SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION,HEALING, AND ALTRUISM: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

This essay introduces the five articles that follow, whose aim is to show how altruism emerges out of spiritual transformation and is integral to healing process in four kinds of ritual healing systems—popular, folk, an indigenous religious healing tradition, and complementary and alternative medicine represented by consciousness transformation movements. In this introduction I situate these largely marginalized religious and spiritual practices within the context of the religion‐science discourse, which has focused for the most part on the relationship between the established, mainstream religions and the dominant biomedical system. Antecedents of two of these types of religious practices, Spiritism and consciousness transformation movements, were part of the development of the psychological sciences in the nineteenth century but lost ground in the twentieth. Despite discrimination and persistent negative attitudes on the part of the established religions and biomedicine, these healing traditions have not only survived through the twentieth century but appear to have gained both followers and interest in the twenty‐first. In future decades, at least for complementary and alternative medical practices and perhaps also for spirit healing centers, there may be a reversal in status through greater acceptance of their unique combination of scientific and religious perspectives.     

意识形态的合法性诠释功能及其限制

意识形态最主要的政治功能就是为统治秩序提供一种合法性辩护,唤起被统治者对既有政治秩序的合法性信仰。但是,意识形态的合法性功能是有限度的,政治合法性具有一定的由政治秩序本身决定的不依统治者意志为转移的客观性规定,意识形态的合法性诠释不能违背政治统治最基本的道义原则。同时,意识形态功能的发挥还必须同其它合法性策略有机地结合起来。在建构合法性的政治实践中滥用意识形态,往往会进一步加剧政治合法性危机,导致严重的政治后果。     

Modern racism and neo‐liberal globalization: the discourses of plausible deniability and their multiple functions

Recently, considerable energy has been focused on extending the mandate of anti‐racism. Modern (or symbolic) racism and discursive psychology have argued that racism has taken on more covert forms. A longitudinal examination of newspaper coverage of two important race‐related newsprint stories in New Zealand (involving Winston Peters, Tuku Morgan and New Zealand First) identified discourses of ‘plausible deniability’ involved in warranting or defending statements about minorities against accusations of racism. We discuss implications of symbolic politics for minorities who are perceived to have violated societal norms, and show how nationalism is used as a framework for denying racist intent. Analyses of historical context show how ‘race’ forms only one lens from which to view issues of intergroup relations. While the press was sensitive to issues of racism, they demonstrated little awareness of concurrent issues of neo‐liberal economics, or market fundamentalism. Anti‐racism may be motivated not only by the ideals of egalitarianism, but also by underlying dynamics of economic power in a global economy. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rethinking Accountability in the Context of Human Rights

Within liberal democratic theory, ‘democratic accountability’ denotes an aggregative method for linking political decisions to citizens’ preferences through representative institutions. Could such a notion be transferred to the global context of human rights? Various obstacles seem to block such a transfer: there are no ‘world citizens’ as such; many people in need of human rights are not citizens of constitutional democratic states; and the aggregative methods that are supposed to sustain the link are often used in favour of nation-state strategic action rather than human rights. So what could accountability mean in relation to human rights? This article argues that discourse theory offers resources for approaching these problems and for rethinking a normative notion of accountability in relation to human rights. It is suggested that accountability should link political decisions to universal agreements through global rights institutions and that the link should be sustained by deliberative rather than aggregative procedures.     

Gender bias in estimating political expertise

The present study reveals that there is a gender bias in estimates of spouses' political expertise. Data were collected from married couples in one city in north-eastern Japan and the results showed that when all respondents were included, the estimation of spouses' political expertise was moderately accurate. However, while husbands' estimates of the political expertise of their wives were lowered and less accurate, wives' estimates of the political expertise of their husbands were more accurate. The implication of these findings for the political equality of males and females is discussed.     

‘Mutual Obligation’ and ‘New Deal’: Illegitimate and Unjustified?

