Two powerful and interrelated transnational cultural expressions mark our epoch, Charismatic spirituality and global city. This book demonstrates how these two forces can be used to inform ethical design of cities and their common social lives to best support human flourishing, spirituality, and social and ecological wellbeing of their residents.

The question of what kind of city we are trying to have is an urgent one as the world continues its dramatic urbanization. Urban Visions presumes that an understanding of our urban experience is a prerequisite for envisioning what the city could be. In assembling work by distinguished authors from different disciplines and countries, Urban Visions offers a patient examination of what urban experience is and of the city’s necessity, with explicit and implicit propositions about what it (...) could be. The book is illustrated in full color. (shrink)

Whybrow's interdisciplinary collection of urban writings demonstrates how performance is 'at work' in the city. His selection highlights both diversity and the potential for interaction, drawing attention to the possible identities produced by the multi-faceted nature of the modern metropolis.

In a long and many-sided career, William Hasledine Pepys contributed significantly to the advancement of the chemical and physical sciences during the first half of the nineteenth century. As an original investigator he determined, in collaboration with William Allen, the composition of carbon dioxide, and the density of ammonia, and elucidated the chemical phenomena of respiration in man, animals, and plants. The success of these researches was largely due to the use of ingenious apparatus of his own invention and design. (...) In the field of experimental physics, he investigated several aspects of the recently discovered Voltaic electricity: his 'Voltaic coil', consisting of only two plates, but of very large dimensions, was particularly suited for investigating electromagnetic phenomena and was so used in Davy's researches. Pepys was one of the co-founders of the Mineralogical and Geological Societies, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1808. As a prominent member of both the Royal and London Institutions, he held honorary office as Manager and Vice-President, contributing materially to the direction of the affairs of these bodies. Pepys was a friend of Humphry Davy and was acquainted with nearly all the leading scientists and medical men of the day. At the same time, he superintended a notable manufacture of surgical instruments in the City, and promoted by his active directorship the affairs of two public companies, both pioneers in their technological fields, namely the Imperial Continental Gas Association, which was active in introducing the new gas illumination to cities and towns across Europe, and the General Steam Navigation Company, which first maintained a regular passenger and cargo service to Continental ports by the exclusive use of steam-propelled vessels. Pepys' advice in scientific and technical matters was widely sought and freely given; he retained his mental powers to the end of his long life, fulfilling his professional commitments until a few days before his death. (shrink)

English summary: The silent film of the Weimar Republic grappled with the norms and values of a society, whose elites dismissed it as a cultural product for the masses and the bulk of whose citizens were eager consumers of film. It scrutinized their civil facade and distanced itself with constructive irony and productive skepticism about their traditional (gender-) roles and modes of identity. Its silent message reaches us today like a message in a bottle from a temporary and distant, but (...) psychologically close, shore, and challenges us to translate it into the language of our own present. In the act of this metaphorically understood translation, one discovers the unexpected currency of Weimars silent film as a global form of art, which overcomes language barriers, moves people who possess various cultural horizons, and heals the trauma that lingers from the never finished Tower of Babel. The silent film of the Weimar Republic shines on us from a close remoteness with a beguiling power, which is its own genuine art. German description: Der Stummfilm der Weimarer Republik setzte sich kritisch mit den Normen und Werten einer Gesellschaft auseinander, deren Eliten ihn als Massenkulturprodukt ablehnten und deren Gros ihn gierig verschlang. Er hinterfragte ihre burgerliche Fassade und distanzierte sich mit konstruktiver Ironie und produktiver Skepsis von ihren tradierten (Geschlechter-)Rollen und Identitatsmustern. Seine stumme Botschaft erreicht uns heute wie eine Flaschenpost von einem zeitlich zwar fernen, psychologisch jedoch nahen Ufer, und fordert uns heraus, sie in die Sprache unserer eigenen Gegenwart zu ubersetzen. Im Akt dieser metaphorisch zu verstehenden Ubersetzung entdeckt man die unvermutete Aktualitat des Weimarer Stummfilms als einer globalen Kunstform, die Sprachbarrieren uberwunden, Menschen verschiedenster Kulturhorizonte bewegt und das Trauma des nie vollendeten Turms von Babel geheilt hat. Der Stummfilm der Weimarer Republik leuchtet uns aus naher Zeitferne mit einer betorenden Kraft entgegen, die nur echter Kunst eigen ist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Photo-credit to Chicago Sun-Times and James Mescall. 4 "The town is beastly and the weather was vile": Bertrand Russell in Chicago, 1938-1939 Visiting Chicago in 1867, Lord Amberley offered his wife an appreciation of the city: "The country around Chicago is flat and ugly; the town itself has good buildings but has a rough unfinished appearance which does not contribute to its attractions."l While Bertrand Russell (...) is known to have accepted and developed particular aspects of his father's thought, it is more likely that his own visits to Chicago, rather than this nineteenth -century appraisal, brought him to the opinion that "the town is beastly and the weather was vile."z One might suppose Russell's longest stay reaffirmed his image of the city suggested in a 1922 article expressing fear of "a slow destruction of the civilization of China" through which "the big towns will become like Chicago."3 Here, Russell appears to have envisioned this city as an amorphous collection of streets and structures manifesting the least desirable values of American capitalism. In his Autobiography a single paragraph is devoted to his 1938-1939 experience of "the bleak hideousness of Chicago" (II, p. 332). Yet there was far more to Russell's six-month sojourn than the little he chose to recall in print. One-half year is a significant period in anyone's life, even for a man who lived ninety-seven (and a half) years. This article, then, presents an account of Russell's coming to and departure from Chicago and his diverse activities while a professor at the University of Chicago. The need to secure some permanent academic position was strongly felt by Russell in the mid-1930s. His ~aertrand and Patricia Russell, The Amberley Papers (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 57. zThe Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1968), II, p. 332. 3"How Washington Can Help China", New Republic, 4 Jan. 1922, p. 154. / 5 second marriage had ended and a third was beginn~ng; ~ar­ ticipation in the Beacon Hill experimen~ w~s behlnd hlmj and journalistic writing, though ~ contlnulng so~rce of income, was ceasing to be attractlve: No~ a d~slre to return to philosophical work, recurrlng fl~anclal troubles, and the fear of another, far m~r~ destr~ctlve.European~ar all contributed toward his declslon to lnvestlgate Amerlcan possibilities. My feelings are threefold: (a) I' have a lot of ideas in,my head that I long to work at and believe important (b) I am faced with such poverty that I may be unable to give a proper education to the child that is coming (c) That Europe is no place for children with the imminent risk of war--particularly England, which is ' 4 likely to suffer most in the next war. At first, with the help of his American publisher, Warder Norton, Russell approached Princeton University hoping for a research post "on the foundations of mathematics and philosophy" (letter to Norton, 13 Jan. 1937). But no prospect materialized, and he requested Norton to inquire at universities such as Columbia and Harvard. Finally in the spring of 1937 Russell received a letter from Professor Scott Buchanan who then represented the University of Chicago's Committee on the Liberal Arts (COTLA). Buchanan offered a place on COTLA with only minor teaching duties. Writing to Norton that this "seems a very agreeable job", Russell nevertheless suggested the post "may be reactionary and the sort of thing my radical friends would think I ought not to be connected with. '" it is a committee concerned with a conservative reform of education." But the invitation promised adequate time for independent research, and Russell, quite characteristically, concluded "my wish is to accept, but not if doing so would be wicked" (letter of 30 Apr. 1937). However, Buchanan, having soon thereafter left the University of Chicago for a Maryland college, corresponded no further with Russell. The COTLA job offer was officially withdrawn. Only in January 1938 did Russell again hear from a University of Chicago spokesman. Aware that Russell had been somewhat brusquely treated, Professor Richard P. McKeon of the Department of Philosophy now wrote "in the... (shrink)

