In the current century, geographic and psychological separations from familial and cultural connections have become endemic. The various fields of social sciences have made belonging vis à vis existential alienation a focal issue with an emphasis on the need for localized belonging. This article argues that there is an innate predisposition within the self that must connect to another, a ?re-membering??a compelling humanistic need to connect and become a member, yet again, of a greater collective. It is suggested (...) herein that this predisposition stems from the need to reclaim our anthropocosmic connection of being embedded in the world beyond, as opposed to an anthrocentric view that instigates an entity-in-isolation mentality. (shrink)

Some of the human needs are more important than others in order to be inevitable. One of these needs which cannot be avoided is the need for belonging to any authority. Whatever the name, religion, nation, homeland, flag etc. all these concepts are the reflections of the sense of belonging that comes with human existence. This article will discuss how Kuwaiti novelist Saud Alsanousi reflects the crisis of a child who is born from a secret relationship with (...) a Filipino woman's son who came to Kuwait as a housekeeper in Kuwait. When he returned to Kuwait, where he carried his passport and felt himself unfamiliar in the Philippines because of his physical structure and the Arabs, he was again excluded by his relatives because of his Filipino mother. The novel tries to draw attention to the socio-economic problems of workers coming from South East Asia to the Gulf countries, especially from the character of Jose, who has a nauseous mood due to the uncertainty between Philippine-Kuwait and Christian-Muslim affiliations. The introduction of foreign workers who constitute more than half of the population in the Gulf countries will be reviewed. Afterwards, a short summary of the novel will be given and the main theme of the lack of disability will be analyzed. Summary: In 1973, Syria and Egypt started a air strike against Israel in order to recover their lost territory in the previous wars and their reputation in the international area. Some Western countries -especially the United States- have shown all kinds of military aid to Israel in the face of this attack. Thanks to these aids the Syrian and Egyptian armies have not achieved their intended goals. This attitude of Western countries to Israel has attracted the reaction of other Gulf countries -especially the Saudi administration- which has a large amount of oil reserves. Gulf countries -which have not gotten a strong military option- tried to use the oil in their hands for the first time as a political trump card. These oil-exporting countries have reduced oil production in response. As a result, the economies of Western countries which were industrialized and dependent on oil have been negatively affected by this decision. In contrast, Gulf States have gained a sudden and massive fortune due to oil prices rising three or four times. The Gulf States, which have led this wealth to development in many areas like education, health, urbanism, etc. The need for qualified staff in these fields was supplied by other Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, and Sudan. However, as the years passed oil prices decreased and so oil revenues decreased. This reduction led the Gulf States -which have only oil-based economies- to look for cheaper labor. While the foreign employment provided from the Arab countries previously later this need has begun to supply from far East Asian countries which are economically very weak. Vast number of employees emigrated to the Gulf countries to work in the labor service sector with very low wages especially from the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. This segment -which has employed with very low wages- has been subjected to injustice and discrimination. The injustices faced by the Far East Asian foreign labor force deprived of social rights have been the subject of many painful stories over time. The modern novel -which aims to reflect the life and the human being with all its details- has reflected the stories of the victims of that employers. Saq al-Bamboo (Bamboo Bar) is one of these novels which has published by Kuwaiti writer Saud Alsanousi in 2012. Within a short time after the publication of the work the novel was interested in the Arab world and in 2013 he was awarded the International Arabic Novelist Prize. The novel is consisting of five chapters and each chapter is divided into three sections 1,2,3... The author conveys the crisis of unetnicity from Jose’s chracter who was born from a Filipino mother and a Kuwaiti father. A translator named Ibrahim Selâm -which is a translation of the souvenirs and diaries belonging to Jose from the Philippine language to Arabic is intended to increase the realism of the work. Josephine -who came to Kuwait to work from the Philippines- was settled in 1985 in one of the country's most reputable families. The old woman who owns the house has a son named Rasheed. Rasheed was interested in Josephine who worked as a servant in their house and he married her with a secret marriage. Because the marriage of a Kuwaiti man and a foreign woman who was working as a housekeeper in Kuwait is accepted as a great shame that will cast a shadow on the dignity and honor of the family the marriage which was concealed by the couple inside and outside of the house, which could only come together with privacy has appeared after months. Rasheed -who was expelled from the house with Josephine- has temporarily found another house. Rasheed and his wife, who thought that his mother's attitude would change as their children were born have disappointed. Rasheed after realizing that his mother would never be satisfied, finally lost his ability to resist this crisis and sent his wife back to. With this development the problem of-identity crisis of Jose’s chracter is dealt with in a multi-faceted way. Jose, who left his age with his mother from Kuwait, had suffered from familial negativities that had passed through Kuwait years later in his twenties, and “familial negativities through his return to Kuwait and depressions caused by the sense of belonging. In an interesting coincidence when he met Gassân, one of the closest friends of Jose’s father in the Philippines, he returned to his dream Paradise ’Kuwait”. The journey from Jesus who has known as “Arabo to “Jesus” started with great hope because he was born from a Kuwaiti father in his own near the Philippines and likened to Arabs alike. But perhaps more of the crisis in the Philippines is waiting for him in Kuwait. Because his father was killed during the years when the Iraqi army occupied Kuwait. Although his father's mother welcomed Jose at first, exclusionary attitude towards foreigners in Kuwait caused her to take a negative attitude towards here grandson. The work is a continuation of the tradition of novels of criticism of the Arab society that has been going on for almost a century. The fact that novel was able to make deep psychological analyzes with his comprehensible language and simple style without being ambiguous and to keep the tension alive by leaving the problems at the end of the episodes and thus to provide immersion in this way reinforced the fictional soundness of the work. The novel also presents fictional material within the Arab society for the researchers in the field of religion psychology and sociology of religion, in order to show how a non-Muslim feels amoung the Muslim society. (shrink)

