Neither public nor private religion: the Russian Orthodox Church in the public sphere of contemporary Russia

Cross-country comparative studies of religion (e.g. the Religion Monitor) do not cover some important issues regarding the religious situation in Russia. The problem of contemporary Russian religiosity is beyond individual religiosity or religiosity as a spiritual phenomenon. In Russia—one of the countries which experienced Communism as a period of enforced secularization, there are very few people who have had any religious socialization or who have the experience of belonging to the Christian Church or to any religion. The main point of this article is that what is happening with religion in post-Soviet Russia cannot be adequately explained by the concept of ‘public religion’ and the dichotomy of public vs. private religion, due to the practices of private religion manifesting at a very low level among the Russian population, despite the fact that a large number of Russians consider themselves to be Orthodox Christians. However, the representation of the Church in the public sphere has little to do with what concerns Russians who are in some way involved in parishes. As an alternative tool we propose to describe the religiosity of Russians through the methods of network analysis. Results of a content analysis of contemporary Russian and Soviet media, survey data of the Russian population, and data obtained in a network analysis of parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church are used for substantiating this conclusion.     

Injustice in American liberal democracy: Foundations for a Rawlsian critique

Conclusion Rawls stipulates that nonideal theory must include theories of punishment and compensatory justice, as well as a justification for the forms of opposition to unjust regimes, from civil disobedience and conscientious refusal to militant resistance, rebellion and revolution. (TOJ, p. 8) Given the Kantian interpretation of nonideal theory we now can see that each of its parts must be constructed to contribute to the teaching of justice. The preferred theory of moral development enables us to understand how persons come to adopt nonideal conceptions and practices, and how they can be convinced to change their thinking. The theory of history enables us to determine which traditions contain empirical causes of contemporary conceptions and practices.We recall that Rawls identifies the parties in the original position as we ourselves; when we ground our judgments upon its procedures, then we can perceive the world as persons in that position do. Our view need not be obscured by the economic determinism of traditional Marxism, nor does it require a psychoanalytic corrective in the manner stipulated by contemporary critical Marxists. A Rawlsian critique of American liberal democracy resolves the question of these determinants in the same way as it resolves all questions of an empirical nature, by placing them in their systematic unity according to a Kantian moral anthropology. If we can see what judgments result regarding empirical injustices and their removal we may ourselves learn something of how to redesign nonideal culture to conform to ideal principles of justice. And this prospect in turn is identical to the prospect of constructing a bridge between social theory and practice within liberal democracy.An earlier draft of this paper was read at the Tenth Interamerican Congress of Philosophy on Human Rights, Tallahassee, Fla., 1981.     

Race,Romantic Attraction,and Dating

Here are two widely held positions on the ethics of dating: First, people are generally morally justified in excluding people they don’t find attractive from their dating pool. Second, people are not justified in maintaining a dating pool that is racially exclusive, even on grounds like attraction. In this paper, we demonstrate how these positions are consistent. To do so we differentiate our attitudes in dating and our dating behavior. Then we show how existing criticisms of racialized attitudes in dating are incomplete as practical criticisms of our behavior. Finally, we give our account of the moral reasons whites have to change their dating preferences when they exclude people of color. In doing so, we supplement existing discussions of race-based discrimination in dating.     

Eroticizing Men: Cultural Influences on Advertising and Male Objectification

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, the model offered by Thomas Rochon is used to examine how ideas, activism, and changing American values have influenced advertiser practices as they relate to sexualized images of men in mainstream media. Previous research has highlighted the importance of economic shifts on advertiser practices, ignoring the importance of cultural factors, such as the influence of the gay liberation movement on representations of masculinity in the post 1960s era. Second, a quantitative analysis of sexualized depictions of masculinity is presented. These data suggest that men in contemporary advertisements increasingly display the visual cues of objectification. After positioning these sexualized images in a larger social, political, and economic context, the implications of male objectification is discussed.     

Back in the mirrored room: the enduring relevance of discursive practice

This article seeks to re‐engage a conversation regarding the importance of acknowledging the discursive content of the therapeutic process. Hare‐Mustin's (1994) article argued that psychotherapy is involved in the generation of values and norms, and thus requires ethical sensibilities. Her analysis recognized how particular socio‐cultural forces go unnoticed and suggested that unless therapists recognize their participation in discursive practices, they may unwittingly collude with and reinforce harmful cultural practices. The goal of this article is to revisit the ‘mirrored room’ so that family therapists can more deliberately evaluate their participation in cultural practices that impact on their work with clients. This article begins with a review of contemporary efforts to grapple with the issues Hare‐Mustin presented, and maintains that even contemporary approaches that assert a commitment to postmodern understandings remain incomplete without an analysis of discourse. The article then outlines the conceptual tools within discursive practice that advance the initial motivation of these contemporary efforts.     

