At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries

David Seth Preston · Margaret Sönser Breen · Peter Twohig · Vera Kalitzkus

Series

29

Books

Understanding Evil: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Book 2·Jan 2003

Written across the disciplines of law, literature, philosophy, and theology, Understanding Evil: An Interdisciplinary Approach represents wide-ranging approaches to and understandings of "evil" and "wickedness."
Consisting of three sections - "Grappling with Evil", "Justice, Responsibility, and War" and "Blame, Murder, and Retributivism" -, all the essays are inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary in focus. Common themes emerge around the dominant narrative movements of grieving, loss, powerlessness, and retribution that have shaped so many political and cultural issues around the world since the fall of 2001. At the same time, the interdisciplinary nature of this collection, together with the divergent views of its chapters, reminds one that, in the end, an inquiry into "evil" and "wickedness" is at its best when it promotes intelligence and compassion, creativity and cooperation.
The thirteen essays are originally presented at and then developed in light of dialogues held at the Third Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2002 in Prague.

Cultural Expressions of Evil and Wickedness: Wrath, Sex, Crime

Book 3·Jan 2003

Preliminary Material --Introduction /Terrie Waddell --Wrath: Purging, Cleansing and Appropriating the Deviant Other /Terrie Waddell --Systemic Book Burning as Evil? /Rebecca Knuth --The Destructive Power of Medieval Mythology: A Revisionist View of the Extermination of the Cathars and Pequots /William A. Cook --Satanic Subcultures? A Discourse Analysis of the Self-Perceptions of Young Goths and Pagans /Meg Barker --The Evils of Christianization: A Pagan Perspective on European History /Michael F. Strmiska --Sexual Imagery: Locus of Pleasure, Pain, Censorship and Reclamation /Terrie Waddell --The Female/Feline Morph: Myth, Media, Sex and the Bestial /Terrie Waddell --Bad Sex: Second-Wave Feminism and Pornography's Golden Age /Loren Glass --"Video Abuse": Gender, Censorship and I Spit on Your Grave /Darren Oldridge --Naked Terror: Horrific, Aesthetic and Healing Images of Rape /Madelaine Hron --Crime: Versions of Guilt, Shame and Redemption /Terrie Waddell --Masking the Evil of Capital Punishment /Earl F. Martin --Interrogating the Penal Gaze: Is the Ethical Prison a Possibility? /Diana Medlicott --The Contraction of the Heart: Anxiety, Radical Evil and Proximity in Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Novels /Fiona Peters --"I did so many bad things": Sin and Redemption in the Films of Abel Ferrara /Paul Davies --Notes on Contributors /Terrie Waddell.

Beyond Boundaries of Biomedicine: Pragmatic Perspectives on Health and Disease

Book 4·Jan 2003

Cultural forces shape much of medicine including psychiatry, and medicine shapes much of our culture. Medicine provides us with beneficial treatments of disease, but it also causes harm, increasingly so in the form of overmedication enhanced by the pharmaceutical industry. The book explores boundaries of medicine and psychiatry in a cultural setting by building bridges between unconnected literatures. Boundaries have to be redrawn since effects of the environment, biological, social and political, on health and disease are undervalued. Potential beneficial effects of diet therapies are a recurrent theme throughout the text, with particular emphasis on omega-3 fatty acids. Deficiencies of these acids in common diets may contribute to many chronic diseases and psychiatric disorders. The book uncovers limitations of evidence-based medicine, which fosters a restrictive view of health and disease. Case studies include: the biology of migraine; limitations of biological psychiatry; conventional versus alternative medicine; science, religion and near-death experiences.

The Idea of Education

Book 5·Jan 2003

This book represents a 'position statement' from the intellectually vibrant and challenging debate that emanated from the inaugural conference project launch entitled 'The Idea of Education' held at Mansfield College, Oxford in July 2002.
The book conveys a wide spectrum of views about 'the idea of education' in recognition of the fact that 'the idea' is not as straightforward as it may appear on the surface. It seems the universities are not alone in this apparent uncertainty of definition. Further Education seems equally nonplussed as regard its purpose or raison d'être. Furthermore, even for those within the sector, it appears to be a point of much contention as to where Further Education ends and Higher Education begins.
The book is divided into three main sections: The Current Structures of Education, Issues within Contemporary Education and The Ambitions of Education. The chapters wrestle, sometimes at variance with each other, with the paradoxes and concerns felt by each writer grappling with the idea of education.

