Transleadership for Transdisciplinary Initiatives

This article shares the genesis of a new idea we called transleadership, as it is informed by Nicolescuian transdisciplinarity. While aligned with several leading edge approaches to leadership, we propose that transleadership stands out because it emerges at the convergence of seven transconcepts: complexity (emergence), logic and reality, intersubjectivity, sensemaking, tensions, power and influence, leverage, and the creation of in vivo, hybrid knowledge. Transleadership accommodates the intricate and complex process of leading a diverse collection of (often contradictory) people, ideas, and consciousness to a new space and place where transdisciplinary knowledge can be created to address wicked problems facing humanity, using transdisciplinary thinking.     

Transdisciplinary Conversations in Child and Youth Care

Beginning from the proposition that doing transdisciplinary child and youth care (CYC) entails an ethic of risk and vulnerability, four graduate students from differing social, spiritual, bodied, and academic locations trace how our research and professional projects encounter, challenge, support, and disrupt one another. Thinking through two concepts critical to the field of CYC in Canada (politics and care), we aim to (a) make visible the possibilities, tensions, and incommensurabilities that emerge when we collectively risk generous, rigorous dialogue between distinct research projects, practice orientations, and lived ontological and epistemological loyalties; and (b) imagine the practices required to enact, and the creative collaborations that might emerge through, transdisciplinary conversations in child and youth care.     

Transdisciplinary Child and Youth Studies: Critical Praxis,Global Perspectives

Drawing on empirical and theoretical literature from across six continents, this Introduction to a special issue of World Futures serves as a prelude to seven articles focused on transdisciplinary child and youth studies. The resulting gestalt builds on the assumption that those engaged in transdisciplinary research and pedagogy are also deeply engaged in the global reform movement currently underway in higher education. As a contribution to this process, we make two key arguments. First, Indigenous epistemologies (defined as traditional integrated knowledge systems drawing on connectedness to the Earth and ontologies of respect for past and future generations) must be fully included within the transdisciplinary canon. Second, we introduce child and youth studies as an inherently transdisciplinary field, one that embraces complex systems analysis along with young people’s participation in research that concerns their well-being.     

A Transdisciplinary Perspective Concerning the Origin of the Species: The Migratory Theory of Genetic Fitness

Although the Neo-Darwin Theory of Evolution is one of the most celebrated theories in science, nonetheless it has received many criticisms. These criticisms are documented and a new transdisciplinary theory of origin is introduced. Darwin's original argument was that natural selection, through heritable changes, changed simple organisms over time. These heritable changes are responsible for the complex plethora of life seen around us today. Darwin's original theory, however, was deconstructed after the fact into a mutation-based theory. This mutation-based theory in its current form is an insufficient and indeed unnecessary transdisciplinary explanation. A subsequent statistical comparison between the six extant scientifically based primary theories of origin was undertaken and based on current biological knowledge a statistically significantly (p < .05) best fit phenotypic model emerged.     

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Global Childhoods: Transdisciplinary Reflections from Nepal

Abstract

Globally, humans face innumerable socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental problems while being threatened by ever more interconnected and complex geopolitical concerns. In this planetary context, unidisciplinary research and related teaching approaches often work to constrain our ability to move beyond institutional and bureaucratic mind-sets to become agents of social change within local systems impacting children. During its 40-year evolution from a sub-discipline of psychology, the international field of child and youth studies has sought common ground for interpreting these pedagogical and professional issues. Many authors now argue for transdisciplinary approaches to address and overcome these tensions in the effort to re-integrate epistemologies of the global South within more dominant global North knowledge production systems. Such approaches have been posited to add new analytical and methodological tools to achieve praxis—the Greek word for translating theory into practice. Transdisciplinary research transcends the usual gap between academia and the broader public by acknowledging the value of knowledge obtained from diverse, nonacademic stakeholders in the community, government, and business. In addition, these approaches in child and youth studies offer us new possibilities for translating and understanding the local and global implications of implementing the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child, and the vast differences in the experiences of childhood amongst and between various socioeconomic, cultural, and political contexts in recognizing their own rights in situ. Moving beyond adult-focused and Eurocentric understanding of the childhood literature (and of children’s human rights), this paper reflects our experiences working with young people affiliated with the Lalitpur Metropolitan City Child Clubs in Nepal, and observing their participatory planning processes for annual budgets. In response to increasing complexity throughout all regions of the world, we consider historical, political, and cultural experiences in Nepal through this transdisciplinary approach to child-centered research and activism. Our paper details key learning and transitions from being “academic researchers” and “observers” of a participatory, child- and youth-focused budgeting process to “collaborators” and “co-constructors of knowledge” with key stakeholders—the young people of Lalitpur, Nepal.     

