1,720,966 research outputs found
'Bringing me more than I contain': Levinas, ethical subjectivity and the infinite demands of education
Full text linkEmmanuel Levinas' s reorientation of ethics as preceding ontology and his radical\ud
presentation of responsibility, justice, consciousness and knowledge are of clear\ud
relevance for education. It is therefore not surprising that in the last decade we have\ud
seen a number of studies ofLevinas by educational theorists.\ud
Much of this work has focused on Levinas's relevance for issues of ethics, social\ud
justice, multiculturalism and moral education. This thesis draws on this previous\ud
research, but aims to take educational readings of Levinas in another direction\ud
through considering how his presentation of discourse, language and subjectivity, as\ud
dependent on an infinite ethical demand, troubles several dominant orientations\ud
within educational discourse that treat education in ways that can become totalising\ud
and instrumentalist.\ud
I begin by offering a philosophical analysis of how Levinas describes the scene of\ud
teaching and the nature of subjectivity. I then interrogate how this reading of Levinas\ud
disturbs some current understandings of education: first, the way that, within\ud
liberalism, education can be conceived instrumentally as the site for the development\ud
of a certain kind of individual (a rationally autonomous chooser, etc.), and second, the\ud
way that neoliberal educational ideologies have privileged managerialism,\ud
performance and the market, with Religious Education providing a case study of the\ud
implications of Levinas's interruption. I then consider how this leads to new\ud
understandings of community and political subjectivity within education.\ud
In this way, I explore how responding to Levinas, and reading his work together with\ud
criticisms addressed by Badiou and others, leads us not just to a richer vision of the\ud
meaning of education, but also to a more motivating understanding of the ethical\ud
subjectivity of both students and teachers, which is dependent on a deepening and anarchic\ud
responsibility, and which invites us to work for a better education extending\ud
beyond the straight line ofthe law
'God isn't a communist':Conservative Evangelicals, Morality and Money in London
Full text linkThis chapter examines moral threads interwoven in the thoughts and actions of conservative evangelicals in relation to the place of money in their lives. I argue that as well as a calculative ethic shaped by modes of economic value, we also see a desire for a value beyond value, in which the good is imagined in relation to a transcendent grace that both exceeds and vaolorizes capitalist regimes. Approaching conservative evangelicals through the lens of the good moves us beyond the ‘othering’ of nonliberal religious movements, while also inviting attention to contradictions and eruptions that evade the logic of capital
Matters of Life and Death
Full text linkWhat is the significance of the concepts of ‘life’ and ‘death’ for different religious and non-religious groups? This chapter aims to draw out deeper understanding of practices of connection and separation between religious and non-religious groups through examining affinities between how different Christian and non-religious groups engage with notions of ‘life’ and ‘death’, drawing on qualitative sociological research. Although questions of life and death might appear perennial concerns for religion, I explore here the particular contemporary significance of ideas of ‘life’ and ‘death’ within the moral landscapes of different religious and non-religious groups. The chapter considers the significance of the idea of ‘life’ for an ‘open’ evangelical church, the Sunday Assembly, and the School of Life, and practices of reflecting on ‘death’ in Death Cafés, drawing this together with Georg Simmel’s writing on life and its interrelations with death. I conclude by suggesting that attending to modes of practical engagement with ideas of ‘life’ and ‘death’ across these different religious and non-religious groups, rather than focusing solely on the propositional content of beliefs about life and death, opens up opportunities for reflection on common existential grounds of experience, moving beyond assumptions that relations between these groups are necessarily antagonistic
Latour, Prepositions and the Instauration of Secularism
Full text linkBruno Latour's understanding of different modes of existence as given through prepositions offers a new approach to researching "secularism," taking forward attention paid in recent scholarship to its historically contingent formation by bringing into clearer focus the dynamics of its relational and material mediations. Examining the contemporary instauration of secularism in conservative evangelical experience, I show how this approach offers a new orientation to studying secularism that allows attention to both its history and its material effects on practice. This shows how Latour's speculative realism extends and provides a bridge between both discursive analysis of religion and secularism and the recent turn towards materiality in empirical study of religion
'Just leave it blank' non-religious children and their negotiation of prayer in school
Full text linkThis article examines how non-religious children experience acts of collective worship and prayer in primary school settings and analyses how they negotiate religion and their non-religious identities in these events. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork examining non-religious childhoods and collective worship in three English primary schools, the authors explore how non-religious children demonstrate their agency when confronted with particular boundaries and concepts related to religion and non-religion in school contexts. Attending to the experiences, perspectives, and practices of non-religious children adds to our understanding of the varieties of non-religion, which has to date largely focused on elite, adult populations. Focusing on non-religious children’s experiences of prayer reveals how these children did not experience tensions between praying to God and their non-religious identities and articulated their own interpretations of these practices, deepening understanding of the lived realities of non-religious cultures and identities
The Stickiness of Non-Religion?:Intergenerational Transmission and the Formation of Non-Religious Identities in Childhood
Full text linkThe rapid rise of those identifying as ‘non-religious’ across many countries has prompted growing interest in the ‘religious nones’. A now burgeoning literature has emerged, challenging the idea that ‘non-religion’ is the mere absence of religion and exploring the substantive beliefs, practices and identities that are associated with so-called unbelief. Yet we know little about the micro-processes through which this cultural shift towards non-religion is taking place. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study, this article examines how, when, where, and with whom children learn to be non-religious, and considers the different factors that are implicated in the formation of non-religious identities. While research on religious transmission has demonstrated the importance of the family, our multi-sited approach reveals the important role also played by both school context and children’s own reflections in shaping their formation as non-religious, suggesting a complex pattern of how non-religious socialization is occurring in Britain today
Introduction: The Good between Social Theory and Philosophy
Full text linkOver the past two decades, dark and apocalyptic tones have come to dominate many areas of social and cultural theory. This chapter argues that understanding social life calls not only for focus on the darkness of our current times but also for bringing the question of the good to the centre of social science inquiry as a way of studying the workings of aspirational and imaginative endeavours in people’s lives. Drawing on the history of social theory and a rapidly growing interest in morality, ethics and values within and beyond the social sciences, we present the first interdisciplinary engagement with what it means to study the good as a fundamental aspect of social and cultural life
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