Friends on the Margins

In this essay, I examine Richard Miller’s exposition of political solidarity as one of the key contributions of his multifaceted argument in Friends and Other Strangers to the study of religion, ethics, and culture. Miller’s focus on culture broadens the landscape of ethical analysis in ways that illuminate how culture and cultural productions mediate and construct norms and virtues, and the complex relations between self and society. I challenge Miller’s inclination, however, to focus scholarly attention more on habituated forms of civic identity and communal solidarity rather than on disruptive potentialities and critical practices. I suggest that an engagement with social movement theory and the sociology of emotions, with their focus on semiotic analysis and social change processes and mechanisms, can greatly enrich Miller’s account of religion and ethical solidarity.     

Heterotopias of Homelessness: Citizenship on the Margins

The concept of heterotopia challenges political theory, which has often focused on utopic thinking. Foucault describes a heterotopia as a heterogenous space that juxtaposes in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Streets, squares and parks form heterotopias when their utopic purity as public space is juxtaposed with the private spaces created by the cardboard boxes and other temporary shelters of homeless people. Since citizenship has traditionally been thought of as participation in a democratic public sphere, how do heterotopias of homelessness challenge the ideas about citizenship? Based on narrative research with homeless people in Poland, I show how the homeless conceive of their marginality. Their participation or non-participation in democracy is not hidden but, on the contrary, very visible in public spaces where they are included as excluded.     

Contemporary Muslim Families: Research and Practice

This research project was undertaken to provide family professionals with the basic information necessary to work appropriately with Muslim families. The Muslim population represents 4–6 million people in the United States, yet it is significantly underrepresented in the family literature. Qualitative analysis of focus groups and interviews revealed multiple key findings. Emergent themes include an interest in gender respect rather than gender equity, the importance of extended family, the centralism of Islam in daily life and the qualified acceptance of professional interventions. Implications for practice are discussed.     

契理当机的"今菩萨行"理念及实践--太虚大师与抗战时期的重庆佛教

太虚大师抗战时期长住重庆,秉持大乘佛法出世而入世的精神,因应时机倡导"今菩萨行",后发展成更完备的菩萨学处体系.以汉藏教理院学僧和慈云寺僧侣救护队为代表,重庆佛教界积极响应投身于救国,特别后者为救护难民作出了相当贡献.不仅如此,太虚大师这一思想对现今重庆乃至中国佛教亦影响深远.     

Midwives on the Margins: Stigma Management among Out-of-Hospital Midwives

Out-of-hospital midwives’ occupational practices can be interpreted as “dirty work” because of their responsibility to touch women’s genitals and the perceived danger of providing healthcare separate from a hospital. Thus, midwives experience prejudice in their interactions with healthcare providers and the public alike. Using 30 interviews with out-of-hospital midwives, this research explores sources and forms of prejudice and techniques with which participants managed their stigmatized professional identity. Specifically, midwives used strategies of information control, including controlling disclosure and controlling interactions. While previous research documents such techniques, I add theoretical complexity by expanding our knowledge on concealable stigmatized identities.     

Balint's Influence on Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

Invited by the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center in New York to lecture on my book Michael Balint: Le renouveau de l'Ecole de Budapest, Toulouse, Erès 2000, I first gave my personal and analytic motivations for writing this book. Then I stressed Balint's original contributions to analytical theory and practice: the object relation combined with the theory of instinct, the development of the infant, adolescent and even of old age, the basic fault, archaic defenses (such as ocnophilia and philobatism), as well as his idea about analytic treatment with its phases of regression and "new beginning". His style and his discretion in treatment and mainly the responsibility he recommended to the analysts seem to me very important not to forget. I have shown him as Ferenczi's heir and how he continued his work. His clinical approach and his style are evoked to alert contemporary analysts--who sometimes just know his method to train general practitioners through the Balint group--that they have been influenced unbeknown to them.     

Facing the Music: Voices from the Margins

Recent philosophy of music in the Anglophone analytic tradition has produced many fine-grained analyses of musical practices within the context of the Western fine-art tradition. It has not for the most part, however, been self-conscious about the normative implications of that orienting tradition. As a result, the achievements of recent philosophical discussions of music have been unnecessarily constricted. The way forward is to enrich the range of musical practices philosophy takes as its target of examination.     

Pastoral Theological Reflection on Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry by Melissa Kelley

This article highlights four of Melissa Kelley’s contributions in her book Grief: Contemporary Theory and Practice. The author identifies these as: 1) Kelley’s capacity to distill and synthesize the most important areas of contemporary grief theory; 2) her work on attachment theory and its relationship to people’s ways of coping with grief; 3) the focus on the research of Bonanno et al. (Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 60:67–73, 2005) and showing us who is most vulnerable and in need of pastoral care during grief; 4) her emphasis on meaning making as the core of the grieving process. The article also lifts up questions concerning communal practices for grieving loss born of injustice and the need for prevention and fostering coping mechanisms so that the worst effects of grief might be mitigated.     