In the past fifteen years, Henri Lefebvre's reputation has catapulted into the stratosphere, and he is now considered an equal to some of the greats of European social theory (Bourdieu, Deleuze, Harvey). In particular, his work has revitalized urban studies, geography and planning via concepts like; the social production of space, the right to the city, everyday life, and global urbanization. Lefebvre's massive body of work has generated two main schools of thought: one that is political economic, and (...) another that is more culturally oriented and poststructuralist in tone. Space, Difference, and Everyday Life merges these two schools of thought into a unified Lefebvrian approach to contemporary urban issues and the nature of our spatialized social structures. (shrink)

The New Towns Movement began in England and later spread world-wide in response to the increasing concern felt at the deterioration of the quality of life in the large cities under the impact of industrialization. The New Towns, it was felt, would combine the advantages of life in the country with that of life in the city. They would be small communities of between 30.000 and 60.000 inhabitants. Their principal characteristics were to be a balanced economy (...) and a well-defined pattern of industrial, commercial and residential zones. (shrink)

Local places, such as communities, cities, and towns, host many cross-cross sector partnerships, many geared primarily toward alleviating local social and environmental issues. Yet, existing literatures focus predominantly on largescale systemic impact and global challenges such as climate change, paying scant attention to the role of local, geographically bounded dynamics in shaping these partnerships. In this article, I conceptualize places as geographic locations imbued with specific meaning systems and material resources to unpack how local embeddedness shape the structure of cross-sector (...) partnerships. Specifically, I investigate how place-based conflict, arising from tensions between the moral and material aspects of a partnership, can shape formalized aspects of organizational structure. These include the scope of operations, partners’ roles, and shared resources. I unpack these relationships using a case study of Occupy Medical, a local partnership between the civic society and the local government in Eugene, Oregon, tackling the problem of providing healthcare to the homeless and other marginalized and disenfranchised communities. The analysis covers the nine-year period of 2011–2020 and spans three major restructurings of the organization, the latest prompted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. I theorize two forms of structural arrangements for cross-sector partnerships, confined and leveraged, and further elaborate on the role of cross-sector partnerships in crises response on the local level. (shrink)

Many current assumptions about health provision in medieval English cities derive not from the surviving archival or archaeological evidence but from the pronouncements of Victorian sanitary reformers whose belief in scientific progress made them dismissive of earlier attempts to ameliorate the quality of urban life. Our own tendency to judge historical responses to disease by the exacting standards of modern biomedicine reflects the same anachronistic attitude, while a widespread conviction that England lagged centuries behind Italy in matters of health (...) and hygiene seems to reinforce presumptions of ‘backwardness’ and ‘ignorance’. By contrast, this paper argues that a systematic exploration of primary source material reveals a very different approach to collective health, marked by direct intervention on the part of the crown and central government and the active involvement of urban communities, especially after the Black Death of 1348-49. A plethora of regulations for the elimination of recognized hazards was then accompanied by major schemes for environmental improvement, such as the introduction of piped water systems and arrangements for refuse collection. (shrink)

In this call for better public history, Robert Archibald explores the intersections of history, memory and community to illustrate the role of history in contemporary life and how we are active participants in the past.

Diese Arbeit reflektiert die Großstadt phänomenologisch konsequent als „Lebenswelt“ - die Lebenswelt Großstadt vorgestellt als Gestalt und Gestaltung wirklich wesentlichen Menschseins hier und jetzt. Damit, und das ist ein Ziel dieser Untersuchung, lässt sich eine Phänomenologie der Lebenswelt Großstadt nicht von einer existentiell gerichteten Anthropologie lösen. - Wir leben, arbeiten, lieben und leiden eben nicht in einer Lebenswelt an und für sich. Nicht eine abstrakt eingeführte Lebenswelt wird als das Fundament unseres Daseins vorgestellt, also unseres Wahrnehmens, Erkennens, Fühlens; nicht sie (...) ist Horizont unseres Krankseins, unserer Kunst und unserer Religion. Vielmehr wird die Lebenswelt Großstadt phänomenologisch eingeführt als die Wirklichkeit, die unser Da-und-So-sein prägt und verändert. So reflektiert sich die Lebenswelt Großstadt phänomenologisch als „aktives“ und „passives“, als „willkürliches“ und „unwillkürliches“ existentielles Aktgeflecht, in und mit dem sich das leibhafte Dasein ganz und gar als In-der-Welt-sein eingefaltet erlebt. Lebenswelt Großstadt und unser Da-und-So-in-der-Welt-sein können phänomenologisch also gleichgesetzt werden. Somit ist Daseins-Analyse Lebenswelt-Analyse und umgekehrt. Das hätte - und darauf macht diese Arbeit besonders aufmerksam - Folgen für Psychologie, Medizin, Psychiatrie, und nicht zuletzt auch für die Theologie. (shrink)

John Cassidy, born in Ireland and trained as a sculptor at the Manchester School of Art, was a popular figure in the Manchester area during his long career. From 1887, when he spent the summer modelling for visitors at the Royal Jubilee Exhibition, to the 1930s he was a frequent choice for portrait busts, statues and relief medallions. Elected to the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, he also created imaginative works in all sorts of materials, many of which appeared at (...) the Academys annual exhibitions. He gained public commissions from other towns and cities around Britain, and after World War I created several war memorials. This essay examines his life and work in Manchester, with particular reference to two major patrons, Mrs Enriqueta Rylands and James Gresham. A list of public works still to be seen in Greater Manchester is included. (shrink)

At best, Fanon had an ambivalent attitude toward the potentialities of African cities. As largely colonial creations, they were never viewed as the ‘real’ locus for an elaboration of a critical national consciousness or political project. Yet now that Africa is an ‘urban continent’, with cities moving in disparate directions through various broken infrastructures and temporalities, urbanization conveys both a desire for collective capacities that would seem to exceed both the terms of colonial residues and Fanon’s revolutionary projections, yet simultaneously (...) to reiterate the fundamental tensions in their relationship. The very practices that would seem to waste political mobilization may be those which defer a definitive foreclosure of them. While African cities remain exemplars of the region’s captivation with redesigned imperialisms, they are generative of the potentials Fanon identified but assumed would never come from them. (shrink)

