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This article begins with a short personal presentation, in order to provide some background to my research and its possible relevance to missiology. After this introduction, the abstract of my Ph.D. thesis is quoted followed by a presentation of additional results of that study. After this, I look more closely into part of the concluding chapter of the thesis, where I discuss the concept of honouring ones parents - from the perspective of ancient Judeo- Christian and Confucian texts respectively: Genesis and Deuteronomy (in the Bible) and Nihon no meicho, Great Books of Japan no. 14, which is about Confucian values. I also quote some pages from my dissertation thesis and this excerpt provides the basis for raising the following two questions. Firstly, are there any inferences to be drawn from this small piece of comparative analysis for the general analysis of post-modern society in a worldwide context? Secondly, can missiology learn any lessons from crosscultural and comparative research and, if so, which ones?

Religions can facilitate cohesion, belonging and feelings of safety or underpin tensions, separatism or terrorism. This has led local, national and international policymakers to use inter-religious councils to overcome local conflicts facilitating dialogue. Sweden is facing a growing number of inter-religious councils around the country. This article focuses on the inter-religious council in Midtown. The aim is (1) to describe how politicians, civil servants and religious leaders as participants in the council express their expectations on the Midtown inter-religious council and (2) to analyse these accounts in light of ongoing research and European examples of inter-religious dialogue. Data have been collected via interviews and participant observation, and analysed through two critical lenses, one focusing on social cohesion, the other on fears of militant religious extremism. Results show that members of the Midtown council view religions as constituting possible obstacles but mainly as an important asset in a process of conviviality. 

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how stakeholders in the food and nutrition field construct and conceptualise “appropriate” national dietary advice.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 40 voluntarily written stakeholder responses to updated official dietary guidelines in Sweden were analysed thematically. The analysis explored the logics and arguments employed by authorities, interest organisations, industry and private stakeholders in attempting to influence the formulation of dietary guidelines.

Findings

Two main themes were identified: the centrality of anchoring advice scientifically and modes of getting the message across to the public. Stakeholders expressed a view of effective health communication as that which is nutritionally and quantitatively oriented and which optimises individuals’ capacities to take action for their own health. Their responses did not offer alternative framings of how healthy eating could be practiced but rather conveyed an understanding of dietary guidelines as documents that provide simplified answers to complex questions.

Practical implications

Policymakers should be aware of industrial actors’ potential vested interests and actively seek out other stakeholders representing communities and citizen interests. The next step should be to question the extent to which it is ethical to publish dietary advice that represents a simplified way of conceptualising behavioural change, and thereby places responsibility for health on the individual.

Originality/value

This research provides a stakeholder perspective on the concept of dietary advice and is among the first to investigate referral responses to dietary guidelines.

In his monumental study The mechanization of the world picture (Dijksterhuis, 1961), Eduard Dijksterhuis has documented how, in the 16th and 17th century, a mechanistic worldview emerged in modern science through developments in astronomy, mechanics, physics, chemistry and natural philosophy. Dijksterhuis marks the start of this process with the publication of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in 1543 and sees its culmination point in the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Math matica in 1687. In the worldview of modern science physical reality is depicted as a deterministic mechanism operating according to causal laws. Many have taken the success of modern technology as evidence of the truth of the mechanistic worldview of modern science (see, for example, Gellner, 1992 and, for a critical discussion, Latour, 1987), on the assumption that it is the knowledge about the laws that govern the causal connections within the clockwork universe that makes prediction and control of physical reality possible. Some have even gone so far as to argue that the mechanistic worldview of modern science sets the standard for what is real and what is rational (on this way of thinking and the problems it has caused see Dewey, 1980; Biesta, 2009). Developments in such interrelated fields as complexity theory, dynamic systems theory and chaos theory have challenged both the accuracy and dominance of the mechanistic worldview. They have done this first of all by highlighting phenomena that cannot be captured as deterministic, linear processes, and secondly by developing vocabularies and ways of thinking that are able to make sense of such phenomena and talk about them in more productive ways.

The essays in this book all deal with a question which, in our view, has so far received insufficient attention in work that aims to explore the significance of complexity theory for education. 1 This is the question of the politics of complexity. Whereas a lot has been written about curriculum, pedagogy and learning, relatively little has been said directly about the ways in which complexity theory might help us to engage with questions concerning the politics of education and about how we might account for the politics of this engagement itself. We take “politics” here in the broad sense of having to do with questions of value andpower. For us it is obvious that value and power play a central role in all educational endeavours. In so far as we can see education as havingto do with ways of directing, structuring and evaluating human learning— bearing in mind that human learning is not a natural phenomenon but itself has to be understood as a construct—and in so far as we can see education as having to do with ways in which we direct, structure and evaluate the learning of others, questions of value and power are simply inevitable. Education opens uppathways and opportunities but also, and often at the very same time, limits, reduces and even closes down ways of doing and being (see Mollenhauer, 1983). Education, after all, always involves choices. Those who engage in the justification of educational choices often do so using a language of values, whereas those who engage in research on the ways in which education actually opens up and closes down often do so using a language of power. We see these as two sides of the same coin, as we do not think that “opening up” isnecessarily good or educationally desirable or that “narrowing down” is necessarily bad or educationally undesirable. What is far more important is to acknowledge that in education both “opening up” and “narrowing down” involve the exertion of power and in this sense can be said to be political. 

