Visualising political thinking on the screen: a dialogue between von Trotta’s Hannah Arendt and its protagonist

This article analyses Margarethe von Trotta’s film Hannah Arendt: The Woman Who Saw Banality in Evil through its protagonist’s own writings on visual culture, visibility and invisibility in the context of political thinking. We start by clarifying Arendt’s understanding of political theory as an activity aiming to provoke thinking. We then discuss systematically the visual language of the film and offer a typology of its representations of political thinking, subdivided into a part on internalisation and one on externalisation (dialogue). We emphasise von Trotta’s reliance on a negative approach, i.e. the representation of thinking through the absence of any other activity while thinking, capitalising on the power of the invisible. However, the film and its director do not entirely succeed in engaging viewers politically. This is so because, first, the film’s lack of conceptual innovation renders difficult the emergence of subject positions on the part of viewers other than consumers of established opinion. Secondly, the film insufficiently audio-visualises the external-communicative dimension of Arendt’s political thinking: a dialogue in which viewers can participate and in the course of which what seemed to be established through political thinking gets deconstructed and subsequently re-ordered. Finally, we emphasise the importance of a cinema of thinking in our current political environment that seems to be increasingly characterised precisely by the absence of political thinking.     

Cultivating listening spaces for civil society: Reorienting public relations amid Hannah Arendt’s urgent pluralism

The article explores how the ideas of Hannah Arendt can further public relations’ understanding of organizational listening and its role in civil society. We draw on three major theoretical concepts from Arendt and scholars studying her work—plurality, interspaces, and lamp holders—and contextualize them within existing civil society research in public relations. Reading Arendt into organizational listening and civil society literature yields insights for how public relations contributes to the maintenance of structures and spaces for deliberation and civil society. Her theory points toward the concepts of bracketing and unbracketing as ways to enter civic spaces with an awareness of power and identity. As research on organizational listening has yet to fully identify how listening can contribute to supporting representative deliberation in polarized societies, this paper helps to theoretically position listening within civil society and provides initial suggestions as to how civic-minded listening can be incorporated into public relations practices aimed at building community.     

Citizenship education for a pluralistic world: the selection of children’s literature in Dutch Protestant primary schools

The goals of citizenship education are often contested in Protestant schools with an ethnically heterogeneous population of pupils in multicultural European societies today. This is connected to the tension between the inclusive goal of citizenship for a pluralistic world and the exclusive goal of education in the Christian faith. This paper presents an explorative study on citizenship education. It describes the opinions of teachers and parents on the selection and use of children’s literature in Dutch ‘liberal’ Protestant primary schools. The results show that most teachers favour the avoidance of books that might not fit in with the Protestant identity of the school or possibly raise objections from orthodox parents. There is considerable diversity in the positions parents take on the issue.     

Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

Saving for Children’s College Education: An Empirical Analysis of the Trade-off Between the Quality and Quantity of Children

This paper examines the effect of children’s college expenses on household savings. The theoretical model introduces life-cycle savings into the quality–quantity model of fertility and derives predictions for the impact of expected expenses on parents’ savings. Using the actual amount of parents’ financial support reported in the Survey of Consumer Finances, the empirical model estimates the expected expenditures on children’s college education and investigates the effect of expected expenditures on parents’ savings. The results show that parents’ support for each of their children’s college expenses decreases with the number of children. The results are consistent with the predictions of the life-cycle theory of saving and consumption that households save in advance for expected expenses to smooth their consumption.

Adolescents’ Use of the Internet for Sex Education: A Thematic and Critical Review of the Literature

ABSTRACT. A thematic and critical literature review was conducted to determine what is known about adolescents’ experiences with online sex education. Four major themes could be discerned from the literature, revealing that: (a) adolescents report engaging with sex information online; (b) adolescents are interested in a number of topics, including sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy; (c) the quality of adolescent-targeted sex information online can be lacking, but adolescents can evaluate these sources; and (d) Internet-based interventions can increase adolescents’ sexual health knowledge. Inconsistencies in the literature are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.     

The influence of accountability for the crisis and type of crisis communication on people’s behavior,feelings and relationship with the government

In this paper we investigated to what extent the willingness of people to take advice from the local government, people’s feelings of collective efficacy and empowerment, and their relationship with the local government, is dependent on whether the local government was accountable for the crisis or not. In addition, we were interested in the influence of empathic versus neutral crisis information on people’s behavior, feelings and their relationship with the local government. The results indicate that people’s intention to follow the advice of the local government is generally high, even when the local government is held accountable for the crisis. However, accountability negatively influenced people’s relationship with the local government, as well as collective efficacy. Our research shows that this negative outcome for people’s relationship with the local government cannot be countered by empathic crisis information. However, conveying empathic concern in the crisis information did enhance level of collective efficacy.     