How to conjure up a picture, for instance, of a town without pigeons, without any trees or gardens, where you never hear the beat of wings or the rustle of leaves—a thoroughly negative place in short?Though now home to the majority of the world's human population, cities—indeed the politics of life itself—have always been multispecies endeavors. The quote above is Albert Camus's description of Oran, the fictional town that is the site of a devastating plague outbreak in (...) his seminal work, The Plague. It is meant to conjure a decidedly dystopian urban landscape due to its marked absence of nonhuman life. Such a scenario is precisely what the visionary artistic and literary movement Solar Punk seek to counter... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 150Leonard A. CurchinA. T. Fear. Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 150. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii 1 292 pp. 3 maps. Cloth, $75. (Oxford Classical Monographs)The Roman province of Baetica has not received a comprehensive treatment since R. Thouvenot’s Essai sur la province romaine de Bétique (Paris 1940; 2d ed. 1973). Since then, (...) important epigraphic finds such as the Tabula Irnitana (AE 1986, 333) and archaeological excavations have greatly modified our understanding of the structure of Roman cities in this province. Fear endeavors to assess the urban phenomenon in Roman Baetica in light of this new evidence. Rather than “Urbanization,” his subtitle might better have read “Urban Change,” since Baetica had already been largely urbanized by the Carthaginians and Iberians, and the real issue is how the native cities were affected by the Roman presence. The author himself concedes that Baetica had a “native urban tradition,” whereas there is “little firm evidence that Rome pursued an active urbanizing policy” (27–29). He also shows that while Romanization may have been passive from a Roman perspective, the inhabitants were actively involved in “bottom-up” initiatives to improve the status and amenities of their cities.An introductory chapter surveys Baetican geography and examines an anthropological model of colonialism. Since Fear later questions “whether the premisses of such a model... are in fact of any use when looking at the life of a Roman province” (274), it is unclear why he includes it at all. The next chapter discusses the characteristics of an ancient city, and (with a range of examples from Britain to Palestine) how urbanism was diffused in new areas. Listing the features of a city mentioned—but incidentally, rather than as a definition—in the Digest, Fear examines to what extent these are reflected in the laws of Urso and Irni. This seems an artificial and otiose exercise, since the colony of Urso and the municipium of Irni were unquestionably cities, even if the Urso law, for instance, contains no reference to bath houses. Moreover, Fear’s tendency to use interchangeably the terms “town” and “city” obscures the issue of urban definition; the pre-Roman oppida of the Baetican highlands may have been towns, but were not cities.Chapter 3 investigates the state of urbanism (including colonies like Carteia and Corduba) in southern Spain around 50 b.c. Fear challenges conventional opinion by discounting the conventus as a major factor in urbanization and by questioning whether mining brought large numbers of Italians to the province. He also shows that while the legends on local coinage were Latinized, the designs (bull, Melqart, Iberian cavalryman) remained pre-Roman. The next chapter asks whether the Late Republican colonies were really miniature replicas of Rome, as Aulus Gellius (16.13) suggests. Fear argues that while the colonies did imitate Rome in such features as law and public architecture, they were “content to adapt native structures” (104) in other areas. This was because the Baetican colonies were not founded on “greenfield” sites (such as Emerita in [End Page 143] Lusitania) but were superimposed on indigenous settlements, thereby including a substantial proportion of Spanish incolae who inevitably had an “Iberianizing” influence on the colonists.The chapter on the Julio-Claudian period is primarily an analysis of the elder Pliny’s list of Baetican privileged towns. Fear finds very few cases in which we can state with certainty whether municipia were of Roman or Latin status. He also maintains that the distinctive cognomina assigned to the cities did not confer legal status (contra M. I. Henderson, JRS 32 [1942] 6, who saw them as “flowery colonial titles”) but simply helped distinguish between homonymous place names. Chapter 6 considers the impact of the Flavian Municipal Law, which Fear sees as a general blueprint, a lawyer’s vision of what life should be like in a municipium. As such the law makes unrealistic assumptions, for instance (in the section on enrollment of iudices) that all the residents will have tria nomina. As for the effect of the law on the inhabitants... (shrink)

The study of the post-Communist towns of East Europe and Russia does not only present the social sciences with the opening of a new field and the attraction of exoticism close at hand. They are a remarkable observatory of the complex relations which unite the material facets of urban life (extension of the built-up area, architectural forms, types of distribution of infrastructures and services) and the social structures (mode of government, nature of the economic initiative, expressions of sociability). In (...) three-quarters of a century for Russia, in fifty years for the countries of East Europe, cities many ages old were to have two changes of system: from liberal industrial capitalism to the controlled Communist economy, from interventionist autarchy to the globalized market. To give the lie to the poet (Baudelaire), towns change no faster than the hearts of mortals but beat to the rhythm of their continuities, their aspirations and their dreams. (shrink)

