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La conoscibilità di Dio nel Commento ai Nomi Divini
No full textThe paper is divided into two parts. First, the author describes the historical context in which Aquinas drafted his commentary on pseudo-Dionysius. The author suggests that the commentary may have been written during Aquinas’s stay in Rome (1265-1267/8), i.e. when Aquinas was writing Summa Theol. Ia, qu. 12, a question on divine names. The second section of the paper focuses on Aquinas’s claims concerning one’s capacity of knowing God. After having expounded the limits of the human capacity of knowing God, the author expounds on the via remotionis and eminentiae, and on the via causalitatis – the three methods for grasping something of God. The author observes that Aquinas was not eager to agree with pseudo-Dionysius’s agnosticism – and this may be a consequence of the 1241 condemnation of the thesis, according to which the blessed in heaven do not see God’s essence
Empowering the disempowered: the dùndún drumming tradition in a British prison
No full textThere are many reasons why people lose their confidence, including social discrimination and/or lack of love. As a result of the social practice and value system, some people also experience deprivation within society (like people incarcerated in prison), leading to loss of personal identity and power. The theory of empowerment has been used by many scholars to deal with the issues of the powerlessness of ethnic minority groups who experience denigration (Collins 1990). This article focuses on four workshops that took place in a prison in Hampshire, England, where I explored drumming as an empowering activity using the dùndún (the ‘talking drums’), a set of a double-headed hourglass drums used by the Yorùbá, an ethnic group in Nigeria. The workshops gave participants the opportunity to express themselves freely within the British prison system. The names of the people have been anonymized. I introduce a theory called ‘Nonsense Theory’, which I coined and explored with the workshop participants. The main theme is empowerment, with a focus also on control, self-esteem, tradition and identity. The article analyses the concept of empowerment within the dùndún drumming tradition, and explores why it might have resonance in a prison
The Robustness of Anti-Atheist Prejudice as Measured by Way of Cognitive Errors
No full textOver the past decade, distrust of atheists has been documented in psychological literature yet remains relatively understudied. The current research sought to test the robustness of anti-atheist prejudice. Specifically, it examined the extent to which an individual’s anti-atheist prejudice remained unchanged in light of new information. 100 participants from the UK completed an online experiment. The experiment involved reading a vignette describing the actions of an untrustworthy individual. Participants were asked to make a judgment with regards to the untrustworthy individual’s identity. The occurrence of a cognitive bias, namely the conjunction fallacy, was used to measure the frequency of anti-atheist prejudice. An examination of judgment errors (i.e., conjunction fallacies) under different conditions was used to test the robustness of anti-atheism prejudice. The results show that anti-atheist prejudice is not confined either to dominantly religious countries or religious individuals but rather appears to be a robust judgment about atheists
Shaping rural settlements: the early medieval inheritance of the English village
No full textResearchers seeking to establish the origins of medieval villages have typically been divided into two camps. Most scholars argue that villages were founded as part of protracted process which began in the tenth century, but others see them as the product of the seventh or eighth centuries, established as part of a Middle Saxon ‘great re-planning’. Advocates of both chronologies have found ostensible support from the results of excavations undertaken within currently occupied rural settlements, although the organisers of England’s most extensive test-pitting scheme have suggested that there is little evidence for roots before the tenth century. This paper demonstrates, however, that test pits are not an inappropriate means of detecting ephemeral Middle Saxon remains and that some scholars have overemphasised the ability of such methods to accurately reconstruct early medieval settlement sequences. Occupation sites dating to before the ninth century are only likely to be located through more extensive excavation, and indeed, a quantitative assessment of such interventions illustrates the striking regularity with which evidence for Middle Saxon habitation is found. The distinctive character of historic villages so instantly recognisable to landscape archaeologists and historians were not established between the seventh and ninth centuries, however. Rather, this paper shows that medieval villages often emerged only after a two-stage process of settlement evolution, as Middle Saxon centres were later shifted short distances and restructured into their more lasting historic forms from the tenth century. The seventh to ninth centuries can therefore be seen as a period during which both the physical scaffolding and the identity of many rural settlements was established, as Middle Saxon communities provided a lasting legacy upon the landscape of England
Psychosocial care/support
No full textThe first edition of the Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society was published in 2007 and received a 2008 Editors’ Choice Award from Booklist. It served as a general, non-technical resource focusing on cancer from the perspective of the social and behavioral sciences, exploring social and economic impacts, the “business” of cancer, advertising of drugs and treatment centers, how behavior change could offer great potential for cancer prevention, environmental risks, food additives and regulation, the relation between race and ethnicity and cancer risk, socioeconomic status, controversies–both scientific and political–in cancer treatment and research, country-by-country entries on cancer around the world, and more. Given various developments in the field including new drug treatments, political controversies over use of the vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix with young girls to prevent cervical cancer, and unexpected upticks in the prevalence of adult smoking within the U.S. following decades of decline, the SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society, Second Edition serves as an updated and more current encyclopedia that addresses concerns pertaining to this topic
Chief examiners as Prophet and Priest: relations between examination boards and school subjects, and possible implications for knowledge
No full textEvidence from an ethnographic study of three secondary school geography departments in England is drawn on to describe aspects of the relationships between examination boards and school subjects. This paper focuses on one department, in ‘Town Comprehensive’, and the argument is illustrated through a discussion of observed lessons with a teacher in this department. Ofqual (Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) have recently announced that examination boards may continue to endorse commercially available teaching resources. The argument presented in this paper extends possible areas of ‘risk’ identified beyond those they currently consider. Specifically, it is argued that chief examiners play multiple roles in the recontextualisation of knowledge, holding substantial power over school subjects. The strong role of accreditation as a rationale is argued to restrict knowledge taught in school geography to horizontal discourses, limiting students’ access to powerful knowledge
Recontextualising knowledge for lessons
No full textThis article builds on the descriptions of teachers’
journeys for knowledge previously presented
in this journal (Puttick, 2014) by asking what
teachers do with these sources of knowledge.
