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Chaplains’ Professional Identity and a Structured Approach to Chaplaincy: Mutually Exclusive or Complementary?
No full textThe trend towards evidence-based health care challenges chaplains to work with structured—predefined and standardized—interventions that lead to measurable outcomes. However, chaplaincy literature raises various objections against using a structured approach. These include compromising the chaplain-client relationship, standardizing and limiting chaplaincy content, and the instrumentalization of the spiritual dimension. Based on a thematic analysis of 20 interviews and 33 workbooks, the current study investigates the experiences of chaplains in the Netherlands who participated in a structured intervention provided in palliative clients’ homes. The results show that most chaplains did indeed struggle with developing a healing relationship with their clients in which they are attuned to their specific needs. At the same time, the participating chaplains reported that a structured approach enriches and broadens the content of their care, improves the impact on clients, and grasps the spiritual dimension of their work. We found that the chaplains’ experiences differed depending on the professional role they emphasized. When they integrate and balance the roles of companion, counselor, and spiritual guide evenly, a structured approach can complement chaplains’ professional identity
Pedagogy with a heartbeat: The transformative potential of citizen science in education
No full textOver the past few years, we have worked together in a citizen science project called Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet (see also Goldin et al. 2021, Goldin et al., 2023). In this project we engaged with 420 young learners in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. We came to see participating schools as collaborative ecosystems where young citizens become entangled with water through experiential encounters that make science alive and relevant. Through our engagement with citizen science, we experienced the transformative power of affect and the relevance of emotions in education as a social and political project. In our pedagogy we depart from the idea that human beings are separate from the biosphere, thus recognising the interdependency of all life forms on earth. We believe that keeping science education in laboratories and libraries affirms what Bozalek and Zemblyas (2023) call “privileged irresponsibility”. We propose that citizen science and its transformative potential can be one way to redress such irresponsibility. Through impactful encounters with human – nonhuman entanglement and the emotions which are evoked in this process, citizen science can create opportunities for responseability (Bozalek & Zemblyas, 2023), through teaching and learning with the heart. Such entanglement also resonates with relationality as the currency of care theorists. In the context of our citizen science work, caring for unfamiliar others is a form of non-humancentred care with unfamiliar water bodies in which the binary of inside-outside learning becomes porous as the geographies of water penetrate the classroom walls. In Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet, we noted how watery spaces and images move back and forth caring-with and through human bodies – waterbodies to school, school to waterbodies. The entanglement with the nonhuman resonates with Massumi’s (2015) notion of becoming where there is an unrolling of an event that is a becoming of two together
Finding One's Way Through the Gender Expanse:Examining the Use of Metaphors in Gender-Affirming Care as a Step Toward More Inclusive Spiritual Care Practices
No full textChaplains can play a unique role in providing care for trans and gender-diverse (TGD) people by addressing their spiritual needs. However, spiritual care for TGD individuals may fail to be inclusive in at least three ways: spiritual care may focus solely on religious TGD people, on a limited part of the whole range of gender identities, or on a specific route toward gender affirmation. In this article, the aim is to develop an inclusive perspective on spiritual care for TGD people. To that end, inspired by work by Susan Sontag, we examine spiritual care for TGD individuals through the philosophical lens of social imaginaries, focussing particularly on metaphors, tracing how metaphors used in care for TGD people have changed over time. We elaborate on the potential of the metaphor of “orientation in gender-expansive space,” based on queer theory and literature about worldview-inclusive chaplaincy, for envisioning an inclusive approach to gender-affirming spiritual care
Performing Plurality: Meet the Alters Vlogs on YouTube as Breeding Grounds for Epistemic Justice
No full textSocial media platforms have provided people with a psychiatric label the opportunity to build communities and share their stories without relying on the mediation of therapists, publishers, or broadcasters. Among them are people who identify not as one whole self, but as a system of plural personalities, often labeled as dissociative identity disorder (DID). People with plural identities started sharing videos on YouTube as a means to convey their experiences and fight stigma. In 2009, this gave rise to a distinct sub-genre of vlogs created by people with plural identities and DID: the ‘Meet the Alters’ video, where various personalities introduce themselves to the audience. This paper traces the fifteen-year evolution of these videos in order to show how the makers of the Meet the Alters videos use YouTube’s affordances and the conventions of the vlog genre to navigate a lack of hermeneutic resources outside of psychiatric discourse and understanding, allowing them to