Global Perspectives on Disability and Mission

This article starts by exploring what disability is and why we should not be limited by only one definition. It then reflects on challenges and possibilities of historical review as it relates to disability by key church figures. In looking at the theology of disability in the modern era, the article argues that in order to move from the margins, we need to embrace a practical theology of embodiment that goes beyond inclusion to belonging. Scholars on disability and theology are therefore called upon to embrace a practical theology of disability through incorporating people with disabilities at the centre of developing a theology.     

Technology for independence: a community-based resource center

Despite the prominence of the disability civil rights model--with its values of inclusion and empowerment--the majority of social and policy research conducted to date has not sufficiently included the perspective of persons with disabilities in the research process and as uniquely qualified researchers themselves. This article describes a new project, "Technology for Independence: A Community-Based Resource Center" (CBRC). Over a five-year period, the CBRC will attempt to enhance community and consumer-directed disability organizations to design, implement, and disseminate research that promotes access to and use of assistive technology (AT). The CBRC will use strategies such as leadership training, participatory action research, technical assistance, web-assisted training, and annual symposia. A primary goal of the CBRC is to increase the capacity of community organizations to conduct research on AT that is scientifically rigorous and relevant to disability services, policy, and law.     

The Social Model of Disability: A Philosophical Critique

abstract Emerging from the political activism of disabled people's movements and mainly theorised by the scholar Michael Oliver, the social model of disability is central to current debates in Disability Studies as well as to related perspectives on inclusive education. This article presents a philosophical critique of the social model of disability and outlines some of its theoretical problems. It argues that in conceptualising disability as unilaterally socially caused, the social model presents a partial and, to a certain extent, flawed understanding of the relation between impairment, disability and society, thus setting a framework that needs clarifications and extensions and presents limits to the achievement of its own aim of inclusion. This article concludes by suggesting that, despite its theoretical limits, the social model acts as a powerful and important reminder to face issues of inclusion as fundamental, moral issues.     

Disability,Performance, and Discrimination in the Service to Humanity

In an age when the church is called upon to be an inclusive community, persons with disabilities in Nigeria are still grappling with exclusion. Disability is associated with multiple challenges. The challenges include degrading treatment, marginalization, and exclusion from recruitment opportunities, as well as discrimination in churches. Some people believe that disability has negative connotations and that persons with disabilities are hopeless, helpless burdens and passive “objects” meant to receive charity as well as physical and spiritual deliverance. Persons with disabilities are stereotypically seen as incapable of being productive. It is assumed that because people live with disabilities, they are not meant to occupy leadership positions or fully partake in church activities. The expectation that persons with disabilities be wholly embraced into the Christian fold is yet to be met. This article shares information on the context in which some of the challenges facing persons with disabilities are rooted. It examines the involvement and experiences of persons with disabilities in the activities of the church, church institutions, and church‐affiliated organizations in Nigeria while acknowledging the church’s mandate of inclusion. It finds that stereotyping and discrimination are challenges for persons with disabilities – individuals who are also made in the image of God. In the future, more research needs to be carried out on issues around the isolation of persons with disabilities in the body of Christ. The findings would help interested groups recognize the predicaments of persons with disabilities and find realistic strategies for a progressive inclusive church community – in this way assisting the efforts of the World Council of Churches’ programme on disability.     

Under the Mountain: Basic Training, Individuality, and Comradeship

This paper addresses questions of friendship and political community by investigating a particular complex case, comradeship in the life of the soldier. Close attention to soldiers’ accounts of their own lives, successes and failures shows that the relationship of friendship to comradeship, and of both to the success of the soldier’s individual and communal life, is complex and tense. I focus on autobiographical accounts of basic training in order to describe, and to explore the tensions between, two positions: (1) Becoming a soldier is a corrupting loss of individuality and moral sensitivity, and friendship is resistance to it. (2) Becoming a soldier is one form of flourishing, and comradeship—the soldier’s distinctive form of friendship—is one of its constitutive virtues. I draw particularly on George Orwell’s account of basic training and fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and on Tim O’Brien’s account of basic training and fighting in Vietnam.     

Civic Friendship and Thin Citizenship

Contemporary appeals for a deepening of civic friendship in liberal democracies often draw on Aristotle. This paper warns against a certain kind of attempt to use Aristotle in our own theorising, namely accounts of civic friendship that characterise it as similar in some way to Aristotelian virtue friendship. The most prominent of these attempts have focused on disinterested mutual regard as a basic ingredient in all Aristotelian forms of friendship. The argument against this is that it inadequately accounts for the idea of a virtue friend as another self, which we find in Aristotle’s thought. When we attend closely to that, we see that civic friendship is different in a fundamental way from virtue friendship because virtue friends are keenly committed to the moral improvement of one another. It is argued that Aristotle does not see civic friendship in the same way. However, if this argument about the differences between the forms of friendship cannot be accepted, the paper argues that we should not draw on Aristotle for an understanding of civic friendship because any similarity it might have to virtue friendship would license illiberal interventions in the lives of citizens in service of some idea of moral improvement. A seeming connection between Aristotelian civic friendship and thick conceptions of citizenship is replaced with a connection between it and thinner conceptions.     

