Suchergebnisse

Los Territorios Específicos condicionados socioambiental y/o físicoculturalmente son sistematizados en base a sus cualidades éticas y estéticas en su sentido filosófico y formal respectivamente. Los mismos surgen como entidades orgánicamente integradas a nivel de las prácticas culturales en función de una performatividad autopoiética con gradientes y resonancias ampliamente debatidas académicamente y/o, a través de producciones específicas de las artes visuales contemporáneas. La Cartografía Estética propuesta se conforma de un corpus de obras plásticas y teóricas que, en la trayectoria expositiva abordada para este estudio, conforman una constelación de ejes temáticos y procedimentales en vinculación a los modos de producción en artes visuales. Estos nódulos o modos de hacer en artes visuales, se integran en una fascinante e interesante red epistemológica que, a la luz de las obras de arte seleccionadas son transparentadas no sólo en su complejidad epistémica sino que también son confrontados a interesantes gestos y guiños visuales a modo de cita y figuras conceptuales que en sentido moebiano remisionan formas de inscripción de obra y de la legibilidad de la misma conformando un alfabeto visual contemporáneo indispensable a la hora de pensar y entender la producción artística del último siglo en general y de las artes visuales latinoamericanas y chilenas en particular, todas ellas conforman una panorámica global en lo que hoy se conoce y divulga como arte actual. La unidad espacial abordada como Territorios Específicos se constituyen críticamente por conformar zonas y áreas marginales, espacios residuales y limítrofes, a la vez que contenedores y contenido de resistencia asistémica facilitado por un desinterés administrativo consecuente a su calidad de margen residual naturalizado y sus contenidos subyacentes. Metodológicamente, esta investigación ha sido cuidadosamente sistematizada a partir de herramientas de análisis y medición provenientes de las ciencias sociales y otras más afín a las de la ingeniería como arquitectura y urbanismo y de otras ciencias fronterizas de las biofísicas como la arqueología, etnografía y antropología, adaptadas todas a un interesantísimo protocolo instrumental replicable para las artes visuales. Este compendio procedimental comprende acciones de arte de sitio específico realizadas en una franja costera de 30 kilómetros que abarca desde la ciudad de Valdivia hasta 'La Reserva de Curiñanco' en la recientemente inaugurada XIV Región de Los Ríos en Chile. Estas acciones son confrontadas y tensionadas tanto a nivel de la crítica especializada como de sus afluentes epistemológicos colindantes con las ciencias humanas, donde, este corpus de obra contemporáneas, curatorías, proyectos de sitio y debates especializados, aportan considerablemente a la construcción de futuros posibles no solo de las artes visuales en particular y de las ciencias humanas en general, sino que además conllevan un debate ineludible para el desafío implicado en el debate territorio/globalización ; Systematic study in Specific territories físicoculturales entities characterized by ethical and aesthetic qualities in its philosophical sense and formal sense respectively. These entities are organically integrated level cultural practices based on an autopoietic performativity with grades that are widely debated academically and/or through specific productions of contemporary visual arts. Mapping aesthetic proposal conforms to a body of art works and theoretical, in the exhibition history addressed by this study, form a constellation theme and procedural attachment to the modes of production in the visual arts. These nodules or modes are integrated to a network epistemological fascinating, in light of the selected art works are always so critical transparentized based, the latter, is also critical the state of the global and systemic, are notable changes or adjustments, so appropriate to the complexity and/or program unit that maneuver both ethical and aesthetic and social needs of its realization. The spatial unit addressed as specific territories constitute denoted by physical and political margins forming residual spaces adjacent, while containers underlying, marks and signs of resistance asystemic administrative facilitated by a lack of consistent quality to its residual margin as invisible 'blind spots' often not even counted, like a colony of homeless 'San Eugenio' in Santiago de Chile and intangible artifacts which were exposed in the work 'Vagrancy Architecture' 2005 in the Museum Contemporany Art MAC UACH in Valdivia, Chile, for the same author. Marginal places and locations that make an interesting 'live tank', a 'living archive' of book and recreate necessary for reflection and unconcealed through, among others, the same corpus of this curatorship, and their counterpoints of works and authors that in the same study notes. Regarding his research methodology presented here has been incipiently systematized during the years 2011-2012 comprising specific art actions in a 14-kilometer coastline that stretches from the place called 'Punta Brava' to 'The Book of Curiñanco' on XIV Rivers Region, Chile. These actions are experiencing considerable confluence of contemporary artistic production both from critics and its tributaries bordering epistemological humanities also an interesting corpus of contemporary works, curatorial and site projects that contribute significantly to the construction of possible futures, from the visual arts in particular and to the economic and human sciences in general, lead to the inescapable debate challenge involved in the discussion localization studies/globalization teory

At DiGRA 2013 (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA), the Indie Game Studies panel and dedicated issue of the journal Loading…, curated by Prof Bart Simon, brought the emerging forms of independent game development to the attention of game scholars (Parker 2014). Five years later, the indie scene has become richer and varied, and has been adapting to mutating contexts of production and distribution. Festivals, incubators for start-ups and small companies, workshops and mentoring schemes, have been proliferating in the USA, Canada, Australia, Northern Europe, and the United Kingdom. Numerous independent companies have been founded in the geographical areas where the video game industry was already solid, and a significant presence is establishing in parts of the world that have been traditionally distant from the main hubs of video game development. While the differences (economic, managerial, ideological) with the mainstream productions have always been contested, the recent proliferation of independent companies has further confused the boundaries that appeared to separate the independent territories from the 'official' video game industry. In 2013 the trade association TIGA estimated that in the United Kingdom '83% of all studios that started up in 2011 and 2012 were independent (as opposed to publisher owned)' (TIGA 2013). It has been estimated that, in 2014, 95% of video game companies in the United Kingdom were micro or small businesses, according to NESTA (2014) and the British government (GOV.uk 2014). In Australia, independent companies now form the 'backbone' of game development (Apperley and Golding 2015, 61; Banks and Cunningham 2016). In 2013, a survey involving 2,500 North American game developers revealed that 53% of them identified as 'indie' (GDC 2013), and a subsequent survey by IGDA revealed that 48% of US game developers self-identified as independent (IGDA 2014). Independence is no longer a marginal or alternative mode of production, if it ever was, but the most common type of organization within the video game industry. It appears that almost every game developer is now partially or temporarily 'indie' within their career, and the trend is expected to grow, consistently with the recent developments of the cinema, music, and fashion industries (Hesmondhalgh 2013, McRobbie 2016). The workshop will explore the current state, meanings, and values associated with independence in video game culture, through a series of contributions and findings that analyse the domain from different perspectives, disciplines and geographical specificities. What is at stake, in 2018, when making claims of autonomy, self-management, and creative control? Are indie games helping improve the diversity deficit in game makers and audiences? Is there still room for independence, in a production context where short-term contracts, individualism, and financial risks are considered necessary to be involved in game development? The workshop picks up where the 2013 DiGRA panel left off, bringing together the most current research and theorizing on the topic of "indie game studies." Speakers, including some of from the original panel in Atlanta, will present and compare research in a series of short (approx. 15 minutes) presentations. The presentation will culminate in a discussion, to which participants will be invited to contribute, identifying patterns, controversies and gaps, with a view toward continuing towards further collaboration, research, publication and dissemination. Speakers' contributions: Indie Game Studies – 5 years later Paolo Ruffino (Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Lincoln, UK) Ruffino will introduce the workshop. Drawing on Felan Parker's proposal of 'indie game studies', the workshop gathers some of the international scholars who are currently doing research on independent game development (Parker 2014). This presentation looks at the various approaches to the study of independence. It also questions the reasons for doing research on this topic in this particular historical moment, while developers are starting to organise in local/global unions and networks of mutual assistance. It also draws on regionally specific studies regarding the meaning and values of independence, with a view on mapping the contemporary topics and questions of academic research in the field. Game Production Studies: Theory, Method and Practice Casey O'Donnell (Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University, USA) Dr. O'Donnell's addition to this workshop is rooted in a deep interest and care for game production studies, beginning with his early dissertation work with AAA game developers and subsequently working in a variety of fields doing research on game production in the educational, crowdsourcing and "indie" communities. O'Donnell's focus will be on the theories, methods and practices of performing indie game production studies. Game Production Studies explore the wide array of processes, practices, texts, technologies and aspects that take place in and surrounding the game production process. This process is often referred to generally as "game development," which while rooted in the practice of making games actually constitutes a wide variety of tasks, disciplinary perspectives, processes, people and institutions. Indiepocalypse Nadav Lipkin (Assistant Professor of Media, Communication and Technology at La Roche College, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) In his 2013 article for Loading…, Lipkin went about defining independent games. A fear at the heart of that discussion was that larger corporations would co-opt the indie movement by producing games that look indie without being independent from dominant production practices. Since then, subsequent research suggests a different concern is perhaps more worthy of examination. For this workshop, Lipkin will discuss the Indiepocalypse and focus on how the biggest threat to independents is not the mainstream but each other. Overproduction, a glamorization of insecure and unpaid labor, and mainstream distribution partners (especially Steam) who have contradictory financial interests need to be better understood. By examining these conditions, Lipkin intends to connect the games industry more closely to examinations of other creative industries plagued by similarly poor labor and economic conditions. Some notes on the indiefication of game development Olli Sotamaa (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Game Lab, School of Information Sciences at University of Tampere, Finland) This presentation will draw on my study of the Finnish game development scene that has been going on for almost a decade now. While Finland arguably is a small node in the global circuits of game production, well known hit games like Rovio's Angry Birds and Supercell's Clash of Clans have attracted attention worldwide. Following Garda & Grabarczyk (2016), I consider it important to highlight how the notions of independent games are always connected to given time and place. Accordingly, I examine how independence and 'indie' get a particular meaning in a North-European game development scene defined by small domestic market and early focus on mobile games. Drawing from diverse examples ranging from Housemarque, an independent studio founded in 1995 and a nominee for the Best Indie Studio in Develop Awards 2018, to Arvi Teikari, the designer of IGF 2018 winner Baba is You, this presentation explores the different understandings of indie in an environment that has never hosted a strong AAA industry. As at least some of the game development practices look increasingly similar, it is clear that we need to take a closer look at the production networks (Tyni 2017) and cultural intermediaries (Parker, Whitson & Simon 2018) and explore how they differ between individual games and companies. The other side of the spectrum – how indies saved VR Paweł Grabarczyk (Post-Doc at ITU Copenhagen, Denmark) As has been pointed out (Juul 2015, Garda & Grabarczyk 2016) pixel art and low (or at least relatively humble) production values have become the de facto aesthetic standard for contemporary independent games. Indie games can typically be run on modest computers as they do not require expensive graphics cards or fast processors. The result of this common association is that independent games with relatively high production values are sometimes dubbed as "AAA indie" (Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice can be a good example of this). Contrary to this VR technologies are typically associated with expensive, high end machines because they require both: the purchase of a relatively powerful computer and the purchase of the headset itself. On the face of it, VR games and indie aesthetics could not be further apart. It is thus very surprising that this expensive technology attracted a substantial number of independent developers (for example, there are currently 1864 games tagged as "independent" "VR" games on the Steam platform). More importantly, many of the most successful VR games belong to the indie category (Job Simulator, SuperHot VR, Beat Saber). I believe that this phenomenon demands further study, because it escapes some of the existing classifications and conceptualizations of independent games market (the move from retro-aesthetics being the most obvious reason for this). I argue that there are three reasons why independent developers were attracted to VR platforms. The first reason is the move from pixel art to low poly art which has been visible in many recent games (and which made the transition from "flat" games to VR games possible). The second reason is the spirit of innovation which permeates both communities (indie developers and VR developers). The third, most intriguing factor is that VR games created an economic niche which resulted from the lack of so called "AAA" games being developed specifically for VR. Project:INDIE Dr Celia Pearce (Associate Professor of Game Design at Northeastern University, USA) Over the past decade, indie games have grown at such a rapid rate that by 2014 roughly half of game developers identified as indie. This explosion is the outcome of a bottom-up, complex, emergent process representing the convergence of a variety of visible and invisible factors, including: emerging technologies, new publication and funding models, game academia, festivals and exhibitions, accessible creation tools, peer-learning and creative communities (e.g. game jams, co-working spaces), as well changes in government and popular perception of games. Project:INDIE is an initiative and consortium formed to develop an overview of the indie ecosystem, mapping the complex interrelationships and influences between its constituent parts. We will do this by aggregating existing research on indie games, identifying gaps and setting research agendas, and conducting comparative analysis on datasets from key players to understand the synergies between various contributing factors to the growth and commercial success of indie and artgames. Independent game industry in Melbourne, Australia Dr Brendan Keogh (Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia) Like other countries beyond North America and Japan, Australia has an emerging, grassroots videogame industry consisting primarily of small teams of independent studios creating original IP in precarious conditions. In Australia, this independent game industry has centred on Melbourne, Victoria, where state funding and the support of institutions such as the State Library of Victoria and the Australian Centre of the Moving Image have encouraged the growth of a robust and diverse ecology of videogame makers. Crucially, within this ecology are two interlocking but distinct independent scenes with different practices and approaches. This talk will present preliminary findings from interview research conducted with 40 videogame makers and cultural institutions in Melbourne to highlight the specific tensions, experiences, skills, and identities across these two Melbourne indie game scenes to draw attention to the need to account for a variety of scales of formal and informal creative labour practices within local videogame development fields. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Paweł Grabarczyk is a post-doc researcher at IT University of Copenhagen and adjunct professor at University of Lodz. His research focuses mostly on the boundaries between philosophy and game studies: specifically philosophy of language (ontology of games and conceptual analysis) and philosophy of mind (forms of representation in games and virtual reality). He is also interested in the study of modern and historical trends in games (indie games, shareware games) and demoscene. He is the president of Centre for Philosophical Research and an editor-in-chief of Replay: The Polish Journal of Game Studies. Brendan Keogh is an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Fellow currently conducting research into Australian videogame makers and skills transfer. He is the author of A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames and Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops The Line. Nadav Lipkin is an Assistant Professor of Media, Communication and Technology at La Roche College in Pittsburgh. His dissertation, "Agents at work: Decision making capacity and creative labor in network society," explores agency for creative professionals through a cross-industry analysis and a case study of the independent game development community in New York City. His research focuses on independent media production both in and beyond the games industry. Currently, he is examining the responses of YouTube content producers to changes in the platform's content policies. Casey O'Donnell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. His research examines the creative collaborative work of videogame design and development. This research examines the cultural and collaborative dynamics that occur in both professional "AAA" organizations and formal and informal "independent" game development communities. His first book, "Developer's Dilemma" is published by MIT Press. Casey is an active game developer, releasing "Osy," in 2011, "Against the Gradient," in 2012, "GLITcH" in 2013 and "Kerem B'Yavneh," in 2016. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). Celia Pearce is an award-winning game designer, researcher, writer and curator. She currently holds a position as Associate Professor of Game Design at Northeastern University. She is the author or co-author of numerous of books and papers, including Communities of Play (MIT Press), Ethnography and Virtual Worlds (Princeton) and IndieCade@10: A Decade of Innovation (CMU ETC Press-In Progress), which chronicles the history of IndieCade, the festival she co-founded. Her recent game credits include Fracture, co-designed for the Blinks Platform, and eBee, which won the 2016 award for Innovation in Tabletop Game Design at Boston Festival of Indie Games. Paolo Ruffino is Lecturer in Media Studies at University of Lincoln, UK, and artist with the collective IOCOSE. Ruffino is the author of Future Gaming: Creative Interventions in Video Game Culture (Goldsmiths and MIT Press), and editor and co-author of numerous publications on games cultures, gamification, and game art. He has been researching in the areas of digital culture, media and cultural studies, media art, and semiotics. Ruffino is President of DiGRA Italia and board member of British DiGRA. Olli Sotamaa is an Associate Professor of game cultures studies at the University of Tampere. His publications cover co-production, user-generated content, game industry analysis & game studies methods. Sotamaa is the co-director of University of Tampere Game Research Lab and a team leader at the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (2018-2025). His current research interests include game production studies, creative labour and game policy. BIBLIOGRAPHY Apperley, T. and Golding, D. (2015) "Australia" in In Video Games Around the World (M.J.P. Wolf, dir.), Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, pp. 57–70. Arsenault, D., and Guay, L.-M. (2015). "Canada". In Video Games Around the World (M.J.P. Wolf, dir.), Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, p. 105-118. Garda, M.B. & Grabarczyk, P. (2016). Is Every Indie Game Independent? Towards the Concept of Independent Game. Game Studies, vol. 16, Issue 1. GDC (2013) "GDC State of the Industry research exposes major trends ahead of March show". GDConf.com. February 28. Available at http://www.gdconf.com /news/gdc_state_of_the_industry_rese/ GOV.uk (2014). "Video games tax relief passes final hurdle". GOV.uk, 27th March. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/video-games-tax-relief-passes-final-hurdle Gregg, M. (2011) Work's Intimacy. Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA: Polity Press Hesmondhalgh, David. 2013. The Cultural Industries. 3rd Edition. London: Sage. Kultima, A; Alha, K. & Nummenmaa, T. (2016). Building Finnish Game Jam Community through Positive Social Facilitation. Proceedings of the 20th International Academic Mindtrek Conference, pp. 433-440. New York: ACM. Juul, J. (2014). "High-tech Low-tech Authenticity: The Creation of Independent Style at the Independent Games Festival". In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Fort Lauderdale. Lessard, J. (2012). "Glutomax: Québecois Proto-Indie Game Development". Loading. Vol. 7, no 11, December 31st. Available at http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/127. Lipkin, N. (2012). "Examining Indie's Independence: The Meaning of "Indie" Games, the Politics of Production, and Mainstream Cooptation". Loading. Vol. 7, no 11, December 31st. Available at http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/122. NESTA (2014) "A Map of the UK Games Industry", Nesta.org, 25th September. Available at https://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/map-uk-games-industry McRobbie, A. 2016. Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge: Polity Press. Parker, F. (2014) "Indie Game Studies Year Eleven". In Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies, Vol. 7, August 2014. Available at http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/indie-game-studies-year-eleven/ Parker, F; Whitson, J.R. & Simon, B. (2018). Megabooth: The cultural intermediation of indie games. New Media & Society, 20(5), 1953-1972. Ruffino, P. (2012). "Narratives of Independent Production in Video Game Culture". Loading. Vol. 7, no 11, December 31st. Available at http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/120. Swalwell, M., and Davidson, M. (2015). "Game History and the Case of 'Malzak': Theorizing the Manufacture of 'local Product'in 1980s New Zealand". Locating Emerging Media (Ben Aslinger et Germaine R. Halegoua, dirs.), London: Routledge. Swalwell, M. (2012). "The Early Micro User: Games writing, hardware hacking, and the will to mod". In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2012 Conference: Local and Global—Games in Culture and Society , June, Tampere Swalwell, M. (2008). "1980s Home coding: The art of amateur programming". Aotearoa Digital Arts New Media Reader (Stella Brennan and Su Ballard, dirs.), p. 192-201. Tyni, H. (2017). Double Duty: Crowdfunding and the Evolving Game Production Network. Games and Culture, Online First. UKIE (2017) "The UK Video Games Sector: a Blueprint for Growth". The UK Interactive Entertainment Association. Available at http://ukie.org.uk/blueprint

Since 2000 there has been a significant development in the number of applications based on XML and Data Warehouses. As these types of applications need to interact with different technologies and other applications, interoperability is an important factor. In parallel, in the same period there has been an evolution of the economic data needed by companies and financial institutions, increasing the number of entities that need more information, but also requiring this information to be reliable and on time. That economic or financial information is reliable does not refer to encoding or transmission errors, since there were already enough reliable procedures for this in 2000, but that these reports have to be semantically correct. It is in this decade that the need for economists and accountants to obtain their reports with semantic content has been observed. For this reason some specifications for the transmission of economic information have arisen, such as the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) and the Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX). The reports of both specifications have semantic content and are dedicated to sending and processing financial and / or statistical information. However, both specifications were created by expert economists or statisticians, and their only purpose was to solve their problems without formalizing their definitions and conceptual rules, because there is a Conceptual Model and the Logical Model created is very close to the Physical Model, that is to say, to its implementation. The aim of this thesis is to formalize the specification of economic financial reports using the XBRL specification, analysing and auditing that specification. In addition, the design of these reports is studied in depth by making use of the methodology of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA), with the ultimate goal of analysing its interoperability. Finally, some proofs of concept are shown, with different validations that are the proposal of the thesis. The thesis begins by analysing the necessity of this specification (XBRL), its historical origin, and the general state of the art that has led to the use of it as a de facto standard. In addition, this research work studies its evolution and utilization, both historically, as it is today, and its expected future. Once the state of the art of economic financial semantic reports has been analysed, the next step is to analyse the XBRL specification. After giving an overview of the XBRL language or specification, the thesis begins to detail it and finally shows the set of meta-metadata used in XBRL, using UML. This thesis proposes designing both the metadata of the reports and the reports themselves. This research work also proposes to study the different implementations of these reports and their design in totality. MDA provides a good consolidated framework for automatic code generation in the life cycle of software development, in addition to solving the problems of heterogeneity and interoperability between systems with different platforms. One of the main challenges of this research is the formalization of the specification in the conceptual model. Different types of design are also discussed, including those already making intensive use of dimensions (European design) and making less use of dimensions (mainly US and Canadian design). This work is mainly based on the reports of the European Supervision - Regulation, thus making intensive use of dimensions. This is due to the fact that the author of this thesis belongs to various groups that deal with harmonised European supervision reports and is a civil servant of the Bank of Spain, and this institution is part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), and this in turn through the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European National Central Banks (NCBs) participates in the Eurosystem (monetary Authority in the Eurozone (Eurosystems)). Therefore the conceptual model proposed in this research is the Multidimensional Data Model (MDM). The proposal is based on reports defined for the European Supervision/Regulation. These reports are the data requested of financial institutions or supervised companies, being the Universe of the Discourse (UD), also called the Computation Independent Model (CIM), using the methodology of the MDA. Once the definitions are fulfilled the next step is analysing the processes of validation of this proposal, showing algorithms for the MDM and the process of generating assertions, or formulas in the XBRL Data Model (XBRLDM) data. In addition, its implementation is displayed in the logical and physical models. The entire proposal is supported by different Proofs of Concept (POCs) submitted in specialized forums of the European financial and economic supervision. These tests are based on three European taxonomies: Financial Report 2008 (FINREP), 2012 and Solvency II (Eurofiling 2015). FINREP taxonomy is sponsored by the European Banking Authority (EBA). Solvency II codifies and harmonizes the regulation of insurance in the European Union (EU) and is sponsored by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). In these POCs all the proposals of this thesis are shown and analysed. In addition, tables show the different tests that show the validation of this proposal at the various levels of the MDA methodology. In addition, the interoperability of economic financial reports, and their need for mapping XBRL, spreadsheets, Access, Database Management System (DBMS), XML and others are analysed. Finally, research work that has to be done in the immediate future as a result of this thesis is proposed. ; Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Informática ; Presidente: Yago Sáez Achaerandio.- Secretario: José María Cavero Barca.- Vocal: Carsten Felden

The ultimate goal and hope for engines of the near future is the development of wide range fuel-flexibility within internal combustion engines. This research dissertation presents three innovations that have pushed the boundary of science and technology to enable this vision on the mini scale. First, the design and construction of a new small-scale, fuel flexible, engine dynamometer that allowed for precise measurement and control of mini engines operating on non standard fuels. Second, the fuel-flexible characterization of the O.S. Graupner Wankel engine and the successful production of output mechanical power between 10-500 W from a range of petroleum-based and bio fuels: gasoline, diesel, biodiesel, bioethanol and military-grade JP8 (among others). Lastly, a low-cost, multi-fuel switching system was designed and tested that controllably delivered a range of fuels to the engine and allowed for the first continual fuel-flexible operation using an array of fuels. In addition to these scientific contributions, it will be shown how the small-scale engine dynamometer and its peripherals were designed, constructed and tested such that future researchers can make advancements toward the ultimate goal enabling wide-range fuel flexibility on the small scale.This work determined a number of the key parameters for small-scale fuel flexible engine operation (4.97 cc). Previous work only showed that fuel flexibility was possible in larger scale rotary engines and turbines--where operating conditions differ greatly from their smaller-scale counterparts. The present work extended the understanding of what engine parameters are critical for enabling fuel-flexible engine operation on this small scale and helped discover the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of mini fuel flexible rotary engines which prior work had not described.The design and construction of a new small-scale engine dynamometer was essential as no commercially available dynamometers on this scale existed and the legacy systems failed to capture all necessary engine data; especially those needed to characterize fuel flexibility. This dynamometer consisted of an engine mount and loading system, therequired sensors for measurement, the actuators to dynamically and repeatedly control engine and the integration of all these elements into a usable data acquisition system. The characterization consisted mainly of the maximum power outputs of the engine while running on specific fuels, the engine operating conditions during max power output, the stoichiometry ranges of each fuel in the context of the O.S. Graupner Wankel engine and output efficiencies. Other preliminary characterizations on emissions, combustion pressure and other typical engine tests were developed but not fully characterized but will be introduced.The design and construction of a multi-fuel switching system was also integral to extending and characterizing fuel flexibility on this small scale. Early experiments only tested fuels independently and switched between them by hand. However, future systems would need to be able to change fuels on-demand and sequentially in real time. Therefore, a system that could accommodate the storage of multiple fuels and then deliver them reliably to the engine at the click of an on-screen fuel selector button was built, better syncing the fuel data with the engine performance data.The resulting fuel-flexible engine characterization system was then tested amongst a variety of liquid hydrocarbon based fuels in order to create a fuel-flexible engine mapping for a Wankel engine of 4.97 cc displacement. During multi-fuel combustion, the following parameters were measured in an effort to fully characterize this engine: engine torque, mass flow rate of ambient air intake, stoichiometry, ambient temperature and humidity, ambient pressure, engine speed, mass fuel flow rate, engine housing temperature, engine exhaust temperature and loading brake temperature and the fuel selection. This data collection was possible through the design and integration of the LabVIEW data acquisition system architecture in concert four input / output devices: the NI-USB-6221, NI-USB-9162 and two ArduinoUNO microcontrollers. The design and integration will be fully described along with the new system potential and shortcomings.In addition to the data acquisition, the system was also designed to enable future real-time control using conventional low-cost model engine servos such that the system could be fully automated. In the current system, there are eight actuation devices that control the throttle position, the glow plug heat, the fuel to air ratio, the dynamometer brake and four electrovalves that control the delivery of each fuel. The mechanical design and construction of all these control mechanisms are also described along with their added potential to enhancing fuel flexibility and opportunities for future improvement.The fuel flexible dynamometer system, multi fuel switching system, data acquisition and system control enabled fuel flexible operation of a Wankel engine of 4.97 cc displacement. The maximum mechanical power produced from Gasoline, Glowfuel (methanol+nitromethane mix), JP8, Diesel and Biodiesel were 334 W, 508 W, 313 W, 239 W and 322 W respectively. Methanol did not require active glowplug power while the 87 octane, diesel and JP8 fuels did. Good throttle response for both Methanol and JP8 was observed however the 87 octane operation, there was little to no throttle response during combustion. This dissertation research clearly demonstrates that small-scale Wankel rotary engines are fuel flexible across at least 6 different fuels: methanol, gasoline, diesel, JP8, biodiesel and ethanol.This dissertation is broken down into six separate chapters: Chapter 1 Introduction that describes the motivations and background of this research, Chapter 2: Theory which gets the reader up to speed with the relevant engineering concepts, Chapter 3: Experimental Setup Design which describes how the fuel flexible characterization system was built, Chapter 4: Experimental Results which succinctly presents all data key data collected during this research, Chapter 5: Discussion and Analysis which are the conclusions drawn from the captured data and Chapter 6: Conclusions which briefly reiterates the key developments presented in this dissertation.It is the hopes of the author that this research serves as a stepping stone in future development efforts and allows science and technology to arrive at a point where wide range and robust fuel flexibility is possible.

Introduction People say, "don't you ever want to come off?" I don't know. The thought of me getting up without taking something is totally. to me that's normal . If I haven't taken anything then I'm not normal . And for me to even, I can't contemplate not taking something, you know. I'm not a lost cause. I know what my problem is. It's other people that want me to stop. I don't want to stop. I don't want to. Does that make sense to you? (Mya) This extract is taken from an interview that formed part of my doctoral research looking at people's experiences of injecting drug use and treatment services in London, UK. Here I consider one of the ways participants described their use of drugs through a concept of becoming "normal." I pay particular attention to Mya's account and explore the very sense-making that her question (above) demands. Mya uses the concept of normality not only to reflect how drugs have become part of her everyday routines, or part of feeling normal, but actually in materially becoming herself—in embodying a "normal body." As she puts it, "if I haven't taken anything then I am not normal." In this sense, Mya's problem is not the drugs, but the people who want her to stop taking them. This understanding is important for challenging recent policy shifts towards reducing opiate replacement/substitution services in the UK (HM Government; Home Office). Methods The study took place from January to September 2014, and included participant observation at a drug treatment service, interviews with service providers, and "creative" interviews with people who inject drugs. The project was granted ethical approval by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Ethics Committee and the NHS Regional Ethics Committee. All participants were given pseudonyms. The creative interview is a term coined by Jennifer Mason to describe an in-depth semi-structured interview which produces additional types of data beyond the spoken word. The method was employed to explore participants' feelings of embodiment as enacted in the drug-using "event." I used a body mapping (drawing) task in these interviews to aid the communication of hard-to-articulate visceral experiences and depict the many actors, human and nonhuman, involved. (For a fuller explanation of the "events" perspective and methods taken in this study, please see Dennis 2016.) Below, I draw both from Mya's narrative and her pictorial account. Becoming "Normal" with Diamorphine Mya is a 52-year-old woman who was recruited to the study through word of mouth. She attended a supervised injecting clinic where another participant informed her about the study. The purpose of this clinic is to prescribe injectable diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) for clients to administer under supervised conditions. This unique service is specifically targeted at people who have previously struggled with the more orthodox opiate substitution treatments, such as methadone and buprenorphine. Mya explained that she had a long history of using street heroin, but in the last ten years has been injecting legally and has also illegally sought diamorphine. Mya's drug use had become very hard to sustain financially, both in paying for private prescriptions and in the illegal drugs market, and therefore she wanted a prescription through the National Health Service. She was told that this was only possible through this clinic. However, the clinic's intention was always to reduce this consumption, which Mya did not want to accept. This is because, as she explained, without drugs she is "not normal." A rhetoric of "normality," as deployed in the drug field, has taken two dominant paths. The first is in Parker et al. 's "normalisation thesis," which documents a move during the 1990s when drug use, albeit "recreational drug use," became increasingly common. A concept of "normalisation" is used to explain this social shift in acceptability towards drug taking. The second lies in a oucauldian-influenced embodied idea of performing normality in line with dominant neoliberal discourses. For example, Nettleton et al .'s study with recovering heroin users employs a concept of "normalisation" to explore the ways in which people talk about regaining certain bodily practices to fit in with "the norm." Using the work of Michel Foucault, and his concept of governmentality more specifically, Nettleton et al . argue that "normalisation" is "a crucial aspect of neo-liberal societies, where individuals are encouraged through [decentralised] political projects to become normal: 'the judges of normality are everywhere' (Foucault, 1977)" (175). Although there are vast differences, both these accounts seem to share an understanding of normality as a socially or discursively produced set of practices. However, Mya's narrative of becoming normal seems to be doing something different. She highlights how she becomes normal with drugs in a way that suggests that without drugs she is not normal. This highlights the material work involved in achieving this "normal" state. It is clear that being normal is something we do (both theories above consider normal behaviour as performative) rather than it being pre-defined. But for Mya this is enacted in an ontological rather than learnt way as she connects with drugs. To know normality—"to me that's normal"—and to be normal—"if I haven't taken anything then I'm not normal"—are conflated. Karen Barad, in her theory of agential realism, would call this an intra-action rather than an inter-action, where what we know (epistemology) and what is (ontology) collide, or rather elide. It is in these entanglements of matter and meaning that Mya becomes normal. Mya's narrative highlights the human body as an assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari) in which drugs have become a part. In this sense, drugs can be seen as part of this embodied self rather than separate. Consequently, Mya's account is about more than how her body interacts with drugs, but rather how they become together. Drawing from Deleuze's ontology of becoming, this is the idea that life does not start with any given entities or organisms, but that these forms are brought into being through the forces of life, and as such they are in a constant state of flux, becoming something else. This can challenge ideas of "recovery" (e.g. Home Office) where people are expected to remove themselves from drugs in order to regain their "normal" self. If one's "normal" includes drugs this calls into question the very attempt to de-couple an entangled relationship that, as another participant put it, "has been a long time in the making " (my emphasis). Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that Mya explains with a heavy heart that she is feeling substantial pressure to reduce her prescription. She feels the clinic staff fail to understand how drugs are part of her and what constitutes her "normal." Thus, as she sees it, her "problem" is not the drugs themselves, but the people who want her to stop taking them. Mya's frustrations start to make more sense—to return to the question in the epigraph—when we think about the body as something we do , involved in a constant task of keeping oneself together . Keeping Oneself Together One does not hang together as a matter of course: keeping oneself together is something the embodied person needs to do . The person who fails to do so dies. (Mol and Law 43) Mol and Law argue that bodies are not something we have but something we do , and that bodies are actively held together through a series of practices. For instance, in their example of hypoglycaemia, a pin prick of blood needs to be taken for the condition to be known, and then counteracted by eating a sugary substance (49). Thinking about Mya's account of becoming normal in these terms, drugs, instead of being seen as "evil" objects of misuse, can, for Mya at least, be part of this vital (life) project of keeping one elf together. This thoroughly blurs the distinctions between "good" medicine (life sustaining/enhancing) and "bad" drugs of abuse (life destroying). Following a Deleuzian understanding of the human body as an assemblage, making the body "actualise" as one is a process of life: "'A' or 'a' (one) is always the index of a multiplicity: an event, a singularity, a life." (Deleuze 388). As such, making bodily boundaries becomes essential. For Mya, drugs are part of this individualisation process in quite overt ways. For example, in her body map (Figure 1) she drew a picture of herself inside a cloud, with voices shouting inwards, penetrating the barrier from outside. About these she said, they are "shouting at me," "telling me what to do," and "what's best for me." But she was at pains to point out that the depicted cloud is not about representing a pleasurable or disassociated feeling, but more to do with blocking out these intruding voices telling her how to live her life so that they "can't get to me": Mya: That makes it sound like the drug makes me feel like I'm in a cloud, it doesn't, cos I just feel normal , it just helps me to, to deal with things better, it helps me to get less stressful, does that make sense? Author: Normal? Mya: Yeah Author: So if you haven't had it, you feel more on edge? Mya: I'm a complete nervous wreck. I'll be jumping everywhere, you know, if someone opens the window of a bus and I'm jumping. Figure 1: Mya's Body Map For Mya, then, her drug use is not about pleasure, or pain for that matter, but about something altogether more vital: it is about keeping together in a stressful, invasive world, to "deal with things better." It seems that Mya's drawing—through which she was asked to depict her feelings when using drugs—is about trying to hold the permeable, leaky body together. For the injecting body, which regularly incorporates and excorporates drugs, is an active/metabolic body: The active body has semi-permeable boundaries [.] inside and outside are not so stable. Metabolism, after all, is about eating, drinking and breathing; about defecating, urinating and sweating. For a metabolic body incorporation and excorporation are essential. (Mol and Law 54) A similar argument is made by Vitellone, citing Keane: Heroin is not separate from but becomes central to the body, selfhood, and processes of individualization. Thus according to Keane "a drug is something external that becomes internalized, blurring the distinction between not only inside/outside but also self/other". (166; see also Keane) In Mya's drawing and account, drugs are intimately involved in the task of individuating—in making clear boundaries between her and the world. In this sense, her drawing of a cloud can be seen almost like an extra layer of skin. This also occurs in the accounts of two other participants. One female participant commented on how, without drugs, she does not feel herself, to the point that she said, "I don't want to be in my own skin." And a male participant also used similar language to note that without heroin (even though he is prescribed methadone, an opiate substitute) he can feel "disembodied": Everything is all "oh oh" [he makes sounds and body movements to show a fear of things getting too close] like that, everything is like right, like if you're trying to walk around the streets and it's just like you can't handle busy high streets and you know busy like tubes and . In these accounts, drugs are playing a key role in this boundary work, that is, in enacting the body as One. This resonates strongly with Donna Haraway's idea of individualisation as "a strategic defense problem" (212). This is the idea that the individual body is not something we are born with, but something we strive towards. Haraway argues that "bodies have become cyborgs," where "the cyborg is text, machine, body, and metaphor" (212). Mya takes great care in making sure that I have understoo this process of boundary-making, which is essential to the cyborg, and on several occasions checks back with me to confirm that she is making sense. She gives the impression that she has been explaining these feelings for years, but still does not feel fully understood. This is perhaps why she seems so thrilled when she feels I have finally got a handle on the dynamic: Mya: But the methadone makes me feel heavy, lethargic, with the diamorphine I can get on with being normal, more better, and not so sleepy, does that make sense? [.] It just helps me cope with everything. You know what I mean, everything . Even . Author: Like taking the edge off things? Mya: That's it, the edge off things, you've got it! I've never thought of that before, that's a good way of putting it. Author: No cos I was thinking about what you were saying about how you can feel anxious and stuff, and I can imagine it just . Mya: You're right, you've done it in a nut shell there. Cos people have asked me that before and I haven't been able to answer. That is a good answer. It takes the edge of things. Yeah. At the end of the interview, and long past this initial reference, Mya shows appreciation of this phrase once more, as an expression which she feels could help in her bid to be better understood: Author: Anyway, I'll end the interview there. Mya: Was that alright? Author: Yeah, perfect. Is there anything else that you think is important that I've missed out? Mya: No not at all. I think you've just helped me there by saying it takes the edge off things, I've been trying to put that into words for a long time, I didn't know how to say it . Although these experiences are of course linked to withdrawal symptoms as a particular arrangement of bodily connections, when I ask about this, it is evident that it is also about something more. For example, in trying to get at why Mya feels she needs diamorphine rather than methadone, she talks about it being "cleaner," "purer," "less groggy." And even though I prompt her on the potential enjoyment, she links "the buzz" to being able to get on with "normal things," saying "I can act more normal with the heroin": Mya: Definitely it's less groggy. Author: And does it give you a slight buzz also? Mya: Sometimes it does yeah. Like I can get on with my housework better and things like that, day to day things, I can act more normal with the heroin. With just the methadone, things just slip . With an interesting use of the term, Mya says that with methadone (which would be the more usual opiate prescribed in heroin treatment) "things just slip." Again, there is a sense of diamorphine holding her together, in a way that without it she would "slip." This perhaps highlights the slipperiness of connections that are only ever "partial" (Haraway 181). Rather than becoming too porous, with methadone she becomes too shut off or "groggy," and again her body becomes unable to do things. This is perhaps why she is so insistent that diamorphine stays put in her life: "I'm not going to lie, even if I don't get it, I'm still going to use the diamorphine." Or, in Haraway's words, she "would rather be a cyborg than a goddess"(181) —she would rather endure the political and potentially criminal consequences of requiring this "outside" substance than pretend to live apart from/above the material world. Conclusion When we consider bodies as something we do, rather than have, we see that rather than Mya's account of normality reflecting a social change (Parker et al .) or solely discursive embodiment (Nettleton et al .), it actually refers to how she becomes her "normal self" in more material ways. Mya's account thoroughly disrupts a separation of object/subject, as well as several other binaries that underpin contemporary ideas of psychoactive drug use and the body, including drug/medicine, inner/outer, self/other, and of course, normal/pathological. Instead, and in trying to do justice to Mya's q estion which opened the essay, her body is seen connecting with drugs in a way that holds her together (as One) in becoming "normal." Consequently, her fears over having these drugs stopped are very real concerns over a disruption to her corporeality, which demand to be taken seriously. This calls for urgent questions to be asked over current UK policy trends toward eliminating diamorphine prescribing services (see O'Mara) and reducing opiate substitution more generally. References Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Deleuze, Gilles. "Immanence: A Life." Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975–1995. Ed. David Lapoujade. New York: Semiotext(e), 2006. 384­–91. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia . London: Continuum, 2004. Dennis, Fay. "Encountering 'Triggers:' Drug-Body-World Entanglements of Injecting Drug Use." Contemporary Drug Problems (2016). . Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature . London: Free Association Books, 1991. HM Government. "Drug Strategy 2010: Reducing Demand, Restricting Supply, Building Recovery: Supporting People to Live a Drug Free Life." Home Office , 2010. 1 Jan. 2011 . Home Office. "Putting Full Recovery First." Home Office , 2012. 5 Feb. 2013 . Keane, Helen. What's Wrong with Addiction ? Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2002. Mason, Jennifer. "What Is Creative Interviewing?" 2010. 10 May 2013 . Mol, Annemarie, and John Law. "Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies. The Example of Hypoglycaemia." Body & Society 10.2 (2004): 43-62. Nettleton, Sarah, Joanne Neale, and Lucy Pickering. "'I Just Want to Be Normal': An Analysis of Discourses of Normality among Recovering Heroin Users." Health 17.2 (2013): 174–190. O'Mara, Erin. "The State We're In: Heroin Prescribing in the UK." Drink and Drug News (Dec. 2015). 20 Jan. 2016 . Parker, Howard, Judith Aldridge, and Fiona Measham. Illegal Leisure: The Normalization of Adolescent Recreational Drug Use . Hove: Routledge, 1998. Vitellone, Nicole. "The Rush: Needle Fixation or Technical Materialization?" Journal for Cultural Research 7.2 (2003): 165–177.