Poverty has continued to be an enormous challenge for Africa. Immoral political decisions and tactics have led to the continued suffering of the landless poor in the city of Harare. With no consideration for the dignity of people, the government of Zimbabwe through Operation Murambatsvina demolished shelters belonging to the poor in the city a decade and half ago. To this day, most of the victims of this destruction still lack adequate accommodation. The majority urban poor have been (...) excluded from the community and inhabit shanty towns around Harare. Deprived of justice, the poor are alienated from their right to land, nourishment and dignified life. This complete disregard for life and African community values ought to be challenged. Ubuntu moral theory presents necessary guiding principles for human progress that achieves genuine harmony and equality among all people. In light of the experiences of deadly but preventable poverty in Harare, the will-to-live for all requires confirmation. Every human being is endowed with irrevocable intrinsic worth. The elimination of poverty requires practical philosophical resolutions that are driven by sincere respect for human life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 114-121 [Access article in PDF] Art as Part of Daily Life - A Cross-cultural Dialogue between Art and People If encounters with art and artists become part of daily life in a small rural community, and if aesthetic experiences are perceived by its local residents as part of their daily lives, what kinds of humanistic, cultural, and social change take (...) place in the community and in the people involved? By living together in a residential community, and by showing and sharing the process of art making, to what extent can aesthetic, cultural, and social issues and concerns expressed by artists be interpreted by local residents? These are the main issues addressed in this essay. 1 The artistic and aesthetic education provided in the community gradually opened up a dialogue not only between foreign artists as guests and Japanese spectators as hosts, but also between art and people, culture and culture, and people and people within the local community. Outline of the Project The Cultural Exchange House, situated in Yamaguchi prefecture, has accommodated about forty artists-in-residence from abroad for over ten years. The forty artists who have stayed there include painters, potters, sculptors, photographers, pianists, musicians, composers, poets, and writers. Artists are responsible for their travel and living expenses. The use of the house is provided without charge and the needs of the artists are met by volunteers. About half of the artists have been German and the rest from Britain, Belgium, United States, Holland, and Australia. Male and female artists have been nearly equally represented.Beginning with three, there are now sixteen volunteers who felt that the creation of a cultural environment, or more specifically the creation of access to the world of art was important for the community. They saw the need for the local community to provide children and adults with aesthetic experiences that could enrich their internal and external worlds. Increasing numbers of children were leaving the community to attend schools and get jobs, with little possibility of returning. The volunteers felt that one of their roles was to educate children and their parents so that they could encounter values different from their own, develop self-confidence, and take pride in the local community which had such cultural opportunities. They assumed that art could open people's minds to the world outside their existing cultural framework, and that it would be valuable to have artists from the outside world as their neighbors and friends. [End Page 114] Benefits of the Project There are already extensive formal grants available to foreign artists in cities such as Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. However, the people who came to Yamaguchi said that they were especially attracted to life in a rural community; they hoped to experience the "real life" of the Japanese. Since the projectcould offer no grants for travel and other daily expenses, the communitydecided that they had little hope of attracting well-known artists. Instead, they invited younger lesser-known artists with potential, who did not mind the limited conditions and who welcomed a new cultural experience which might stimulate or broaden their approach to art. The contract stated that the artists should participate in cultural exchange programs, such as visiting schools and community centers to hold art workshops, and also, at the end of their stay, to share their experiences of the residency in the form of an exhibition or a concert. The degree to which this contract was kept varied. In general, the artists fulfilled the local people's expectations by holding workshops with children and adults, and did not mind having concerts in the town gymnasium or exhibitions at the community center. Foreign artists had an opportunity to reflect in a quiet environment and further their art. They were also stimulated by the encounter with the culture and people, and felt at home in the Cultural Exchange House.The house is relatively large with more than ten rooms; a dining room,kitchen, toilet, an outside bathroom, a separate studio space, and a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beginning in the 20s of the last century, historical research into Eiximenis's life and writings has thrown into relief his contribution to the language and political ideas of the kingdoms and towns of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. Of fundamental importance has been the work of medievalists from North America, and in particular that of Canadian scholars during the last decades of the twentieth century.More recently, a number of studies (...) have underlined the decisive contribution of Eiximenis – a representative of a European textual tradition among friars of the Minor Observance that extended from Oxford to Florence – to the establishment of a system of ethical values for the economic sphere and for trading practices that continued to be developed by members of the Franciscan Order throughout the high middle ages and early modern period.As a follow-up to these studies, I believe that a program of textual analysis and systematic investigation of Eximenis's work could provide further information about the range and significance of his political thinking, based as it was on applying, in typically Franciscan fashion, experimental observation to gain an understanding of the nature both of the societas and of the market, the latter being thought of as a defining expression of civic institutions in Western Europe. This same experimental approach can be found in Franciscan thinking from the catalan-aragonese realm not only in the work of Arnau de Vilanova and Ramon Llull, but also in that of Pere Tomas and Anselm Turmeda, two figures fundamental to the preparation and political engagement of the Friar of Girona.1. The concept of contractIn Eiximenian texts, the communitarian dimension is defined as one that is of necessity based on contract. It is expounded in the long opening section of the Dotzè del Crestià, where Eiximenis outlines the political value of the civitas, as well as setting out the elements that constitute civic life.Borrowing from Aristotle's discussion in the First Book of the Politics , the Franciscan friar strongly affirms that one of the principal reasons behind the civitas is the "necessitat de contractes," the need for contracts. Going far beyond the highly qualified analysis of money and coinage set out by the Greek philosopher, Eiximenis here maintains that the aims of the community is the profit that the citizenry realises by means of different forms of exchange, through buying and selling, through contracts, and through trading. Moreover, that the binding nature of trading-contracts is a matter of concern not of the city in the narrow sense, but of each and every kind of human social organization.Even before contract-law, or, better said, conventional or foral procedure, Eiximenis views the idea of the contract as an essential part of the ethical and organizational principles of living as a community, the essence of the civitas. And it is of great significance that when he is discussing the value and function of money, Eiximenis chooses to call the sorts of exchange that to-day we term economic or financial les civils conmutacions, or exchanges between citizens.These lexical hints allow us to capture the strength of meaning and value, the ethical perspective by which the Gerundense defines the inextricable union of the market and civic society. But it is not only an analytical perspective, significant as that is, that unites market and civic ethics; we are presented with a value judgment of contract and economic exchange as elements that determine the very idea of civilitas.The "bona civilitas," an expression that can be roughly translated as "good civic culture," is in fact founded on a concept of economic ethics that has as its distinguishing feature the logic of profitable exchange, of the distribution of that profit, of contractualization, and of the circulation of goods and money. It is characterised by redefining the anti-value of avaritia as a real.. (shrink)

The paper explores town-gown relations in Europe across thecenturies from the point of view of the university. It arguesthat the history of their relationship can be largely dividedinto two distinctive periods: one, in the period 1200–1800, whenthe University was in the town, but not of it; the other,post-1800, when the two were much more closely connected. Italso briefly examines the influence of the American campus modelon the European university system.

The aim of this encyclopedia is to provide a comprehensive reference work on scientific and other scholarly research on the quality of life, including health-related quality of life research or also called patient-reported outcomes research. Since the 1960s two overlapping but fairly distinct research communities and traditions have developed concerning ideas about the quality of life, individually and collectively, one with a fairly narrow focus on health-related issues and one with a quite broad focus. In many ways, (...) the central issues of these fields have roots extending to the observations and speculations of ancient philosophers, creating a continuous exploration by diverse explorers in diverse historic and cultural circumstances over several centuries of the qualities of human existence. What we have not had so far is a single, multidimensional reference work connecting the most salient and important contributions to the relevant fields. Entries are organized alphabetically and cover basic concepts, relatively well established facts, lawlike and causal relations, theories, methods, standardized tests, biographic entries on significant figures, organizational profiles, indicators and indexes of qualities of individuals and of communities of diverse sizes, including rural areas, towns, cities, counties, provinces, states, regions, countries and groups of countries. (shrink)

In 1939, just before graduating from high school in the small town of Ridgeway in northeast Iowa, Everett Kuntz spent his entire savings of $12.50 on a 35mm Argus AF camera. He made a camera case from a worn-out boot, scraps from a tin can, and a clasp from his mother’s purse. For the next several years, especially during the summers when he worked on his parents’ dairy farm, he clicked the shutter of his trusty Argus all around the (...) quiet town. Everett bought movie reel film in bulk from a mail-order house, rolled his own film, and developed it in a closet at home, but he never had the money to print his photographs. More than two thousand negatives stayed in a box while he married, raised a family, and worked as an electrical engineer in the Twin Cities. When he became ill with cancer in the fall of 2002—sixty years after he had developed the last of his bulk film—Everett opened his time capsule and printed the images from his youth. He died in 2003, having brought his childhood town back to life just as he was leaving it. A sense of peace radiates from these images. Whether skinny-dipping in the Turkey River, wheelbarrow-racing, threshing oats, milking cows, visiting with relatives after church, or hanging out at the drugstore or the movies, Ridgeway’s hardworking citizens are modest and trusting and luminous in their graceful harmony and their unguarded affection for each other. Visiting the town in 2006 as he was writing the text to accompany these photographs, Jim Heynen crafted vignettes that perfectly complement these rediscovered images by blending fact and fiction to give context and voice to Ridgeway’s citizens. (shrink)

"Sponsored by the Quadrant Global Cultures group... and by the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.".

Introduction: Antonio López García's everyday urban worlds -- Gran Vía (1974-1981) -- Madrid desde Torres Blancas (1974-1982) -- Madrid desde la torre de bomberos de Vallecas (1990-2006) -- Epilogue: El sol del membrillo.

