The article deals with the problem of the divine light in the mystical works of St Symeon the New Theologian in the context of the Eastern Christian ascetical tradition. The author focuses on the passages referring to the divine light in the works of Evagrios Pontikos, St Isaac the Syrian, St Maximus the Confessor, and in the Makarian corpus. As is shown in the present contribution, none of these authors created a fully-developed theory of the vision of the divine light. (...) Being close to these writers in many ideas, St Symeon was generally independent of any of them in his treatment of the theme of vision of light, always basing himself primarily upon his own experience. (shrink)

The Bioethics Committee of the Church of Greece, headed by Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, was founded a few years ago, bringing together clergy, medical and legal experts. In his address, Metropolitan Nikolaos explains the concerns and the conditions that led to its foundation and he outlines some of the activities and the principles of the Committee. This address, a somewhat broad-brush presentation of the state of bioethics in Greece, is offered as a proposal as to how (...) the Church can work within a secular state, and how it can attempt to raise awareness about the spiritual aspect of bioethical concerns. Overall, the Bioethics Committee tries to promote public dialogue about sensitive bioethical issues, and to make sure that the spiritual perspective is duly informed by medical science. In addition, the Committee tries to make sure that the spiritual perspective is considered by the state in the face of existing or emerging law that touches on bioethical concerns. (shrink)

Farmers markets have traditionally served as a space for farmers to sell directly to consumers. Recently, many FMs in the US and other regions have experienced a renaissance. This article compares the different value sets embedded in the rules and norms of two metropolitan FM regions—Minneapolis, Minnesota and in Vienna, Austria. It uses a values-based framework that reflects the relationships among FM operating structures and their values reflected by the key FM participants—i.e., farmer/vendors, consumers and market managers. The framework (...) allows us to focus on two very contrasting value sets of metropolitan FM regions in presenting and discussing the values found and embedded in the two metropolitan market regions; illustrating how the values found are embodied as rules and norms in each FM region; considering the alignment or not of FM participant values with their corresponding FM values; and the differences and commonalities as well as the benefits and challenges of the two market regions. In contrasting metropolitan FMs we explain that FM value sets are complex and differ among and within FM participant groups and are dependent on their respective OS. We show that contrasting two metropolitan FM regions can be useful in understanding beneficial and disadvantageous relationships between the values and structures of, and in FMs, and specifically in examining institutional impediments such as governance. Thus we illustrate the possibilities and limitations of values for and within metropolitan FMs. (shrink)

In what follows, I examine the views of Metropolitan Amfilohije’s views on St Gregory Palamas and Orthodoxy, primarily focusing on his PhD thesis, which was defended at the University of Athens, Faculty of Theology in 1973, and published in Thessaloniki in the same year. I claim that his views there not only show him defending Palamas, but also highlight the need for a strengthening of Palamism in Greece and abroad. Some of the problems, which he identified in 1973, exist (...) in Orthodoxy today and his suggestion that all contemporary Orthodox intellectuals should persist in the Philosophy and Theology of Palamism seems to be the only way to solve these problems, even today. (shrink)

The most important structural feature of the music of the New World is its often-time polyrhythmic and polymetrical character. This is also a key to unlocking the nature of social form and democratic persona in the diasporic and settler metropolises of the New World. In such settings, composers and musicians working with simultaneous temporalities, lines, groups, textures and characters offer intimations of a just totality for culturally fragmented societies.

Autumn 1918 p. the breakup of the war-weakened Austro-Hungarian Empire was evident. Taking into account the existing claims of the Poles on the territory of Galicia, the first task of the Ukrainian parliamentary representation was to prepare for the re-election of the authorities in the region. On his initiative October 18-19, 1918 p. a constituent was held in Lviv - "a representative assembly of Ukrainian ambassadors to the parliament and regional councils of Galicia and Bukovina, bishops, delegates of Ukrainian parties...".