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept ofeudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a music ensemble within which homeless adults and individuals with a psychiatric or alcohol/drug related background engage in collective musical improvisation. Between 2017 and 2019 data was collected through open interviews and video (...) recordings of rehearsals and performances. Participant data was analyzed through inductive analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. One interesting finding was the discrepancy in the participant interviews between social relationships indicative of a negative affect about social group interaction versus strong feelings of group coherence and belonging. Video recordings of performances and rehearsals showed clear enjoyment and pleasure while playing music. Alongside verbal reflection through one-on-one interviews video recordings and analysis of moment-to moment observations should be used, in order to capture the complexity of community music projects with homeless people. The initial open coding was aligned with the five elements of the PERMA model. Overall, we observed more focus on Relationship (sense of belonging), Engagement (flow in rehearsals and performances) and Meaning (belonging to something greater than yourself) and less on Positive Emotion and Accomplishment (goal setting). (shrink)

The aim of this research was to describe the dependence between the need for and sense of belonging and symptoms of depression vs. one’s capacity to cope effectively. Using path analysis of our data, we found direct patterns, in which both depression symptoms and life satisfaction depend to a considerable degree on the sense of belonging. The belonging need influences, in a direct way, the coping focused on the search for social support. Undertaking active techniques (...) of coping, including confrontation with a stressful situation and its negative controlling impact, depends on having a high level of the sense of belonging. In contrast, individuals who cope by means of taking psychoactive drugs show the symptoms of depression. (shrink)

High-profile organizations often emphasize fixed giftedness rather than malleable effort-based criteria as critical for excellent achievements. With giftedness being primarily associated with White or Asian males, such organizational implicit theories of excellence may shape individuals’ sense of belonging depending on the extent to which they match the gifted White/Asian male prototype, i.e., the prototypical gifted person which is typically imagined to be a White or Asian male. Previous research has reported fixed excellence theories emphasizing giftedness to impair the (...) sense of belonging of females and negatively stereotyped ethnic minorities. We investigate the combined effects of gender and ethnicity. We predicted that, while individuals whose gender and ethnicity do not match the gifted prototype show a reduced sense of belonging in fixed organizations, White/Asian males who match the gifted prototype show the opposite effect, experiencing a higher sense of belonging in fixed organizations. In an experimental study, we manipulated advertising material used by a highly selective academic institution in Germany and tested effects on students’ belonging. Whereas the original material emphasized giftedness as essential for excelling, our manipulated version stressed effort. As expected, females from stereotyped ethnic minority groups felt less belonging in the fixed organization, while White/Asian males anticipated stronger belonging in the fixed organization. Fixed views of excellence impair negatively stereotyped individuals’ belonging but may even strengthen the belonging of prototypical academic elites. (shrink)

Assuming live music can foster belonging in the workplace, this study linked companies in the secondary and tertiary sectors with the world of music performance. Specifically, students from a Swiss music university offered live mini-concerts on the premises of three companies over a period of 3 months. To analyze the impact of these brief musical interventions on the sense of belonging of staff in these companies, a mixed methods approach was adopted using a standardized questionnaire. The short (...) concerts were much appreciated. On the individual level, they led to a greater sense of pleasure and were perceived as a break, a possibility to connect to one’s emotions and above all, as a “moment for oneself.” On the group level, the short concerts allowed the members of teams to meet, prompted conversations and new ways of sharing, created links, and offered opportunities to get to know work colleagues differently and to discover them on a more personal level. (shrink)

The movement of families around the world is becoming increasingly common, whether involuntarily or voluntarily . Though one of the effects of globalization is the growing number of professional parents whose occupation causes them to move their families around the world on a fairly regular basis, little is known of the effects of such global mobility on the children. This paper describes a small‐scale study undertaken with 120 globally mobile Botswana‐based children between 9 and 11 years of age, which explored (...) their perceptions of what it means to belong to a home country. Findings highlighted the many different factors that influence such perceptions , as well as the need for further research to be undertaken in this increasingly important area. (shrink)

Research has shown that experiences of discrimination cause harm to the health and well-being of people. In terms of the identity of members of a group, a positive evaluation of that group might involve devaluing the out-group as a way of raising the endo-group, causing discrimination toward the out-group. In the Chilean context, the Mapuche people have historically suffered discrimination and violations of their rights. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between Collective Identity, perceived experiences of (...) discrimination, psychological well-being and distress in the inhabitants of the Mapuche conflict zone according to their sense of belonging to their ethnic group. This descriptive, correlative, and cross-sectional study involved 200 participants, including 94 men, and 106 women, between the ages of 18 and 83 years old, who had lived for at least 1 year in communities in the Araucanía Region. The sample was stratified according their sense of ethnic identity, including 30% Mapuche, 33.5% Caucasian, and 36.5% Mestizo. The results show that participants with a sense of Mapuche ethnicity experienced more instances of discrimination, had a greater sense of collective identity, and that they also supported the Mapuche social movement and its methods. Based on evidence that well-being is directly related to collective identity, the study undertook a regression analysis of emotional distress and the psychological well-being of participants. The interaction between experiences of discrimination and collective identity has a significant influence. Collective identity and experiences of discrimination in themselves as well as the interaction between them, predict psychological well-being. The results suggest that the importance of the Mapuche group’s identity phenomena are related to a broad socio-historical context that leads them to identify themselves as a collective in conditions of inequality. This relationship between well-being and collective identity could be explained by their sense of cultural belonging, which can be a factor in protecting mental health. (shrink)

