The Qualitative Revolution and Psychology: Science,Politics, and Ethics

Growing interest in qualitative research methods and methodological pluralism in psychology since the 1990s is placed in the historical contexts of long-standing philosophical and scientific rationales and the more recent “qualitative revolution” in other social sciences that began in the 1970s. An examination of areas in which qualitative methods have become most strongly established—applied, feminist, and multicultural psychologies—suggests practical and social motivations as primary and as energizing renewed expression of previously ignored ontological, epistemological, and scientific reasoning in the turn to qualitative methods. Methodological diversification in the arenas of human suffering, women's issues, and cultural politics is traced to psychologists' deeply rooted ethical obligations. The existential philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas articulates an implicit ethics at the heart psychology's increasing acceptance of qualitative methods and provides an understanding of how the emerging methodological diversity can contribute to social justice and human liberation as well as to an enhancement of rigorous scientific knowledge.     

WAR, WOMEN, AND POLITICAL WISDOM

One of the most perceptive and ambidextrous social commentators of our day, Augustinian scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain furnishes in ever fresh ways through her writings a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between politics and ethics, between timeless moral wisdom and cultural sensitivity. To read Elshtain seriously is to take the study of culture as well as the “permanent things” seriously. But Elshtain is no mere moralist. Neither is she content solely to dwell in the domain of the theoretical. For it is Elshtain the citizen—the creatively engaged and contributing citizen—whom the reader encounters on virtually every page of her writings. But reader beware: Elshtain does not shy away from controversy. At the same time, she is anything but a controversialist. In the essay that follows, several prominent themes that emerge from Elstain's writings—civic responsibility, justice, gender, and war—are considered afresh. Whether one agrees with her positions or not, one is forced to confess in the end that she cares deeply about the common good. And this alone makes her required reading for any engaged citizen of the republic.     

Melancholic Response to War Destruction and the Emergence of a Group Assumption of Post-Ness

What psychological response does war and forced displacement evoke in victims? How do survivors of war communicate their experiences to their children? Finally, what culture does the psychological response to loss shape? Using data collected through interviews, psychological consultations, and children’s drawings from two sources—the ongoing Syrian civil war and the Bosnian war of 1992–1995, this paper suggests that the experience of the war generation becomes the organizing axis of their identity and that of their children. It seeks to demonstrate that survivor parents communicate their experience of loss through gesture, act, and object rather than through a coherent narrative. Whereas survivor children use metaphoric and metonymic readings of their parents’ everyday performance in order to construct meaning and form their identities as descendants of a given family. This paper argues that such an identity is characterized by ambivalence towards the self and towards others, melancholic longing for an idealized pre-war past, and the impossibility of letting it go.     

Psychological attachment,no-self and Chan Buddhist mind therapy

The role of Chan Buddhism for mind therapy is distinguished from psychotherapy by the objectives in diminishing or removing the deluded perceived self and the psychological self of attachments and cravings, which are considered as the more basic origins for psychological suffering and problems. The Buddhist concepts of impermanence, no-self and emptiness are discussed to explain the Buddhist explanation for human suffering. A four-stage theory is described to explain the common Buddhist meditation experience toward the realization of no-self. Removing psychological attachment is found to be of explanatory value for many enlightenment episodes of Chan masters. Meditation concentration and reduction of self-attachment will mutually reinforce each other toward a complete therapy of the mind. An innovative approach for psychotherapy in going further to tackle a person's basic life attachments is suggested.     

Group therapist as social scientist, with special reference to the psychodynamically oriented psychotherapist

The recent literature suggests a lowering of tensions between psychotherapy practitioners and researchers in the decades-long "psychotherapy war." The author analyzes reasons for the thawing and suggests that the time is ripe for clinicians to assume greater authority in the work of developing models of the psychotherapy change process. The article highlights the unique positioning of the psychodynamic group psychotherapist for advancing this work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Science,Scientism and Imaginaries of Publics in the UK: Passive Objects,Incipient Threats