In this article I examine the legal framework for addressing violence against women in post war Guatemala. Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, judicial reform in Guatemala has included the passing of laws in the area of women‘s human rights, aimed at eliminating discrimination and violence against women. These laws constitute a response to and have occurred concurrently to an increase in violent crime against women, particularly in the form of mass rapes and murders. Drawing on fieldwork (...) conducted in Guatemala‘s Metropolitan Area, this paper juxtaposes the laws for addressing violence against women to Guatemalan women‘s complex, multilayered and multi-dimensional life experiences. The latter expose the limitations of strictly legal understandings of the phenomenon of gender-based violence, and highlight the need for broad social justice approaches that take into account the different structures of violence, inequality, and injustice present in women‘s lives. (shrink)

The four-year wrangle over the ownership of what was then thought to have been the largest known meteorite, recognized near Melbourne in 1860, provides a fine-grained example of the interaction between scientific internationalism, metropolitan appetite for specimens, and colonial civic pride.

Scholars of modernity have taken a particular interest in processes of urbanization and—thinking of Simmel, Benjamin, Mumford and Weber—the character of different varieties of city. From a different angle, notions of urban imaginary have gained greater purchase in the field of contemporary urban studies in comparative analysis of varieties of city. This essay begins with notes on both classical accounts of the city in social theory and current concepts of urban imaginaries. The notes revolve around the essay’s main topic: the (...) institution of cities of New World, specifically those of the United States and Canada. Paralleling Castoriadis’ conception of the imaginary institution, the present author argues for a more exact notion of metropolitan imaginaries, differentiated from the broader subject of urban imaginaries. ‘Metropolitan imaginaries’ denotes processes of urbanization at the heart of networks of migration, transport, and flows of capital and culture. As part of larger imaginaries, metropolises generate immigrant cities. The specific kind of creation in question produces creativity also by concentrating intellectual and creative schools of design in architecture and visual culture. In sum, metropolises are not merely part of networks of connection and creation; they produce networks and act as the hubs of interaction and creativity within larger social imaginaries. The essay explores this argument in the contexts of US and Canadian modernity and state formation, with specific foci on New York, Chicago, and Toronto. The conclusion notes two limitations to the case presented here and sketches planned directions for future research. (shrink)

A river can be the lifeblood of a city, standing as a symbol of economic prosperity, harmony with nature, and communal life, and the Menomonee River is such an anchor for the Milwaukee area. In Urban Wilderness, Eddee Daniel guides us down the waterways of the Menomonee watershed and reveals how preserving urban rivers is key to modern day city life. In rich color photographs and engaging text, Daniel explores the natural and cultural history of the Menomonee River. The development (...) and rapid growth of Milwaukee as one of the leading cities in the Midwest is deeply intertwined with the river, and Daniel reveals the river’s moods and ecological conditions and its ills and strengths. The book charts the exemplary preservation efforts to rescue the river from pollution and neglect, ultimately showing how parks and nature preserves are crucial to the quality of life and economic success of a thriving city such as Milwaukee. A compelling in-depth chronicle, Urban Wilderness is an invaluable read for environmental scholars, urbanists, and everyday citizens who are concerned about the environment. (shrink)

As for me, the very objective history of relations between Ukraine and the Vatican, the attitude of the Apostolic Capital to the fate of the Ukrainian people has not yet been written. In those writings I read, it is presented mainly with diametrically opposite estimates. And this is because this story itself as a process is not one-dimensional, it is highly controversial, and its researchers often adhere to different appraisal approaches to its illumination. The fact is that Catholicism was not (...) directly connected with the fate of Ukrainians, but mainly indirectly, through the Polish factor. The latter, as we know, was hostile to the Ukrainian ethnic group. (shrink)

The European policies acknowledge greenways and “Green Infrastructure” as strategically planned and delivered networks comprising the broadest range of green spaces and other environmental features. The Aniene River, linking the eastern suburbs of Rome to the City of Tivoli, has been envisaged in a multi-level approach as a Green-Blue Infrastructure able to hinder land use fragmentation and provide new continuity to remainders of open space. In turn, landscape is taken into account as a biodiversity reservoir, the scenery of outstanding cultural (...) heritage and the relevant backdrop of ordinary life. (shrink)