To the extent a cognitive artifact extends natural language, questions of the former should be preceded by answers to those of the latter; and, questions about cognitive science and pertinent technology should begin by asking how one may verbalise one’s ideas about cognition, one’s own cognition to start with. One does that, it is plain, in two ways: one talks of one’s thoughts and one’s feelings. One thus sees oneself not as one but as at least two. Not to cause unrest, however, one continues to talk of oneself as one, calling one’s pluralistic faculties in the singular as the Soul or the Intellect, the nest of the classical trivium of the beautiful, the good, and the intelligent. Degraded to tangible by social demand, the Intellect becomes intelligence plain, semantically rooted in behavior, hence operational, prerogative of machine. One’s remaining spiritual faculties, collectively labeled psyche, are something to aid by therapy or drugs to keep one from acting strange. Bottled in rational formaldehyde for almost a century, only recently get they restituted by science as key actors of cognition. But in public space they remain non gratae, increasingly so indeed as the digital strait jacket steadily tightens around people’s souls, taking the spark out of their social and professional presence, the spark that survived both Descartes and Marx. A century after Freud, four after Shakespeare, and four and twenty after Plato, feelings remain a mystery eluding words. Perhaps they should? We share our feelings on these vital mushy matters, irrespectively

This chapter provides an overview of the book while introducing the main concepts of a posthumanist epistemology of practice theory. In particular, the Introduction articulates the framework of the entire book which is aimed at raising a series of radical epistemological questions about what research practices entail, how such practices—in their variety—generate knowledge, and what are the ethico-onto-epistemological implications of decentering the human beings as the main actors of the research agencement.

Computing is changing the traditional field of Philosophy of Science in a very profound way. First as a methodological tool, computing makes possible ``experimental Philosophy'' which is able to provide practical tests for different philosophical ideas. At the same time the ideal object of investigation of the Philosophy of Science is changing. For a long period of time the ideal science was Physics (e.g., Popper, Carnap, Kuhn, and Chalmers). Now the focus is shifting to the field of Computing/Informatics. There are many good reasons for this paradigm shift, one of those being a long standing need of a new meeting between the sciences and humanities, for which the new discipline of Computing/Informatics gives innumerable possibilities. Contrary to Physics, Computing/Informatics is very much human-centered. It brings a potential for a new Renaissance, where Science and Humanities, Arts and Engineering can reach a new synthesis, so very much needed in our intellectually split culture. This paper investigates contemporary trends and the relation between the Philosophy of Science and the Philosophy of Computing and Information, which is equivalent to the present relation between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Physics.

Denna studie har i syfte att undersöka hur F-3 lärare tillämpar läroplanen för sin undervisning i religion och på vilket sätt de inkluderar elevers livsfrågor i undervisningen. Genom intervjuer med lärare för årskurs F-3 har vi samlat in material för vår studie. Resultatet visar att elever har frågor gällande livet och religion. Lärare tycker att det är viktigt att bemöta elevernas livsfrågor direkt när de uttrycks och inte enbart i den planerade religionsundervisningen. Slutsatsen visar att lärare för årskurs F-3 uppfattar att elever har olika slags livsfrågor och syn på religion beroende på skola och elevgrupp. Likabehandling och kamratskap värderas högt hos de flesta elever. Hur livsfrågor i undervisningen tar form ser olika ut för de intervjuade lärarna i årskurs F-3, då läroplanens innehåll är fritt för lärare att tolka. Gemensamt för de intervjuade lärarna är att livsfrågor behandlas när eleverna uttrycker dem, vilket kan vara när som helst och inte enbart i religionsundervisningen. 

This paper addresses the question of the nature of empathy, and attempts to develop a unified understanding of empathy, and thereby overcome the split perspective that is present in current literature. Based on previous definitions, I present my own account of empathy as feeling the other’s feeling. In an analysis of this new definition, empathy is characterized as feeling with the two constituents of understanding and care. Empathic understanding ensures that empathic care will lead to appropriate actions. A consequence of describing empathy as a feeling with the two constituents of understanding and care is that we are not forced to choose between the two main tracks in the empathy literature, empathy as understanding and empathy as care, but are instead at ease with both sides.