This study investigates how hope moderates the relationship between students’ sense of belonging and their academic misconduct intentions and behaviours. A sample of 234 university students (57% female) aged between 16 and 64 (Mage = 25.56, SDage = 8.18) responded to an online survey. The survey included demographic questions, measures of student’s sense of belonging at university, dispositional hope, motivation to reach their goals (Agency), perceived ability to implement a plan to attain their goal (Pathways), future (...) intentions to engage in academic misconduct intentions (AM Intentions) and previous engagement in academic misconduct behaviours (AM Behaviours). Our findings suggest that a student’s sense of belonging to their university and their levels of hope are negatively associated with academic misconduct intentions. We also observed a significant Hope × Belongingness, Agency × Belongingness, and Pathways × Belongingness interaction for students’ AM intentions and their AM behaviours. Our findings identified that students who have a strong sense of belonging, but low levels of hope are more likely to engage in academic misconduct behaviours. We also confirm that high levels of hope are protective against students engaging in academic misconduct. Universities can use these findings to identify students at an increased risk of engaging in academic misconduct and protect at-risk students from engaging in academic misconduct by improving their goal motivation and perceived capacity to implement a plan to reach their education goals. (shrink)

Perceived levels of belonging and frequency of disagreeing with local teaching were assessed in a sample of 404 lay members of the Anglican Church in England. Belonging and disagreeing were inversely related, although occasional disagreement was common even among those who felt entirely at home in their church. The power of individual differences and external factors to predict sense of belonging and frequency of disagreeing was tested using multivariate binary logistic regression analysis. Sense of (...) class='Hi'>belonging was strongest among people who, in terms of psychological type, recorded high feeling and high judging scores, who were older, who attended church frequently, and who had low frequency of charismatic practice. Disagreement was most frequent among people who, in terms of psychological type, recorded high intuitive scores, who had experienced higher levels of education and who were in larger congregations. Belonging and disagreeing seemed to be related more to intrinsic and acquired individual differences than to external factors associated with congregations. (shrink)

Senses of place are strongly intertwined with senses of heritage and cultural identity. Heritage places are distinctive not only for their tangible dimensions, but also the intangible qualities which give them meaning. The conservation of heritage places, however, has often emphasised the materiality of place rather than its symbolic significance. This article explores issues surrounding sense of place and heritage management through a focus on the former site of the Paradise Hotel in Norfolk Island’s Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic (...) Area. Drawing on interviews and a zine co-created with Norfolk Island residents, the article unpacks various ways participants articulate connections to the Paradise via their memories and recollections of the past as well as their present interpretation of and engagement with the site. Through a localised case study, the article provides insight into transnational challenges for the relationship between sense of place, heritage value and heritage management and interpretation. (shrink)

We report new data from a survey of loneliness in Australia during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020–21, in order to identify those age groups most at risk of increased loneliness. Counter-intuitively, proportionately fewer elderly Australians experienced increased loneliness as a result of lockdowns, as compared with 44% of those aged 19–29 and 31% of those aged 40–49. To explain this pattern, we investigated how lockdowns disturbed the complex connections between types of place affordance and the age-specific cultural scripts that normally (...) give rise to a sense of belonging. For younger age groups, such scripts demand their identification with future orientations and a sense of belonging tied to the more distant and wide-ranging places of career advance, meeting, play, and pleasure that lockdown inhibited. By contrast, older retired cohorts were more inclined to frame their sense of belonging in the past through the maintenance of community connections and closer place-bonds of their locality, cultural places of memory and return that they were more happily confined to during lockdowns. (shrink)

In the context of coronavirus pandemic, the face-recognition-based access control system has been intensively adopted to protect students’ and teachers’ health and safety in school. However, the impact of FACS, as a new technology, on students’ attitude toward accepting FACS has remained unknown from the psychological halo effect. Drawn on “halo effect” theory where psychological effects affect the sense of social identity and belonging, the present study explored college students’ sense of school identity and belonging in (...) using FACS during COVID-19 based on the technology acceptance model. Data collected from 391 college students was analyzed using SEM to verify the relationship among perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intention to use, school identity, and school belonging. The results show that PU and PEU can positively predict IU, and consequentially can positively predict school identity and school belonging. Our study expands the application of halo effect theory to study FACS acceptance based on TAM, and provides strong evidence to support the effect of school FACS during the pandemic. The findings of this study also suggest that FACS acceptance can enhance students’ sense of school identity and belonging. (shrink)

Our sense of entitlement influences our interactions and attitudes in a range of specific relational contexts, one of them being aging parents’ relationships with their adult children. This study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Sense of Relational Entitlement—aging parents toward their offspring, an 11-item questionnaire that assesses aging people’s sense of relational entitlement toward their children, and examine the associations of its subscales with related personality and mental health constructs. One thousand and six participants, (...) aged 65–99, with at least one child, completed the SRE-ao, Brief Symptom Inventory, Loneliness Scale, and General Belongingness scale. The SRE-ao demonstrated good construct structure using confirmatory factor analysis. Both SRE-ao subscales were significantly and positively associated with anxiety, depression, somatization and sense of loneliness and negatively with sense of belonging. When all variables were entered into a regression model, age, anxiety, and low sense of belonging, but not sense of loneliness, positively predicted both restricted and inflated sense of entitlement. Somatization negatively predicted inflated sense of entitlement. The SRE-ao is a reliable and valid scale that can be used in clinical practice and research to enhance our understanding of parent–child relationships throughout the lifespan. (shrink)

