The aim of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the experience of time when living with severe incurable disease. A phenomenological and philosophical approach of description and deciphering were used. In our modern health care system there is an on-going focus on utilizing and recording the use of time, but less focus on the patient’s experience of time, which highlights the need to explore the patients’ experiences, particularly when life is vulnerable and time is limited. The empirical (...) data consisted of 26 open-ended interviews with 23 participants receiving palliative care at home, in hospital or in a nursing home in Norway. The theoretical frameworks used are mainly based upon K. Martinsens philosophy of care, K. E. Løgstrup phenomenological philosophy, in addition to C. Saunders’ hospice philosophy, L. Feigenberg’s thanatology and U. Qvarnström’s research exploring patient’s reactions to impending death. Experience of time is described as being a movement that moves the individual towards death in the field of opposites, and deciphered to be a universal, but a typical and unique experience emerging through three integrated levels: Sense of time; where time is described as a movement that is proceeding at varying speeds. Relate totime; where the awareness of limited life changes the understanding of time to be more existential. Being in time; where limited time seems to clarify the basic living conditions and phenomena of life. The existence of life when the prospect of death is present is characterized by emotional swings that move within polarizing dimensions which is reflected in the experience of time illustrated as the moves of the pendulum in a grandfather clock. The diversity of the experience of time is oscillating between going fast or slow, being busy or calm, being unpredictable but predictable, safe or unsafe and between being good or bad, depending on the embodied situation of the individual. (shrink)

Within recent years, an increasing number of people and researchers in the Global North have become interested in psychedelic substances and their therapeutic application. While much of the current media attention and research effort mainly concentrate on the therapeutic potential and actions of the individual's acute psychedelic experience, this article explores the user-perceived, therapeutic dynamics of psychedelics in a more long-term perspective by charting the lived experiences and practices of ‘integration’ among psychedelic users in Denmark. Based on ethnographic fieldwork from (...) November 2020 to June 2021, I offer a dual typology of self-related integration as narrative and experiential-somatic. Combining the two, I argue that psychedelic integration in contemporary Denmark can be viewed as a processual self-transformation of the users' experiential orientation where understandings and/or modes of being from the acute psychedelic experience are woven into, prolonged, and/or embodied in their everyday existence. (shrink)

Quantum Physics suggests that life in the world is about engaging with and entangling in its waves. Its concept of complementarity also makes possible the affirmation of God's consistent actions in the universe without violating Scientific findings, an affirmation that offers resources for dealing with life's waves.

Abstract:The aim of this article is to analyze and discuss the role that sociological theory plays in music education scholarship. Using books published internationally and explicitly on the topic of the sociology of music education during the recent decade as well as abstracts published in the programs from the 2017 and 2019 International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education biennial conferences as entryways into this discussion, the questions asked are: What kinds of sociological theory are put to use in (...) this material? Which sociologists or sociological theoreticians seem to be the main contributors in this regard? Which questions are asked by utilizing the approaches in play? In other words, what is sociological theory used for? In order to create a backdrop for the analysis, the article provides brief overviews of some of the similarities and differences between the field of philosophy and that of sociology in general as well as the state of sociological theory within music sociology and cultural sociology. Compared with the latter two scholarly fields, that of music education sociology comes through as one in considerable lack of theory creation, and as more invested in the logic of practice than subscribing to the rules of the scholastic game. It is also predominantly Western-centric. Following Bourdieu, these features are interpreted as conveying some of music education’s “epistemic unconscious.”. (shrink)

This book provides a thorough introduction to research ethics and ethically responsible research practice in a research organization. It is relevant for all research areas. Morality, however, is not something one can just “learn”. Therefore, the book is written with a different basic tone than regular textbooks, so that it makes the reader aware of how morality plays a role in the various daily tasks one has in a research organization. The book conveys knowledge and experience material about the society’s (...) and the research community’s view of how different ethical issues should be solved. From this, the reader will acquire the basic ethical principles they need to know and understand and be aware of, in order to be qualified in an ethical context as employees of a research organization, and to be able to deal with common ethical issues associated with research. (shrink)

We argue that people may resist temptations not only with the aim of acquiring more self-control, but also because they want to convince others that they are patient and already possess self-control.

The number of people who survive critical illness is increasing. In parallel, a growing body of literature reveals a broad range of side-effects following intensive care treatment. Today, more attention is needed to improve the quality of survival. Based on nine individual stories of illness experiences given by participants in two focus groups and one individual interview, this paper elaborates how former critically ill patients craft and recraft their personal stories throughout their illness trajectory. The analysis was conducted from a (...) phenomenological perspective and led to the meaning structure; a quest to find oneself after critical illness. In this structure, illness represented a breakdown of the participants’ lives, forcing them to develop a new understanding of themselves. Despite acute illness, they felt safe in hospital. Coming home, however, meant a constant balancing between health and illness, and being either in or out of control. To gain a deeper understanding of the participants’ narratives of survival, the meaning structure was developed from a phenomenological life world perspective, Heidegger’s concept of homelikeness and Arthur Frank’s typologies of illness narratives. In conclusion listening to and acknowledging the patients’ lived experiences of critical illness may support the patient efforts to establish the newly defined self and hence be vital for recovery. Phenomenology is one approach facilitating care tailored to the patients’ lived experience of critical illness and its aftermaths. (shrink)