Restoration of religious life, the formation of an autocephalous Orthodox church in the occupied German troops, Ukraine faced a number of foreign-policy and domestic problems. First of all, it is about the approach of different personalities and groups of Orthodox hierarchs to their solution. At that time, there were two irreconcilable, antagonistic concepts - Metropolitan of Warsaw Dionysius and Archbishop of Kholmsky and Podlyassky Hilarion. It should be noted at the outset that both these hierarchs were in Poland, (...) which was declared by the General Governorate of Hitler and actually bordered by the Germans occupied by Ukrainian lands, most of which were included in the "Reichscommissariat Ukraine". It was in these occupational administrative formations, under the direct guidance of Hitler and his close circle, that the whole range of Ukrainian problems - political, economic, national, cultural, and church - was solved. Ukrainian Orthodox circles and their leaders have long hoped for the invaders' good will to solve Ukrainian problems and, for the most part, tried to act on the basis of their own concepts of governance of church life. All of them, as time showed, were, to a greater or lesser extent, peculiar "ideas - fixed", since they contradicted the principled vision of the solution of the church issue in Ukraine by the German invaders. (shrink)

This essay aims to examine metropolitan cities of Latin America with two aspects of the literature in anthropology, history, and sociology in mind. First, the essay addresses an imbalanced focus on cities in the USA and Canada by sketching the significance of migration, creation, and urban development in four major metropolises of Latin America. Second, in place of a framework of urban imaginaries, which has dominated the sociology of Latin American cities in recent years, I argue for a more (...) precise notion of metropolitan imaginaries that better frames the creativity of particular cities and their level of integration into international and regional networks. With this more precise notion, I distinguish southern cities as highly connected places, which attract migrants and bring economic and cultural traffic to their shores, ports, plazas, and streets. They are lively centers of Atlantic modernity with connections that generate greater magnitude for creativity and, as such, bear international significance as places of architecture and urban design. In their informal settlements, impulses of organic creation further distinguish southern metropolises from their North American counterparts. The quality of international and regional connections distinguishes these cities from other urban centers in Latin America, a point underestimated in the literature on urban imaginaries. In this essay, I examine 19th and 20th-century Buenos Aires, Mexico City, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. Each is distinguished from most cities by the magnitude of migration, the diversity of their populations, and the connections they have to global and regional developments. Crucially, each one stands out for the quality and impact of their metropolis-making, particularly in creative architecture and urban design. (shrink)

Previous research on gender-based economic inequality has emphasized occupational segregation as the leading explanatory factor for the gender wage gap. Yet the globalization of the U.S. economy has affected gender inequality in fundamental ways and potentially diminished the influence of occupational gender segregation. We examine whether occupational gender segregation continues to be the main determinant of gender earnings inequality and to what extent globalization processes have emerged as important determinants of inequality between women’s and men’s earnings. We study factors contributing (...) to the gender earnings ratio as well as the median earnings of men and women for 271 U.S. metropolitan areas. The results indicate that occupational segregation is still the leading determinant of gender earnings inequality, that its effects are only slightly diminished by the presence of globalization, and that various aspects of the global economy independently influence the gender earnings gap. (shrink)

This article attempts to think through the logic and distinctiveness of the early Royal Society's position as a metropolitan knowledge community and chartered corporation, and the links between these aspects of its being. Among the knowledge communities of Restoration London it is one of the best known and most studied, but also one of the least typical and in many respects one of the least coherent. It was also quite unlike the chartered corporations of the City of London, exercising (...) almost none of their ordinary functions and being granted very limited power and few responsibilities. I explore the society's imaginative and material engagements with longer-established corporate bodies, institutions and knowledge communities, and show how those encounters repeatedly reshaped the early society's internal organization, outward conduct and self-understanding. Building on fundamental work by Michael Hunter, Adrian Johns, Lisa Jardine and Jim Bennett, and new archival evidence, I examine the importance of the city to the society's foundational rhetoric and the shifting orientation of its search for patronage, the development of its charter, and how it learned to interpret the limits and possibilities of its privileges through its encounters with other chartered bodies, emphasizing the contingent nature of its early development. (shrink)

An individualized and coherent life story has been described as the form of identity that is required by highly mobile individualistic Western societies, whereas more family-oriented, traditional societies require more role-based, synchronic identities. Therefore entire life narratives can be expected to be more coherent and to contain more autobiographical arguments that contribute to life narrative coherence in individualistic cultures. This cultural group difference is expected to be mediated by individuals’ conformity to their respective cultural normative concept of biography. We tested (...) these expectations by eliciting entire life narratives and cultural life scripts from students of technical universities from provincial and metropolitan Turkey, as well as from students with a Turkish migrant and a German background in urban Germany (N= 96). Expectations were confirmed for global life narrative coherence and autobiographical arguments with self-event connections. Conformity with a normative concept of biography indeed mediated cultural influences on life narrative coherence. Life narratives from Turkey also contained more family-related events and, unexpectedly, were more negative. Thus creating a coherent life narrative is more typical for cultures that require autonomous, individualized selves rather than for cultures requiring more related selves, reflecting the life story’s suitability for expressing individualized identities and its lesser suitability for expressing interdependent identities. (shrink)