The Motive of Society: Aristotle on Civic Friendship, Justice, and Concord

My aim in this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of the Aristotelian notion of civic friendship to contemporary political discussion by arguing that it can function as a social good. Contrary to some dominant interpretations of the ancient conception of friendship according to which it can only be understood as an obligatory reciprocity, I argue that friendship between fellow citizens is important because it contributes to the unity of both state and community by transmitting feelings of intimacy and solidarity. In that sense, it can be understood as an important relationship predicated on affection and generosity, virtues lacking from both contemporary politics and society that seem to be merely dominated by Post-Enlightenment ideals. For Aristotle, friendship is important for society because it generates concord, articulating thus a basis for social unity and political agreement.     

Invoking Deep Access: Disability beyond Inclusion in the Church

Abstract : This article seeks to challenge the ways access and inclusion are thought about and practiced in church communities with the hope of encouraging a robust hospitality and deep accessibility among all in the body of Christ. A first step stresses the difference of disability over the sameness of human personhood underneath it. A second step considers possibilities for practices of receiving gifts from one another in ongoing gestures of vulnerable mutuality that negotiate access for all, and thereby create community. The article concludes by proposing this be cultivated by a spirituality of attentiveness that embodies hospitality.     

Yielding Actuality: Trust and Reason in Gillian Rose's Vision of Community

This article explores the conviction that the durability of communities is contingent, at least in part, on the conception of reason in play. It proposes that prospects for building and sustaining community are enhanced to the degree that rationalistic theories of rationality are rejected. The resulting equivocation in the processes of rule‐making, moral thinking, analysis, and critique, while problematic, will be preferable to the alternative and caricatured approaches premised on a strong division between reason and its so‐called others. This desirable equivocation involves an analysis of the role of trust in human relations and a revised conception of reason developed by philosopher and social critic Gillian Rose (1947–1995). Through an analysis of Rose's commentary on the folk legend of Camelot and the phenomenology of friendship, this article tries to show how relations constrained by alterity can be transformed.     

Religious and spiritual education in disability situations in Italy

In this short article, the authors focus on religious and spiritual education’s potential to offer social and spiritual inclusion for students with a disability. They take the view that the religious and spiritual education teacher in such situations is positioned better when seeing such teaching as a special vocation. They use Italy as the case study by which to explore a religious and spiritual education approach to teaching in disability situations.     

You Are My Friends: Pastoral Care with Young Mexican Men

In this article, the author discusses the significance of friendship in caring for and counseling with young men. Following Seward Hiltner, he affirms the distinction between friendliness (or friendly disposition) and friendship. Insofar as friendliness implies warmth and genuine concern, caregiving and counseling relationships can benefit from the minister’s friendly disposition. The author argues that ministers can effectively counsel with young Mexican men who are both their parishioners and their friends. To illustrate this point, he presents and discusses the case of a Mexican minister (Pastor Garza) and a young Mexican man (Alonso). By reflecting on the friendship motif in the Gospel of John, he concludes the article with the idea that friendship and counseling can coexist despite the power differential and imperfect mutuality between the minister and the care seeker.     

A Compassionate Space‐making

Using the lens of trinitarian theology of friendship, this article discusses the idea of compassionate space‐making. By showing the primacy of friendly love (philia) over agapeic love, it argues that the idea of trinitarian friendship can offer a creative and imaginative way for constructing a theology of friendship in the communal and broader social contexts. The article then presents five marks of theology of friendship that enable Christians to participate in this trinitarian friendship by making space for and befriending others: vulnerability, unpredictability, reimagination, propheticity, and compassion. The article concludes with a practical spiritual exercise which exemplifies this trinitarian theology of friendship.     

The Shadow of Dunblane

The massacre of sixteen children and their teacher in Scotland, at the Dunblane Primary School, earlier this year, shook the world. Hundreds of thousands of flowers were sent from all over the globe, as a gesture of sympathy and solidarity. Eight months later, the world carries on its normal business, but for the people of Dunblane there can be no return to normality. This article looks at some points raised by the Cullen Report, the Government inquiry into the massacre, particularly the emerging details about the background of the killer, Thomas Hamilton. These details are set alongside Jung's discussion of the Shadow archetype. The article also examines the role of the local churches at the time of the tragedy and thereafter, particularly the Cathedral at the center of Dunblane. The final section looks at some general reactions within the community to the killings.     

