Food,faith, social service and institution building: the Annamrita programme of the Hare Krishna movement in India

Based on fieldwork with the Annamrita programme, a food-based social service of ISKCON or the Hare Krishna movement in India, I look at the intricate connection between food, faith, social service and institution building. Formally known as the ISKCON Food Relief Foundation, the Annamrita programme has partnered with the government’s midday meal scheme for school children. From the point of view of sociology of food and sociology of religion, I propose that food is a cultural, moral and emotional investment for ISKCON. I describe how a faith-based social service through the instrument of food becomes a mode of bridging and institution building. The governmentality of this food service and the sacred public–private partnership is a specific kind of cultural and macroeconomic intervention in a resource-limited setting such as India. Camouflaged and embedded in this programme is an element of cultural hegemony and a Krishna consciousness-governed nationalism, with the ideas of the nation as a sacred land. Krishna is considered as the vanguard of sacralisation and the faith messages of ISKCON inevitably accompany the service package.     

A role for affect in the link between episodic simulation and prosociality

Prospection and prosociality are hallmarks of our species. Little is known, however, about how our ability to imagine or simulate specific future events contributes to our capacity for prosociality. Here, we investigated this relationship, revealing how the affective response that arises from a simulated prosocial event motivates a willingness to help a person in need. Across two experiments, people reported being more willing to help in specific situations after simulating future helping events that elicited positive (versus negative or neutral) affect. Positive affect increased engagement of theory of mind for the person in need, which in turn informed prosocial responses. Moreover, the subjective experience of scene imagery and theory of mind systematically couple together depending on the affective valence of future simulations, providing new insight into how affective valence guides a prosocial function of episodic simulation.     

Tradition,morality and community: elaborating Orthodox identity in Putin’s Russia

This paper draws upon a number of official, semi-official and other public texts related to the current views of the Russian Church on social and political issues. Overall, in spite of a variety of opinions and nuances, a certain mainstream becomes apparent, as expressed through this body of texts. The most discussed topics include moral values related to the human body (such as abortion, euthanasia, reproductive technologies and sexuality) and issues such as blasphemy, juvenile courts and new technologies of personal registration for Russian citizens. ‘Traditional morality’ has become the signature discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church which is attempting to construct ‘tradition’ by drawing upon a partly imagined ethos of imperial Russia and the late Soviet Union. Traditional family values are central to the church’s rhetoric. The authors of these texts see a presumed decay of traditional values as the main danger that must be opposed. They usually trace the source of this danger directly to the contemporary West. By contrast, they see Russia as a protective shield against these global influences. Either consciously or involuntarily, they translate their religious language of traditional morality into a political rhetoric of solidarity and patriotism. Such ideological rhetoric has direct political implications and analogies in the agenda of Putin’s regime. This Russian appeal to ‘traditional values’, both religious and political, has recently acquired an extraordinary international relevance.     

Impact of retailer image on private brand attitude: Halo effect and summary construct

The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of retailer image on consumers' attitude towards private brand. More specifically, we evaluate two alternative perspectives of retailer image—the halo effect and the summary construct—and include a moderator variable, consumer familiarity with a retailer's private label products, to discern which of the two models has better explanatory power. The findings indicate that there are moderating effects of consumer familiarity with a retailer's private brands and product categories in determining the efficacy of each model. In private brand foods, high familiarity is related to the summary construct model, and low familiarity is associated with the halo effect model. In private brand clothing, however, low familiarity is related to the halo effect model, but high familiarity is associated with both the halo effect and the summary construct model. Managerial and future research implications are also provided.     

The 'secret cocoon': fantasies about the private self in the absence of consensual reality

Clinical material is presented from an analysand whose defense of withdrawal to 'a private internal space' was mobilized when she became confused, within her relationships and within the transference, about whose understanding of a shared event was 'real.' Analysis of the defense as resistance revealed a disrupted sense of connection to others and to the analyst in the face of the difficulty in determining a consensual reality. This was accompanied by emotional withdrawal, with a complex fantasy of retreat to a protective inner hiding place, or cocoon. The phenomenology and functions of such withdrawals, the fantasies accompanying them, and the ways in which they changed during the analysis are discussed in this paper. For the patient described, the analysis of her shifting 'cocoon' states and of the fantasies connected with them eventually enabled her to access her creative 'private self' more freely and with less conflict.     

