Search Results (303)

This study proposes a new conceptual framework that moves beyond the widely used civic/ethnic dichotomy in nationalism theory by bringing Michael Billig’s concept of banal nationalism into dialogue with the literature on everyday boundary-making. It argues that the so-called “invisible” and routine markers of banal nationalism play a constitutive role in the everyday reproduction of national belonging and in delineating who is counted as inside and who is excluded as outside. Crucially, this process is not static; it is activated and contested through the constant dialectic between everyday border-drawing and the lived reality of border-crossing. Banal nationalism, therefore, is not merely composed of unnoticed symbols, but is deeply intertwined with the quotidian mechanisms of boundary-drawing that shape rights, belonging, and processes of exclusion. In this regard, the study critiques the limitations of the civic/ethnic distinction and introduces a new model (termed “banal boundary-making”) which links banal nationalism to practices of boundary construction and the management of border-crossers across linguistic, affective, material, and administrative dimensions. The aim is to contribute to nationalism theory with a mechanism-oriented approach that transcends the binary of civic versus ethnic nationalism by showing how boundaries are performatively redrawn at the very moment they are crossed. Full article

This paper investigates two central themes of contemporary transhumanism—human enhancement and artificial intelligence—from the perspective of Classical Islamic Philosophical Ethics (CIPE). First, it reconstructs the metaphysical framework and ethical orientation of CIPE through an analysis of its major representatives. Second, it examines the concept of enhancement in transhumanist thought in light of the metaphysical assumptions and ethical principles of this tradition. The analysis argues that although transhumanist enhancement theory generates significant tensions with classical philosophical conceptions of human nature, it can nevertheless be interpreted as compatible with certain premises of CIPE when understood within a broader framework of human perfection, intellectual development, and the harmony of body and soul. Building on this discussion, the paper further argues that CIPE offers valuable insights into contemporary debates concerning the topics of enhancement and artificial intelligence. In particular, it highlights the importance of harmony, integrity, and the reinterpretation of traditional philosophical concepts in response to emerging technological challenges. Overall, the paper seeks to contribute to discussions on transhumanism from within the Islamic intellectual tradition. It also aims to demonstrate the possibility of a middle path between the rejection of transhumanism on the basis of classical philosophy and its uncritical acceptance, thereby opening new avenues for dialogue between ancient philosophical traditions and contemporary technological developments. Full article

Background: Nature-based health interventions (NBHIs) show promising potential for supporting people experiencing mild to moderate anxiety, depression, and stress. However, their underlying programme theories are rarely made explicit, limiting transparency, implementation, and transferability within healthcare contexts. The Nature Impact Mental Health Intervention is a context-adapted, nature-based programme designed to support mental health and well-being. This article aims to describe its development through a structured co-production process and presents its programme theory and logic model. Methods: The co-production-based development process followed a three-stage framework. Stage 1 established a scientific foundation through a systematic review, stakeholder analysis, dialogue meetings, and a Delphi study to synthesise evidence and identify knowledge gaps. Stage 2 involved a co-production workshop with practice partners and researchers to translate evidence and refine intervention components. Stage 3 consolidated outputs and site visits into an operational intervention catalogue for prototyping the resulting programme theory and logic model. Results: The co-production process yielded a coherent programme theory comprising clearly defined mechanisms of change and aligned intervention activities. These were iteratively refined through workshops and prototyping, resulting in a consolidated logic model that articulates hypothesised causal pathways linking activities to outcomes. The model also provides a practical framework for guiding subsequent feasibility testing, implementation, and evaluation across contexts. Conclusions: This study demonstrates a transparent development process for co-producing a programme theory and logic model for NBHIs. The resulting model provides a theoretically grounded and implementation-sensitive foundation for subsequent feasibility testing and contributes methodological guidance for integrating NBHIs within healthcare systems. Full article