Homi Bhabha attends to the figure of the postcolonial metropolitan subject-a racialized subject who is not representative of the first world, yet a symbol of the metropolitan sphere. Bhabha describes theirdaily lives as inextricably split or doubled. His analysis cannot account for the agonistic moments when one is caught in not knowing, in focusing attention, and in developing understanding. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology with the openness in the horizon of the gestaltian framework better accounts for such splits as moments (...) on the horizon for becoming and grasping something new. (shrink)

The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) in the 1990s becomes a landmark and has now been ratified by every other country of the world. Bring hope for a better world—for all children was highlighted as one of the most far-sighted human right instrument in the convention. Yet access to basic livelihood needs such as clean drinking water, primary health services, primary education, recreation and other urban infrastructure becomes a nightmare for millions of children and youth in (...) the developing world and particularly in metropolitan cities in India. The Indian children are living in varying residential environment, comprised of residential colonies of rich, high-raised flats of middle and low-income groups and the economically weaker sections living in slums and squatter colonies. The conventional method of planning residential neighbourhood lacks in indentifying the varying needs of children while building urban infrastructure. As a result there is a large gap in getting access to basic livetihood needs for children of rich and poor. The basic question becomes, is the urban child and youth population just as a numerical variable in planning infrastructure needs in metropolitan cities? This article attempts to analyse the situation in some of the selected residential areas in Delhi. (shrink)

Using optical add–drop multiplexer/remover multiplexer (OADM), it is possible to add or remove wavelengths and change or route them through the various nodes and networks. At this moment, key problems in add–drop multiplexer (ADM) are the bandwidth, modulation format, and reuse wavelength. In this article, the Optisystem software simulation is used as a platform to design, test, and verify the method applied to the current work; the OADM is proposed based on the metro network to get distribution between nodes over (...) a transmission link; OADM analysis was presented with four channels (193.1, 193.2, 193.3, and 193.4 THz) at total bandwidth of 1.6 Tb/s, none-return-to-zero (NRZ), and return to zero coding types. Experiment one shows that the average output power is −17.997 dBm, the average drop power is −17.997 dBm, and the average add power is −18.338 dBm, the average gain is −0.0429 dB, the average noise figure is 0 dB, the average power input signal is 10.679 dBm, the average of power output signal is 10.633 dBm, and the average output optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) is 0 dB, However, the second experiment shows that the average output power is −24.238 dBm, the average drop power is −24.288 dBm, and the average add power is −24.753 dBm, the average gain is −0.0417 dB, the average noise figure is 0 dB, average power input signal is 7.691 dBm, average of power output signal is 7.677 dBm, and the average output OSNR 0 dB. The system supports four input channels, four add channels, four output channels, and four drop channels. The results are acceptable after three spans of Solitons fiber with 600 km length, 200 km for each span. Nonetheless, it is believed that it is well justified to adopt these schemes in the current optical network with a low cost for overall expenditure. (shrink)

Colombia has received the largest influx of Venezuelan refugees and migrants. Since 2015, more than 3 million Venezuelan migrants have entered the country. Those arriving in Cúcuta have several options for entering Colombian territory. One of the main routes involves a difficult and dangerous journey of nearly 200 km to the Metropolitan Area of Bucaramanga, which serves as a key territory for accessing various destinations. Because of its geographical location, this area serves as an important transit city, facilitating travel (...) to other major cities in Colombia, such as Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali; it is also a residence destination for Venezuelan migrants. Among the specific reasons why immigrants choose Bucaramanga over other cities are factors like climate, the existence of various cooperation organizations that provide assistance, and the considerable number of migrant individuals previously settled in this area; thus, many new migrants have family or friendship connections there. Furthermore, for many, it is the safest option or the only place they can go to when the weather turns cold. In this study, we analyze the institutional response and identify barriers that limit the protection of Venezuelan migrants’ right to access to healthcare in this location where Venezuelan citizens have faced economic, legal, bureaucratic, and social barriers. This has profound consequences for migrants’ health and poses a risk to their lives. The article is primarily based on interviews and fieldwork conducted with migrant populations between 2022 and 2023 to identify the barriers and supporting elements they experienced in terms of health care services. Likewise, this study makes a significant contribution by directly examining the experiences of Venezuelan migrants in relation to the right to health in this area. This provides a useful understanding of the social phenomenon at both the academic and institutional levels. (shrink)

