Religion and rights: Is there still room for Christianity at the table?

Drawing on recent discussions about issues relating to sexual and reproductive rights in the Jamaican print and broadcast media, this article highlights the interplay between Christianity, activism and rights talk. This interplay is being framed in the local print media as a debate between two dominating hegemonic forces: on the one hand, between more ‘conservative’ and ‘fundamentalist’ Christian theological beliefs and, on the other hand, those who subscribe to what may be characterised as more ‘liberal secular fundamentalist’ viewpoints. This polarisation ignores some conciliatory scenarios that exist within other segments of Caribbean societies, theology included, that provide beneficial approaches to rights talk and work. The endeavours of some Jamaican church folks have converged with those of progressive right defenders, or, where such endeavours predate contemporary rights activism or have no direct contact with it, they might at least be viewed as benign by those who espouse such activism.     

The Importance of Fostering Ownership During Medical Training

There is a need to consider the impact of the new resident-hours regulations on the variety of aspects of medical education and patient care. Most existing literature about this subject has focused on the role of fatigue in resident performance, education, and health care delivery. However, there are other possible consequences of these new regulations, including a negative impact on decision ownership. Our main assumption of is that increased shift work in medicine can decrease ownership of treatment decisions and impact negatively on quality of care. We review some potential components of decision ownership in treatment context and suggest possible ways in which the absence of decision ownership may decrease the quality of medical decision making. The article opens with the definition of decision ownership and the overview of some contextual factors that may contribute to the development of ownership in medical residency. The following section discusses decision ownership in medical care from the perspective of “diffusion of responsibility.” We question the quality of choices made within narrow decisional frames. We also compare isolated and interrelated choices, assuming that residents make more isolated decisions during their shifts. Lastly, we discuss the consequences of decreased decision ownership impacting the delivery of health care.     

自我表征的可塑性:基于橡胶手错觉的研究

自我识别是人类自我觉知的行为标记。传统方法认为稳定的自我表征是自我识别的基础。随着对橡胶手错觉及一系列自我表征和自我识别错觉的揭示,这一能让人将外部客体感知为自身一部分的错觉研究使得我们能够以多感官整合的方式来研究自我表征和自我识别。拥有感和自主感被认为是我们进行自我识别的两类基本体验,本文对一系列橡胶手错觉范式研究的系统回顾表明,拥有感和自主感会发生改变,这说明人的自我表征是可变的和可塑的。     

The emotional relations of children's participation rights in diverse social and spatial contexts: Advancing the field

Children's participation rights, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), have been a popular area of research, policy and practice for decades. Despite a great deal of interest and activity, participation rights have posed a particular challenge to implement. In response, researchers have consistently called for more in-depth and nuanced analyses of the way participatory rights are actually lived and experienced by children and young people, within the complexity of interdependent relationships. However, there has been surprisingly little focus on the emotional relations of children's participation rights. The analytical links between emotions and participation rights are rarely the focus and, where emotions are discussed, they are rarely discussed as a central concern in their own right. This article provides a review of the field and identifies three ways in which making emotions a central concern can help to advance debates on children's participation rights: by helping to unsettle ‘traditional’ constructions of the child-adult binary, by increasing sensitivity to ethical and safeguarding issues, and by making visible and challenging intersectional power relations.     

Taking emotions seriously: Fun and pride in participatory research

The article focuses on emotions in participatory research with children and young people. We approach emotions as a generative site for exposing assumptions about participation, as well as participation rights more widely. Our reflections emerged out of revisiting two participatory research projects involving young people (aged 14 to 25) and identifying the significant, but under-articulated importance of emotions in this work. Research is often planned and described in emotionally ‘neutral’ terms, although participatory research necessarily relies on building relationships and engaging emotionally in a research process with others. In our own projects we retrospectively identify and trace the circulation of two salient emotions of fun and pride. We identified fun as an explicit emotion often invoked in the research process, but often under-theorised, and treated almost instrumentally, as something necessary to make the research process flow. The project with young queer women drew our attention to questions of pride, and the role of pride as a transformative emotion which draws our attention to what matters in young people's lives, particularly when it is not anticipated. We argue for the analytical value of emotions, not only as a key component of participatory research design, but also as a site for analysis and knowledge production, if we are to explore seriously research that is intended to respect and support children and young people's participation rights.     

