Values,ideological attitudes and patriotism

We tested a series of discriminant associations, investigating how dimensions of patriotism (i.e. blind and constructive) differently relate to value orientations, and to ideological attitudes such as Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Using an Italian student sample (N = 146) we found that blind patriotism correlated positively with tradition and negatively with universalism, whilst constructive patriotism correlated negatively with tradition and positively with universalism. Both RWA and SDO correlated negatively with universalism, whilst only RWA was associated with security and tradition and only SDO related positively to power and self-direction. Mediation analyses revealed that most of the effects of value orientations on patriotism were mediated by SDO and RWA.     

Community,subjectivity, and intersubjectivity

This paper deals with the notions of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and community from several different points of view that include subjective and intersubjective agency, a sense of community, the community as a social institution, and the idea of social justice. The context of these considerations can be found in the Community–Social–Psychological approach to social action as it is often practiced in Latin America. A review of these themes is considered important because different models of community intervention and practice may lead to different expressions of community interaction.     

Agency,perception, space and subjectivity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - The goal of this paper is to illuminate the connections between agency, perception, subjectivity, space and the body. Such connections have been the...     

Neutrality,tenderness and the analyst's subjectivity

Addressing the rôle of the analyst in the psychoanalytic relationship, the author takes issue with the emphasis on acknowledging the analyst's subjectivity and the critique of concepts like neutrality and abstinence as these issues are presented in the relational tradition. He advocates a better articulation and emphasis of these concepts in the service of understanding the impact of the analyst's subjectivity, and demonstrates how the mere loosening up of analytic neutrality and abstinence and an acceptance of the analyst's self-disclosure make transference analysis more difficult to handle. Such an attitude also increases the risk for ethically dubious conduct, since there is a close link between clinical methods and ethical standards in psychoanalysis. In conclusion, the author points to the importance of the analyst's continuous self-reflection and countertransference analysis.     

Blind and constructive patriotism,national symbols and outgroup attitudes

We examined whether there is a relationship between the different forms patriotism can take (i.e., blind vs. constructive) and different representations of one's own nation. We considered two types of national symbols representing the nation in terms of confrontation between groups (polarized symbols) and as a unique entity (unpolarized symbols). In Study 1 we found that blind patriotism was positively associated with the degree to which individuals perceived their nation through confrontation whereas constructive patriotism was positively associated with the degree to which individuals perceived their nation as unique entity. In Study 2 we tested how the relationship between blind patriotism and outgroup attitudes changed when the nation was defined either through confrontation or as a unique entity. The results emphasize the essential role of the specific meaning associated to the nation when studying patriotism and its relation to outgroup attitudes.     

Irreducibility and subjectivity

Thanks to Marshall Abrams, Irene Appelbaum, Dan Gilman, Jeff Honnold, and the referees of this journal for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Body, society, and subjectivity in religious studies

Attention to bodies has transformed the study of religion in the past thirty years, aiding the effort to overcome the discipline's Protestant biases by shifting interest from beliefs to practices. And yet much of this work has unwittingly perpetuated an individualist notion of the religious subject. Although religionists are now well aware that bodies cannot be studied apart from the social forces that shape them, all too often the religious subject stands alone in a crowd, participating in communal rituals, subject to religious authorities and disciplinary practices, but oddly detached from intimate relationships. In this article, I first argue that the turn to the body was motivated by what it appeared to reject: theoretical questions about subjectivity. I then seek to challenge prevailing trends by arguing that these same theoretical insights should now prod us to attend to the import of intimacy and personal relationships.     

Desire satisfaction,death, and time

Desire satisfaction theories of well-being and deprivationism about the badness of death face similar problems: desire satisfaction theories have trouble locating the time when the satisfaction of a future or past-directed desire benefits a person; deprivationism has trouble locating a time when death is bad for a person. I argue that desire satisfaction theorists and deprivation theorists can address their respective timing problems by accepting fusionism, the view that some events benefit or harm individuals only at fusions of moments in time. Fusionism improves on existing solutions to the timing problem for deprivationism because it locates death’s badness at the same time as both the victim of death and death itself, and it accounts for all of the ways that death is bad for a person. Fusionism improves on existing solutions to the problem of temporally locating the benefit of future and past-directed desires because it respects several attractive principles, including the view that the intrinsic value of a time for someone is determined solely by states of affairs that obtain at that time and the view that intrinsically beneficial events benefit a person when they occur.     

Recognition,Desire, and Unjust Sex

In this article I will revisit the question of what I term the continuum of heteronormative sexual interactions, that is, the idea that purportedly ethically acceptable heterosexual interactions are conceptually, ethically, and politically associated with instances of sexual violence. Spurred by recent work by psychologist Nicola 11 , I conclude that some of my earlier critiques of Catharine MacKinnon's theoretical linkages between sexual violence and normative heterosex are wanting. In addition, neither MacKinnon's theory nor my critique of it seem up to the task of providing an ethical account of the examples of “unjust sex” that Gavey has described. I come to the conclusion that an ethical analysis of sexual interactions requires a focus on sexual desire, but that desire cannot take on the by now heavily criticized role of consent. Rather than looking for the presence or absence of sexual desire prior to sexual encounters as a kind of ethical certification of them, we ought instead to focus on the efficacy of that sexual desire, that is, its ability (or lack thereof) to shape an encounter in substantial and meaningful ways.     

Sikh middle class,Panjabi cinema and the politics of memory

The paper attempts to look at the relationship between memory and politics in Panjabi cinema and its implications for the construction of Sikh identity, specifically through the prism of the Sikh Middle Class. It seeks to understand the manner in which this middle-class grapples with the memory of Operation Bluestar and 1984 riots, how this memory is recreated in the present and how it continues to reside as contemporary in individual consciousness. To do so, it attempts to understand the popularity of recent films dealing with Sikh militancy and also to contextualize the present period in which these films have become very relevant to both the local and diasporic audiences, in particular, the way in which people connect to Operation Bluestar and Delhi riots almost 30 years after the event.     

Narrative identity,practical identity and ethical subjectivity

The narrative approach to identity has developed as a sophisticated philosophical response to the complexities and ambiguities of the human, lived situation, and is not – as has been naively suggested elsewhere – the imposition of a generic form of life or the attempt to imitate a fictional character. I argue that the narrative model of identity provides a more inclusive and exhaustive account of identity than the causal models employed by mainstream theorists of personal identity. Importantly for ethical subjectivity, the narrative model gives a central and irreducible role to the first-person perspective. I will draw the connection between narrative identity and ethical subjectivity by way of an exposition of work by Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, and a brief consideration of Korsgaard’s work on practical identity and normative ethics. I argue that the first-person perspective – the reflective structure of human consciousness – arises from human embodiment, and therefore the model of identity required of embodied consciousness is more complex and irreducibly first-personal than that provided in a causal account. What is required is a self-constitution model of identity: a narrative model of identity.