communicate their experiences in a relatable way to a general audience. Through a close reading of the staging and performance of plurality in thirteen Meet the Alters videos, posted between 2009 and April 2024, the paper reveals key developments and particularities of this genre. The analysis highlights how plural YouTubers create their own hermeneutic resources to present their potentially unfamiliar or unruly experiences in an understandable manner to their viewers. In conversation with emerging and growing plural communities, these hermeneutic resources have been continually supplemented and refined. After fifteen years, this has resulted in a rich identity-centered discourse that enables the performance and communication of plural experiences. We argue that YouTube’s specific affordances and the generic conventions of the vlog have been crucial in the emergence and development of non-stigmatising, non-psychiatric hermeneutic resources for expressing plural experiences
Expanding the quality of life paradigm:Contributions from the field of disability studies
No full textThis article considers the contributions from the field of Disability Studies to the conceptualization of Quality of Life (QOL) for people labelled with Intellectual Disability (ID). We suggest four elements from the field of Disability Studies that may be incorporated into an evolving QOL paradigm. The first element concerns the meaning of disability itself. Those working in contemporary Disability Studies identify societal obstacles and points of inaccessibility as sources of disablement while also recognizing the experience of difference. We suggest this understanding of disability as an interaction between a person and the social world/environment may be included more explicitly in QOL conceptualization. A responsive and adaptable definition of disability in the QOL paradigm is recommended. The second element is the recognition of relationality. The field of contemporary disability studies challenges the value of considering a person's disability as a solitary medical experience and questions the goals of independence, instead considering the value in interdependence and community. This could be included in the QOL paradigm by further emphasizing the importance of relationships and contributions of those labelled with ID. The third element is participatory design and epistemic justice, making space for people labelled with ID to contribute to research and direct the course of their own lives and supports. This element of self-determination is important to QOL but an increase in participatory research, service, and support design in the field is recommended. The final element is intersectionality, the idea that the experience of disability must be understood in the context of other points of identity or marginalization such as race, gender, and sexuality. We recommend that the QOL paradigm should allow for these additional elements to be included in further design and research in the field
Losers of representation:Gains and losses of globalisation as seen by workers in internationalised companies in the Netherlands
No full textDichotomisation between winners and losers is a prominent element of the debate on globalisation, with ordinary workers often considered losers. However, little is known about what workers make of globalisation, how they experience the phenomenon, and how they talk about it. We use a set of focus groups to explore meaning-making on the globalisation of the economy among lower-educated employees of Dutch internationalised firms. We find that they weigh up the pros and cons and proudly struggle with the consequences of globalisation. To the degree that they feel left behind, it is by politics and government. This suggests that dislike of globalisation is the result of negative experiences with politics, rather than the other way around
Be a good sport::A care ethical inquiry into sport parenting
No full textIn recent years, reports on youth sports excesses and abuses of minors underscore the need for a safer sport environment. However, the way in which parents guide their children in dealing with winning and losing in sports is less understood. A care ethical inquiry into sport parenting might contribute to a better understanding of the role parents play in creating a safe sport environment for their children. This study applies theoretical perspectives from care ethics into practical context focusing on the relationship between parents and their sporting children through the lens of relational identity. An interpretative phenomenological study was conducted into the meaning of competitiveness amongst Dutch parents of children aged eleven and twelve, who play hockey and are in the midst of transitioning from sport as a game to competitive sport. This article concludes that the meaning of competitiveness for these parents is twofold. On the one hand there is a desire to be proud of your child’s success, fuelled by meritocratic ideals. On the other hand, parents desire their child’s ongoing commitment to sport, which they consider a return investment for the sacrifices they make to support their child’s sport participation. From a care ethical stance of relational responsibility, parents should not solely view sport as a quid pro quo concept in which desires are fulfilled or battles settled, but rather as a game that is enjoyed by both parents and children. Mature sport parenting can only emerge once the tensions resulting from parental sacrifices on the one hand and the child’s loyalty to meet parental expectations on the other are overcome through dialogue and reflection, aimed at elucidating responsibilities within the relationship. More research is needed to gain insight into the significance of this relational connection for the youth sports climate