Two-way public engagement with science is an important modern democratic practice that paradoxically coincides with the intensifications of state surveillance and policing of publics and social movements engaging with issues involving science. This raises important questions about the contemporary anatomies of publics, and what count as legitimate expressions of public concern over scientific stakes within the knowledge economy. Implicit in the tension between inclusion and surveillance are concerns over the social meaning and authority of science amongst both scientific practitioners and publics. Bringing science and technology studies (STS) and social movement studies (SMS) into dialogue offers a means to explore the neglected ontological stakes in the framing of scientific imaginaries of publics, and public imaginaries of science. Post-WWII UK science–publics relations have emerged in three significant modalities, with publics imagined: as passive non-entities, circa 1950–1990 (continuing); as incipient threats due to presumed deficits in their grasp of science 1990–2000 (continuing); and, since circa 2000, as politicised threats requiring state control. Each modality is shaped by elite denial of the normative commitments embedded within science as surrogate politics—scientism. In each mode, scientistic elite emphasis on epistemic issues forecloses engagement with broader public meanings expressing legitimate normative and ontological differences. Fusing the more epistemic focus of STS with SMS's emphasis on meaning and democratic process offers a route to deeper democratic forms of public engagement with what is called science, which would also precipitate more accountability in elite discourses around science and technology.     

Who is Authorized to Do Applied Ethics? Inherently Political Dimensions of Applied Ethics

A standard view in ethics is that ethical issues concern a different range of human concerns than does politics. This essay goes beyond the long-standing dispute about the extent to which applied ethics needs a commitment to ethical theory. It argues that regardless of the outcome of that dispute, applied ethics, because it presumes something about the nature of authority, rests upon and is implicated in political theory. After internalist and externalist accounts of applied ethics are described, “mixed” approaches are considered that contain inevitable political dimensions. A feminist alternative, Walker’s metaethic of responsibility, shows that authority is best understood as relational and that situations of unequal power are therefore often the places where applied ethics arises. Furthermore, in a democratic society, commitments to democracy should shape the account of authority, and, thus, the nature of applied ethics as well.     

Happiness,morality, and politics

The idea that politics should promote the happiness of the population is rather common in the community of happiness researchers. This political view is sometimes based on the happiness principle, the fundamental ethical view that we have a strong moral reason to do what we can to maximize the happiness and minimize the suffering in the world. The first main purpose of this paper is to investigate (1) what role this principle play in ethics as a whole, how it should be weighed against other moral considerations, and (2) how exactly it should be understood, i.e. which possible version of the principle that is most plausible. This is the only way to arrive at well-founded theory of the fundamental moral (and political) significance of happiness and suffering (an “ethics of happiness and suffering”). The idea that politics should promote happiness is sometimes accompanied by the notion that we should introduce some kind of happiness index, and that it is a central goal of politics to maximize the value of this index. The second main purpose of this paper is to examine this suggestion. I will first ask (3) how such an index should be constructed, assuming that it might be a good idea to construct an index in the first place. I assume that an index of this kind cannot be plausible unless it incorporates a number of moral considerations, and that (3) is very closely related to (2). I will then ask (4) whether the suggestion is plausible, or whether there are better ways to put a politics of happiness into practice, e.g. to simply apply the knowledge we have about the determinants of happiness.     

The NICE guidelines are misleading,unscientific, and potentially impede good psychological care and help

NICE guidelines have been given the authority to determine what psychological therapies can be provided within the UK National Health Service. This also has implications for private practice. The guidelines are based on a medical model and consider psychotherapy as analogous to a drug. Psychological thinking is discouraged by this approach. A large amount of psychotherapy research evidence is ignored by NICE, particularly the persistent finding that differences in effectiveness between therapies are minimal and elusive. Differences between the skills of therapists are a more significant factor. Practice-based evidence, and learning from the patient's feedback (both conscious and unconscious) may be a better approach. For most forms of psychological distress, none of the main psychological therapies studied in randomized controlled trials can be considered to be clinically effective, even though they facilitate some degree of statistically significant change.     

One nation under God? Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s changing Fiqh of citizenship in the light of the Islamic legal tradition

In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries in the Middle East are grappling with how Islamists might be included within a regime of democratic political pluralism and how their aspirations for an “Islamic state” could affect the citizenship status of non-Muslims. While Islamic jurisprudence on this issue has traditionally classified non-Muslims in Islamic society as protected peoples or dhimma, endowed with what the authors term “minority citizenship”, this article will examine how the transnational intellectual Wasa?iyya or Centrist movement, of which Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the figurehead, have sought to develop a new fiqh of citizenship in which Muslims and non-Muslims have equal civil and political rights. This article will focus on Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the basis that his very recent shift in 2010 on the issue is yet to be studied in depth, as well as in view of the fact that the dilemma faced by reformist Islamic scholars—how to integrate modern concepts into a legal tradition while simultaneously arguing for that tradition’s continuing relevance and authority—is for him rendered particularly acute, given that this tradition is itself the very source of his own authority and relevance. It will therefore be argued that the legacy of the Islamic legal tradition structures his discourse in a very specific way, thereby having the potential to render it more persuasive to his audience, and worthy of a more detailed examination.     