Though New Zealand author Janet Frame (1924-2004) lived at a time of growing dissatisfaction with purely Western (i.e. European) cultural models, her work has so far never been examined from the vantage point of its indebtedness to Eastern epistemologies, and to Buddhism in particular. Even though it is possible to establish links between an author and a given system of thought (Heidegger's for instance) without necessarily buttressing the comparison from a factual perspective, in this case, the author's (auto-)biography, her fiction and letters, as well as the circles of Buddhists or Buddhist-sympathizers in which she evolved at a given time, all testify to the fact that a direct encounter between Janet Frame and Buddhism did occur. It can thus be affirmed that, just like W.B. Yeats, C.G. Jung, Heidegger and many others before her, one of the most striking personalities of the 20th century was drawn eastward. The relevance of this study to Janet Frame scholarship resides not only in its politicized angle of approach but also, more importantly, in the fresh light it sheds on entire segments of the Framean corpus which have tended to remain obdurately mysterious; this includes passages centering on e.g. the existence of a non-dual world, a reality un-harnessed by the partial categories of empirical thinking, on a character's sudden embrace of a non-ego-like self, or on the jolting back of distracted individuals into an awareness of their physical reality in 'this' profane world. On the whole, and despite this apparent profusion of themes, my concern is to show that these obscure passages, as well as many other key moments in the narratives, all coalesce into a systematic deconstruction of empirical thinking and its point of anchorage in a discriminating kind of consciousness, both notions forming excellent points of entry into virtually all the texts produced by Frame. Through a careful mapping of the impact of discriminating habits of thought on the self's place of being in the world and perception thereof, this work clarifies, or rather reconstructs, the narratological architecture of the studied texts – especially the novels – quite apart from the somewhat restrictive view, held in some circles of literary criticism, that they are mazes of random turnabouts and dead-ends where narrotological playfulness is valorized for its own sake. To provide just one example of how a study of Janet Frame via Buddhist thought facilitates the navigation of the author's intricate novels, the idea in Buddhism that the artist is the bow that shoots the arrows, but then s/he is the target also, is a useful starting point for analyzing the seminal "Jan Godrey" (one of Frame's best known short stories) in which a terrified author-figure finally allows her creature of words, described as an alien inside, to take full control of the speaking position. A contrario, Thora Pattern's willingness in The Edge of the Alphabet to trap her creation within neat academic cages of words (as she calls them) spawns images of a hellish self-scape of containment which translate in an endless regression of framed frames since her attitude is paralleled by some of her own creatures of words and by the Christian God Himself – each at his or her level of being and of influence. But that is not all for, in a last turn of the screw, and pace the critics who diminish their roles in the narrative, Thora's characters rebel against their creator, and they succeed in jamming her creative incarcerating mechanisms so that, by the end of the novel, the author-figure is no longer able to exist without the not-self. This dialectics of un/framing, in which a discriminating consciousness battles against the invading otherness of the non-dual, unharnessed world in all its manifestations, is one which typically informs the Framean corpus although, of course, the architecture of enactments it gives birth to is as varied as it is unpredictable. The idea, which Frame shares with Buddhism or with Nietzsche (who, incidentally, owes an intellectual debt to Buddhism), that most of the human existence is characterized by the "will to power," i.e. by the drive to take full possession of one's chosen place of being, is rather unflattering for her fellow human beings. In another sense, the author's conception of our (in-)humanity as being made up of an accretion of egotistic habits that can be unlearned certainly explains why, in her oeuvre, a liberation from totalizing structures demands an encounter with the negative of place, of identity, of vision, of sound, of fullness, of shape, of well-worn mind-routes and, as we saw in the last chapter, with the negation of negation. Often, it takes no less than a rebellion of the supposedly harnessed reality to disorient a protagonist's dualistic bearings or to jam an artist's incarcerating mechanisms; and this, in part, accounts for the extreme physicality encoded in a fiction replete with moments of thumping or bashing – indeed with the promise of a cut finger. Still pondering the centrality of 'unframed' or 'ego-less' modes of being, each of the nine chapters that constitute this work aims at countering the oft-recurring claim that Frame's oeuvre is studded with traces of a 'beyond' which no character can ever approach because 'one cannot explore beyond'. By this definition, each of the questing selves that clutters the author's haunting universe is condemned to failure beforehand, as it were, while concomitantly the Framean text itself is deemed to be bleak, defeatist, even nihilistic. Therefore, it is of the utmost significance that a Buddhist navigation of Frame's texts should lead one to the conclusion that this unharnessed world which human beings are often unable to apprehend and embrace has always been right under their nose so that, between 'this' world of limited perceptions and 'that' world of the beyond, the boundary is as thick or as thin as the walls of a self-made conceptual prison. Indeed, whenever the aspect of the intellect that filters perceptions into mutually excluding categories fails to function, or is willingly jettisoned by a protagonist, s/he finds a place of subjective arrival in, and sees, this supposedly unknowable 'beyond'. Thus, possibly against the grain of mainstream criticism, this study argues that Janet Frame constantly seeks ways through which the infinite and the Other can be approached, though not corrupted, by the perceiving self, and that she found in the Buddhist epistemology a pathway towards grasping such alterity. ; Bien que l'écrivain Néo-Zélandais Janet Frame (1924-2004) ait vécu à une époque d'insatisfaction grandissante à l'encontre des modèles culturels purement occidentaux (c.-à-d. européens), son œuvre n'a jusqu'à ce jour jamais été examinée du point de vue de sa proximité aux épistémologies orientales, et au bouddhisme en particulier. Alors qu'il est possible d'argumenter une comparaison entre un auteur et un système de pensée (celle d'Heidegger par exemple) sans que les liens ne soient avérés d'un point de vue factuel, dans le cas qui nous intéresse, l'(auto)biographie de l'auteur, sa fiction et ses lettres, ainsi que les cercles de bouddhistes ou de sympathisants bouddhistes dans lesquels elle évolua à une certaine époque, attestent du fait qu'un contact direct entre Janet Frame et le bouddhisme eut lieu. Il est par conséquent certain que, tout comme W.B. Yeats, C.G. Jung, Heidegger, et d'autres encore, l'une des personnalités les plus marquantes du 20ième siècle a été attirée par l'Orient. La pertinence de ce travail pour les études framéennes réside donc dans son angle d'approche politisé mais plus encore dans l'éclairage novateur qu'il porte sur ces segments entiers de l'œuvre de Janet Frame qui tendent à demeurer résolument mystérieux, entre autres des passages se focalisant sur l'existence d'un monde « non-dual », « non-harnaché » par les catégories partiales de la pensée empirique, ou encore sur l'adoption soudaine par un protagoniste d'un « soi » au-delà de l'égo, sur la re-sensibilisation fracassante des consciences distraites à leur réalité physique dans ce monde profane. De manière générale, et ce malgré l'apparente profusion de thématiques, mon souci est de montrer que ces passages obscurs, de même que nombre d'autres moments clés des narrations, tous convergent en une déconstruction systématique de la pensée empirique et de son siège en la conscience discriminante, les deux notions formant d'excellents points d'entrée vers virtuellement tous les textes produits par Frame. Au travers d'une cartographie consciencieuse de l'impact des habitudes de pensée discriminatoire sur la place de l'être dans le monde et sur sa perception de celui-ci, ce travail clarifie, ou plutôt reconstruit, l'architecture narrative des textes étudiés, particulièrement les romans, à l'écart de l'avis soutenu dans certains cercles littéraires qu'ils sont dédales aléatoires d'impasses et de tournants où le jeu narratologique est valorisé en soi. Pour donner un exemple de la manière dont une étude de Janet Frame par la pensée bouddhiste facilite la navigation des romans complexes de l'auteur, l'idée dans le bouddhisme que l'artiste est un arc pour les flèches de la création et en est la cible également est un point de départ utile pour l'analyse de la séminale « Jan Godfrey » (une des nouvelles les plus connues de Frame) dans laquelle un personnage-auteur apeuré autorise finalement sa créature de mots à prendre le contrôle absolu de la position de parole. A contrario, la propension de Thora Pattern dans The Edge of the Alphabet à capturer sa création dans des cages de mots académiques bien nettes (comme elle les appelle) évoque, image sur image, un infernal paysage intérieur de confinement qui se traduit en une régression infinie de cadres encadrés, puisque l'attitude de Thora suit une trajectoire semblable à celle de certaines de ses créatures de mots et du Dieu chrétien lui-même, chacun dans sa propre sphère d'être et d'influence. Ceci n'est pas tout car, au dernier moment, et ce malgré la tendance des critiques à diminuer leurs rôle dans la narration, les personnages de Thora se rebellent contre leur créateur, et ils réussissent à enrayer ses mécanismes d'incarcération créative si bien que, à la fin du roman, elle cesse de pouvoir exister à distance du « non-soi ». La dialectique de dés-incarcération, en vertu de laquelle une conscience discriminante lutte contre les multiples manifestations de cet envahissant autre qu'est le monde non-dual, imprègne typiquement le corpus framéen quoique, bien entendu, l'architecture ainsi engendrée est aussi variée qu'imprévisible. L'idée de Frame, qu'elle partage avec le bouddhisme et avec Nietzsche (qui, soit dit en passant, a une dette intellectuelle envers le bouddhisme), selon laquelle l'existence humaine se caractérise par un désir de pouvoir, par une volonté d'assumer l'entière possession d'une place d'être soigneusement choisie, est peu flatteuse. D'un autre côté, la conception qu'a l'auteur que notre (in-)humanité est faite d'une accrétion d'habitudes égotiques qui peuvent être désapprises explique certainement pourquoi, dans son œuvre, une libération des structures totalisantes demande une rencontre avec le négatif du lieu d'être, de l'identité, de la vision, du son, de la plénitude, de la forme, de toutes les routes usées de la pensée et, enfin, de la négation de la négation. Souvent, donc, il ne faut pas moins qu'une rébellion de la réalité supposée enchaînée (par l'esprit empirique) pour confondre l'orientation dualiste d'un protagoniste ou pour enrayer les mécanismes d'incarcération d'un artiste, et ceci explique en partie la physicalité extrême qui est encodée dans une fiction repue de raclées et autres corrections, et même d'une promesse d'un doigt coupé. Toujours en considérant la centralité des modes d'êtres « déharnachés » au-delà de l'ego, chacun des neuf chapitres qui constituent ce travail tentera de contrer l'assertion bien répandue dans la critique que l'œuvre de Frame est saturée de signes d'un monde supérieur qu'aucun protagoniste ne peut jamais approcher car « on ne peut explorer au-delà ». Selon cette définition, les êtres en quête d'un meilleur et qui peuplent l'univers étrange de l'auteur sont condamnés, pour ainsi dire, par avance à l'échec pendant que, de manière concomitante, le texte framéen est lui targué de sombre, de défaitiste et même de nihiliste. Par conséquent, il est plus que significatif qu'une navigation bouddhiste des textes de Frame conduise à la conclusion que ce monde non harnaché par la pensée cartésienne que l'homme peut si difficilement appréhender est, en fait, juste sous son nez, si bien qu'entre ce monde-ci des perceptions limitées et le monde au-delà, la frontière est aussi fine, ou épaisse, que les murs d'une prison conceptuelle. En effet, dès que l'aspect de l'intellect qui filtre les perceptions en autant de catégories exclusives oublie de fonctionner, ou est sciemment rejeté par un protagoniste, il ou elle trouve enfin un authentique lieu d'être et il ou elle voit ce soi-disant inconnaissable au-delà. Donc, possiblement à contre courant de la critique dominante, cette étude argumente que Janet Frame cherche inlassablement comment l'infini et l'autre peuvent être appréhendés, mais non corrompus, et qu'elle a trouvé, au travers de l'épistémologie bouddhiste, un chemin vers cette altérité.

Includes bibliography (p. 439-461). ; Number of sources in the bibliography: 304 ; Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Cyprus, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture, 2016. ; The University of Cyprus Library holds the printed form of the thesis. ; Η έννοια της συλλογικής νοημοσύνης χαράσσει νέες κατευθύνσεις ως προς τον τρόπο προσέγγισης πολλών σύγχρονων θεμάτων πολιτικής, οικονομικής, κοινωνικής και ηθικής φύσης, αποδίδοντας μεγάλη έμφαση στις δυναμικές σχέσεις που αναπτύσσονται μεταξύ των συμβαλλόμενων μερών. Κατ' επέκταση, ο συλλογικός χώρος που προκύπτει ως αποτέλεσμα αυτής της 'ανοικτής' διαδικασίας, μπορεί να αποτελέσει το πεδίο όπου διάφορες αβεβαιότητες αποκαλύπτονται, αλλά και να λειτουργήσει ως το πεδίο όπου οι αντιθέσεις, συγκρούσεις και αντιπαραθέσεις συνιστούν τα κύρια στοιχεία που ορίζουν την αρχιτεκτονική δημιουργία. Εξετάζοντας οποιαδήποτε χωρική προβληματική, καλούμαστε να ανταπεξέλθουμε σε έναν τεράστιο αριθμό παραμέτρων που αναδεικνύουν την ανεπάρκεια των διαθέσιμων μεθόδων σχεδιασμού για την αντιμετώπιση πολύπλοκων αστικών προβλημάτων. Σε άλλους επιστημονικούς κλάδους, όπως αυτόν της πληροφορικής, η διαχείριση της πολυπλοκότητας φαίνεται να επιτυγχάνεται από τους ίδιους τους χρήστες, με την υιοθέτηση διαφόρων μοντέλων συλλογικών διαδικασιών, όπως είναι ο ανοικτός κώδικας (open source), η ομότιμη δυναμική (p2p), ο πληθοπορισμός (crowdsourcing), κ.λπ. Εν αντιθέσει, στον κλάδο του αστικού σχεδιασμού οι εκφάνσεις συλλογικών πρακτικών σχετίζονται με την έννοια του συμμετοχικού σχεδιασμού, ο οποίος συχνά περιορίζεται στην εμπλοκή διαφόρων ενδιαφερομένων στη διαδικασία σχεδιασμού και στην απόδοση ευθυνών σχεδιασμού προς αυτούς, για την παραγωγή χώρων που θα αφορούν τις ανάγκες των πραγματικών χρηστών. Παρότι ο σχεδιασμός συνήθως επικεντρώνεται στο τελικό προϊόν σχεδιασμού, στην πραγματικότητα τα στάδια της διαδικασίας σχεδιασμού, τα οποία ξεκινούν με τον προσδιορισμό ενός αστικού προβλήματος και με στόχο την ανάπτυξη ενός τελικού προϊόντος, συνήθως παραμένουν στην αφάνεια, παρόλο που αποτελούν ουσιώδες μέρος της αρχιτεκτονικής πρακτικής. Για τους λόγους αυτούς, η παρούσα μελέτη αποσκοπεί στη διερεύνηση της έννοιας της συλλογικής νοημοσύνης, εστιάζοντας στο σχεδιασμό ως μια διαδικασία η οποία εκτείνεται πέρα από τα όρια κάθε έργου και η οποία δύναται να συμβάλλει στη διάδοση της γνώσης. Το τελευταίο κατέστη δυνατό μέσα από την επιλογή της πλατφόρμας αρχιτεκτονικών διαγωνισμών Europan, ως περιπτωσιολογικής μελέτης. Για το σκοπό αυτό χρησιμοποιήθηκαν αναλυτικές μέθοδοι προσέγγισης συγκεκριμένων έργων από το αρχείο του Europan, σε συνδυασμό με ένα αριθμό συνεντεύξεων των εμπλεκόμενων μερών για τα επιλεγμένα έργα, καθώς επίσης πραγματοποιήθηκε διεξοδική μελέτη του 28-χρόνου αρχείου του Europan. Η διατριβή κατέδειξε ότι οι συλλογικές πρακτικές που διενεργούνται μεταξύ των παραγόντων ενός έργου (πόλεις, αρχιτέκτονες, εμπειρογνώμονες, φορείς ανάπτυξης) και οι οποίες διαμορφώνουν σταδιακά το σχεδιασμό ενός έργου, επωφελούνται και ενισχύονται από τις πλατφόρμες επικοινωνίας που προσφέρονται από το θεσμό του Europan (χώροι δημόσιας συζήτησης (forum, debates), εργαστήρια, εκθέσεις, κλπ.). Ως εκ τούτου, διαπιστώθηκε ότι ένα έργο αστικού σχεδιασμού μπορεί να αποκτήσει υβριδικά χαρακτηριστικά, επηρεαζόμενο τόσο από την ιδιαιτερότητα του χωρικού πλαισίου αναφοράς όσο και από τη δυναμική των δικτύων των παραγόντων τα οποία εκτείνονται σε όλες τις ευρωπαϊκές πόλεις που εμπλέκονται στο θεσμό. Κατά συνέπεια, διαπιστώθηκε ότι η πλατφόρμα του θεσμού Europan αποτελεί όντως ένα πρακτικό πολυεπίπεδο μέσο, μια κοινή πλατφόρμα επικοινωνίας των διαφόρων παραγόντων, ένα μέσο για την παραγωγή και διάδοση της γνώσης, ένα εν εξελίξει ερευνητικό πεδίο καθώς και ένα ενεργό μέσο στη διαμόρφωση πολιτικής. Η καινοτομία της εργασίας έγκειται στο γεγονός ότι ο συγγραφέας πρότεινε την ανάπτυξη μιας προσαρμοστικής μεθοδολογίας για τη χαρτογράφηση της πορείας εξέλιξης μιας αστικής κατάστασης, από το στάδιο προσδιορισμού της προβληματικής μέχρι και την υλοποίηση ενός έργου και η οποία αξιοποιεί πλήρως τη συσσωρευμένη γνώση που διαθέτει σήμερα ο θεσμός του Europan. Η επιστημονική αξία της εργασίας έγκειται στο ότι η γενίκευση της μεθοδολογίας αυτής θα μπορούσε να οδηγήσει στην εφαρμογή της πέρα από τα καθορισμένα όρια του θεσμού του Europan και να συμβάλει στην εμφάνιση ή την περαιτέρω ενίσχυση της συλλογικής νοημοσύνης. ; The concept of collective intelligence opens up new avenues in the potential approaches to many contemporary issues of a political, economic, social and moral nature, by laying great emphasis on the dynamic relations which are developed among the contributing parties. In turn, the collective space that emerges as the outcome of this 'open' process can function as the field where uncertainties are revealed as well as where the confrontation with differences, contrasts, conflicts and controversies that define architecture on the making, takes place. Coming across any problematic urban situation, we are faced with a vast number of parameters that highlight the inadequacy of our planning methods to respond to complex urban problems. In other disciplines, such as in Information Technology, the management of complexity appears likely to be resolved by the users themselves, by embracing several models of collective processes, such as open source, p2p, crowdsourcing, etc. That said, in urban design such manifestations of collective practices are usually related to the 'traditional' form of participatory design, that is often limited to engaging stakeholders in the design process and to attributing design responsibilities to them in order to produce environments for the actual users. Despite the perseverance of a design process being mainly focused on the end-product of the design, the process that starts from identifying the urban problem towards an end-product usually remains invisible but at the same time is a very challenging part of the architectural practice. On these grounds, this study explores the concept of collective intelligence by focusing on design as a process that stretches beyond the specific project and contributes to the spread of knowledge. The latter was made possible with the employment of Europan architectural competitions' platform as a case study. Analytical approach methods of selective Europan projects including interviews of key actors for the selected projects and the study of Europan's 28 year course archive were employed. The dissertation demonstrated that the collective practices between project actors (cities, architects, experts, developers) formulate gradually the design project, profiting from the platforms offered by the Europan institution (forums, workshops, debates). Therefore, it was found that the making of an urban design project can obtain hybrid characteristics, depending both on the specificity of the actual context and the dynamics of networks of actors that span all European cities involved. Consequently, it was found that the Europan platform is indeed a practical multi-level medium, a shared platform for the communication of diverse actors, a means of production and spread of knowledge, a domain of research in progress and an active argument in the formation of politics. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the author suggested the development of an adaptive methodology for mapping an urban situation's course of evolution into an implemented project that fully exploits Europan's accumulated knowledge. The significance attached to the latter is that the methodology's generalization could lead to its use over and above the Europan's context and contribute to the emergence or the enhancement of collective intelligence.

Temporary or permanent, local or international, voluntary or forced, legal or illegal, registered or unregistered migrations of individuals, whole communities or individual groups are an important factor in constructing and modifying (modern) societies. The extent of international migrations is truly immense. At the time of the preparation of this publication more than 200 million people have been involved in migrations in a single year according to the United Nations. Furthermore, three times more wish to migrate, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa towards some of the most economically developed areas of the world according to the estimates by the Gallup Institute (Esipova, 2011). Some authors, although aware that it is not a new phenomenon, talk about the era of migration (Castles, Miller, 2009) or the globalization of migration (Friedman, 2004). The global dimensions of migration are definitely influenced also by the increasingly visible features of modern societies like constantly changing conditions, instability, fluidity, uncertainty etc. (Beck, 2009; Bauman, 2002).The extent, direction, type of migrations and their consequences are affected by many social and natural factors in the areas of emigration and immigration. In addition, researchers from many scientific disciplines who study migrations have raised a wide range of research questions (Boyle, 2009, 96), use a variety of methodological approaches and look for different interpretations in various spatial, temporal and contextual frameworks. The migrations are a complex, multi-layered, variable, contextual process that takes place at several levels. Because of this, research on migrations has become an increasingly interdisciplinary field, since the topics and problems are so complex that they cannot be grasped solely and exclusively from the perspective of a single discipline or theory. Therefore, we are witnessing a profusion of different "faces of migration", which is reflected and at the same time also contributed to by this thematic issue of the journal Ars & Humanitas.While mobility or migration are not new phenomena, as people have moved and migrated throughout the history of mankind, only recently, in the last few decades, has theoretical and research focus on them intensified considerably. In the last two decades a number of research projects, university programs and courses, research institutes, scientific conferences, seminars, magazines, books and other publications, involving research, academia as well as politics and various civil society organizations have emerged. This shows the recent exceptional interest in the issue of migration, both in terms of knowledge of the processes involved, their mapping in the history of mankind, as well as the theoretical development of migration studies and daily management of this politically sensitive issue.Migration affects many entities on many different levels: the individuals, their families and entire communities at the local level in the emigrant societies as well as in the receiving societies. The migration is changing not only the lives of individuals but whole communities and societies, as well as social relations; it is also shifting the cultural patterns and bringing important social transformations (Castles 2010). This of course raises a number of questions, problems and issues ranging from human rights violations to literary achievements. Some of these are addressed by the authors in this thematic issue.The title "Many faces of migration", connecting contributions in this special issue, is borrowed from the already mentioned Gallup Institute's report on global migration (Esipova, 2011). The guiding principle in the selection of the contributions has been their diversity, reflected also in the list of disciplines represented by the authors: sociology, geography, ethnology and cultural anthropology, history, art history, modern Mediterranean studies, gender studies and media studies. Such an approach necessarily leads not only to a diverse, but at least seemingly also incompatible, perhaps even opposing views "on a given topic. However, we did not want to silence the voices of "other" disciplines, but within the reviewing procedures actually invited scientists from the fields represented by the contributors to this volume. The wealth of the selected contributions lies therefore not only in their coherence and complementarity, but also in the diversity of views, stories and interpretations.The paper of Zora Žbontar deals with the attitudes towards foreigners in ancient Greece, where the hospitality to strangers was considered so worthy a virtue that everyone was expected to "demonstrate hospitality and protection to any foreigner who has knocked on their door". The contrast between the hospitality of ancient Greece and the modern emergence of xenophobia and ways of dealing with migration issues in economically developed countries is especially challenging. "In an open gesture of hospitality to strangers the ancient Greeks showed their civilization".Although the aforementioned research by the United Nations and Gallup Institute support some traditional stereotypes of the main global flows of migrants, and the areas about which the potential migrants "dream", Bojan Baskar stresses the coexistence of different migratory desires, migration flows and their interpretations. In his paper he specifically focuses on overcoming and relativising stereotypes as well as theories of immobile and non-enterprising (Alpine) mountain populations and migrations.The different strategies of the crossing borders adopted by migrant women are studied by Mirjana Morokvasic. She marks them as true social innovators, inventing different ways of transnational life resulting in a bottom-up contribution to the integrative processes across Europe. Some of their innovations go as far as to shift diverse real and symbolic boundaries of belonging to a nation, gender, profession.Elaine Burroughs and Zoë O'Reilly highlight the close relations between the otherwise well-established terminology used in statistics and science to label immigrants in Ireland and elsewhere in EU, and the negative representations of certain types of migrants in politics and the public. The discussion focusses particularly on asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who come from outside the EU. The use of language can quickly become a political means of exclusion, therefore the authors propose the development and use of more considerate and balanced migration terminology.Damir Josipovič proposes a change of the focal point for identifying and interpreting the well-studied migrations in the former Yugoslavia. The author suggests changing the dualistic view of these migrations to an integrated, holistic view. Instead of a simplified understanding of these migrations as either international or domestic, voluntary or forced, he proposes a concept of pseudo-voluntary migrations.Maja Korać-Sanderson's contribution highlights an interesting phenomenon in the shift in the traditional patterns of gender roles. The conclusions are derived from the study of the family life of Chinese traders in transitional Serbia. While many studies suggest that child care in recent decades in immigrant societies is generally performed by immigrants, her study reveals that in Serbia, the Chinese merchants entrust the care of their children mostly to local middle class women. The author finds this switch of roles in the "division of labour" in the child care favourable for both parties involved.Francesco Della Puppa focuses on a specific part of the mosaic of contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean: the Bangladeshi immigrant community in the highly industrialized North East of Italy. The results of his in-depth qualitative study reveal the factors that shape this segment of the Bangladeshi diaspora, the experiences of migrants and the effects of migration on their social and biographical trajectories.John A. Schembri and Maria Attard present a snippet of a more typical Mediterranean migration process - immigration to Malta. The authors highlight the reduction in migration between Malta and the United Kingdom, while there is an increase in immigration to Malta from the rest of Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. Amongst the various impacts of immigration to Malta the extraordinary concentration of immigrant populations is emphasized, since the population density of Malta far exceeds that of nearly all other European countries.Miha Kozorog studies the link between migration and constructing their places of their origin. On the basis of Ardener's theory the author expresses "remoteness" of the emigratory Slavia Friulana in terms of topology, in relation to other places, rather than in topography. "Remoteness" is formed in relation to the "outside world", to those who speak of "remote areas" from the privileged centres. The example of an artistic event, which organizers aim "to open a place like this to the outside world", "to encourage the production of more cosmopolitan place", shows only the temporary effect of such event on the reduction of the "remoteness".Jani Kozina presents a study of the basic temporal and spatial characteristics of migration "of people in creative occupations" in Slovenia. The definition of this specific segment of the population and approach to study its migrations are principally based on the work of Richard Florida. The author observes that people with creative occupations in Slovenia are very immobile and in this respect quite similar to other professional groups in Slovenia, but also to the people in creative professions in the Southern and Eastern Europe, which are considered to be among the least mobile in Europe. Detailed analyses show that the people in creative occupations from the more developed regions generally migrate more intensely and are also more willing to relocate.Mojca Pajnik and Veronika Bajt study the experiences of migrant women with the access to the labour market in Slovenia. Existing laws and policies push the migrants into a position where, if they want to get to work, have to accept less demanding work. In doing so, the migrant women are targets of stereotyped reactions and practices of discrimination on the basis of sex, age, attributed ethnic and religious affiliation, or some other circumstances, particularly the fact of being migrants. At the same time the latter results in the absence of any protection from the state.Migration studies often assume that the target countries are "modern" and countries of origin "traditional". Anıl Al- Rebholz argues that such a dichotomous conceptualization of modern and traditional further promotes stereotypical, essentialist and homogenizing images of Muslim women in the "western world". On the basis of biographical narratives of young Kurdish and Moroccan women as well as the relationships between mothers and daughters, the author illustrates a variety of strategies of empowerment of young women in the context of transnational migration.A specific face of migration is highlighted in the text of Svenka Savić, namely the face of artistic migration between Slovenia and Serbia after the Second World War. The author explains how more than thirty artists from Slovenia, with their pioneering work in three ensembles (opera, ballet and theatre), significantly contributed to the development of the performing arts in the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad.We believe that in the present thematic issue we have succeeded in capturing an important part of the modern European research dynamic in the field of migration. In addition to well-known scholars in this field several young authors at the beginning their research careers have been shortlisted for the publication. We are glad of their success as it bodes a vibrancy of this research area in the future. At the same time, we were pleased to receive responses to the invitation from representatives of so many disciplines, and that the number of papers received significantly exceeded the maximum volume of the journal. Recognising and understanding of the many faces of migration are important steps towards the comprehensive knowledge needed to successfully meet the challenges of migration issues today and even more so in the future. It is therefore of utmost importance that researchers find ways of transferring their academic knowledge into practice – to all levels of education, the media, the wider public and, of course, the decision makers in local, national and international institutions. The call also applies to all authors in this issue of the journal. ; Začasne ali stalne, lokalne ali mednarodne, prostovoljne ali prisilne, legalne ali ilegalne, registrirane ali neregistrirane migracije posameznic in posameznikov, celih družbenih skupnosti ali posameznih skupin predstavljajo pomemben dejavnik v konstruiranju in spreminjanju (sodobnih) družb. Razsežnosti mednarodnih migracij so resnično ogromne, saj je bilo vanje v času nastajanja te publikacije po ocenah Združenih narodov v enem letu vključenih več kot 200 milijonov ljudi. Po ocenah Gallupovega inštituta pa se jih še trikrat toliko želi preseliti, največ iz podsaharske Afrike ter proti nekaterim gospodarsko najbolj razvitim območjem sveta (Esipova, 2011). Nekateri avtorji zato, čeprav ob zavedanju, da ne gre za nov fenomen, govorijo o dobi migracij (Castles, Miller, 2009) ali o globalizaciji migracij (Friedman, 2004). Zagotovo je na globalne razsežnosti migracij vplivalo tudi to, da so vse bolj vidne značilnosti sodobnih družb nenehno spreminjanje razmer, nestabilnost, fluidnost, negotovost ipd. (Beck, 2009; Bauman, 2002).Na obseg, smeri in vrste migracij ter na njihove posledice vplivajo številni družbeni in naravni dejavniki, tako na območjih odseljevanja kot tudi na območjih priselitev. Poleg tega si raziskovalke in raziskovalci iz številnih znanstvenih disciplin, ki proučujejo migracije, v raziskavah zastavljajo »neverjetno raznovrstna« vprašanja (Boyle, 2009, 96), uporabljajo različne metodološke pristope in iščejo različne interpretacije, in sicer v različnih prostorskih, časovnih in vsebinskih okvirih. Vse bolj prihaja do izraza, da so migracije kompleksen, večplasten, spremenljiv in kontekstualen proces, ki poteka na več ravneh. Prav zaradi tega spoznanja je raziskovanje migracij postajalo vse bolj interdisciplinarno polje, saj so teme in problemi tako kompleksni, da jih ni mogoče zagrabiti zgolj in izključno iz perspektive ene same znanosti ali teorije. Zato smo priča pravemu bogastvu »obrazov migracij«, ki ga odraža ter obenem k njemu tudi prispeva pričujoča tematska številka revije Ars & Humanitas.Čeprav mobilnost oziroma migracije niso nov pojav, saj so se ljudje selili in preseljevali skozi celotno zgodovino človeštva, pa se šele v zadnjem času, v zadnjih nekaj desetletjih, z njimi resno teoretsko in raziskovalno ukvarjamo. V zadnjih dveh desetletjih so se pojavili številni raziskovalni projekti, univerzitetni programi in predmeti, raziskovalni inštituti, znanstvene konference, posveti, revije, knjige in druge publikacije, pri katerih sodelujejo tako raziskovalna in akademska sfera kot tudi politika in različne civilnodružbene organizacije. To priča o v zadnjem času izjemnem zanimanju za vprašanje migracij, tako kar zadeva poznavanje samih procesov in njihovo mapiranje v zgodovini človeštva kot tudi teoretski razvoj migracijskih študij in vsakodnevno urejanje tega politično občutljivega vprašanja.Migracije zadevajo številne subjekte na številnih ravneh: posameznice in posameznike, njihove družine ter celotne skupnosti tako na lokalni ravni v družbi emigracije kakor tudi na vseh teh ravneh v imigrantski družbi. Z migracijami se spreminjajo ne samo življenja posameznikov in posameznic, ampak se spreminjajo celotne skupnosti oziroma družbe in družbeni odnosi, zamikajo se kulturni vzorci, prihaja do pomembnih družbenih transformacij (Castles, 2010). Ob tem se seveda odpirajo številne teme, problemi in vprašanja, ki se gibljejo v širokem razponu od kršenja človekovih pravic do literarnih presežkov. Nekaterih od njih se dotikajo tudi prispevki v pričujoči tematski številki.Povezovalni naslov prispevkov v tej tematski številki revije, »Številni obrazi migracij«, smo si sposodili iz že omenjenega poročila Gallupovega inštituta o globalnih selitvah (Esipova, 2011). Temeljno vsebinsko vodilo pri izbiri prispevkov je bila raznovrstnost, kar nakazuje tudi pregled znanstvenih disciplin, iz katerih prihajajo avtorji: sociologija, geografija, etnologija in kulturna antropologija, zgodovina, umetnostna zgodovina, sodobne sredozemske študije, študiji spola in medijski študiji. Tak pristop nujno pripelje ne le do raznolikih, ampak tudi do vsaj navidezno neskladnih, morda celo nasprotnih pogledov na obravnavane tematike. Vendar nismo želeli utišati glasov iz »drugih« znanstvenih disciplin, temveč smo raje v recenzentske postopke povabili znanstvenike s področij, s katerih so tudi avtorji. Bogastvo zbranih prispevkov torej ni v njihovi medsebojni skladnosti in potrjevanju, temveč prav v mnogoterosti pogledov, zgodb in interpretacij.Prispevek Zore Žbontar obravnava odnos do tujcev v antični Grčiji, kjer je bilo gostoljubje do tujcev tako častivredna vrlina, da je vsak moral »izkazati gostoljubje in zaščititi kateregakoli tujca, ki je potrkal na vrata«. Zlasti je izzivalen kontrast med gostoljubjem v antični Grčiji in sodobnim pojavljanjem ksenofobije ter načini soočanja z migracijsko problematiko v gospodarsko razvitih državah. »Antični Grki so v odprti gesti gostoljubja do tujcev prepoznali svojo civiliziranost.«Čeprav omenjene raziskave Združenih narodov in Gallupovega inštituta podpirajo nekatere uveljavljene stereotipe o glavnih globalnih tokovih migrantov ter o območjih, o katerih »sanjajo« potencialni migranti, Bojan Baskar opozarja na sočasen obstoj tudi drugačnih migracijskih želja, tokov migracij in njihovih interpretacij. Posebej se osredotoči na preseganje in relativizacijo stereotipov in teorij o nemobilnem in nepodjetnem (alpskem) hribovskem prebivalstvu in migracijah.O tem, kako različne strategije pri prehajanju, prestopanju in prečkanju meja razvijejo migrantke, piše Mirjana Morokvasic. Označi jih kot prave socialne inovatorke, ki izumijo različne načine transnacionalnega življenja in tako od spodaj navzgor prispevajo k integrativnim procesom po vsej Evropi. V svoji inovativnosti gredo nekatere tako daleč, da premikajo različne, tako realne kot simbolne meje pripadanja naciji, spolu in poklicu.Elaine Burroughs in Zoë O'Reilly izpostavita tesno povezanost med sicer uveljavljeno terminologijo, s katero v statistiki in tudi znanosti označujejo imigrante na Irskem in širše v EU, ter negativnimi reprezentacijami nekaterih tipov migrantov v politiki in javnosti. Razpravo navežeta zlasti na iskalce azila in nezakonite priseljence, ki pridejo iz držav zunaj EU. Raba jezika lahko hitro postane politični način izključevanja, zato predlagata razvoj in uporabo obzirnejše in pravičnejše migracijske terminologije.Za spremembo izhodišča opredeljevanja in interpretacije sicer dobro proučenih selitev v nekdanji Jugoslaviji se zavzame Damir Josipovič. Predlaga zamenjavo dualističnega pogleda na te migracije s celostnim. Namesto njihovega poenostavljenega razumevanja kot mednarodnih in notranjih ali prostovoljnih in prisilnih migracij pa se zavzema za koncept psevdoprostovoljnih migracij.Na zanimiv fenomen zamikanja ustaljenih vzorcev spolnih vlog opozori tekst Maje Korać-Sanderson, katere zaključki izhajajo iz študije družinskega življenja kitajskih trgovcev v tranzicijski Srbiji. Medtem ko številne študije ugotavljajo, da skrbstveno delo v zadnjih desetletjih v imigrantskih družbah v glavnem opravljajo migrantke, njena študija ugotavlja, da v Srbiji kitajske trgovke skrb za svoje otroke večinoma zaupajo lokalnim ženskam srednjega razreda. Ta obrat vlog pri »delitvi dela« v skrbstveni sferi, ugotavlja avtorica, je v prid obema vpletenima stranema.Specifičen del mozaika sodobnih migracij v Sredozemlju, bangladeške skupnosti imigrantov na visoko industrializiranem severovzhodu Italije, razkriva Francesco Della Puppa. Izsledki poglobljenega kvalitativnega proučevanja odstirajo dejavnike, ki oblikujejo ta segment bangladeške diaspore, izkušnje migrantov ter učinke selitve na njihove družbene in biografske trajektorije.Izsek iz bolj tipičnih sredozemskih migracijskih procesov na primeru priseljevanja na Malto predstavita John A. Schembri in Maria Attard. Ugotavljata zmanjševanje števila selitev med Malto in Veliko Britanijo ob hkratnem povečevanju priseljevanja iz ostalih držav Evrope in podsaharske Afrike. Med učinki priseljevanja na Malto izpostavita izredno zgoščenost priseljenega prebivalstva, ki presega gostote celotnih prebivalstev v nekaterih evropskih državah.Miha Kozorog obravnava povezavo med migracijami in konstruiranjem krajev, iz katerih te migracije izvirajo. S pomočjo Ardenerjeve teorije »odročnost« izrazito emigracijske Benečije izrazi ne toliko v topografskem kot v topološkem smislu, v razmerju do drugih krajev. »Odročnost« nastaja v razmerju z »zunanjim svetom«, s tistimi, ki govorijo o »odročnih krajih« iz privilegiranih središč. Na primeru umetniškega dogodka, s katerim želijo organizatorji »odpreti tak kraj zunanjemu svetu« in »spodbuditi produkcijo bolj svetovljanskega kraja«, pokaže zgolj začasnost učinka tega dogodka na zmanjšanje »odročnosti«.O temeljnih časovnih in prostorskih značilnostih selitev »prebivalcev z ustvarjalnim poklicem« v Sloveniji piše Jani Kozina. Pri opredeljevanju tega specifičnega dela prebivalstva in pristopa k proučevanju njegovega migriranja se opre zlasti na dela Richarda Floride. Ugotavlja, da so prebivalci z ustvarjalnim poklicem v Sloveniji prostorsko zelo nemobilni in po tem kriteriju precej podobni ostalim poklicnim skupinam v Sloveniji, obenem pa tudi prebivalcem z ustvarjalnimi poklici v južni in vzhodni Evropi, za katere velja, da so med najmanj mobilnimi v Evropi. Podrobnejše analize pokažejo, da se ustvarjalci bolj razvitih regij načeloma intenzivneje selijo in so tudi v večji meri pripravljeni na selitev.O izkušnjah migrantk pri dostopu do trga delovne sile v Sloveniji govori članek Mojce Pajnik in Veronike Bajt. Obstoječa zakonodaja in posamezne politike namreč migrantke potiskajo v položaj, ko, če hočejo priti do zaposlitve, pristajajo na manj zahtevna dela. Pri tem so tarče stereotipnih reakcij in praks diskriminiranja tako na podlagi spola kot tudi starosti, pripisane etnične in religiozne pripadnosti ali kakšne druge okoliščine, še posebej dejstva, da so migrantke. Obenem pa prav zadnje vpliva na to, da s strani države niso deležne nikakršne zaščite.Migracijske študije pogosto domnevajo, da so ciljne države »moderne«, države izvora pa »tradicionalne«. Razprava Anıl Al-Rebholz ugotavlja, da takšna dihotomija pojmovanja modernega in tradicionalnega dodatno spodbuja stereotipne, esencialistične in homogenizirajoče predstave o muslimanskih ženskah v »zahodnem svetu«. Na podlagi biografskih pripovedi mlade Maročanke in Kurdinje ter razmerij med materami in hčerami prikaže raznolike strategije opolnomočenja mladih žensk v transnacionalnem migracijskem kontekstu.Specifični obraz migracij prinaša tekst Svenke Savić, namreč obraz umetniških migracij med Slovenijo in Srbijo po drugi svetovni vojni. Avtorica v njem ugotavlja, da je v treh ansamblih (opernem, gledališkem in baletnem) več kot trideset umetnic in umetnikov iz Slovenije s svojim pionirskim delom pomembno zaznamovalo razvoj gledališke umetnosti v Srbskem narodnem gledališču v Novem Sadu.Verjamemo, da nam je uspelo v pričujočo tematsko številko ujeti pomemben del sodobnega evropskega raziskovalskega utripa s področja migracij. Poleg uveljavljenih znanstvenikov s tega področja se je v ožji izbor prispevkov uvrstilo tudi več mladih avtoric in avtorjev, ki začenjajo raziskovalne kariere. Njihov uspeh nas veseli, saj obeta živahnost tega raziskovalnega področja tudi v bodoče. Obenem nas veseli, da so se vabilu odzvali predstavniki tako številnih znanstvenih disciplin ter da je število prispevkov, ki smo jih prejeli, znatno presegalo največji možni obseg revije. Spoznavanje in razumevanje številnih obrazov migracij sta pomembna koraka proti celovitemu znanju, potrebnemu za uspešno soočanje z izzivi migracijske problematike danes in, kot kaže, še posebej v prihodnosti. Zato je izjemnega pomena, da raziskovalci najdemo načine prenosa svojih znanstvenih spoznanj v prakso – na vse ravni izobraževanja, v medije, širše strokovne javnosti ter seveda tudi odločevalcem v lokalnih, državnih in mednarodnih ustanovah. Poziv velja tudi vsem avtorjem prispevkov v tej številke revije.