Toward a Science of Transdisciplinary Action Research

This paper offers a conceptual framework for establishing a science of transdisciplinary action research. Lewin's (1951) concept of action research highlights the scientific and societal value of translating psychological research into community problem-solving strategies. Implicit in Lewin's formulation is the importance of achieving effective collaboration among behavioral researchers, community members and policy makers. The present analysis builds on Lewin's analysis by outlining programmatic directions for the scientific study of transdisciplinary research and community action. Three types of collaboration, and the contextual circumstances that facilitate or hinder them, are examined: (1) collaboration among scholars representing different disciplines; (2) collaboration among researchers from multiple fields and community practitioners representing diverse professional and lay perspectives; and (3) collaboration among community organizations across local, state, national, and international levels. In the present analysis, transdisciplinary action research is viewed as a topic of scientific study in its own right to achieve a more complete understanding of prior collaborations and to identify strategies for refining and sustaining future collaborations (and their intended outcomes) among researchers, community members and organizations.     

The formation of Soviet cultural theory of music (1917–1948)

This article explores the continuities and discontinuities of pre-Revolutionary intellectual traditions in 1920s Soviet culture and the Stalin-era cultural revolution. Through examination of the pre-revolutionary philosophical legacy underpinning Soviet musicological theory, I demonstrate that there are decisive features, such as Soviet Prometheanism, that characterize the musicology of the 1920s that both underline and differ from the pre-revolutionary philosophy of music and the musicology of the 1930s. I offer the basic outlines of a Soviet cultural theory of music formulated by Russian music critic, historian, composer and musicologist Boris Asafiev (1884–1949) in the 1920s. Explaining and describing what I mean by a particular cultural theory of music in the Soviet context forms the core issue of my article.

     

The Big Picture of Individual Differences in Physical Activity Behavior Change: A Transdisciplinary Approach

The goal of this research is to utilize a transdisciplinary framework to guide the selection of putative moderators of the effectiveness of an intervention to promote physical activity behavior adoption and maintenance in the context of a randomized controlled intervention trial. Effective interventions to increase physical activity are sorely needed, and one barrier to the identification and development of such interventions is the lack of research targeted at understanding both the mechanisms of intervention efficacy and for whom particular interventions are effective. The purpose of this paper is to outline our transdisciplinary approach to understanding individual differences in the effectiveness of a previously successful exercise promotion intervention. We explain the rationale for and operationalization of our framework, characteristics of the study to which we apply the framework, and planned analyses. By embracing a transdisciplinary orientation for individual differences important in the prediction of physical activity (spanning molecular approaches, animal models, human laboratory models, and social psychological models), we hope to have a better understanding of characteristics of individuals that are important in the adoption and maintenance of physical activity.     

The Relevance of Big Five Trait Content in Behavior to Subjective Authenticity: Do High Levels of Within‐Person Behavioral Variability Undermine or Enable Authenticity Achievement?

ABSTRACT Individuals vary their behavior from moment to moment a great deal, often acting “out of character” for their traits. This article investigates the consequences for authenticity. We compared 2 hypotheses—trait consistency, that individuals feel most authentic when acting in a way consistent with their traits; and state‐content significance, that some ways of acting feel more authentic because of their content and consequences, regardless of the actor's corresponding traits. Three studies using experience‐sampling methodology in laboratory and natural settings, with participants ages 18–51, strongly supported the state‐content significance hypothesis and did not support the trait‐consistency hypothesis. Authenticity was consistently associated with acting highly extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and intellectual, regardless of the actor's traits. Discussion focuses on possible implications for within‐person variability in behavior and for the nature of the self‐concept.     

Neoliberalism,Black Masculinity,and Black Male Youth: The Value Of Transdisciplinary Studies To Urban Educators

Drawing on Critical Race Theory and a transdisciplinary framework, this article considers how hegemonic neoliberal discourses contribute to and reinforce negative constructions of Black masculinity and the implications for educating Black male youth (BMY). Neoliberal secondary educational reforms of the last three decades in Ontario, which have resulted in heightened standardization in schools and promote norms of individual attainment, competition, and social control, have served to intensify the stigmatization and alienation BMY. In response to the interlocking racial, gendered, and class oppression they experience within the prevailing neoliberal context, many BMY have increasingly embraced a defensively situated resistant Black masculinity. We argue that, rather than viewing the communities and counternarratives of BMY as sites of deficiency, educators need to conceptualize the experiential knowledge of such young people as that which can nourish transdisciplinary knowledge production and be integrated into classroom curricula and pedagogy. Inviting the cultural wealth of BMY into school can help bridge the divide between schools and the communities of such youth, thereby making mainstream schooling more inclusive by diversifying curricula, democratizing the classroom, and challenging the neoliberalization of education. The authors highlight Hip-Hop as an example of cultural wealth that illuminates the knowledge and lived realities of BMY and can be utilized by urban educators to promote academic engagement and intercultural exchange in classrooms.     