Pamvo Berynda’s Verses on the Nativity of Christ: Between Western Education and Byzantine Hymnography

The Verses on the Nativity of Christ written by Pamvo Berynda in 1616 bear witness to the first trace of an oral performance in Ruthenian by school children. The work is embedded in the author’s specific interest in terminology, but also exemplifies the educational orientation taken by civil and ecclesiastical Orthodox Ukrainian authorities in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This collection of poems, written for the Christmas week, responds to the music and the hymns of the liturgy. As such, these verses also echo a Byzantine culture that Ukrainian Orthodox scholars tentatively hoped to revive. The present analysis seeks to uncover the influence of the Byzantine element in Berynda’s Christmas poems and illustrates both the success and failure of attempts to revive the Byzantine roots of seventeenth-century Orthodox Ukraine.     

An education and negotiation of differences: the ‘schooling’ experiences of English-speaking Canadian children growing up with polio during the 1940s and 1950s

In this paper we present oral narratives focusing on schooling experiences of Canadians who lived with polio as children between 1940 and 1959. We argue that disabled students with polio received an education about the differences ascribed to them by individuals in authority (teachers, principals), by other young people, and through the dominant negative discourses of polio and normalizing, ableist practices of schooling. Using narrative accounts from participants’ interviews, we analyze their school experiences of difference: inaccessible physical and temporal spaces, bullying at school, exclusion from classes, and negotiating youth culture related to shoes, clothes and friendships. However, participants were not passive and they discussed how, along with families, they negotiated and occasionally defied normalizing processes. This research gives voice to a generation of disabled English-speaking Canadians, whose stories about school have not been heard before.     

Motherless Subjects and Mothered Selves: The Implications of Jacques Lacan’s and Donald Winnicott’s Writings on the Formation of the ‘I’ for American Studies

ABSTRACT

This article contrasts the theories of ego formation put forward in Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Mirror Stage’ and Donald Winnicott’s ‘The Mirror Role of the Mother,’ and discusses their methodological implications for the field of American studies. While Lacan theorises subjectivity as irreparably split and (self-)alienated, Winnicott offers an optimistic version of a self which is sustained in its going-on-being by a nourishing maternal presence. These disparate conceptualisations of the human being produce two powerful frames through which to approach culture. Yet, while Lacan is widely recognised in the American studies scholarship, Winnicott remains virtually unknown. This article aims to enhance the visibility of the British author by outlining the productivity of his ideas for any cultural or literary analysis. By stressing the foundational significance of the primary bond Winnicott’s theory intervenes in the recent critiques of neoliberal capitalism which remain halted in a Lacanian-like melancholic mode, masked by a cultural command of perpetual enjoyment. The Winnicottian perspective challenges Lacan’s fixation on the unattainable objects of desire, reiterated by the neoliberal myth of self-perfection through consumption, and offers an alternative pattern of human sociality, based on relational, self-reflexive moderation.     

College women’s sexual and reproductive health screening behaviors and the role of mother–daughter communication

Abstract

Objective: The study investigated the role of mother–daughter communication and race in college women’s decisions to pursue sexual health screening services. Participants: Participants were 301 college women who primarily identified as White and Asian American (M_age = 19?years). Methods: Participants completed an online survey that assessed mother–daughter communication about sex and responded to items pertaining to pursuing sexual health screening services. Results: Maternal communication predicted daughters’ screening behaviors and sexual anxiety mediated the negative association between conservative communication from mothers and screening behaviors. Asian American college women were less likely than White college women to report that they received frequent and open communication about sex from their mothers and reported higher levels of sexual anxiety. Conclusions: Mothers should be aware of the implications their communication patterns may have on their daughters’ sexual and reproductive health, and college women’s sexual anxiety should be addressed in order to increase utilization of screening services.     

Toward a ‘paideia of the soul’: education to enrich America’s multicultural democracy

What role might education play in the reinvigoration of a robust American democracy? We argue that common understandings of democracy, citizenship, and democratic education are too anemic to right the political inequalities and stagnancies that have deadened American democracy. Instead, we look to notions of paideia and an educated, enlightened citizenry to shape a multicultural democratic education. Multicultural democratic education cultivates the full and flourishing lives and minds of all citizens in American democracy rather than focusing on narrow preparation for voting. It does this through the practice of critical and authentic caring, the cultivation of community across difference, the connection to a global context, and the opportunity for social action. Most importantly, multicultural democratic education takes as its starting point equity and justice in a pluralistic society by committing to the cultivation of the minds and intellects of all students – in stark contrast to the unequal and mind-numbing education that most marginalized and minority students receive.     