Authors' introductionWe present an overview of research about racial residential segregation. The first part of the article reviews major debates and findings drawn primarily from the sociological literature. The second part of the article identifies new areas of research that in some cases cross into other disciplines such as geography and urban studies. We show the enduring persistence of racial residential segregation as well as its causes and consequences. We also highlight the ways in which residential segregation can be better understood by including discussions about the varied social and spatial expressions of, and responses to, segregation. The social scientific examination of the patterns and everyday experiences of racial residential segregation remains prolific.Authors recommendKrysan, Maria 2002. 'Community Undesirability in Black and White: Examining Racial Residential Preferences through Community Perceptions.'Social Problems 49: 521–43.The author presents an empirical critique of research which examines the role that residential preferences play in perpetuating racially segregated residential settlement patterns. The data are drawn from the Multi‐City Study of Urban Inequality. The author analyzes black and white participants' responses to open‐ended questions about community undesirability in 23 communities spread across four US metropolitan areas. Rather than examine residential preferences in relation to hypothetical communities of varying relative racial compositions, the author uses respondents' subjective perceptions of actual communities, and the reasons they give for their perceptions, as measures of residential preference. The major finding of the article is that preferences are mediated by class‐ and race‐based considerations, such as perceived community crime rates or a community's reputation as a hotbed of racial animosity and hostility.Logan, John R., Brian J. Stults, and Reynolds Farley 2004. 'Segregation of Minorities in the Metropolis: Two Decades of Change.'Demography 41: 1–22.The authors report on national‐ and metropolitan‐level residential segregation trends for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian groups using a cross‐sectional analysis of 2000 Census data. They also present findings from a longitudinal analysis of changing residential segregation trends for the period 1980 to 2000. During this time black–white segregation levels, measured by the Index of Dissimilarity, steadily declined nationally and in most major metropolitan areas. However, Hispanic–white and Asian–white segregation levels increased slightly at both the national and metropolitan levels since 1980. The authors estimate regression models to test prevailing hypotheses that seek to account for these changes. Notably, they conclude that black–white segregation remains high especially in older manufacturing centers in the Northeast and Midwest. Levels of Hispanic–white and Asian–white segregation meanwhile are increasing in regions where these minority groups are most heavily concentrated and where they continue to grow due to high levels of foreign‐born in‐migration.Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.This book is a seminal contribution to the scholarly debate about the causes and consequences of black urban poverty in the US. The authors argue that racial residential segregation is the key social process which explains the conditions under which a black urban underclass forms and is maintained. Segregation creates a 'structural niche' of concentrated black socioeconomic deprivation wherein, for instance, conditions of welfare dependency become normative and oppositional cultures emerge in reaction to the contradictory values of dominant groups. Massey and Denton claim that segregation is perpetuated by, but also compounds, the effects of institutional racism and white prejudice. To support their claim the authors point to historical trends in levels of racial residential segregation they attribute to public policy as well as private decision‐making. The book makes a methodological statement as well in relation to the conceptualization and measurement of residential segregation.Williams, Richard, Reynold Nesiba, and Eileen Diaz McConnell 2005. 'The Changing Face of Inequality in Home Mortgage Lending.'Social Problems 52: 181–208.The authors develop a theoretical framework to account for an emerging 'new inequality' in home mortgage lending and home‐ownership that has contributed to contemporary patterns of residential segregation. The 'old inequality', which was characterized by individual‐ and neighborhood‐level race‐ and class‐based discrimination, gave way in the early 1990s to a new form of inequality based on access to high‐cost loans and exposure to predatory lending practices. The authors rely on descriptive metropolitan‐level data on home mortgage lending to document rising rates of home‐ownership and loan origination among African American and low‐income borrowers, and within minority neighborhoods, since the early 1990s. Their interpretation of these data, however, leads them to conclude that despite these gains, the residential segregation generated by the old inequality creates the conditions for the emergence of the new inequality and similar patterns of residential segregation.Wyly, Elvin K., and Daniel J. Hammel 2004. 'Gentrification, Segregation, and Discrimination in the American Urban System.'Environment and Planning A 36: 1215–41.This article is a nice companion to the article by Williams et al. (2005) (see above). The authors examine racial and economic inequalities, such as residential segregation and racial discrimination, related to mortgage reinvestment and gentrification in major US central cities since the early 1990s. Using regression models to analyze home mortgage lending data and credit market characteristics across 30 US cities, the authors find that both early‐ ('peripheral') and late‐stage ('core') gentrification reproduce familiar patterns of race‐ and class‐based segregation, and are associated with more intensified forms of racial discrimination by property developers, realtors, and lenders.Online materials

Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) –Home Mortgage Disclosure Act http://www.ffiec.gov/hmda/ This website provides access to publicly reported loan data under the provisions of the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The site allows users to view descriptive information on consumer lending institutions as well as borrower and loan characteristics that can be geocoded by census tract. The site is fairly user‐friendly yet provides access to powerful aggregate loan data. Researchers have used these publicly available data to compile profiles of consumer finance and investment trends across metropolitan areas or to begin to document patterns of disinvestment, redlining, and subprime lending.
Racial Residential Segregation Measurement Project (Reynolds Farley, University of Michigan) http://enceladus.isr.umich.edu/race/racestart.aspQuoted from the website:This website provides you with indexes of racial residential segregation for all states, for all counties, for all metropolitan areas and for all cities of 100,000 or more using information from the Census of 2000. Indexes of dissimilarity, exposure indexes and interracial contact measures are available for five single races and for the three most frequently reported combinations of two races. Segregation measures are provided using three different levels of local area geography: census tracts, block groups, and blocks. The links on this page provide you with access to the calculation of measures, descriptions of their meaning, information about the census data and the measures as well as to a bibliography of major studies of the extent, causes, and consequences of racial residential segregation in the United States.
Windows on Urban Poverty (Paul Jargowsky) http://www.urbanpoverty.net/ This website provides interactive features that examine the 'spatial context' of urban poverty; that is, the ways in which poor and segregated neighborhoods shape the life chances of impoverished individuals and families. The site has links to reports and policy briefs as well as a mapping tool which allows users to view the spatial expression of concentrated poverty neighborhoods and related demographic information.
Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research (University at Albany, State University of New York) http://www.albany.edu/mumford/ The site allows users to access a wide range of social and economic indicators that document conditions of racial residential segregation across the US. The Mumford Center is a leader in reporting on national‐ and metropolitan‐level demographic trends compiled from publicly available US Census data.
The U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/ This is the official US government website where users can access US Census data. The site includes a range of interactive mapping tools that can be used to generate profiles of key demographic, social, and economic indicators at varying geographic scales, such as the neighborhood and metropolitan levels. The site also links users to relevant census‐based government reports, news releases, and even multimedia content (e.g., video, radio, photography).

Sample syllabusCourse outline and reading assignments Section 1: Segregation Trends and Patterns Residential Segregation in Black and White 'Census 2000 Basics' (http://www.census.gov/mso/www/c2000basics/00Basics.pdf)For an updated and extended discussion of measurement issues see: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/housing_patterns/housing_patterns.htmlMassey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Chapter 1: 'The Missing Link'; Chapter 2: 'The Construction of the Ghetto'; Chapter 3: 'The Persistence of the Ghetto'Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1988. 'The Dimensions of Residential Segregation.'Social Forces 67: 281–315.Adelman, Robert M., and James Clarke Gocker. 2007. 'Racial Residential Segregation in Urban America.'Sociology Compass 1: 404–23. Moving Beyond the Black/White Dichotomy Logan, John R., Brian J. Stults, and Reynolds Farley. 2004. 'Segregation of Minorities in the Metropolis: Two Decades of Change.'Demography 41: 1–22.Fischer, Claude S., Gretchen Stockmayer, Jon Stiles, and Michael Hout. 2004. 'Distinguishing the Geographic Levels and Social Dimensions of U.S. Metropolitan Segregation, 1960–2000.'Demography 41: 37–59.White, Michael J., Eric Fong, and Qian Cai. 2003. 'The Segregation of Asian‐origin Groups in the United States and Canada.'Social Science Research 32: 148–67.Crowder, Kyle D. 1999. 'Residential Segregation of West Indians in the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area: The Roles of Race and Ethnicity.'International Migration Review 33: 79–113. Section 2: Causes of Residential Segregation Institutions and Actors Charles, Camille Zubrinsky. 2003. 'The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation.'Annual Review of Sociology 29: 167–207.Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 2005. Chapter 1 ('Introduction') and Chapter 2 ('More Pluribus, Less Unum? The Changing Geography of Race and Opportunity').Tegeler, Phillip. 2005. Chapter 9 (Briggs): 'The Persistence of Segregation in Government Housing Programs'.Jackson, Kenneth.1985. Crabgrass Frontier. Chapter 11: 'Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: How Washington Changed the American Housing Market'. Group Differences in Socioeconomic Status and Neighborhood Preferences Logan, John R., Richard D. Alba, Thomas McNulty, and Brian Fischer. 1996. 'Making a Place in the Metropolis: Locational Attainment in Cities and Suburbs.'Demography 33: 443–53.Alba, Richard D., John R. Logan, Brian J. Stults, Gilbert Marzan, and Wenquan Zhang. 1999. 'Immigrant Groups in the Suburbs: A Reexamination of Suburbanization and Spatial Assimilation.'American Sociological Review 64: 446–60.Harris, David R. 2001. 'Why are Whites and Blacks Averse to Black Neighbors?'Social Science Research 30: 100–16.Krysan, Maria, and Reynolds Farley. 2002. 'The Residential Preferences of Blacks: Do they Explain Persistent Segregation?'Social Forces 80: 937–80.Emerson, Michael O., George Yancey, and Karen J. Chai. 2001. 'Does Race Matter in Residential Segregation? Exploring the Preferences of White Americans.'American Sociological Review 66: 922–35. Mortgage Lending Discrimination Yinger, John. 1995. Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination. Chapter 2 ('The Housing Discrimination Study'); Chapter 3 ('Discrimination in Housing'); Chapter 7 ('The Impact of Housing Discrimination on Housing Quality, Racial Segregation, and Neighborhood Change').Ross, Stephen L., and Margery Austin Turner. 2005. 'Housing Discrimination in Metropolitan America: Explaining Changes between 1989 and 2000.'Social Problems 52: 152–80.Williams, Richard, Reynold Nesiba, and Eileen Diaz McConnell. 2005. 'The Changing Face of Inequality in Home Mortgage Lending.'Social Problems 52: 181–208.Freidman, Samantha, and Gregory D. Squires. 2005. 'Does the Community Reinvestment Act Help Minorities Access Traditionally Inaccessible Neighborhoods?'Social Problems 52: 209–31. The Search for Housing Turner, Margery, and Stephen Ross. 2005. Chapter 4 (Briggs): 'How Racial Discrimination Affects the Search for Housing.'Farley, Reynolds. 1996. 'Racial Differences in the Search for Housing: Do Whites and Blacks Use the Same Techniques to Find Housing?'Housing Policy Debate 7: 367–85.Massey, Douglas S., and Garvey Lundy. 2001. 'Use of Black English and Racial Discrimination in Urban Housing Markets: New Methods and Findings.'Urban Affairs Review 36: 452–69.Feagin, Joe. 1994. Living with Racism: The Black Middle‐Class Experience. Chapter 6: 'Seeking a Good Home and Neighborhood.' Section 3: Consequences of Residential Segregation Poverty Concentration and Hypersegregation Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. Chapter 5: 'The Creation of Underclass Communities'; Chapter 6: 'The Perpetuation of the Underclass'.Jargowsky, Paul A. 1997. Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City. Chapter 5: 'Theory and Evidence on Inner‐City Poverty.'Wilkes, Rima, and John Iceland. 2004. 'Hypersegregation in the Twenty‐First Century: An Update and Analysis.'Demography 41: 23–36.Roy, Kevin. 2004. 'Three‐Block Fathers: Spatial Perceptions and Kin‐Work in Low‐Income African American Neighborhoods.'Social Problems 51: 528–48. Neighborhood Effects Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Thomas Gannon‐Rowley. 2002. 'Assessing "Neighborhood Effects": Social Processes and New Directions in Research.'Annual Review of Sociology 28: 443–78.LaVeist, Thomas A. 1993. 'Segregation, Poverty, and Empowerment: Health Consequences for African Americans.'The Milbank Quarterly 71: 41–64.Rosenbaum, Emily, and Laura E. Harris. 2001. 'Low‐Income Families in Their New Neighborhoods: The Short‐Term Effects of Moving from Chicago's Public Housing.'Journal of Family Issues 22: 183–210.Wagmiller, Robert L. 2007. 'Race and the Spatial Segregation of Jobless Men in Urban America.'Demography 44: 539–62. Crime and Neighborhoods Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City. Preface, Introduction ('Down Germantown Avenue') and Chapter 1 ('Decent and Street Families').Pattillo‐McCoy, Mary. 1999. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. Chapter 4: 'Neighborhood Networks and Crime'.Massey, Douglas S. 2001. 'Segregation and Violent Crime in Urban America.' Pp. 317–44 in Problem of the Century: Racial Stratification in the United States edited by Elijah Anderson and Douglas S. Massey.Logan, John R., and Brian J. Stults. 1999. 'Racial Differences in Exposure to Crime: The City and Suburbs of Cleveland in 1990.'Criminology 37: 251–76. Section 4: Mobility, Class, and Public Policy Residential Mobility Lee, Barrett A., R.S. Oropesa, and James W. Kanan. 1994. 'Neighborhood Context and Residential Mobility.'Demography 31: 249–70.South, Scott J., and Kyle D. Crowder. 1998. 'Leaving the 'Hood: Residential Mobility between Black, White, and Integrated Neighborhoods.'American Sociological Review 63: 17–26.Crowder, Kyle D., Scott J. South, and Erick Chavez. 2006. 'Wealth, Race, and Inter‐Neighborhood Migration.'American Sociological Review 71: 72–94.Pattillo‐McCoy, Mary. 2000. 'The Limits of Out‐Migration for the Black Middle Class.'Journal of Urban Affairs 22: 225–41. Intersection of Race and Class: The Black Middle Class Pattillo, Mary. 2005. 'Black Middle‐Class Neighborhoods.'Annual Review of Sociology 31: 305–29.Cashin, Sheryll D. 2001. 'Middle‐Class Black Suburbs and the State of Integration: A Post‐Integrationist Vision for Metropolitan America.'Cornell Law Review 86: 729–76.Adelman, Robert M. 2004. 'Neighborhood Opportunities, Race, and Class: The Black Middle Class and Residential Segregation.'City and Community 3: 43–63.Lacy, Karyn. 2004. 'Black Spaces, Black Places: Strategic Assimilation and Identity Construction in Middle‐Class Suburbia.'Ethnic and Racial Studies 27: 908–30. Public Policy and Politics Rubinowitz, Leonard S., and James E. Rosenbaum. 2000. Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia.Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 2005. Chapter 14: 'Politics and Policy: Changing the Geography of Opportunity'.Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. Chapter 8: 'The Future of the Ghetto'.Project ideas US Census Data Assignment (Adapted from an assignment developed by Nancy Denton, University at Albany, State University of New York)Your task for this assignment is to compare one US metropolitan area to another one. Your focus of the comparison should be on key sociodemographic variables including, but not limited to, the overall population size of the areas, the racial and ethnic composition of the areas, the socioeconomic standing of the areas, the housing quality, what types of occupational opportunities exist, the level of immigration in the areas, the level of residential segregation between groups in the areas, among others.You can choose any two metropolitan areas but they must be defined as such by the Census Bureau (i.e., make sure you obtain information at the metropolitan level). There should be some component of change; that is, identify how these variables have changed over time (an ideal strategy would be to focus on 1980 to 2000 changes, but there could be other strategies). In the end, you want a five‐page report comparing the two places. Which one would be better to live in? Why? From whose perspective?Potential data sources include:

The US Census: go to http://www.census.gov and click on 'American Factfinder' or another census tool
The Lewis Mumford Center: go to http://www.albany.edu/mumford and click on 'Census 2000' and use one of the tools to obtain data

Urban Ethnography Assignment (Adapted from an assignment developed by Charles Gallagher, Georgia State University)Write a short ethnography about an urban, public space. Your task is to choose a public space (broadly defined) and examine who uses the space, how the space is used, and the interactions that occur between people in that space. Pay close attention to issues like (but others too) the racial and ethnic background of the people using the space, the socioeconomic reasons which explain the location of the site (e.g., exchange versus use values; urban development), and the extent to which the space is actually 'public' (i.e., are there restrictions to the space like bars separating benches in half?).You can observe any public space. For example, the extent to which a park is actually public is continually and consistently contested and negotiated. What about transportation nodes? Malls? Restaurants? Comparative Urban Assignment Your task for this assignment is to review three scholarly articles about a city outside of the US. Your focus can be on any aspect of the city but you should include some general information about the area including, but not limited to, the geographic and demographic size of the area, the socioeconomic standing of the area, the residential segregation of groups in the area, among other issues.You can choose any city or metropolitan area as long as it is outside of the US. In the end, you want a five‐page report reviewing the three articles with a brief introduction about the city (this information could be gleaned from one of the articles).The main international urban journal, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, will be very useful for this assignment, but you can obtain articles from any peer‐reviewed journal. Make sure to use only scholarly journals rather than popular magazines, newspaper articles, or the internet. Rely on the social science literature.

One
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Louisiana Legislature failed was Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the
GOP-supermajority in each legislative chamber scored an own goal in
congressional reapportionment that, instead of ending litigation, only will
increase it with them in a weaker position.

The main reason for the session Landry stated as congressional
reapportionment, in response to a Middle District of Louisiana court case
where, at present, the presiding judge said that unless the state acted to
change its current distribution of one-out-of-six majority-minority districts,
in a state where the population is about a third identifying as black, a trial
on the merits of the existing map would occur and likely end with the judge voiding
it and imposing her own plan. That configuration likely would have followed
closely the preferred plan of the special interest plaintiffs which would have
created districts more in violation of traditional principles of reapportionment
than any from the past 30 years which almost certainly would see GOP Rep. Julia Letlow ousted in favor of a
black Democrat.

Landry and his two main water carriers for his
plan SB 8,
its author Republican state Sen. Glen
Womack and House and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Beau Beaullieu,
surrendered to this viewpoint of judicial inevitability. Braying over and over
that it would be better to pick their own poison, SB 8 capitulated to the two
M/M scheme but instead reconfigured districts to put Republican Rep. Garret Graves at risk, who is
on the outs with Landry by working behind the scenes to put up an opponent
against him in last year's election and with other members of the state's GOP
congressional delegation because he worked against the eventual process that
brought on a Louisiana Speaker of the House.

They and the GOP majorities that passed SB 8 didn't
need to do any of this: with at
least two contestable avenues that could have had higher courts overturn the
extant ruling – that the basis of that decision was ripe for reversal because
of the Kavanaugh
concurrence, which the state actually is employing to defend itself in a similar
suit concerning the state's legislative districts, and because of circuit court
disagreements, one of which came from the Fifth Circuit's handling of the case
about the use of a private
right of action. Indeed, there wasn't even an imperative under law, despite
the assertions of Landry, Womack, and Beaullieu as well as legislative Democrats
and the plaintiffs, to create two M/M districts, as not only does Section 2 of the Voting
Rights Act instruct that it does not require the proportion of M/M seats to
match roughly the racial distribution of the population, but also as no court
in the country has ruled that a plan that didn't create roughly equal
proportions had to do that, with the operative language from a panel
of Alabama-based circuit and district judges used to date as the judicial
guidepost for cases like Louisiana's reading "any remedial plan will need
to include two districts in which Black[sic] voters either comprise a
voting-age majority or something quite close to it" (emphasis added).

But they did it. This leaves the ball in the court
of the plaintiffs, who can decide to accept the plan and dismiss the case, or
if they don't then the court likely steams ahead by bringing into effect by
fiat their desired plan anyway and neuters the entire effort by the majority of
Republicans.

However, if the plaintiffs do accept, then the
2024 boundaries become that plan, and the GOP gives away a seat to Democrats,
even if contested by a private party, for the same reason the current
boundaries otherwise would have stayed in place if left unchanged: the
judiciary is reluctant to alter electoral boundaries through litigation too close
to an election. Basically, by this action Landry et al. gave away a
congressional seat for Democrats in 2024, as opposed to if they had they passed
a plan with a single M/M district and another opportunity district – one that
has a plurality-minority population distribution which is the "something quite close
to it" – or with two opportunity districts, as HB 14 by
Republican state Rep. Mike Echols
offered. In that instance, Republicans could have had a shot at winning one or
both districts.

Of course, the plaintiffs would have turned that
one down. But that then would have led to the state challenging the subsequent imposed
map, and on the basis of the Kavanaugh concurrence and no private right of
action where the former stands a decent chance of prevailing, that would have
overturned the plaintiffs' victory. And this likely would have happened in
2025, keeping the additional Republican district. Yet Landry and most of the
members of the GOP legislative party stubbornly asserted that the district
court's ruling was sacrosanct, set in stone, and had to be followed.

And, not only did the GOP throw away this
possibility of an eventual ruling on the merits preserving the current map, the
SB 8 map created itself likely is unconstitutional. That was drilled home in testimony
to members of H&GA by Paul Hurd, the lawyer who actually was involved
in early 1990s legal actions that ended up twice invalidating Louisiana plans where
race unconstitutionally played too large of a role in mapping. He estimated
that the new M/M district was about 90 percent similar to the one struck down,
and similarly infirm.

Expect if the plaintiffs accept the new map for a challenge
to it to come on the same basis – don't be surprised if allies of Graves are
involved – and succeed, although it likely would mean a 2024 cycle under SB 8.  If by then another challenge from somewhere else
springs successfully the Kavanaugh concurrence, that would invite the GOP
Legislature to remap again back to a single M/M – although this possibility itself
is a little uncertain because of the evolving jurisprudence around the concept
of "retrogression,"
or drawing fewer M/M districts than existed before and whether that is
constitutionally permissible.

Keep in mind, however, that the state has
handcuffed itself in restoring a single M/M map because of the result of the
session, and in fact put itself in the absurd position of a GOP governor,
attorney general, and Legislature defending a map putting their party at a
disadvantage. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs have a decision to make: take a two M/M
map even if not their preferred and much like one previously declared
unconstitutional for at least one cycle but hope it survives, or turn it down
to suffer a one M/M map in 2024 but roll the dice that the Kavanaugh concurrence
doesn't flip the previous decision and they get their preferred two M/M map in
2026.

In summary, absent a desire to ensure Graves rather
than Letlow was put at risk even as either being put at risk was far from
certain under the current plan or HB 14, there was no good reason for the GOP
governor and legislative majorities to give away a congressional district to Democrats
as early as 2024. Forcing a court's two M/M plan imposition in fact would have increased
the chances that map would be overturned eventually, compared to forging ahead
with a constitutionally-questionable volunteered two M/M plan that may get
rejected anyway.

Unless the plot all along was to offer up an infirmed
plan ripe for ruin as a way to buy time to the jurisprudential landscape to
shift, but that gives away 2024 and is riskier than outright resistance. If so,
it was a reckless brinksmanship with a result at present that should discourage
conservatives' hopes for propagation of their agenda in Louisiana that they
thought was a slam dunk to come into fruition over the next four years.

