Este artigo analisa narrativas construídas por professores formados em Educação do Campo, atuantes no interior de Alagoas, Nordeste do Brasil, com o propósito de compreender como suas experiências formativas e práticas pedagógicas se articulam às especificidades socioculturais e territoriais do contexto rural nordestino. As experiências relatadas emergem de um processo formativo desenvolvido pela Universidade Estadual de Alagoas, que se constituiu como uma iniciativa educacional singular e transformadora para o Agreste e o Leste alagoano. A investigação pauta-se na escuta sensível de sujeitos do campo, por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas e registros em áudio, assumindo a narrativa como instrumento político-pedagógico de afirmação de memórias, saberes e modos de vida. Com base na perspectiva do conhecimento sistêmico e insurgente, o estudo denuncia a permanência das lógicas coloniais no campo educacional e reafirma a urgência de práticas contra-hegemônicas. Defende-se que a Escola do Campo, ao valorizar as epistemologias locais (Toledo; Barrera-Bassols, 2015), deve operar como espaço de resistência. Ela deve ser enraizada na pedagogia da alternância (Ribeiro, 2008), na agroecologia e no ethos rural (Rosset, 2017); isso abrirá caminhos para que os sujeitos do campo não apenas sejam ouvidos, mas também reconhecidos como produtores de conhecimento.
As transformações demográficas, o envelhecimento populacional e a crescente complexidade das organizações de saúde têm impulsionado a busca por modelos assistenciais mais integrados e preventivos. Em entidades confessionais, esse desafio ganha relevância diante das especificidades do cuidado a populações religiosas envelhecidas e da necessidade de articular saúde, bem-estar e dignidade no envelhecimento. Objetivou-se avaliar a transição de um modelo de gestão em saúde centrado no tratamento para um modelo voltado à integração e à prevenção. Trata-se de pesquisa qualitativa realizada com profissionais, usuários e stakeholders jesuítas de quatro comunidades da Província dos Jesuítas do Brasil. Foram analisadas 61 entrevistas por meio da Análise Textual Discursiva e agrupamento por similaridade, com apoio do software NVivo. A análise revelou três eixos principais: mudanças nos processos com maior profissionalização, fortalecimento da segurança psicológica e desenvolvimento do cuidado. Conclui-se que estratégias centradas na pessoa e no estilo de vida contribuem para o bem-estar e a qualidade do cuidado em populações religiosas envelhecidas.
Este texto propõe uma aproximação entre a noção de colonialidade de gênero, desenvolvida por María Lugones, e a política da libertação, formulada por Enrique Dussel, buscando evidenciar como a articulação entre esses dois marcos teóricos pode oferecer contribuições relevantes para a interpretação crítica de estruturas e problemas sociais contemporâneos. A partir de uma incursão exploratória na literatura acadêmica de perspectiva decolonial, dialoga-se com autoras e autores que questionam a construção eurocêntrica do saber e do fazer político. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de caráter bibliográfico e documental, que mobiliza textos originais dos(as) autores(as) referidos(as) e de seus(suas) principais intérpretes, publicados nas últimas décadas e disponíveis em repositórios virtuais. Entre as contribuições mapeadas, destaca-se que a ação política à qual Enrique Dussel se refere pretende provocar uma cidadania crítica e insurgente. Associando as inquietações de María Lugones, pode-se questionar leituras sociais que isolam categorias como gênero e raça, negligenciando interseccionalidades, para miradas em fazeres-outros verdadeiramente comprometidos com a decolonialidade.
Com aumento da procura por lazer e bem-estar, os espaços públicos se tornam preferência para a coletividade e a cultura popular se apresenta como uma possibilidade, uma necessidade ou um valor para a sociedade, nesse sentido praças e parques tornam-se um diferencial para momentos de esportes, espaços culturais e de proximidade junto à natureza. Nesse contexto, o município de Canoas/RS por meio da Lei nº 6.577/22 preconizou meios para que ocorra adoção de praças e parques. Nessa linha o presente estudo se desenvolve com objetivo de investigar os benefícios percebidos, e o desenvolvimento da cultura popular nesses locais, a partir das reflexões de Milton Santos, utilizando como metodologia, a leitura e reflexão de bibliografia relacionada ao tema, os artigos, dissertações e teses, e a legislação pertinente. Buscou- se entender como ocorre essa integração social entre a comunidade e seus usuários decorrentes das ações entre o poder público e o setor privado. Assim, a pesquisa indica o uso sazonal e cotidiano a todos os cidadãos consumidores dessa cultura popular e o estímulo à formação de uma consciência ecológica, em prol da conservação da natureza. A análise visou demonstrar, a partir das reflexões propostas, a preocupação do município em conduzir as políticas públicas culturais e ambientais que atendam os anseios da sociedade, trazendo consigo a inquietação de incorporar premissas relativas à ODS 11, com a finalidade de consolidar todas essas práticas culturais.
