illness, sin, and existential threat, as well as through theological framing and appeals to family and national values. These rhetorical strategies produce a social hierarchy in which heteronormativity is positioned as a “natural truth” while queer identities are labelled as deviant or threatening. From sociological perspective, the study reveals how conservative discourse establishes social boundaries and reinforces collective identity through the exclusion of the Other, thereby reproducing power relations and hierarchies. The article calls for the development of an alternative public discourse grounded in pluralism, inclusion, and the recognition of diverse identities as a means of strengthening democracy and social justice. While existing studies have examined conservative discourse toward LGBTQ+ communities primarily in Western contexts, this study contributes to the field by centering the Israeli case as a distinctive site of analysis, where conservative voices emerge from multiple and ideologically heterogeneous traditions: national-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Muslim-Arab. By examining how rhetorically divergent speakers converge around shared mechanisms of exclusion, the study reveals that heteronormative discourse is not the product of a single ideological source, but a cross-sectoral phenomenon embedded in the specific political and cultural tensions of Israeli society. Full article

This paper develops a systems theoretical account of democracy as an emergent equilibrium ecosystem within complex evolutionary adaptive systems rather than a purely institutional or normative construct. Drawing on general systems and complexity theories, it argues that democratic stability depends on maintaining balance across economic, security, and informational domains. The Industrial Revolution illustrates how technological and economic transformations simultaneously enabled democratic expansion and generated instability. This paper’s central contribution is to conceptualize the technological revolutions (e.g., Industrial and AI) as an entropic force that accelerates systemic instability through inequality, amplifications (e.g., mass and algorithmic media), and informational fragmentation (e.g., polarization and radicalization). In response, democratic resilience is reframed as integration (economic, governance/security, and informational/social) and harm reduction, both of which serve as adaptive mechanisms within complex evolutionary systems. Democracy is thus understood not as a fixed institutional form but as a dynamic, fragile, evolutionary equilibrium continuously shaped by technological and entropic systemic pressures. Full article

This study examines how individual political predispositions and national mobilisation contexts jointly structure protest participation in contemporary Europe across the pre-pandemic, pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Using data from Rounds 9, 10 and 11 of the European Social Survey (2018–2023), the analytical sample includes 106,106 respondents from 33 countries. Descriptively, protest participation remains a minority behaviour, yet displays pronounced cross-national heterogeneity, with participation rates ranging from below 3% in several Central and Eastern European countries to nearly 20% in the most mobilised contexts and remains remarkably stable across rounds at approximately 8.5%. Building on resource mobilisation theory, political process approaches and New Social Movements perspectives, the analysis conceptualises protest participation not as an isolated behavioural act but as the outcome of interactions between individual resources, evaluative orientations toward democratic institutions and broader mobilisation environments. Logistic regression models, country fixed-effects specifications and multilevel models with random intercepts are used to assess these relationships. At the individual level, political engagement emerges as the strongest predictor of participation: higher political interest is associated with substantially higher protest propensity, while ideological self-placement indicates lower participation among respondents positioned further to the right. Younger age and higher education also increase participation. Lower satisfaction with democracy and stronger perceptions of inequality are consistently associated with protest behaviour, supporting grievance-based interpretations linked to democratic evaluations rather than material deprivation alone. Country fixed-effects and multilevel models confirm that these individual-level associations are robust within countries, while significant between-country variation persists (random-intercept SD = 0.554), indicating that national mobilisation environments shape baseline levels of protest participation. Multilevel results further reveal that protest participation was significantly lower during the pandemic period (Round 10) relative to the pre-pandemic baseline, with only partial recovery in the post-pandemic period. A cross-round comparison demonstrates that the core individual-level associations are stable across all three periods, indicating that these relationships reflect durable structural patterns rather than dynamics specific to any particular mobilisation cycle. Beyond this overall stability, the analysis identifies two theoretically informative exceptions: subjective financial difficulty is significant only in the pre-pandemic period and gender differences in protest participation attenuate over time—patterns consistent with broader shifts in protest repertoires during and after the pandemic. These findings make three contributions to the comparative literature on contentious politics. First, by extending the analysis across three ESS rounds, the study demonstrates the temporal robustness of individual-level determinants of protest—an empirical question rarely addressed in the existing literature. Second, the multilevel design with round fixed effects allows for direct estimation of pandemic-related suppression and post-pandemic recovery in protest activity at the aggregate level. Third, the cross-national scope and temporally structured comparison provide new evidence on how individual political predispositions interact with shifting mobilisation environments across a period of exceptional socio-political strain in Europe. Full article