This study aims to address the problems, obligations and value judgments that the modern individuals encounter while endeavoring to shape their own identities with the emergence of the new era in general. It examines the conflicts of the individuals within themselves, their senses of belonging, lifestyles, moral problems and the relationship between not only city and countryside but also tradition and modernity, one of the dichotomy in the modern era, in the context of Turkey in particular. More specifically, the (...) study emphasizes extreme individualism, the trivialization of traditional values owing to modernity, the loss of sense of belonging as a result of a shift to a consumption-oriented lifestyle as well as individuals’ sense of conscience and morality. In this sense, the issue of morality might be construed as the focal point of the present study. In the modern communication era, cinema has played a pivotal role in reflecting the realities of life. Therefore, film-oriented social life studies are particularly important. In this study, the effects of fundamental changes and transformations in Turkey, and the issues in the realms of social life, education, religion, profession and family in the modern era are examined through the film ‘The Wild Pear Tree’. The script of the film is written on the story of Akın Aksu, who is the son of Nuri Bilge Ceylan's uncle and one of the screenwriters. Nuri Bilge Ceylan deals with human nature and social problems in depth in his films. He attempts to depict the reality in his films directly by portraying many aspects and details of it. Ceylan's films could be delineated as critical films including meta-fiction. The Wild Pear Tree is one of his long winded works in which he displays the consumer society, the capitalist lifestyle and its reflections on the individual with satire and subtle irony. The film was analyzed in terms of Sinan's relationships with the characters he encountered during his search for himself. The findings of the study indicates that Nuri Bilge Ceylan addressed not only the traces of modernity, but also the problems of post-modernity boldly and presents his criticisms clearly through dialogues. The film was shot in the post-modern period and touches on the social problems of Turkey as well as the problems of the era. The individual’s dragging into an unconnected, discontinuous and fragmented way of life during his search for his ‘self’ with modernity has led to identity crises. Even though this situation is personal, it also highlights the intervention in social memory. Although the traces of the transition from the countryside to the city became blurred over time, the duality of tradition and modernity has stood out. In the study, the changes in the family and society along with the individual change were examined. The necessity of the rapid life increasing with modernity and the depressions caused by the sense of being out of date were also discussed. It has become evident in the last century that the individual feels stuck, lonely, and unstable in his behavior. Within this framework, the loneliness of Sinan, the main character and his being stuck between not only the country and the city but also his dreams and living conditions in the Wild Pear Tree started with his escaping from the country and resulted in his finding his ‘self’ in the country. A perspective of continuity in change is seen in the character Sinan, who escaped from his own reality and returned to the countryside where his father lived. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that all humans have a profound need to belong and that a sense of ‘belonging together’ is a prerequisite for creating political communities. Many of our existing models for this ‘first person plural’ fail to fully account for the increased global mobility of persons which can all too often result in serial attachments at a superficial level or the problems that can arise with a growing fragility of all belonging. This article looks at (...) the other side of belonging: failure to belong—either through the loss of a sense of belonging or the removal of membership belonging —and the resulting damage that might occur. This can have profound implications for what happens in schools where one of the accepted major functions has always been to develop and nurture belonging in children: to each other, to the school and within the wider society. However, the general assumption that most children enter schools at a neutral stage on the belonging spectrum ready to be developed and nurtured towards citizenship belonging may no longer hold and we may need to explore new ways as to how this might be achieved. (shrink)

The paper posits a relationship between the sensory modality of touch, including a sense of active movement, and early modern knowledge of active powers in nature. It seeks to appreciate the strength and appeal of knowledge built on the active-passive distinction, including that which was retrospectively labeled animist. Using statements by Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Stahl, rather than detailed new readings of texts, the paper asks whether scholars drew on phenomenal, or conscious, awareness of activity as effort (...) encountering resistance when they reasoned about activity in the world. How were there relations and analogies between descriptions of psyche’s relation to body, of the relation of living forces to matter, of relations among material objects, of God’s relationship to His creation, and of relations involving causal agency generally? It is possible to understand what were later called animistic theories as belonging to the mainstream of the new natural philosophy, not to a residue of unscientific argument. Early modern theories of active and vital powers cannot be dismissed because they were based, in error, on mere analogy to human action. Rather, they had a central position in reasoning grounded in phenomenal awareness of action-resistance when a person is “in touch.”. (shrink)

Experiences of thought-insertion are a first-rank, diagnostically central symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients who undergo such delusional mental states report being first-personally aware of an occurrent conscious thought which is not theirs, but which belongs to an external cognitive agent. Patients seem to be right about what they are thinking but mistaken about who is doing the thinking. It is notoriously difficult to make sense of such delusions. One general approach to explaining the etiology of monothematic delusions has come (...) to be known as the endorsement model. This model claims that the patient holds her delusional belief because she simply trusts her bizarre experience and takes it at face value. The content of the bizarre experience thus plays a central role in the etiology of delusions. Despite being widely discussed with respect to delusions like Capgras and Cotard, an endorsement model of thought-insertion has not yet been formulated. This article seeks to fill this void by fleshing out and defending the endorsement approach to delusions of inserted thoughts. It aims to show that such an approach can be defended against objections that have been raised in the literature. In particular, it will be argued that there is nothing wrong with the idea of being first-personally aware of a thought which is presented in consciousness as being someone else's. The upshot is that with respect to delusions of thought-insertion, the endorsement model turns out to be a viable account of why patients come to believe that someone else is inserting thoughts into their minds. (shrink)

This paper proposes an original ubuntu-inspired account of human-animal moral status for engaging the problem of belongingness—the ethico-ecological community view. This account embodies two integrated features: locatedness and relationality. While locatedness prompts us to attend to the embeddedness of beings in the built and natural environment, relationality allows the discussion to focus on human-nonhuman interdependencies. I argue that a deep sense of both features prompts us to move the moral status conversation away from capacities to a non-capacity-based approach, thereby (...) helping to disrupt unjustified human moral superiority over animals in a way that commits us to environmental flourishing. (shrink)

To most, myths are merely fantastic stories. But for Luc Brisson, one of the great living Plato scholars, myth is a key factor in what it means to be human – a condition of life for all. Essential and inescapable, myth offers a guide for living, forming the core of belonging and group identity. In 1999 Quebec classicist Louis-André Dorion published a series of French conversations with Brisson on the idea of myth. In Making Sense of Myth Gerard (...) Naddaf offers an extended and updated English translation of these conversations, as well as a new set of discussions between himself and Brisson. Beginning with Brisson's childhood in the village of Saint-Esprit, Quebec, through his education as a gifted child in minor seminaries starting at age eleven, and continuing with his years in Paris, first as a graduate student and later at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Brisson tells the story of his escape from an all-encompassing myth – the one promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church. The philosopher situates Quebec society as inseparable from the history of the Catholic Church in Quebec, and argues that this correlation offers a perfect paradigm of myth and mythmaking. Naddaf’s introduction and afterword contextualize the conversations by discussing Brisson’s and Plato’s understanding of the origin and meaning of myth, elaborating on the role of myth in anthropogeny, in the creation of selfhood, and in multiculturalism. Making Sense of Myth promises both a philosophy of myth and a philosophy of life, one inspired by Brisson’s lifelong engagement with the great Western philosopher Plato. (shrink)