Que nous apprend la vie publique urbaine de notre culture morale et politique? Comment perçoit-on les autres, et comment définit-on, dans l'espace limité des rencontres auxquelles nous expose le côtoiement urbain le plus routinier, le périmètre de ce que l'on doit à autrui, ce que l'on peut en attendre, en craindre ou en exiger? Des métamorphoses de la mendicité à la politisation du phénomène de «harcèlement de rue», l'étude des «relations en public» chère au sociologue américain Erving Goffman est ici (...) prolongée, pour analyser la façon dont les formes ordinaires de la coexistence urbaine participent à la fabrique de nos cultures démocratiques. L'ethnographie de longue durée menée par Carole Gayet-Viaud montre, au fil des séquences d'enquête, mêlant observations des espaces publics urbains (rues, transports, jardins, terrasses de café, etc.) et entretiens relatifs à ces expériences, le travail normatif à l'œuvre dans ces échanges. La définition des choses dues entre inconnus, telles que la vie publique les donne à voir, dessine ainsi une civilité irréductible à un corpus de règles qu'il ne s'agirait que d'appliquer. C'est, bien plutôt, une activité permanente de réglage des conduites, qui inscrit, dans des pratiques d'apparence anodine, aux frontières des sphères morale et politique, une définition située des exigences de la vie commune, des égards qui articulent un sens du juste et du convenable, et tentent de les faire coïncider."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Dervish lodges and cults were among the important elements of the Ottoman social life and in those times, they had spread to nearly all city centers, towns and villages. Dervish lodges served as non-formal educational institutions for people from all ages and all segments of the society. In addition to education, these structures also played important roles in political, economic, social and military life of the Ottoman Empire. In general, wise people and scholars contributed to the development (...) and dissemination of Islamic sciences in general, and specifically, mystic thought. As a matter of fact, it was determined that there were a great number of Dervish lodges that were founded or supported by shaykh al-Islam (the chief justice), kādī (judge), scholars and mudarrisīn (teachers) in the history of sufism. One of them was Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which was founded in the 16th Century by Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who belonged to the Ilmiya class (d. 998/1590). Until today no detailed studies have been conducted on lodges, which continued their existence until 1925. For this reason, this article will be the first study that deals with the dervish lodges in the light of archive sources. In this article, which was written to shed light on the course of our sufi cultural history, the prominent names, shaykhs and physical status of the Dervish lodges, especially Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who was the founder of these lodges, will be dealt with.Summary: Our country, which hosts scientific moral centers like dervish lodges, school, madrasa and masjids, has a rich historical cultural treasure. As it is already known, the above-mentioned institutions had an important place in the life of Ottoman social life. Dervish lodges and madrassas were considered as science and wisdom centers because there is no distinction between zāhir (exterior) and bātin (interior) in our tradition. Under then-present conditions, the institutions that were needed most were supported. In this sense, the sultans and scholars cared about the dervish lodges, which were the places where sciences were studied contributing to the construction of these structures. One of these was Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which was founded in the center of Eyupsultan by the Ottoman man of letter, poet and scholar, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi (d. 998/1590).Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge is located in the Debbaghane/Tabakhane (Tannery) district in the center of Eyupsultan. As Suleyman Çelebi stated, “the valiant ones worked in the Tannery”. For this reason, it is possible to say that there were tanners among the disciples and followers of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge.Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge was built by Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who belonged to the scholar class in the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed Vusuli Efendi, who served as a professor in various madrasahs, served as a kādī in cities like Konya, Kutahya and Istanbul. Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was called “Mullah” because of his madrasah origin and “Çelebi” because of being a member of the scholar class. For this reason, dervish lodge in question was known as Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge in his honor. Sources mention the religious, knowledgeable and modest personality of Mehmed Vusuli Efendi. In this sense, the establishment of a dervish lodge by someone from the scholar class is important in terms of being a sign of the togetherness of dervish lodges and madrasahs in the Ottoman Empire. In addition to his scientific personality, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was also an important figure who wrote works both as prose and as poetry, and made some translations into Turkish. In addition to the Dervish Lodges mentioned here, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi also established mosques and public baths in various places in Istanbul and was interested in charity works. Cemaleddin Server Revnakoglu stated that he was given the nickname “FındıklıÇelebi” because he had established a mosque in Fındıklı District.Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was the son-in-law of Aise Hubbi Hatun (d. 997/1589), who was one of the lady poets of the 16th century divan literature. Aise Hubbi Hatun was the granddaughter of Kanuni Sultan Suleyman’s foster brother Yahya Efendi from Beşiktaş. Aise Hubbi Hatun was also the wife of Semsi Çelebi, who was one of the grandchildren of Aksemseddin. In this sense, Aise Hubbi Hatun was a person who served in the palace during the reign of Selim II. According to the sources, Mullah Çelebi was appointed to a post that was as high as being the kādī of Istanbul with the help of Aise Hubbi Hatun, who was one of the prominent figures of the palace. For this reason, Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was also known as “Hubba/Hubbi Mullah”.In the present study of ours on Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, one of the most prominent lady poets was Serife Zubeyde Fitnat Hanım (d. 1194/1780). In the sources, some authors discussed whether Fitnat Hanım’s tomb was in Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge. Since there is no inscription on it, the tomb of Mehmed Vusuli Efendi was assumed to belong to Fitnat Hanım. Actually, in the past, Istanbul Tombs and Museums Directorate hung a plate saying that the tomb in question belonged to Fitnat Hanim. However, Bilgin Turnalı revealed that the tomb of Fitnat Hanım was not in the Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge in his article with the title “The Tomb of the Poet Fitnat Hanım”.The archive sources, which we can examine on Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, generally belong to the 18th century and onwards. For this reason, the information on the establishment years of the Dervish Lodge was not determined fully. However, some of the archive sources reported some revenues of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge. For example, it was recorded in the archives that payments were made to this Dervish Lodge in Muharramiya activities. As it is known, ceremonies were held in the Ottoman Palace in the month of Muharram, which was the initial month of the Hijri calendar, and a number of people and institutions in Istanbul and its surroundings were paid by the Sultan under the name of “Muharramiyya”.In Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, there were some prominent shaykhs like Mahmud Efendi and Nureddin Efendi. For example, since Mahmud Efendi had a lot of influence on the lodge, it was named after him for a period of time. Another prominent shaykh in the above-mentioned dervish lodge was Nureddin Efendi. As a matter of fact, he was closely interested in the maintenance and repair works of the dervish lodge and the activities related to the cults, and applied to Evkāf-i Humāyūn many times for repair works. Mehmed Esref Sabri Efendi, who was the shaykh before the last one in this dervish lodge, contributed to the training of many people of cult, especially Saadeddin Ceylan, who was the shaykh of Haki Baba Lodge. The last shaykh of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge was Hafiz Hussein Kamil Efendi, who was the son-in-law of Mehmed Esref Sabri Efendi.When the physical condition of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge is examined, it is understood that it was ruined in some periods in the history due to erosion; and for this reason, it had renovations. It was determined that Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, which belonged to the Kadiriyye cult, remained until the last period of the Ottoman Empire; however, after the closure of the dervish lodges in 1925, it disappeared rapidly. In our present day, two tombs that belong to Mehmed Vusuli Efendi and Aise Hubbi Hatun and a graveyard where the members of the lodge were buried are left behind from this Dervish Lodge. As it is known, Dervish Lodges had an important place in the religious, scientific, political and economic life of the Ottoman society. In this article, which was planned to examine the Ottoman sufi culture, the historical course of Mullah Çelebi Dervish Lodge, its founder, shaykhs, physical location, etc. were discussed in the light of the archive sources. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit in three theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977), and Peter Katz's The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1994). I then (...) propose a set of ‘settlement’ issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude by suggesting that the ‘good city’ be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space; and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public discourse. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relations between art and everyday life in the city from the vantage points of urban aesthetics and sociology, where the “city” refers as well to a normative world. The aim is to show how art/artistic life contributed to the normative change and new urban lifestyles. First, I focus on Baudelaire’s theory of beauty and life in modern metropolis or the city as “poetic object” and dandyism as an art of the (...) self, seen as a crucial normative change: the emergence of new norms of excellence and art of living, such as creativity and self-fashioning. Second, I discuss a recent yet related normative change, described by Boltanski and Chiapello as a passage to the “project-oriented city”, seen as a new way of working and living that fuses cultures of creativity and uncertainty. Third, I tackle the “creative city” hailed by Florida, where the creative lifestyle of “creative people” is the new mainstream setting the norms for society: individuality, diversity and openness, but also impermanent relationships and loose ties. I will argue that extending the hyper-mobile and flexible creative lifestyle from the extraordinary figure of the artist to ordinary people, as everyday urban life, triggers both benefits and risks. (shrink)