Towards a synthesis of Art,Science and Spirituality—Notes on transdisciplinarity

This article, originally meant for an Auroville publication, consists mainly, besides the quotations, of a wide range of suggestions related to a transcultural approach to various questions raised by transdisciplinary research. All these suggestions converge on a central focus; the virtual reality of a subject/object interaction that eludes narrow disciplinary restrictions as well as rigid cultural definitions. Here, significantly, etymology seems to lead towards mythical cultural watersheds, just as philology has been offering clues to some fundamental philosophical discoveries, from Nietsche to G. Colli. The recent impact of Orientalist studies leads further into the same initiatic dimension, wherein metaphysics, ontology, aesthetics, linguistics, cosmology and psychology, all blend in a continuum of psychic experience, while variations of conscious awareness could only be described, and not sharply differentiated.

All this would point, not only to the emergence of new cognitive methods, but also to correspondingly adequate means of expression. A transcultural approach could, moreover, provide vital links between today's originality and the spiritual traditions of the past, adding thus a sense of cultural continuity to our endeavours in understanding evolution.     

Lacuna in Sankara studies: A thousand teachings (Upadeśasāhasri)

In an important text, A Thousand Teachings, sometimes overlooked by scholars, Sankara expounds non‐dualist religion. This article analyses Sankara's thought for its theoretical and practical perspectives. First, the discussion views non‐duality from the viewpoint of ignorance. This pluralistic/dualistic perspective obscures the unenlightened seeker's vision of the Ultimate Truth. Secondly, the study examines Sankara's introduction of a transitional idea, Unevolved Name‐and‐Form (avyākrte nāmarūpe). Such an idea assists the seeker's intellectual progress from the state of ignorance to a rational understanding leading toward nonduality (Advaita Vedānta). Finally, the exposition clarifies Sankara's expression of the “knowledge of Brahman”. This fulfilling wisdom affects a transformation of the life experience of the unenlightened. Subsequently disciplined in meditation (parisamkhyāna), the persistent seeker develops into an experiencer of the non‐duality (advaitavāda).     

On the Cross‐Cultural Replicability of the Resilient,Undercontrolled, and Overcontrolled Personality Types

Personality types reflect typical configurations of personality attributes within individuals. Over the last 20 years, researchers have identified a set of three replicable personality types: resilient (R), undercontrolled (U), and overcontrolled (O) types. In this study, we examined the cross‐cultural replicability of the RUO types in Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United States. Personality types were identified using cluster analyses of Big Five profiles in large samples of college students from Italy (n = 322), the United States (n = 499), Spain (n = 420), and Poland (n = 235). Prior to clustering the profiles, the measurement invariance of the Big Five measure across samples was tested. We found evidence for the RUO types in all four samples. The three‐cluster solution showed a better fit over alternative solutions and had a relatively high degree of cross‐cultural generalizability. The RUO types are evident in samples from four countries with distinct linguistic and cultural traditions. Results were discussed in light of the importance of considering how traits are organized within individuals for advancing contemporary personality psychology.     

Intra‐active refractions

Responding to the analyses that Andreas Losch and Lucas John Mix offer regarding Living with Tiny Aliens: The Image of God for the Anthropocene, this article begins to address how their respective concerns regarding ratiocentric and anthropocentric ideas haunt the construction of a planetary account of the imago Dei. The article then introduces a subsequent line of critique not mentioned by Losch or Mix related to decentering the human individual from accounts of the imago Dei in order to highlight an ongoing challenge for transdisciplinary theological projects that involve astrobiology.     

Sustainable Technologies and Transdisciplinary Futures: From Collaborative Design to Digital Fabrication

This paper argues for hands-on, contextual and problem-solving collaborations, that is, for a transdisciplinary approach that establishes direct connections between social and technical disciplines. It is based on our experience as a team of researchers at the Vitruvius Fab Lab (Digital Fabrication Laboratory) of ISCTE-IUL (University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal). The paper presents a particular research and learning initiative–STTF2013 Summer School ‘Sustainable Technologies and Transdisciplinary Futures: From Collaborative Design to Digital Fabrication’, which served as a testbed for our transdisciplinary, critical and open approach. We address its rationale and main challenges, while also discussing recommendations for other transdisciplinary projects striving to integrate social and technical disciplines in research and innovation.     