Reflective practice is a crucial component of initial teacher education (ITE), potentially guiding pedagogical praxis toward social justice and equity. Based on the written work of residents in the Chemistry Teaching Program, this article analyses the challenges and opportunities that reflection offers for developing this awareness. Through a qualitative study on the interpretive analysis of two residents' final projects, we investigate how their reflections on chemistry teaching reveal an emerging awareness (or lack thereof) of social justice and equity dimensions. The findings indicate a predominance of focusing on technical and didactic challenges and using descriptive and dialogic reflective writing modalities. While signs of sensitivity toward equity emerge—particularly in the concern for all students' understanding and pedagogical clarity—explicitly critical reflection on the structural dimensions of social justice is still incipient or absent. It is concluded that, although reflective practice constitutes fertile ground, FDI needs to implement more intentional strategies and tools to guide future teachers in connecting their didactic reflections with an active commitment to equity and social justice in the science classroom.
Humanity lives in a paradoxically closely linked globe and social distances characterised by anthropophobia and anthropogenic threats. Social distancing anthropophobia emanant from myths of prejudicing human diversities as spiritual, cultural, political, economic and social threat. By anthropogenic threats the article acknowledges that humanity selfishly poses much human-to-human threat; consequently, possessing the potential to harm itself more than anything else. Due to social distancing anthropophobia and anthropogenic threats, humanity seek safety in repulsive avoidance or domination traits such as terrorism, discrimination, exploitation, violence and oppression. Whether assuming the domineering or victims position humanity needs liberation from the bondage of fear. This research theologically and anthropologically urges for a relook at the meaning of being human in a closely linked yet multicultural globe. With data collected from literature review and observation the article proposes a liberative reading of Acts 10 in order to address causes of social distancing anthropophobia and anthropogenic threats.
This article examines a recurrent difficulty in English language teaching: the tendency of communicative activities to generate speech without necessarily leading to meaningful communication. While communicative language teaching has reshaped classroom practice by placing interaction at the center of language learning, classroom experience often shows that student participation may remain superficial. Learners speak, complete tasks, and appear engaged, yet their interaction frequently lacks development, continuity, and sustained engagement with meaning. The article approaches this issue through the phrase communicative saturation, used here as a descriptive term for the contemporary condition in which learners are constantly exposed to rapid, frequent, and often fragmented communication outside the classroom. Against this background, it argues that the educational role of communicative activities must be reconsidered. The problem is no longer simply how to encourage students to speak, but how to ensure that classroom interaction moves beyond procedural participation and supports meaningful exchange. In this respect, the language classroom becomes a particularly revealing space in which broader shifts in communication, technology, and the formation of meaning can be observed through everyday educational practice. Building on key perspectives from communicative language teaching, classroom interaction research, and task-based pedagogy, the article analyzes the distinction between speaking and communicating, identifies pedagogical factors that contribute to superficial speaking, and reflects on the teacher’s role in shaping more substantial classroom interaction. It argues that communicative activities become educationally valuable not simply when they increase verbal participation, but when they encourage learners to clarify ideas, respond to others, and develop meaning through interaction. In this sense, English language teaching plays an important role in helping learners move from superficial speaking toward more thoughtful and meaningful communication, a task that acquires particular relevance in educational contexts shaped by changing communicative habits and technologically mediated forms of exchange.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease associated not only with physical disability but also with significant psychological, emotional, and existential challenges. Although disease-modifying therapies have improved clinical outcomes, many patients continue to experience fatigue, anxiety, depression, cognitive difficulties, uncertainty, and social isolation that are insufficiently addressed by conventional biomedical models. This paper presents a critical interdisciplinary review of the so-called mind-body-spirit (MBS) framework in multiple sclerosis care. Drawing on perspectives from neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology, rehabilitation medicine, psychology, and phenomenology, it examines how biological disease processes interact with emotional adaptation, lived experience, and the search for meaning. Particular attention is given to mindfulness-based interventions, cognitive behavioral therapy, rehabilitation programs, and meaning-centered approaches. The paper also discusses the methodological and conceptual limitations of integrative medicine, including concerns regarding reproducibility, placebo effects, and the tendency to conflate supportive care with disease-modifying efficacy. While existential and spirituality-oriented interventions may help address dimensions of suffering that extend beyond neurological impairment, they should not be considered substitutes for evidence-based treatment. The MBS framework may therefore serve as a valuable complementary perspective in MS care, provided it is applied with methodological rigor, ethical caution, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