Wholeness: The Character Logic of Christian Belief

Book 6·Jan 2004

The notion of a "person" is in deep philosophical trouble. And this has posed a deepening crisis for believers: Christian beliefs are, after all, irreducibly about persons. In response to this situation, Prust proposes a new way to reason about persons, one based on identifying persons as characters of action. Employing a phenomenology of action he calls "character logic," he develops a powerful new tool for thinking through some of the intractable dilemmas that have long befuddled belief:
- Can we avoid being arbitrary and parochial in claiming that God is the only source of moral value?
- Can we reconcile natural evil in the world with God's absolute power?
- Can we continue to honor the historicity of faith-based claims in the face of critical history?
- Can our personal life be eternal when neither timeless nor everlasting life is conceivable?
- Can we accept our personal mortality and still affirm our destiny as eternal?
Wholeness: The Character Logic of Christian Belief argues that character logic shows us a reasonable way to think about persons, one that puts theology on a new footing and gives affirmative answers to all these questions!

Virtual Learning and Higher Education

Book 8·Jan 2004

It is clear that the Internet and other global information infrastructures provide a major challenge to Higher Education. Questions such as: the extent to which education should become 'virtual', the actual cost and value of such innovation and to what degree such education suits its stakeholders (e.g. students) are now discussed the world over. These issues formed the focus for a conference held at Mansfield College, Oxford in September 2002 and this book contains the most rounded and challenging papers from that event.
The book is divided into three main parts which consist of the following themes within Higher Education: current practical and planned uses for Virtual Learning; the future 'Virtual' vision; and the large questions that remain unanswered behind 'Virtual Education'.
The contributors range from the nerdy end of experimenters of futuristic innovative technologies via the practitioner middle of well-known organizers of existing virtual systems to the other extreme of the critical engagement of philosophers.
This stimulating and important book is aimed at researchers of topics such as technology-driven Education, Philosophy, Innovation and Cultural Studies. It is also meant to appeal to anyone with interest in the impact that the technological virtual will have upon Higher Education in future.

Making Sense of Dying and Death

Book 9·Jan 2004

This book aims to extend upon the growing body of literature concerned with dying and death. The book analyses various experiences and representations of dying and death from the perspective of academic disciplines as diverse as theology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and literature. The rationale for this is simple. As objects of study dying and death cannot be usefully reduced to a single academic perspective. One cannot hope to gain a deep and comprehensive understanding of dying and death by gazing at them through a single lens. Bringing various perspectives in a single volume aims to both accurately record those enduring properties of the phenomena, such as mourning and fear, whilst simultaneously analysing the diversity and heterogeneity of human beings' attempts to come to terms with this most forbidding of existential horizons.

Future as Fairness: Ecological Justice and Global Citizenship

Book 10·Jan 2004

Twenty years after the establishment of the World Commission on Environment and Development, the 13 contributions in this interdisciplinary volume offer a broad spectrum of perspectives and research-based recommendations on environmental sustainability, social justice and the human enterprise. The cases explored cover global citizenly rights and obligations, environmental health, ecological building practices, tradable fuel permits, forestry and illegal logging, local waste management, employment and risk assessments, the genetic modification debate, nuclear and toxic waste, global environmental governance and 500 years of globalization.

Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease

Book 11·Jan 2004

Health, illness and disease are topics well-suited to interdisciplinary inquiry. This book brings together scholars from around the world who share an interest in and a commitment to bridging the traditional boundaries of inquiry. We hope that this book begins new conversations that will situate health in broader socio-cultural contexts and establish connections between health, illness and disease and other socio-political issues. This book is the outcome of the first global conference on "Making Sense of: Health, Illness and Disease," held at St Catherine's College, Oxford, in June 2002. The selected papers pursue a range of topics from the cultural significance of narratives of health, illness and disease to healing practices in contemporary society as well as patients' illness experiences.
Researchers and health care practitioners now live in the age of interdisciplinarity, which has transformed both health care delivery and research on health. The essays in this collection transcend the traditional boundaries of biomedicine and draw attention to the many ways in which health is embedded in socio-cultural norms and how these norms, in turn, shape health practices and health care. This volume is of interest not only to researchers but also to those delivering health care.

(Re)constructing Cultures of Violence and Peace

Book 12·Jan 2004

(Re)Constructing Cultures of Violence and Peace brings together eleven original essays that were presented at the Third Global Conference on Cultures of Violence held in August 2002 in Prague. Covering an array of violence-related subjects, and a range of methodologies--textual, historical, theoretical, quantitative--the resulting volume is a multifaceted exploration of how cultures of violence are constructed, and how they can be deconstructed and replaced with cultures of peace. In part one, the authors aim to map and describe some of the important cultures of violence in our modern world--interstate war, civil war, criminal punishment, religious conflict, hooliganism--as an initial step towards understanding violence as a cultural construction. Part two explores aspects of the (re)construction of culture of peace. Specifically, the challenges encountered in attempting to conceptualise, study, or transform cultures of violence are examined. A common theme throughout the book is that violence is a fluid social and cultural construct--it is made by individuals, groups, and social forces. The implications of this are more than simply ontological: if violence is made, it can also be unmade; if cultures of violence are socially and politically constructed, they can also be de-constructed.