This article examines how Chinese scholars and institutions selected Western musicological works for translation into Chinese and how these choices shaped the formation of musicology as a modern discipline in mainland China from 1900 to 2025. Drawing on disciplinary translation history, it asks which musicological works were translated, who selected and translated them, under what historical and institutional conditions they circulated, and how they contributed to the intellectual development of Chinese musicology. On the basis of translated works, publication records, archival materials, and the secondary literature, the article identifies four historical stages: technical transplantation (1900–1949), planned transplantation (1949–1978), critical transformation (1978–2010), and two-way dialogue (2010–2025). Each stage was shaped by a different configuration of ideology, academic demand, market forces, and translator agency. The article argues that the Chinese translation of Western musicological scholarship was never a passive import of foreign theories. Rather, it was a historically situated process in which Chinese scholars, translators, publishers, and institutions identified, adapted, and reorganized foreign musicological knowledge in response to local academic needs. The findings contribute to knowledge translation studies by offering a diachronic, multi-agent account of translation selection and by explaining how these choices helped shape modern Chinese musicology as a discipline. Full article

This paper explores the complex nature of ethical leadership and decision-making in educational settings by reviewing the learning content of a master’s subject in an educational leadership course. The paper focuses on how effective ethical leadership requires a multidimensional, context-sensitive approach rather than simple rules or linear paradigms. Drawing on foundational and contemporary scholarship, the paper discusses how leaders address “wicked problems” such as equity gaps, data ethics, and conflicting stakeholder values. It emphasises moral reasoning rooted in dialogue, role theory, and political literacy, acknowledging that institutional cultures, power dynamics, and norms influence decision-making. The article discusses how practical tools, such as ethical decision-making staircases, dilemma mapping, and reflection protocols, help leaders balance values and foster inclusive, morally resilient communities. A discussion of the increasing ethical challenges of data analytics and surveillance, and an advocacy for transparency, dignity, and data minimalism, is presented. The paper concludes that preparing ethical leaders involves immersive experiences such as case studies and simulations, alongside the development of moral courage and networks to support systemic change. By integrating theory, context, and transformative practices, this paper offers a comprehensive framework for nurturing leaders who navigate ambiguity and advance justice, care, and integrity across diverse educational environments. Full article

This article describes the use of dialogue, through the format of critical conversations, as a creative and reflective anti-racist tool to develop understanding of departmental values of anti-racism, equity and social justice with colleagues across academic, technical, and leadership roles. The project focused on the development and facilitation of spaces for dialogue between staff members employed in an education department in a university in a city in the Southwest of England. Making use of concepts from Smith and Lander’s critical pedagogy and critical race theory as well as philosophy for children (P4C), we developed a framework used by adult participants to encourage the development of racial literacy through reflexive practice. More than seventy staff members were invited to attend five sessions over a six-month period. During each session, staff members were given pre-prepared stimuli designed to encourage ‘epistemological shudders’ that stimulate dialogue in relation to professional roles and responsibilities of anti-racism, equity and social justice within our working context. Each session was facilitated by two colleagues, given the agency to make use of the stimuli within the sessions in any way they chose, together with their participants. Feedback from each session was non-mandatory and informal. In this article, we capture our reflections on the processes of developing and adapting P4C within a university education department. We believe that this evolving model acts as a valuable tool for dialogues, particularly when attempting to encourage discussion of topics perceived as providing professional risk due to their sensitive and controversial status within education and more broadly. Full article