Lärm gehört zu den größten Umwelt- und Gesundheitsproblemen unserer Zeit und folgt somit an zweiter Stelle nach der Luftverschmutzung. In der Europäischen Union (EU) sind rund 40 Prozent der Bevölkerung Lärm ausgesetzt, der die Grenze der Belästigung von 55 dB überschreitet. Die Motivation zu dieser Arbeit ist daher einerseits die hohe Dringlichkeit der Lärmbekämpfung aufgrund der großen Gesundheitsgefahr und andererseits die schlechte Qualität der Lärmkarten, die in der Praxis zur Information der breiten Öffentlichkeit verwendet werden. Diese sogenannten strategischen Lärmkarten bilden die Grundlage zur Bewertung von Umgebungslärm und für die Öffentlichkeitsbeteiligung, das heißt sie sind das Kommunikations- und Informationsmittel. Hauptinhalt der Karten ist die Schallimmission, dargestellt anhand des Lärmindexes Lden für Straßen-, Schienen-, Flug- und Industrielärm, der jeweils einzeln in einer Karte darzustellen ist. Lden ist der gewichtete A-bewertete äquivalente Dauerschallpegel für alle Tage eines Jahres. Er wird anhand von farbigen Isophonen, das sind Linien gleicher Lärmbelastung, in 5-dB-Klassen dargestellt. Die zu verwendenden Farben sind in der der Verordnung über die Lärmkartierung, festgeschrieben und in einer DIN definiert. Das vorgegebene Schema entspricht jedoch nicht dem aktuellen Forschungsstand der kartografischen Gestaltung. Bestehend aus einer Abfolge von Hellgrün, Mittelgrün, Dunkelgrün, Gelb, Ocker, Orange, Rot, Dunkelrot, Lila, Hellblau und Dunkelblau, ist es qualitativ und die Farben aufgrund des Fehlens einer systematischen Helligkeits- und Sättigungsverteilung nicht den ansteigenden Werten der dB-Skala zuzuordnen. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war daher, die Lärmkarten, wie sie entsprechend der END zur Öffentlichkeitsbeteiligung verwendet werden, zu analysieren und für den wichtigsten Karteninhalt, die Schallimmissionen, ein neues Farbschema zu entwickeln. Neben einer qualitativen kartografischen Analyse, einer Bestandsanalyse der Lärmkarten der 27 deutschen Ballungsräume, die zur Lärmkartierung verpflichtet sind, und einer Task-Analyse, wurden in einer Anforderungsanalyse die Voraussetzungen für die Entwicklung des neuen Farbschemas bestimmt und in einem nutzerorientierten, iterativen Prozess ein neues Farbschema zur Darstellung der Schallimmissionen entwickelt. Bedingt durch die Farbwahrnehmung und bei genauerer Betrachtung des Anwendungsfalles, der Darstellung der Schallimmissionen, werden die Herausforderungen zur Erstellung eines Farbschemas klar. Die Schallimmissionen werden zwar in 5-dB-Klassen dargestellt, aber der zugrundeliegende Schalldruckpegel ist ein logarithmisches Maß, dadurch tragen höhere Werte stärker zu einem Mittelwert bei und die dargestellte Wertespanne ist sehr groß. Um eine sinngemäße Interpretation zu ermöglichen, müssen diese daher auch in der Darstellung stärker betont werden, was durch einen starken Anstieg der Sättigung der Farben für hohe Werte erreicht wurde. Da Lärmkarten die Lärmbelastung darstellen, ist es für eine verbesserte Interpretation sinnvoll, Farben zu wählen, die mit der Belastung assoziativ sind. Aus diesem Grund wurde von der kartografischen Konvention abgewichen und ein Schema mit zwei Farbtonübergängen gewählt. Insgesamt besteht das entwickelte Farbschema aus zehn Farben, die drei Wirkungsklassen bilden. Jeder Wirkungsklasse ist ein Farbton zugeordnet - Blaugrün, Orange und Lila - der assoziativ mit dem Grad der Belästigung und dem Gesundheitsrisiko ist und somit die Interpretation erleichtert. Da es pro Farbton somit nur drei bis vier Helligkeitsstufen gibt, werden die Unterscheidbarkeit und die Zuordnung der Farben zur Legende erleichtert. Durch die Vermeidung von Ampelrot und –grün konnte die Eignung für Menschen mit Farbenfehlsichtigkeiten stark gesteigert werden. Um die Farbtöne in eine visuelle Hierarchie zu bringen, wurden die Helligkeit und die Sättigung systematisch variiert. Die Helligkeit ist am größten bei der vierten Farbe und nimmt in Richtung beider Enden ab, die Sättigung hingegen nimmt v. a. zum unteren Ende der Skala, d. h. in Richtung der hohen Werte, stark zu. Durch dieses "bipolare" Schema wird eine Betonung der Regionen erreicht, die von größtem Interesse sind: die positiven, ruhigeren Bereiche und die Bereiche hoher Belastung. Das Schema wurde in vier Nutzerstudien evaluiert, die Ergebnisse flossen jeweils in die Weiterentwicklung ein. Die Ergebnisse der ersten Studie zeigten, dass es signifikante Einflüsse des Farbschemas auf die Interpretation der Lärmbelastung gibt. Weitere Studien ergaben, dass die verwendeten Farben unterscheidbar sowie assoziativ mit der Belastung sind und dass großeWertespannen besser anhand konträrer Farben, wie beispielsweise Komplementärfarben dargestellt werden, was sehr für das Farbschema mit Farbtonübergängen spricht. Es zeigt sich, dass die Farben auch für Menschen mit Farbenfehlsichtigkeit unterscheidbar sind. Der Anwendungsfall zur Entwicklung waren deutsche Straßenlärmkarten, daher wurden die Anwendbarkeit in anderen EU-Ländern und die Übertragbarkeit auf andere Lärmquellen untersucht. Zur Übertragbarkeit auf andere Lärmquellen sowie auf Daten aus Crowdsourcing müssen die Anforderungen und darauf aufbauend die Darstellung an die spezifischen Charakteristika der Werte angepasst werden, wie zum Beispiel die Wiederholungsrate, die Dauer, oder die Häufigkeit von Messungen. Über das Farbschema hinaus ergab die Analyse u. a., dass zur Vermittlung einer wahrnehmungsgetreuen Lärminformation psychoakustische Aspekte der Wahrnehmung integriert werden müssen, denn physikalische Parameter, wie Lden, scheinen dafür nicht auszureichen und kein ausreichendes Bild einer tatsächlich wahrgenommenen Lärmsituation zu liefern. ; Noise is one of the most serious environmental and health risks, a close runner-up to air pollution. Roughly 40 percent of the population in the European Union (EU) are exposed to a noise level of 55 dB, which is at the verge of annoyance. Therefore, the motivation for this research project was the acuteness for noise abatement due to high health risk, on the one hand, and the lack of quality that can be observed in noise maps used for public information on the other hand. These so-called strategic noise maps have to be drawn up every five years according the EU Environmental Noise Directive (END, RL 2002/49/EG). They form the basis for noise assessment and public participation and, therefore, they are a major tool of communication and information. The main map content is sound immission, presented by means of the noise index Lden for road traffic, train noise, airport noise, and industrial noise; each noise source has to be presented in a separate map. Lden is the A-weighted equivalent continuous sound level for all days of a year. It is represented by means of colored isophones, which are areas of equal noise pollution, in 5 dB steps. The colors that have to be used are established in the German regulation about noise mapping, and defined in a German standard. However, this predefined color scheme does not conform to the latest standard in cartographic research and science. Being composed of a sequence from light green, green, dark green, yellow, light brown, orange, red, dark red, purple, light blue, and dark blue it is counterintuitive because a systematic change of lightness and saturation is missing. Also, the colors cannot be matched with the increasing values of the dB-scale. The aim of this research effort, therefore, is to analyze END-conform noise maps and to develop a color scheme for the most important map content, the sound immission. Besides a qualitative, cartographic analysis the author undertook a status analysis of the maps published by the 27 agglomerations, which are legally obliged to draw up noise maps, an analysis of the tasks users carry out in accordance with their aims, and a requirements analysis for noise maps. The requirements are the foundation for the user-centered and iterative color design process to develop a new color scheme for the presentation of noise immission. Looking at the vast number of cartographic research on color-design the development of a color scheme might seem trivial. However, due to color perception and the specific case of application challenges become clear. Noise immission is presented in 5-dB-classes, but the underlying sound pressure is logarithmic. The effect is that higher values contribute more to the energetic mean value and the span between extreme values is big. To support that colors are logically assignable to the characteristics of noise data, higher values have to be highlighted. This is achieved by an increase of saturation for higher values. To facilitate interpretation it makes sense to choose colors that are associative with the presented noise pollution. That was the reason for choosing a color scheme with two color transitions against cartographic custom. In total the color scheme consists of ten colors and three color hues – blue-green, orange, and purple. The color hues symbolize three levels of noise exposure as well as health risk and support recognition. For each hue there are only three to four lightness steps, which supports distinguishability and the matching of colors in the map with colors in the legend. Through avoidance of red and green the scheme's suitability for people with color vision deficiencies was achieved. A systematic change of saturation and lightness supports a visual hierarchy of the presentation. The fourth color is the lightest while lightness decreases at both ends of the scale. Saturation, in contrast, increases for higher values. By means of this "bipolar" scheme areas of interest are highlighted, which are quiet areas as well as highly polluted areas. The scheme is evaluated in four user studies following an iterative design. Thereby results of the studies are considered for the further development of the scheme. Results of the first study show that color schemes have an influence on the interpretation of noise maps. The other studies prove that the colors of the scheme can be distinguished, also by users with color vision deficiencies, and are associative with the level of pollution. Studies also show that contrary colors with a high color or lightness contrast are appropriate to represent a big span between extreme values. This is the argument for the proposed scheme with two hue transitions. The case of application for the development of this new color scheme were German traffic noise maps, therefore the adaptability of results for other EU member states and for other noise sources was evaluated. Results show that there is no effect between place of residence and color association. Consequently, the color scheme can also be used in countries other than Germany. To be used for other noise sources as well as data from crowdsourcing, requirements and presentation styles have to be adapted to the specific data characteristics, such as repetition rate, duration, or the frequency of metering. Beyond insights for the color scheme the analysis revealed that the presentation of physical parameters like Lden is not sufficient to represent noise information that is in line with the individual perception of affected people. Therefore, psychoacoustic aspects have to be integrated to a greater degree.

Ladies and GentlemenGood morningAt the outset of my speech, I'd like to personally welcome all the respected attendees, from our home country Iran and abroad, respected invitees from ISESCO and the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, researchers and scientists from Iranian universities, editor-in-chiefs of ISC-indexed journals from Iran and the regional countries, my colleagues from ISC and RICEST and all those who participated in one way or another to make this unique event come true. I firmly believe that bringing inspired people together in a forum like this would ensure that ISC always remains at the cutting edge.Before I commence I tend to name those humble people for whose association and help we here at ISC are so proud as well as grateful. To me, such public thank you is a veiled declaration of intimacy with those who have been in a position to lend assistance to ISC since its establishment in 2008.First, my sincerest thanks go to H, E, Dr.Othman Altwijiri, Director General of ISESCO for the key role His Excellency played in the establishment of the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC).Second, I am much indebted to Dr.Faiq Bilal, Director of Science Directorate of ISESCO, for his contribution to the holding of this conference.Third, my appreciations Vahid Ahmadi, the MSRT's Vice-Minister for Research and Technology, for full support of ISC and its programs. Also, I am appreciative of the helps we received from Dr, Salar Amoli for producing Visa for our respected guests from the OIC countries.Finally, I thank my colleagues at the ISC and RICEST, the editor-in-chiefs of ISC-indexed journals, researchers and colleagues from Iranian universities and all the attendees without whose presence this whole program could be nothing but a fail.The idea of founding a citation center to assess research performance of OIC countries' research output was first conceived in the third Islamic Conference of Ministers of Higher Education and Scientific Research, held in Kuwait City, State of Kuwait, between November 19-21, 2006. There, the delegate from the Islamic Republic of Iran took the initiative and put forward the idea of founding such a center to assess OIC countries research performance. This idea was welcomed by all members of ISESCO and was hence included in the agenda.The proposal was worked on successfully and put on the table during the fourth Islamic Conference of Ministers of Higher Education and Scientific Research, held in Baku, Capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in October, 2008. During that meeting, the proposal was discussed and verified with absolute majority and the I. R. of Iran was bestowed with the responsibility to establish such a citation center. And that is in brief how ISC was established in Shiraz, south of Iran.ISC seeks to assess research performance of OIC countries. Great strides have been made by the directing body of ISC to provide the infrastructure required for the successful fulfillment of this objective.I am obliged here to avow here that ISC's achievements during its short life have been phenomenal, in need, owing to the constant help and support received from Iran's Ministry of Science, Research and Technology as well as Iran's High Council for Cultural Revolution. These two supporting bodies guaranteed ISC's accomplishments by adopting scientific, administrative and financial policies required.Assessment of research performance is a complicated phenomenon involving an array of variables and indicators. In general, citation systems – like ISI, Scopus and ISC - undertake various types of assessments and rankings through a number of indicators including researchers, scientific journals, subject fields, universities, research institutions and countries. Currently, ISC ranks third, after ISI (from Thomson Reuters with a history of more than half a century) and Scopus (in the Netherlands, with a history of about two decades) in the whole world. Both ISI and Scopus are well known citation systems embodying a number of interesting products and services of which the scientific community can avail it. Despite these advantages, they fail to cover local languages and concentrate only on English resources. In contrast, ISC, despite its short history, has endeavored to cover languages other than English as well. The long term objective has of course been to cover all national languages in OIC has been produced such that it can be expanded, on demand to cover OIC languages. No doubt, this is time-taking process due to the linguistic difficulties embedded in such practices. This difficulty is well justifiable when we observe that even global ranking systems like ISI and SCOPUS have avoided local languages despite the long time and better resources they have had for development.I would like to announce here that ISC currently processes journals in three languages, i.e. Persian, Arabic and English and seeks to cover French shortly since it is used in a number of OIC countries. This is a non-stop process and having covered French we will seek to include other languages from the OIC region.Having OIC region as its scope has not acted of course as a restriction for the realm of our activities. Interestingly, we have been receiving requests from non-OIC countries (including America, England, Finland, Poland, Russia, India, …) as well to have their journals indexed in ISC. So, the regional ISC has now upgraded into a global ranking system ranking universities, journals, etc. from all over the world.To date, 1117 Arabic journals, 1056 English ones and 403 journals from other languages are indexed in ISC. The number of Iranian journals indexed in ISC is also remarkable – 1046 journals affiliated to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, 331 journals from the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Training, and 250 journals affiliated to the Islamic Azad University.This simply means that ISC currently indexes more than 4000 journal titles from Iran, OIC and of course non-OIC countries. Of course, this sum is a fraction of the whole journals available in the international scientific community, and hence not that bulky in its present status, nevertheless it provides good ground for implementation of various types of scientometrics analyses and will provide more information as we move on.It is axiomatic that development of citation systems is time taking process. By this I am not focusing on issues like budget, building, etc. since such requirements have always been provided to ISC by the Iranian government with ease and on demand. Rather, I would like to focus on the time required to develop the software needed and of course the need for man power who have a good grip on scientometrics analysis.Regarding ISC's software, it has been developed by our own staff here. We consistently improve and enrich it by adding new features and new products. Regarding the staff, the M.S. program for Scientometrics was commenced at RICeST last year. Currently 12 students are studying in this program and this trend will be continued to train the man power required to fill-in-the-gap between ISC and ISI (and Scopus) in the shortest time possible.An important scheme here at ISC is to open up its branches in ISESCO member states to accelerate the enlargement of ISC database. This will, of course, require training of expertise in Scientometrics for which I am honored to introduce our M.S. program for Scientometrics. This program, in the long run, intends to train staff from the OIC countries to represent ISC branches in their relevant countries. I invite here the respected participants from the OIC countries to assist by introducing to us, through their universities, interested students who wish to attend the program.An important point I wish to share here on the present conference is that not many journals from OIC countries are indexed in ISI and Scopus. From among those which are indexed, journals with an IF from only a minority. Since the establishment of ISC, citation analysis has come under focus not only in Iran but also in OIC countries. Journal seek to publish original research with the objective to promote the status of science in the society, to increase scientific and research collaboration among research and scientific institutions in Iran and the OIC countries and expand knowledge frontiers. Attaining this objective depends greatly upon the scientific and research infrastructure of each member state.As specified in its charter, ISC has been bestowed with the responsibility to hold workshops and seminars to improve the status of ICS-indexed journals and, of course, facilitate journal submission by interested bodies to ISC. The present conference is indeed the second of this type- the first one was held two years back- which is being held for editor-in chiefs of scientific journals from Iran and the OIC region.The respected editor-in-chiefs here are invited to make the best use of the potential available in universities, research institution and societies to enhance the status of their journals. To enhance the quality of journals, a number of steps need to be taken:The editor-in-chiefs as well as the editorial boards of scientific journals should be picked up from among outstanding scientific figures. These people are those whose effort cans most contribute to the enhancement of scientific journals.Another point of great moment in enhancing the status of academic journals goes back to the nature of the peer-review process. Qualified and experienced referees can guarantee the quality of articles – and their originality as well.Yet another important issue pertains to the referencing mechanism used in journals. Studies undertaken on the referencing issue reveal that journals quite often do not follow in-text and out-text citation standards. Inconsistencies are observed among journals, even between different issues of a given journal and even at times between different articles of a single journal issue. To ease indexing in ISC, journals need to abide by citation standards. Mismatch in out-text citation may not cause any problem in information databases but they can be a big problem in citation systems like ISC. Hence, it is highly recommended that ISC-indexed journals move towards adapting sort of citation standards. One further point contributing to the quality of journals goes back to the issue of author affiliations. In general, author affiliation is drawn on in a number of research areas including ranking of universities and research institutions, production of science maps, assessing research quality, ranking authors, departments, etc.During the past few years, the increase in the volume of journals has been astronomical. We witness that journal editors are showing ever increasing tendency towards e-publishing. The reasons for such tendency are two-fold: First, journals try to keep abreast of the recent trend in publishing namely the open access movement. Second, journals are faced with budgeting problems and such constraints have forced them to adopt e-publishing as a substitute policy. E-publishing is today deemed as a routine in many countries of the world especially emerging scientific countries.Today, electronic copies of a large number of scientific journals are freely accessible. E-publishing is easier, faster and requires less budgeting. An inherent advantage of e-publishing is that it provides the grounds needed for crawlers to retrieve journals and to use the data for indexing purposes. For e-publishing to perform maximally, there is of course a need for an online journal submission system by the use of which journals can receive articles, send them for peer-review and also form their own online archives for later reference and use.Plagiarism is also deemed as an important issue in the scientific community today as it has been for so long. This phenomenon can harm the quality and status of journals. Indexing systems are apt to exclude journals from their systems due to plagiarism traces observed in them. Thus, it is a must for editor-in-chiefs of journals to be familiar with plagiarism, plagiarism detecting software and the strategies needed to avoid or at least minimize this problem in scientific production process thereby guarantee the copyright issue.Before closing my speech, I would like to make some proposals:1- To establish a publishing agency, with international scope, to publish scientific and research journals from the OIC countries. This will facilitate their indexing in ISC substantially and will be a great help to journals financially.2- To establish ISC local branches in different OIC countries.3- To encourage consistent interaction between ISC and journals with the aim of enhancing the quality and status of ISC-indexed journals.4- To schedule regular visits to ISC (for ISC-indexed editor-in-chiefs) and to OIC countries (for ISC directing body or staff to mark the problems and to make proposals for their removal).5- To hold ISC's conferences in OIC countries. ISC will help financially to hold such conferences.6- To use ISC for citation analyses, science mapping and scientific and research performance assessments in the OIC countries.7- To hold workshops at national and international levels to publicize research and scientific potential of the OIC countries, especially their universities and research institutions. Thank You