趋避道德动机调节方式的作用

道德动机是推动人们产生和完成具有道德意义和行为的内在动因。在解释道德动机的各种理论中, 道德动机模型(Model of Moral Motive, MMM)是一种比较综合的理论。该模型透过一个新颖的视角, 强调趋避两种动机调节方式在自我、他人和群体背景下产生的道德动机。通过对MMM模型综合性的分析, 并且横向比较了道德基础理论(MFT)和行为/结果双系统模型这两个具有代表性的道德理论, 挖掘出了MMM模型的比较优势, 如强调利他、聚焦于自我的道德动机、群体道德与意识形态之间的联系等。由于MMM模型是基于西方道德观提出的, 未来的研究重点应着重于西方道德动机的心理与脑机制与国人的异同以及文化差异对道德动机的影响。     

从具身视角看道德判断

道德判断是个体对于某类行为的善恶好坏和是非对错所进行的评价及判断。随着具身认知理论的兴起, 道德判断的具身研究随之展开。道德判断具身性的研究主要围绕身体清洁、厌恶, 身体温度及身体动作这3个维度展开。从皮亚杰及维果茨基的心理发展观, 概念隐喻理论和进化心理学3个角度对道德判断具身效应进行了理论解释和探讨。考虑到身体变量会通过情绪、认知因素进而影响道德判断, 今后具身认知视角下的道德判断应与道德判断中已有的理论进行整合, 同时对其与道德直觉的关系需要深入探讨, 并需进一步考察具身效应发生的时效性和动态性问题, 探讨道德判断具身效应的调节变量及个体差异, 同时要对道德判断具身效应进行跨文化比较。     

The Australian Psychology Workforce 3: A national profile of psychologists in salaried employment or in independent private practice

A detailed analysis of the different sectors of the psychology workforce was conducted as part of the National Psychology Workforce Survey: Independent Private Practice (IPP), Employed in Public Sector (EPuS) and Employed in Private Sector (EPrS). A total of 11,897 psychologists responded to the workforce survey, a response rate of 48%. Of these 8,086 were fully registered and currently working in a psychology role. Sectors were compared on a range of practice characteristics and differences were explored using a series of ANOVAs and post‐hoc analyses. Results of analyses revealed qualitative differences between the three sectors. Strategies for maintaining the employed workforce were also collected and are reported to be as much about increasing work satisfaction and support for professional and development opportunities as about salary.     

Sin and bioethics: why a liturgical anthropology is foundational.

The project of articulating a coherent, canonical, content-full, secular morality-cum-bioethics fails, because it does not acknowledge sin, which is to say, it does not acknowledge the centrality of holiness, which is essential to a non-distorted understanding of human existence and of morality. Secular morality cannot establish a particular moral content, the harmony of the good and the right, or the necessary precedence of morality over prudence, because such is possible only in terms of an ultimate point of reference: God. The necessity of a rightly ordered appreciation of God places centrally the focus on holiness and the avoidance of sin. Because the cardinal relationship of creatures to their Creator is worship, and because the cardinal corporate act of human worship is the Liturgy, morality in general and bioethics in particular can be understood in terms of the conditions necessary, so as worthily to enter into Eucharistic liturgical participation. Morality can be summed up in terms of the requirements of ritual purity. A liturgical anthropology is foundational to an account of the content-full morality and bioethics that should bind humans, since humans are first and foremost creatures obliged to join in rightly ordered worship of their Creator. When humans worship correctly, when they avoid sin and pursue holiness, they participate in restoring created reality.     

The patient's private construction of meaning and canons of science: Freud's case studies noch einmal1

Starting from Freud's classical case studies, the author highlights the tension between the psychoanalytical starting point in the subject's own meaning construction and the claims of the professional expert to objectivity, privileged knowledge and interpretative precedence. Psychoanalytic investigation of subjective phenomena came into existence parallel with Freud's magnifi cent project to furnish ‘a psychology that shall be a natural science’. The privileged knowledge of the specialist was substituted by the explicit intention to listen to the individual's own stories and private explanatory constructions. In order to investigate the territory of the unconscious, Freud had to develop various strategies for uncovering and correcting errors, and for testing clinically anchored hypotheses. However, Freud regularly failed to follow his own intentions. The thesis the author presents here is that departures from the explicit ambition to follow the subject's own meaning construction, and departures from the scientifi c attitude, easy to trace in Freud's case studies, accompany each other. These departures have had far‐reaching consequences for the present status of the psychoanalytic knowledge.