Evangelical Civil War on the College Campus,White Evangelical Right Framing Resistance to Racial Justice in 2020s America

This paper examines a civil war brewing among evangelicals on the college campus over racial justice—calls for greater racial equality, equity, and inclusion—in the era of Black Lives Matter (BLM). It examines how the white evangelical right are framing their resistance to racial justice and redrawing the color line in the contemporary college evangelical landscape not with distant “social justice warriors” in broader secular society, but with those right inside their evangelical community who, at varying levels, are coming out in support for racial justice in 2020s America. To do this, I first examine the varied campus evangelicals that support racial justice and how they express and frame their support as proper religious practice. I then explicate how the white evangelical right utilize a strategy of colorblind-othering to fight against these co-evangelicals that support racial justice. Data for the study come from the Landscape Study of Chaplaincy and Campus Ministry (2019–22).     

Reply to Reynolds

Abstract

How should we read Foucault's claims, in his late work, for the relevance of ‘aesthetic criteria’ to politics? What is Foucault's implicit understanding of the nature of aesthetics and the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere? Would an ethics which gave a place to the aesthetic legitimize a politics of manipulation, brutality and aggression ‐ in short, a ‘fascist’ politics ‐ as some of Foucault's critics argue? In this paper, I examine key accounts of the fascist ‘aestheticization of politics’ ‐ from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936), to Philippe Lacoue‐Labarthe's work on the relation between Heidegger's philosophy and the fascist theme of politics as the plastic art of the state. Through a discussion of Foucault's late work, the paper demonstrates the connection between Foucault's turn to ancient Greek ethical practices and his call for a contemporary renewal of the idea of ethics as an art of living. The aim of the paper is to show in what ways the ethico‐political position which is presented in Foucault's late work, far from contributing to a fascist politics, in fact provides ways of thinking about the relationship between the aesthetic and the political which avoid both mindless radicalism and totalitarian narcissism. In doing so, the key question is, ‘What's aesthetic about Foucault's “aesthetics of existence"?’     

Mourning the Dead,Following the Living

In this paper I take up the ambivalence we rightly feel toward leaders by examining the relationship between charismatic authority and moral exemplarity. Drawing on the social theory of Max Weber, and in dialogue with a case study of an anti‐militarism movement called the SOA (School of Americas) Watch, I demonstrate that through a “politics of sacrifice” leaders synchronize their own stories with those of communally recognized exemplars and act in ways that evidence a solidarity in the suffering of those exemplars thereby generating their charismatic authority. While performing crucial strategic, motivational, and pedagogical roles, this charisma also introduces problematic temptations to authoritarianism that short‐circuit the practical reasoning that exemplars supposedly help to form. In the end this leaves our sense of ambivalence intact. What is needed, I argue, are practices of critique that reopen the distance between leader and follower and thus allow the possibility of practical reason.     

Feminism, Family, and Women's Rights: A Hermeneutic Realist Perspective

In this article I apply the insights of hermeneutic realism to a practical‐theological ethics that addresses the international crisis of families and women's rights. Hermeneutic realism affirms the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans‐Georg Gadamer but enriches it with the dialectic of participation and distanciation developed by Paul Ricoeur. This approach finds a place for sciences such as evolutionary psychology within a hermeneutically informed ethic. It also points to a multidimensional model of practical reason that views it as implicitly or explicitly involving five levels—background metaphysical visions, some principle of obligation, assumptions about pervasive human tendencies and needs, assumptions about constraining social and natural environments, and assumed acceptable rules of conduct. The fruitfulness of this multidimensional view of practical reason is then demonstrated by applying it to practical‐theological ethics and the analysis of four theorists of women's rights—Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin, Lisa Cahill, and Mary Ann Glendon. Finally, I illustrate the importance and limits of the visional dimension of practical reason by discussing the concept of “Africanity” in relation to the family and AIDS crisis of Eastern Africa.     