Drawing on the transformative potential of critical-theoretical learning grounded in the CHAT framework of recognizing the bi-directional relationship between learning and development, the present paper is an investigation of how nine American community college students participating in a critical learning community (Peer Activist Learning Community) make sense of and position themselves towards the pursuit of higher education. The paper has two key findings: (1) students primarily draw on vocational discourse paired with a conceptualization of learning as rote learning (i.e. (...) memorization and acquisition of skills) in making sense of their pursuit of higher education, and (2) students embody a transitional positioning toward the community college, which poses the ontological challenge of belonging to an academic institution while seeking to negate this belonging. The findings are framed and discussed in particular through the lens of the transformative activist stance (Stetsenko) with an emphasis on the recognition of education as the process of becoming human as well as with a focus on the transformative potential of meaningful learning experiences. I conclude by suggesting the need for transforming the aim of retention studies as well as put forward the suggestion of re-conceptualization the concept of belongingness in educational psychology in light of the CHAT framework. (shrink)

Theoretical analyses of person–environment interaction describe complex models, addressing different levels of social systems, while models of the sense of community provide a base for transferring views of this interaction to the national level. This paper presents two studies that explored the structure of the sense of country and its relation to emigration plans and social identification. Study 1 involved 1,005 adults from Latvia. The Sense of Country Inventory included influence, perceived opportunities, belonging, and spatiotemporal commitment (...) as the components of this sense. The bifactor model demonstrated the best fit and confirmed the general factor, integrating components of the sense of country, and specific factors, emphasizing its complexity. The validation demonstrated that the general sense of country is the main negative predictor of emigration plans. Study 2 included 247 participants who completed the SOCI and Identification With All Humanity Scale. Correlating with national identification, the sense of country negatively predicted emigration plans that reflected the social identity continuity pathway. In turn, a negative relationship between the sense of country and global identification, which positively predicted emigration plans, revealed a social identity gain pathway. Together, the studies present the integrative nature of the sense of country and its links to emigration plans and national and global social identification. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Philosophy of Belonging: Persons, Politics, Cosmos by James GreenawayThomas W. HolmanGREENAWAY, James. A Philosophy of Belonging: Persons, Politics, Cosmos. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2023. xii + 326 pp. Cloth, $125.00; paper, $50.00“Belonging” is a common theme in contemporary political discourse, but it has not yet garnered much sustained attention in terms of its philosophical significance. James Greenaway’s new book aims (...) to address this issue by offering an original and penetrating exploration into the philosophical meaning of this difficult and laden term. At the heart of his approach lies the concept of the metaxy. As explained in Plato’s Symposium and expanded by Eric Voegelin, it is a state of being-in-tension between two static states or “poles,” which can represent wisdom and ignorance, need and plenty, transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, and so forth. This becomes the foundation for Greenaway’s “hermeneutic of belonging,” which consists of two forces: “existence-from” and “existence-toward.” Existence-toward is a sort of intentionality, a consciousness of “someone or something with whom I am experiencing some kind of an affinity.” It is the “where” or “with whom” I desire to be. Existence-from is an awareness [End Page 717] of the other that a person carries within him- or herself: persons, communities, places, times that are “so significant that I cannot be who I am without them.” Greenaway argues that belonging in the abstract hinges on the metaxic tension between these two poles, variously conceived depending on the context.The second section of the book examines the different contexts in which existence-from and existence-toward play out within each person: between oneself, other persons, and the cosmos. These constitute the various aspects of what Greenaway calls “presence.” Belonging on this level means each person participates “in the grand, continual emergence of reality in all of its variety.” Presence to myself, to others, and to the cosmos as a whole reflects the metaxic tension of the hermeneutic of belonging.In the final section, Greenaway turns to explaining how belonging works in community. He begins by differentiating between the communion, or “bond and order” of a community, and communitas, the “shoulder-to-shoulder stance” that permeates political existence. Communion is a manifestation of the aforementioned hermeneutic of belonging within and among persons and the cosmos. It is the more fundamental principle of community that reflects the primordial intersubjectivity of Buber’s I–Thou: In some sense, each person is or must be involved in or available (in the sense of Gabriel Marcel’s disponibilité) to the other. Without some sort of grounding in communion, communitas becomes impossible. By contrast, communitas is the jostling, back-and-forth movement associated with the practical discernment and attainment of common political goods that Greenaway conceives, with St. Augustine, as objects of common love. These are sought out, argued about, and even fought over in everyday political life, which is marked by a shared commitment to achieving the goals associated with common political goods. The communitas is centered in the tension of belonging between the more fundamental recognition of each person as a bearer of meaning in the cosmos and the everyday business of collectively discerning and implementing the common good.But communion carries a further meaning. In addition to the more fundamental respect for myself and all others in the community as bearers of presence, it is also an awareness of all possible transcendent perfections of the community as a whole. Greenaway calls this second sense “sacramentality.” Yet this mysterious perfection is not necessarily for the here-and-now. It is, rather, another example of the hermeneutic of belonging where transcendent principles intersect with temporal reality. Thus, every community is sealed with seeming contradictions that, far from being irresolvable paradoxes, illustrate its belonging-in-tension alongside mystery. An example of one such paradox is the ideal of universal humanity: we are aware of the claims placed on us by our shared universal humanity, but we are also necessarily situated within a particular place or country or community. The idea of a universal brotherhood of man reflects one way in which transcendent perfection [End Page... (shrink)

What grounds my experience of my body as my own? The body that one experiences is always one’s own, but it does not follow that one always experiences it as one’s own. One might even feel that a body part does not belong to oneself despite feeling sensations in it, like in asomatognosia. The article aims at understanding the link between bodily sensations and the sense of ownership by investigating the role played by the body schema.