Extensive explorations in neuroscience, psychology, and psychotherapy increasingly recognized the embodied and relational foundations of selfhood, underscoring the need for an integrated framework spanning development, psychopathology, and therapeutic change. This narrative review synthesizes empirical and theoretical literature across neuroscience, embodiment research, predictive processing, developmental science, phenomenology, and psychodynamic theory, proposing a multidimensional neuropsychodynamic framework of embodied selfhood and its clinical implications. A central contribution is the positioning of Peripersonal Space (PPS) as an embodied action-oriented interface that functions as a primary developmental scaffold for bodily self-consciousness, self-other relations, affect regulation and temporal continuity. PPS is proposed as a dynamic matrix linking embodied predictive self-processes with relational experience, thereby shaping subjective temporality and autobiographical processes. Within this framework, subjective time emerges through bodily rhythms, interpersonal synchronization, and predictive engagement with environmental affordances. These embodied temporal processes gradually extend toward autobiographical continuity and mentalizing capacities, supported by coordinated interactions among large-scale brain networks. Psychodynamic concepts including holding, containment, dimensionality, and symbolic transformation are revisited in dialogue with contemporary embodied and relational neuroscience. Clinically, disturbances of selfhood across psychopathological conditions are discussed in relation to altered PPS organization, disturbances in self-evidencing, and embodied temporal continuity. Psychotherapeutic change is conceptualized as involving gradual reorganization across embodied, affective, and reflective dimensions through co-regulation, interpersonal attunement, and temporally extended relational engagement. Overall, this perspective advances a process-oriented and interdisciplinary framework linking embodiment, temporality, autobiographical integration, and psychotherapy, while highlighting directions for future interdisciplinary research at the interface of neuroscience, embodiment and psychodynamics. Full article

This article develops a symbolic hermeneutic framework for interpreting contemporary socio-educational phenomena within the horizon of decolonial thought and Liberation Theology. It begins from the assumption that symbols are not merely decorative forms of representation but fundamental structures of meaning that shape both individual experience and collective life, especially through their educational effects. From this perspective, the article examines how the symbols circulating in social communication reveal the ideological underpinnings of imagination, authority, exclusion, and resistance. The essay then places this symbolic analysis in dialog with decolonial theory, arguing that the enduring epistemological legacy of colonialism continues to organize hegemonic forms of knowledge, subjectivity, and power. Particular attention is devoted to the concept of the frontier, first understood as a modern device of exclusion and then reinterpreted as a space of epistemic resistance, ethical encounter, and democratic confrontation among differences. The discussion further engages key authors of Liberation Theology and the philosophy of liberation—especially Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Enrique Dussel, and Paulo Freire—in order to show how religious discourse and pedagogical practice intersect in processes of emancipation. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative, interpretative approach grounded in philosophical hermeneutics and critical conceptual analysis. It reconstructs and compares major theoretical positions rather than presenting empirical data. The article argues that the integration of symbolic hermeneutics, decolonial thought, and liberationist theology offers an original framework for rethinking education as a transformative practice grounded in ethical responsibility toward the Other. By bringing the concepts of frontier, sentipensamiento, communality, and pluriverse into a single analytical constellation, the paper contributes to current debates in religious studies, critical pedagogy, and epistemic justice. In the context of contemporary global crises—migration, ecological devastation, social fragmentation, and the weakening of democratic participation—it proposes a renewed role for religion as a critical and generative force capable of opening new educational spaces for dialogue, liberation, and the reconfiguration of knowledge. Full article

The intersections between memory, space, and mobility have become increasingly prominent in tourism studies in recent years. This article examines the relationship between religious tourism and social memory by conceptualizing religious tourism as an active process of collective remembrance. While realizing this aim, it conceptualizes faith tourism as an active process of collective memory. Faith tourism possesses a wider area than the traditional classification of religious travel. This article adopts a conceptual and thematic narrative review approach. Rather than offering a systematic or meta-analytic review, it develops a theory-based interpretive framework by synthesizing interdisciplinary literature from sociology, memory studies, anthropology, and tourism studies. The article argues that faith tourism constitutes essential memory work. This review does not contribute by presenting the relationship between memory, space, identity, and tourism as an entirely new field of research. Instead, it proposes an integrative analytical framework specific to faith tourism that brings social memory theory into closer dialogue with sacred space, ritual mobility, visitor interpretation, and the formation of collective identity. By organizing these dimensions not as separate themes, but as interacting mechanisms, the article clarifies how sacred sites and faith-based tourism practices contribute to the production, transmission, and reinterpretation of collective memory. Moreover, it provides a conceptual contribution by clarifying the role of religious sites as memory spaces that link past, present, and future. Full article