Against the backdrop of high digital uncertainty in the 2023 Thai General Election, this study examines how social media reshapes voting intentions through a novel hybrid framework integrating Fuzzy Rough Set Theory (FRST), Hierarchical Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Random Forest Regression (RFR). A three-stage design—combining 23 expert opinions with survey data from 812 voters—overcomes expert ambiguity and non-linear dynamics. The findings reveal a hierarchy in digital campaigning: while Party Image (Importance = 0.3056) is the primary predictor for initial voter attention, substantive Campaign Policy (β = 0.98) remains the definitive driver of final commitment. Other perceptual constructs, including Trust, Loyalty, and Perceived Quality, function as reinforcing dimensions that validate policy claims within the digital ecosystem. This suggests a shift where traditional broadcasting is superseded by interactive digital streaming, allowing voters to scrutinize policies through replays and public comments. The model’s robustness, validated through 10-fold Random Forest Cross-Validation, demonstrates high predictive stability (Mean CV R² = 0.840) and minimal error (MAE = 0.064). This study offers a sensitive instrument for emerging democracies and provides actionable insights, showing that substantive policy remains the ultimate driver of voter choice, even when mediated through Party Image in interactive digital environments. Full article

Africa is historically celebrated as the cradle of humankind. However, there is doubt on whether she is maintaining her own originality and position as the motherland and fatherland of all humanity. Although globalisation has impacted all continents and states, its negative effects seem to be skewing towards African and in particular Zimbabwean Shona families. This paper examines how DNA testing has impacted on some of the Shona families in Zimbabwe. The Shona community in Zimbabwe is culturally porous and receptive in terms of traditional, religious, linguistic and cultural values. They embraced Western democracy that is premised on human rights principles, constitutionalism, and citizenship, which, however, do not guarantee their belongingness. As some of the Shona families in Zimbabwe drifted away from the traditional cultural belief system campus, they got into a foreign and alien worldview that is dictated by the host in the name of technology. This has led to excessive reliance on foreign systems that are appearing like global standards yet they are disempowering them and causing them emotional and social distress. The reliance is a result of neocolonialism, linguistic and cultural imperialism that needs decolonisation. Thus, the paper adopts a qualitative approach based on an illuminating multiple case study design of six purposively selected scenarios aired on the The Closure DNA Show programme broadcasted on Zimbabwe Television (ZTV). The Afrocentric paradigm serves as a lens to uncover some of the perceptions of Shona families in Zimbabwe on DNA testing and its implications on parenthood, the family unit, and identity. The findings reveal that DNA testing is perceived as gender divisive and a destroyer of the family unit and exposing children to vulnerability, while it is also perceived positively as a way of (dis)affirming identity, which is crucial among the Shona. The paper recommends that other television programmes be screened based on their implications on gender relations, the family unit and identity. Full article

This paper offers ‘memoriography’ as a theo-ethical methodology for working with collective memories of marginalized people. Conducting ethnographic and qualitative research that draws on people’s stories and memories involves practical and philosophical challenges, particularly when these stories are shaped by violence and trauma. This paper critically examines these methodological challenges for theology, ethics, and broader religious studies. On a philosophical level, this paper challenges positivist and colonial assumptions that have limited our capacity to hold and wrestle with collective memory, by conceptualizing memoriography within the post-positivist research paradigm and with hauntological insights. On a practical level, memoriography offers three major hermeneutical suggestions for engaging memories of the marginalized: (1) the necessity of holding multiple temporalities, (2) the significance of attending to paradox and aesthetics in resistance to essentialism, and (3) the importance of understanding the networked nature of collective memory and its implications for interpretation. Through this two-fold analysis, memoriography not only guides us to fully embrace sites of ambiguity and tensions of collective memory, but also calls for us to advocate for conditions that allow these memories to be heard across various sites of scholar-activism. Full article

This paper presents qualitative findings from a broader study conducted with beneficiaries of social assistance grants in Nkonkobe Municipality, South Africa, guided by Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and a Feminist Political Economy perspective. It specifically examines the impact of the Child Support Grant (CSG) on women residing in rural areas with limited economic opportunities. Drawing on the narratives of twenty-five female beneficiaries, the study explores the grant’s role beyond child welfare outcomes. Despite its small monetary value, the CSG demonstrated significant and unintended transformative effects. Within contexts of persistent poverty, unemployment, and inequality, the grant contributed to alleviating household hardship and enhancing women’s empowerment. Participants reported increased economic agency, autonomy, and decision-making capacity. The CSG also served as a critical resource for women seeking to exit abusive relationships by providing a measure of financial independence, often lacking among survivors of domestic violence. These findings contribute to broader debates on welfare services as tools for equality, diversity, and democracy, highlighting the CSG’s potential to advance gender empowerment and social inclusion. However, the grant alone remains insufficient to ensure sustainable economic security. The paper recommends that the CSG be strengthened through increased value and complemented by active labour market interventions that promote women’s economic participation. Full article