What does ‘being dead’ mean? Should we understand ‘being dead’ as a real property or state of a subject or as something different? Does the study of death belong to metaphysics or philosophy of nature? Does the meaning of ‘being dead’ change when referred to a corpse or to a separated soul? What kind of negation does it entail? The present paper discusses these and related questions concerning the meaning of death. To do so, the paper assesses the contemporary debate (...) concerning the so-called “termination thesis” and provides a metaphysical argument against non-terminism. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak spurred unplanned closures and transitions to online classes. Physical environments that once fostered social interaction and community were rendered inactive. We conducted interviews and administered surveys to examine undergraduate STEM students’ feelings of belonging and engagement while in physical isolation, and identified online teaching modes associated with these feelings. Surveys from a racially diverse group of 43 undergraduate students at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) revealed that interactive synchronous instruction was positively associated with feelings of interest (...) and belonging, particularly for students of color, while noninteractive instruction reduced social belonging, but was related to more cognitive engagement. Small group and one-on-one interviews with 23 of these students suggest that students derived feelings of connectedness from their instructors, peers, and prior experiences and relied on their sense of competency to motivate themselves in the course and feel a sense of belonging. Two embedded cases of students in physics classrooms are compared to highlight the range of student feelings of connectedness and competency during the lockdown. Findings reaffirm that social interaction tends to support belonging and engagement, particularly for under-represented (Black or African American and Hispanic) racial groups in STEM. STEM instructors who aim to support feelings of belonging and engagement in virtual learning environments should consider increasing opportunities for student–student and student–teacher interactions, as well as taking a flexible approach that validates and integrates student voice into instruction. Future research is needed to further explore the themes of relatedness and competency that emerged as aspects of course belonging. (shrink)

This article underscores the dilemma posed by the exclusivist view of the tradition-modernity contrast for anyone interested in the project of returning and belonging to the African community. On the exclusivist view, tradition and modernity are irreconcilable. After discussing the tradition-modernity contrast in the fields of sociology and academic African philosophy, this article adopts an eclectic view of tradition as an alternative to the exclusivist view. The alternative view enables those interested in the project of returning and belonging (...) to retrieve those elements of tradition that have enduring values in order to utilize them creatively in various development projects. It is argued that this creative synthesis of traditional and modern elements is necessary to build viable contemporary African societies in which individuals feel a sense of belonging and identity. (shrink)

As the era or racial and ethnic separateness (apartheid) in South Africa moves further into the annals of history, the new era of integration is being steadily entrenched. While apartheid was internationally condemned and popularly opposed inside the country, a laissez faire type of integration is gradually replacing this system of social rigidity. Apartheid was an exaggerated form of political, economic and social insulation that forbade racial intermingling and sanctioned the existence of separate amenities and living spaces through legislation (Group (...) Areas Act of 1950). However abhorrent apartheid was, it should not be construed that the majority of people had a natural aversion for maintaining social boundaries and a natural inclination to intermingle. In reality, people in all kinds of heterogeneous situations have a proclivity towards demonstrating bonds that emerge out of a sense of “sameness”, as demonstrated in a wide range of literature. (shrink)

Multisensory stimulation has been shown to alter the sense of body-ownership. Given that perceived similarity between one’s own body and those of others is crucial for social cognition, we investigated whether multisensory stimulation can lead participants to experience ownership over a hand of different skin colour. Results from two studies using introspective, behavioural and physiological methods show that, following synchronous visuotactile stimulation, participants can experience body-ownership over hands that seem to belong to a different racial group. Interestingly, a baseline (...) measure of implicit racial bias did not predict whether participants would experience the RHI, but the overall strength of experienced body-ownership seemed to predict the participants’ post-illusion implicit racial bias with those who experienced a stronger RHI showing a lower bias. These findings suggest that multisensory experiences can override strict ingroup/outgroup distinctions based on skin colour and point to a key role for sensory processing in social cognition. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show that a particular view of emotion sharing and a specific hypothesis on infant social perception strengthen each other. The view of emotion sharing is called “the straightforward view.” The hypothesis on infant social perception is called “the pairing account.” The straightforward view suggests that participants in emotion sharing undergo one and the same overarching emotion. The pairing account posits that infants perceive others’ embodied experiences as belonging to someone other than the (...) self through a process of assimilation to, and accommodation of, their own embodied experience. The connection between the two theories lies in the domain-general process of association by similarity, which functions both in the individuation of a unitary emotion and in the interpretation of the sensory stimulus. By elaborating on this connection, the straightforward view becomes more solid from the cognitive-developmental standpoint and the pairing account expands its explanatory power. Since the straightforward view requires minimal forms of self- and other-awareness, the paper provides a characterization of the developmental origin of the sense of us, i.e., the experience of self and other as co-subjects of a shared emotional state. (shrink)

Is there a crisis of sense in the world? Does it even make any sense to talk of either “sense” or a “world” that does or does not have any sense? According to Jean-Luc Nancy in The Sense of the World, it is no longer possible to speak of a “crisis of sense.” Such a way of formulating the problem of the sense of the world belongs to the past. “Today, we are beyond (...) this: all sense has been abandoned”. A crisis of sense implies a loss of sense in the world that can be regained or replaced, whereas an abandonment of sense rejects this entire setup. In this brilliant and exciting work, Nancy endeavors to elaborate this abandonment, which is not only an abandonment of sense, but also and at the same time an exposure to sense. In over thirty short but extremely insightful sections, Nancy articulates the double meaning of this abandonment through reflections on a number of thinkers and topics. He not only gathers up and focuses the strands of the respective problematics he is engaging, but he also inaugurates new, fruitful strands along which to pursue the questions and problems of sense facing us in our concrete existence. (shrink)