This article extends the Coase Conjecture to ethical issues of initial acquisitions of property rights. The Coase Conjecture complements the Lockean labour-mixing criterion to limit the boundaries of morally legitimate initial acquisitions of unowned property; whenever the Coase Conjecture applies, the Lockean Proviso that there be “enough and as good” left is automatically satisfied. This holds provided that, when a claim is made, the marginal willingness to pay for the last portion of it is zero (infra-marginally, willingness to pay may be arbitrarily high). Thus, the market price of the claim is zero, except for the part of it that the claimant inhabits or improves. “Excessive” claims therefore come to have a zero market price, so anyone may take possession of them, by purchase or theft. In either case they must compensate the original claimant by a zero amount. It follows that non-claimants do not lose by putatively “excessive” grabs by claimants. This article argues that any initial claims are just under these circumstances.

We propose a model of moral policy opinion formation that integrates both ideology and cognitive ability. The link from people's ideology to their opinions is assumed to go via a semantic processing of moral arguments that relies on the individual's cognitive ability. An implication of this model is that the relative quality of arguments that justify supporting vs. opposing a moral policy-the policy's “argument advantage”-is key to how opinions will be distributed in the population and develop over time. To test this implication, we combine polling data with measures of the argument advantage for 35 moral policies. Consistent with the opinion formation model, the argument advantage of a moral policy accounts for how public opinion moves over time, and how support for the policy ideologies varies across different ideological groups and levels of cognitive ability, including a strong interaction between ideology and cognitive ability.

Questionable behaviours that are perceived as more common also tend to be judged as more morally justified. Here we explore this phenomenon in survey data from 31 countries in the European Values Study, allowing us to examine the universality of the common-is-moral association. More than 35,000 participants rated eight questionable behaviours (e.g., cheating on taxes, having casual sex) on how frequent they are and how justified they are. We estimated common-is-moral associations both across individuals for each behaviour and across behaviours within each individual; in both cases, the association tended to be positive. We further examined the hypothesis that the common-is-moral association would be stronger among less religious people, who are less likely to adopt their moral judgements from religious authorities and therefore should be more susceptible to the heuristic of using the perceived commonness of a behaviour as a guide to how it should be morally judged. Indeed, we found the common-is-moral association to be somewhat stronger among less religious people, whether the association was estimated across individuals or within individuals. We discuss alternative explanations, implications and directions for future research. 

According to a recent theory, public opinion on moral issues will trend toward opinions that are justified by generally acceptable kinds of arguments. Both in the United States and the United Kingdom, generally acceptable kinds of arguments include concerns about harm, violence, fairness, and liberty. The theory therefore predicts that these countries will exhibit similar opinion trends on moral issues. We test this prediction using polling data on 98 issues in the United States and 108 issues in the United Kingdom, with an overlap of 27 issues on which opinions have been polled in both countries. We find that moral opinion trends are well predicted by the applicability of generally acceptable kinds of arguments and that there is a remarkable similarity between opinion trends in the two countries. These findings lend support to the theory that generally acceptable kinds of arguments play a key role in driving opinion dynamics.

In this paper, we discuss the ethical responsibilities of being a role model as an engineering teacher in higher education. We draw on virtue ethics, care ethics, ethics of freedom and role modeling theory, using Grande's framework for engineering education. We argue that the three ethical theories give different views on the ethics of role modeling as a teacher. Virtue ethics implies that the teacher should behave as virtuously as possible to encourage students to emulate character traits. Care ethics implies that the ethics of role modeling is fundamentally about care practices, emphazising relationships and values such as attentiveness and responsibility. Ethics of freedom urges the teacher to grant individuals opportunities to develop and be free from the control of others. By using role modeling and ethical theory, we aim to show how theory has an impact on both teaching practices and could underpin empirical research in engineering education.

This study wants to highlight the difficulty of designing an abstract character that should be perceived as genderless. Also, examine where the limit lies in how many components a character can have before it is difficult to perceive genderless. Even how easy a character is from having no gender to be interpreted directly as a man or woman. It may be due to attributes, components, or body language when placed in scenes. It does not take more than 0.2 seconds to identify a character like a man or a woman.

The aim is to make a new, improved design for the Mälardalen University (MDH) Security Service; Aj, oj, halloj. The artifact should consist of scenes where a character should simulate various events that could happen at school and need to be reported.

More well-known abstract characters where analyzed and different own character designs and other similar characters were tested against students and teachers and the result was that they were interpreted very differently. People experience images very differently, and gender identification seems to be linked to memories that are linked to certain components that the character in question has. The two characters most interpreted as genderless were applied in scenes consisting of graphics, compared to the earlier photographs used. The scenes that were presented were also tested and the result was that the scenes were understood though the missing captions. MDH will now get two versions of seven scenes where two different characters are applied, they are tested and are based on theories.