War and Virtual War: The Challenges to Communities

Book 13·Jan 2004

If the practice of war is as old as human history, so too is the need to reflect upon war, to understand its meaning and implications. The Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus asserted in 600BC that War (polemos) is justice, thus inaugurating a long philosophical tradition of consideration of the morality of war. In recent times, the increased specialisation of academic disciplines has led a to a fragmentation of the thematic of war within the academy - the topic of war is as likely to be addressed by sociologists, cultural theorists, psychologists and even computer scientists as it is by historians, philosophers or political scientists. This diversity of disciplinary approaches to war is undoubtedly fruitful in itself but can lead to an isolation of respective disciplinary analyses of war from each other.
In July 2002, at Mansfield College, Oxford, an inter-disciplinary conference on war (entitled 'War and Virtual War') was held so as to redress some of this disciplinary isolationism and to forge an integrative dialogue on war, in all its facets. The papers in this volume were nominated by delegates as the most paradigmatic of the ethos of the original project and the most successful in achieving its aims of inter-disciplinarity and critical dialogue.

The Clown Doctor Chronicles

Book 15·Jan 2004

This is the first book in English to provide a close-up view of the emotional and rewarding experiences of clown-doctors working with hospitalized children. It describes the development of a new program in a pediatric hospital and all the challenges that confront clown-doctors. The book recounts work that takes place over a few months in 1999-2000. Most of the children that are described had been diagnosed with leukemia and other serious forms of cancer. They were hospitalized often and ran the risk of death.
This book is a tale of love and humor and of dealing with great traumas and tragedy. It tells of the immense compassion and the amazing resilience of individuals in the most stressful and debilitating of circumstances. It is a small window looking onto what it is to be human with all our strengths and frailties and of how complete strangers can become bonded to one another through laughter and pain.
The story presented here is based upon real case studies annotated with occasional commentaries to put these experiences into perspective. Above all else this book is a celebration and an homage to all the children, their parents and care-givers who have shared their lives with clown-doctors in many countries around the world.
The Clown-Doctor Chronicles is written to 'speak' to people of all ages: men and women; professionals, trades people and homemakers in cities, towns and villages; for laughter and illness know no boundaries. It will be of particular interest to parents, artists in hospitals and anybody working with children (health care professionals, educators, psychologists).

Gut Feelings: Chronic Illness and the Search for Healing

Book 16·Jan 2005

What does 'healing' mean for people who have chronic illnesses without a known cure? Gut Feelings shows readers a new way to explore the problem of suffering, seeking answers in sociology, philosophy and theology. Catherine Garrett's autobiographical narrative links physical, emotional and spiritual experience with intellectual discovery. It is written for people in pain and for all who hope to alleviate suffering. As a profound meditation on life with illness, this book shows that academic and personal wisdom, offered in the form of stories, can make healing itself more widely accessible.

Global Citizenship and Environmental Justice

Book 17·Jan 2006

Preliminary Material --Preface /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --What Identifies Discourse as Interdisciplinary? /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --Is there a Common Language of Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship? /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --Concepts of Environmental Justice and the Law /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --The Multiple and Competing Conceptions of Environmental Justice /John Callewaert --A Conceptual Framework for Environmental Justice Based on Shared but Differentiated Responsibilities /Asghar Ali --Global Citizenship, Trade and Environmental Justices /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --Fairtrade and the International Moral Economy: Within and Against the Market /Gavin Fridell --Law, Civil Society and Transnational Environmental Advocacy Networks /Paul Street --The Triple Bottom Line as a Business Basic? Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability: A Rio Tinto Case Study /David Birch --Applying Environmental Justice /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --Dysfunctional Technology Transfer: The Challenge of Global Markets /David E. Smith and J. Robert Skalnik --Agricultural Biotechnology and Human Rights /Kristen Hessier --Contrast is a Must! The Architect as Environmentalist High-density Development as an Ecological Device in the Battle for the Preservation of Valuable Landscapes and Urban Settings using the Built Environment as a Departure Point for Ecology /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --Education, Environmental Justice, Global Citizenship and Deep Ecology /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --Education for Sustainable Development as Applied Global Citizenship and Environmental Justice /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson --About the Authors /Tony Shallcross and John Robinson.