External shocks such as meteor strikes have led to rare mass extinctions events in the past. The “external” shock faced by life on Earth in this Anthropocene era, however, is unsustainable human ecologies. Human ecologies are clusters of local cultural narrative constructs and regulated practices that determine how we interact with local natural environments. The sustainability crisis we face today is thus not an ecological but a cultural crisis. Societies around the globe have adopted a flawed way living in relation to nature, a modernist and neoliberal capitalist human ecology that cannot be sustained. Consequently, the Human Development Index shows that the more developed a country is, the larger is also its environmental footprint. The development model we are applying is itself the problem. Today’s human ecologies are based on a model of industrialisation that originated in 18th century western Europe but has now reached almost every corner of the planet. In this paper I discuss the basic flaws of such modernist-industrialist human ecologies, and compare them with pre-industrial and sustainable ecologies that anthropologist have often studied. Anthropological research shows that human societies have been sustainable for most of our history as a species. While we cannot return to the past, there is much we can learn from the sustainable ways of life of our ancestors and of indigenous and local peoples that still retain sustainable ways of life. But the key to such learning is to understand first why traditional ecologies are less destructive. What forms of cultural meaning encourage people to live sustainably? It turns out that at the heart of the modernist industrialist ecology and general perspective on life lies a spiritual poverty, a sense of a disenchanted and meaningless world that arose in the wake of the scientific revolution from the Renaissance onward. Nihilistic, conventional science-based management of ecosystems therefore does not lend itself to conservation of nature as an end in itself. I argue that we need to instil human ecologies around the world with a new cosmological understanding of our place and purpose within nature, not as masters of an ‘external’ universe but as custodians of a living whole to which we inseparably belong.
The imago Dei, understood as the relational and embodied image of God, is increasingly distorted by the imperial logics that shape contemporary gender debates. Drawing on George Orwell’s 1984 as a diagnostic framework and employing a constructive theological method integrating biblical witness, historical analysis, and relational anthropology, this study identifies two converging imperial logics: the Patriarch-Enforcement Complex (PEC) and the Expert-Dependency Complex (EDC). Though distinct in method, both advance a common project: the regulation of bodies, the severing of maternal and relational bonds, and the reorganization of human life around control rather than communion. Winston Smith’s severing from maternal memory in 1984 names the deepest mechanism of this logic: the erasure of the relational bonds through which the imago Dei becomes visible. Over five centuries, from colonial Christendom to modern technocratic governance and digital platforms, these systems have progressively marginalized the maternal dimensions of the divine image. Against this imperial logic, this study proposes the Maternal Commons as a third path, rooted in Illich’s understanding of the vernacular commons, Ruddick’s maternal epistemology, and kenotic Christology. The Maternal Commons receives the contested body without condition as a bearer of the imago Dei that empire cannot revoke. Its fourfold practice, preservation, growth, acceptance, and release, enacts the relational capacities that imperial systems seek to destroy. The oldest word for freedom, amargi, return to mother, names the logic the Maternal Commons enacts: humanity’s most enduring alternative to imperial control.
This article explores evidence and insights from a meta-analysis of the author’s own research on how families navigate communication breakdowns, transform conflict, and move toward greater emotional connection and well-being in South Africa. Family dynamics and communication patterns play a significant role in shaping contemporary understandings of the human person. Every family experiences moments of distance, misunderstanding, and psychological and linguistic barriers that leave its members feeling unheard, frustrated, or emotionally disconnected. For example, consider a father attempting to discipline his teenage daughter, only to be met with silence or sarcasm. He leaves the interaction feeling disrespected; she leaves feeling misunderstood. The gap between them widens. However, this outcome is not inevitable. All families experience conflict and lapses in communication. What distinguishes thriving families from those that struggle is not the absence of tension; rather, it is the ability to bridge the gap through intentional communication and respectful conflict resolution. Addressing the wrong issue often stems from misunderstandings caused by poor communication. As our understanding of communication between individuals deepens, we recognize the complexity and challenges inherent in this process. People communicate not only through person-to-person discussions, meetings, letters, and publications, but also through verbal and non-verbal channels, lifestyles, the environment, relationships, body language, paralanguage, intonation, tone, and numerous other subconscious cues. Effective communication among family members can prevent unnecessary conflict and misunderstanding.