Debate on the potential and uses of human stem cells tends to be conducted by two constituencies—ethicists and scientists. On many occasions there is little communication between the two, with the result that ethical debate is not informed as well as it might be by scientific insights. The aim of this paper is to highlight those scientific insights that may be of relevance for ethical debate.Environmental factors play a significant role in identifying stem cells and their various subtypes. Research related (...) to the role of the microenvironment has led to emphasis upon “plasticity”, which denotes the ability of one type of stem cell to undergo a transition to cells from other lineages. This could increase the value given to adult stem cells, in comparison with embryonic stem cell research. Any such conclusion should be treated with caution, however, since optimism of this order is not borne out by current research.The role of the environment is also important in distinguishing between the terms totipotency and pluripotency. We argue that blastocysts and embryonic stem cells are only totipotent if they can develop within an appropriate environment. In the absence of this, they are merely pluripotent. Hence, blastocysts in the laboratory are potentially totipotent, in contrast to their counterparts within the human body which are actually totipotent. This may have implications for ethical debate, suggesting as it does that arguments based on potential for life may be of limited relevance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 80-98 [Access article in PDF] Musical Spirituality:Reflections on Identity and the Ethics of Embodied Aesthetic Experience in/and the Academy Deanne Bogdan Music in/and My Life Several years ago, I attended a Pontifical High Mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. It was the feast of the Epiphany, a public holiday in the predominantly Roman Catholic country of Austria. 1 A "lapsed" (...) Catholic myself, my intention as part of the congregation that day was not primarily one of worship as it was to listen to a performance of the Pauckenmesse of Joseph Haydn, complete with soloists, full choir, and orchestra (in overcoats), including, of course, timpani.As I stepped from the brilliant winter morning into the narthex of that gothic splendor, the pungency of the incense propelled me into Proustian recollections of growing up female, Catholic, and Italian-Canadian in the cathedral parish in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada's steel town. My mother and father, first generation Italian-Canadians, whose own parents had emigrated as teen-agers, had been partners in a corner grocery located in another part of the city that was largely professional and white-Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Eager to assimilate (they never spoke Italian to my sister or me, and we never learned the language), my parents realized early on that their most valuable legacy to their two daughters would be the advantages of a solid education, religious and secular. For them that meant enrolling us in the local co-educational Catholic elementary school. Later we attended a convent secondary school as day students, and were the only members of our extended family, male or female, to attend university.It was memories of those elementary school years that were conjured up for me that crisp January morning at St. Stephen's. (In hindsight, I am struck by the synchronicity 2 of the fact that my original surname is Di Stefano, or rather "Distefan," as it had become in its anglicized form). 3 For a [End Page 80] whole complex of reasons, I identified strongly with my parochial school and the church that sheltered/shadowed it — a soaring pseudo-gothic structure reputed to have been replicated, stone by stone, wood carving by hand wood carving, from some European cathedral. The romance of that basilica — The Cathedral of Christ the King — its "daughter" school, and the priests and nuns who were our guides and teachers became my second family for the whole of my grade school education. For me, being at school was like a recognition scene. As Italian-American literary theorist Marianna de Marco Torgovnick writes: When I was a child, school was...a light-filled, wide awake world in which fear did not erupt except on rare occasions. I saw school as a place where I was valued for my intelligence, even though I was female — and this probably had something to do with my absence of fear there. I quite naturally chose to stay in school through college and into graduate school. It's in these relatively late years that I first became fully conscious of how even within the world of school I was and always would be female. 4My identification with my church/school centered around my musical development, which began at age four when the piano I grew up on arrived like a beacon in our home. Coterminous with my eager entry into first grade, piano lessons were begun with Sister Cecile, a somewhat nervous, gentle nun predisposed to mystical experience, who shepherded me through exams and recitals until high school. Because I could sight-read fairly well, I was regularly pulled out of class to accompany soloists and dancing groups rehearsing for annual Christmas and St. Patrick's Day concerts. Something about this made me feel special; I both reveled in and felt isolated by my difference from my classmates. I had found a sense of community through my music, and enjoyed a feeling of security in the knowledge that my schoolwork was strong enough... (shrink)

The present essay describes how one small, rural, Canadian town relied on its community sprit to support locals affected by the current pandemic. Such spirit might increasingly attract people, now working from home in large cities, who seek a sense of community beyond what work offers. The attraction could bring new life to small towns.

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar workers, laundresses (...) and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

Understandings of urban foodways in Zimbabwe and other African countries have been dominated by food security frameworks. The focus on material scarcity and measurable health outcomes within these frameworks has often obscured the socio-cultural dimension of foodways and the historical and political structures that have shaped, and continue to shape, everyday relationships with food among different groups of urban residents in cities. Addressing these often-overlooked aspects, this paper looks at intergenerational contestations over foodways in a midsized high-density Zimbabwean town. (...) Presenting results of 6-months ethnographic fieldwork involving participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the paper explores meanings and practices of food in a postcolonial urban setting using three generational groups as a point of departure. These groups are youth (aged 15 to 25 years old), a post-independence generation (aged 26 to 43) and a pre-independence middle-aged generation (aged 43 to 65). Findings show that foodways of the three generations, each having experienced Zimbabwe’s (post-)colonial political economy in different ways, are negotiated through postcolonial socio-ecological relations, urban–rural connections and social hierarchies articulated through urban and rural space. The paper concludes that to understand urban food security in a postcolonial setting, urbanites’ generation-specific life experiences and intergenerational negotiations around historically situated spatial and socio-ecological relations should be considered. The findings could inform urban food security policy to make it more targeted towards the needs of different generational groups as well as more attuned to urbanites’ dynamic socio-cultural foodways and the socio-ecological relations that shape these. (shrink)