Neoliberal ideology in work and organizational psychology

This paper explores the role of neoliberal ideology in workplace practices and in work and organizational psychology (WOP) research. It analyses how neoliberal ideology manifests in these two domains by using a prominent framework from the field of political theory to understand ideology through three different logics: political, social and fantasmatic logics. We explore the main neoliberal assumptions underlying existing practices in the workplace as well as in WOP research, how individuals are gripped by such practices, and how the status quo is maintained. The paper analyses how individuals in the contemporary workplace are henceforth influenced by neoliberalism, and how this is reflected in the practices and dominant paradigms within WOP. In particular, we focus on three ways neoliberalism affects workplaces and individual experiences of the workplace: through instrumentality, individualism and competition. The paper finishes with practical recommendations for researchers and practitioners alike on how to devote more attention to the, often implicit, role of neoliberal ideology in their work and research. The discussion elaborates on how alternative paradigms in the workplace can be developed which address the downsides of neoliberalism.     

Familial Influences on Dating Violence Victimization Among Latino Youth

Despite theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that the family environment plays a central role in Latino youth development, relatively little is known about how family processes influence dating violence victimization among Latino adolescents. To address this gap in the literature, we used data from 210 Latino parents and their 13- to 15-year-old adolescents to examine associations between several different family processes, including both parenting practices (parent monitoring, parent–adolescent communication) and aspects of the family relational climate (family cohesion, family conflict, acculturation conflict) and psychological, physical, and sexual dating violence victimization. Consistent with expectations, lower levels of family cohesion and higher levels of family and acculturation conflict were associated with risk for dating violence victimization, although associations varied depending on victimization type. In contrast, neither parental monitoring nor parent–adolescent communication was significantly associated with any type of dating violence victimization. In addition, we found that parent, but not teen, Anglo-American acculturation was associated with higher dating violence victimization risk. Findings suggest that family-based dating abuse prevention programs for Latino youth should seek to increase family cohesion and decrease family conflict, including acculturation-based conflict.     

Psychoanalytic perspectives on paraphilias and perversions

Since Freud’s exposition of the nature of perversion in his seminal work, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality there has been a multitude of rich and varied explorations of human sexual fantasies and behaviours that are considered as perversions within the psychoanalytic literature. However, with more recent societal shifts towards the acceptance of sexual orientations and practices which would previously been categorized as deviant, perversion has become a pejorative term seen as stigmatizing and debasing those whose sexual preferences do not conform to the traditional norm. In this paper I argue that certain psychoanalytic concepts of perversion retain utility in how we might think about and help individuals whose sexual desires and practices cause distress to themselves and/or others, particularly in the realm of intimate relationships. Historical and contemporary theories about the nature and origins of perverse fantasies and behaviour are presented and explored, focusing on how perversion may be conceptualized as a defence against early anxieties and disturbances in the mother–infant relationship. Such ideas inform a psychoanalytic approach to the treatment of perversions, particularly in consideration of transference and countertransference dynamics. The ideas in this paper are based on my work at the Portman Clinic in London, UK.     

Affect at the margins: Alternative empathies in A Small Place

Against the contemporary universalist injunction to ‘be empathetic’, this paper explores the possibilities of what I call ‘alternative empathies’ in the aftermath of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonialism. Offering an affective reading of Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place (1988/2000), it examines how empathy expressed at the margins of postcolonial imaginaries might disrupt or refigure some of the dominant ways that affect is thought and mobilised in pervasive Euro-American liberal and neoliberal discourses. As a powerful commentary on the cultural, political, economic and affective links between slavery, colonialism, and contemporary practices of tourism in the Caribbean that has provoked intense emotional responses among its readers, A Small Place offers a pertinent site through which to consider how history, power and violence shape the meanings and effects of empathy. It illustrates how the affective afterlives of decolonisation shape contemporary subjectivities in ways that are not easy to penetrate, nor possible to undo, through the power of empathetic will alone. Yet it also points to the role that alternative empathies can play in interrogating ideas of time as linear and universal and space as self-contained, revealing how we live affectively through different temporalities and spatialities – with varying implications for our senses of possibility in and for the world. I thus argue that exploring alternative empathies might open out to affective politics which do not view emotions instrumentally as sources of – or solutions to – complex social and political problems, but rather examine diverse and shifting relations of feeling for what they might tell us about the affective workings of power in a transnational world.     

Cultural and historical influences on the concepts of guidance in late 20th century Russia

The article discusses the ways cultural and historical events have changed the concepts and practices of preparation for employment in Russian schools over the last 30 years. The discussion focuses on data on 30 teachers and 30 students which were analysed using a socio-cultural approach. Differences identified in the ways teachers treated and used the concept of upbringing (a combination of guidance and counselling concepts) are linked to the social transformations Russia experienced before and after the collapse of the Soviet regime. Three different generations of teachers represent three different pedagogic identities which have been formed in different times but are mixed in the same pedagogical context of the same school. Questions are raised about changes in the nature of preparation for employment in contemporary schools.     