Although Descartes and Malebranche argue that we are immaterial thinking things, they also maintain that each of us stands in a unique experiential relation to a single human body, such that we feel as though this body belongs to us and is part of ourselves. This paper examines Descartes’s and Malebranche’s accounts of this feeling. They hold that our experience of being embodied is grounded in affective bodily sensations that feel good or bad: namely, sensations of pleasure and pain, hunger (...) and thirst, and so on. These bodily sensations ground our experiential identification with the body because they represent the body’s needs and interests as though they were own, such that we experience an important aspect of our well-being as consisting in the preservation of the body. According to these Cartesians, then, we feel embodied in part because we experience ourselves as having a bodily good. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explore how experiences of social belonging might emerge and be sustained in online communities, drawing from the work on rituals by Randall Collins. I argue that rather than viewing mediated interactions in terms of whether they are suitable substitutes for face-to-face interactions, we should consider mediated encounters in their own right. This allows us to recognize the creative ways that people can create rituals in a mediated setting and thus support and create a sense (...) of belonging with others online. I also highlight how some online platforms not only support online rituals but that they are well-positioned to create and circulate collective symbols (or sacred objects) of groups and, thus, can continue to scaffold and sustain on-going feelings of belonging. (shrink)

Multisensory stimulation has been shown to alter the sense of body-ownership. Given that perceived similarity between one’s own body and those of others is crucial for social cognition, we investigated whether multisensory stimulation can lead participants to experience ownership over a hand of different skin colour. Results from two studies using introspective, behavioural and physiological methods show that, following synchronous visuotactile stimulation, participants can experience body-ownership over hands that seem to belong to a different racial group. Interestingly, a baseline (...) measure of implicit racial bias did not predict whether participants would experience the RHI, but the overall strength of experienced body-ownership seemed to predict the participants’ post-illusion implicit racial bias with those who experienced a stronger RHI showing a lower bias. These findings suggest that multisensory experiences can override strict ingroup/outgroup distinctions based on skin colour and point to a key role for sensory processing in social cognition. (shrink)

Concern for what we do to plants is pivotal for the field of environmental ethics but has scarcely been voiced. This paper examines how plant ethics first emerged from the development of plant science and yet also hit theoretical barriers in that domain. It elaborates on a case study prompted by a legal article on “the dignity of creatures” in the Swiss Constitution. Interestingly, the issue of plant dignity was interpreted as a personification or rather an “animalization of plants.” This (...) sense of irony makes sense when one realizes that on scientific grounds the plant is a “second animal,” i.e., it differs from the animal in degree of life or some ethically-relevant criterion but not in nature. From the point of view of ethics however, plants should be defended for what they are by nature and not by comparison to external references: the ethical standing of plants cannot be indexed to animals. It is thus reckoned that to circumvent this odd fetishism, the plant ethics can only be adequately addressed by changing the theory of plant science. Common sense tells us this: plants and animals belong to radically different fields of perception and experience, a difference that is commonly captured by the notion of kingdom. In this paper we remind the ethical conversation that plants are actually incommensurable with animals because they are unsplit beings (having neither inside nor outside), i.e., they live as “non-topos” in an undivided, unlimited, non-centered state of being. It is concluded that the unique ontology of plants can only be addressed through a major change from object-thinking to process-thinking and a move from ego-centric to “peri-ego” ethics. (shrink)

Abstract:There is an established narrative in which the world shrinks, distances are overcome and rendered insignificant, and the near and the far lose their salience as means of orientation and understanding. Yet, within this narrative, new distances are equally felt and observed to have opened up. New distances between and amongst us, multiplying distances of indifference, incomprehension and antagonism. And felt distances also between ourselves and ‘land’ and ‘nature’—a sense of separation, alienation and loss which it then becomes imperative, (...) ethically and environmentally, to overcome.In this general context, this article asks: is it possible to sense distance more positively? Given the scope of the topic, the article aims primarily to offer key frameworks and avenues for rethinking distance. In two initial sections I consider distance in terms of ethics and spatialities respectively. Then, in a lengthier third and final discussion, I turn to landscape specifically as a venue for thinking distance anew. Notions of apartness and alienation are, it can be argued, historically stitched into Western visual art traditions of landscape. In Robin Kelsey's terms, landscape names a “fantasy of not belonging to the totality of life of a terrestrial expanse.” But, drawing in particular upon Jean-Luc Nancy's account of landscape as uncanny and estranged spatiality, I will argue that the distances of not-belonging are actually the signature elements of landscape's distinction as a mode of experience, imagination and presentation. (shrink)

IntroductionThis paper employs Confucianism to illustrate a kind of differential or benevolent love, which people give in accordance with their relations and roles. In this sense, Confucian benevolent love is more of a duty to create mutual belonging than an emotion of solidarity.1 This benevolent love contrasts with the universal love of liberalism and the resultant solidarity that those who express this form of love feel for one another—these people often being the distant and unacquainted—whose presence would puzzle (...) Confucian leaders in terms of their roles and duties. Confucian roles are, in comparison, contextual, evolving, and reciprocal in order to cope with encountered strangeness. The liberal belief in everyone being ontologically equal and free de-emphasizes the relevance of experiencing the other’s strangeness. As a result of this, a Confucian’s and liberal’s love for one another may ironically cause, in both, a moral outrage qua deprived belonging.2. (shrink)

This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers? job satisfaction, self?efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers? professional identity. Using two?step cluster analysis, three distinct professional identity profiles have empirically been identified, based on data of 1214 teachers working in secondary education in the Netherlands. These profiles differed significantly regarding the indicators of teachers? (...) professional identity. Teachers belonging to the found profiles did not significantly differ in their amount of experience. (shrink)

