The Body of Christ has AIDS: The Catholic Church Responding Faithfully to HIV and AIDS in Papua New Guinea

Using the example of the Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea (PNG), I detail how, through praxis, it has brought to life a living theology of HIV and AIDS. In this way, the Catholic Church in PNG is responding faithfully to the epidemic. As a Christian country with a generalised HIV epidemic, where the body of an individual is reconstituted through the liturgical practices of baptism and Eucharist, theologically, in PNG the body of Christ has AIDS. In order to examine the ways in which the Catholic Church in PNG has responded faithfully to the Christian body with AIDS, I do so in relation to the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

The Destiny of Creation: Theological Ethical Reflections on Laudato Si'

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si's theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis's accounts of the techno‐economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.     

The Possibility of Justice: The Work of Paulo Freire and Difference

The work of Paulo Freire, while remaining important to many educators, has been challenged by some postmodernist arguments. In particular, the pursuit of justice becomes difficult, or at least more complicated, when the concept of difference is taken seriously. This paper reconsiders the Freirean commitment to justice in the light of ideas from Young (1990, Justice and the politics of difference, New Jersey: Princeton University Press) and Pavlich and Ratner (1996 Justice and the Postmodern, In M. Peters, W. Hope, J. Marshall, &; S. Webster (Eds.), Critical theory, poststructuralism and the social context, Palmerston North: Dunmore Press). How might the work of Paulo Freire accommodate these ideas and what demands do they place on his philosophy? In addressing this question, I focus on three key themes in contemporary debates over pedagogy and justice: (i) the notion that the individual is produced; (ii) the significance of difference; and (iii) the idea that justice is context dependent and multiple. I argue that given Freire’s emphasis in later publications on the produced and unfinished self and his recognition of the multilayered nature of oppression, Freirean theory continues to have much to offer to these debates.     

Fairness lies in the heart of the beholder: How the social emotions of third parties influence reactions to injustice

The present research explores third parties’ (e.g., jurors, ombudsmen, auditors, and employees observing others’ encounters) ability to objectively judge fairness. More specifically, the current research suggests that third parties’ justice judgments and reactions are biased by their attitudes toward the decision recipient and, in particular, the affective aspect of those attitudes as characterized by their felt social emotions. We explore how the congruence of a social emotion (i.e., the extent to which the emotion reflects feeling a subjective sense of alignment with the target of the emotion) can influence their evaluations of recipients’ decision outcomes. The five studies presented show that congruence can lead third parties to react positively to objectively unfair decision outcomes and, importantly, that the influence of social emotions on subjective justice judgments drive third party reactions to decisions, decision makers, and even national policies.     

Justice in teams: The activation and role of sensemaking in the emergence of justice climates

Justice climates are considered to be an emergent phenomenon, which originates in the cognition, affect and behaviors of individuals, but is amplified by their interactions and manifests itself as a collective construct (see Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). However, researchers have given little attention to the role of social interaction in the convergence of member justice perceptions in teams. Using conversational data from 372 students working in a team business simulation with two levels each of procedural treatment and outcome favorability, this study examines how treatment fairness arouses sensemaking in teams and the features of such sensemaking processes that give rise to shared justice perceptions. The results highlight an interactive effect of outcomes and procedures on team sensemaking, which is shown to influence justice climate strength. The results also provide insight into the effects of discussion content, intensity and duration on the emergence of justice climates.     

The creative suffering of the triune God: An evolutionary panentheistic paradigm

Abstract

One way the alleged conflict between science and religion is often presented is the claim that Western religions represent human beings as the pinnacle of creation. Science, however, has progressively shown this perspective to be false, specifically through the discoveries that we are not at the universe's center, that the universe is much larger than we once thought, and that we evolved from “lower” life forms. While these discoveries are valid, the interpretation that they mortify vain human pretensions to significance is not. In this essay we assess this claim of mortification and argue that it is a myth.     

Transforming habits of inattention to structural racial injustice in educational settings: A pedagogical framework that pays attention to the affective politics of habit

This paper draws together current scholarship regarding affect, habit and social change to suggest that attending to the affective dimension of habits in pedagogy and education develops a novel account that not only begins to explain why transforming habits of inattention to structural racial injustice proves particularly difficult in educational settings; this account can also offer new pedagogical openings for educators and students to engage more productively with the negative affective responses (e.g. denial, defensiveness, resentment) that often result from pedagogical efforts to disrupt these habits. Rather than seeing habits as conservative forces of routine and passive behavior, recent theorizing in affect theory and cultural geography pays attention to habits as affective and performative forces that influence the emergence of environment and can transform socio-spatial, affective, and material conditions. As such, the paper argues that a critical re-appraisal of the notion of habit in pedagogy and education, where the role of affect is central, can provide a fruitful terrain for understanding the ethical, material and affective complexities of transforming habits of inattention to structural racial injustice.     