The science of ethics: Deception, the resilient self, and the APA code of ethics, 1966-1973

This paper has two aims. The first is to shed light on a remarkable archival source, namely survey responses from thousands of American psychologists during the 1960s in which they described their contemporary research practices and discussed whether the practices were "ethical." The second aim is to examine the process through which the American Psychological Association (APA) used these survey responses to create principles on how psychologists should treat human subjects. The paper focuses on debates over whether "deception" research was acceptable. It documents how members of the committee that wrote the principles refereed what was, in fact, a disagreement between two contemporary research orientations. The paper argues that the ethics committee ultimately built the model of "the resilient self" into the APA's 1973 ethics code. At the broadest level, the paper explores how prevailing understandings of human nature are written into seemingly universal and timeless codes of ethics.     

Narrative Therapy's Relational Understanding of Identity

We describe how we think of identity as relational, distributed, performed, and fluid, and we illustrate the use of this conceptualization within a narrative worldview. Drawing on the work of Michael White, we describe how this relational view of identity leads to therapeutic responses that give value to interconnection across multiple contexts and that focus on becoming rather than on being. We show how a narrative worldview helps focus on the relational, co‐evolving perspective that was the basis of our early attraction to family therapy. We offer detailed examples from our work of practices that help us stay firmly situated in a relational worldview that is counter to the pervasive influence of individualism in our contemporary culture.     

Resilience in Virtual Teams: Developing the Capacity to Bounce Back

Resilience, or the capacity to bounce back from adversity strengthened and more resourceful, can be considered an important quality of virtual teams in the contemporary working world. A team is the basic organizational unit many modern firms are composed of—and, the virtual ones are those conducting teamwork over distance using a combination of telecommunications and information technologies to accomplish an organizational task. Yet, we know little about how these teams with members who rarely meet in person can build resilience. We develop further the notion of resilience from the traditional focus on significant adversity to also include mundane yet crucial events that can become key for building resilience in virtual teams. Our study focuses on team dynamics and builds on an experimental research setting using a longitudinal, qualitative and interpretative research design to examine five anatomically similar, well-performing virtually working teams over their life cycle. Our findings show that team members in two out of the five teams engaged in specific reflection and action mechanisms—self-reflective practices, regulation of emotional expression, and engagement in concrete actions promoting team inclusion—that in turn helped these teams become more robust and prepared to face new adversities. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

A Zero-Relationship Justification of Rights: A Contractual Approach Based on Rawls’ Device of the “Original Position”

In contemporary moral and political philosophy, there are two leading approaches to the justification of rights. These could be broadly identified as deontological theories and consequential theories. These two schools of theories each have their own strengths and weakness, while there is also a third contractual approach that is under represented. Because Rawls’ and Scanlon’s well-known contractual theories are designed for purposes other than the justification of rights, the purpose of this paper is to establish a principle of rights on the basis of Rawls’ justification device of the “original position.” First, it supplies a criterion based on human conduct or action. Second, based on this account of human conduct, different types of relationships are constructed and presented to the parties in the “original position.” Third, it will show that the parties in the “original position” would choose one of these relationships as the principle of rights. Finally, Rawls’ first principle of justice will be reformulated. The procedure of choosing a principle of rights in this paper could also be viewed as a demonstration that, when properly situated and motivated, human beings exhibit their potential as rational beings.     

Best Practices in Communicating Best Practices

We send messages as much in how we communicate as by what we communicate. Learning best practices, such as those for data management proposed in the accompanying article, are components of becoming a responsible and contributing member of the community of scholars. Not only must we teach the principles underlying best practices, we should model and teach approaches for implementing those practices and help students come to view them within the larger context of becoming members of a professional community. How to collaborate across differences and how to have disputes professionally are skills all professionals need, and they should be taught along with the content itself.     

Introduction: the image of Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Russia has a long, complicated and, at times, contradictory relationship with Islam and Muslims. Islam is classified as one of the ‘traditional’ religions, along with Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. Throughout Russia’s history across the centuries, the efforts by the state and Muslims to define their relationship have led to contradictory outcomes. This special issue grew out of a conference that took place in 2016, seeking to explore the complicated nature of the image of Islam in Russia from a multidisciplinary perspective. A collection of six contributions explore how Islam is viewed and projected in the public and media sphere in contemporary Russia, including state attempts to ‘manage’ the development of Islam, initiatives to transform the public image of Muslims and the charitable work of a mosque at the local level.     

The revenge of the Jinns: spirits, Salafi reform, and the continuity in change in contemporary Ethiopia

The point of departure for this article is a story about jinns taking revenge upon people who have abandoned earlier religious practices. It is a powerful account of their attempt to free themselves from a past viewed as inhabited by evil forces and about the encounter between contemporary Salafi reformism and a presumed disappearing religious universe. It serves to prove how a novel version of Islam has superseded former practices; delegitimized and categorized as belonging to the past. The story is, however, also an important source and an interesting entry-point to examine the continued relevance of past practices within processes of reform. Analyzing the story about the jinns and the trajectory of Salafi reform in Bale, this contribution demonstrates how the past remains intersected with present reformism, and how both former practices and novel impetuses are reconfigured through this process. The article pays attention to the dialectics of negotiations inherent to processes of reform and points to the manner in which the involvement of a range of different actors produces idiosyncratic results. It challenges notions of contemporary Islamic reform as something linear and fixed and argues that such processes are multifaceted and open-ended.