Background: The retention of Clinical Research Associates (CRAs) is critical for the integrity and sustainability of clinical trials in South Africa, an emerging hub for global clinical research. High CRA turnover threatens trial quality, data continuity, and site relationships, yet the context-specific drivers of turnover within the South African clinical research landscape remain poorly understood. This study explores the factors influencing job satisfaction and turnover intentions among CRAs to inform targeted retention strategies. Methods: A qualitative, interpretivist study was conducted using semi-structured interviews. Twelve CRAs with experience in South African Contract Research Organizations (CROs) were sampled on LinkedIn using purposive sampling. Data were analyzed iteratively using thematic analysis within Atlas.ti 26.0.1.33961 software, guided by Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory and Mobley’s Turnover Model. Results: The analysis revealed a complex model of turnover drivers. Compensation was the most salient factor, operating not only as a hygiene factor but also as a direct motivator for job mobility in a competitive market. Unsustainable workload and a culture stigmatizing discussions of overload were key push factors. Intrinsic motivators were equally decisive: misalignment with therapeutic area preferences caused profound dissatisfaction, while alignment fostered engagement. Career growth manifested dual pathways: ambition for vertical progression and a redefined search for horizontal growth into roles offering greater work-life flexibility. Conclusions: CRA turnover is driven by an interplay of extrinsic pressures and intrinsic motivational deficits. To enhance retention, managers must adopt a multi-pronged strategy: implement market-competitive, well-being-oriented compensation; foster a culture that supports open workload dialogue; create transparent career architectures with dual progression tracks; and facilitate internal mobility across therapeutic areas. This study provides a foundational framework for developing context-sensitive retention policies, thereby contributing to the stability and quality of clinical research in South Africa. Full article

This article examines experiences of loneliness among older adults from a life course perspective, fostering a dialogue grounded in Social Work. The aim is to understand how loneliness is constructed, expressed and reinterpreted as a subjective, relational and dynamic experience embedded in diverse life trajectories and shaped by structural factors. A qualitative, descriptive and interpretative approach was adopted, involving 30 individual interviews and 4 focus groups with 74 participants (older adults, social workers and other social-sector professionals) in Barcelona (Spain). The analysis was structured around the three core concepts of life course theory and its five key principles. The findings show that loneliness, understood as distinct from social isolation, is linked to biographical processes marked by expected and unexpected life changes. Its intensity and meaning vary according to timing, historical context, social position and life decisions. Employment, family, institutional, migratory, and sexual orientation and gender identity trajectories significantly shape experiences of loneliness. The study highlights the role of agency and underscores the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding accumulated inequalities. From a Social Work perspective, the article advocates a biographical, situated and relational approach to loneliness, promoting interventions that recognise individual trajectories and support meaningful social relationships. Full article

Background/Objectives: The integration of psychotherapeutic theory with contemporary neuroscience represents one of the most productive frontiers of clinical research. The fundamental theoretical constructs of Gestalt therapy have been developed with considerable clinical depth, yet their neurobiological foundations remain largely unexplored. Confluence, one of the most debated mechanisms of contact disruption in Gestalt therapy, has recently been described as characterized by a three-dimensional conceptual structure: blurred boundaries, undifferentiation, and avoidance of contact. Methods: In this hypothesis article, we start from this structure and from neuroscientific evidence on thalamic filtering, thalamocortical synchronization, and salience attribution. Results: We propose an original theoretical framework—explicitly hypothesis-generating rather than empirically validated—for dysfunctional confluence, understood as a putative disruption of the transition from globally distributed somatosensory activation to the formation of differentiated figures in the salience network. Conclusions: The proposed correspondences are intended as heuristic mappings aimed at generating testable hypotheses and opening a productive dialogue between Gestalt theory, affective neuroscience, and clinical practice. Full article