Deliberative Pedagogy: Ideas for Analysing the Quality of Deliberation in Conflict Management in Education

Institutions worldwide respond to the need to recognise the value of educating children and young people to handle or solve conflicts in communication. But how do they or we know that an event is correctly interpreted as a conflict? How can people analyse the quality of deliberation when handling or solving conflicts in communication in education? I discuss these questions and argue that the notion of conflict cannot be defined only in terms of incompatibility, clash, opposition and/or disagreement; it also has to encompass negativity in the approach to the other. I also argue that the quality of deliberation can be analysed through a deliberative pedagogical approach, which takes into account structural features of deliberation and required dispositions of the participants, and that our knowledge of conflicts emerges holistically and is interpersonal and objective. I begin by giving an account of some institutional responses to conflicts. Then I discuss the notion of conflict and define it, inter alia, in terms of incompatibility, disagreement and negativity. Finally, I discuss ideas for analysing the quality of deliberation in communication when handling or solving conflicts in education.     

Getting rid of the bad ones: The relationship between group identification, deviant derogation, and identity maintenance

Two studies investigated the impact of the presentation of an undesirable group member on group stereotype judgments among participants with varying degrees of ingroup identification. In Study 1 (N = 67), identification was associated with stereotype change following presentation of an undesirable, but not a desirable, ingroup member. This relationship was mediated by evaluations of the undesirable ingroup member: the stronger the identification, the more negative the evaluation, and the greater the shift towards a more positive ingroup stereotype. In Study 2 (N = 180), identification was positively associated with ingroup stereotype ratings following presentation of an undesirable ingroup member but was negatively associated with outgroup ratings following presentation of an undesirable outgroup member. As in Study 1, the association between ingroup identification and ingroup stereotype ratings was mediated by evaluations of the undesirable ingroup member. Results are discussed in relation to the black sheep effect and identity maintenance strategies.     

Pedagogy Beyond Piracy: Un‐Learning the White Body to Recreate a Body of Learning

This essay highlights a range of questions that arise when white suburban students engage urban neighborhoods of poverty and color in the United States. How can involvement in an “other” context move beyond “educational tourism”? The essay presents a pedagogical style that raises questions of the kind of socialized body one inhabits: either one shaped by presumptions of control and rights of academic observation, or one mobilized to risk involvement in a differently communalized episteme. And while the pedagogy described may not be replicable by faculty who do not share the author's background or cross‐cultural orientation, the rhetorical style of the essay itself enacts the tensions that this pedagogy contends with: the efforts of a white male educator – altered by decades of inner city involvement – to open “white” space in the classroom to other norms of embodiment and other modes of learning. Here is the necessity and impossibility of moving beyond “educational tourism.”     

Foregoing the labor for the fruits: The effect of just world threat on the desire for immediate monetary rewards

Previous theorizing and research suggest that the need to believe in a just world develops when children begin to understand the benefits of foregoing their immediate gratifications for more desirable, long-term outcomes. Drawing on this previous work, we propose that an extant just world threat may induce a desire for smaller, immediate rewards at the expense of larger, delayed rewards. Participants were exposed to the suffering of an innocent or non-innocent victim and then, in a different context, completed a temporal discounting task that assessed, across six time delays, their preferences for smaller, immediate monetary rewards versus a constant, larger, delayed reward. Consistent with our reasoning, participants exposed to the suffering of an innocent versus non-innocent victim more steeply discounted the value of the delayed reward—that is, they were willing to accept smaller immediate rewards in place of the larger, delayed reward. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

A Spirituality of the Desert for Education: The Call of Justice Beyond the Individual or Community

This paper argues for an alternative notion of spirituality for education, based on Theo de Boer’s idea of a spirituality of the desert. Rather than depicting an inner, additional region named the spiritual, spirituality here is thought of as a discourse that depicts the everyday world in a particular way. In dialogue with David Purpel’s analysis, the paper argues for a notion of spirituality that is located in an ongoing oscillation between ‘the individual’ and ‘the community.’ This oscillation turns out to be the call of justice. This analysis helps understand classroom dynamics differently, providing a place of critique for current practices.

The utility of a multifoci approach to the study of organizational justice: A meta-analytic investigation into the consideration of normative rules,moral accountability,bandwidth-fidelity,and social exchange

Multifoci justice pulls from research on social exchange theory to argue that despite the proliferation of rule sets in the literature (often referred to as the “types” of justice), individuals seek to hold some party accountable for the violation/upholding of such rules, and it is these parties (e.g., supervisors, the organization as a whole) that are most likely to be the recipients of attitudes and behaviors (i.e., target similarity effects). To explore these issues, we meta-analytically (k = 647, N = 235,682) compared the predictive validities of source- vs. type-based justice perceptions and found that (a) multifoci justice perceptions more strongly predicted outcomes directed at matched sources than did type-based justice perceptions, (b) multifoci justice perceptions more strongly predicted target similar than dissimilar outcomes, and (c) the relationships between multifoci justice perceptions and target similar outcomes were mediated by source-specific social exchange.     