This essay continues with a discussion concerning the intersection between indigenous technological adoption/adaptation and the range of perspectives with respect to local communities' use of technology in general. Analytical instruments will be presented at the end of this article. First, however, the reader will have the opportunity to examine the 'views' of outsiders with respect to the debate surrounding sustainability, environmental management and territorial ordering. Responses to an on-line survey concerning the above issues together with my own comments, will add to the discussion. ; Gestión ambiental; Ordenamiento Territorial; Sostenibilidad; TIC; Usos ; 1 TECHNOLOGY IN NORTHWEST AMAZONIA (NWA) VIEWS OF VIEWS: SUSTAINABILITY, ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND TERRITORIAL ORDERING A contribution to a Political Ecology for Northwest Amazonia1 This essay continues with a discussion concerning the intersection between indigenous technological adoption/adaptation and the range of perspectives with respect to local communities' use of technology in general2. Analytical instruments will be presented at the end of this article. First, however, the reader will have the opportunity to examine the 'views' of outsiders with respect to the debate surrounding sustainability, environmental management and territorial ordering. Responses to an on-line survey concerning the above issues together with my own comments, will add to the discussion. Aims Initially there were two aims behind the construction of a website. One of was to overcome impediments to my personal mobility and direct access3. ICT facilitated communications with other interested people and helped solicit their views on indigenous management of the forest and their opinions with respect to the process of territorial ordering in Amazonia. The other aim was to serve the process of opening up political opportunities for NWA's inhabitants. Grassroots organisations all around the globe were (and are) establishing links through ICT. The indigenous peoples of Amazonia may attempt the same and this experience could, in the future, be an instrument of education for NWA. The introduction of such technology among indigenous peoples, if possible, will have impacts, which will to be judged as positive or negative, depending of the political interests of the observer and the moment of observation. It is argued here, that despite there being no indisputable positive or negative effects of technological transfer, it would be contrary to indigenous people's rights to self-determination to prevent the promotion of ICT among them. We wish to question conservative forces: if governments, corporations, NGOs and even international drug dealers and terrorist groups are using ICT to fortify their political positions, why should indigenous peoples be denied access to it? The access (or lack of it) of grassroots organisations to ICT facilitates (or impedes) the 1 The author wishes to thank: Jim Connor and Mark Bennett of Imperial College, the former for his advice on the use of Arcview-GIS and the latter for helping to write the cgi-script form for the website. Thanks are also due to: Stuart Peters from the University of Surrey for training in Web- Page design; Adriana Rico from Páginas.Net for valuable advice during the design process and Alvaro Ocampo for a detailed critique of Kumoro.com before it went live. I also wish to thank the Board of Puerto Rastrojo Foundation, which gave me permission to use their vegetation map as a base for the Yaigojé vegetation map that appears on the web-site. Finally thanks to all the people that took the time to fill out the on-line survey. Their contributions made this chapter possible. 2 This discussion was introduced in "Technology in Northwest Amazonia: Sketches from Inside" (Forero 2002b). 3 A restriction of one of the scholarships the author was granted as well as guerrilla incursions at the time, prevented the author from going back to NWA. 2 development of their rights to be informed (and educated) in accordance with the actual historical context of a globalising corporate economy and cultural hybridisation. For indigenous peoples, as well as for other ethnic minorities, financial resources to set up ICT are extremely limited compared to those of corporations, governments and even NGOs. The establishment of an ICT network for indigenous peoples' organisations in NWA remains a Utopia. But without a Utopian vision there is no aim for social mobilisation; this is something that was underlined by responses to the on-line survey. Fieldwork in NWA involved the author in the territorial ordering process, helping with the formation of indigenous people's organisations, and getting involved in communities' economic and educational projects. My work in NWA can thus be characterised as participatory action research (PAR) and one way of continuing to engage in PAR without going back to the field was to set up a website, wait for an opportunity to share my experience with the people of NWA and promote projects that would allow them to take over the website and use it for their own projects4. Deconstruction of an Internet generated discourse Elsewhere the author has dealt with descriptions and deconstructions of discourses of indigenous and institutional organisations, be they NGOs, churches, governmental or international. This process of deconstruction has included the author's own work among indigenous organisations and NGOs, which was one of the aims of "Indigenous knowledge and the scientific mind: activism or colonialism?" (Forero 2002a). I wish to explain the inclusion of governmental and non-governmental organisations within the category 'institutional'. There are great differences as well as important coincidences in governmental actions and the work of NGOs in developing countries due to the limited nature and poor quality of State-driven action in such nations. E.g. in Colombia, COAMA, the largest NGO network in NWA, has been involved in the political administrative reforms, and served as a consultant in matters of education, health and sustainable production. Furthermore, COAMA staff accompanied indigenous peoples in all these processes and without their intervention it is doubtful that many of the indigenous political organisations of Amazonia would ever have succeeded in their quest for legal recognition5. NGOs and governmental institutions may pursue similar political aims and share administrative structures. Inasmuch as small organisations are successful, (and usually this success is a result of strong personal commitment to a cause and personal knowledge of all members of the organisation), they tend to obtain more funds, which in turn forces them to become increasingly bureaucratic. As 4 At the time of writing (May 2002) the author was preparing to visit NWA at the invitation of indigenous leaders, including the Co-ordinator of an education committee who wanted to discuss the roll of ICT in education. 5 See Forero, Laborde et al. 1998 and the interview with the director of COAMA Martín von Hildebrand, in The Ecologist 2002 (Vol. 32 No.1-February). 3 organisations grow, individual members have fewer opportunities to get to know each other personally and maintain an accordance of principles, aims and political means. This is not to say that NGOs are condemned to be inefficient bureaucratic institutions, (which is not uncommon among developing countries' governmental institutions). But it is important to draw attention to the risk that when resources are pumping in and recruitment is growing there is more chance of becoming detached from grassroots sensibilities with respect to issues and less chance of correctly interpreting local developmental idioms. Views of Indigenous Environmental Management The design, production and publishing of a website on the development of a political ecology for NWA, taking the Yaigojé Resguardo as a study case, may seem a very simple task with little impact. But it proved to be a very delicate matter that involved exhausting work. The production of a map of the Yaigojé Resguardo, (which was to be included on the website) has been explained elsewhere, although it is worth mentioning something about the methodology involved. The author accompanied shamans (who were selected by indigenous leaders from the Apaporis) on several trips in which all the recognised sacred places of the Apaporis River and some of its tributaries where identified. The shamans learn the names of the places during their training. These names are recited in myths, chants and spells. The shamans carry, as they say, the map within themselves. It is impressive to see these men point to a place and give its name without hesitation. It is like this even when they have never been in that place before. It is impressive that this orally transmitted geography corresponds so precisely to the physical aspects that start to become relevant for people who, like the author, have different epistemological instruments for their interpretations of the world. While visiting the sacred places shamans spoke of trips they had made previously. In the case of shamanistic trips, visits did not actually involve physical journeys, but what were referred to as trips en pensamiento, en espíritu (in thought, in spirit). While accompanying them I recorded the geographical co-ordinates using a satellite guided geographical positioning system (GPS). The geographical co-ordinates thus generated were converted to plane co-ordinates and a map was generated using AUTOCAD software. Translations, drawings and reflections about this map-making process are included in a MSc thesis of the University of Warwick (Forero 1999). The work I will describe now, although partially derived from my work with the shamans is distinct in character and intention from that reported in Forero (1999). The use of technological gadgetry allowed me partially to reflect the Tukano world in a way that non-indigenous people could understand. And although this was a significant and, I believe, useful undertaking the real knowledge of the territory lies within the shamans with whom I worked. The fact that the 'indigenous territorial' aspects of the website are illustrated with maps is a by-product of the technology. A more significant value of the work (and the reason behind the shamans' wish to become involved in mapping) is that the maps were going to provide evidence for the legal process through which the ACIYA 4 indigenous organisation would claim rights over lands outside the recognised Resguardo Indigenous Reserve (Forero, Laborde et al. 1998). This work was successful and an extension to the Resguardo was indeed granted. Work on the website began by making a provisional outline of the desired end product. The original plan included six pages: Introduction (Home), vegetation map, traditional territorial map, discussion (an introduction to the political ecology of the Yaigojé Resguardo), bibliography (for those looking for references to NWA and the Yaigojé in particular), and a questionnaire that would generate the information from which this chapter has been developed6. The contrasting discourses obtained from the questionnaires Although I shall refer to percentages in this section, there is no intention of making any predictions based on statistical analyses. Neither is it suggested that the analysis of questionnaires can provide an objective account of outsiders' opinions with respect to the politics of the environment and people of NWA. The following notes are not representative in that sense and such was never the intention of the exercise. What is intended is that the reader gets an insight into the perceptions of survey respondents. What is important in a qualitative data analysis, like this, is to present differential tendencies. If discourses are constituents of reality then the confusing scenario of political confrontation in NWA should be linked to the visions and perspectives of all of us, including the views of people that have never been in Amazonia but nonetheless hold an opinion. And, if there is a marked difference between indigenous and exogenous perspectives with respect to sustainability and environmental management in Amazonia, which relates to whether people have visited NWA or not, this should be reflected in the answers to the surveys. The information generated from the on-line survey was collected between May and December of 2001. Eight hundred invitations were sent through e-mail. They were sent mainly to academics and organisations working on indigenous issues, conservation or sustainable development in NWA. One of these invitations reached COLNODO7 and the ICT network asked if we wished to submit the website in a weekly contest for the best new website, which we did and subsequently won! This meant that COLNODO subscribers were notified and invited to visit the site. But we have no idea how many hits were derived from COLNODO invitation. What we know is that during these 8 months we received 51 completed survey forms. This is a 6.4% response rate to the original 800 invitations8. 6 The survey form is in Appendix 1and, a summary of the technical work involved in the construction of the web-site is in Appendix 2. 7 "COLNODO is a Colombian communications network serving organizations dedicated to community development. It is operated by the non-profit organization called Colombian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations for Email Communication" (http://www.colnodo.org.co/summary_english.html). For a critical review of COLNODO work the interested reader could consult Gómez, R. 1998. 8 This response rate is rather low relative to postal questionnaire surveys, but we are unable to assess it relative other on-line surveys. 5 For the purposes of the analysis respondents (R) were divided into two groups: those claiming to have visited NWA (VA – 29% of R) and those claiming not to have visited the region (NVA – 71% of R). With respect to occupation, 68% of R come from the academic sector, including five anthropologists (almost 10% of R) all of whom had visited NWA. In contrast, although there were the same number of environmental managers as anthropologists answering the questionnaire, none had visited NWA. With respect to gender, the percentage of male (53%) and female (47%) respondents is similar across both VA and NVA groups. In terms of age, there were four groups: 1) 18 to 24, 2) 25 to 34, 3) 35 to 50, and 4) over 50. For R the percentages were: 8%, 47%, 35% and 10% respectively. The majority of respondents belong to the second group, between 25 to 34 years of age. However with respect to age groups the composition of VA and NVA groups differs: 56% of the NVA group belong to this second age cohort (25-34), while the majority of the VA group (47%) is between 35 and 50. Additionally, 13% of the VA group are over 50. 61% of the NVA group are between 18 and 34 years of age, while 60% of those that have visited Amazonia are over 35. A comparison of age among the survey respondents thus shows that those that have visited Amazonia (VA) tend to be older than those that have not (NVA). To distinguish among the views held by survey respondents we have to present the responses to each of the questions of the survey. We have made some associations of responses with the intention of outlining the different tendencies that we identify, but the reader might identify others. Before we do so a word about the view of respondents with respect to the website itself should be said. Website evaluation An evaluation of the web-site made by users was included in the questionnaire. Respondents were asked to rate the site between four categories: poor, fair, good and excellent. These categories were chosen as follows: 0, 2, 32 and 15 respectively. Two of the respondents did not offer a rating for the site. Additionally, respondents had the opportunity to suggest improvements. Some respondents suggested changes in design: modification of fonts and colours (some changes had already taken place). There were those who asked for more pictures, a photo album, more links and the construction of a chat room. With respect to the content, some wanted more ethnographic data, another more on political ecology, others asked for better visibility of the maps, while others called for additional links to related sites, and/or more information in general. One suggestion was to make the website less personalised, while another expressed interest in knowing more about the author's research project. Others asked for an enhanced bibliography. Some changes had already taken place by the time these comments were analysed but further changes are still being undertaken at the time of writing. With respect to the questionnaire, two people suggested larger windows to facilitate vision and to be able to comment largely, in contrast, another suggested encouraging more 'yes/no' responses. An important suggestion was: "Perhaps it is now appropriate to include some questions on communication 6 and information flows" (S52). Although not sought explicitly, information was gathered with respect to the use of ICT in the territorial ordering process of Amazonia. One of the respondents suggested that in future the website should be used by indigenous peoples of the Yaigojé. This has been the intention of the author, which has made a visit to Yaigojé (summer 2002) with intention to advance in that direction. Access to ICT for the indigenous peoples of the Yaigojé Resguardo is very limited but present. Future modification of the site will respond to indigenous peoples' feedback. During the visit few indigenous people gave their opinions on the website but several discussions on the roll of ICT in developmental processes took place9. Q1 - Are development and sustainability compatible? A clear response to Question 1 was that this depends on the definition of both terms: "It is impossible to answer this question as it is, as both terms are open to interpretation… " (S26). The question could have been and was read as: Is sustainable development attainable? Respondent S26 continued: "I think sustainable development is possible but hard to achieve in an environment of often conflicting interests and values (economic vs. environmental vs. cultural.)… " One respondent (S22) did not answer this particular question, and two others seemed to be confused (S38 and S41). Forty respondents (78% of R) answered that they were or could be compatible, although there are differences in the way they perceived this compatibility. Development first There were few respondents that failed to question the meaning of 'development' as concept or practice: the developmental project. These responses somehow postulated that certain environmental concerns should be acknowledged and dealt with in order for the development processes to continue: "Yes… . Development as the integration of western technologies or increase of income per capita, can be carefully done by implementing appropriate technologies into the productive activities of the communities. Sustainability defined as a continuous productivity level over the long term." (S2); "Yes. It is only a question of integration of environmental considerations in all we do and adjustment of behaviours accordingly." (S12); "Yes, because there can never be sustainability without development. People have, first to develop for them to have a sense of sustainability." (S13); "Yes, I do. The point is how you can reach a determinate "state" of development without undermining financial, ecological and human capacities in a determinate site (or taking into account their characteristics)." (S40) SD: human - environmental security There were others that perceived the compatibility or the possibility of sustainable development as the chance to diminish human/environmental security risks: "Yes of course in the long run - otherwise life is not possible." (S18); 9 The author is currently preparing a report that will summarise some of these discussions. 7 "Yes. Both are necessary for the survival of the area." (S21); "Si. Solo las acciones en el hoy nos pueden garantizar acciones en el mañana. (Yes. Only by taking action now we can guarantee we could act tomorrow)." (S23); "Yes, development should always be sustainable otherwise there are costs that are not taken into account. i.e. cost of pollution" (S39); "We don't have any choice. We have to make development and sustainability compatible as it's the only way we can survive and at the same time preserve the earth for future generations." (S42) Pessimism, in the sense that without SD life will no longer be possible, was to be repeated in the responses to all of the survey questions. Sustainability is an aim The majority of the respondents that believed development and sustainability to be compatible or capable of becoming compatible, were also of the opinion that the goal of sustainable development had not yet been achieved. Some of them discussed requisite conditions for achieving sustainability. They either underlined the importance of accepting sustainability as a guiding principle for development policy and interventions or/(and) exemplified ways in which sustainable practices might be instituted: "They have to be. I think they are because they have to be. I am optimistic that eventually it will be seen as natural to have sustainable development, but the problem is when this attitude kicks in." (S3) "Depends on how you define the two terms. If you mean that human quality of life can improve while maintaining the natural resource base, I think this is possible but very difficult to achieve." (S5) "Yes, but development in qualitative and not in quantitative terms." (S8) "Yes… there can be sustainable development in an ecological sense of the word - which means installing 'best ecological practice' in planning development." (S24) "No solo lo creo sino que estoy seguro que ambos pueden ser compatibles. Un desarrollo sin considerar ciertos indicadores de sustentabilidad/ sotenibilidad no es posible o viceversa. Uno y otro deberan de ir al parejo tratando de limar los conflictos que a menudo surgen cuando se pretende no un desarrollo pero un crecimiento economico sin considerar la parte social/cultural o ecologica. (Not only I believe that the two can be compatible, I am certain. Development without considering certain indicators of sustainability is impossible or vice versa. Both should go hand in hand, trying to solve the social, cultural and ecological problems that often arise when economic growth rather than sustainable development is the goal)." (S 25) "Sim, no alto rio Negro onde trabalho a ideia e essa: implementar um programa regional de desenvolvimento indedgena sustentado. (Yes, in the Upper Black River, where I work, the idea is precisely to implement a regional programme for sustainable indigenous development)" (S29) "Yes they are. The problem is with the material and energy growth and its compatibility with some environmental standards, like critical thresholds and so on." (S35) "Yes. The only way is by avoiding rapid over-development and having good planning."(S37) ".El concepto de desarrollo sostenible lo veo mucho mas como algo a lo que se quiere llegar, es una nocion implementada por parte de las politicas gubernamentales y ong's donde lo que se 8 procura con estos es el aprovechamiento al maximo de los recursos con un minimo impacto ambiental y social. (I see the concept of sustainable development as goal towards which we heading. It is an idea implemented through governmental and non-governmental policies which aim at maximum exploitation of resources with a minimum of environmental and social impacts)." (S48) "Yes, because they represent the best option to keep for human life." (S51) The need for local definitions Among the respondents that considered sustainability and development compatible if certain conditions were met, there is group of responses that emphasised the need for local definitions of 'sustainability' and 'development', or 'sustainable development': "They can be compatible providing that development is targeted at the right level i.e. small scale and in-keeping with the natural resources and environment." (S5) "Depende de las condiciones y del desarrollo para quién? Por lo tanto el desarrollo es sostenible si es buscado y logrado por la misma comunidad local (It depends on the conditions and on the question 'Development for whom'? Development can only be sustainable if it is sought and implemented by the local community itself)" (S20) "Yes but mainly if made through indigenous methodologies in their territories in Amazonia" (S27) "Yes. There is work done in northern Scandinavia where the "sammi" (lapps) have been given economical support and encouraged to create their own parliament. They have programs protecting their way of life, language and customs. The Norwegian broadcasting company NRK sends news in the language and coastal dialects. All this, at least for Norwegian sammi (lapps) has been key factors in late developments where communities have developed economically achieving great sustainability, contributing, not only to their well being, but to the sustainability of the inhospitable sub-artic regions." (S31) "Yes - but only if there is an 'appropriate' deployment of tools, techniques and processes of development in line with local community needs." (S52) Semantics and the economic imperative Interestingly, one respondent was very pessimistic about the possibilities for sustainable development even when it was sought and pursued at the local level. This respondent brought into the equation the idea that people are driven by monetary benefits to deplete their environment, even though they know that such practices are unsustainable: "To a certain degree, yes. I think that monetary considerations will always outweigh humanitarian concerns and it is very hard to convince people who are seeking a living from sometimes-meagre resources that it is in their own good to give consideration to long-term sustainable use of their resources. It is usually easier and cheaper to move on to the next area when one area has been depleted." (S17) This last argument derives from a rationality that considers poor people to be collaborators in their own misery. In this particular response there was no questioning of the developmental project or the social structures within which people are stimulated to act regardless of the future; but it did address 'monetary considerations' as the driving force. 9 Those responses that argued that the concepts are incompatible claimed an intrinsic contradiction in "sustainable development": "Development of any kind cannot sustain anything." (S4). Instead of blaming the people (needy or not), the proponents of incompatibility pointed their fingers at 'the system'; contemporary capitalist structures, the current developmental project and the prevailing economic model are seen as unavoidably contrary to sustainable practices: "No because development is premised upon economic gain, and capitalism is inherently unsustainable" (S10); "The problem with sustainability is that the economic model is not compatible with social, economic and ecological aspects at the same time and proportion. The neo-liberal model promotes the economic aspect leaving as secondary the social and ecological." (S19); "No, because development does not imply a recognition of limits or the necessity to preserve the natural and human resources used to achieve it. It is an economic concept, which has bases in the apparently unlimited uses of resources… " (S47); "… Si lo entemos [desarrollo] como crecimiento economico, por supuesto que no son compatibles. Ya que el crecimiento economico, tal y como lo plantean los economistas, excluye de raiz criterios sociales, culturales y ambientales requeridos para la sustentabilidad." (If we understand development as economic growth, of course they [sustainability and development] are not compatible. This is because economic growth, as economist have brought it up, excludes from its bases the environmental, cultural and social requirements of sustainability)" (S34) S.D. inconsistent with the present There are less radical rejections of the compatibility, which do not portray sustainable development as a contradiction itself but rather as inconsistent with current economic and ecological trends. The point such respondents make is that the necessary conditions for sustainable development are currently, rather than inherently unattainable: "… The current model of industrial development, where 'development' means material economic growth, is unlikely to be sustainable on a long term basis for the majority of the world population." (S1) "Present development of our world is clearly not sustainable" (S33) "Yes, they are compatible. But in a different social and economic order, not in the one the world is living now… " (S36) "Yes, if we change the way development is understood, for instance, development is associated to living styles resembling to those Europe and USA have, which are a lot related to consumption. But we could live in a healthier and more compatible way with our environment if we change our pattern of consumption and the generalised idea of development nowadays, it would be turning it into "only use what I need and get from nature, exclusively this, not until I just can't get anymore from it", 'cause I over pressed the place, to obtain more benefits. So, at last, this could be possible but in the long term, I hope not when there's nothing left to do." (S45) 10 Greening politics Some responses expressed doubts about the compatibility of sustainability and development. These doubts arise from the apparent use of "sustainability" as a green rhetoric, the aim of which is the continuation of projects that degrade the environment or human rights: ". usually development translates into cutting down natural habitats without regard to "sustaining" cultures" (S32); "In theory 'yes' but much depends on the definition of the terms and societies' acceptance of equal human rights and obligations to others." (S7) "Los conceptos de desarrollo y de sostenibilidad resultan ser bastantes amplios y ambiguos. En la mayoria de los casos cuando se plantean proyectos de desarrollo se trata de relacionarlos directamente con proyectos que resulten ser favorables para el medio ambiente. Como si un concepto llevara implicito otro, sin embargo creo que lo que se esta haciendo desde hace algunos años es precisamente disfrazar los proyectos de desarrollo para que sean aprobados bajo el nombre de mantenimiento del medio ambiente." (The concepts of sustainability and development are very ambiguous. In the majority of cases, there is an attempt to portray development projects as environmentally friendly[, a]s if one concept implied the other. However, I believe that what has been happening for the last few years is a camouflaging of development projects, in order to get them approved under the heading of environmental management) (S48). Reflections on responses to Q110: If "all development is not 'absolute' but will have a beginning and an end" (S24) then, "[d]evelopment of any kind cannot sustain anything." (S4). The impossibility of re-establishing high quality energy after it has been transform into low quality energy (or entropy) is a characteristic feature of closed systems, this would leave us with a world in decline where there is no possibility of sustaining anything. It could be argued that this is the case, as we cannot even guarantee perpetual solar energy flow. But this is perhaps taking the concept of sustainability too far, leaving us with no possibility for discussion. The central political discussion arising from the different responses revolves around the contradiction between those arguments of compatibility that leave the development project unquestioned and those that reject any possibility of compatibility because of a profound questioning of development. Between the two, the picture is blurred, undefined, open and elusive. There does not appear to be any significant correspondence between the two opposite groups of respondents in relation to whether they have been in Amazonia or not. Three out of five of the respondents claiming that there is absolutely no compatibility between development and sustainability have been in Amazonia; but so have two out of four of the respondents that left the development project unquestioned. However, it may be of some significance that none of those that accepted 'sustainable development' are related to social sciences. Those respondents with academic backgrounds in the social sciences all fit into groups 10 A schematic summary can be found in Table 1, Appendix 3. 11 that see sustainable development as a principle, something to be defined locally or as a reformist greening of politics. None of them were found in the group arguing for absolute incompatibility. The middle ground, where the picture is most blurred, came from the majority of respondents by whom it was argued that sustainable development may be possible but that they were unsure about how it might be achieved. Although these responses varied from those expressing suspiciousness (those pointing out the rhetoric of sustainability) to hope: "They have to be. I think they are because they have to be". This acceptance of a possibility of sustainable development, despite the semantic contradiction and current political rhetorical manipulation of the term, reflects a process of thinking and acting that is deeply rooted in Utopian beliefs. This 'sustainability' will happen in the future, in another time, when local communities take control of their lives and their resources, when environmental protection is taken seriously, when today's actions reflect our responsibility toward the future, etc. According to one of the respondents even continuous increases in productivity will be possible, when the proper technology has been developed. Q2 - Is there a relationship between indigenous reserves (IR) and protected areas (PA)? In Colombia IR are called "Resguardos Indígenas" or "Resguardos de Tierras". The term resguardo, literally means protection. Its meaning is not too different from that given to natural conservation areas of different grades: áreas protegidas, protected areas (PA). Both, IR and PA, emphasise the need for an area to be specially protected. Some of the respondents of this question pointed out an implicit relationship between IR and PA perhaps departing of this meaning: "… In a general sense, indigenous reserves are protected areas; they are protected from outside influence for the benefit of the indigenous people… " (S1); "Yes there are relationships. Both have natural systems and environmental quality that requires some level of conservation and protection" (S9); "Yes , for obvious reason. Because the protected reserves are a birth child of indigenous reserves and because we do not want to lose the nature environment the relationship should be maintained." (S13); "Yes, indigenous reserves are protected areas" (S28) As in the case of Q1 (Do you think that development and sustainability are compatible?) some respondents pointed out that it would depend on what we understand by the two terms: "Depends on the sort of protected area or what we mean with protected area… " (S25). "There could be" (S38); "It could be, but I am not sure" (S46); "… this has to be context specific" (S1). Five respondents simply said "yes" (S37, S18, S22, S43, S50) and one simply said "no" (S15). However many of the respondents did go on to qualify the relationship in some way. 12 Harmony or the need for it Some of the affirmative responses portrayed indigenous peoples as the guardians of the environment while others offered concrete examples of this viewpoint: "Si. Las culturas indigenas han demostrado que sus culturas han vivido armonicamente con su entorno durante miles de años" (Yes. Indigenous peoples have demonstrated that their cultures have lived in harmony with their environment during millennia). (S23); "Empirical evidence through statistical analysis has shown (particularly in Colombia in the north west region of the Sierra Nevada) that there is a direct relation between conservation and indigenous reserves. So, the answer is "yes, I do think so". (S40) There were those that referred to the need for a harmonic relationship because: 1) the environment should be protected for the benefit of indigenous peoples: "… indigenous reserves are related with spaces or areas that the government leaves for indigenous people and protected areas are where the local authorities or government provide the ($) resources in order to protect them" (S19); "Existe una relación, historica y cultural, respecto a su territorio, esto debe ser respetado y protegido para las mismas comunidades indigenas" (There is an historic and cultural relationship with respect to their territories. This should be respected and protected by indigenous communities for their own sake (S20). 2) the protection is fundamental for biodiversity conservation: "… Podria ser que se proteja un area porque existe cierta flora o fauna que esta en peligro de extincion. Por ejemplo, muchos animales que viven en la selva solo se aparean una vez al año en cierta temporada y si estos son interrumpidos por presencia humana su decendencia podria verse aun mas en peligro de extincion… " (It may be that an area is protected because there are endangered flora or fauna. For example, there are many rainforest animals that mate once a year or seasonally; if they are interrupted by human activities their progeny could be further endangered) (S25); "… development there should be restricted for the sake of conservation" (S33) 3) sustainable practices could be developed based on indigenous peoples' experiences: "Yes. By protecting areas where almost all indigenous people are more and more confined, there will be a way to preserve indigenous experiences in order for these experiences to contribute to a sustainable development." (S11). Utopia There were also those sorts of answers that reflected a feeling of hope or a sense of Utopia, in which a harmonic, positive relationship was acknowledged as desirable but not yet achieved: "I imagine IR to equate with PA in some way. Perhaps naively. IR is implicitly protected from external development forces, but not necessarily internal." (S3); "There can be. If people are continuing a way of life that has been sustainable in the past and are able to develop sustainably (… ) there is no reason why both should not coexist." (S6); "Most indigenous reserves must be also protected areas. How to effectively do it? I don't know." (S36); "In countries with mindless and irresponsible politicians and business people, it should be mandatory that 'indigenous reserves' must be synonymous with 'protected areas'. (S42) 13 Contamination and cultural imposition Some respondents signalled the risk of contamination, this is of indigenous peoples being influenced by a mestizo culture and therefore driven to break the presumed harmonic relationship with the natural environment. This may be seen as a lost opportunity, that of the rest of humanity to learn from indigenous experiences or, that of given indigenous people to assert managerial control: "Yes, as indigenous populations tend to live in harmony with nature these areas tend to require protection from the outside world. (S12); "… I also think it is difficult to put it into practice since indigenous people want to be part of the economic system and therefore there is a risk of depletion. Anyway who is better to protect certain areas than the people who have lived there for hundred of years!!!" (S39); "Yes, in fact, so far as I know, many of our indigenous people live in these protected areas, where most of them have been able to live in a sustainable way, I say most of them, because others are affected by the mestizo men that live nearby or want to get something from that place due to its economic importance, affecting these natural areas." (S45) It was pointed out that both types of jurisdiction, IR and PA, derived from a cultural-historical process, in which self-determination was not accounted for: "Yes, a very imperialistic one - especially in the Americas (including Canada). It is an old regressive link between the two, in the 60s and 70s this paternalistic viewpoint saw indigenous culture as static --which is wrong!" (S24); "Yes, they both seem to be defined by the ruling 'white' government." (S26) A respondent that had visited Amazonia (VA) added that there is resistance to this imposition, at least as far as indigenous peoples of Colombia are concerned: "yes-especially when indigenous management systems are practised in spite of the models of dominant society in Colombia" (S27). Similarly, another VA respondent suggested that in Colombia there are no friendly relationships between IR and PA: "It depends from country to country, but in Colombia no" (S10)! Analytical responses The analysis provided by some of the respondents tended to localise the relationship: to put it into the historical process. The analysis underlined the main problem for a "non-confrontational" relationship between IR and PA regimes. As they are designations that came about without public participation and from a rationality that is especially alien to indigenous peoples, when IRs and PAs overlap, competition for management arises. These type of answers either acknowledged that the relationship happens through overlap, or mentioned the difficulties of hitting indigenous rights and conservation target simultaneously: "Freedom of choice for all people, in terms of lifestyle, cultural heritage can translate into giving management control to indigenous people in protected areas. However the balance between sustainable economic development for indigenous people and at the same time protecting the environment is a difficult topic to discuss at a macro level. Individual environmental and socio-cultural circumstances need to be fully accounted for and explicitly articulated." (S7) "Yo creo que existe una relacion estrecha entre reservas indigenas y areas protegidas alrededor del mundo. Ya que estas dos figuras juridicas en muchos casos (p.e. Colombia) se encuentran translapadas." (I believe there is a close relationship between indigenous reserves and protected areas around the world. It derives from the fact that in many cases these two jurisdictions overlap) (S34). 14 "There is a relationship when they overlap, which I think happens often." (S44) "Los resguardos y las reservas indigenas han tenido la tendencia a considerarse y definirse como areas protegidas, sin embargo me parece importante tener en cuenta que al establecer los limites territoriales entre los resguardos quedan zonas intermedias que no pertenecen necesariamente a algun resguardo, y esto hace de un modo u otro que tambien se presenten roces con diferentes actores. Por la misma razon que al no estar circunscrito en un resguardo aparentemente se consideraría como un area no protegida… " (It has been the tendency to consider the resguardos and indigenous reserves as protected areas. However, I think it is worth considering that when the resguardo boundaries are established, there are zones in-between not ascribed to any resguardo. And this makes it somehow possible for different [political] actors to get confrontational. This happens as a consequence of the non-ascription of the in-between zone, which is not considered as protected area… ) (S48) However it came about and assuming that both jurisdictions are somehow competing, some respondents argued that IR should be more effective, as it gives responsibility to the people for their own lives: "Yes, although I think indigenous reserves serve to protect the environment/area better. This is because they are protected by local people who value the resources and use them in a traditional and more sustainable way. Protected areas can be designated/run by Governments and this can remove the responsibility from the indigenous peoples." (S5); "Yes. I think that indigenous reserves do offer more protection than protected areas because it gives local people more incentive to use sustainable practices. They can see it being in their own interests" (S17) In contrast, one respondent argued: "Maybe there is, but I don't believe in reserves" (S35). And a second respondent (VA) added that poverty have driven indigenous peoples to behave unsustainably: "I think it is possible. However, some indigenous areas are completely degraded because they are selling their natural resources to survive." (S53). This response (S53) is related to one of those made to Q1: "To a certain degree, yes. I think that monetary considerations will always outweigh humanitarian concerns and it is very hard to convince people who are seeking a living from sometimes meagre resources that it is in their own good to give consideration to long-term sustainable use of their resources. It is usually easier and cheaper to move on to the next area when one area has been depleted." (S17) Both answers (Q1-S17, Q2-S53) echo a neo-Malthusian argument. It implies that a 'tragedy of the commons' is happening in Amazonia and elsewhere as result of overpopulation. The politics involved "No. Indigenous reserves and protected areas (for nature conservation) are two different political land use strategies. If the government is assigning an Indian reserve then they should respect the use the indigenous people are making of the terrain according to traditional use or to improved technologies. Areas for Nature conservation must be treated separately and with a different priority. We cannot make the indians responsible for the disappearing of the diversity. The government has to be responsible by applying appropriate conservation and management regimes" (S2) This response makes an argument for the need to differentiate between IR and PA as diverse political strategies that pursue different aims. The first would aim to 15 comply with Indigenous Peoples Rights, particularly that of self-determination. The second political strategy would aim at biodiversity conservation. The respondent acknowledges indigenous social change as indigenous management depends on both, tradition and technological improvement. Interestingly, the analysis provided does not try to conceal the confrontational nature of the relationship; nor does it neither place much hope in conciliation. On the contrary, it advocates for a distinction. If there is some hope or sense of utopia in the response it comes from solutions provided by technological improvement. Which is something this particular respondent had already stressed in Q1: "… . Development as the integration of western technologies or increase of income per capita, can be carefully done by implementing appropriate technologies into the productive activities of the communities. Sustainability defined as a continuous productivity level in the long term." (S2) Non-conclusive comment-Q211 Nowadays, the establishment or enlargement of IRs (Resguardos in Colombia) and PAs requires the interested proponents to follow long protocols, the fulfilment of precise administrative procedures and of legal conditions. One aim of the process is to allow different stakeholders to participate and to assure the fulfilment of fundamental rights to all citizens in equal conditions. In Colombia, like in many other parts of the developing world, when the "juridical figures" were established these procedures were not necessary, therefore, many IRs and PAs were established without participation of all interested parties. It is not surprising that some of the respondents refer to the confrontation or competition of regimes that began with their imposition. It could be of some significance that none of the respondents that claimed the need to harmonise IR and PA have been in Amazonia. In contrast, the two respondents that pointed out that these two regimes are conflicting in Colombia have been there. The analytical response that called for clear differentiation between the two also came from the group of people that had visited Amazonia (VA). From the set of answers given to Q2 it is clear that different and contrasting narratives ascribed to with respect to environmental management. For some of the respondents indigenous peoples are guardians of the environment, victims of colonialism or in risk of a cultural contamination that will force them to adopt maladaptive strategies that would threaten conservation strategies. For others, indigenous reserves are untrustworthy designations: the environment should be preserved against development and human intervention, be it indigenous or otherwise. Therefore indigenous peoples should not be in charge of environmental management. Yet, another political perspective is derived from hopes of compatibility between the two regimes, which although pursuing different aims are seen as relevant for environmental and human security at the same time. Thus, the third perspective could be characterised as dialectic or iterative. From this (last) perspective indigenous experience could help the development of conservation strategies; and, 11 Schematic summary: Table 2, Appendix 3. 16 at the same time, the revision of environmental and conservation management strategies could be vital for the survival of indigenous peoples. Hope or Utopian visions also have a place here: the development of technology is seen as a key component for adequate environmental management. Technological improvement would allow both compliance with indigenous peoples' rights and biodiversity conservation. We are sketching a continuum from our comment on Q1, suggesting that the narrative of conciliation 'reflects a process of thinking and acting that is deeply rooted in utopia'. Q3 - Do you think that the concepts of protected areas (PA), indigenous reserves (IR) and sustainable development (SD) are useful for environmental management today? Two respondents say that the concepts should be context specific: "Yes, but which of them is useful depends on context… " (S1). "As I said before, all these terms have to be defined properly in the first place before they can be applied." (S2). There were two respondents that simply said 'yes' (S14, S22), while one answered: "yes, if it works" (S4). S4's response suggests that concepts are instruments, and not surprisingly many answers referred to the "applicability" of these three concepts. Environmental indians and contamination risk Some respondents reiterated the idea, already expressed in Q1 and Q2, that indigenous peoples are practitioners of SD or conservation managers: "… Indigenous reserves are important because they allow the preservation of a way of living in sympathy with the environment long gone in most areas… " (S12); "Claro que si. Las culturas indigenas son un ejemplo de convivencia y explotacion sostenible del entorno en que viven" (Yes of course. Indigenous cultures are an example of coexistence with the environment they live in and of sustainable exploitation.) (S23); "Yes because indigenous people are the 'shepherds' of the landscape and they have a first-hand understanding and experience (handed down from previous generations) of ecosystem processes. Sometimes indigenous customs and habits reflect an understanding of nature's processes that can be exemplary in the planning of management plans… "(S41) One response re-enforced an idea presented in Q2, that indigenous sustainable practices are in risk as the younger generations begin to adopt western lifestyles: "… , but this knowledge is also in danger [endangered],… , shamanism is related in many cases to the management of the natural resources, but I have listened to the indigenous people from the community that I'm working in, that they're not interested in receiving this knowledge from their parents, and day by they they're a lot like us in their agricultural practices." (S45) Principles as instruments Various responses made reference to certain conditions that would have to be fulfilled in order for the concepts to be useful. This perspective, where the concepts are understood as political instruments, could be useful if a 'real' or 'truth-value' definition of them were accomplished. This truth-value would come from using the political instrumentality of a concept only if it were to reflect a set of principles such as intergenerational equity, empowerment, and participation. 17 And, in the case of participation, special emphasis were given to the incorporation of indigenous people, their knowledge and ways of dealing with the environment: "The concept of protected areas will only be successful if indigenous peoples are involved, therefore this would seem to indicate that indigenous reserves would be the best way forward of the two" (S5) "… indigenous reserves need to be redefined according to the wishes of the people who will be living in them,… (S6); "… If sustainable development means development with the means which exist and with the participation of the people concerned… " (S11); Yes. Exercising indigenous knowledge should not be limited to reserves but integrated into the management plans along with scientific knowledge more widely. (S26); "Yes… Any protected area, etc. must actively incorporate the participation of indigenous people" (S41) The idea of intergenerational equity is attached to that of resource reserve for the developmental process: "Yes… The sustainable development concept relating to the obligation of the present generation to leave enough natural assets and capital for future generations to enjoy at least the same quality of life we enjoy today must be at the heart of environmental management activities." (S12) "Yes, because the natural environment that we believe is endangered should be protected as a reference in future years to come and because of this a sense of environmental management is very important as the same environment becomes a resource for development" (S13) "Yes. We need to protect the area and its people and provide for sustainable development. (S21) "… pero estoy cierto que las areas protegidas independentemente del interes en prervarlas desempeñan un papel importante en el manejo de ambientes naturales para la captura de CO2, conservación de recursos biogenéticos/biodiversidad/ y como elementos de estudio para futuras generaciones… " (… but I am certain that, independently of the interest in preserving them, protected areas play a roll in the management of natural environment for CO2 sequestration, conservation of biodiversity/genetic resources and as study subjects for future generations (S25) "yes, otherwise development will go against our own endurance. I think we have to consider the possibility that we are not the most powerful force in this world." (S38) Risk and Protection Following this idea is that of concepts (as political instruments) being useful if they could provide and enforce protection (S13, S21 above). In this case either the environment is seen at risk (endangered species or ecosystems) or both indigenous peoples and their environments: "Yes. Protected areas are important as pools of natural resources not affected by human activity. Indigenous reserves are important because they allow the preservation of a way of living in sympathy [tune] with the environment long gone in most areas." (S12); "I think they are vital. Until everyone has a responsible attitude to environmental control certain protections have to be enforced." (S17) Some of the responses expressing a need for environmental protection have a sense of impending catastrophe: "Yes, but they are loaded concepts so we have to be careful in using them… sustainable development is the only way we will survive, but is usually glibly applied." (S6); "in a limited sense perhaps.but what we need to accomplish is protection of all that there is left, without cutting and taking land around the so called protected area. stop the modernisation process wherever it has not already reached into" (S32); "Yes, because they are the only source to preserve life on earth." (S51) 18 Protection but of cultural diversity: "… They may contribute to 'capturing' and saving fragile cultures and 'unknown' languages." (S31) Although acknowledging the need for protection, some respondents made it explicit that IRs were not effective, as the policies derived from such concepts (regimes) would increase risk instead of attenuating it: "… in terms of indigenous groups if they become circumscribed to a specific protected area then this will prevent persistence of nomadic lifestyles etc. and as a result the protected area may become 'unsustainable' as people are becoming circumscribed to a specific reserve. I guess this also answers the question on indigenous reserves, however, the indigenous reserves of N. America should be used as an example of the problems of tying people to such reserves,… " (S10) "… 'indigenous reserves' are not so useful - most of indigenous social problems have been caused by the colonisers, and are being reproduced through generations. Keeping indigenous people enclosed in such areas, and introducing paternalistic rules and laws is not healthy for any society. It instils racism in a society, and will not ensure that indigenous practices of environmental management will be maintained - that depends on the indigenous group and how they choose to manage their environment… " (S24) The need for integration and its impediments Some emphasis was put on the idea that there is or should be a link between the concepts (political instruments): "Yes all concepts are useful as they each permit different aspects of the economic/ecology debate to enter into the wider public arena. Ultimately for there to be sustainable solutions to environmental problems there needs to be a holistic approach adopted… " (S7) "… environmental development will not be meaningful without taking into account the interrelation between 'indigenous reserves' and 'sustainable development'" (S11) "Yes, because all areas are linked with each other very closely" (S18). "Yes. Exercising indigenous knowledge should not be limited to reserves but integrated into the management plans along with scientific knowledge more widely." (S26) "… Lo que creo es que tanto las reservas indigenas, como las areas protegidas deberian orientarse hacia un desarrollo sostenible. Bien sea que estas dos figuras se translapen o no. Si entendemos el desarrollo sostenible como un proceso que involucra criterios sociales, culturales, economicos, y ambientales." (… What I do believe is that indigenous reserves as well as protected areas should direct their attention towards sustainable development, whether or not the entities [juridical regimes] overlap. If we understand sustainable development as a process that involves social, cultural, economic and environmental criteria.) (S34) However, quiet a few responses pointed out the problems that prevent this integration from taking place: 1) Incompatibility of interests between IR and PA: "… Protected areas are useful, but they raise the debate as to whether one should protect an area and exclude people from it so that a certain species/ archaeological site/community can survive or whether people should have access… " (S10); "It is quite difficult to harmonies those concepts, specifically among indigenous people. They are convinced that 'sustainable development' is an imperialist concept, and the first idea they have -as far as they hear the concept- is that they are going to be exploited by others… " (S40) 2) The prevalence of economic efficiency and profit at the expense of anything else: 19 "… El desarrollo sustentable que ha sido cada vez mas un objetivo importante en varios paises del mundo. Pero encontrar los balances correctos ha sido y es dificil, particulrmente cuando las sociedades y gobiernos estan sometidos a un proceso de globalizacion y de efeicientizacion economica. He ahi los conflictos permanentes de lograr un desarrollo verdaderamente sustentable que considere no solo los aspectos economicos, pero politicos, cultrales, sociales y ecologicos o ambientales. (Sustainable development has become an increasingly important objective in several countries around the world. But to find the correct balances has been and continues to be difficult; in particular as a result of societies and governments being subjected to economic efficiency within the globalisation process. There are permanent conflicts in the way of obtaining a real sustainable development that involve not only the economic aspects, but also the social, cultural, ecological and environmental criteria " (S25). "… too many people think of 'sustainable' as meaning economic sustainability and not environmental sustainability." (S30). "… While protected areas and indigenous reserves serve to maintain environmental quality, the concept of sustainable development is often disregarded for the sake of profits and globalisation." (S33) 3) Political manipulation: "I think there have been problems with these concepts for two reasons: First, they mean different thing for different people, second, they have been used and to serve particular interests. There are several and opposite definitions of 'sustainable development' and it's a difficult concept. 