This article reflects on the ethical dilemmas that emerged during qualitative fieldwork conducted with children residing in the reception centre for foreigners in Czerwony Bór, Poland. While the research was designed to explore the educational and everyday experiences of children with refugee backgrounds, the fieldwork also placed the researcher in a morally complex position: that of a witness to experiences of uncertainty, loss, and emotional distress. In such encounters, the role of the researcher becomes ethically ambiguous. On the one hand, academic research requires analytical distance, methodological discipline, and careful representation of participants’ experiences. On the other hand, encounters with children’s vulnerability often evoke a strong moral impulse to respond, support, or intervene. This tension between methodological distance and ethical responsibility forms the central concern of this article. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, the reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and the anthropological reflections on suffering developed by Arthur Kleinman, the paper examines the position of the researcher as simultaneously observer, witness, and moral subject. In doing so, it explores how theoretical frameworks function both as necessary tools for analysis and as mechanisms that may distance lived experiences from their immediacy.
This paper makes the case that, to this point, the post-apartheid denial of racial essentialism has not developed a sufficient theory of personhood; that philosophical anthropology and literary writing suggest that the post-essentialist movement (while ethically and politically necessary to overcome the ontological violence of apartheid) did so in a manner that provides an insufficient platform from which to navigate ethically, establish a stable sense of self, and generate responsive selfhood. Drawing on literary texts by Coetzee's Disgrace and Mda's Ways of Dying, I try to prove that narratives offer a view on the indeterminacy of being, an indeterminacy not adequately addressed by post-essentialist anthropology; and, more importantly, in dialogue with Mamdani, Ricoeur and Taylor, that fluid and relative ways of being are not satisfactory for a responsive sense of self, when an underlying framework for ethically responsible behavior is not provided. In this sense, literary texts act as diagnostic devices through which the deficiency of an enduring post-essentialist ontology is exposed and a stable philosophical anthropology made necessary.
Brian Cutter (2025) claims that AIs can be ensouled under right conditions which he calls the AI ensoulment hypothesis. In this paper, I extend Cutter's argument and suggest that virtual individuals can receive a soul under the right conditions, which I call the virtual ensoulment hypothesis. First, I raise the argument from analogy according to which virtual individuals can receive a soul given that they are functionally equivalent with real individuals: they have access to their environment, they have a complex behavioral repertoire and they can make inferences which are partially drawn from their memory. However, I raise the counter-argument from value which doesn’t arise for the AI ensoulment. According to the argument from value, virtual worlds do not possess certain values which make virtual individuals fit for ensoulment. I consider three ways in which virtual worlds lack value and show that two out of three of them fail. However, the third value–the value of structural stability–can create trouble for virtual ensoulment because virtual worlds lack such value. By structural stability, I mean that virtual worlds are unstable given that they depend on the computer that runs them which can have negative effects on the lives of virtual individuals. I ultimately conclude that we should be agnostic about virtual ensoulment due to structural instabilities, though I suggest that our credences should mildly favor virtual ensoulment.
One of the crucial elements in all human life is the capacity to develop and demonstrate empathy, to express one’s feelings, or even just to experience those in the first place. When people begin to resort to violence and kill each other randomly without any reasonable justification, such as in war or a crime scene protecting a potential victim, then the human element is in danger of getting lost. The current political situation in many different countries of the world indicates that this basic capacity to accept and respect other people as worthy and noble individuals is in danger of getting undermined. Robots might pick up where the violent governmental agents operate now, and then there won’t be any humanity left because all ethics and values will be lost. Beginning with political reflections about this imminent danger we all are facing, then turning to the disappearance of love, sympathy, compassion, and other feelings in our current world, this paper then looks at a selection of medieval texts where we can see already some precedents of this dangerous decline in humanity. However, the real purpose consists of exploring expressions of grief and mourning in a number of poems as signifiers of the cultural development of a specific society in the past. Most poignantly, the question pursued here consists of how individuals react to the loss of a loved one and what this tells us about our level of civilization. Tragically, the operations of the American agency ICE speak volumes about a horrible decline in humanity imposed on us as civilians by our own, US government. The messages from medieval literature thus sound loud and clear as to the central value of the ability and freedom to grieve and hence to be human.