Getting off on the right foot: The role of openness to experience in fostering initial trust between culturally dissimilar partners

Cross-cultural partnerships can provide a competitive edge for organizations, but also hinder trust between individuals, and thus the flow of diverse knowledge that facilitates positive organizational outcomes. We investigate whether openness to experience (openness, in short) protects against lower trust in cross-cultural partnerships by weakening the effect of cultural diversity on trust formation processes (defined by perceived similarity and trustworthiness, serially). We randomly assigned White, American participants to partners from either the same or different (i.e., Chinese) cultural background. After introductions, participants rated their partner’s similarity and trustworthiness, and played a game assessing behavioral trust. Openness was measured 3–7 days prior. People high (versus low) on openness were more trusting towards culturally dissimilar partners because they perceived them as more similar, and thus more trustworthy.     

Never quite good enough: The paradox of sticky developmental relationships for elite university graduates

Drawing on the mentoring, education, and social psychology literatures, this longitudinal study examines how the persistence of developmental relationships from an elite graduate school influences subjective career outcomes during early career. Participants (n = 136) were surveyed about their developmental networks—a group of individuals who take an active interest in and action to advance a focal individual’s career—and subjective career outcomes over the 10 years (1996-2006) post graduation. Results show that although receiving mentoring from one’s entire developmental network was positively related to career-related self-efficacy and perceptions of career success, this was not the case for ties retained from graduate school. Continuing to receive mentoring support from developers from graduate school and further, from peers from graduate school, was negatively related to perceptions of career success. These findings offer insight into the dynamics and potentially negative consequences of developmental networks and highlight the significance of social comparison during early career.     

Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation,dialogue, and the development of social understanding

The ideas of Vygotsky [Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, (Vol. 1). New York: Plenum. (Original work published 1934.)] have been increasingly influential in accounting for social–environmental influences on the development of social understanding (SU). In the first part of this article, I examine how Vygotskian ideas have to date been recruited to explanations of the development of SU. Next, I present a model of SU development which draws on two implications of Vygotsky’s ideas: the importance of semiotic mediation for mental functioning, and the dialogic nature of the higher mental functions. I then consider the value of the proposed model in accounting for evidence from three areas of enquiry: the typical development of SU in infancy and early childhood, relations between individual differences in SU and social–environmental variables, and atypical development. The model is suggested to be particularly helpful in understanding the transition from intentional-agent to mental-agent understanding, and the role of language in SU. Remaining challenges include a need to specify further the cognitive processes underlying internalization, and to gather more extensive evidence on the roles of typical and atypical social experience in SU development.     

Actors in the Classroom: The Dramatic Pedagogy Model of Counselor Education

Role playing is a fundamental component in the training of counselors to use counseling skills. However, role play activities commonly involve counseling students as clients or actors and hence have notable limitations. One training method widely practiced in the medical profession is the use of professional actors as patients. Although there are some examples in the literature of studies that have used actors for counselor training, most address only a specific topic or skill set. In this article, the authors propose the dramatic pedagogy model (DPM) as a comprehensive model for implementing client actors into the education of counselors. The DPM includes a set of pedagogical techniques and a structure for preparing actors and curriculum.     

The Catholic Church,moral doctrine,and HIV prevention in Recife,Brazil: Negotiating the contradictions between religious belief and the realities of everyday life

Religious beliefs have had a key role in shaping local responses to HIV and AIDS. As the world's largest Catholic country, Brazil is no exception. Yet little research has been conducted to document how religious doctrine is enacted in practice among its lay leaders and followers. In this article, we present ethnographic research from Recife, Brazil, conducted to understand the way in which religious doctrines are interpreted at a local level. Contextualised within the sociology of contemporary Brazilian Catholicism, we draw on interviews with clergy members, lay leaders, and parishioners to discuss how the Catholic Church's vision of sexuality translates into everyday lives of its followers. We explore the disjuncture between the Catholic ideals of fidelity and delaying sex until marriage with the everyday reality of the Church's followers, highlighting the role that gender plays in defining sexual roles and expectations. We conclude by posing questions for future research and HIV prevention strategies considering the formal institutional response of the Brazilian Catholic Church to AIDS on the one hand, and the social and cultural contexts in which Catholics live their daily lives on the other.     

Justice and the human alarm system: The impact of exclamation points and flashing lights on the justice judgment process

Extending theory within the justice domain and work on the human alarm system, the current paper argues that the process by which justice judgments are formed may be influenced reliably by the activation of psychological systems that people use to detect and handle alarming situations. Building on this analysis, it is further proposed that if this line of reasoning is true then presenting alarm-related stimuli, such as exclamation points and flashing lights, to people should lead to more extreme judgments about subsequent justice-related events than not presenting these alarming stimuli. Findings collected using different experimental paradigms provide evidence supporting these predictions both inside and outside the psychology lab. Implications for the social psychology of justice and the human alarm system literature are discussed.