Engaging Ethics

Abstract

Reflections Upon Reflections

Research As Praxis: Lessons From Programmatic Research In Therapeutic Practice Research in Therapeutic Practice edited by Lisa Tsoi Hoshmand and Jack Martin New York: Teachers College Press, 1995, 252 pp.

Revisioning Supervision

Visual and Active Supervision New York: Norton, 1995, 256 pp. by Antony Williams     

Engaging with Buddhism

In his new book, Jay Garfield invites philosophers of all persuasions to engage with Buddhist philosophy. In part I of this paper, I raise some questions on behalf of the philosopher working in the analytic tradition about the way in which Buddhist philosophy understands itself. I then turn, in part II, to look at what Orthodox Buddhism has to say about the self. I examine the debate between the Buddhist position discussed and endorsed by Garfield and that of a lesser-known school that he mentions only briefly, the Pudgalavāda (“Personalists”). I suggest that the views of the Pudgalavādins are strikingly similar to a position held, in the twentieth century analytic philosophy, by Peter Strawson.     

Engaging religious experience in stroke rehabilitation

In this article, I respond to the problem of engaging with religious experience in health care environments. In particular, I illuminate the relational aspects of religious experience in the context of stroke rehabilitation by providing a commentary on data gathered from existing qualitative research and personal narratives in the acute and rehabilitation phases of stroke recovery. In so doing, I address the necessary balance of empathy and alterity in the art of resonant listening. I also provide some critical reflections on interdisciplinary approaches to engaging with religious experience with reference to a largely overlooked group of health care professionals—hospital chaplains.     

Engaging with Women's Words and their Silences

In studying the 1984 pogrom and its aftermath, I have attempted to capture the voices of women of succeeding generations of the victim families and to gauge some sense of the arduous path which these women have had to tread on. In the present paper, I have examined and assessed the ways and means which women survivors of the 1984 pogrom have relied on to cope with their sense of trauma and hurt, and to negotiate everyday existence. In accounts seeking to document and map the experiences of trauma survivors, the themes which they raise and the issues that they speak of are taken into cognisance, while the gaps in their speech often remain unnoticed and unexplained. But these silences and gaps need to be recognised and highlighted as much as the speech of the survivors. Women survivors of 1984 also do not speak of their own agency, leaving it mostly unarticulated in words. Gauging a sense of this requires going beyond the words that are spoken and attempting, even if tentatively, to unravel and interpret the silences.     

Engaging the Paleolithic Images of Chauvet Cave

The prehistoric artists of Chauvet Cave likely never imagined their drawings would be discovered 35,000 years later, inspiring scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. Scholarship thus far has focused primarily on artistic techniques and material cultural remnants. Although these quantitative studies have revealed important data suggesting the cave’s use as a ritual space, the history and ceremonies of these ancient humans remain a mystery. This article demonstrates that depth psychology may be a valuable discipline for gaining further understanding of the cave’s ancient images. Depth psychologists have argued that the modern human unconscious retains vestiges of the archaic human psyche. In order to explore that premise, the author applies C. G. Jung’s technique of active imagination to selected Paleolithic images from within Chauvet Cave, amplifying the resulting materials in order to better contextualize them within the collective unconscious. Although this qualitative exploration cannot conclusively establish an accurate portrayal of what specific rituals were performed within the ancient cave, it offers potential insight into archaic elements that persist within the modern human psyche. The 1994 rediscovery of Chauvet Cave thus becomes not just a clue to our past, but a remarkable window upon our present.     

Aesthetics and Affect: Engaging Energy Communities

ABSTRACT

Engaging publics in participatory events has become a central means to introducing lay people's voices into processes of technoscientific innovation and governance. However, little attention has been paid to the role of aesthetics, especially in terms of opening up potential ways of critically and creatively engaging with technoscientific matters of concern. The terms semblamatic and matters of potentially are proposed as addressing this dimension of aesthetics. Drawing on practice-based design research, a probe workshop with members of energy communities was implemented. Three probe exercises served to open up potential re-articulations of such core themes as energy, communities and futures. Our goals were to examine the whether such probes enabled semblamatic responses and the emergence of matters of potentiality. Findings were mixed. The continued retention of standard meanings of these core themes suggested that such events can be anaesthetic, blunting access to the semblamatic aspects of engagement. Conversely, there was some opening up in which the core themes were creatively re-articulated. The present perspective, with its three novel terms - semblamatic, matters of potentiality, and anaesthetic - might prove useful in alerting scholars to the complex role of aesthetics in the methodological and analytic practices entailed in engagement with publics.     

Class in the Classroom: Engaging Hidden Identities

Using Marcuse's theory of the total mobilization of advanced technology society along the lines of what he calls "the performance principle," I attempt to describe the complex composition of class oppression in the classroom. Students conceive of themselves as economic units, customers pursuing neutral interests in a morally neutral, socio-economic system of capitalist competition. The classic, unreflective conception of the classroom responds to this by implicitly endorsing individualism and ideals of humanist citizenship. While racism and cultural diversity have come to count as elements of liberal intelligence in most college curricula, attempts to theorize these aspects of social and individual identity and place them in a broader content of class appear radical and inconsistent with the humanistic notion that we all have control over who we are and what we achieve. But tags such as "radical" and "unrealistic" mark a society based on the performance principle. Marcuse allows us to recognize a single author behind elements of psychology, metaphysics, and capitalism. The fact that bell hooks hits upon a similar notion suggests that we might use Marcuse's theory of the truly liberatory potential of imagination to transform and reconceive our classrooms so that the insidious effects of class, racism, and individualistic apathy might be subverted. Specifically, I outline and place into this theoretical context three concrete pedagogical practices: (a) the use of the physical space of the classroom; (b) the performance of community through group readings and short full-class ceremonies, and (c) the symbolic modeling represented by interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. All three of these practices engage students in ways that co-curricularly subvert class (and, incidentally, race divisions) and allow students to imagine, and so engage in, political action for justice as they see it.     