Poland has seen the aftermath of wars and violent conflicts in recent years, which has resulted in a dramatic rise in the number of refugees entering Europe illegally. In my work, I looked at an extreme case: families with children who have experienced being refugees and have crossed the Polish-Belarusian border illegally from all over the world. The goal was to find out how to build theoretical and analytical categories for dealing with refugees within the pedagogical framework. There is a dearth of comprehensive qualitative study on the everyday behaviours of refugees, particularly those who remain in Poland during protracted asylum procedures, developing common spaces. Previous migration studies have concentrated on migration policy and assimilation. Unlike those under international protection, the study's participants continue to live in a situation of protracted legal ambiguity, making it impossible for them to find employment or engage fully in social activities. Their operation is characterized by structural exclusion and reliance on the institutional system, even though they are physically present in metropolitan areas. In this sense, the paper aims to provide answers to issues about how people in a state of "liminality" suspension create common spaces in urban surroundings, give meanings to them, and shape dialogical relationships in interactions with the social environment. The very nature of the behaviors under study led to the selection of the pedagogy of the common place as a theoretical framework: the observed activities allow for the examination of dialogicality, relationships, and the meanings of space, which enables the coupling of empirical data with theory. In addition to describing the respondents' experiences, the empirical data tests and demonstrates the pedagogy's theoretical presumptions.
This article aims to analyse the impact that religion can have on a student with poor academic performance, in a situation where he discovers faith, then directs his actions towards following God, and the results of his efforts seem to be the fruit of divine grace. We identify both evidence of the profound erudition of the Christian writer Athanasios Katigas, the refinement of his poetic/artistic expression, his actions deeply in line with the teachings of the Orthodox Church, as well as possible questions regarding his cultural, cognitive, inspirational, and artistic development. The investigative approach we are undertaking is based on the first and second volume of the series ‘Tears of Repentance - True Experiences in a Greek Taxicab’. Our goal is to leverage the author’s transformative experience in other similar situations, where children with genuine learning difficulties could follow his example. Our study aims to be both an educational case study and an interdisciplinary conceptual reflection. The present article combines narrative analysis of Katigas’ work with anthropological and educational interpretation, the focus being on the importance of spiritual dimension in author’s evolution.
The argument of this paper is that the recovery of moral normativity after structural evil cannot be taken for granted; not only do normativity and the circumstances for the recovery of normativity fail to promptly return but when they do return, they do not return in confidence. Using a reading of post-apartheid texts, this paper intends to locate and describe the process through which structural injustice damages not only the structures within which it operates but the very circumstances required for moral assessment. A closer examination of Damon Galgut's novel The Good Doctor and Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull will aim to reveal literary symptoms of administrative breakdown, testimonial collapse, and atomised moral communities where it will become evident that structural injustice does not equal restored moral consensus or a restored sense of certainty regarding moral assessment. Based on an interpretation of resources from such philosophers as Hannah Arendt, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl Jaspers, and Claudia Card, this paper will build a philosophical basis for an inherently contingent and historically weak normativity by providing literature as a kind of testing site to reveal and diagnose the corruption of and partial repair to human moral agency by questioning the assumption of the inevitability of normativity's return.
Focusing on Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights, this paper examines the relationship between identity, violence, and inherited loyalty in a Shanghai deeply marked by political instability and gang conflict. Throughout the novel, moments of intimacy and personal choice are repeatedly interrupted by family obligation, social expectation, and the violence surrounding the Scarlet Gang and the White Flowers. Drawing mainly on Judith Butler’s ideas about performativity together with Stuart Hall’s understanding of identity as something shaped by history and social experience, the analysis explores why Juliette Cai’s authority never feels entirely secure despite her position as heir to the Scarlet Gang. Gong repeatedly shows how Juliette’s behaviour, emotional restraint, and public image are closely monitored within a world that continues to associate leadership with masculine authority. Through close readings of dialogue, character interactions, and moments of emotional conflict, the paper argues that the novel never allows its characters a fully stable sense of self. Even when Juliette and Roma attempt to distance themselves from inherited violence and family loyalty, the past continues to shape their choices, relationships, and understanding of themselves. Rather than presenting identity as something fully self-determined, These Violent Delights portrays it as deeply connected to memory, obligation, and the difficulty of escaping the world that formed the characters in the first place.
By focusing on a comparative analysis of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace and Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull the paper maps the writing of memory in post-apartheid South Africa. This analysis shows that the post-apartheid writing of memory is characterized by fragmented identities and by its testimony/history and collective existence dualities in order to portray its fragile nature. Far from creating a unifying narrative, both works highlight fragmented national identities and social memory through collective struggle against the reality of violence and unfinished histories. It can be concluded from these two works that post-apartheid writings reflect the continued issues surrounding memory and as such are not monuments to oneness but monuments to its enduring struggle.