'Indigenous reserve', used as a general concept does not describe usefully the complex realities and 'protected areas' have been used to serve particular interests over time so I think it is seen suspiciously by a lot of people." (S44) "I think so, but these concepts are used a lot by politicians, and then the meaning can be manipulated". (S46) "… The big problem is not related to the concepts alone, it is related to the way in which these are applied according with particular interests and purposes. Many times the terms are used by different groups or organisations in order to pretend to be environmental friendly or responsible, when the real purposes reveal an opposite target or interest." (S47) "… Muy seguaramente estos términos se manejan como deben ser en el plano académico teórico, mas no ocurre lo mismo en el ambito práctico donde lo que prevalece son los interese de los diferentes actores que trabajan en este campo, lo que lleva inevitablemente a que se presenten situaciones de tension entre estos y se deje de lado el objetivo primordial en cuanto a la conservación y le manejo ambiental" (For sure, theoretically and within the academic circles these concepts are managed as they should be. Although, in the practical scenario privilege is given to the particular interests of those different [political] actors who work in this field. Thus, it is unavoidable that tensions will arise between these [political actors], which leave aside the fundamental aim of environmental management and conservation) (S48) 4) Semantics, the concepts mean too many things to too many different political actors (S44 above): "… 'Sustainable development' is not so useful for environmental management, as the concept is too contested - it means too many different things to different people." (S24); "As I said, the problem is that there are many definitions of those terms and it makes it difficult to determine if they are useful in one place compared to other places" (S50) Dynamism The perspective of 'dynamism' reflects a perception of mutating meanings as an advantage. Under this perspective 'contested' means 'in change', which is seen as part of a learning process, which is in tune with the idea of local definition of concepts (emphasised above): "Ultimately for there to be sustainable solutions to environmental problems there needs to be a holistic approach adopted, where people can better appreciate that their lifestyle has much in 20 common with others - even if they are in an OECD country and cannot appreciate the day to day lifestyle of someone in a less developed country. … . Therefore the concepts listed can provide an opportunity to raise the awareness of the majority of the world's people." "Yes, there is plenty that can be learned from these three concepts and also applied" (S37) "A lot, I believe there are a lot of things we can learn from them, specially in this field of study,." (S45) "If these concepts are [understood or interpreted] under a dynamic and changing world (attached to contexts), which mean that there is not a unique definition or way to apply them, I think they are still useful for environmental management." [original: understanding or interpreting… ] (S47) The need for new concepts-Q3 Contradicting narratives can be appreciated through the reading of these responses. There is a group of respondents that are uncritical of the concepts or the policies derived from them (like S37, S45 above and): "Yes, they are important to efficient environmental management" (S28); "Yes. An understanding of the mechanism of these terminologies is essential for effective environmental management … " (S9). Another group could be made out of those responses that reflect suspicion or are definitely critical of the concepts (S10, S24, S25, S30, S33, S40, S44, S46, S47, S48, S50 above). And, besides the group of respondents that express conditionality or hope (see above), there is a group of responses that, while critical of the concepts, acknowledge that at present they are all we have: "… which of them is useful depends on context… If an ethnic group is to be allowed to determine the course of events within its own territory, then the territory must be reserved for them until such time as they develop complete autonomy or decide to integrate more closely with wider society. Sustainable development may seem a rather broad, unspecific term, but it does at least draw attention to the unsustainability of conventional development… " (S1) "… The concept of sustainable development is gradually getting better developed and, even if it is not strictly attainable, gives decision-makers something to work towards… (S5) "I don't agree with the concept of SD as it is a contradiction in terms, but at present there are few better alternatives… " (S10) One respondent actually moved forward in the critique, pointing out that the concepts were built on preconceptions and identifying the need to generate new concepts that would integrate the useless categorical divide of nature and society: "I think they are old fashioned, and generated by the Anglo-Saxon culture. We should move towards an increased compatibility between human activities and nature, making it therefore not necessary to talk about reserves, or natural areas." (S35) Non-conclusive comment-Q312: The majority if not the totality of respondents took 'concepts' as 'politics'. They discussed the history of these politics, their adequacy and sufficiency. It is very interesting that while the conduct through which political ideas become policies is supposed to be complex, it is obvious for the respondents that there is more than theoretical debate going on in the process of policy making. There is a prevailing, sometimes automatic or non-reflexive awareness that narratives pursue the aims that drive the policies and politics that are transforming the environment. 12 Schematic summary: table 3, Appendix 3. 21 In continuity with the results of Q2, only 1 out of five respondents of those who argued for the need to integrate the concepts had been in Amazon; while the two respondents that argued the case of 'incompatibility of interests' had been there. Of those which suggested that these concepts –political strategies- are useful for environmental protection or that this is the last chance –catastrophism- for life, none had visited Amazonia. It may be of some significance that none of the five respondents that suggested that IR might be a better strategy than PA have been in Amazonia, while one person of the two that argued that IRs are ineffective had been there. The responses correspond to several narratives that can be identified. One of them is that of 'confidence in science and trust in political instrumentality' derived from the (traditional definitions of) concepts outlined. Another narrative is that of 'natives as heroes and outsiders as villains', which is reflected in the suspiciousness of concepts based in untested assumptions and in mistrust of the governmental policies derived from them. In summary there is a status-quo narrative and a counter narrative. Yet a third type of narrative could be identified, that of 'critical understanding'. Q4 – Should environmental managers (EM) get involved in the territorial ordering process (TOP) of the Amazon? One of the respondents simply answered yes (S4). One was unsure (S52), perhaps suspicious? One considered the question was tricky (S32), and three of them put the question into question. Two of these responses asked for the term 'environmental manager' to be defined: "Difficult to answer. Define the roles, mandate and empowerment of the environmental manager… " (S31); "What do you mean by environmental managers?." (S6). The third one was more critical: "this sentence is colonialist as if indigenous peoples of Amazonia were not in fact environmental managers" (S27). With a similar intent, one respondent argued that indigenous people were better-qualified environmental mangers: "Las comunidades indigenas han sido las mejores administradoras del territorio ancestral, eso debe ser respetado y replicado en zonas donde la intervención humana 'civilizada' ha afectado las condiciones ambientales. (Indigenous communities have been the best managers of ancestral territories, this should be respected and should be replicated in areas where 'civilised' human intervention has affected environmental conditions) (S20)" The response of Indigenous peoples as better managers had been expressed in Q1, Q2 and Q3. Another three responses reinforced the ideas of catastrophism, the need for urgent environmental protection and to stop development (S32, S33, S42). Perspectives EMs are the ones: "Definitely" (S12); " … They have in many cases a better view for the long-run." (S18); 22 Yes. Who else is better suited to do so?" (S21); "Environmental Managers should get involved. They are best able to ensure protection of ecosystem" (S28); "Por supuesto que si. Ya que el ordenamiento territorial de un territorio (en este caso de la Amazonia) debe tener como objetivos el desarrollo sostenible." (Definitely. Territorial ordering (of the Amazon in this case) should have sustainable development as an objective) (S34); "Because they are the ones that can understand the balance that must exist between economic development, traditional culture and environment." (S36); " They should, how can they do whithout?" (S46) "Yes, because they can contribute to better territorial ordering in the region" (S53) EMs and scientists figure out the solutions and take the decisions: "Deben estar involucradas todas las personas del planeta, pero con mas razon los 'decision makers', que a fin de cuentas, toman las acciones concretas sobre nuestro futuro medioambiental. (All people from the planet should get involved, but the 'decision makers' have more reason to be there, after all they are the ones that take the concrete actions in respect to our environmental future) (S23); "Yes, but along with some other scientists, not only because of the importance of the Amazon from a global point of view, but specially for the importance for the people living there." (S35); "Yes, always considering multiple disciplines result in a better understanding and so better solutions." (S38) But taking into account the other opinions: "Yes, although indigenous peoples will also play a major part and without them any agreements between Governments and environmental managers will not work… " (S5); "Not always, because it is necessary to take into consideration lay people's opinions too." (53) Indigenous peoples direct EMs: "If they are asked to do so by indigenous peoples, I see no problem with this." (S1); "Territorial ordering should be primarily decided upon by the indigenous groups that inhabit them, … ultimately decisions need to come from the bottom upwards" (S10); "… The indigenous people should be in charge of the program at the ultimate level" (S14). " They should but they should make sure they respect the opinion of indigenous people and they should be very discreet in their approach and aim for cooperation." (S41) EMs have equal rights to participate as other stakeholders: " Of course. All actors should be involved in the process… It doesn't mean that they have to take decisions but they can evaluate the circumstances under different and also important perspectives." (S2); "What do you mean by environmental managers? But yes, I think they also have a stake in the fate of the Amazon, and have a right to make their voices heard. (S6); " Involvement - yes but only in collaboration and co-operation with the Amazonian people and those in the higher levels of bureaucracy and policy making … Environmental managers can make significant contributions in this area, given their depth of understanding of the issues (relative to the general public)" (S7); "Deveriam estar envolvidos no processo de re-ordenamento territorial, junto com edndios, ribeirinhos etc" (they should be involved in the territorial ordering process together with indigenous peoples, riverine inhabitants, etc." (S29); " I think they should be involved as advisors and technical support but I support the idea of a non-technical management, where decisions are taken by the different stakeholders based on the technical advice and the social, cultural and economic factors." (S44) 23 But this intervention should be avoided within indigenous territories: "Not in indigenous reserves or territories which historically have been managed by indigenous communities. In other areas, should be taking part in dialogue of knowledge between cultures, people, communities, scientists and decision makers from private and government sectors, to order process on the amazon area." [Original text:… historically has been management by… ](S47) The apolitical EM: "Yes, but not for political reasons. It should be for the cause of sustainable use of our natural environment which is our heritage." (S9); " … Generally though I think that environmentalists like missionaries before them should not get involved in political processes as this can have a very negative reaction within the local community." (S17) "Yes, their knowledge will hopefully be of use in the ordering process" (S37) The political participation of EMs: "Yes, to counteract the interference of other external actors but hopefully to work with the indigenous people respecting their values and practices, not independently." (S26) EMs as facilitators of the dialog between IK and WS: "… without them [indigenous peoples] any agreements between Governments and environmental managers will not work. Environmental Managers should facilitate discussion… " (S5); "Territorial ordering should be primarily decided upon by the indigenous groups that inhabit them, environmental managers roles here should be as referees to help in the co-ordination of the process, but ultimately decisions need to come from the bottom upwards." (S10); "It's necessary for people involved in this field of study, that had already gained a conscience, and that are able to understand that we have to work with indigenous, not from our usual management vision, but theirs, trying to see the world like they do. In this way could be easier, perhaps to understand and give convincing and why not scientific arguments to the authorities (or people in charge of handling these affairs) about the different way they have already distributed their territory, which [in] most of the case (if not all) doesn't have our political distribution. (I.E, those groups that live between Colombia and Brazil boundaries) they don't have the same division of territories, because of this, they must be managed in a way more in concordance to their political organisation." (S45) Capacity, ability and quality of EMs: "Depends who the environmental managers are - if they are from the area and have a passion for the area, then why not. If they are drafted in from outside, and seen as the 'outside experts' then probably not - it usually causes friction within the area."(S24) "Define the roles, mandate and empowerment of the environmental manager. They may fall into different categories, of which I may name at least 4: 1. The conflictive manager. Created by a lobbying body. A good example is the body (forget the name) that is in charge of the Everglades in Florida. Their work is tainted by conflict of interest: the provision of water to cities and sugar cane farmers, at the same time maintaining the 'wet lands' as an ecosystem and controlling flooding! 2. The romantic. Exemplified by rich Europeans or North-Americans. Wanting to keep habitats, they may buy some land and resort to eco-tourism in order to keep their sustainability. I believe there are some German managed 'eco' destinations in Ecuador. Driven by an alternative way of life, they may not 'manage' the environment as they should. 3. The bureaucrat. A member of a government agency or NGO that may not be aware of local needs, responding always to policies made from a distance. Current legislation may be a hinder. "Los paisas", developed and colonised what is today Risaralda, Quindio, Caldas and 24 parts of Choco in Colombia, by using legislation that enabled them to cut and clear big forest areas to be claimed afterwards, creating the concept of the "colono". A colonisation process I witnessed in Caquetá some years ago. 4. The "grass roots" manager. Perhaps, the type who knows best the ecosystem and the power relationships that develop around it by the people involved with it. Usually their voice is not heard, mainly because of the threat they represent to some landowners or 'colonos'. If the law regarding claiming land that has been cleared is still existing, managing the environment is going to be a great task. One shall not forget that the 'colono' phenomenon represents one of the many socio-economical problems a nation like Colombia faces. … Management work usually develops around a policy. Trust among all participants is primordial. There ought to be some kind of legal-economical framework that will ease management work. If this is in place and all conflicts of interest reduced, then the territorial ordering process of Amazonia may become real." (S 31) Political risks, EMs tough job: "Yes, however the pressures on the person might be extreme. It would be preferable to have both on-site environmental managers and use some respected external managers as reference." (S15); "Yes, but bearing in mind that you should work with politicians and many kinds of 'parasitic' people which are thinking every day in the short term. It means that environmental managers are not enough for sustainable management and use of natural resource: their analytical models as well as their technical capacity is necessary, but they cannot work isolated, they require to work with others, despite the fact that 'the others' could (and should) think in a different way." (S40) Summarising-Q413 Like in the responses to Q1, Q2 and Q3, we can identify different and often contradictory perspectives. There were those that argued that environmental managers14 are the best qualified for the task and appeared somewhat perplexed by the question. Within that group there were those responses that assumed that decisions were taken by environmental managers or should be taken by them, although two expressed that others' opinion should be considered to a lesser extent. In the other direction were the responses that questioned intervention by EMs and considered it useful only when the decision-making process was led by indigenous peoples themselves. Yet, a third group was of the opinion that EMs should get involve in the same conditions that other stakeholders, such as indigenous peoples but, one respondent suggested they should not intervene in the management of indigenous peoples' territories at all. 13 See also Table 4, Appendix 3. 14 Called EMs in the survey to differentiate them from other experts and indigenous peoples. As it has been explained elsewhere (See "The march of the Manikins: Agroforestry practices and Spiritual dancing in Northwest Amazonia) indigenous peoples management of the environment departs from a different rationality and uses different instruments. What indigenous people from Northwest Amazonia call "management of the world" is not only a set of shamanistic practices but a way of living that combines social aims, aesthetic values, religious believes, and economic practices in a distinctive manner. Although acknowledging indigenous peoples from Northwest Amazonia are in fact environmental managers, the author has stressed that their "management of the world" incorporates many things, some of them of tremendous importance for environmental management more generally. 25 The other contrasting perspectives concerned the character of the intervention. While one group of responses were of the opinion that EMs should not get involved in politics, but have a technical approach, others thought that they should get involved to contrast and balance the political interests of other groups. A third group emerged, which advocated the intervention of environmental managers as conciliators and facilitators. Related to this roll of managers as advisers there was a group of responses showing concern with the capacity, ability and quality of environmental managers and, the possible risks that they have to face. Non-conclusive comment-Q4: As in responses to questions one, two and three, we can trace arguments and contra-arguments. One set of respondents portrays EMs as heroes. In this scenario they face a tough job, they are well trained, better able and indispensable for the process of territorial ordering; their politically risky job in which they have to make the decisions would be fundamental for diminishing environmental risk and even saving life on earth. (As in Q2 and Q3 none of those arguing conservation/catastrophism had been in Amazonia). A counter narrative is that provided by respondents arguing that EMs' participation should be directed by indigenous peoples (IP) or that the projects should be led mainly by natives, and that EMs should not intervene in the management of indigenous territories: in this case the heroes are indigenous peoples. A second counter narrative seems to be reflected by some of the respondents. In this scenario, EMs like IP should have equal rights to participate as different stakeholders, in this case decisions would come from a rational process in which dialog between cultures would take place. The participation of EMs would not be limited by their status/power but by their capacity, ability and their roll as facilitators or conciliators. Discussion European colonisation of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australasia from the late fifteenth century onwards, gave a tremendous boost to the volume of global transactions involving natural resources. Over the long run, trade in these resources, and in an increasingly diverse array of environmental services, has been expanding ever since. However, much of what is called globalisation in the twenty first century has more to do with developments in information technology since the late 1900s. The increasing speed of communications media and information transfer have proved fundamental in economic restructuring and the transformation of the world into a largely urban space (Castells 1996). In the globalised, twenty first century, local political decisions have little chance of being autarchic; international policy advisors inform local stakeholders about what is considered adequate or legal in accordance with international treaties, foreign protocols and political compromises. The local politics of environmental management is the concern of everybody: corporations, governments, international, regional and national NGOs, all of which compete for access to information and expansion of their scope of power in the political arena (Ambrose-Oji, Allmark et al. 2002). During the 1990s, and especially after the Río Earth Summit in 1992, one of the main topics of discussion was management of the global environment (Sachs 26 1993). Global targets for sustainable development were established at Río and similar processes were set in train at regional, national and local scales all over the world, following the guidelines set out in one of the policy documents agreed at Río: "Agenda 21". The official discourse that emerged from the Río process was replicated and many of the assumptions that informed the original discourse have been accorded a quasi-factual status by many people all over the globe (Sevilla_Guzmán and Woodgate 1997). The official discourse on globalisation emphasised the need for environmental management at supranational levels. At the same time, counter-discourse or anti-globalisation narratives have emerged. These emphasise the rights of indigenous people and local political actors to manage natural resources independently, in ways that allow them to make their own livelihood decisions and establish resource-use regimes that can provide the environmental goods and services that people need15. The management of the environment has always motivated debate and often led to confrontation. One of the main arguments of conservative conservationists concerns the 'vulnerability' of rainforest environments, and thus the need for their protection. Since the 1980s the problem of deforestation of tropical rainforests has been a global issue with special emphasis in South East Asia, the Congo basin and Amazonia (Adger, Benjaminsen et al. 2001). In a 1998 analysis of 'rainforest' web-sites, Stott revealed four metawords within the conservation rhetoric: orientalism (the exotic other), climax (harmony), old age (ancient, undisturbed) and vulnerability (Stott 1999). Metawords such as these become key rhetorical devices so that even research and development project proposals tend to employ them, thus replicating assumptions that are no longer questioned. How is this metalanguage produced? What are the bases of its principal cannons? And why is it that semantic analysis tends to remain the preserve of scientists – or is it something that is also dealt with at a local level? Narratives can be traced back in time. Equilibrium disturbance (climax rupture) and environmental fragility (vulnerability) both played parts in Hardin's 1968 'tragedy of the commons' (Hardin 1998). The neo-Malthusian discourse of environmental catastrophe as a result of an increasing population (of 'poor people') lies at the heart of Hardin's tragedy. The conservative conservationist perspective on the management of the rainforest is based on mistrust of systems of environmental management in which property rights (over life and resources) are not yet marketable. From a conservative political perspective responsible environmental action can only be achieved through the clarification of property rights to allow the unfettered action of free markets for the negotiation of such rights. It is assumed that the tragedy of the commons is happening or will happen in rainforest contexts where private property rights are not yet the rule and where societies still practise communal environmental management regimes based on indigenous knowledge rationalities in which nature and society form an ontological continuum. For conservatives only free markets for environmental rights, good and services can guarantee sustainable development. Neo-Malthusian 15 The discourses that emphasise on the need of eco-efficiency, economic transnationalization and planetary ecological management, were named by Sachs as contest and astronauts' perspectives. And the counter-discourse arising from the desempowered communities of the South as the home perspective (Sachs 1977). 27 and neo-liberal assumptions are fundamental to this perspective on sustainable development. With the aim of promoting Agenda 21 at local, national and regional levels, a complex and sophisticated process of institutionalisation was embarked upon. Amazonia did not escape this process; governmental officials or conservationist NGOs replicated the dominant conservationist discourse at the local level in NWA16. This official discourse of deforestation with its main initiative of protection of the environment from people has been labelled 'hegemonic' (Stott and Dullivan 2000) or 'neo-Malthusian' and 'managerial' (Adger, Benjaminsen et al. 2001). It should come as no surprise then that counter narratives have developed in Amazonia (and elsewhere), for many of which the principal intention is to contradict the conservative policies derived from this hegemonic discourse. The rights of indigenous people to define the course of their lives: their rights to manage natural resources and the environmental services used or supplied by the Amazonian environment have been key issues in these significant counter-claims against the official Amazonian territorial ordering politics and policies, which have involved environmental management that has been designed elsewhere. This counter-narrative pursues the principle and right of self-determination against the interests of political initiatives for global environmental management. The counter-narrative was not just a reaction to neo-liberal, neo-Malthisian conservative politics and conservation policies during the 1980s and '90s, however. In Latin America, all indigenous peoples' rebellions against the European empires were motivated by a call to reconstruct pre-colonial socio-cultural orders returning to territorial orders where the management of 'agroforestry' was undifferentiated from the sacred (Varese 1996:124-25). In modern, post-colonial states, indigenous peoples continued to struggle for the recognition of their territories. In today's NWA this struggle is related to governmental and conservationists policies of environmental management and the presence of armed groups opposed to political resolution of territorial ordering. Many of the Protected Areas (PAs) of NWA were created at a time when no legal procedure was established for public intervention in the designation of such areas. The official titles of the PA or IR (Resguardos in Colombia) have not prevented non-native invasion of lands or the expansion of illegal crop production inside either PAs or IRs. Conservationists and indigenous peoples alike have vacillated between alliances with, and the rejection of, the armed groups in charge of illegal crop production, depending on the political gains to be made and the risks involved in rejecting the proposals or achieving an alliance. The armed groups, on their part, have sought political alliances when such co-operation could benefit their military capacity or improve the managerial efficiency of their enterprises.17 16 With respect to the territorial ordering process, the Colombian Amazon controversy is discussed in Forero 1999, 2000; Forero, Laborde et al. 1998. 17 See Forero 2000, "Territoriality and Governance in the Colombian Amazon". 28 As far as local inhabitants were concerned, rainforest conservation policies arrived in NWA from another space and time. The legal establishment of protected areas took no account of the opinions or desires of the peoples already inhabiting NWA. Indigenous agro-ecosystems and the livelihood strategies of more recent colonisers were both ignored. The ideology expressed through legal frameworks was that of protection of the environment from people. The villains were local inhabitants and the regulations to be enforced were those of expelling people from the 'conservation' areas and maintaining their exclusion. The dominant discourse made no distinction between complex indigenous agro-ecosystems and the less sophisticated livelihood strategies being developed by recent immigrants. All of them were labelled as "slash and burn" agriculture (Myers 1980). Yet it has become increasingly apparent over the last thirty years that slash and burn is just an aspect of indigenous environmental management in Amazonia, which combines agricultural production, fish and game management, ritual prescriptions, and aesthetic developments18. It has even been suggested that movement towards "short cropping/long-fallow" cultivation patterns within indigenous Amazonian agro-ecosystems was an strategic response to alien invasion of territories and the introduction of metal axes (Denevan 2001: 115-31). Today, most ethnoscientists find it self-evident that the concepts of "chagras" (gardens) and "rastrojos" (abandoned gardens) are far too simplified to reflect the structure of cultivations over the short-, medium- and long-terms, in accordance with local knowledge of agro-ecological variation. It is obvious that indigenous environmental management has transformed Amazonian ecosystems for millennia; this was already evident to many of the nineteenth century European explorers19. Even the most knowledgeable people in the industrialised world have no precise idea of how 'vulnerable' rainforest is and few have accurate knowledge about the political conditions facing indigenous peoples or other human inhabitants of the Amazonian rainforest. With respect to NWA, even the most determined researcher would have problems accessing this information. It is often said that the rainforests of Amazonia are the 'lungs of the planet' (S.33), a metaphor used to emphasise the region's role in the carbon cycle, especially the absorption of CO2. This is somewhat ironic given that our own lungs actually consume oxygen and release CO2 during respiration. Indigenous people have been portrayed as villains or victims depending on the observer and the moment of observation. When portrayed as victims the picture is something like this: the wise guardians of the rainforest are obliged by violence to sell their natural resources or abandon their noble environmental practices. The role of violence in the functioning of extractive economies has been well documented. Violent coercion has been the dominant system in NWA for more than a century. Although indigenous people are no longer sold, 'debt-peonage' systems still dominate and exploit poor indigenous and immigrant inhabitants of 18 See Forero 2001, " The march of the Manikins: Agroforestry Practices and Spiritual Dancing in Northwest Amazonia". 19 See Forero 2002a, " Indigenous Knowledge and the Scientific Mind: Activism or Colonialism". 29 NWA. These people are employed for the harvesting, transport and commercialisation of coca base, cocaine and, the functioning of 'extractive economies' in general (Gómez, A. 1999). But there has been an indigenous response. This has sometimes taken the form of open rebellion and sometimes that of making strategic and tactical alliances in an attempt to obtain or preserve political power, to secure the acquisition of merchandise or simply to survive20. The counter-hegemonic narratives that we mentioned above have been labelled 'populist discourse': making it explicit that the victims are the indians and the villains the international organisations, sometimes allied to transnational corporations (like oil drilling companies) and the dependent and often corrupted governments that collaborate with these international organisations (Adger, Benjaminsen et al. 2001: 687). For NWA there are reports that seem to corroborate these arguments; e.g. indigenous peoples and environmental campaigners have protested jointly in Ecuador and Brazil against the construction of massive pipelines planned to cross through both IRs and PAs in both countries. The pipeline construction projects in both countries have arisen following collaboration between national governments and international oil exploration companies and have provoked public feelings of outrage (Weinberg 2001)21 . " [In NWA] Governments, multilateral lenders, multinational corporations, private banks and other institutions may not be counting on the convenient disappearance of indigenous peoples who get in the way of their ambitious development plans, but they often act as if they are." (Rabben 1998:122) "We who live in indigenous communities are surviving in the midst of a war imposed upon us by different factions and by the very same Colombian state that historically abandoned the countryside and permitted our lands to be invaded by waves of colonizers. Today we are caught in the crossfire, menaced by killings and displacement, while the State manifests its presence in the air with planes that slowly kill our plants and animals, our subsistence crops, and our people." (Organizacion Zonal Indigena del Putumayo_ OZIP 2002) However, is it possible to claim that there is a policy of 'ethnic cleansing' for NWA? From one side the whole issue of national sovereignty has been put into question; the expansion of Plan Andino (formerly Plan Colombia), the USA's anti-drug strategy for Latin America, exemplifies the delicate situation in which some of the Latin American countries have entered the twenty first century. The military component Plan Andino is aimed to support economic measures, the famous and indeed infamous structural adjustment plans that have provoked strikes and rebellions22. Additionally, even if there were an official policy of ethnic cleansing, South American States, given their size and power, would find it difficult to implement 20 See "Indigenous Knowledge and the Scientific Mind: Activism or Colonialism" (Forero 2002a), and "Technology in Northwest Amazonia: Sketches from Inside" (Forero 2002b). 21 For recent (March 2002) press releases on this issue see www.amazonwatch.org and www.americas.org 22 See Forero and Woodgate 2002, "The semantics of 'Human Security' in Northwest Amazonia: between indigenous peoples''Management of the World' and the USA's State Security Policy for Latin America". 30 it. The poor, be they indigenous peoples or colonisers are in the middle of a territorial war linked to international networks of criminality; they have been displaced, kidnapped or killed regardless of their claims of neutrality. In the case of Colombia, although some military authorities have been linked to some of the worst of the paramilitaries' atrocities, it has not been proved that the State itself has a policy of ethnic cleansing. In the case of Brazil, in 1996 the national executive proclaimed Decree 1775, instructing a right to contravene which, contrary to 169 WTO international agreement on Indigenous Peoples' rights, gave other stakeholders the opportunity to challenge Indigenous property rights. Paramilitary groups associated with illegal evictions of indigenous peoples in Brazilian Amazonia have long sought such a 'charter'. At the same time, the decree left the definition of indigenous land rights to the will of the executive power itself (Ministry of Justice). But, as in the case of Colombia, it cannot be proved that there is a policy of ethnic cleansing. It has been suggested in the non-conclusive comments on the survey results, that many people's responses echoed hegemonic and populist narratives. Indigenous peoples were portrayed as heroes or victims, as well as scientists and environmental managers. However, quiet a few of responses cannot be associated with either populist or hegemonic narratives. There is a group of responses that reflect critical thinking and are willing to challenge such simplistic dichotomies. Thus, the concept of sustainable development has been questioned, suspiciousness of western, scientific and technological solutions was expressed, and there was little willingness to give environmental managers carte blanche to prescribe whatever measures they might see fit. Interestingly, this last group, while acknowledging the need for: new concepts and adequate guidelines for environmental management, and the difficulty of achieving conservation targets while complying with indigenous peoples rights, still consider the concepts of SD, PA and IR as useful or the politics derived from them as desirable. What is interesting is that the responses to this survey, which were made by outsiders (respondents were not inhabitants of Amazonia), reflect a tendency to picture the conflict over territory in ways that do not correspond to either of the two main narratives. We can say that inasmuch as outsiders see possibilities for political action outside hegemonic or populist approaches, so Amazonian insiders are organising and negotiating regardless of whether their political discourse echoes either conservative or counter-hegemonic politics of territorial ordering. As no significant statistical analysis could be derived from the survey it would be difficult to speak of tendencies. At first sight it seems that adherence to hegemonic, counter-hegemonic, utopic or conciliatory narratives reflects each respondent's intellectual background more than his or her witnessing of the situation of peoples and forests in Amazonia. However, certain coincidences among the responses to each question might be representative: - For Q1-SD, two out of four of the respondents that accepted the imperative of SD without question have been in Amazon, none of them is a social scientist (SS) though and the other two were environmental managers. None of the SSs 31 that had visited the region argued for complete incompatibility between sustainability and development. Instead, SSs were part of a third group acknowledging that the concept of SD might be of some use, given certain conditions. - For Q2 – the relationship between IRs and PAs, not one of those who argued for the need to harmonise the two concepts (5), or those that emphasised SD as a desirable aim that has not yet been reached (4), or those or that argued that IRs are better than PAs (2) had been to the Amazon (in total 21 % of respondents). Respondents that had visited Amazonia (VA) were among those that acknowledged a relationship between IRs and PAs and that the relationship can be both complementary and competitive. Two respondents from the VA group argued that a complementary relationship was not possible in Colombia and one of them pointed out that being political strategies with different aims they should be kept differentiated in order to avoid conflict. This result might indicate that people that have been in Amazonia are more aware of the problems of territorial ordering caused by the imposition of regimes based in alien concepts. - For Q3 – on the usefulness of the concepts, none the five respondents arguing that IRs might be better that PAs had been in Amazonia, while one of the two that argued that IRs are ineffective had visited. Only one out of five respondents that argued for the need to integrate the concepts had been in Amazonia, while both those that argued for an incompatibility of interests have. This result seems to confirm that people who have visited the area are more conscious of the problems caused when policies formulated elsewhere are imported to Amazonia. Conclusions All technological adoption/adaptation has diverse effects in the life and development of society. People living within the society that is adopting them, and the outsiders that are analysing cultural change perceive these effects in different ways. The assessments of 'usefulness' or 'risk' a society makes when adapting/adopting technologies are linked to the conscious and subconscious present and future scenarios into which the society places itself alongside other societies. If the rest of the world wishes to respect Amazonian indigenous peoples' rights of self-determination, they should not intervene in ordering processes of indigenous territories. The problem is that indigenous ways of dealing with the world might not be compatible with the ideas that foreigners have with respect to Amazonia, its peoples and its future. And, for good or bad, fairly or unfairly, each group has a way of intervening and exercising a certain amount of power to modify the global political agenda for the governance of Amazonia in function of their own particular interests. Replication of narratives is a common strategy used by all groups aiming to make alliances and enhance their power. However, the responses analysed here seem to indicate that a large group of people (at least from the academic sector) is 32 unhappy with the assumptions behind either populists or hegemonic discourses with respect to rainforest management, and seeking new ways of environmental policy making. This group of people acknowledged that political conflict has derived from policy formulated elsewhere, and derived from an epistemology alien to local inhabitants. There are varied political groups competing for the governance of Amazonia. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilitates analysis and political action. It is expected that better-informed indigenous peoples would be in a better position to make decisions with respect to the governance of Amazonia. At the present time, the indigenous peoples of Amazonia have very limited and precarious access to ICT. Thus, their perspectives on territorial ordering are less likely to be represented than those such as conservation agencies, multinational developers, insurgent and mafiosi groups, all of which have far superior access to ICT. 33 Appendix 1 PRIVACY POLICY: Email addresses will be used only to send out materials related to this survey. Aggregate survey results may be distributed, but all personal data will be kept strictly confidential. No information about individual users will be disclosed to third parties. 34 Appendix 2 Summary of Web-site technical work The most demanding work was designing the pages that would contain indigenous territorial maps. CAD versions of the map would have to be transformed into image files suitable for Web use. In order to do this ArcView- GIS (Geographical Information Systems) software was needed. A picture of the map could be easily generated in ArcView-GIS and to certain extent, editing and colouring could enhance some features. But such a map or, more precisely, such a picture of the bi-dimensional representation of the Tukano territory remained inadequate for publication in WebPages. "The pics were to heavy" (I would learn the ICT design jargon), meaning that the memory used to storage, loading and unloading of these pictures was vast. Besides dividing the map and generating pictures of several areas, these pictures needed transforming to make them 'lighter'. This meant that the pictures had to be edited and the storage format had to be changed in terms of the colour pallet and resolution (a maximum of 72 dpi). Most importantly, the pictures should look better! An early version of PhotoImpactTM was used to change the colours and other features as well as to design the icons that would be used to identify the hypertext links between pages. However, the software was not appropriate for the task and the 'pics' were still too heavy. The design was poor, too rigid, with inappropriate colours and, worst of all the 'weight' of the maps would not allow for easy loading of the images by potential users. To change the maps (pics) again, PhotoshopTM was used, while major design transformations were achieved using FireworksTM software. For the actual montage and edition of the whole web-site Dreamweaver3TM was used. A similar process was followed to generate the vegetation map, which was adapted from one of the Amazonian Vegetation maps generated by Puerto Rastrojo. The introduction to a political ecology taking as a case study the Yaigojé Resguardo, was originally a single text (like in the preliminary version) but following the advice of critical reviewers, this page was divided into six parts. 35 Appendix 3 Table 1 Q1- Do you think that 'development' and 'sustainability' are compatible? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Unquestioning the developmental project 2 1 PhD Student Biology 12 1 Environmental Engineer 13 1 Environmental Engineer 40 1 Project Co-ordinator (SD) Yes, to diminish environmental risk 18 1 Student 21 1 Taxation 23 1 Designer 39 1 Postgraduate Student 42 1 Biologist Sustainable Development is an aim to be 3 1 Epidemiologist reached 5 1 Civil Servant 8 1 Accountant 24 1 Student 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 29 1 Anthropologist 35 1 Lecturer 37 1 Postgraduate Student 48 1 Anthropologist 51 1 Postgraduate Student Compatible if defined locally 5 1 Civil Servant 20 1 Lecturer: Ecotourism 27 1 Anthropologist 31 1 Postgraduate Student 52 1 Lecturer: IT & Development Possible but risk of economic imperative 17 1 Unemployed Incompatible a) Contradiction in terms 24 1 Student 4 1 PhD St. Environmental genetics b) Financial economic imperative 10 1 Student 19 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 34 1 PhD Student: Environmental Manager 47 1 PhD Student SD inconsistent at present time 1 1 Lecturer: Env. Sociology 33 1 PhD Student 36 1 Research Engineer 45 1 EM SD is green rhetoric 7 1 Student 32 1 Teacher 48 1 Anthropologist 36 Table 2 Q2 - Do you think there is any relation between 'indigenous reserves' (IR) and 'protected areas' (PA)? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Yes 37 1 Postgraduate Student 18 1 Student 22 1 Anthropologist 43 1 Anthropologist 50 1 PhD Student No 15 1 Consultant: Health & Safety Need to harmonise IR and PA to protect a) For (IP) Indigenous Peoples' benefit 19 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 20 1 Lecturer: Ecoturism b) Protection of Biodiversity 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Development 33 1 PhD Student c) SD based on IP experiences 11 1 Consultant: Rural Development. SD as Utopia 3 1 Epidemiologist 6 1 Lecturer Ecology Env. Management 36 1 Research Engineer 42 1 Biologist IR and PA are different political strategies 2 1 PhD Student - Biologist IR and PA are colonisation strategies 10 1 Student 24 1 Student 26 1 Student Indigenous resistance to IR/PA strategies 48 1 Anthropologist IR and PA overlapped 7 1 Student 34 1 PhD St. Environmental Management 44 1 Postgraduate Student Environmental Indian 23 1 Designer 40 1 Project Co-ordinator (SD) Environmental Indians contaminated 12 1 Environmental Engineer by mestizo culture 39 1 Postgraduate Student 45 1 Environmental Manager IR are Inefficient 35 1 Lecturer 53 1 Journalist IR more effective that PA 5 1 Civil Servant 17 1 Unemployed 37 Table 3 Q3 - Do you think that the concepts of 'protected areas' (PA), 'indigenous reserves' (IR) and SD are useful for environmental management today? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Depends on the context 1 1 Lecturer: Env. Sociology 2 1 PhD St. Biologist Yes 4 1 PhD St. Env. Genetics 14 1 Economist 22 1 Anthropologist Indigenous Environmental 12 1 Environmental Engineer 23 1 Designer 41 1 PhD Student Indigenous Environmental in contamination risk 45 1 EM Concepts: Principles and instruments a) Participation: IR better than PA 5 1 Civil Servant 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 11 1 Consultant: Rural Development RD 26 1 Student 41 1 PhD Student b) Intergenerational Equity: resource reserve 12 1 Environmental Engineer for Development 13 1 Agriculturist 21 1 Taxation 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture & Dvnt. 38 1 Gardener (MSc) Risk and Protection a)Environmental Protection (EP) 12 1 Environmental Engineer 17 1 Unemployed EP and catastrophism 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 32 1 Teacher 51 1 Postgraduate Student b) Of cultural diversity 31 1 Postgraduate Student IR as ineffective 10 1 Student 24 1 Student Integration of concepts or the need for it 7 1 Student 11 1 Consultant RD 18 1 Student 26 1 Student 34 1 PhD Student Env. Mgment. Difficulties for integration a) Incompatibility of interests 10 1 Student 40 1 Project co-ordinator (SD) b) Financial economic effectiveness' imperative 25 1 PhD St. Agriculture Devent. 30 1 Postgraduate Student 33 1 PhD Student c) Political manipulation 44 1 Post. St. Environment 46 1 Lecturer 38 47 1 PhD Student 48 1 Anthropologist d) Semiotic blur 24 1 Student 50 1 PhD Student Education: Dynamism of the concepts 37 1 Postgraduate Student 45 1 Environmental Manager 47 1 PhD Student 39 Table 4 Q4 - Should or should not environmental managers (EM) get involved in territorial ordering process in Amazon? RESPONSE - ARGUMENT SURVEY No. NVA VA Profession Yes 4 1 PhD St. Evolutionary Genetics In fact they are 22 1 Anthropologist Unsure 52 1 Lecturer: IT & Development 32 1 Teacher Question into Question 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 31 1 Postgraduate St Indigenous Peoples as EM 27 1 Anthropologist Yes, for Env. protection (catastrophism) 32 1 Teacher 33 1 PhD Student 42 1 Biologist Yes, EM are the ones (better able that IP) 12 1 Environmental Engineer 18 1 Student 21 1 Taxation 28 1 Lecturer 34 1 PhD student 36 1 Research Engineer 46 1 Lecturer 53 1 Journalist EM provide solutions/ take decisions 23 1 Designer 35 1 Lecturer 38 1 Gardener Yes but listening to others 5 1 Civil Servant 53 1 Journalist If Indigenous Peoples direct EM or projects 1 1 Lecturer: Env. Sociology 10 1 Student 14 1 Economist 41 1 PhD Student EM have equal rights to other stakeholders 2 1 PhD St. Biology 6 1 Lecturer Ecology EM 7 1 Student 29 1 Anthropologist 44 1 Post. Student Not inside IP territories 47 1 PhD Student Yes, if apolitical EM 9 1 Environmental Manager 17 1 Unemployed 37 1 Postgraduate Student Yes for political counteract 26 1 Student EM as facilitators 5 1 Civil Servant 10 1 Student 45 1 Environmental Manager Depends of capacity, ability & quality of EM 24 1 Student 31 1 Postgraduate Student EM tough job: political risk 15 1 Consultant: Health 40 1 Project Co-ordinator (SD) 40 References Adger, W. N., T. A. Benjaminsen, et al. (2001). "Advancing a Political Ecology of Global Environmental Discourses". Development and Change 32: 681-715. Ambrose-Oji, B., T. Allmark, et al. (2002). "The Environmental State and the Forest; of Lookouts, Leopards, and Losers". In The environmental state under pressurence. A. P. J. Mol and F. H. Buttel. Oxford, Elsevier. 10: 149-69. Castells, M. (1996). "The rise of the network society". Cambridge, MA, Blackwell Publishers. Denevan, W. M. (2001). "Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes". Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press. Ecologist (2002). Making it happen. Interview to Martin von Hildebrand. The Ecologist. 32: 44-7. Forero, O. A. (1999). From pure sciences to ethnosciences. A broad perspective on ecosystems analysis and governance. Examining the environmental management problems of the Yaigojé Resguardo Indigenous Reserve in the Colombian Amazon. Ecology and Epidemiology Group. Biological Sciences. Coventry, UK, University of Warwick: 233. --- (2000). "Territoriality and Governance in the Colombian Amazon". Conference: SLAS annual conference- 2000, Hull, (Unpublished). --- (2001). "The March of the Manikins. Agroforestry practices and spiritual dancing in Northwest Amazonia". Conference: Conservation and Sustainable Development -Comparative Perspectives, CCR-University of Yale. New Haven, Connecticut, Unpublished. --- (2002a). "Indigenous knowledge and the scientific mind: Activism or Colonialism?" Conference: Activism as History, History as Activism. History Department, Columbia University, New York. --- (2002b). "Technology in Northwest Amazonia: Sketches form Inside. A contribution to the Political Ecology of Northwest Amazonia." Unpublished. Forero, O. A., R. E. Laborde, et al. (1998). "Colombia: Yaigojé Indigenous Resguardo Natural Reserve". In Indigenous Peoples and Diversity Conservation in Latin America. IWGIA. Copenhagen, IWGIA. Doc. 87. Forero, O. A. and G. Woodgate (2002). "The semantics of 'Human Security' in Northwest Amazonia: between indigenous peoples' 'Management of the World' and the USA's State Security Policy for Latin America". In Human Security and the Environment. M. Redclift. Cheltenham UK and Northampton MA, Edward Elgar. Gómez, A. (1999). "Estructuración socioespacial de la Amazonia Colombina, siglos XIX-XX". In Domínguez, C. F. Cubides. Bogotá, CES, Universidad Nacional de Colombia: 21-40. Gómez, R. (1998). "The Nostalgia of Virtual Community. A Study of computer-mediated communications use in Colombian non-governmental organizations". Information Technology and People 11(3): 217-34. Hardin, G. J. (1998). "The Tragedy of the Commons". In Debating the Earth. The Environmental Politics Reader. S. Dryzek and D. Scholosberg. N.Y., Oxford University Press: 23-34. Myers, N. (1980). Conversion of Tropical Moist Forest: A Report prepared for the Committee on Research Priorities in Tropical Biology of the National Research Council. Washington D.C., National Academy of Sciences. OZIP (2002). SOS from Indigenous Peoples of Putumayo, Znet:http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=2122. 2002. Rabben, L. (1998). "Unnatural Selection. The Yanomami, the Kayapó and the Onslaught of Civilisation". London, Pluto Press. Sachs, W. (1977). "'Sustainable Development'". In The International Handbook of Environmental Sociology. M. Redclift and G. Woodgate. Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA, USA, Edward Elgar: 71-82. ---, Ed. (1993). "Global Ecology. A new arena of political conflict". London, Zed Books. Sevilla_Guzmán, E. and G. Woodgate (1997). "'Sustainable rural development': from industrial agriculture to agroecology". In The International Handbook of Environmental Sociology. M. Redclift and G. Woodgate. Cheltenham, UK Northampton, MA, USA, Edward Elgar: 83-100. Stott, P. (1999). Tropical rain forest: a political ecology of hegemonic mythmaking. IEA Studies on the Environment, No 15. London. 41 Stott, P. and S. Dullivan, Eds. (2000). "Political Ecology: Science, Myth and Power". London and N.Y., Arnold. Varese, S. (1996). "The new Environmentalist Movement of Latin American Indigenous Movement pp." In Valuing Local Knowledge. S. Brush and D. Stabinsky. Washington D.C.: 122-144. Weinberg, B. (2001). "Amazonia: Planning the Final Destruction. Mega-Development Threatens Devastation of Indian Ecologies". Native Americas: Hemisphere Journal of Indigenous Issues 450: Fall/Winter.