The traveling idea of Islamic Protestantism: a study of Iranian Luthers

This article examines some religious ideas of three prominent Iranian intellectuals: Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, Ali Sharī ^c ati, and Hashem Aghajari. They are considered Iranian Luthers for their deep appreciation of Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth-century in Europe, and their calls for Islamic Protestantism in Iran. However, this article is not intended to compare two religious reformations in Europe and Iran, but rather to study the traveling idea of Islamic Protestantism from al-Afghānī and Sharī ^c ati, to Aghajari in different situations and periods, and in response to different challenges. Edward Said's ‘traveling theory’ is used to analyze the dynamic historical movement of Islamic Protestantism ‘from person to person, from situation to situation, and from one period to another’. The traveling idea of Islamic Protestantism from al-Afghānī, Sharī ^c ati, to Aghajari, then creates the chain of intellectual transmission from the old generation to a newer one. As with ‘traveling theory reconsidered’, however, there is also the possibility that the idea of Islamic Protestantism will be reinterpreted and reinvigorated by a newer generation.     

Schiller and the Dance of Beauty∗

In the first volume of his Spinoza and Other Heretics entitled The Marrano of Reason, Yovel proposes a different cultural context for the study of Spinoza: the Marrano mentalité. Living as crypto‐Jews in a Catholic Iberian world, the Marranos developed a certain life‐style that had specific religious and literary modes of expression: heterodox tendencies, the use of equivocation, and the zealous search for salvation, which often assumed secular forms. These Marrano traits are, Yovel claims, found in Spinoza as well, who was the son of a Marrano and brought up in the Marrano milieu of the Amsterdam Jewish quarter. In this essay I challenge this interpretation of Spinoza by stressing both the generally orthodox character of Marrano religiosity and the significant differences between Spinoza and the few Marrano heretics by whom he was supposedly influenced. I argue that Spinoza not only rejected Marrano orthodoxy but was already inhabiting an intellectual framework that differed considerably from the marginal deviant Marrano pattern that Yovel focuses upon.     

The rich are different: Unravelling the perceived and self‐reported personality profiles of high‐net‐worth individuals

Beyond money and possessions, how are the rich different from the general population? Drawing on a unique sample of high‐net‐worth individuals from Germany (≥1 million Euro in financial assets; N = 130), nationally representative data (N = 22,981), and an additional online panel (N = 690), we provide the first direct investigation of the stereotypically perceived and self‐reported personality profiles of high‐net‐worth individuals. Investigating the broad personality traits of the Big Five and the more specific traits of narcissism and locus of control, we find that stereotypes about wealthy people's personality are accurate albeit somewhat exaggerated and that wealthy people can be characterized as stable, flexible, and agentic individuals who are focused more on themselves than on others.     

The adaptive value of personality differences revealed by small island population dynamics

Whether differences in personality among populations really exist and, if so, whether they are only due to cultural and linguistic differences or have a genetically selected adaptive value, is a controversial issue. In this research, we compared three Italian populations living on three small archipelagos in the Tyrrhenian Sea (n = 993), with their corresponding neighbouring mainlanders (n = 598), i.e. sharing the same geographical origin, culture and language. We used an adjective‐based Big Five questionnaire in order to measure personality traits in four categories of individuals for each archipelago/mainland population: (1) original islanders; (2) non‐original islanders; (3) mainlanders and (4) immigrants to the islands. We further analysed original and non‐original islanders who had or had not emigrated from the islands. We found that islanders had different personality traits from mainlanders, the former being more conscientious and emotionally stable and less extraverted and open to experience. We also found that the subgroup of islanders whose ancestors had inhabited their island for about 20 generations in isolation (original islanders, n = 624) were less extraverted and open to experience than immigrants (n = 193). In contrast, immigrants retained the typical personality profile of the mainland populations. Lastly, emigrants from the islands (n = 209) were significantly more extraverted and open to experience than original and non‐original islanders who had never left their island (n = 741). We hypothesise that population differences in extraversion and openness to experience are more probably related to genetic differences which evolved rapidly, presumably through an active gene flow produced by selective emigration from the islands. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is this a good time? Political activism and other in the temenos

This paper discusses raciality and Africanist culture as elements of the analytical clinical experience. The history of American Jungian psychology, and its relationship with the African diaspora, is reviewed with a perspective that seeks to deepen understanding of racism as an aspect of psychoanalytical institutional life. An attempt to separate political activism from the clinical setting is explored with consideration of the necessary intertwining relationship between socialization, racial identity and racism. Diversity and inclusion are becoming cultural signature markers of clinical work with individuals who have oftentimes, within the psychoanalytical clinical setting, been described due to ethnicity, as other. Political activism such as the Black Lives Matter movement stretches consciousness towards an insistence that blackness matters, skin colour matters and the lives of Africanist individuals matter. This paper reflects on cultural racial identity, the influence of politics on the individual, and the effects of these on the analytical relationship.