Karolinska University Hospital's problem regarding the CAR-T cells' journey has been impacting thetreatment of patients and therefore a solution was in dire need to be presented. Visual mappingmethods have been used to review and map the journey with the aim of identifying factors that seemto be impacted. Previous research concerns user journey mapping, mapping methods andcollaboration theories. To carry out the mapping of the cells' journey, semi-structured interviews werecarried out with selected experts within the research area. These experts consisted of the unit managerat the apheresis clinic at Karolinska, a medically responsible researcher at the apheresis clinic atKarolinska and a senior patient operation manager at Bristol Myers Squibb. Their expertise andexperiences were the basis for the visual mapping, and this provided deep insights into the researcharea where the problem has been identified. Lastly, the data was mapped to create a visual map oftheir current management approach regarding CAR-T cell therapy where their experiences around theproblems could be identified. As a result, a solution to the identified factors that expose the cells tothe risks is presented with several visual maps and a proposed solution for a redesign withinKarolinska.

Clare Heyward and Jörgen Ödalen focus on the need for institutional reform to address climate-related injustice for a particular group of victims. They are concerned with the potential lacuna in international law concerning those citizens of states whose entire territories could be submerged by rising sea levels. Heyward and Ödalen refer to these as the the ‘territorially dispossessed’ and argue that they should be provided with a ‘Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed’ which gives its holder a right to choose their new nationality. They compare their proposal with competing ‘quota’ schemes and argue that the PTD is less unjust because its principle of free choice allows the territorially dispossessed to retain a larger measure of control over their destiny.

Hjelle and Ziegler (1981) believe that people's positions on nine fundamental dimensions of human nature affect their personality theories, and that differences between people on these dimensions contribute to differences between their personality theories. The present study was conducted in order to obtain information about the ordinary person's position on these dimensions and to compare the ordinary person's position with 10 personality theorists' positions. 84 subjects rated their positions on each of nine Ii-step bipolar dimensions. The following results were obtained: (1) According to the ordinary person, the human being is free, changeable, influenced by the subjective world of experience, a product of the environment, and best understood from a holistic perspective; (2) The position of the ordinary person is most similar to Allport's position, and least similar to Skinner's position. The results are discussed in light of the relation between implicit (lay) and explicit (scientific) theories of personality.

The following study is based on observations made in practical medical and nursing care. A practical medical and nursing care problem is introduced, in which an imbalance is shown between the expectations on medical and nursing staff expressed by the patient and the fact that the medical and nursing staff has not had the opportunity to develop the ability to notice and meet the expectations of the patient. In order to solve the above-mentioned complex, practical medical and nursing care problem, it is essential to analyse such terms as: ‘authentic encounter’, ‘health’, ‘emotion’ and ‘personhood’ in order, thereby, to define the necessary conditions for a patient-carer encounter in which the independence and dignity of the patient is respected and active participation in the patient’s own health status is facilitated.

In order for the patient’s independence and dignity to be respected, the fol­lowing conditions for the authentic encounter are discussed. One such fundamental condition for the authentic encounter is Martin Buber’s modified I-Thou relation, the characteristics of which are mutuality, acceptance and confirmation. The ability of medical and nursing staff to create such an encounter based on these characteristics is also emphasised in order to safeguard the dignity of the patient. In addition to the modified I -Thou relation, a number of other prerequisites are discussed, attention to which is essential when creating an authentic encounter. One such condition is the view of health held by the carer. A review of various perspectives on health shows that an individual oriented, social approach is applicable since the outlook on humankind characterising such an approach is that of seeing the patient as a freely acting being with abilities of his own. Another condition for the authentic encounter is the interactive attitude described by Martha Nussbaum, which stresses the importance of getting to know one’s own emotions by accepting them but also by trusting others. Finally, the concept of personhood is discussed in order to clarify a further condition for the authentic encounter, namely, that the carer show consideration for the patient as the person she or he actually is. Making this possible demands a non-static conception of personhood, the fundamental idea of which is that the encounter takes place on the basis of the patient’s abilities and resources.

In his well-known thought experiment regarding artificial intelligence (AI), John Searle sketched out the philosophic idea of “The Chinese room” – a room in which comprehensible rules (a program) allow a person to perfectly correlate one set of unknown linguistic symbols (a question) with another (an answer) of the same unfamiliar kind. In our creation of an AI-based micro-opera for humans and machines, we have come to reflect upon our concept as an artistic response to Searle’s arguments and a mirroring complement to his debated figure. Our immersive and interactive opera was conceived as a modular series of musically paced meetings between individual visitors and a singing seeress in contact with the digital realm. As an analogy to the Delphic oracle, the seeress delivered AI-prompted answers to the visitors’ questions in real time, framed by poetical, musical, and theatrical structures. In Searle’s Chinese room, goal-oriented computational mechanisms remain detached from understanding during the linguistic operation. In our Delphic room, understanding is key for carrying out the aesthetic operations intended to artistically stimulate a coupling of intellectual and visceral information processing in open-ended and personal ways.