Based on an ethnographic study in a Danish residential care center, this article shows how the interplay of a sensor-floor technology and currently influential values of person-centeredness, privacy, and security in care transforms care work and care interactions between residents and care workers. Based on an understanding of care as realized in a heterogeneous collective of human and nonhuman actors, this article illustrates how new modes of monitoring and interpreting residents’ care needs at a distance arise, and how a new (...) organization of work focusing on quick and responsive care is established. These new care practices lead to conflicts between the values of privacy and security, to ambivalent experiences among care workers of simultaneously increased security and insecurity in work, and, paradoxically, also often to a decentering rather than person-centering of care. Instead of accommodating simultaneous compliance to the values of privacy, security, and person-centeredness, the use of the sensor-floors makes the tensions between these values continuously and loudly present in daily care practices. (shrink)

A gas in a box is perhaps the most important model system studied in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Usually, studies focus on the gas, whereas the box merely serves as an idealized confinement. The present article focuses on the box as the central object and develops a thermodynamic theory by treating the geometric degrees of freedom of the box as the degrees of freedom of a thermodynamic system. Applying standard mathematical methods to the thermody- namics of an empty box allows (...) equations with the same structure as those of cosmology and classical and quantum mechanics to be derived. The simple model system of an empty box is shown to have interesting connections to classical mechanics, special relativity, and quantum field theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Broken Bodies and Healing Communities: The Challenge of HIV and AIDS in the South African ContextEmily Reimer-BarryBroken Bodies and Healing Communities: The Challenge of HIV and AIDS in the South African Context Edited by Neville Richardson Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Cluster Publications, 2009. 209 pp. $12.00.The township of Mpophomeni, like many communities in South Africa, has been tragically devastated by HIV/AIDS. Christian churches in the region have responded to (...) this ongoing crisis in a variety of ways. In this collection of essays, edited by Neville Richardson, a team of international scholars from various subfields has combined ethnography and qualitative research with theology, with the goal of understanding how Christian churches have responded to the needs of the people of Mpophomeni. This book is the result of a two-year collaborative research project. The title of the book alerts the reader to two major themes of the unfolding narrative: the reality of brokenness, suffering, and sin (individual, interpersonal, social, and ecclesial) and the goal of healing (again, individual, interpersonal, social, and ecclesial). The ten chapters, individually authored, are divided thematically into three sections: Part 1, “Healing and Community: Perspectives from Zulu Culture and Religion”; Part 2, “Caring, Healing and Faith Communities”; and Part 3, “Caring and Community: Training in a Hospital Setting.” As perhaps expected, the authors’ conclusions remain ambivalent. James R. Cochrane explains: “Religion per se is not innocent of breaking bodies, which should always stand as a warning to us. But religion per se is also the source of healing; indeed, in some ways it is all about healing or wholeness, in relation to the sacred” (115). Churches in Mpophomeni have been “protective spaces” (11), “bridging communities” (91), and “broken bodies” that remember and re-member “the broken body of Jesus” (145–51). But communities are also in flux (101) and are sources of discourse that stigmatizes and shames (172).The book presents clearly argued and compelling essays that work independently and could be read or adopted for class as individual essays. The authors approach some of the same difficult questions from different vantage points, methodological foundations, and subdisciplines. For example, in the first two chapters Sidsel Roalkvam and Jone Salomonsen describe the many social problems in Mpophomeni, including poverty, unemployment, gender inequalities, sexual violence, drug and alcohol addiction, and criminal violence. But their [End Page 225] ethnographic research uncovers some of the rituals of healing that help the community to cope, including the practice of communal “strong prayer” (11–15), and uMemulo rite of passage for girls (23–37).However, I wish there were more coherent conversation between the authors of each individual essay. While Richardson explains that the research was collaborative “not only in terms of interaction between the researchers and the community but also among the researchers themselves” (ix), this collaboration between the researchers is not obvious to the reader in the final format of the book. Perhaps another book format would have more fruitfully conveyed this collaborative stance (for example, the inclusion of responses to each chapter or the addition of a roundtable discussion chapter or coauthored chapters).The ethnographic data presented in the third section is particularly rich and challenging for theology, but the authors could have spent more time unpacking, contextualizing, and analyzing the included quotations from patient–chaplain conversations. If, for example, the story of a thirty-three-year-old HIV+ man who allegedly raped a fifteen-year-old girl to give her “a good lesson for her life” so that she will not dress provocatively is “very characteristic of the material” in the study (203–5), much more needs to be said to explain how pastoral care interventions can address the stated “gender inequalities and the drastically different roles of men and women resulting in the vulnerable position of women” (206).The book is a must-read for scholars working on HIV/AIDS and Christian ethics. It could also provide supplemental readings for an undergraduate or graduate course in this area. [End Page 226]Emily Reimer-BarryUniversity of San DiegoCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)