One of the areas of study of tafsīr is the stories in the Qur’ān. In the stories of the Qur’ān, generally creation, man, the nature of man and different societies that lived in history are mentioned. Although the main theme in the stories is belief and disbelief, social structures and cultural features are explicitly and indirectly mentioned as well. But the mufassirs approached the stories mainly from the point of view of belief and disbelief. They did not declare an opinion (...) on cultural studies. Positive science applies the culture, science and technology that humanity has, only to the will and labour of man. However, when we look at the sacred texts, humanity has not only realized its development in the field of culture, science and technology, but also evolved by the presence of divine grace as well as the mind. In this evolution, the prophets were given a special task. This study covers the prophets and some inventions and professions attributed to them. The examination of the influence of divine grace and the Prophet’s fatānah (outstanding reasoning power) in the development of culture, science and technology is among the importance of the study. Because when scientific determinations are examined, it is seen that the first cultural events and civil developments occurred in the geography of the Prophets. Again, it can be seen that the explanation of culture and cultural developments with a positivist perspective and an empirical paradigm has some shortcomings. For this reason, the article aims to explain how cultural developments are formed based on sacred information data. In the study, the qualitative method was selected and the document examination technique was applied. Along with cultural activities, the prophets and their works were discussed; classical and modern tafsīr sources, as well as historical books, akhīlik (a guild system) works and futuwwatnāmas (rules and regulations of the guild) were addressed. Man was created by Almighty Allah with different and superior equipment than other beings. He has been taught all names. Names mean having the ability to recognize-classify-name the creature, to reason, to transform the nature and to transfer the culture. The meaning of the verse “he taught him all the names” is to teach the Prophet Adam the knowledge of things and the general knowledge of civilized life. The general knowledge was developed by people and various and different objects were produced; science and technique were constantly developed. Especially the prophets made a great contribution to these scientific and technological developments. Thus, the prophets guided people in the spiritual sphere such as faith, worship and morality, as well as in the scientific and material sphere. Throughout the history, the prophets have shed light on scientific developments directly or indirectly, showing the limits of the level of science that humanity can reach through their miracles. According to Islāmic Sciences, the process of domesticating seeds and taming animals began during the reign of the Prophet Adam. He produced dresses for himself and his wife. As a prophet, a religion and belief system was formed during his time. Along with Prophet Idrīs, more beautiful dresses began to be knitted and sewn, writing with pencil. In the era of Prophet Noah, besides agriculture, art was also developed; sculptures and ships were made. During Prophet Hoad period, there was progress in agriculture as well as urbanization activities, and villages and towns began to form. During the reign of Ṣāleḥ, cities were founded in a serious sense. For this reason, in Prophet Ṣāleḥ’s stories, emphasis is placed on the words dār and diyār, which means house or houses, and in particular the word medīna (city) is used. The inscription, which began to be mentioned with Prophet Idris in Islāmic Sciences, also began to be used in the Qur’ān along with Prophet Abraham/Ibrāhīm, and during the reign of Prophet Moses/Mūsā, it was referred to as the book. During the reign of Prophet Joseph, money was invented and the clock and calendar were used. Again, Islāmic sources also contain the information that Prophet Joseph/Yūsuf invented paper for the first time. During the period of Prophet Shu‘ayb, the knowledge of account, measurement and weighing were developed, and they began to be used extensively in trade. During the reign of Prophet David/Dāwūd, iron was very widely used, and Prophet David, made household items out of iron, as well as war tools and equipment. Prophet Solomon/Sulaymān, on the other hand, expanded the processing of iron further, making it widely in all areas of life. During the reign of Prophet Jesus/ʿĪsā and Luqmān, medicine also made progress; Prophet Jesus developed and treated methods of treatment for crippled patients. Along with Islām, this information has been included and developed in the most detailed way in the Qur’ān, the personality of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the Hadīth. (shrink)

The article analyzes the interdisciplinary methodology of city research within the philosophical and cultural approach. The authors argue that at present, besides sociological and economic approaches to the interpretation of the city, the cultural and philosophical examination of city is of special interest. It combines both theoretical issues and the practical aspects. The authors present the philosophical and cultural analysis of the city as well as the general concept of chronotopia. The concept of chronotope, proposed by (...) M. M. Bakhtin and his followers, is most often used as a tool for the analysis of fiction. According to the authors, the spatio-temporal diagnostics of the city also has significant theoretical and practical potential. The authors discuss various literary and philosophical texts analyzing the feautures and evolution of the “soul of the city” (written by Russians N.P. Antsiferov, I.M. Grevs, Y.M. Lotman, M.S. Kagan, I.I. Mitin as well as by foreign scholars Y. Slezkine, K. Schlogel, exploring the chronotope of Soviet cities). The article presents other modern Russian and foreign researchers who directly collaborated with the authors of this research in joint urban projects: M. Golovanivskaya (“syntax” of urban squares), “Ural matrix” (A. Ivanov, I. Lisovets, E. Trubina), chronotope of a small Israeli city (E. Rimon), Stanford chronotopes (J. Bender, D.E. Wellbery). Since the city, like any cultural phenomenon, manifests itself within a set of spatio-temporal coordinates, the chronotope can be considered as the basic tool for its philosophical and cultural interpretation. The article substantiates the practical aspects of applying chronotopia to the analysis of the city: chronotopes of the past and everyday life in cities of certain types, strategic opportunities and boundaries of the chronotopes of a given city. The authors concludes that the chro-notopia of city is a transdisciplinary field in the cultural and philosophical studies of the city. (shrink)

The present collection of translations arises from our work within Writing Urban Places, a network of researchers interested in the different ways citizens appropriate meaningful built environments through stories, and in doing so are also better able to integrate with others. A key locus in this respect is what our network has termed the ‘mid-sized’ [or ‘intermediate’] European city. Often afforded only cursory attention in the discussion of both culture and society, overlooked in favour of more usual suspects, such (...) urban places allow for a more de-centred, and on occasions regionally focused, view of urban practices, even as they play host to a significant element of contemporary European life and experience. The quest for meaningfulness and appropriation of the urban environment through co-creative, adaptive, and transformative processes (many of which have a textual quality) became central to the theoretical framework of this initiative. Between the individual places in which such processes could be observed and documented, we hypothesized, arises the problem of intermediation – the move from place to place, and its techniques. Translation, more than a textual practice among others, emerged as a structuring consideration of the project at a European scale. Other Destinations is the outcome of this collective process presented here, offering entry into this work to an English-language readership for the first time. We hope that, even as they bring their cities of origin somewhat closer to a new readership, those readers will be uprooted and moved some distance in the direction of these ‘other destinations.’ -/- The edited volume Other Destinations. Translating the Mid-sized European City thus features English translations of 15 21st century (mainly) literary texts published in different media (books, podcasts, journals, online/social media) originally written in languages other than English and that have not previously been translated into English. The selected texts cover the topic of mid-sized European cities, where mid-sized does not solely refer to the size in terms of geographical scope or the number of inhabitants, but also to their socio-historical context of urban identity where these cities are neither metropolises nor small towns, but “other”, lesser-known European cities. The texts selected to be translated in this edited volume cover cities like Volos, Canakkale, Varna, Plovdiv, Durres, Tirana, Porto, Den Haag, Osijek, Salzburg, Naples, Zrenjanin, Loule and others…. The publication intends to enhance the dissemination and accessibility to an international readership of texts about overlooked urban contexts, “other”, lesser-known European cities, their stories and signifying practices in order to develop a better awareness of these cities, their self-constructions, and their responses to the challenges of the present. (shrink)