This article departs from the educational reform of upper secondary school 2011, and the changing in the curricula for religion studies education. Our theoretical point of departure is inspired by Ivor Godson's and Thomas Popkewitz's understanding of a school subject and its relation to socialisation. In relation to their understanding of a school subject and its socializing role, we see a didactical implication that the subject of religious study education will fall back to transferring knowledge that is easy to teach, control, assess, and grade. We wonder how teachers in religion education studies respond to, and handle existential and pupil related questions in the classroom when they, for example, are addressed with questions about life and death, the environmental crisis or global poverty, even if there is no scheduled time for such matters. To answer this question, we have interviewed eleven religion education teachers from different programs in upper secondary school about how they consider the subject, its content and purpose and how this materialises in their teaching. The conclusions we could draw from our interviews are that most of the teachers try to be open and respond to existential and pupil-initiated questions, even if there is no scheduled time for this, while others focuses on facts about the Abrahamitic religions. 

This chapter originates from the educational reform of Swedish upper secondary school in 2011, where the focus for religious studies education changed from being based on different religious perspectives, various existential questions, and pupil-initiated questions to an emphasis based on a scientific-rational content, with an exceptional position for Christianity in relation to other world religions. The aim of the chapter is twofold. The first purpose is to clarify the subject scientific approach and its exceptional position for Christianity in relation to other world religions mean for the socializing dimension in upper secondary education. The second purpose is to illuminate how teachers in religion education studies respond to and handle existential and pupil-related questions that emerge during the lessons. Given both the historical study on the purpose of religious study education and the interview study focusing on a common educational dilemma, the objective perspective, based only on facts, risks losing its relevance for the pupils if the teacher does not nuance the images of different beliefs and their forms of expression and considers a student-oriented perspective. Hence the teacher must keep the balance between what they must do and what they want to do to fulfill their assignment in situ. 

Summary

To become, to be and to have been: about the  Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, in the following text referred to as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or “the organisation”, is a worldwide Christian organisation with about 6.7 million members. The organisation has many times, without any success so far, proclaimed Armageddon when they expect Jehovah to return to Earth. They interpret the Bible in their own, often very literal way, and require their members to live according to these interpretations. Among the consequences of this, members are forbidden to vote, to do military service or to receive blood transfusions. Apart from attending the three weekly meetings, members are expected to be active in missionary work, known as “publishing”. If a member fails to do a certain number of hours’ publishing, he or she risks being deprived of active membership status

Sweden in general is considered to be a society where the population is not very religious. The formerly state-governed Lutheran church has lost its influence and the vast majority of ordinary Swedes do not visit church on other occasions than weddings, funerals or christenings. Expressing one’s own religious values has become somewhat of a private matter where publicity is seldom appreciated, which is contrary to the practice of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is one of the reasons why the Jehovah’s Witnesses are commonly perceived by average Swedes as a “suspicious” religious organisation.

The aim and methods of the study

This dissertation seeks to describe and investigate the entering and leaving of a highly structured and hierarchical religious community, exemplified in this case by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. What are the thoughts and aspirations of someone who is considering becoming a Jehovah’s Witness? What are the priorities and what experiences seem important when a person is going through such a process? And when this person has finally reached his or her goal of becoming a member, is it the same motivation that makes him or her stay in the organisation for longer periods of time, possibly for the rest of their lives, or does it change during the process of entering, or does this motivation change its character during the transition from entering to being a regular member?

Why do some of the members change their attitude to the Jehovah’s Witnesses from rejoicing to bitterness? And how does this process of exit manifest itself? In what way is it different from the process of entry?

The respondents in this study were chosen from both active members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sweden and those who have left the organisation for personal reasons. Repeated interviews with ten active members of the organisation have been conducted in the course of the study and compared to equal numbers of former members. The interviews have been semi-structured to deal with questions of how a person has come into contact with the organisation; how they retrospectively experienced the process of entry; the reasons for becoming a member. Questions have also been asked about life in the organisation. The group of “exiters” have also been asked about the experience of leaving, why they wanted to leave, and how this process was started and carried out.

In addition to this I have analysed a four-year diary describing the time inside and the process of leaving the organisation. This has given me an extra psychological insight into the inner experience of someone who has gone through the whole process.

The analysis has been done by categorising the content of the transcribed interviews. An attempt to outline a model of an entry and exit process has been made, based on ideas and interpretations presented in the interviews. The analysis of the diary has involved thorough reading, resulting in a division of it into four different parts, where each part has been given a certain key-word, signifying the author’s emotional state when writing it. A great deal of the information about the Jehovah’s Witnesses has been collected through discussion boards on the Internet, informal talks with members and ex-members, interviews with representatives of the organisations during visits to its different offices (Bethels), such as St. Petersburg, Russia, and Brooklyn, New York, USA.

