UiS Open Journals (Univ. of Stavanger)
Not a member yet
457 research outputs found
Sort by
Steven J. Sutcliffe & Ingvild Sælid Gilhus (red.), New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion, London: Acumen 2013
Get PDF
Avkobling og transformasjon: Meditasjonsretreater på Dharma Mountain mellom popularisering og religiøst fellesskap
Get PDFWhile meditation has undeniably become a part of popular culture, the term encompasses a wide variety of practices and conceptualizations on the religious-secular spectrum. In this paper, I explore how this wide scope is dealt with at meditation retreats offered at the Norwegian center Dharma Mountain. The place is built around the Norwegian guru Vasant Swaha and serves as a meeting place for his disciples, the sangha. At the same time, the Dharma Mountain group takes part in the wider popular meditation field with retreats tailored toward the preferences of an often guru-critical mainstream audience. Based on ethnographical material, I compare two meditation techniques, vipassana and Dynamic Meditation, and how they are introduced, legitimized, and performed at a newcomer weekend in the first and a summer retreat with Vasant Swaha in the second case. I show that while instructors introduce vipassana as a generic and simple technique, they mark Dynamic Meditation as a specifically composed method and thus integrate it with Swaha’s background in the Osho movement and the therapeutic outlook of his retreats. My findings point to the flexibility of the concept of meditation and how this helps organizers to address different audiences. Under the umbrella of meditation, Dharma Mountain incorporates a range of conceptualizations, from self-help to spiritual awakening, and different social forms, from costumer relations to religious community, in one and the same place
Activating the person in the changing situation: A dynamic analytical approach to labour activation
Get PDFFor several decades, the turn towards labour activation has dominated European social work and social work institutions. While social work research and practice focused on labour activation have long considered “the person in the situation”, exploring the service users’ experiences at specific moments and contexts in time, we argue that labour activation is an ongoing process involving a complex interplay of factors (structural, social, personal), and that these are shaped by changes and ruptures throughout a person’s life course. Furthermore, the changing situation is not an objective fact, though its meaning is actively constructed by the service user. Asking how participants in a labour activation programme subjectively make meaning of their activation experiences, with reference to changing personal histories and institutional encounters over time, we shift the focus from social work’s emphasis on “the person in the situation”, and we open the concept to include “the person in the changing situation” to help enable a more dynamic analysis of the activation process. The concept accounts for the interaction between subjective meaning making and institutional structures and offers, as these change over time. The study is based on fieldwork in the Norwegian labour and welfare services (NAV). We present three participants in the Norwegian Qualification Programme as illustrative cases, each with distinct profiles, to illustrate how service users actively refer to changing situations – as these are shaped by time, biography and institutional movement – when making meaning of their labour activation experiences. The findings have implications for social work research and practice, as matters of biography, timing and life course trajectories must be accounted for to gain a more accurate picture of the labour activation experience. A consideration of institutional and life course change also offers a better professional understanding of the complexity of lived experiences when working with service users, potentially enabling a more effective practice
Key Competencies in Social Work through Field Placement: Teaching and Learning Cases in Ukraine in the Time of COVID-19
No full textField placement is considered a core component of social work education. However, it requires regular personal contacts with individuals, groups and communities. These contacts have been limited in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. A central question is how to organize field placement during the lockdown to develop key competencies in social work. To answer this question, we employ the students’ reports, competency-based self-evaluation tools, students’ assessment of the field placement (led by the University’s education quality assurance centre) and assessment of students’ performance by the field placement supervisors and university instructors. This paper presents the achievements and challenges of teaching and mastering key competencies in social work at the School of Social Work of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy from different perspectives: students, placement agencies and the University itself. While almost all competencies have been taught and learned, those related to individual casework were the most difficult to achieve. The flexibility of the social work profession is also discussed in this paper. Future social workers should be flexible and meet the people\u27s needs in different contexts, including lockdown. The findings have implications for students, schools of social work and field placement agencies