Frontiers of Diversity: Explorations in Contemporary Pluralism

Book 18·Jan 2005

"Frontiers of Diversity critically examines the explanatory and normative power of pluralism in contemporary philosophy, politics, economics and culture. Based on the papers presented at the "First Global Conference on Critical Issues in Pluralism" at Mansfield College, Oxford, it brings together for the first time essays examining pluralism's impact, both positive and negative, in each of these critical domains. These essays exhibit something of the fertility of the concept of pluralism, not only across the spectrum of fields, but at all levels of analysis, from individual to social to national and international, touching on specific cases from around the world. Through their diversity, the essays are intended to both promote cross-pollination between these domains of study and experience, and to encourage reflection on pluralism as a powerful cross-disciplinary approach for understanding the contemporary world."--BOOK JACKET.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Health, Illness and Disease

Book 21·Jan 2004

The study of health care brings one into contact with many disciplines and perspectives, including those of the provider and the patient. There are also multiple academic lenses through which one can view health, illness and disease. This book brings together scholars from around the world who are interested in developing new conversations intended to situate health in broader social and cultural contexts. This book is the outcome of the second global conference on "Making Sense of: Health, Illness and Disease," held at St Hilda's College, Oxford, in July 2003. The selected papers pursue a range of topics and incorporate perspectives from the humanities, social sciences and clinical sciences.
This volume will be of interest to researchers and health care practitioners who wish to gain insight into other ways of understanding health, illness and disease.

Contemporary Issues in Education

Book 22·Jan 2005

Following the warm reception given to The Idea of Education, a volume of papers in this same Rodopi Series, a second conference around similar themes was held at Oxford University and this book is the result. This edited book provides the reader with a fairly representative, coherent and cohesive statement of the 2003 Oxford conference. Quoting the Chancellor of Paris University with regretting that "in the old days ... lectures were more frequent ... but now the time taken for lectures is being spent in meeting and discussions" our keynote Frank McMahon made the profound observation that some of the issues around education have been with us for a surprisingly long time. Notwithstanding the longevity of some questions concerning education, this book details and examines contemporary educational practice and theory and as such it is a very important work.

Minding Evil: Explorations of Human Iniquity

Book 23·Jan 2005

Minding Evil: Explorations of Human Iniquity brings together fifteen essays, versions of which were presented at the Fifth International Conference on Evil and Wickedness, held in Prague in 2004. The volume examines evil and wickedness from a variety of disciplines, including criminology, cultural studies, gender studies, law, literature, peace studies, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. In so doing Minding Evil keeps in play the doubled meaning of its title: on the one hand, to tend to evil, that is, to oversee, cultivate, and deploy it; on the other hand, to be bothered by evil and so, in learning to identify or recognise it, to try to understand its workings and thus contain or control it and, perhaps, repair or undo it. While the essays taken together work to show the difficulty and at times the travesty of not being able to distinguish between the two meanings, it is this second meaning that remains key. What are the individual and collective responsibilities entailed in minding - being troubled by - evil? This is the central question of this volume.

Evil, Law and the State: Perspectives on State Power and Violence

Book 24·Jan 2006

The topic of "evil" means different things depending upon context. For some, it is an archaic term, while others view it as a central problem of ethics, psychology, or politics. Coupled with state power, the problem of evil takes on a special salience for most observers. When governments do evil -in whatever way we define the term - the scale of harm increases, sometimes exponentially. The evils of state violence, then, demand our attention and concern. Yet the linkage of evil with state power does not resolve the underlying question of how to understand the concepts that we invoke when we use the term. Instead, the question becomes what evil means in the context of and in relation to state power.
The fifteen essays in this book bring multiple perspectives to bear on the problems of state-sponsored evil and violence, and on the ways in which law enables or responds to them. The approaches and conclusions articulated by the various contributors sometimes complement and sometimes stand in tension with each other, but as a whole they contribute to our ongoing effort to understand the characteristics and workings of state power, and our need to grapple with the harm it causes.

Redefining Europe

Book 25·Jan 2005

Preliminary Material --Introduction /Joseph Drew --Federalism in Europe: History and Future Options /Maiken Umbach --From Dialectics to Political Theology: Rethinking Complexity in Federalism /Isabel David --The Democratic Principle as an Organisational Basis of the European Union /Xenophon Contiades --The European Union's Institutional System as the Basis for a New Form of Democracy /Fausto Capelli --Incorporating the Principle of Co-Equal Branches into the European Constitution: Lessons to be Learned from the United States /Mark K. Gyandoh --Institutional Redress of the Democratic Deficit: Redefinition with a Democracy-Efficiency Continuum /Joelle Anne Schmitz --Constituent Power and Polity Legitimacy in the European Context: A Theoretical Sketch /Zoran Oklopčić --Circumventing the State? The Demands of Stateless Nations, National Minorities, and the European Constitution /David Adam Landau and Lisa Vanhala --The Catholic Church and Poland's Accession to the European Union /Mirella Eberts --Inclusive Education as a Human Right and Slovakia's Accession to the European Union /Julia M. White --The US Must Merge with the EU /Tom Hudgens --Conclusion: Europe on the Road to Redefinition /Joseph Drew --Notes on Contributors.