The context

Each organisation evolves in its own context with its own norms, roles and stories that would not survive outside it. With this as a starting point, there is a chapter dedicated to the description of the organisation’s history, structure and activities. It has been stated that the organisation’s treatment of its critical members and the strategies for recruiting new members have evolved over the years of its history. At the beginning there was an openness allowing members to be critical. As the structure of the organisation has become more rigid and formalised, the treatment of internal critics has become much less tolerated and exclusion has become a frequent option.

As a rule many new members have been attracted to the organisation when (1) the day of Armageddon has been pronounced to be approaching; (2) the members of the organisation have been persecuted or threatened with persecution; and (3) the organisation has discovered a “new market”.

The processes for entering and exiting

How the entering processes manifest themselves depends on whether the person has been brought up in the organisation or not. A person converting as an adult has to pass six phases before being considered a Jehovah’s Witness by the organisation. These are:

 Contact with the Jehovah’s Witnesses,

• Studying the bible with members of the organisation,
• Questioning,
• Accepting,
• Being active as publisher (spreading the belief),
• Being baptised.

 For a person brought up in the organisation, the process to full membership is much shorter:

• Upbringing in the organisation,
• Taking a stand on the belief,
• Being baptised.

The exit process contains of seven phases:

• Different levels of doubts,
• Testing of doubts,
• Turning points,
• Different kinds of decisions,
• Different steps in executing the decisions,
• Floating, a period of emotional and cognitive consideration of membership and its experiences,
• Realtive neutrality.

The process in and the process out are both slow and are accompanied with anguish and doubts. When a person is going through the process in or out of the organisation he or she experiences criticism. This is when people around the adept question the decision to continue in the process. The result of the criticism depends on where in the process the person is. If he or she is at the beginning of the process, the criticism will probably make the person insecure and the process will slow down or stop. If the criticism is pronounced in a later phase, the process will probably speed up.

The norms of the organisation affect the behaviour of the members. There are techniques for inclusion that both bind members to the organisation and shield them off from the surrounding society. Examples of techniques for inclusion are the “work situation” and “closed doors”. The work situation signifies that members who do as the organisation recommends – doing simple work – often end up in the same branch of industry as many other Jehovah’s Witnesses. This often means that the person has other witnesses as workmates. If the person is unemployed or moves to another town it is easy to find a new job through connections in the organisation.

Doubts and exclusions can lead to problems since they entail a risk of losing one’s job. This can also result in problems getting a new job. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not supposed to talk to excluded members, which of course mean difficulties working together. “Closed doors” means that members who do as the organisation recommends – not pursuing higher education, not engaging in civil society, working with a manual or in other way simple job, putting much time into the organisation – will, after a long life in the organisation, have problems starting a new life outside the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The language used in the organisation shows the community among the members, thus the language is one of the most important symbols. A special way of thinking is created through the language. It binds members to the organisation and sometimes it can work as a way to get back into the normative world of the organisation.

Randall Collins’s (1990, 2004) thoughts about “emotional energy” have enabled an understanding of the solidarity and unity in the organisation. This also gives an understanding of the way the members treat doubting and critical members. The members who want to exit have to open up the binding/screening off. A possible way to do that is through language, to become aware of the effect the language might have. Another way is to search for emotional energy in another situation.

During the exit process, shame might be of some importance. When members become aware of the shame they feel, because they perceive they are “acting a belief”, the exit process might accelerate.

Christian plurality is challenging for a religious education teacher in a classroom of students with different orientations of Christianity, not least due to immigration. As Christianity represents an essential component of the majority culture in many European countries, in this study we examine how it is represented in religious education textbooks used in upper secondary schools in Sweden. The purpose is to examine how liberal Christianity is shaped in the textbooks and the possible implications for educating citizens in a plural society. The selection of books is based on those used by religious education teachers in Sweden. The results show a tendency towards a modernised liberal Christianity, the implications of which are discussed in relation to the significance of religions and worldviews in education for social cohesion.

Background: Historically, alcohol use has been a normative behavior for adolescents, a trend that has turned from the 21st century when both the proportion of adolescents who drink and the amount of alcohol have decreased sharply. Therefore, the science shows a lack of knowledge about the new generation of adolescents where those who still consume alcohol, drink for the same or quite different reasons than before. There is a need to study which determinants are predicting, that is which factors can foretell the first initiation of alcohol for the new generation of adolescents.

Aim: This study aims to identify determinants in the form of parenting and mental disorders that predict adolescent’s first initiation of alcohol in Västmanland County and investigate whether the prediction ability of these determinants differs between boys and girls.