Education in the crucible of a postcolonial revolution: community reaction to the challenges of Zimbabwe’s crisis

It is paradoxical that when Zimbabwe was experiencing the worst economic situation in its recorded history and the highest inflation rate ever experienced worldwide by any nation at peace, its educational achievements were unprecedented. The economy had untold negative effects on the education system causing mass exodus of teachers, dilapidation of infrastructure, shortage of library books and even lack of food. However, against this backdrop, the country scored major successes in education. In 2010, Zimbabwe became the highest ranked in terms of literacy on the continent. University enrolment was ninefold by 2006, and technical and vocational education has achieved similar developments. How and by what means? Research on education has so far mainly focused on the institutions of higher learning with little or no concern at all about community activities and efforts to sustain education at various levels. In fact until recently university education in Zimbabwe has had little community participation. This had to change during the last decade when the state could not afford to fund its own army, let alone education. Donor, bilateral and multilateral funding were withdrawn as the sanctions screw tightened. This research explores the community (students and parents) efforts in sustaining education from secondary to tertiary institutions. How did parents and students react to the deteriorating conditions of education and with what effect? The study findings indicate parents responded by supporting teachers with money and food, engaging in economic activities such as cross-border trading, and were involved in teaching the students. The students also responded by engaging in peer education and sharing resources such as books. This study could widen our understanding of community participation in education particularly at university level.     

Parental Borrowing for Dependent Children’s Higher Education

Using the 1992–1993 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, with the 1997 follow-up, the parental decision to borrow and, for borrowers, the level of borrowing for dependent children’s college education was analyzed. Parents with smaller household size and those being college graduates borrowed greater amounts. White parents borrowed greater amounts than their non-White counterparts. The age of the student, dependent students’ income and parents’ cash and savings each had a significant negative impact on the amount parents borrowed, while home equity was a significant positive factor. Greater college costs significantly increased parents’ decision to borrow, as well as the borrowed amount. Greater amounts of grants significantly reduced the amount borrowed.     

Tornado warning: Understanding the National Weather Service’s communication strategies

This study explores the National Weather Service’s communication through a multi-sited rapid ethnography that extends the fully functioning society theory. National Weather Service field offices do not employ public information officers. Instead, forecasters predict the weather, craft messages, and build relationships with their publics. Scholars have called for public relations research that examines messages, including how crisis communication can help publics cope. Additionally, scholars have noted that all organizations need public relations, even if they do not employ formal public relations personnel. In our study, forecasters emphasized the need to build their publics’ tornado threat awareness and provided strategies to make weather science accessible. Forecasters discussed a variety of message strategies including avoiding fear appeals, humanizing the organization, and visualizing risks. Forecasters also built relationships with active publics through soliciting weather spotters and empowering them to prepare others for severe weather. Overall, findings expand knowledge about how organizations can employ strategic public relations to benefit society, thereby extending fully functioning society theory.     

The ‘Fool’s Cap’ map of the world: exploring critical cosmopolitanism through cartographic critique

The ‘Fool’s Cap’ map of the world is thought to date from the late sixteenth century and is often attributed to a little-known Christian sect called the Familists. It places a map of the world in the place of a face inside a jester’s cap, playing upon the subversive figure of the jester and his ability to ridicule those in control. The Familists were cosmopolitan and valued the idea of the world citizen, but insisted upon self-reflection, in ways not dissimilar to contemporary scholars of ‘critical cosmopolitan’. This article makes a case for viewing the Familists’ thinking as an early form of critical cosmopolitanism – critiquing its own culture whilst maintaining belief in what constitutes a good ethical world citizen. It engages with the debates forged by thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Gerard Delanty, and links these to the idea of emancipatory potential of globalization advanced by Leslie Sklair.     

Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural Heritage

Qualitative Sociology - This article examines a recent controversy over the Catholic Church’s registration of Cordoba’s iconic Mosque-Cathedral as official Church property in 2006. In...     

Collecting for the cabinet of freedom: the parliamentary history of Thomas Clarkson’s chest

This article discusses a wooden chest used by the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, to display samples of African natural resources and artefacts. It explores the role played by the chest during the 1788–1789 Privy Council enquiry into the slave trade, and suggests that the box (which is usually thought of as travelling showcase employed by Clarkson in public lectures and meetings) was in fact firmly embedded in – and spoke directly to – the 1788–1789 enquiry process. Its initial purpose was to conjure alternate cargoes in the minds of those debating the slave trade; to enable Parliament to visualise an Africa filled not with potential slaves, but with alternate resources, having a multitude of domestic and commercial uses.