Preview: It is not a gross exaggeration to state that philosophy is an inherently urban phenomenon. Born and largely practiced in the Greek polis, it was developed throughout the ages in various places that more often than not were situated within city walls. Even if, udoubtedly, philosophy has never been limited solely to urban spaces, it has become more and more embedded in cities over the centuries. Consequently, from the 19th century on it has been part and parcel of (...) the intellectual life whose main centers have been towns since it has been almost exclusively researched on and taught within academic institutions. (shrink)

When town planning emerged at the end of the 19th century, its proponents did not envisage the city without nature. Some, such as Ebenezer Howard, believed the garden city would become the new face of the urban landscape, bringing together only the positive aspects of both city and country. Others, health experts and rationalists, advocated functional planning, where the ‘green space’ was part of the overall plan. And so nature was not forgotten. But what ‘nature’? A (...) ‘nature’ external to the town-dweller, like an ornament or decoration? Something that enhanced the built environment and not the very condition of our existence as human beings? Behind the planners’ inclusion of ‘nature’ lie very different intentions, from one period to another and one culture to another. The globalized, standardized ‘nature’ that was subsequently part of marketing the city is just an image; whether wild or tamed, it is no longer localized, no longer a partner in our condition as denizens of the earth. Thierry Paquot examines these continuing processes of change. (shrink)

The sixteen ground-breaking essays in this volume examine the processes by which cities grow and how current public policy, both in the area of zoning and town planning respond to this process.

The aim of the paper is to present how the late medieval plague pandemic affected the societies of Western and Eastern Europe. The author used chronicles and works of literature of that time, on top of the abundant literature on the subject. Based on this bibliography, he carried out a critical analysis of the content, revealing the similarities and differences in the course of the Black Death epidemic across parts of Europe. The plague was taking its toll on all age (...) groups and at all levels of society. The main reason for this was that physicians, not knowing what was causing the disease, could not help the infected for a long time. The epidemic exposed the poor level of the contemporary medics’ knowledge and their unpreparedness for saving human lives. It also showed that university studies neither equipped them with sufficient knowledge nor gave them the practical skills needed to fight the dangerous disease. The Black Death particularly disorganized the economic and social life of Western and Southern European countries. Although the plague first struck Central Europe with less intensity than it did the West, it did take its toll on it. Its subsequent waves had an especially dramatic impact on the large trading towns such as Wroclaw and Krakow. A pervasive fear of the plague also contributed to the resentment towards those seen as aliens, especially Jews. They were the ones accused of poisoning wells and supplies, and spreading the disease. In Wroclaw, the capital city of Silesia, which was then part of the Kingdom of Bohemia, the attack on Jews was initiated by John of Capistrano – the papal inquisitor. It led to a much publicized trial that resulted in the death sentences death sentences given to several dozen people. Seeking to understand the reason behind Capistrano’s actions, the author analyzed his treatise on the duties of physicians and clergy toward plague patients. It results from that work that the course of the epidemic in Central Europe, despite its local variations, was not significantly different from that observed in Western countries. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of Copenhagen, Denmark in the career of Soren Kierkegaard, explaining that the city had an active presence in his writings. It analyses the wide range of meanings embedded in the daily life of the city in which Kierkegaard lived, moved, and wrote, and identifies some of the places that were believed to have a significant influence in his works, which include Tivoli, Ostergade, the market-town, and the Church of Our Lady.

Cohousing is an increasingly popular form of tenure that combines elements of private and collective ownership and affords its occupants a combination of the advantages of individual proprietorship with some of the benefits of living in a community that shares some of its space and activities. People join cohousing groups because they believe that there is something wrong with life in most villages, towns, and cities and they want to develop a better alternative. Sometimes this has been seen to (...) articulate a utopian aspiration to secure a better way of living, of the kind more normally associated with self-consciously intentional communities. But many influential spokespeople in the contemporary cohousing movement, in North America particularly, deny this association and take an explicitly anti-utopian stance, distancing cohousing from the communal movement and intentional communities. This article undertakes an examination of cohousing in North America today and asks the following questions: What is the real character of people's lived experience with modern cohousing? Why do people choose cohousing? Is it a form of intentional community? Is it utopian? Or is it just an attractive form of housing tenure for people who want a nice place to live with good neighbors? (shrink)

In large and small villages, regardless of tourist attraction, cultural life is faded; people's initiative is low as urban migration is extremely high. Many ethnographic villagers do not realize that they live in a significant for the state areas. The younger generation is embarrassed by local traditions, folklore. The low level of aesthetic education, and the poor possibilities of organizing artistic celebrations for the younger generation make them the users of the lowest level of urban culture. The relevance of (...) the research: employees of Lithuanian rural culture centers - a group uniting almost three thousand people, invited to make sense of rural people's leisure time, to create conditions for the development of amateurism in small villages. 882 country cultural centers in villages, towns and cities are institutions of universal use or specific activities. Their work varies, depending on what traditions have formed, the ambitions of the district or eldership that local cultural and sports departments seek. You will not find a cultural center where they would not sing, dance, play, perform, or celebrate. Also, exhibitions are regularly opened. Obviously, more intensive activity takes place in metropolitan areas, district centers, and in resorts during the summer. As here there is more space, more culture and more communities. Village and town culture institutions that are constantly communicating with schools, libraries, religious communities, neighborhoods, and sports clubs are also gaining significant results. However, it is appropriate to move to specific data from the theoretical point of view. Those members of rural communities who go in for sport individually face health supervision problems. Inadequate attention is paid to the development of personal responsibility for one's health and the promotion of a healthy life: proper nutrition, active rest, less health-hazardous environment, abandoning harmful habits and etc. in an environment contrary to life in the countryside. It is important to develop a physically active and healthy society, consciously aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle, to create a favorable environment for leisure time and sport and for the improvement of health of rural population, moreover, to increase the development of physical education and sports services in rural districts of Lithuania, to increase the quality of sports services, giving rural residents wider opportunities to meet their needs. The problem of the research: the lack of cultural and sporting services in rural communities. The analysis of the problem is based on scientific data of Aleksandravičius and Žukovskis, Baršauskienė, Leliūgienė, Kroeber A., Kluckhohn, Nefas, Paulikas, Adomonis, Putnam, Biologur, documents regulating the activities of rural communities. Methodology of the research: In order to achieve the goal, the analysis and synthesis of scientific literature, legal documents and other information sources and statistical data are used. The aim of the research: to reveal the factors of cultural and sports development in rural communities. Research objectives: to describe the development of cultural and sports services in the context of rural communities' activities; to identify the most significant factors in the development of cultural and sporting services in rural communities. Conclusion. Activities carried out by organizations of rural communities include a wide range of community needs, including the organization of cultural and sporting events, improvement of environmental management assistance, and others. As the main problems of rural community activities, the poor condition of rural social infrastructure objects are mentioned, therefore the process of establishment of community centers for the establishment of universal multifunctional centers is one of the significant tools for the development of rural communities and thus the development of cultural and sports activities. (shrink)