Love Your Neighbour as Yourself

This paper examines the many ways interreligious dialogue and interreligious relationship-building interact with and serve how we live out – with others – the moral core of the Christian faith, which is the love of God and neighbour. I take as an example the contemporary Poor People’s Campaign in the United States. The campaign originated with the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and others involved in the civil rights movements of the early 1960s. While the Poor People’s Campaign was initiated by and is led by Christians, it is intentionally inclusive of people of many different faiths and those with no particular faith, all of whom share the commitment to love and to serve the poor.     

Nature-Driven Economy through Sustainable Communities

Sustainable development will shortly become the core issue of our everyday life. This article argues that only a nature-driven economy and society could give a final answer to sustainability questions.     

The Challenge of Information Technology for Literary Studies

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies the challenge and shows how research done on the Kierkegaard corpus is meeting the challenge. It presents eighteen studies, tracing the development of computer based Kierkegaard research, and suggesting that the computer might be used to produce more than word counts and locations of words or strings of texts. The study introduces the idea of a multi-dimensional concordance as evidenced by recent research on Fear and Trembling.     

Modeling human dialogue with computers

Conversation, talk, the communicative process, can be compared to the symphonic play of a piece of music. There is an orchestra, the musicians, whose tones and notes must flow, complement and harmonize with one another. There is a main theme. As the music builds variations on the theme are played, and new themes and subthemes are introduced. The basinett responds to the strings, the bass emphasizes the mood of the violin, while the french horn adds a new melody. The subtlety and evenness of flow, the seeming simplicity of the piece, the rich interleaving of subdevelopments, variations, tangents, and recapitulations, are what make a piece of music great.Coherent communication is much the same. It looks easy. It flows. It seems effortless. In reality, of course, it is rich and complex, in both form and content. As in music, conversants may begin a conversation slowly, tentatively, with some simple (or complex) topic in mind. Slowly the momentum builds, the connections surface, and the themes become defined. As in music, these themes are then elaborated upon in various ways. Topic elaborations often spawn their own variations. New themes and subthemes are introduced. All the while, as in music, original themes reappear and are interwoven with the new ones. The twists and turns of the conversation seem to occur effortlessly.In music, there is usually one composer in control of which instrument plays next; one composer who is in charge of what the instrument will say. There is a single coordinator of theme introductions, developments, variations, and interweavings. The composition is done off-line and usually involves editing and re-editing for flaws. In discourse, however, we have on-line development with multiple parties responsible for flow coordination. All parties have to organize their own turns, themes, and variations, in addition to their being able to integrate these items into co-conversants'.In their book, Understanding Computers and Cognition, Winograd and Flores (1987) cite the following from Gadamer (Winograd and Flores, 1987, p. 32):It is not so much our judgments as it is our prejudices that constitute our being ... the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something — whereby what we encounter says something to us. (Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 1976, p. 9)     

Democratic classroom communities

I explore democractic communities using the classroom community as a metaphor. I suggest that democracies do justice to individuals as well as groups, because of the democratic focus on the interconnected, interdependent, interactive relationship that exists between selves and communities. However, the concept of community has problems and contradictions as well. Through the examples of Summerhill and Montessori schools it is easier to see a necessary quality of democratic communities that needs highlighting. That quality is caring. Making the connection between democracy and caring is what this article uniquely offers to the lively discussion on communities and selves.     

Drug addicts in therapy—changes in life space in the course of one year

In a residential community treatment setting, moods and emotional states of drug addicts were explored over a 1‐year period. The specific form of treatment of heroin addiction employed in the communities is based on the importance of interpersonal relationships for psychosocial transition. Twenty‐nine participants reported current mood, emotions, attributions, and motive activation using a time‐sampling diary for 2 weeks at the beginning of the treatment, and 6 and 12 months later. Results show an increase in positive emotions, and in subjective strength and freedom. Furthermore, participants report higher self‐esteem and use less fatalistic attributions. This is interpreted as indicating successful transition processes in terms of higher autonomy, a more extended life space and increased levels of realism. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Multidimensional Nature of Social Cohesion: Psychological Sense of Community, Attraction, and Neighboring

Items from the Neighborhood Cohesion Instrument were completed by 1,732 individuals from a random sample of households in 20 rural communities across Canada during the summer of 2001. Confirmatory factor analysis of the NCI items based on polychoric correlations and weighted least squares estimation found three underlying latent variables. Although items were related to the three latent variables in a somewhat different manner than they were in Buckner's original study, the same three latent variables were evident, providing convincing evidence that social cohesion has at least three subscales: psychological sense of community, neighboring, and attraction. Correlations between subscales were relatively high (between .67 and .87). Intraclass correlation coefficients for the three scales were .115, .127, and .112. In addition, the community means differed on different subscales in a manner that related to recognized characteristics of the communities. Thus the subscales are appropriate measures for both individuals and communities and can be recommended for further research on social cohesion.     

实践社区成员的成就动机对知识传播的影响

为了研究成就动机对实践社区及其成员的知识传播过程的影响,采用自编实践社区成员成就动机问卷以及知识传播过程与效果问卷对重庆、银川、南京、上海等地企业的430名实践社区成员进行测量,研究了成就动机对知识传播的影响.结果表明:问卷具有良好的信度和效度;不同性别被试的社会取向成就动机存在显著差异;工作年限为11-15年的被试社会取向成就动机识显著高于其他组别;自我取向成就动机对知识传播的路径系数除"自我取向-区内吸收"外均达到显著性水平,即对"知识传播投入程度"、"社区外知识获取能力"及"知识传播效果"的预测作用都是正向的;社会取向成就动机仅对知识传播效果产生显著影响.     

互联网使用对共情的影响

随着信息技术的发展,互联网已成为当今社会人际交往的新平台。网络环境和现实环境不同,它具有匿名、便捷和易控制等特点。共情在人际交往中扮演重要的角色,它是指对他人情感的感同身受。互联网环境下共情的研究逐渐受到学者的重视。现有研究表明,不同的互联网使用对共情产生不同的影响:在线暴力视频游戏会降低共情,而在线亲社会视频游戏则对共情产生积极影响;网络社区的使用为网络中人们表露共情提供了重要平台;过度网络使用会对共情产生负面影响。但现有研究比较零散,还存在一些不足。未来要结合多种研究方法进行更多的应用研究,同时加强理论建构。