The Community Psychologist as Critical Friend: Promoting Critical Community Praxis

Community‐engaged researchers have a responsibility to community partners to get beyond the traditional researcher stance to take on the active role of critical friend. On the basis of my own community research experiences in the USA, in this article, I argue that there is added value in taking on the practice of critical friendship to encourage a higher degree of critical reflection and critical practice in our partners and in our work together. In the context of long‐term, trusting relationships with community partners, researchers can play the role of critical friend working together to shape critical community praxis on the basis of critical theorizing, critical reflection, and a shared commitment to working for social justice. Those trying to make a difference in communities are often isolated and can benefit from opportunities for dialogue with other community practitioners within a critical frame of reference. Although not without risks and challenges, stepping into this role allows us to put into sharper relief the gap between community practice that challenges injustice and practice that maintains it. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Good of Friendship at the End of Life

Abstract

This article attempts to explain the value that we assign to the presence of friends at the time when life is ending. It first shows that Aristotle’s treatment of friendship does not provide a clear account of such value. It then uses J. L. Austin’s notion of performativity to supplement one recent theory of friendship – given by Dean Cocking and Jeanette Kennett – in such a way that that theory can then account for friendship’s special value at our time of death.     

Civic and Cosmopolitan Friendship

This article draws out two implications for cosmopolitan or global friendship from an examination of a recent work on civic friendship in the domestic sphere: (1) Insofar as it is the case that civic friendship, as defined by Schwarzenbach (On civic friendship: Including women in the state. Columbia University Press, New York, 2009) is necessary for justice in the state, it is also the case that the absence of global justice can be partially explained by the absence of what might be called cosmopolitan friendship. (2) If we consider the practicalities of civic friendship, we find that cosmopolitan friendship is an even more difficult and demanding project than we might have imagined.     

The Educational Community as In-tentional Community

This paper reassesses a perennial concern of philosophy of education: the nature of the educational community and the role of the teacher in relation to such a community. As an entry point into this broader question, we turn to Philosophy for children (P4C), which has consistently emphasized the importance of community. Yet, not unlike pragmatist notions of community more broadly, the P4C community has largely focused on the goal-directed, purposive, aspect of the process of inquiry. The purpose of our paper is to move beyond P4C (as it has traditionally been conceived) in order to theorize a non-instrumental, in-tentional, educational community without pre-conceived goals or intentions. Drawing largely from the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we describe the P4C-classroom as one that refuses to be operative (moving forward toward reaching common goals) and thus undermines the taken-for-granted logic of means and ends that underlies how educational communities are typically depicted and justified. Again drawing from Agamben, we identify the specific ways in which the experience of love and friendship (both of which are pure means rather than means to an end) constitute the in-tentional community. The silence of the voice of the teacher enables the experience of love and friendship to come about. Being included as an exclusion via his/her silence, the teacher is neither immanent (facilitator of student learning) nor transcendent (outside or beyond learning) but alongside the community as a paradigm of friendship.     

Between friends: Making emotions intersubjectively

Analysing qualitative interview material from a project on friendship and spatiality, this article examines the relationship between friendship, emotions and context. In the project's data the workplace emerged as a key site in which people meet new friends and practice friendships. Using the workplace as a case study, the article analyses how context can shape friendships, how emotions are woven throughout the very constitution of friendships, and how friendships can impact upon people's emotional experience of workplaces. Further, I analyse how emotions are actively generated between friends. In this understanding, emotions are not pre-existing states that are located in individuals; rather, emotions are created intersubjectively between friends and in specific contexts.     

Hermanas de Corazón y Alma

Friendship is a relationship that can traverse generations or be located within a specific era of a person's life. In this article, the author examines the role that her childhood friendship played in shaping her understanding of gender, ethnicity, poverty, immigration, spirituality and family processes. This friendship was during emerging adolescence and helped the author navigate and develop mestiza consciousness. These lessons were reinforced during her graduate training and have influenced her identity as a Chicana feminist therapist and the manner in which she connects with clients in psychotherapy. After presenting the story of her friendship, the author incorporates the theoretical perspectives of Chicana Feminism and Spirita to demonstrate how this friendship has influenced her clinical work with women. Specific themes discussed are language, invisibility, and cultural formulations of gender and spirituality.     

Flexibility,friendship, and family

This article is concerned with the impact of late modernity on patterns of solidarity in friend and family relationships. It takes as its starting point the transformations in partnership, family, and household formation and dissolution that have been occurring in Western societies since the 1970s. Accepting these shifts as indicative of the greater freedoms people now have over the construction of their personal relationships and social networks, the article examines the degree to which the domains of family and friendship are merging. Its principal argument is that despite increased flexibility in the construction of personal life, including diversity in the prioritization of different relationships, at a cultural level clear boundaries exist between family and friendship ties.