PRIZE NUMBER. ' APRIL, 1906 ¥OL. XI¥. HO. 2 GETTYSBURG COLLEGE GETTYSBURG, PA. M*Uft«0ftNMtf \m**nmm***mh*m*m EBTT«aBVRaMKEW8» PRIHT, , r HELP THOSE WHO HELP US. The Intercollejlate Bureau or Academic Costume. Cotrell & Leonard, ALBANY, N. Y. Makers of Caps, Gowns and Hoods to the American Colleges and Universities from the A tlan-- tie to the Pacific- Class contracts a specialty, Rlcia. G-owxis fcr tlxe ZF-u.lpit a-zid.Beaaels.- Seniors Going into Business or Technical Work should write us to-day for full information concerning desirable posi-tions in all parts of the country. We already gave 1,2:51 definite places for College, University and Technical School graduates to be-gin work in July or September and the list is growing daily. A choice of the beat opportunity is yours if you write us at once, stating age, course taken, practical experience if any. and line of work preferred. ^5e3a.n.s37-l-va.ziia. B'ld.g-., I»ls.ila,«a.elp3a.ia" ^a,.- Offices in Twelve Other Cities. Come and Have a Good Shave, or HAIR-CUT at Harry B. Seta's BARBER SHOP 35 Baltimore St. BARBERS' SUPPLIES A SPECIALTY. Also, choice line of fine Cigars. R. A. WONDERS Corner Cigar Parlors. A full line of Cigars, Tobacco, Pipes, etc. Scott's Corner, opp. Eagle Hotel GETTYSBURG, PA. Pool Parlors in Connection. IF YOU CALL ON C. A. Bloehe*, deuueler, Centre Square, He can serve you in anything you may want in REPAIRING)- or JEWELRY. i WE RECOMMEND THESE FIRMS. Established 1867 by Allen Walton SJfc Allen K. Walton, Pres. and Treas. Kobt. J. Walton, Superintendent. Hummelstown Brown Stone Company and Manufacturers of BUILDING STONE, SAWED FLAGGING, and TILE, WALTONVILLE, Iade in his image thou must nobly dare The thorny crown of sovereignty to share. Think not too meanly of thy low estate ; Thou hast a choice ; to choose is to create." THE MERCURY. 43 SONG OF THE WAITERS. BY ROE EMMBRT, '06. OH, we belong to the boarding-house, The boarding-house caf£, Oh, we don't bother with etiquette, For manners are in the way ; If you've got the " mon " you steps right in, And every man has his say ; You pays yer cash, And you gets yer hash, At the boarding-house cafe\ We brings yer in and we sets yer down, At the boarding-house cafd ; You bows yer face and you says yer grace,. If it happens to be yer way ; When you ask for bread look out for yer head',. And keep it out of the way, For we slings 'em down, And don't pass 'em around, At the boarding-house caf£. And we ain't a first class restaurant, At the boarding-house cafe ; We've just a common eatin-hou.se And there's no champagne-frappe Yer soup comes hot, right out of the pot, But it ain't no consomme ; But it goes to the spot, And yer gets a lot, At the boarding-house cafe. Oh, we feeds ten dozen students, At the boarding-house cafe ; Oh, we piles it in their faces, Just three times every day ; We starts 'em in for breakfast With some shredded, flaked, baled hay ; For dinner its mash, For supper its hash, At the boarding-house caf£. 44 THE MERCURV. O'1) things look mean and they ain't too clean, At the boarding-house cafe ; When the outfit ain't too dirty, Why you bet we lets 'em lay, For we feeds the college students And they don't care anyway ; They pays their cash, And they gets their hash. At the boarding-house cafe. A MODEL Y. M. C. A. BUILDING. G. E. WOLFE, '09. By the death of Sir George Williams, which occured some weeks ago, the world was newly reminded of the great organi-zation, the Young Men's Christian Association, which he es-tablished sixty-one years ago. In these years the Association has undergone such a great transformation that today it is a mighty factor for good every-where, devoting itself to a broad and diversified development of young men and boys and engaging in many enterprises for general social advancement. The most characteristic monu-ment to the memory of this noble man will be found not in St. Paul's Cathedral, where his body will lie, but in the Association buildings which have been erected all over the world for the carrying on of its great work. It is the purpose of this paper to sketch what the writer, and others who have seen it, consider a model Association building. No one walking down one of the principal streets, in the not far distant city of Lancaster, could fail to observe this model Young Men's Christian Association building, for it occupies one of the most imposing corners in the city, and is of consider-able size; the main building being four stories in height, 180 feet long by 63 feet wide, and extending, together with the an-nexed gymnasium, practically the length of a half-square. The external appearance of the building is also such as to at-tract notice, distinguished as it is for its beauty of architecture THE MERCURY. 45 and material. One's first impressions, then, on entering the building, are very pleasing, and, as one continues to make an inspection of it throughout, these first impressions invariably continue with the spectator. A marked- feature of the internal appearance of the building is its cheerfulness—it has a homelike air. The fact that care and taste has been exercised in the arrangement of every part is clearly in evidence. ' The walls throughout the building are hung with some of the most beautiful pictures that are to be had—fine reproductions of famous paintings, most of them, framed in neat, substantial frames ; all of them the gift of one of the city's most generous educators. These are not only pleas-ing to behold, but also make interesting and inspiring subjects for study. The attractive paper on the walls also adds greatly to the cheerfulness of the interior of the building—the designs in some of the rooms being quite rich—as do also the furnish-ings, which are elegant and serviceable. In fact, the internal appearance of the building,is all that one could desire. But the purpose to which every part of this splendid Asso-ciation building is dedicated is the thing that will interest one most, when making a tour of it. The basement is the first de-partment- visited,-and ihe first objects there to claim one's at-tention are the Twin Regulation Howling Alleys, the Manual Training Room, which is well equipped for practical work, and the Locker Rooms. The Swimming Pool, 40 feet long by 18 feet wide and 3 1-2 to 6 1-2 feet deep, the seven beautiful marble and nickeled Shower-Baths, constituting a most elegant bath equipment; the Boiler Rooms, Workshop and Store Cel-lars are also located on this floor. On the first floor are seven Store Rooms, the rentals of which contribute materially to the financial needs of the Asso-ciation, and the splendid Gymnasium with 2806 feet of floor space, equipped with the best appliances for health and devel-opment. The second floor is the working floor of the Association and contains the Reading Room, which is open to all the men of the city; the Library with its 8000 volumes; Member's and 46 THE MERCURY. Ladies' Parlors; the main floor of the Auditorium, which has a seating capacity of 835 ; and the Reception Halls and General Offices. On the third floor are located the Banquet Halls; a suite of rooms given over entirely to boys' work; the Bible Study Room; Committee Room; Auditorium Gallery; Magazine Closets and Kitchen. The fourth and top floor contains the Dormitories, the com-fortable rooms of which are furnished and maintained by the Ladies' Auxiliary; Educational Class Rooms, where young men can and do increase their store of learning in various branches.; Camera Dark Room, where the developing, toning, printing and mounting of pictures can be done most conven-iently ; and Boys' Printing Office. The value of this beautiful building is over $200,000, but the fact that it stands for all that is best in the physical, mental, social, and moral development of manhood, is what gives it its true worth. It provides an ideal place for the boy, as well as the young man, who is seeking to improve his spare moments, and who recognizes the value of association with his fellows in a healthful atmosphere. Though it is not by any means a mere place of amusement, it does furnish that which is most beneficial in this direction ; indeed the Association puts forth definite effort along this liner- to offset, if at all possible, the tendency of so many young men to gratify this element of their character in unclean places, the number of which in a city es-pecially is far too great. As an example of what is being done: in addition to the approved games constantly available, and the Star Course of entertainments, the Auditorium every Saturday evening during the winter season throws open its doors to the crowds, and furnishes most excellent entertainment in some form or another. The Physical Department in Association work today receives special attention, and this building providing as.it does the best gymnasium and apparatus obtainable, together with a most competent instructor, is there to offer men who need it the best possible means for scientific body building and health producing THE MERCURY. 47 work and there are many such, who from long hours in the office, behind the counter or in the study are forced to cry out for some sort of vigorous recreation. The Swimming Pool not only provides a luxury, which one must have enjoyed to ap-preciate, but is also an ideal place to acquire the fine art of swimming at any season of the year. However, all the various phases of Association life in an As-sociation building, interesting as they are, cannot be touched upon here, but it does seem in.place to express finally the hope that, especially in view of the fact that the Young Men's Chris-tian Association of Gettysburg College is striving to have a building of its own and thus increase its sphere of usefulness, this little description of a model Association building may arouse a deeper earnestness on the part of our students and friends to the extent that the time for the erection of the build-ing which will meet our needs here may be hastened. The necessity tor such a building is obvious, and it is to be hoped that all are interested. AMERICAN HUMORISTS. THOMAS E. SHEARER, '07. AMERICAN literature from its very beginning has had a delicate and exquisite humor. Who that has read the works of Washington Irving, the Father of American Litera-ture, has not been charmed with his humor? The same ques-tion might be asked concerning the works of J. Fenimore Cooper, the Founder of American Romance, and also of the earlier writings of Lowell, such as the " Biglow Papers," or his " Fable for Critics." Dr. O. W. Holmes acquired fame as a humorist from his Breakfast Table series, and even Hawthorne, with his " undercurrent ot melancholy and serious thoughtful-ness," has given glimpses of the higher and brighter side of life. Yet in this earlier period it would hardly have been predicted that there would ever be a class of writers who would make it a business to excite the laughter of the public. But the pro-fessional humorist made his appearence in the early '5o's, in 48 THE MERCURY. the persons of Benj. P. Shillaber and Frances M. Whitcher, of " Widow Bedott" fame. The former known to the public as " Mrs. Partington," was a very popular humorist. He was born in Portsmouth, N. H., in 1S14. For some years he was connected with various periodicals, and afterwards (1852) pub-lished " Rhymes With Reason and Without." This was fol-lowed by " Liie and Sayings of Mrs. Partington," " Partington-ian Patchwork " and " Ike Partington and His Friends." The droll sayings and blunders of " Mrs. Partington," drew smiles to the gravest of faces and made her a conspicuous character. Scarcely less prominent and slightly preceding her in time, was " Widow Bedott." Her quaint humor and playful descriptions of country life and society brought the writer immediate fame. " Widow Spriggins," added to the " Widow Bedott Papers," increased her fame. This authoress was born in Whitesboro, N. Y. in 1811 and died in 1852. Closely following these was a great number of humorists, among whom Samuel L. Clemens, Chas. Farrar Browne, Henry W. Shaw, Marietta Holly and E. William Nye are the most noted. Samuel L. Clemens, or-Mark Twain, as he is better known to the public, was one of the most successful of professional humorists. He was born in Florida, Mo., in 1835. He early learned the printing trade, was pilot on a river steamboat from 1855-*6i, when he became private secretary to his brother who then held a government position. He afterwards lived in Cali-fornia and in Hawaii, and later in Hartford, Conn., where he attained fame as a humorous lecturer. In the field of author-ship his broad humor soon gained for him a wide circle of readers. His most successful work was " The Innocents Abroad" published in 1869. Other well known works are " Adventures of Tom Sawyer," " Huckleberry Finn," etc. A good example of his humor is his story of playing jokes on a guide. The party was traveling in Italy, and after they had noticed the satisfaction the guide took in exciting their emotions, they never took any interest in anything. The doc-tor asked the questions, as he could keep his countenance, and ' MHBMMHHHHHMHHH1 THE MERCURY. 49 I looked more like an inspired idiot than any of the others. " It comes natural to him," said Mark. When the guide showed them relics of Columbus, none of them had ever heard of him, and so it was of everything else. " The guide was bewildered, nonplussed," he continues. " He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary things, and exhausted all his inge-nuity on us, but it was a failure; we never showed any interest in anything. He had reserved what he considered was his greatest wonder till the last—a royal Egyptian mummy. He took us there. He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came back to him." " See, gentelmen !—Mummy ! Mummy !" The eyeglass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever- « Ah what did I understand you to say the gentleman's name was ?" " Name ? he got no name ! Mummy !—'Gyptian mummy!" " Yes, yes, born here ?" " No, 'Gyptian mummy." " Ah just so. Frenchman, I presume ?" ■• No !—not Frenchman, not Roman !—born in Egypta !" " Born in Egypta. Never heard ot Egypta before. Foreign locality, likely. Mummy—mummy. How calm he is—how self possessed ! Is—ah—is he dead ?" " Oh, sacte bleu ! been dead three thousan' year!" The doctor turned on him savagely: " Here now, what do you mean by such conduct as this ? Playing us for Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn ! Trying to im-pose your vile second-hand carcasses on us ! Thunder and lightning! I've got a notion to—to—if you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!—or, by George, we'll brain you !" " Artemis Ward," as Chas. Farrar Browne is known, was a natural born humorist. Humor seems to have been his birth-right. It came from him as naturally as water flows from a spring. It sparkled in his conversation and gleams forth from all his writings. He was born in Maine, in 1834, and at an early age went West to make his fortune. After roving about for some time he entered newspaper work, contributing de- f I 5° THE MEKCURV. scriptions of an imaginary travelling menagerie, under the style of " Artemis Ward, Showman," while on a lecturing tour he had an opportunity to study the Mormons, and soon after, his book " Artemis Ward Among the Mormons," appeared. He was fond of giving himself the character of a showman and mingling lessons of good common sense with his droll witti-cisms. As such a character he tells the following experience with a " Woman's Club." " I pitched my tent in a small town in Injianny, one day last season, and while I was standin' at the dore takin' money a deppytashun of ladies came up and sed they was members of the Bunkumville Female Reformin and Wimins' Rites Asso-ciashun, and they axed me if they cood go in without payin.'" " Not exactly," sez I, " but you can pay without goin' in." " Dew you know who we air?" said one of the wimin—a tall and feroshus lookin' critter, with a blew kotton umbreller under her arm—" do you know who we air, Sir? " " My impreshun is," sed I, " from a kersey view, that you are females." " We air, Sur," sed the feroshus woman, " we belong to a Society whitch beleeve wimin' has rites—whitch beleeves in razin' her to her proper speer-—whitch beleeves she is endowed with as much intelleck as man is—whitch beleeves she is trampled on and aboozed—and who will resist hence4th and forever the encroachments of proud and domineerin men." During her discourse, the exsentric female grabbed me by the coat koller and was swinging her umbreller wildly over my head. " I hope marm," sed I, starting back, " that your intentions is honorable ! I'm a lone man hear in a strange place. Be-sides, I've a wife to hum." " Yes," cried the female, " she's a slave! Doth she never think of throwin' off the yoke of tyrinny and thinking and votin' for herself!—Doth she never think of these here things?" "Not bein' a natural born fool," sed I, by this time a little riled, " I kin safely say that she dothunt." - i THE MERCURY. 5 l "Oh what, what," screamed the female, " 0, what is the price that woman pays for her experiunce ! " " I don't know " sed I; " the price of my show is 15 cents pur individooal." " & can't our society go in free?" asked the female. " Not, if I know it," sed I. " Crooil, crooil, man ! " she cried and burst into teers. . " Won't you let my darter in ? " sed another of the exsentric females, " O, please let my darter in—she's a sweet gushin' child of nature." " Let her gush ! " roared I, as mad as I could be at their tarnal nonsense, " let her gush " whereupon they all sprung back with the simultaneous observashun that I was a Beest. " My female friends," sed I, " be-4 you leeve, I've a few re-marks to remark ; way them well. The female woman is one of the greatest institutions of which this land can boste. It's on-possible to get along without her. She is good in sickness— good in wellness—good all the time. O woman, woman," I cried, my feelin's worked up to a high poetick pitch, " you air an angel when you behave yourself, but when you take off your proper apparail & (metyforicolly speakin') get into panyloons— when you desert your firesides, & with your heds full of wimin's rites notions go round like roaring lions, seeking whom you may devour somebody—in short, when you undertake to play the man, you play the devil and air an emfatic noosance. " My iriends," I continued, as they were indignantly departin,' " way well what A. Ward has sed." Marietta Holley was a writer who saw the humorous side of things wherever one was to be found, and she presents it to her readers in the most agreeable manner. Her humor is with-out any apparent effort or anything that is far-fetched. It flows along in a natural spontaneous way that is delightful. Miss Holley was born near Adams, N. Y. In her early years she began to write sketches, poems and essays, some of which were published in a local paper and gave indications of the future success of the writer. Her first real literary effort appeared in a Philadelphia magazine under the pen name \1 S'< THE MERCURY. " Jemyme." After this she used the name of "Josiah Allen's Wife," by which she is now best known. It is said that her first book was refused by the publishing house, but that one member of the firm assumed the responsi-bility of bringing it out, and did so with eminent success.* Af-terwards, she published " My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet's" which was so successful that since then her books have been in constant demand. " Samantha at the Centennial" and " Sweet Cicely, or Josiah Allen's Wife as a Politician," both had large sales, but her most successful book was " Samantha at Saratoga" for which she received $ 10,000 before it was pub-lished. Nearly, one quarter of a million copies of this book have been sold. Owing to their length no example of her writings can be given here. Her biographer, however, says, " Her humor is of the wholesome type, imbued with common sense and she never provokes laughter at anything which is good. Ratherr in the most playful and laughter provoking manner, does she hit off the follies and foibles of society. She can see some-thing humorous in almost every person, every snatch of con-versation and every style of dress." Edward William Nye was a writer of humorous sketches. He is known to the public as " Bill Nye," the signature under which his articles were published. He was born in Shirley, Maine, in 1850. While he was yet a child the family moved to the West, and he received his education at Falls River, Wis, Later he went to Wyoming where he studied law and was ad-mitted to the bar in 1876. At an early age he began to con-tribute humorous sketches to the papers. For some years he was connected with various western journals and it was while he was editor of the Laramie "Boomerang" that his fame spread beyond the confines of the West. He finally settled in New York, where he contributed to the " World " and to some other prominent papers. He made a lecturing tour through Europe, and on his return lived at Ashe-ville, N. C, where he died in 1896. His writings have been — HBHMMM BHMHP If THE MERCURY. 53 published in book form under the titles—" Bill Nye and Boom-erang," " The Forty Liars," " Baled Hay," and " Remarks." He says the discovery of New York occurred in this man-ner : " About this time a solitary horseman might have been seen at West Two Hundred and Ninth street, clothed in a lit-tle brief authority, and looking out to the West as he petu-lantly spoke in Tammany dialect. As he stands there aboard of his horse one sees that he is a chief in every respect, and in life's great drama would naturally occupy the middle of the stage. It was at this moment that Hudson slipped down the river from Albany, past Fort Lee, and, dropping a knickle into the slot at One Hundred and Twenty fifth street, weighed his anchor at that place. As soon as he had landed and discovered the city, he was approached by the chief, who said :." We gates. I am on the the committe to show you our little town. I suppose you have a power of attorney, of course, for dis-covering us?" " Yes," said Hudson. " Very good," said the chief, as they jogged down town on a Sixth Avenue elevated train towards the wigwams on Four-teenth street. " We do not care especially who discovers us so long as we hold control of the city organization. How about that, Hank ?" " That will be satisfactory," said Mr. Hudson, taking a pack-age of imported cheese and eating it, so they could have the car to themselves. Thus was New York discovered via Albany and Fort Lee, and five minutes after the two touched glasses, the brim of the Schoppin and the Manhattan cocktail tinkled together, and New York was inaugurated." There yet remains space, to say but a few words about " Josh Billings " and to give his " Letter to Farmers." Henry W. Shaw, or " Josh Billings," was the son of a Massachusetts Congressman and was born April 21,1818, He entered Hamil-ton College but soon tired of college life and ran away to the West. There he led a roving life, at one time he was a coal-dealer ; again, he was a farmer, and then he became a steam- 54 THE MERCURY. boat captain. He finally settled in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., as a real estate agent and auctioneer. The quaint spelling he adopted has had much to do with the popularity of his productions. He wrote an " Essay on the Mule" which received no notice; then adopting dialectic spel-ling his " Essa on the Muel, by Josh Billings," was reproduced in halt the papers of the country. His homely humor, plain common sense and droll manner, made him popular as a lectuier. Among his publications are— " Josh Billings on Ice ; " " Every Boddy's Friend ;" " Trump Kards ; " and " Josh Billings Allminax," which continued for ten years with a circulation of over one hundred thousand copies a year. He died in Monterey, Cal, in 1883. LETTER TO FARMERS. Beloved Farmers : Agrikultur iz the mother ov farm pro-duce ; she is also the step.mother of garden sass. Rize at half-past 2 o'clock in the morning, bild up a big fire in the kitchen, burn out two pounds ov kandles, and greeze yure boots. Wait pashuntly for dabrak. When day duz brake, then commence tew stir up the geese and worry the hogs. The happiest man in the world iz the farmer; he rizes at 2 o'clock in the morning, he watches for dalite tew brake, and when she duz brake, he goes out and stirs up the geese and worries the hogs. What iz a lawyer ?—what is a merchant ?—what is a dok. tor?—what is a.minister?—I answer, nothing. A farmer is the nobless work ov God ; he rizes at 2 o'clock in the morning, and burns out a half a pound of wood and two kords ov kandles, and then goes out tew worry the geese and stir up the hogs. Beloved farmers, adevv, JOSH BILLINGS. S THE MERCURY. 55 THE USE OF ROUTINE. E. VICTOR ROLAND, '07. THERE has never been an age when activity so pervaded every phase and condition of life, as in our present age. Whether we take a view of the industrial world, with its varied enterprises, or survey the broad field of intellectual pursuits, we behold every successful and renowned man actively engaged in his particular work. This must needs be true of every in-dividual, whether he be farmer or manufacturer, lawyer, preacher, or what not. We live in an age of great things, and consequently great things are expected of us, and in order that we may not be a disappointment to ourselves and others we must follow out some system or. routine of work. It shall not be our purpose to speak of the use of routine in the many pursuits of life, where it must necessarily be followed, if suc-cess is sought, but to consider it in relation to education and its importance in student life. A splendid example of routine is found in almost all of our schools and colleges. Take for instance the system followed out in every well regulated public school. The child takes up the study of certain branches, and continues these from day to day and from term to term, until he is able to take up other studies, ior the development of his higher faculties, and thus he continues until he has prepared to enter college, where the course is continued on the same plan. Just what routine should be adopted by the student when he enters college is hard to map out, but it is most essential that every college man adopt some routine to be followed out in his daily life. Now in order that one may not err in the mapping out of this daily plan of action there are three things that he must realize. First, that he has come to college above everything else to be a Christian man. Secondly, that he has come to college to acquire the training, that comes from the pursuit of such.studies as the curriculum offers. Thirdly, that there are various outside activities of the col-lege life that he must help maintain. r; I 56 THE MERCURY. Now as to the first. How is the student to maintain his Christian life, and raise it to a higher standard ? There seems to be only one reasonable way to do this, and that is to set apart a portion of every day, for the study of God's Word, and the cultivation of the secret prayer life. The college man has peculiar temptations, and it is only by following out the above plan, that he can hope to combat successfully with them. 'Twill not be necessary to say to the one who follows out the above plan, that he should attend as many of the religious services associated with the institution, as are possible. So then we will consider this as the first step toward a successful routine. It would hardly seem necessary to say that every student who enters college, should pursue energetically the studies composing the regular course. It is only through this plan that he can ever expect to become a learned man. Taking for granted, that every student realizes this, there might be added a word in regard to how these studies should enter into the day's work. Every lesson should have a certain portion of the day in which to be gotten out, and if possible nothing else should be allowed to interfere. It might be added here, that a portion of every, day could be well used, if it were allotted to the study or reading of good literature. It is fitting also to say that some portion of the day, should be allotted for glancing over the daily newspapers. And now we come to the consideration of the outside work of college life, such as the literary societies, the college publi-cations, the musical clubs, and the various athletic sports. How much time a student can devbte to such matters, will de-pend largely on his ability to get out his required work. The ordinarily intelligent student will have some time to put on such work, and so he should help in whatever field he is fitted for. Every student should engage in some form of athletics, if it is possible lor him to do so, as all decent sports, will aid in giving him a strong body, which is the best condition for a free and healthy mind. It is a sad thing that many students do not realize the importance of the exercise of their physical organism, and thus quite a few leave college physical wrecks. ■■■■■Hi THE IVfERCURY Entered at the Postoffice at Gettysburg: as second-class Matter VOL. XIV GETTYSBURG, PA., APRIL, 1906 No. 2 Assoi tale Editors GEO. W. KESSLER, '08 J. K. ROBB, '08 EDMUND L. MANGES, '08 Advisory Board PROF. J. A. HIMES, LITT.D. PROF. G. D. STAHLEY, M.D. PROF. J. W. RICHARD, D.D. Editor-in-chief WARD B. S. RICE, '07 Exchange Editor THOS. E. SHEARER, '07 Business Manager THOMAS A. FAUST, '07 Ass't Bus. Managers. HENRY M. BOWER, '08 H. WATSON DAVISON,- '08 Published each month, from October to June inclusive, by the joint literary societies of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College. Subscription price, one dollar a year in advance; single copies 15 cent3. Notice to discontinue sending the MERCURY to any address must be accompanied by all arrearages. Students, Professors and Alumni are cordially invited to contribute. All subscriptions and business matter should be addressed to the Busi-ness Manager. Articles for publication should be addressed to the Editor. Address THE MERCURY, GETTYSBURG, PA. EDITORIALS. WE consider it no little pleas-ure to send to our readers, this month, a double prize number, consisting of the inter-collegiate oratorical prize oration, and the Senior Graeff prize essay. By these we are enabled to judge our position among the institu-tions of our rank, and to become acquainted with the merits and qualities of orations and essays which are worthy of reward and applause. 58 THE MERCURY. MUCH interest has been shown of late by the members of the literary societies. Some of the students are just beginning to realize the invaluable, practical benefits that are derived from this line of work. We note, with pleasure, a great im-provement in the work of the members and particularly of those who have been most active. It is this unceasing toil, this ever readiness to act, that has raised the plain of the achieve-ments of the societies so much nearer that of their ideal. The one great object of the societies is to create a desire in the hearts of their members for better and higher achievements in the literary field. We study our text books so that we may develop our minds, cultivate our intellects, and broaden our sphere of thought, but how are we to impart our knowledge to others, unless we learn to give expression to our.thoughts. If we should study our text books from now until eternity, what would we get ? Theory, that's all, simply theory. It is very good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far unless we are able to put it into practice. Be practical, are the key-words to success. By continued application we develop our intellect, but what will this development avail us unless we rightly direct it. The literary societies are the practical agents whereby an ease of speech and clearness of expression is at-tained. If you don't believe it, try it. Thousands of others have done so, and are now at the top of the ladder above the wrangling of the rabble. We congratulate the societies upon the rapid strides they have made toward excellence in every branch of their work, and, in the literary field, among the students, we hope soon to see even greater activity. * * * 1 GETTYSBURG has again triumphed. It was not on the ath-letic field ; it was not a victory over brute muscle and brawn ; but we are gratified to say that it was in the intellectual arena that she has shown her strength. One of Gettysburg's sons has brought honor to his Alma Mater from a field from which heretofore she has retreated in defeat, though honor-able, and each time with a firmer determination to finally con-quer. Her earnestness has now been compensated, and the THE MEKC'JRV. 59 victorious ivy of the 1906 inter-collegiate contest waves over her head. This victory, which several times has been on the point of being ours, but is now a reality, should be a stimulus to every loyal Gettysburg student. It should be our purpose to hold that which has been placed in our hands; it should be an at-tainment to which all should turn with that firm determination which is characteristic of final success. Then let us all realize the situation and prepare ourselves to contend with the future. Our chance will be small, if we put too much confidence in letting tomorrow care for itself; or if we attempt, in the very latest hour, to make a dash, for there is much truth in a bor-rowing from Hare : " Nothing bursts forth at once, the light-ning may dart out of a cloud ; but the day sends forth his bright heralds before him to prepare the world for his coming." We hope, fellow students, that you will not regard this lightly; for we know that these things are not mere chance, but the re-sults of careful and steady preparation. Nor do we believe that we are hoping for impossibilities, for we are confident that there are those in our midst who can again lead the Orange and Blue to victory. EXCHANGES. We acknowledge the receipt of the following exchanges: The Amulet, The Haverfordian, The Scio Collegian, The Sus-quehamia, Juniata Echo, The Forum, The Manitou Messenger, The Red and Blue, Augustana Observer, The State Collegian, The Dickinsonian, The College Student, The Drury Mirror, The Monthly Bulletin, Temple Echos, The Lesbian Herald, The Philomatliean Monthly, The Mountaineer, The Augsburg S. S. Teacher, The Star and Sentinel, The Gettysburg Compiler, and the Western Maryland College Monthly. The College Student contains a very readable essay on " Chas. Lamb—His Personal Qualities, His Dictaion and Rank as a Critic." The writer treats his subject systematically and the result is a unity which is very pleasing. 60 THE MERCURY. " American Students in Christian Mission " in The Philo-mathean Monthly contains some concise statements concerning the great Student Missionary Conventions. There have been five such conventions in America. The first was held in Cleve-land, Ohio, in 1891, and was attended by 680 delegates ; the second, at Detroit, Mich., enrolled 1325 delegates; the third was at Cleveland again, with 2221 delegates ; at the fourth, at Toronto, Canada, there were 2957 delegates and at the fifth, at Nashville, Tenn., their number was almost 5,000. The Augustana Observer this month is below par. Neither of its two articles are up to the standard, although one is writ-ten by an alumnus. Just the reverse is The Manitou Messen-ger. Its neat appearance is pleasing and the contents are in keeping with the appearance. The review of " Tito Melema " and the article on " Joan of Arc " are both good. We find The Red and Blue especially attractive this month. " The Sketch Book " is a novel feature, but highly entertaining. The article " The Lure of Bohemia " was read with profit and enjoyment. Prize Contest Essays are usually very profitable reading, but there is one in The Sitsquehanna entitled " Conrad Weiser— The Patron of two Races " that makes us wonder if the prize is not a booby affair. From all appearances the essay seems to be a compilation of heterogenous sentences, nearly every one of which is placed in a separate paragraph regardless of content. We trust there are other competitors, for we should not like to see a prize of any value and honor won by such an essav. PATRONIZE OUR ADVERTISER'S • i FURNITURE Mattresses, Bed Springs, Iron Beds, Picture Frames. Repair Work done promptly. Under-taking a specialty. * Telephone No. 97. £9C. E- Bender 37 Baltimore St., Gettysburg, Pa. The Windsor Hotel 1217=2 Filbert St., Philadelphia. Headquarters for Students. Thoroughly Renovated, Refurnished and Remodeled FRANK M. SCHEIBLEY, Manager. Graduate of Lafayette College 1898. A. G. Spalding & Bros. 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New York, Chicago, Boston, Buffalo, Washington, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Montreal, Canada, New Orleans, London England, Denver, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Syracuse, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Hamburg, Germany. ,. .-.i.k.i i»i«j; PATRONIZE OUK ADVERT1SEKS. BEGKEK & GOUINS OHAMBERSBURG ST., Dealers in Beef, Veal, Lamb, Pork, Sausage, Pudding, Bologna, Hams, Sides, Shoulders, Lard, Prime Corned Beef. SEFTON & FLEMMING'S LIVERY Baltimore Street, First Square, Gettysburg, Pa. Competent Guides for all parts of the Battlefield. Arrangements by telegram or letter. Lock Box 257. J. I. MUMPER. The improvements to our Studio have proven a perfect success and 41 Baltimore St., we are now better prepared than Gettysburg, Pa. ever t0 give you satisfactory work • ICE CREAM Telephone Call 1612 SODA WATER Sheads' (High (Grade (Confections 37=39 Chambersburg Street, Gettysburg, Pa. FRUITS RESTAURANT ATTACHED Under New Management —r-^ The Peoples Drug Store Invites you to visit them and select your needs from a fresh, new, and up-to-date stock. C. WM. BEALES, Ph.Gr., Prop. D. J. Swartz Country Produce Groceries Cigars and Tooaccj) GETTYSBURG. Dealer in Shoes Repaired —BY— J. H- BR^ER, 115 Baltimore St., near Court House. Good Work Guaranteed, WANTED. College students during their vacation can easily make $20 to $30 per week. Write for par-ticulars. THE UNIVERSAL MFG. CO., Pittsburg, Pa. "I I I

