Truth,hope, compassion in a time of corona virus and a presidential election

Despite signs of public unity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic has also highlighted our divisions, disparities, and racism. The churches can have a voice for greater harmony and community if their public theology flows from their core beliefs and practices and is marked by engagement with truth, and a vision of hope acted out with compassion.     

Ordering the alternatives of a strategic plan for Valencia (Spain)

In this article we present an evaluation of the initiatives involved in a Strategic Plan for Valencia City (Spain) by applying a method to assist Multi‐Criteria Decision‐Making. The complexity of the case lies in the size of the problem, 47 alternatives and 10 criteria, as well as the need to reach a consensus on the final result. The method followed, which has been named PRES Multi‐expert, can be generalized and applied to other complex cases. Thirteen experts have participated in the process, representing different political and social groups of the City, a group of analysts, formed by three lecturers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and a consultant, representing the City Hall of Valencia. The PRES algorithm was used to order the alternatives developed in 1992 by Gómez‐Senent at this University. In this article we highlight the advantages of applying the Multi‐Criteria Decision‐Making Aid techniques and the importance of following a procedure to select the criteria, pondering on them and evaluating the alternatives. This procedure ensures that the parties interested in or affected by the decision take part in deciding what measures to adopt. The Multi‐expert PRES method facilitates this participation and can be adapted to different types of problems. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Political opportunity structures and the activism of first- and second-generation Muslims in two Italian cities

ABSTRACT

The present contribution describes Muslims’ opportunities for activism and political participation, as shaped institutionally and discursively, in Milan and Turin. It analyses the interplay between the national level and the local level, and assesses the implications that contrasting local arrangements have for Muslims’ activism, claims-making and, to a certain extent, even self-identifications – especially with reference to young, second-generation Muslims. In Milan Muslims are confronted with a very closed system of political opportunities, while in Turin there appears to be a much more open system, which aims at co-opting second-generation organisations in particular. The consequence is that while in Milan Muslims – especially second-generation ones – are resigned to being merely the recipients of integration policies, in Turin they can conceive themselves more as partners of the city’s institutions, by resorting to a strategy of ‘active citizenship’.     

The Cultural Turn: Empirical Studies and their Implications

This essay uses empirical studies to engage Richard Miller’s advocacy of a “cultural turn” in the study of religious ethics found in Friends and Other Strangers. The particular kind of empirical research I highlight here, cultural cognition, emphasizes the ways that belonging to a cultural group influences one’s reasoning when faced with controversial issues involving disputed facts. This approach underscores the significance of the cultural turn, but it also raises some important challenges for Miller’s accounts of moral psychology and public reason. I work to elucidate what those challenges are and point to some ways that taking cultural cognition seriously might open up fresh avenues for addressing perennial ethical issues.     

Pan-Africanism and African-American Liberation in a Postmodern World: A Review Essay

This review essay explores Josiah Young's project of developing a liberatory Pan-Africanism that is attuned to cultural diversity and Victor Anderson's advocacy of postmodern cultural criticism in African-American religious thought. After situating African-American religious thought as a branch of Africana thought, the author examines these two religious thinkers' work as an effort to forge a position on African-American religious thought—including its relation to theology—in an age where even theory is treated as a god that is about to die. At the conclusion, secularism emerges as a religious project that normatively undergirds the methodological dimensions of these works.     

Achievement motive and sport participation

Three studies investigated the relationship between the achievement motive and sport participation. It was expected that both the implicit and the explicit achievement motives are positively associated with how frequently people engage in sport activities. The implicit achievement motive was assessed with indirect motive measures; the explicit achievement motive was either inferred from participants’ personal goals or measured with self-reports. Two hundred five athletes participated including college students enrolled in leisure sport programs offered at their university (Study 1), amateur athletes registered in sports clubs (Study 2), and elite tennis athletes (Study 3). The implicit achievement motive consistently predicted sport participation in all three studies. In contrast, the explicit achievement motive was uncorrelated with sport participation. The interaction between the two motives did not yield an effect on sport participation. The results indicate that the implicit, unconscious need to achieve facilitates regular engagement in sport activities, but the explicit, conscious orientation toward achievement does not. The enrichment of sports environments with incentives for the implicit achievement motive may thus attract more people to participate in sport activities.     

Community as practice: social representations of community and their implications for health promotion

Health promotion researchers and practitioners have increasingly turned to community-based approaches. Although there has been much work around the diverse understandings of the term in areas such as community psychology and sociology, I am concerned with how such understandings relate directly to community health research and practice. From a discursive perspective ‘community’ is seen as a socially constructed representation that is used variously and pragmatically. However, from a wider view, community can be seen as a matter of embodied practice. This paper draws on social representations theory to examine the shifting constructions of ‘community’, the functional use of those understandings in social life, and the practices that suggest that it is important to attend to their use in particular contexts. Accordingly, the paper argues that meanings of community in the health promotion or public health context must be seen as representations used for specific purposes in particular situations. Furthermore, the broader notion of embodied practice in social life has implications for community participation in health promotion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.