"实践"的内涵与当代美学建构

当代中国美学研究呈现出多彩纷呈的局面,这种局面是在"走出传统实践美学的困境"中产生的.传统实践美学是在20世纪50、60年代的美学大讨论中产生的,到了80年代,它逐渐成为中国美学的主流派,占据了主导地位.     

Author Response to Reviews of Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry

The purpose of this article is to respond to three reviews in Pastoral Psychology of the author’s text, Grief: Contemporary Theory and the Practice of Ministry (Kelley 2010). This article considers in particular the grief born of injustice, the need for pastoral caregivers to cultivate skills and sensitivities for grief ministry in multicultural and multireligious settings, and the centrality for many of a secure relationship with the Divine as a primary source of hope after loss.     

Margins for Error: A Reply

I address Peter Mott's 'Margins for Error and the Sorites Paradox' ( The Philosophical Quarterly , 48 (1998), pp. 494–503). Mott criticizes my account of inexact knowledge, on which it satisfies margin for error principles of the form 'If one knows in a given case, one avoids false belief in sufficiently similar cases'. Mott's arguments are shown to be fallacious because they ignore the fact that our knowledge of inexact knowledge is itself inexact. In the examples discussed, the first-level inexact knowledge is perceptual. Since my defence of an epistemicist theory of vagueness explains our ignorance of truth-values in borderline cases as the result of knowledge the inexactness of which has a conceptual source, the paper also contributes to the defence of epistemicism about vagueness.     

Revision from the Margins: Fromm's Contributions to Psychoanalysis

Fromm's important contributions to the modern development of psychoanalytic thought are often ignored and frequently misunderstood. An early proponent of revisions of psychoanalytic theory and therapy similar to recent trends in object relations, self-psychology and interpersonal psychoanalysis, Fromm was a visionary for a Freudian theory built upon orthodoxies of the past but going beyond them. It is argued here that Fromm's unique role in helping create a new version of psychoanalysis for the 21st century was as sociological as it was intellectual. Fromm's contributions were intimately linked to his institutional positioning close to the center but on the relative margins of the discipline. This paper will outline how sociological dynamics shaped Fromm's revision of psychoanalysis. We will conclude by discussing how Fromm was able to have a more dramatic influence than other Freudian revisionists who were less favourably positioned.     

当代医学人文理念与实践论纲

医学人文是当代医学的重要主题.科学观念的转换是医学人文兴起的深层原因;特异性病因说与医学人文的分离与结合直接相关;当代医学人文引起关注有其广泛的社会背景和直接原因.当代医学人文思想有其自身的特点,并承担着重要的历史使命.不仅要重视医学人文的教学、研究,还更应重视医学思想的实践.     

Reflections on Contemporary Psychotherapy Practice, Research, and Training

We do not lack for criticism about psychotherapy practice, research, and training. Admittedly, there is much there that needs to change. But, thus far, what have we done right? What are some of the positive, affirming, constructive strides that have been made with regard to therapy practice, research, and training? In this paper, those questions are addressed. Ten broad-based themes about some aspects of psychotherapy are presented and discussed; while by no means exhaustive, each is considered to be quite robust and clearly reflective of some of the truly constructive facets now evident in the field.     

当代西方社会理论的实践论转向--吉登斯结构化理论的深度审视

安东尼·吉登斯(Anthony Giddens)是二战后英国著名的社会理论家,是当代西方学界备受推祟也备受争议的社会理论--结构化理论的创立者.吉登斯结构化理论的产生缘于下述背景:一方面,现代西方社会在政治、经济和文化层面都发生了巨大的变化,迫切要求社会理论家对现代社会(特别是当代资本主义社会)做出具有深度的分析和批判;另一方面,自上世纪60年代以来西方社会理论陷入了方法论的二元纷争之中,迫使当代西方理论家重构一个新的社会理论分析框架,从而出现了一股"新的综合复兴努力的迹象"[1].吉登斯明确系统地概括了现代西方社会理论中根深蒂固地存在的行动与结构的二元对立,确立了从人类实践活动看待社会的理论向度,把结构与行动视为人类实践活动的两个侧面.这是其结构化理论最具创新、最显特色之处,它标志着当代西方社会理论的"实践论"转向.马克思曾说:"人们自己创造自己的历史,但是他们并不是随心所欲地创造,并不是在他们自己选定的条件下创造,而是在直接碰到的、既定的、从过去继承下来的条件下创造".[2]吉登斯的结构化理论正是对马克思的这句名言的深刻反思.他吸取了马克思实践观的某些思想,并且做出了富于创见的思考和发挥,但他夸大了实践主体的能动和能知特性,否认了物质生产实践在社会构成中的重要地位和作用,因而吉登斯实践观存在根本的缺陷.在这个意义上,吉登斯并没有彻底解决行动与结构的二元对立问题,但无论如何,吉登斯的理论努力无疑是值得赞赏的,也是富于启发性的.