There is a substantial tradition of discussing the
transformation of (mainly disciplinary) knowledge
into school curricula, a process described by
Dewey as psychologising; by Bruner as conversion;
and by Schwab as translation (Deng, 2007).
Bernstein (2000) describes this movement as
recontextualisation. Building on his work, social
realism foregrounds the relationship between
academic disciplines and school subjects,
focusing on ‘the boundaries between schools and
professional and academic “knowledge producing
communities”’ (Young, 2009, p. 17). For the
teachers in my study of three secondary school
geography departments in England, the dominant
sources are Google, YouTube, exam specification
websites and textbooks, news websites, and
departmental virtual shared areas. This wide
range of ‘selections and arrangements ... creates
a quite different animal to the discipline’
(Muller, 2009, p. 215). There are different ways
of understanding the relationships between
school subjects and academic disciplines (cf.
Puttick, 2013, pp. 334–335), and concern has
been expressed about the relationship between
academic and school geography; there is a widely
held contention that they are disconnected,
separated by a chasm (Butt and Collins, 2013;
Goudie, 1993). However, concern about this
chasm is mainly based on evidence of formal
representations of school geography. The notion
of ‘disciplined judgement’ discussed below
offers one way of introducing students to the
ways in which powerful knowledge is produced,
judged, and developed. Therefore, understanding
more about recontextualising principles offers
an opportunity to develop the relationship
between school and academic geography through
teachers’ own practice
Prayer requests in an English cathedral, and a new analytic framework for intercessory prayer.
No full textA small but growing body of international research has begun to explore the rich resource of intercessory prayers posted on the prayer boards in churches, cathedrals and hospital chapels for illuminating the religious and spiritual quests of ordinary men, women, and young people whose sense of the transcendence has been enriched by these buildings. However, the integration of findings from these international studies has been frustrated by the absence of a recognised analytic framework through which the data have been analysed or by the means of which rigorous replication studies could be presented. It is within this context and in response to these issues that the ap Siôn Analytic Framework for intercessory Prayer (apSAFIP) was developed and tested
Competency frameworks in diabetes
No full texthe quality, skills and attitudes of staff working in the healthcare system are central to multidisciplinary learning and working, and to the delivery of the quality of care patients expect. Patients want to know that the staff supporting them have the right knowledge and attitudes to work in partnership, particularly for conditions such as diabetes where 95% of all care is delivered by the person with diabetes themselves. With the current changes in the NHS structures in England, and the potential for greater variation in the types of 'qualified provider', along with the recent scandal at Mid-Staffordshire Hospital, staff need to be shown to be competent and named/accredited or recognized as such. This will help to restore faith in an increasingly devolved delivery structure. The education and validation of competency needs to be consistently delivered and assured to ensure standards are maintained for different roles and disciplines across each UK nation. Diabetes UK recommends that all NHS organizations prioritize healthcare professional education, training and competency through the implementation of a National Diabetes Competency Framework and the phased approach to delivery to address this need
The anarchist, the punk rocker and the Buddha walk into a bar(n): dharma punx and rebel dharma
No full textPunk rock is known for its frenetic energy. Its aggressive, anger-driven music is born from the seething cauldron of discontent. Anarchism is the ‘ideology’ that often underpins punk, but anarchism exists beyond punk in its drive to create a new social order fuelled by discontent at the current systems. There exists a large self-identifying anarchist group within the wider punk subculture, but it is only one group within a myriad of understandings of punk. Not all anarchists are punks; not all punks are anarchists. On first glance, Buddhism, as an ancient practice of mindfulness intended to lead the individual into an awareness of the nature of being through calming activities such as meditation, appears incongruous with anarchism and punk. However, a shift away from understanding Buddhism as a religion and an examination of the purposes behind Buddhism, punk and anarchy reveal a synchronicity. This has culminated in the creation of groups such as the Dharma Punx (US) and the Rebel Dharma (UK), which this article will explore and outline