Body language and metaphors revealed through applications of Movement Psychotherapy in a hospice: A clinical case of refractory pruritis

Movement psychotherapy (MP), and dance/movement therapy (DMT), are body-orientated psychotherapy approaches that use movement for the integration of emotional, cognitive, physical, social and spiritual aspects of self (European Association Dance Movement Therapy, 2010). It is distinctively a combination of moving and sensing the body with verbal self-reflection (Bloom, 2006). Several papers have presented DMT as a treatment in general medical care and cancer care, but there is still a paucity of evidence-based studies. The authors describe a clinical case illustrative of many of the situations in which facing death was particularly tormenting. The emotional pressure can produce a barrier of communication with the risk of rupturing the therapeutic relationship. The movement therapist’s function is to clarify the elements of body language and this has important implications for clinical practice because the end-of-life decisions are difficult, like palliative sedation therapy (PST). Even if procedural guidelines for PST help physicians and care teams through the decision-making process and make them more comfortable when responding to physical suffering, physicians more frequently report an emotional pressure when their patients experience psychological symptoms, with the risk that PST could become a potential “counterphobic defence to treat”.     

The psychological conditions of meaningfulness,safety and availability and the engagement of the human spirit at work

Building on Kahn's (1990) ethnographic work, a field study in a U.S. Midwestern insurance company explored the determinants and mediating effects of three psychological conditions — meaningfulness, safety and availability — on employees' engagement in their work. Results from the revised theoretical framework revealed that all three psychological conditions exhibited significant positive relations with engagement. Meaningfulness displayed the strongest relation. Job enrichment and work role fit were positively linked to psychological meaningfulness. Rewarding co‐worker and supportive supervisor relations were positively associated with psychological safety, whereas adherence to co‐worker norms and self‐consciousness were negatively associated. Psychological availability was positively related to resources available and negatively related to participation in outside activities. Finally, the relations of job enrichment and work role fit with engagement were both fully mediated by the psychological condition of meaningfulness. The association between adherence to co‐worker norms and engagement was partially mediated by psychological safety. Theoretical and practical implications related to psychological engagement at work are discussed.     

Comparative Religious Ethics and the Politics of Christian Identity

I present a brief historical narrative of the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE) that attempts to make sense of the tensions within the field from the perspective of the politics of identity with reference to its changing content and practices—its internal history—and what might be called the background conditions—its external history—that shaped not only the content and methods of CRE but also its self‐understanding. Given the politics of Christian identity and the historical development of religious ethics within the American academy, I recommend that scholars of CRE adopt a more confessional mode of inquiry that makes explicit their ultimate commitments.     

Equality,its Basis and Moral Status: Challenging the Principle of Equal Consideration of Interests

The principle of equal consideration of interests (ECOI) is a very popular principle in animal ethics. Peter Singer employs it to ground equal treatment and solve the problem of the basis of equality, namely the problem of why we should grant equal treatment despite the variability of people’s features. In this paper, I challenge Singer’s argument because ECOI does not provide plausible grounds to presume that the interests of diverse individuals are actually equal. Analyzing the case of pain and the interest in not suffering in particular, I contend that there are some insurmountable epistemic and axiological problems in accounting for the equality of interests. Besides criticizing ECOI as a basis of equality, I argue that we need to rely on an equality of moral status. I conclude by providing some considerations on the relation between equality and the principle of proportionality.     

Questions in the Making: A Review Essay on Zen and Buddhist Ethics in the Context of Buddhist and Comparative Ethics

In reviewing four works from the 1990s—monographs by Christopher Ives and Phillip Olson on Zen Buddhist ethics, Damien Keown's treatment of Indian Buddhist ethics, and an edited collection on Buddhism and human rights—this article examines recent scholarship on Zen Buddhist ethics in light of issues of Buddhist and comparative ethics. Its highlights selected themes in the notional and real encounter of Zen Buddhism with Western thought and culture as presented in the reviewed works and identifies issues and problems for further consideration, in particular, problems of comparative and cross-cultural understanding and the articulation and redefinition of Zen Buddhist tradition.     

Withstanding Persecution as a Corroboration of Legitimacy in the New Testament: Reflections on the Resulting Ethical and Hermeneutical Quandary

Abstract : Assertions of standing, authority, and power claimed on the basis of withstanding persecution play a prominent and heretofore under‐appreciated role in much of the New Testament literature. Yet deriving legitimacy from persecution presents an interpretive quandary not unlike those inherited from biblical passages that condone slavery or unhealthy attitudes toward women and men. Reflection on how we construe ourselves in relation to suffering is an agendum inadequately realized in the New Testament that commends itself for twenty‐first century ethics and theology.