This article discusses the national identity of the Yemenite Jews as portrayed in Majdi Saleh’s novel The Journey of Buried Secrets. The novel, in addition to being a journey to the ancient past of Yemen, is a journey to the secret life of the Yemenite Jews as well. It is an exploration of their customs, traditions, worries, passions and identity. The writer has been able to dive deep into the depths of Yemeni society, both Muslim and Jewish, depicting the beauty (...) of Yemen architecture, ancient inscriptions and living styles of bygone days. Saleh’s novel presents a new perspective of the Yemenite Jew, one who identifies himself with Yemen and feels proud of this attachment to the land of his birth. The article argues that Yemenite Jews have been emotionally and cognitively attached to their motherland and perceived themselves as being Yemenites belonging to the country where they were born and grew up. It asserts that such a sense of belonging is the outcome of religious tolerance and coexistence of the larger Muslim community. (shrink)

Sustainable products are engineered to reduce environmental, ecological, and human costs of consumption. Not all consumers value sustainable products, however, and this poses negative societal implications. Using self-expansion theory as a guide, we explore how an individual’s general sense of belonging—or the perception that one is accepted and valued by others in the broader social world—alters their responses to sustainable products. Five experimental studies and a field study demonstrate that individuals lower in belonging respond less favorably to (...) sustainable products in terms of evaluations and willingness to pay than individuals higher in belonging. Process evidence shows that the extent to which individuals low in belonging perceive that collective, sustainable choices will impact them personally drives this result and that belonging does not impact responses to conventional (i.e., non-sustainable) products. However, perceiving a shared human experience—or that individuals share some important, basic similarities with all people—attenuates the negative effect of low belonging on responses to sustainable products for consumers both low and high in belonging. This research has significant implications for businesses and society given the growing sense of disconnect in modern society. (shrink)

Background We need to preserve the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic in caring for the mental health of clinicians, of shared experiences, interdependence, team cohesion and vulnerability, among others. We need reform in the way that clinicians are cared for, and a resistance to the idea of a post-pandemic ‘return to normal’. Main text To build connected and optimally functioning clinical teams, we need to create an inclusive culture in which difficult conversations and caring are the expectation. If we are (...) to be better at solving problems and better at serving our patients, we should be vigilant about creating a psychologically safe medical culture in which colleagues feel safe, seen, heard, and respected. Conclusion Going forward, each of us, regardless of seniority, needs to take responsibility for this culture change. We need to create and participate in weekly collegial peer support sessions that feel nurturing and safe, that allow us to reveal parts of ourselves, to be vulnerable with each other in a way that reduces loneliness, and encourages and maintains social connections and a sense of belonging within clinical teams, improves clinician well-being and reduces the risk of burnout. “Care is a practice of informed responsive actions on behalf of the one cared for and authentically aimed toward their growth and flourishing.” Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity; Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower. (shrink)

Human existence is intrinsically community-oriented. Persons find themselves as responsible in community. This is a classical and Christian insight that is supported by significant contemporary philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Levinas. This article makes the claim that to thrive as a person is to belong; indeed, that it is the experience of belonging that satisfies the human need for meaning, value, and purpose. The article proceeds by considering the term ‘community.’ In itself, ‘community’ is a common (...) class='Hi'>sense term. However, it is also a symbol with dimensions of meaning beyond common sense implicit within it. For the sake of a richer understanding of belonging, this article proposes to discuss some of those dimensions under three headings: Dynamism; Communion; and Consummation. ‘Dynamism’ relates to the members of a community whose mutual participation constitutes the characteristics of that community. ‘Communion’ considers the emergence of genuine community, as opposed to general association, from the prior mutual will to accommodate the Other in the self. ‘Consummation’ considers the significance of communion as both the goal and fulfilment of each person and community. Put another way, consummation is the perfection of belonging. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a case study that aims to highlight the processes by which French female migrants in London and Manchester attempt to de/re/construct identities to negotiate the challenges of the cultural and social structures in England. This research centres on 15 semi-structured interviews with French women residents of diverse backgrounds. The interviews conducted represent counter-narratives to existing studies which focus only on highly skilled French migrants in London and define them as free movers and ‘invisible migrants’. (...) This study attempts to fill a gap by examining solely French women migrants in Manchester and London as a strategic research site for a number of key research questions taken from the current literature of intra-European migration, gender and identity. Indeed, the ways in which migrants negotiate their identity are crucial to migration studies and have to be analysed in relation to women’s specific experience. The study exemplifies how migrants’ identities are a ground of negotiation, contestation, deconstruction and reconstruction. Patterns that emerged in this study first highlight the high heterogeneity among women’s strategies of self-identification and definition and sense of belonging in a changing Europe. The article concludes by proposing a refined notion of transculturality as a useful concept for future explorations of changes in contemporary European societies and the role women can have in them. (shrink)

Background We need to preserve the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic in caring for the mental health of clinicians, of shared experiences, interdependence, team cohesion and vulnerability, among others. We need reform in the way that clinicians are cared for, and a resistance to the idea of a post-pandemic ‘return to normal’. Main text To build connected and optimally functioning clinical teams, we need to create an inclusive culture in which difficult conversations and caring are the expectation. If we are (...) to be better at solving problems and better at serving our patients, we should be vigilant about creating a psychologically safe medical culture in which colleagues feel safe, seen, heard, and respected. Conclusion Going forward, each of us, regardless of seniority, needs to take responsibility for this culture change. We need to create and participate in weekly collegial peer support sessions that feel nurturing and safe, that allow us to reveal parts of ourselves, to be vulnerable with each other in a way that reduces loneliness, and encourages and maintains social connections and a sense of belonging within clinical teams, improves clinician well-being and reduces the risk of burnout. _“Care is a practice of informed responsive actions on behalf of the one cared for and authentically aimed toward their growth and flourishing.” _ _Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity; Maurice Hamington and Michael Flower._. (shrink)