It is now commonplace for governments in Western countries to require the unemployed to work in exchange for their unemployment benefits. In this article I raise some serious doubts about the most promising and philosophically interesting defence of this argument, which relies on the ‘principle of reciprocity’. I argue that it is seriously unclear whether the obligations imposed on welfare claimants by ‘workfare’ schemes are legitimate and justified according to the principle of reciprocity. I do this by reconstructing the arguments for the obligations of the unemployed put forward in both the United Kingdom and Australia.     

"It's Us Against the World": How Distrust in Americans versus People-In-General Shapes Competitive Foreign Policy Preferences

Previous research has uncovered links between generalized distrust and preferences for competitive (vs. cooperative) action. However, based on individuals' tendency to hold consistent attitudes and to believe that their own political preferences are morally legitimate, it was hypothesized that the direction of the relationship between distrust and competitive foreign policy preferences would depend on which category individuals had in mind: Americans or people. Two correlational studies with American participants were consistent with this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that distrust in Americans versus people had qualitatively different relationships with support for competitive policy preferences (i.e., immigration control, militaristic action). Study 2 found that when the covariance between distrust in Americans and people was controlled, distrust in Americans predicted opposition to torture of suspected terrorists, whereas distrust in people predicted support for torture of suspected terrorists. Moreover, individual discrepancies between distrust in Americans versus people uniquely predicted support for torture. Finally, mediational analyses in both studies indicated that political conservatism explained the effects between distrust in Americans versus people and competitive policy preferences. It is argued that distrust in Americans and distrust in people are distinct but complementary bases of Americans' moral-political reasoning.     

Civic Knowledge of High School Students in Israel: Personal and Contextual Determinants

Past research on civic education suggests that students' performance is largely influenced by individual socioeconomic background and motivational factors. There has been little attention to the effects of school and classroom ideological and social attributes, such as the socioeconomic make-up of the school or classroom, or how interested in politics are a student's classmates. The results of the present study support the contention that contextual effects play a vital role in determining students' civic knowledge scores. Analysis of Israeli 11^th graders' performance on the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) civic knowledge test shows that while individual backgrounds and motivations play a significant role, school and classroom contexts greatly contribute to civic knowledge acquisition.     

Expertise, Evaluative Motivation, and the Structure of Citizens' Ideological Commitments

Political psychologists have typically argued that ideological commitments are structured in a bipolar fashion, where a positive evaluation of conservative objects implies a negative evaluation of liberal objects (and vice versa). Individual differences in conformity to this pattern are usually attributed to an ability-related variable, i.e., political expertise . Departing from this strict focus on ability, this study examines the hypotheses that an important motivational variable—the need to evaluate , or the desire to form opinions of objects as "good" or "bad"—would (1) predict deviations from ideological bipolarity, even controlling for expertise; and (2) moderate the relationship between expertise and deviations from bipolarity. Data from two national surveys provided evidence for these hypotheses and indicated that the results extended to deviations from bipolarity in evaluations of presidential candidates and political parties.     

Need for Cognitive Closure and Conservative Political Beliefs: Differential Mediation by Personal Worldviews

The paper investigates the relationships between motivated social cognition (need for cognitive closure), personal worldviews (traditional, modern, or postmodern), and conservative political beliefs. The relationships were analyzed in a sample of 189 Polish adults. High need for closure was associated with support for both traditional and modern worldviews. Although different in content (i.e., endorsing different values and assumptions about the methods and limits of cognition), the worldviews share similar formal characteristics: Both assume the absolute nature of values and the existence of definite truths. However, acceptance of the traditional worldview was related to political conservatism (i.e., support for nationalist and isolationist opinions and a stronger role for traditional, religious values in public life), whereas acceptance of the modern worldview was associated with a rejection of conservative political beliefs. Moreover, personal worldviews mediated the relationship between need for closure and political beliefs: Support for social conservatism was mediated by acceptance of the traditional worldview, whereas acceptance of the modern worldview predicted rejection of conservative values.