This study conceptualizes the theological principle declared by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10—“My power is made perfect in weakness” (ἡ γὰρ δύναμίς μου ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελεῖται)—as the Perfection in Weakness Paradox (PIW) and examines it through an integrative lens with contemporary third-wave psychotherapies. A Reformed theological exegesis of 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 identifies two foundational axes: sola gratia (grace alone) and the acknowledgment of weakness. The core mechanisms of Self-Compassion (Neff), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes), Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG; Tedeschi and Calhoun), and Rumination-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (RFCBT; Watkins) are then analyzed for their systematic parallels with PIW’s theological structure—acceptance of weakness, dissolution of self-criticism, meaning-making through suffering, and transformation of rumination. The evidence-based framework of Spiritual Psychiatry is applied to examine the relationship between spiritual practices and mental health from neuroscientific and clinical perspectives. The central thesis is bidirectional: (1) the revelatory principle of 2 Corinthians provides theological foundations for the healing mechanisms of third-wave psychotherapies, and (2) the empirical evidence of these psychotherapeutic theories offers convergent support for and strengthens the theological interpretation of 2 Corinthians in a contemporary clinical context. This integrative framework proposes a new model for interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and psychiatry and discusses implications for clinical practice. Full article

Conflicts over natural resources reveal the inseparability of issues such as ecological degradation, structural injustice, human dignity, and peace. This article examines the Catholic Church’s pastoral role in such conflicts through the case study of Juan Antonio López, a Honduran lay Catholic leader, environmental defender, and Delegate of the Word who was killed in September 2024 after years of advocacy against extractive projects threatening local communities and water sources. Drawing on political ecology, development theory, biblical reflection, and Catholic Social Teaching, the article argues that conflicts over natural resources cannot be adequately addressed through legal, economic, or institutional frameworks alone. They also require moral, cultural, and pastoral responses capable of sustaining communities in their pursuit of justice and peace. First, the biblical narratives of disputes over wells in Genesis illuminate both the necessity and fragility of legal agreements when fear, domination, and unequal power shape access to life-sustaining resources. Then, in dialogue with the Church’s social magisterium, especially the tradition of integral human development, the article claims that the Church’s distinctive contribution lies in pastoral accompaniment: walking with vulnerable communities, defending the common good, encouraging the development of just societies by raising just individuals, denouncing structures of injustice, and finally witnessing to a just peace rooted in human dignity, fraternity, and care for creation. Full article

This paper revisits assimilation theory—developed to explain immigrant incorporation into U.S. society—and advances a reformulation centered on reciprocal assimilation. Classical models describe a linear convergence toward dominant Anglo-American norms, while segmented assimilation highlights multiple pathways shaped by context, race, and class. Both, however, tend to frame incorporation as a directional process in which minority groups adapt to dominant institutions. Drawing on contemporary autism scholarship, this paper brings assimilation theory into dialogue with neurodiversity to examine how its core assumptions extend beyond immigrant contexts. Using autism as a critical case, we show that social adaptation often occurs through camouflaging (masking, compensation, and behavioral adjustment), producing outward conformity without changing underlying neurological differences and often carrying psychological costs. These dynamics suggest that inclusion is frequently conditional on sustained performance of normative behavior rather than true structural incorporation. We identify an underlying assumption of universal assimilability within assimilation research and show how engaging with disability calls for a broader conception of incorporation. In response, we propose reciprocal assimilation as a framework in which adaptation emerges through dynamic interaction among individuals, institutions, and social structures. Integrating life-course concepts—turning points, cumulative (dis)advantage, agency, and social bonds—we illustrate how participation trajectories are shaped by accessibility, accommodations, stigma, and support over time. We conclude that a reciprocal model shifts emphasis from cultural convergence to meaningful participation, offering a more flexible framework for understanding incorporation across diverse populations, with implications for research, measurement, and policy. Full article