Engaging families in therapy: A pilot study

Engagement is reviewed as a central component of marriage and family therapy and presented as a viable means of assessing the nature and outcome of therapy. A tentative model containing six differentiated engagement categories is described and documented with clinical data and case examples. Conclusions drawn indicate engagement has merit as a construct for evaluating marriage and family therapy and as a means of generating process hypotheses in research. Recommendations to validate, refine and revise the model are posited and further research relative to engagement is advocated.James P. Trotzer, Ph.D. is Professor of Counselor Education at the University of Visconsin-River Falls, River Falls, Wisconsin 54022, marriage and family therapist in private practice     

Engaging Australian Aboriginal youth in mental health services

It is currently estimated that up to 40% of Aboriginal youth (aged 13–17) will experience some form of mental health problem within their lifetime. Of greater concern is the evidence that indicates that Aboriginal youth fail to access mental health services commensurate with this need. This is due, in part, to the characteristically monocultural nature of service delivery of existing services. This paper overviews a model that has been developed specifically for the engagement of Aboriginal youth (aged 13–17 years) in mental health settings. Importantly, a mix of urban (N = 43) and rural (N = 68) Aboriginal youth were represented within the sample to determine its efficacy across different language and tribal groups. The model proved to be effective in engaging 97% of Aboriginal youth (n = 108), with only a small number not effectively engaged (n = 3). The model provides a foundation for the further development of evidence‐based models of best practice that have so far provided to be elusive within this complex field.     

Suffering the Promise of God: Engaging Oswald Bayer

This article examines Oswald Bayer's wide‐ranging constructive appropriation and application of Luther's theology of the Word. Bayer grounds theology in the divine word of promise, understanding theology and the Christian life as a vita receptiva in which human action is, from first to last, responsive. He pits Luther against modern theological evasions of the Word in his insistence on the distinctively Christian pathos of existence, and his ethic of categorical gift reflects this. I conclude with a commendation of Bayer's theology of the Word, a question about the relation between God's revelation and hiddenness and a concern that he may at times compromise the definitive self‐revelation of God in Christ.     

Engaging Diasporas: a Fledgling Role of Cluster Organizations

Malaysia is probably one of the most notable countries in Asia affected by the talent mobility. In spite of important implications of the emigration, this issue is not given the due deliberations. Diaspora has taken a central role in the recent talent management policies of Malaysia. A large number of East Asian economies have benefited from the diaspora employed in the large North American and European clusters. This paper highlights the structural obstacles inhibiting brain circulation in Malaysian context. In the light of the review of successful diaspora stories of China, India, Korea, Philippines, and Taiwan, it elaborates what potential role Malaysia’s diaspora can play in the national development. It is suggested that apart from the national level policies, the industrial cluster organizations can assume the role of networking with Malaysian diaspora abroad in order to leverage their skills, contacts, and finances for cluster challenges.     

Engaging families as experts: collaborative family program development

This article presents the collaborative family program development (CFPD) model, a collaborative research-based approach to creating community-based programs for families. In this approach, families are viewed as experts on the nature of their challenges and on what they desire in a program. This approach is particularly useful in developing programs for families who have experienced social oppression and who may have been reluctant to participate in programs created for them by professionals without their consultation. In contrast, when professionals adopt the stance of respectful learners, families respond by actively engaging in the program development research and in the program created from it. This article describes the nature and complexities of a collaborative program development stance, the unique contribution to community-based program development offered by a family systems focus, and the 10 steps in the CFPD approach. These 10 steps guide movement from initiating the project and forming collaborative professional partnerships to engaging cultural consultants; conducting in-depth research to understand the problems, resources, contexts, and recommendations from the perspective of families who will receive the program and from the perspective of front-line professionals working with these families; transforming research findings into program contents and formats; and implementing, evaluating, revising, and replicating the program. The approach is illustrated by a program called Fresh Start for Families, developed and replicated for families in New York City who are homeless and attempting to move from welfare to work.     

Movable Peace: Engaging the Transnational in Cambodia's Dhammayietra

The Dhammayietra is an annual peace walk in Cambodia that originated at the historic repatriation of refugees in the Thai border camps at the U.N.-monitored transition to democracy in 1992. It situates itself within the discourse and practice of "socially engaged Buddhism" that has gained visibility in Asia and American Buddhism during the last two decades. As Cambodia's particular form of socially engaged Buddhism is marked by refugee return, I will argue that the Dhammayietra's revival of Buddhism in postsocialist Cambodia is only possible because of its transnational formation. Represented as a quintessential Khmer Buddhist response to Cambodia's entrenched conflicts, the networks forged beyond the border of Cambodia have been instrumental in fashioning the face of the Dhammayietra. Though it forges its discursive identity vis a vis the "local" space of the nation, this local space is mobile. Maha Ghosananda's instruction to move "step by step" toward peace reappropriates dangerous mobility—the massive relocations during the Khmer Rouge era, refugee flight, the danger of treading on land fed with mines—and turns walking into a religious act. It is this discursive "move" that loosens the Dhammayietra's ties to the nation and allows it to slip across political and religious borders and ally itself with a diverse network of interfaith peace groups that are its transnational public forum.