Method: To investigate which determinants of parental factors and mental disorders predicts adolescent’s alcohol initiation, a quantitative method with secondary data from a longitudinal cohort study was used The Survey of Adolescent Life in Västmanland (SALVe Cohort) was used. Two measurements are included in the study, which the first basic measurement was performed in 2012 and the second follow-up measurement was performed in 2015. Multivariate logistic regressions have been the basis for the study's analyzes.

Results: Parental factors as mental and physical exposure were predictive for adolescent’s alcohol use. However, the predictive effects disappeared when adjusting for confounders. Mental disorders as ADHD (Attention Difict Hyperactivity Disorder), psychosomatic disorders and conduct problem predicted adolescent's alcohol use. However, the predictive effects disappeared for ADHD and psychosomatic disorders when adjusting for confounders. Conduct problem was the only determinant that predicted alcohol after confounders were adjusted.

Conclusions: Parental factors do not seem to predict alcohol initiation. For mental disorders, antisocial behavior is the only determinant that shows a predictive effect with the adolescent's alcohol initiation. The gender differences that emerge were that psychosocial problems predicted girl’s alcohol initiation but not for boys.

Background: Nurses often face ethical difficulties in their profession. In order for ethical decision-making to be implemented in the best possible way, ethical competence and support is needed in these decisions. Discussing basic values and experiences of ethical difficulties can provide broader competence and give health care professionals a greater understanding of each other's experiences. Nurses face stressful situations and are involved in critical decision-making for patients. Aim: To describe ethically difficult situations that nurses encounter in the care profession. Method: Systematic literature study with descriptive synthesis based on ten qualitative articles. Results: The analysis revealed two themes: Organizational shortcomings and difficulties in conducting good care. Furthermore, four sub-themes emerged: Lack of support from management, lack of resources in the workplace, difficulties in satisfying patients' rights and difficulties in maintaining good care. Conclusion: That the nurses in connection with ethical difficulties often experience feelings of powerlessness that were based on the influence of organizational shortcomings and difficulties in conducting good care. Lack of resources affects both nurses and patients on several levels. Lack of time and lack of staff were particularly prominent factors where both patients 'and nurses' experiences were consistent with each other.

Against common misconceptions of Kant as a philosopher who neglects the emotional aspects of moral life, I show that he actually considers our emotional dispositions to be valuable tools for perfecting ourselves morally.

I show not only that it is incumbent on us to cultivate morally beneficial emotions, but also how we can do it. Building on Kant's vague hints about what the process involves, I argue that cultivating a given feeling requires, above all, sharpening one's judgment about it, one's sensitivity to its nature and to the shape it takes in one's own character in order to make responsible decisions about whether to act on the feeling and when one does choose to act on it, to express it in a way which harmonizes with one's sense of moral integrity.

I begin with an argument showing that on Kant's mature moral theory, it is our duty to cultivate feelings which help us form a virtuous disposition. I then discuss particular feelings which are especially important in this regard. I begin with the feeling of respect for the moral law and show that it constitutes the motive of duty. Kant's "pure" moral motive--the motive of duty--is thus actually a feeling which is grounded in a rational grasp of the moral law. I then consider feelings associated with our duties toward ourselves (e.g., pride and courage) and with our duties toward others (e.g., love and respect) and raise the question of how cultivated feelings figure in the virtuous character and also in relation to good willing and to morally worthy action. I show that certain "moral" feelings (feelings with a rational basis, e.g., "proper" pride and love of man) can become part of the motive of duty itself and so can serve as motives to morally worthy action.

Syftet med föreliggande studie är att fördjupa oss i F-3-lärares uppfattningar om sina elevers tidigare erfarenheter av och intresse för religion, och hur detta kommer till uttryck i undervisningen. Den ansats som ansågs vara mest lämplig för studien var en kvalitativ ansats med kvalitativa och semistrukturerade intervjuer som datainsamlingsmetod. Det valda teoretiska perspektivet, det konstruktivistiska perspektivet, har använts som tolkningsram. Studiens resultat visar att lärare upplever att intresset för religion är stort bland elever i årskurs F-3, men att erfarenheterna skiljer sig åt. Lärares uppfattningar påverkar deras val av innehåll, arbetssätt och metoder. 

Purpose – This article adopts Foucault’s notion of a bipolar technology of disciplinary power and regulatory biopower to address the tension between discipline and freedom in domestic relationships between human and nonhuman animals commonly referred to as “pets.” In doing so, the article examines the promises and pitfalls of thinking through pet keeping as a form of lived, posthumanist critique.

Design/methodology/approach – The argument relies on an interview study with 20 pet owners—most of the interviews conducted in their homes together with their pets—to conceptualize how they organize their lives in relation to their pets.