‘Thank God We Are in Syria!’ Modernization,Interfaith Relations and Women’s Rights in Syria Before the ‘Arab Spring’ (2000–2010)

The status of women is generally considered a measure of ‘modernity’ and it has often been exploited by the West to highlight the ‘backwardness’ of non-Western countries and to justify colonialism and ‘civilization’ endeavours. The question of women’s rights and its connection to ‘modernity’, however, is not simple. This article considers the example of Syria immediately before the revolts of 2011, and highlights that the government’s approach to the issue of women’s rights appears to have been inspired by a peculiar idea of ‘modernity’ that is not in line with the Western mainstream view, because it is not based on the centrality of the individual and does not include a view of secularization that underestimates the social and political importance of religious beliefs. Reflections on the peculiarities of the Syrian approach may help avoid simplifications and – more generally – may help us reflect on the premise of the mainstream Western approach to the issue in countries considered as ‘other’.     

Eugene Carson Blake: Renewal in Church and Society

This article reviews the ecumenical involvement of Eugene Carson Blake, the second general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 1966 to 1972, focusing on the support for the US civil rights movement and rejection of racism that he brought with him to the WCC. It also examines his role at the WCC's 4th Assembly, in Uppsala, which is often seen as a turning point in ecumenical history.     

Making All Things New

The relationship between the civil rights movement and the World Council of Churches was personified in the links between Martin Luther King Jr and Eugene Carson Blake, both of whom were known for heightening the spirit of prophetic Christianity through their involvements in the ecumenical movement and the mounting struggles against global poverty and the Vietnam War. As 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Uppsala assembly and King's assassination, this article focuses on the contributions of King and Blake to the kind of ecumenical movement that united peoples of faith in cooperative, concrete efforts to eliminate racism, poverty, and war. The central argument is that these joint efforts were still unfolding at the time of King's untimely death.     

Evaluating the impact of human rights education on the adjustment of Greek primary school students

Human rights education has an encouraging effect on children's school routine. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of a 12-session transformative human rights education intervention in improving children's school adjustment. Participants were 340 Greek primary school students assigned to intervention group (n = 187) and control group (n = 153). All members completed a written questionnaire 1 week before the implementation of the intervention, measuring their knowledge of human rights, school engagement, perceptions of the school environment, interpersonal relationships, empathy and perceptions, attitudes and feelings towards school. The completion process of the same questionnaire was repeated 1 week after the termination of the intervention and 4 months later. The results showed that the intervention was particularly beneficial as the intervention group members demonstrated a significant increase in their knowledge of human rights, school engagement, perceptions of the school environment, empathy and school liking, while experiencing a significant decrease in school avoidance and loneliness. Members of the control group did not report any significant improvement over time. The study's implications for future research on school-based human rights interventions are discussed.     

Protection of Children from Physical Maltreatment in Canada: An Evaluation of the Supreme Court's Definition of Reasonable Force

In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada set out seven criteria to distinguish reasonable from abusive corrective force with children. We tested the validity of those criteria by mapping them onto a nationally representative data set of substantiated cases of physical abuse. The court's criteria defining reasonable force actually characterized the majority of cases of child physical maltreatment in Canada. These cases were more likely to be characterized by the use of spanking in the family than by each of the criteria set out by the Supreme Court. One in five cases was not characterized by any of the court's criteria, and virtually none were characterized by all of them. The findings provide stronger support for abolishing physical punishment than for legal attempts to narrow its definition.