Daniel Susskind examines how machines will generate more prosperity, but he is convinced that their proliferation will have some alarming consequences, like higher income inequality, dangerous greed for power to control others, and a world in which people lose their sense of meaning in life for lack of work.

One of the most pressing challenges facing environmental philosophers is how to address social and economic inequality while pursuing ecological sustainability. Bioregionalism is a view that is theoretically and practically well-equipped to grapple with the ecological, sociocultural, and economic complexity of the ecological crisis. However, its virtue ethics-oriented communitarianism as well as its spatial understanding of the just human polity render it unable to adequately address the on-the-ground reality of environmental degradation and political injustice as they occur in urban regions. (...) Indeed, legacies of environmental racism and present patterns of social exclusion and economic inequality give good reason to designate multibioregional urban areas as the principal polity. Iris Young’s conception of justice as the “being together of strangers” critically yet sympathetically helps bioregionalism address these problems and that of the proper scale of the polity. The New York City region is a case study. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag werden die Anfänge der GTA und der Gestalt Theory ab Ende der 1970er Jahre nachgezeichnet. Diese Anfänge waren angesichts der Zerschlagung der Gestaltpsychologie und der Vertreibung eines großen Teils ihrer akademischen Vertreter durch das Nazi Regime überaus schwierig: War mit dem Ende des sog. „Dritten Reiches“ die Nazi-Ideologie in Deutschland noch keineswegs überwunden, was sich u.a. auch darin zeigte, dass man sich nicht erinnern mochte, welche bedeutende international geachteter Richtung mit der Berliner Schule der Gestaltpsychologie vor dem (...) Nazi-Regime die Psychologie in Deutschland prägte, geschweige denn, dass man sich bemüht hätte, führende Vertreter zurück zu gewinnen. Der Fokus der Darstellung ist aber auch auf die beiden Persönlichkeiten Hans-Jürgen Walter und Hilarion Petzold gerichtet, die aus der Gestalttherapie kommend umfassende Konzepte von Psychotherapeutischem Verständnis entwickelten, die unter der Bezeichnung „Gestalttheoretische Psychotherapie“ und „Integrative Therapie“ wichtige Grundsteine auch für heutige Diskurse darstellen. Beide konnten am 25. März 2024 ihren 80. Geburtstag feiern, wobei die Gratulation seitens der GTA auch das Gedenken an Rainer Kästl einschließt, der ebenfalls für die Entwicklung der Gestalttheoretischen Psychotherapie Bedeutendes beigetragen hat, seinen 75. Geburtstag in 2024 aber aufgrund seines frühen Todes (2020) nicht begehen konnte. (shrink)

Scarce resource allocation policies vary across the United States. Little is known about regional variation in resource allocation protocols and variation in their application. We sought to evaluat...

A reivindicação da cidadania religiosa de pessoas LGBTQIAPN+ dentro das instituições religiosas tem gerado grande sofrimento a quem se entende como parte de uma tradição religiosa historicamente hegemônica. Tais situações configuram formas de violência religiosa que ultrapassam o campo de instituições específicas e se manifestam na cultura como parte do que se tem chamado de LGBTfobia. É no contexto desses enfrentamentos que se situam aquilo que se está se propondo chamar “martírio_ queer”_. Nessa reflexão particular, o contexto privilegiado para a (...) identificação das fontes e análise do tema em discussão é a emergência e desenvolvimento do que se convencionou chamar de “Igrejas inclusivas” no contexto estadunidense. Como exemplo de mártires queer, serão apresentadas as trajetórias de duas personagens fundamentais para a história das “Igrejas inclusivas” no mundo – a transativista Sylvia Rivera e o Reverendo Troy Perry, das _Metropolitan Community Churches_. (shrink)