Findings – The analysis shows that the boundaries of the home, the play of power between bodies, and the “conditions of an unconditional love” are central to producing the pet relationship as inherently meaningful and as an indispensable part of the lives of both pet keepers and pets. A balance between discipline and freedom enables the construction of both human and other identities: pet owners produce their pets’ subjectivity by speaking of them as autonomous persons, while pets’ presence in the home also enables their owners’ subjectivity.

Social implications – The article critically examines interspecies relationships, which by extension can benefit nonhuman animals. It argues that pet keeping can challenge anthropocentrism and unsustainable consumption lifestyles, but it may also reinforce prevailing biopolitical logics, if it remains maintained within a secluded domestic or cultural sphere.

Originality/value – The article draws on original data. While Foucauldian theory has been used to discuss pet keeping, empirical studies of pet keeping that rely on this theoretical framework are scarce.

Introduktionstext till Korpo filosofidagar 2019, tema "En gemensam värld: Djur och kultur" 

Människan och djur är en tematik som genomsyrar filosofin, där idéer om det mänskliga ofta uttrycks i kontrast till natur eller djur. Under Korpo filosofidagar undersöks människans relationer till djur som en öppen fråga: vilka olika innebörder kan djur få i våra liv? Djur finns på olika platser: i våra hem, på laboratorier, i lantbruket, i naturen och på djurparker. Vilka samhälleliga, etiska, politiska och filosofiska frågeställningar väcks i dessa sammanhang?

Samtida diskussioner om djuren i kulturen sitter ofta fast i bilder av djur som tidlösa naturvarelser medan människan ses som dynamisk, kulturell och föränderlig. Denna bild har i allt högre grad ifrågasatts i diskussioner om ”det antropocena” och ”det posthumana”, som strävar att ifrågasätta vanemässiga tankesätt och uppdelningar mellan ”djur och människa”, och granskar hur människor och djur skapar praktiker och gemenskaper tillsammans. Under Korpo filosofidagar diskuterade vi denna tematik ur olika synvinklar, med en strävan till att få en klarare bild av djuren i kulturen.

This article examines the reasons for the Chihuahua breed’s popularity in contemporary western society by looking at two sets of data: Chihuahua handbooks and The Simple Life show, starring Paris Hilton and her Chihuahua Tinkerbell. The article argues that the Chihuahua is a holy anomaly: a creature which can be used in myths and rituals to temporarily alleviate the tension-filled binary oppositions and stereotypes inherent in a particular culture, in order to celebrate and reinforce that culture’s categories and social order. The Chihuahua – or the bonsai wolf – transcends two binary oppositions fundamental to contemporary westerners: subject/object and nature/culture. Although the Chihuahua challenges a number of related binary oppositions, it is generally dismissed as a matter for humor, low-brow entertainment or expressions of sentimentality, rendering ritual encounters with Chihuahuas harmless. The article concludes by asking: what would happen if humans actually started listening to what the Chihuahua is telling them?

n this lecture sociologist David Redmalm will talk about companion animals and their liminal status in human society. He will show how thinking with companion animals can challenge ingrained stereotypical ideas about the distinction between nature and culture, and how this distinction shapes interspecies relationality. To show how "liminanimals" can enable a more nuanced understanding of what we think of as nature and culture, David Redmalm will draw on a number of examples from his own research: Chihuahuas and their symbolic and material role in Western society, the media narrative of Obama family’s dog Bo Obama, and the disciplining of human and equine bodies in riding schools.

Pixar-filmen Insidan ut 2 har slagit rekord den här sommaren och är nu den mest inkomstbringande animerade filmen genom tiderna. Filmen är den andra om Jenny och hennes känsloliv i vilken vi får följa både yttre händelser i Jennys liv och inre händelser på hennes ”huvudkontor” där Glädje, Vemod, Ilska och Avsky konkurrerar om att få bestämma hur Jenny ska agera i olika situationer. Det är lätt att förstå filmens popularitet – att våra känslor drar i väg med oss, nästan som en magisk kraft, är något de flesta varit med om.

Pet owners commonly speak of their pets as friends or family members, and pets of middle-class and upper-class owners often enjoy greater privileges than many humans, at least with respect to the amount of money spent on veterinary bills, insurances, grooming, and accessories. But pets are also members of the wide category of “animals,” and as such they are bred, bought, and sold as commodities and lack individual rights. This essay explores the ambiguity surrounding pets—these liminal creatures who lead a life on the threshold between nature and culture.

I kapitel 11 tar sig David Redmalm an den tecknade satiren som redskap för att belysa och problematisera människans förhållande till naturen. Han utgår här från Sara Granérs samhällssatiriska serieteckningar i en essä som med hjälp av filosofer och miljösociologer undersöker spänningsfältet mellan natur och människa. Kapitlet innehåller även en intervju med Sara Granér.