Issue 53.1 of the Review for Religious, January/February 1994. ; Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JANUARY-FEBRUaRY 199Zl. - V6LUME ~; ¯ NUMBER 1~o Review for Religious (ISSN 0034-639X) is published bi-monthly at Saint Louis Universi~ by the Jesuits of the Missouri Province. Editorial Office: 3601 Lindell Boulevard ¯ St. Louis, Missouri 63108-3393. Telephone: 314-535-3048 ¯ Fax: 314-535~0601 Manuscripts, books for review, and correspondence with the editor: Review for Religious ¯ 3601 Lindell Boulevard ° St. Louis, MO 63108-3393. Correspondence about the Canonical Counsel department: Elizabeth McDonough OP ¯ P.O. Box 29260 ¯ Washington, DC 20017. POSTMASTER Send address changes to Review for Religious ¯ P.O. Box 6070 ° Duluth, MN 55806. Second-class postage paid at St. Louis, Missouri, and additional mailing offices. See inside back cover for information on subscription rates. ©1994 Review for Religious Permission is herewith granted to copy any material (articles, poems, reviews) contained in this issue of Review for Religious for personal or internal use, or for the personal or internal use of specific library, clients within the limits outlined in Sections 107 and/or 108 of the United States Copyright Law. All copies made under this permission must bear notice of the source, date, and copyright owner on the first page. This permission is NOT extended to copying for commercial distribu-tion, advertising, institutional promotion, or for the creation of new collective works or anthologies. Such permission will only be considered on written application to the Editor, Review for Religious. review for religious Editor Associate Editors Canonical Counsel Editor Assistant Editors Advisory Board David L. Fleming SJ Philip C. Fischer SJ Regina Siegfried ASC Elizabeth McDonough OP Jean Read Mary Ann Foppe Joann Wolski Conn PhD Mary Margaret Johanning SSND Iris Ann Ledden SSND Edmundo Rodriguez SJ Sefin Sammon FMS Suzanne Zuercher OSB Christian Heritages and Contemporary Living JANUARY-FEBRUARYI994 ¯ VOLUME53 '* NUMBER I contents feature Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God Elizabeth A. Johnson CSJ relates the stress within religious life to the loss of traditional God images and the search now for the hidden face of the living God. 29 43 58 toward the synod The Consecrated Life in Church and World Bishop Jan P. Schotte CICM explains the synod of bishops, with brief descriptions of previous ones and the 1994 synodal process. Charism, Charisms, and Faddism A. Paul Dominic SJ brings clarity to the Lineamenta treatment of the charism of religious life and the charisms of its many con-crete forms in various congregations. Hopes for the Synod and Beyond Joel Giallanza CSC focuses his attention on the identity and mis-sion of apostolic religious congregations and their relationship to the hierarchy. 64 73 82 mission and ministry Images of Hope in an Inner-City Parish George M. Anderson SJ shows God working in unlikely places, making use of humble and broken people to advance the values for which Jesus died and rose. A Bracelet of Elephant'sHair Jo O'Donovan RSM shares her sabbatical experience of an "outer" and "inner" Africa. The Modern Development of Messianic Prophecy Allen S. Maller presents for our ecumenical consideration a deeply felt Jewish view of Messianic meaning and fulfillment. 2 Review for Religious experiencing the spirit 89 Living in the Womb of God Marion Zeltmann PCPA reflects upon her experience of enclosure and prayer as a Poor Clare. 95 Do I Really Believe that Death Leads to Life? Francis Blouin FIC suggests some practical ways of responding to the current dyings manifest in religious life. 102 A Rite for Those Departing Religious Formation Peter A. Lyons suggests positive and wholesome ways in which individuals departing from religious life and ~he community mem-bers who remain might deal ritually with this reality. 107 120 130 religious life issues Integrating Human Needs in Religious Formation Howard J. Gray SJ suggests ways of viewing human needs as "longings," radical desires to be integrated in the art of religious ministry. Chapters Present and Future Catherine M. Harmer MMS reviews the history of chapters in reli-gious life and raises questions about their future functioning. Religious Life, a Continuum Francis Assisi Kennedy OSF examines, historical beginnings of reli-gious congregations for patterns surprisingly serviceable today. departments 4 Prisms 142 Canonical Counsel: The Conciliar Decree Perfectae Caritatis 149 Book Reviews Jan~mry-February 1994 3 prisms 1994--a year still to be lived, a year yet to pass into history. For most people there is a healthy anticipation of "good things" when new begin-nings are made. Perhaps such "anticipation" should be called, rather, a precious grace which interconnects us with God, the eternal optimist. New evangelization is the most consistently optimistic theme of John Paul II's papacy. While his encyclicals and apostolic exhortations are many and weighty (witness the most recent Splendor of Truth), I suspect that his repeated call to a new evangelization will be the most significant and lasting grace for the church. The call is a beginning similar to the beginning of a year; it is not as if evange-lization is any newer than the parade of days which form any year's calendar. The newness in large part comes from the attitude with which we enter into evangelization, just as it comes from the way we enter into another year. The oft-quoted phrase about this call to evangelization being "new in its vigor, new in its methods, and new in its expression" is grounded in the attitude which we bring to our Christian responsibility as evangelizers. Attitude alone is not enough, but unless the grace of optimism warms our efforts as believers in Good News to share it and explain it and to offer people a challenge, little evange-lization is the result. Do members of religious congregations need to see a more intimate connection between the new evangeliza-tion and their own efforts at renewal? Since all forms of Christian life come from our having the gospels in our blood, it would seem obvious that an evangelization effort promotes effective renewal. The gospels not only have 4 R~,iew for Religio~s inspired the different forms of religious life, but also have helped shape its various expressions and methods. Men and women moved by the Spirit of Christ have gifted the church with at least three prismatic "colors" of Christ-following that look monastic or mendicant or apostolic. The question remains for us today who have been illumined by these various Christ-prisms how our gospel-inspired attitude can reveal the graced mystery of this life-form in terms of new depths of meaning and new ways of expres-sion- in the very heritage we claim. The darkness we feel comes not from Jesus, the light-source whom we follow, but from our own self-chosen, squint-eyed angle of vision having so little to do with grace or gospel. So often our efforts at renewal seem more a vain search for one "tree of life" instead of for the God who gives all created gifts for our creatively discerned use. Optimism marks the effort of anyone who begins something. An evangelical optimism seems almost lacking both in internal reli-gious congregation renewal attempts and in hierarchical control efforts. As we begin this year of the synod on consecrated life, our prayer for ourselves and our church begs again for that grace dear to our God imaged as the prodigal parent who expects the son (and daughter) to be coming up the road--the grace of opti-mism. As we begin this new volume, Review for Religious warmly welcomes Regina Siegfried, a member of the Sister Adorers of the Blood of Christ, Ruma province, as associate editor. She serves currently as assistant professor of historical studies and spiritual-ity at Aquinas Institute in St. Louis. Former editor of Spirituality Today, she is well known for her books Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, edited with Bishop Robert Morneau, and In the Company of Preachers, edited with Edward Ruane OP. Review for Religious accepts graciously the loss of Michael Harter SJ as associate editor. In his new role assignment as direc-tor of novices for the Jesuit Missouri provirice, he can assure young candidates' solid formation through their familiarity with articles from Review for Religious. So in losing an editor, I am sure that we are gaining a number of new subscribers. Just as he leaves this media field, his prayer book, Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits, has been published by the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis and is already in its second printing. We wish him well and know that we will miss him. David L. Fleming SJ January-February 1994 5 feature ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON Between the Times: Religious Life and the Postmodern Experience of God As the third millennium of the Western, Christian calen-dar approaches, all manner of assessments are being made about what will fade into history and what will newly flourish in the year 2001 and afterwards. It does not take a new millennium, however, to see that religious life in the United States is passing through an epochal change, the outcome of which in terms of fade or flourish is an open question. The research project "The Future of Religious Orders in the United States," conducted by David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis under the sponsorship of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, and the Leadership Council of Women Religious, sets out fully aware of this moment in history2 The original proposal for this study underscores the rad-icality of the journey now underway. Religious orders, it notes, are in the midst of a process of transformation, defined in categories from the social sciences to mean: The operation of changing (as by mapping or through strategies) one configuration or expression into another in accordance with a rule, a purpose or mission. Elizabeth Johnson csJ is associate professor of theology at Fordham University. This article will be part of a companion book to The Future of Religious Orders in the United States: Transformation and Commitment, (Praeger Publishers, 1993) by David J. Nygren and Miriam D. Ukeritis. Her address is Department of Theology; Fordham University; Bronx, New York 10458-5165. 6 Review for Religious Such change, furthermore, involves: qualitative, discontinuous shifts in organizational members' shared understandings of the organization, accompanied by changes in the organization's mission, strategy, and formal and informal structures. The most basic questions of group and individual identity, involving who religious are, how they are to live, what they are to do, and why, are all at stake. Religious orders in this country, the proposal continues, are in the midst of a transformative process so profound that it will lead to the demise of some, the revitalizing of others, and the birth of new forms of the evangelical life as yet unimagined. The aim of this research project is to identify factors within religious orders themselves that will contribute to a suc-cessful outcome of this major metamorphosis. Recent historical studies have unveiled a heartening picture of how the evangelical following of Jesus in the church, traditionally called "religious life," has been incarnated in a great diversity of forms. From monastic to mendicant to apostolic communities, to mention but a few of the more widespread models, new forms of this living movement have consistently emerged from the insights of individuals and groups responding to the Spirit in the crucible of cultural change. A compelling interpretation of the present sit-uation holds that in the United States, at least, the present crisis of religious orders signals yet another breakthrough in the many-faceted evolution of forms of the evangelical life. If this be true, this is the first time in the history of the church that members of religious orders in a time of transition have been so self-con-sciously aware of their situation and so equipped with the tools of modern research that they can reflect on and even direct the pro-cess of change. The purpose of this essay is to provide a theological context for the data that follows. It is important to note that this essay was commissioned, designed, and largely written before the research project was completed. Therefore it should not be read as an interpretation of the project's findings. Rather, it is intended as an independently conceived reflective piece on this moment in the history of religious life. To .contextualize the report that follows, this essay first surveys the state of the question in contemporary literature on religious life and then identifies a basic shift occur-ring that affects all the rest and that holds great portent for the future, namely, a change in the experience of God.2 January-February 1994 7 Johnson ¯ Between the Times The living tradition of the change of forms of religious life is still alive; the great cycle of death and rebirth is turning once again. State of the Question Starting in the late 1970s, a number of excellent works have contributed to discussion of the meaning of religious life and have expressed the emerging self-understanding of religious them-selves. Written by or available to members of religious orders in North America, the list includes works on the history, sociology, and theology of the life as lived by both women and men in general,3 as well as works that focus on the experiences of women4 or men5 in particular. The imagery and language of these writings reflect the enormous tension in the state of the question, both as lived and reflected upon. There is a prevalence of "re" words: revitalize, refound, rein-terpret, reimagine, reweave, redefine, rebirth. Metaphors point to new creative acts: pouring new wine into new wine-skins; reweaving the threadbare cloth; standing at the crossroads and discerning the way ahead; planting new seeds; mid-wiring a birth; bringing order out of chaos. The focus is consistently on the future: shaping the coming age, strate-gizing for growth, negotiating the challenge of change, claiming identity, being converted. Individual differences of approach in this literature recede when compared with the convergences that these writings dis-play. Virtually all of the authors are seized by the conviction that in the Western democracies the missionary and apostolic mod-els of religious life, prevalent for the last two hundred years, are dying. Relatively speaking and in some cases literally, "there is no one behind us." But this does not mean that religious life itself is dying, for no one form has ever been definitively lasting as the predominant form for every era. What it may well mean, however, is that the living tradition of the change of forms of religious life is still alive; the great cycle of death and rebirth is turning once again,6 The present malaise and decline, if lived through with discernment, fidelity, and courage, can lead to new, yet-to-be-determined forms commensurate with the cultural realities of the third millennium. 8 Review for Religious This being the case, the literature is replete with enlighten-ing analyses of ecclesial and cultural factors at work in the present changes. It also indicates that a strong consensus is taking shape regarding the way forward. A prophetic stance suffused with con-templation is being glimpsed as the crucial spiritual force that seeks expression in coming forms of religious life. Both the anal-ysis and this key proposal are surveyed here as interesting in their own right and as factors that themselves point further to a foun-dational experience of God. Changes in Church and Society The literature agrees that the most important ecclesial factor underlying the shift in religious life's self-understanding contin-ues to be Vatican II's two-pronged theological articulation of the church's identity and mission. Ad intra (internally) the church is first and foremost the people of God, with every member conse-crated by baptism and empowered to life in Christ. The conse-quent universal call to holiness undercuts the traditional notion that religious life is an elite state of perfection whose members are spiritually set above ordinary lay people. Rather, religious live out their call to holiness as a sacrament or sign to the whole church of its Spirit-filled vocation. Ad extra (externally) the church is to turn pastorally toward the world as God's good creation, marred by sin but redeemed by Christ and worthy of attention. The mission of the church in the world undermines the tradi-tional dualism between the sacred and the secular, along with the concomitant idea that religious should be set apart from the world. Rather, they are to live in relation to the world, not over against but ~vith and for, in criticism and compassion. The conciliar shift from a juridical to a more-biblically-based pastoral identity and mission, still being contested and negotiated in the church at large, undergirds the changes in self-understanding, lifestyle, and ministry that now affect traditional forms of religious life. Since the council, additional ecclesial factors have appeared that continue to impinge upon religious life in the United States. The ongoing efforts by religious orders to reinterpret founding charisms is occurring in the context of postconciliar reinterpre-rations of the Catholic biblical, theological, and liturgical tradi-tions themselves. The infusion of insight from these sources is resulting in new and influential understandings, such as the rad- .January-Febrnary 1994 9 Johnson ¯ Between the Times ¯ ical equality of all in baptismal grace. Furthermore, the postcon-ciliar explosion of lay ministries, both ecclesially sponsored and lay initiated, is multiplying the possibilities open to those who wish to serve in the church beyond the confines of traditional religious life. At the same time it creates a situation of shared, collabora-tive ministry between religious and the laity. In these same years, the original immigrant church in this country has reached mainstream status with the majority of its members moving into the middle class. More options for service and advancement have opened up in the civil sector, lessening the church's attraction as the primary field for a dedicated life. In addition, the economic and educational mores of middle-class life coupled with the availability of birth control has resulted in the reduced size of Catholic families, thus shrinking the pool from which candidates for religious life were traditionally drawn. Meanwhile, a new wave of immigration from Latin America and Asia is presently changing the face of the church; one-third of Catholics in the United States are now Hispanic, half of whom are younger than eighteen years of age. Despite outstanding service on the part of some religious of European descent, however, dif-ferences of culture, race, class, and age, if not overt, prejudice, seem to prev.ent the majority of religious orders from making an effective case for their way of life to members of new immigrant groups. Eras do not repeat themselves. All of these ecclesial factors are playing out in the wider con-text of the church .becoming a world church, less European in character and belonging to all cultures; a church of the diaspora, less supported by a homogeneous culture and more a little flock in a pluralist world; and a church in interreligious dialogue, open to the wisdom of other great religious traditions. Social, economic, and political forces at work in the culture of the United States are also contributing to changes in religious life) These forces are many and complex, but several consistently surface in the literature: democracy, which yields a more partic-ipative rather than authoritative style of governance; global aware-ness, which subverts provincialism; growing consciousness of economic and social injustice at home and abroad, which demands action to relieve poverty and promote justice; pervasive violence, which highlights the need for teaching and modeling peaceful resolution of conflicts; materialism, which calls for a countercul-tural witness to simplicity of life and the value of the human over 10 Review for Religious the product; excessive individualism, which cries out for the anti-dote of a genuine community of free and responsible persons; ethnocentrism, racism, and insensitivity to other cultures, which needs the word of the gospel about the fundamental human dig-nity of every person; and feminism, which advocates the equal inclusion of women in that human dignity. The search in the United States for a new, more humane society among ourselves, between all nations, and between human beings and the natural world of this planet contextualizes and begins to inspire the search for new, vital forms of religious life. In a striking way, ecclesial and cul-tural factors have converged in the rise of Christian feminism and its influ-ence in women's religious orders. It is indisputable that women's insights into how to live the evangelical life have never yet been allowed full scope in the course of church history, even now. Perhaps it was the play of prov-idence that unleashed the conciliar reforms at the very moment that the women's movement was gathering force once again in the United States. It is indisputable that women's insights into how to live the evangelical life have never yet been allowed full scope in the course of church history, even now. In any event, while renewing their lives in the light of the gospel and their founding charisms and while strengthening their witness in the world, especially among those depriv.ed of human dignity, women religious became aware of themselves as women in a patri-archal church and society. They .began to notice the systemic absence and silence of women in church pol!cy-making bodies and ministries, its obvious connection with gender, and the result-ing pressures on the way they lived their lives. Contextualized by the women's movement in church and society, they began to find their own voice and to claim, even for themselves, the respect befitting a human person. Women's experience was affirmed as a legitimate if untapped source of knowledge about religious life and its ministry, prayer, community, and governance, and this found expression in their reflection, dialogue, and new constitu-tions. The result of this awakening was a release of energy that bore and continues to bear promise for the future of religious January-February 1994 11 Johnson ¯ Between the Times life. But it also brings conflict as men church authorities refuse to reverence or dialogue with the insights coming from women's experience, insisting rather on conformity to their own under-standing and law. At this point the alienation of legions of women in the church is a matter of public record. Women religious, too, know this darkness. But among women religious in the United States at the end of the twentieth century, the conviction per-dures that the goals of Christian feminism are fully in accord with the gospel. They continue to grapple with issues of identity and mission with the understanding that through their struggle the Spirit of God is offering a transforming grace to the whole church, although, terrifyingly, grace may always be refused.8 In and through all of this analysis of ecclesial and cultural factors that affect religious life today, authors have been seeking clues as to how this life will be able to flourish in the future. The search appears to be narrowing. Glimpse of a New Form: Prophetic, Contemplative Life In books and essays about religious life and in documents generated by religious orders and the national conferences, a new combination of ancient dements is beginning to define the essen-tial character of religious life. The emerging understanding of this life is primarily that of persons and communities called to prophetic ministry embedded in a contemplative relationship to God. Prophecy and mysticism, prophetic witness and contem-plation, will shape the evangelical life of love of God and neigh-bor in its coming age. The two national conferences of men and of women religious place this insight at the head of the list of ten transformative ele-ments they identify for religious life in the future: 1. Prophetic Witness: Being converted by the example of Jesus and the values of the gospel, religious in the year 2010 will serve a prophetic role in church and society. Living this prophetic wimess will include critiquing social and ecclesial values and structures, calling for systemic change and being converted by the marginalized with whom we serve. 2. Contemplative, Attitude Toward Life: Religious in 2010 will have a contemplative attitude toward all creation and be motivated by the presence of the sacred? 12 Review forReligious In a similar way the visioning groups studied in the Futures Project as well as those identified by the research as outstanding leaders consistently and vigorously endorsed the prophetic/con-templative stance. Far from being an esoteric perspective, this stance brings to light what is most basic in Christian faith and what the church itself needs to emphasize in order to thrive in the future. As Karl Rahner foresaw, the spirituality of the future will arise from rela-tion with the living God at the very heart of the world and con-sequently "will be a spirituality of the Sermon on the Mount and of the evangelical counsels, continually involved in renewing its protest against the idols of wealth, pleasure, and power.''t° This is the calling of the church as a whole, and religious life crystallizes and witnesses to this. The two constituent elements, prophecy and contemplation, can be distinguished mentally and examined separately, but in reality they form one living shape, one wholistic form, one gestalt of life. Asking which comes first is a chicken-and-egg kind of question, with no intelligible answer in sight.1~ Contemplation is a way of seeing that leads to union. It arises from an experience of connection with the sacred at the very core of life. Mediated, as always, by created things such as words, images, and actions, this relationship unfolds as persons and com-munities allow these mediations to lead them into the living pres-ence of the holy. Insofar as the created mediations themselves are transcended in contemplation, this experience counteracts the human effort to control the divine and instead delivers the spirit into the bright darkness of God. From one perspective, the con-nection with the sacred is a result of the inflow of the love of God inflaming and awakening the heart. From another, it entails the discipline of becoming fully conscious, journeying to one's deepest self and to the outer limits of the cosmos in order to touch the divine. In the process, the contemplative "knows" God not in an extrinsic, conceptual way but from within, experien-tially. At the very heart of existence one is in touch with holy mystery, a relation for which the I-Thou relationship among human beings is only a remote analogy. As a result, a certain intuition arises by which one begins to know and love the world as God does. This attitude is totally inclusive of all creation. Everything created is precious and sacred within the cosmic ambience of life and is cause for delight and January-February 1994 13 Johnson ¯ Between the Times thanks. But the evident brokenness of the world and damage done persons and other creatures are cause for grief, compassion, and protest. In some unspeakable situations,, the utter depravity of evil occasions the most profound, wordless hope against hope, without any supports, in the risk that God is faithful in judgment and grace. The contemplative attitude is thus not otherworldly but pro-foundly turned toward this world in celebration and resistance, knowing that the Creator is also the Redeemer. The prophetic lifestyle and action that express this way of seeing are not the result of simple humanism (although the world could use a lot more of this too) but of real belief in God. In solidarity with divine purpose for the world, prophetic persons and communities desire to restore right relationships and so to set right what causes pain and suffering. While this has always been the case, the hermeneutic of prophecy in our day with its sophisticated knowl-edge of systems realizes that the wounds of the heart also afflict culture. Thus prophetic witness includes critique not just of per-sonal acts but also of social, economic, and political structures and values in society. Knowing, too, that we are a sinful church always in need of repentance and reform, this witness is borne toward the values and structures of the community itself. The prophetic stance is marked by a number of characteris-tics. These include attentive listening to the creative Spirit of God, connecting with the suffering in a situation and evaluating its causes, naming what is unjust, being empowered to articulate an alternative future based on the dream of God for the world, bringing compassion and hope to the brokenness, and resistance and challenge to the status quo that would maintain it. In the process prophetic persons and communities strive to empower people in their struggle to live and survive, in turn being taught and empowered by them to continue to seek the face of God. In the Christian tradition this witness is shaped by the fol-lowing of Jesus, in whom the compassion of God takes flesh in the world. Contemplation and prophecy were indivisibly connected in his historical life. As Edward Schillebeeckx explains, "In the prophet Jesus, mysticism and healing came from one and the same source--his experience of the contrast between the living God and the history of human suffering." ~2 The reign of God that he announced envisages an end to exploitation or suppression; his ministry in word and deed enacted practical anticipations of this 14 Review for Religious salvation to come. His own drink from the cup of suffering in torment and execution and the seal of God's graciousness in the resurrection ground a hope in human history that has empow-ered discipleship ever since. Remembrance of Jesus through the power of the Spirit guides and informs the life of prophecy and ~ontemplation in the church. This vision of a wholistic con-templative, prophetic shape to reli-gious life in the future, glimpsed in the literature, is already a living, growing reality in some cases. It also stands in contrast to the overall shape of religious life in the present, which has become domesticated by too close an identification with the law, structure, and spirituality of the institutional church. In a particularly eloquent argument, Diarmuid O'Murchu, taking a clue from reli-gious life as it is lived in Eastern religions, contends that religious life in the west needs to reclaim its liminal identity, a move of genuine conversion en.tailing profound change in spirit and structure. Re!igious would then be known as persons and communities who are in touch with the sacred, passionately committed to just and loving relationships, fiercely resistant against exploitation of the earth and of persons, and willing to live countercultural lifestyles with and for the marginalized. They would stand in church and society a.s liminal, archetypal, prophetic persons, articulating and empowering the deepest love.13 To arrive at this goal, religious must confront many chal-lenges and questions. A key CMSM paper muses: People in general probably do not think of us as genuine prophets. What must we do, what price must we pay, if we wish to embrace a prophetic stance? How can we be prophetic without becoming triumphalistic? How can we be prophetic without losing a ministry .to the middle class which is the social origin of nearly all of us? How can we learn to read the signs of the times and discern more surely the thrust of prophecy? What steps must we take to arrive at solid social and cultural analysis? How can we relate our The contemplative attitude is thus not otherworldly but profoundly turned toward this world in celebration and resistance, knowing that the Creator is also the Redeemer. ~anuary-February 1994 15 Johnson * Between the Times traditional institutions to the prophetic role? How can we motivate ourselves, with God's grace, to accept a materi-ally poor standard of living? We have more questions than answers, but we believe that we are on the way to a new, more prophetic presence within the U.S. Church.~4 The Futures Project identifies "fidelity to purpose" and "response to absolute human need" as the two most basic ele-ments for the revitalization of religious life. As this brief survey of the literature shows, the search for the sacred in resistance to what afflicts the world is being fingered as the purpose that will shape the new form of this life. The move toward a contemplative-prophetic stance augurs well for the future insofar as it grapples with the religious heart of the matter in the context of the suf-fering of the contemporary world. Experience of God My own reflection on these matters brings me to a founda-tional area not frequently mentioned in the literature, namely, the idea of God that undergirds the evangelical life. The fasci-nation with the mystery of God is endemic to religious life every-where and at all times. The varieties of structures and self-understandings that have emerged in the course of history only serve to underscore this fact. As Sandra Schneiders observes, "Whatever unites all these people is more interior and spiritual than forms of life or types of behavior."15 The common thread that unites them all is a search for relationship with the sacred, leading to a certain kind of absorption with the religious dimen-sion of life. "Those who are called 'religious' in the technical sense of the word," writes John Lozano, "have decided to adopt a way of life whose intrinsic, underlying explanation is religious experience.''16 This way of life intends to give daily, concrete expression to the experience of God, to empower its further devel-opment, and to manifest its fruits publicly. Put another way by Ladislaus Orsy, the only reason for religious life is the experi-ence of God. This being so, it seems vitally important to inquire about the idea of God that is presupposed at any given moment, for this structures the experience of God that sustains the entire endeavor. As the primary symbol of the whole religious system, the idea of God is a lodestar. It represents what a community takes to be the 16 Review for Religious highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty. Thus it is not a neutral concept, but functions powerfully to shape the personal and corporate identity of believers. A religion, for example, which would speak about a warlike God and extol the way he smashes his enemies to bits would promote aggressive group behavior. By contrast, speech about a beneficent and lov-ing God who forgives offenses would turn the faith community toward care for the neighbor and mutual forgiveness.'7 By definition, the One whom people call God is the recipient of absolute human trust, God being "that to which your heart clings and entrusts itself" in the memorable phrase of Martin Luther (OSA).~s Consequently, the idea of God implicitly guides all of a person's and community's principles, choices, system of values, enterprises, and relationships. The symbol of God func-tions. Neither abstract in content nor feeble in its effect, it sums up a people's sense of ultimate mystery, the proper order of the world, and the right orientation of human life and devotion. Along with many others, I sense that a seismic shift is occur-ring in the experience and idea of God in our day and culture. Fully aware that not all people who live at the same time are con-temporaries, I nevertheless think that a certain culturally condi-tioned cast of mind is emerging in our era that yields an idea of God markedly different from the classical model. VChat is emerg-ing is a notion that coherently supports and strengthens prophetic and contemplative consciousness. Thus it is not just the move from a juridical to a pastoral relation of the church to the world, nor the dissolving of the sacred-secular dualism, nor increased global and ecological awareness, nor growing consciousness of injustice, nor any of the other ecclesial and social factors that alone or together are causing the changes in religious life. Rather, at the deepest level what is transpiring, I think, is new experience of God. The Postmodern World The contemporary mind-set in the United States shaped by conditions of the late twentieth century is frequently described as postmodern. First coined in artistic, literary, and philosophical circles, this term is used in a bewildering variety of ways to describe the sentiment that humanity must go beyond the mod-ern. Like the wanderer in Kafka's parable who, when asked where January-February 1994 17 Johnson * Between the Times he is riding to, responds, "I don't know,., only away from here, away from here, only by doing so can I reach my destination,''19. postmodernity points beyond the present to what cannot yet be readily envisioned. Philosopher Stephen Toulmin refers to the world "that has not yet discovered how to define itself in terms of what it is, but only in terms of what it hasjust-now-ceased-to-be," namely, the modern world originating from the seventeenth-cen-tury Enlightenment.2° Modern!ty esteemed at least four dynamic forces: the myth of unending progress, the clear and distinct ideas of universal reason, the power of the self-contained individual directed by his soli-tary ego, and the ascendancy of human control over nature. By contrast, postmodernity is conscious of the end of progress, the limits of reason, the sad isolation of the unconnected individual, and the catastrophe that results when nature is disrespected. Not everything originating in the modern era is to be discarded. One would want to keep the emphasis on human dignity and human rights and their expressions in liberty and equality (fraternity in isolation is suspect). But postmodernity is awake to the egregious failures that the modern ethos has wrought. It wants to go Away- From-Here. Perhaps the most felicitous description comes from David Power, who observes that postmodernism is the sensibility that does not try to pretend that the twentieth century has not hap-pened. Sprung from the disruptive, out-of-control evils of this century, postmodern consciousness is aware of the chaotic, con-tingent, threatened character of existence and the fragility of the human project. Two distinct but related positions have developed within this general description. One, the option for deconstruction, seeks to undo the power and securities that produce such evils. In theory and art it pokes holes through the rationalizations of the victors, unveiling their pretensions to righteousness and order. While in its extreme form postmodern deconstruction leads to radical skep-ticism and nihilism, its bracing insights are powerfully instruc-tive as to what should not be. In tandem with this option, a second, more constructive model has emerged. Suspicious of inherited triumphal truths, it seeks out suppressed voices and sto-ries, risking new interpretations of established tradition "from the margins" in order to enable resistance to the forces of destruc-tion. Its aim, unlike nihilism, is a more just and humane universe. 18 Review for Religious It is this latter type of constructive postmodernism, found in intellectual theory, literature, and art as well as in grass-roots movements, that generates a certain kind of spirituality.21 Its char-acteristics are painted here in broad strokes. Postmodern spiri-tuality notes the ambiguous character of progress itself and takes its bearing not from the dream of untrammeled, irreversible progress fueled by a consumerist mentality, but from the suffering of those on the underside of history, keeping in view the gaps and failures of human advance. It seeks wisdom not in the clear and distinct ideas of what is claimed to be universal reason but is in reality the thought of privileged men; rather, it honors the plurality and ambiguity of human con-sciousness, sensitive to the differ-ence that difference makes according to one's social location in gender, race, and class. The com-pass of postmodern spirituality points not to rampant individual-ism and its violent outcroppings but to the importance of community The compass of postmodern spirituality points not to rampant individualism and its violent outcroppings but to the importance of community and tradition, prizing human solidarity and peace. and tradition, prizing human solidarity and peace. It finds life not in human supremacy over the earth but in affective kinship with the extended family of the cosmos. In a word, it prizes not isolation but essential connectedness; not body-mind dualism but the wholistic, embodied person; not patriarchy but inclusive fem-inism; not militarism but expenditure for the enhancement of life; not tribal nationalism but global justice. Our age is witnessing the shift to a postmodern cast of values, in theory if not always in practice. This constitutes a widespread, if not universal, cultural phenomenon in the United States, even among Christian believers. It may well signal the first phase of an axial breakthrough in human consciousness that will shape the next millennium. If so, that is of no little significance for the future of religious life in this country. For the postmodern sensi-bility in its constructive form has a strong affinity with the prophetic-contemplative stance increasingly envisioned as con- January-February 1994 19 Johnson ¯ Between the Times stitutive for the future of religious life. At the very core of that life is the experience of God. And so we come to the heart of the matter by asking how the postmodern matrix shapes the experi-ence and concept of the sacred. Postmodern Experience of God In our era the concept of God developed by rational En-lightenment theology in the context of modernity has become largely unbelievable. Whether drawn from revelation or philo-sophical inference, this by-now-traditional theism views God as the Supreme Being who created all things and who governs all things with inscrutable providence. Perfect in a way that stands in sharp contrast to the finitude of creatures, "he" (the theistic God is always referred to in male terms) is "infinite, self-existent, incor-poreal, eternal, immutable, impassible, simple, perfect, omni-scient, and omnipotent.''22 Although architect and ruler of the world, it is essential to God's deity that he be essentially unre-lated to this world and unaffected by what happens in it. This view therefore excels at stressing ,divine transcendence and its human counterpart of spirit, while divine immanence along with the importance of matter and the body tend to slip from view. This God of classical theism is modeled on the pattern of an earthly absolute monarch, a metaphor so prevalent that most often it is simply taken.for granted. As a king rules over his subjects, so God the Lord has dominion over his creatures, a view which, as Sallie McFague has shown, is intrinsically hierarchical, whether the divine reign be accomplished through dominance or benevo-lence. 23 In theory such theism adheres to the truth that the mys-tery of God is beyond all images and concepts. Yet history shows how in practice modernity tends to objectify God, reducing infi-nite mystery to an independently existing Supreme Being along-side other beings, a solitary, transcendent power who together with the world can be thought to form a larger whole. This is the idea of God that is no longer seriously imagin-able within a postmodern sensibility. Factors that contribute to its lack of cogency include the evils of this century, contemporary science and its view of the universe, liberation and feminist anal-ysis, the political disparagement of dictatorship, and the encounter among world religions. Any one of these alone would put a large question mark next to the modern symbol of the divine. Taken 20 Review for Religious together within the cultural shift to postmodern consciousness, they all but bury it. The result for people of faith is the radical loss of their famil-iar God image, along with the experience of divine presence that it mediated. Along with this also comes the loss of their sense of place in the order of the universe. As Janet Ruffing comments on the domino effect of loss of the tradi-tional God image in religious communi-ties, "All the ways we had construed our place in the sun and the meaningfulness of our commitment have been gradually eroding.''24 But this experience is not restricted to religious life; it is culture-wide and has attracted a host of com-mentators. For Martin Buber, the loss signals the eclipse of God. For Karl Rahner, it involves entry into the spiri-tuality of a bleaker season. For Constance Fitzgerald, it means the classic mystical experience of impasse and dark night. For Sandra Schneiders, this dark night is not only individual but a corporate purification. For Martin Marry, winter serves as metaphor for this season of the heart. For Michael Bucldey, it is entry into emptiness, silence, the cross in accord with the dynamic of apophatic mysticism,zs For me, this shift is poignantly summed up in the titles of the first and last books of my friend and colleague William Hill OP, now seriously ill. He broke into print with Knowing the Unknown God, an exploration of how the Thomistic category of analogy could lead the mind to God even in the contemporary world. God might be unknown, but we were possessed of some knowl-edge through the judgments we make. Now his recent essays have been collected under the rubric In Search of the Absent God. We are not in possession at all. Enmeshed in history and its suffering, we can but seek the hidden face of the living God.26 The absence of God experienced through the breakdown of traditional mediations of structure and theory does not mean, how-ever, that there is no experience of God at all. In a profound dialec-tic, what has been taken away is encountered in the ache of its loss. Divine absence itself becomes a mode of divine presence. The unknowing beckons to a deeper knowing. Th~ darkness mediates a brightness that the eyes cannot see. The wintry horizon hints at Enmeshed in history and its suffering, we can but seek the hidden face of the living God. .~anuary-February 1994 21 Johnson ¯ Between the Times new life buried beneath the snow. The cry from the depths signals an affirmation of Life deeper than pain, as did Jesus' cry from the cross. As Maura Clarke wrote from E1 Salvador, "In the very absence of God here, God has never been more present to me." 27 It all depends on the character of God. If God be trustworthy, then we hope that we are grounded and enveloped by a Living Presence even here, in the night of the senses and of the spirit. While there is no universal enactment of salvation, the sacred comes in the form of promise mediated through everyday, small fragments of healing, beauty, liberation, justice, and love. This does not remove the darkness, but it allows us to keep on walk-ing. The ice melts but will freeze again: in history there are only relative victories. Lament and celebration are both necessary. Here there are no easy assurances, no props. We know God through hope and, in the face of starkness, even hope against hope, nourished by remembrance and the circle of community. For many years now I have found the prophet of this experi-ence to be Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his vision God is being edged out of the world and onto the cross, and that is the way, the only way, that God can be with us: "only a suffering God can help.''28 His struggle to believe culminates in the maxim "Before God and with God we live without God.'':9 This is an experience of God in which darkness is an event of disclosure, clearing the decks of a false conception of God and opening contact with the incom-prehensible holy mystery of God who goes beyond all images, all grasping, all ~elling. The manageable God of the modern age who was immediately available and could be counted upon to intervene for our benefit is no longer there. But a new experience of God is already breaking through that intensifies our compassion. Constance Fitzgerald has wisely observed that what is going on in and through this experience is "a progressive hermeneutic of~e nature of God.''3° A full theology of God has yet to be writ-ten in a postmodern context, but the typical spii'itual experience of this age is yielding an unmistakable interpretation.3~ If there be a God at all, then this is absolute holy mystery that can never be fathomed. Not literally a male person writ large, the sacred can be pointed to by any created good: male, female, animal, cosmic. This mystery does not dwell in isolation from the world but encompassesit as the Matrix of its being and becoming. God in the world and the world in God--panentheism describes the mutual relation. Thus related, the Holy One of Blessing is a God 22 Review.for Religious of pathos who participates in the suffering of the world in order to transform it from within. Divine power is the strength of love, rather than raw, monarchical omnipotence. Passionate for justice and peace and compassionate over pain, Holy Wisdom typically self-reveals in the fragmentary breakthroughs of well-being that come about through human partnership with divine purpose. Forever God acts to create a fresh, new future: liberation is her signature deed. A God like this calls for an ethic of critical com-passion. We are impelled so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. Religious people of all stripes are now in the transitional posi-tion of trying to find words and symbols for this personal and collective experience of God. A common language has yet to come to light. Yet the very way the search is being conducted gives some indication of the outcome. An LCWR paper expresses the efforts of women religious in this regard: God is immanent in creation, in the midst of the web of life. As we bond with the oppressed and marginalized, we know God standing on the side of the poor and oppressed, seeing with the eyes of the poor, leading the oppressed by alleviating oppression. In this context, we see God angry, sad, suffering, marginalized; we see God incarnated in peo-ples of color, in women, in the homeless and battered, the victims of violence and oppression of all kinds. And then the inevitable: Religious find themselves in a "Dark Night." The painful and intense moments of disintegration, which carry the hope for what can break through, characterize our living in this in-between.32 To sum up, the idea of God emerging in postmodern spiritual experience is a contemporary hermeneutic of the God whose reign Jesus preached and embodied: the God of life. If the experience of God is the core of religious life, and if it is this God who is being perceived in contemporary religious experience, then here is a key tt)eological factor shaping the future of religious life in the United States. Conclusion The dialectic between divine absence and presence, in the last analysis, is an experience of the Spirit of God: radically tran- ~tanlmry-February 1994 23 Johnson ¯ Between the Times scendent, like the wind blowing where it will; and at the same time radically immanent, dwelling at the heart of the world to vivify and renew all things. Empowered by the Spirit in our age, people of faith who treasure the living memory of Jesus seek the hidden God of life (contemplation) and live out the passion of God for the world in need (prophecy). It is my sense that religious life is riding the crest of this wave in the postmodern culture of the United States. Internally its forms are breaking down; its interpretive support systems are col-lapsing; rifts with the institutional church exacerbate the dark-ness, especially among women; many members are in distress. Most radically of all, forms of religious life that traditionally medi-ated the experience of God now not only do not mediate this experience but positively block it. At the same time, consciousness of the suffering of poor and marginalized peoples grows; action on behalf of justice continues to attract; women reclaim their human dignity and the voice that goes with it; the vivifying power of God is experienced in and through the human power to chal-lenge, cherish, and set free; the divine mystery is named in new ways. Here and there religious persons and communities begin to articulate the prophetic-contemplative identity coherent with these experiences and act in mission accordingly. For religious life in the United States it is now Advent, the most honest season of all. In my judgment, the times do not call for return to the securities of a previous age. In fact, the very effort to keep alive forms of religious life that have for the most part run their historical course may well be counterproductive to the evangelical following of Jesus. Rather,what is needed is vig-ilant patience, profound prayer, and the ability to act boldly toward that future where new forms of evangelical life will develop. Notes ~ See summary by David Nygren and Miriam Ukeritis, "Future of Religious Orders in the United States," Origins 22, no. 15 (24 September 1992): 257-272. Hereafter cited as the Futures Project. Also in Review for Religious 52, no. 1 (January-February 1993): 6-55. 2 1 would like to thank the following colleagues and friends for pro-viding me with materials for this essay: Mary Ann Donovan SC, Patricia Lucas CSJ, Thomas McKenna CM, Janet Ruffing SM, and Clara Santoro CSJ. My deep gratitude also goes to Mary Catherine Hilkert OP, John W. Padberg SJ, David Power OMI, and Sandra Schneiders IHM for read-ing and critiquing the manuscript in outline or finished form. 24 Review for Religious 3 Among the works that have made significant contributions are: Gerald Arbuclde, Out of Chaos: Refounding Religious Congregations (New York: Paulist, 1988). ~. Strategies for Growth in Religious Life (New York: Alba House, 1987). Marcello Azevedo, Vocation for Mission: The Challenge of Religious Life Today (New York: Paulist, 1988). Leonardo Boll, God's Witnesses in the Heart of tbe World (Chicago: Claret Center for Resources in Spirituality, 1981). Lawrence Cada et al., Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life (New York: Seabury, 1979). Robert Daly et al., eds., Religious Life in the U.S. Church: The New Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1984). Barbara Fiand, Living the Vision: Religious Vows in an Age of Change (New York: Crossroad, 1990). David A. Fleming, ed., Religious Life at the Crossroads (New York: Paulist, 1985). Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving Religious Life: Beyond the Liberal Model (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990). John Lozano, Discipleship: Towards an Understanding of Religious Life (Chicago: CCRS, 1983). ¯ Life as Parable: Reinterpreting the Religious Life (New York: Paulist, 1986)¯ Johannes Baptist Metz, Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist, 1978). Diarmuid O'Murchu, Religious Life: A Prophetic Vision (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1991). Sandra Schneiders, New Wineskins: Re-imagining Religious Life Today (New York: Paulist, 1986). Jean Marie Tillard, A Gospel Path: Religious Life (Brussels: Lumen Vitae, 1975)¯ The Way Supplement 65 (summer 1989): "Religious Life in Transition," pp. 1-152. Patricia Wittberg, Creating a Future for Religious Life: A Sociological Perspective (New York: Paulist, 1991). Evelyn Woodward, Poets, Prophets and Pragmatists: A New Challenge To Religious Life (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1987). 4 Works include: Mary Ann Donovan, Sisterhood as Power: The Past and Passion of, Ecclesial Women (New York: Crossroad, 1989). Nadine Foley, ed., Claiming Our Truth: Reflections on Identity by United States Women Religious (Washington, D.C.: Leadership Conference of Women Religious, 1988). January-February 1994 25 Johnson * Between the Times Marie Augusta Neal, Catholic Sisters in Transition: Front the 1960s to the 1980s (Wilmington, Delaware: Glazier, 1984). --. From Nuns to Sisters: An Expanding Vocation (Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990). Lora Ann Quifionez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). Ann Patrick Ware, ed., Midwives of the Futttre (Kansas City, Missouri: Leaven Press, 1985). s "Hope-Filled Deeds and Critical Thought: The Experience of American Male Religious and Their Need to Reflect on It," paper pre-pared for the Third Inter-American Conference on Religious Life and printed in David A. Fleming, ed., Religious Life at the Crossroads, pp. 20- 50; John W. O'Malley, "Priesthood, Ministry, and Religious Life: Historical and Historiographical Considerations," Theological Studies 49 (1988): 223-257. The dearth of works in this category is due, I think, to the fact that for most men authors until recently, male experience, given its normative status in church and society, is simply presumed. Thus gendered experience has not become a major category of interpre-tation as it has among women. 6 L. Cada et al., Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life, is the ground-breaking study that brought the notion of cycles to present-day awareness. See the excellent fine-tuning of this thesis b~; Philip Sheldrake, "Revising Historical Perspectives," The \¥ay Supplement 65 (summer 1989): pp. 66- 77. 7 Here I have found the following particularly helpful: Howard Gray, "Shapes for the Fut.ure," pp. 289-295, and Helen Flaherty, "Religious Life in the U.S.--A Guess at the Future," pp. 296-309, in R. Daly, Religious Life in the U.S.; Anne Clifford, "Women Missioned in a Technological Culture," pp. 37-55, in N. Foley, ed., Claiming Our Truth; the address by Robert Schreiter, "The Environment of Religious Life in 2010," to CMSM/LCWR Assembly in Louisville, Kentucky, August 1989; and the videotape "Religious Life: The Constant Is Change," IHM Sisters, Monroe, Michigan, which is an analysis of societal trends by Amata Miller, Margaret Brennan, and Sandra Schneiders. 8 See Anne Carr, Transfo~wting Grace: Christian Tradition and I, Vomen's Experience (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988). 9 Joint Meeting of the CMSM and the Lcv~rR, Louisville, Kentucky, August 1989. ,0 Karl Rahner, "The Spirituality of the Church of the Future," Theological Investigations, vol. 20, Concern for the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 145. ~ One of the best contemporary treatises on contemplation remains William Johnston, The Inner Eye of Love (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978); and on prophecy, Walter Bruggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978). 26 Revieva for Religious 12 E. Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (New York: Seabury, 1980), p. 821. ,3 D. O'Murchu, Religious Life: A Prophetic Vision, passim. ,4 "Pilgrims and Prophets," paper drawn up by the Religious Life and Ministry Committee of the CMSM for the Fourth Inter-American Conference on Religious Life and printed in D. A. Fleming, ed., Religious Life at the Crossroads, pp. 51-64; quotation at p. 57. is S. Schneiders, New Wineskins, p. 32. 16 j. Lozano, Life as Parable, p. 9. 17 See Gordon Kaufman, The Theological Imagination: Constructing the Concept of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981), pp. 187-189. Kaufmann argues here for the importance of the great symbol of Jesus Christ who, as the image of the invisible God, manifests a God who does not act in a violent way but rather creates a community of love and equality in a peaceable and free way. !8 Martin Luther, "Large Catechism," The Book of Concord (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), p. 365. 19 Franz Kafka, "My Destination," Parables and Paradoxes (Berlin: Schocken, 1975), p. 189. I am indebted for this reference to Catherine Keller, "Toward a Postpatriarchal Postmodernity," in David Griffin, ed., Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions (Albany: State University of New York, 1988), p. 65. 20 S. Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (Berkeley: University of California, 1982), p. 254. For further descriptions of postmodernity, see Frederic Burnham, ed., Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989); and Paul Lakeland, Theology and Critical Theory (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990), chap. 7, "Catholicism and Postmodernity." 21 The essays in the Griffin collection are enlightening, especially his own "Introduction: Postmodern Spirituality and Society," pp. I-31. 22 H. P. Owen, Concepts of Dei~y (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), p. 1. 23 Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), pp. 63-69. 24 Janet Ruffing, "Seeing in the Dark: The Present Moment in Religious Life," address to regional meeting of LCWR, Sparkill, New York, September 1991, p. 10. This address, somewhat edited, appears in Review for Religious 51, no. 2 (March-April 1992): 236-248. 2s M. Buber, The Eclipse of God (New York: Harper and Row, 1952); K. Rahner, see note 10; C. Fitzgerald, "Impasse and Dark Night," in Tilden Edwards, ed., Living with Apocalypse: Spiritual Resources for Social Compassion (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), pp. 93-116; S. Schneiders, see video-tape, note 7; M. Marry, A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983); Michael Bucldey, "Atheism and Contemplation," Theological Studies 40 (1979): 680-699. January-February 1994 27 Johnson ¯ Between the Times 26 William J. Hill, Knowing the Unknown God (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971), and In Search of the Absent God, Mary Catherine Hilkert, ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1992). 27 Quoted in Mary Catherine Hilkert, "The Experience of Impasse and the Roots of Wisdom," address to Dominican Leadership Conference, October 1991, p. 11. 28 D. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Macmillan, 1953), letter of 16 July 1944, p. 220. 29 Ibid, p. 219. 30 C. Fitzgerald, "Impasse and Dark Night," p. 112. 31 For a profound analysis see Peter Hodgson, God in History: Shapes of Freedom (Abingdon: Nashville, 1989); and Wendy Farley, Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy (Louisville: Westminster, 1990). 32 "Reflections upon the Religious Life of U.S. Women Religious," paper prepared for the Fifth Inter-American Conference on Religious Life, 1985, and printed in N. Foley, ed., Claiming Our Tmtth," pp. 173-181; quotation at p. 177. Cana, Meaning Uncertain Wine flowed until there was no more at a wedding in Galilee; Mary, seeing this, turned to her son, one till then like any other, a brother, a carpenter who measured what he said and did. "They have no more wine," she said. He hesitated, questioned her, stirred up feelings between them. In the end Jesus acquiesced, six stone jars, water into wine, a fine line crossed, spirit revealed. Yet the uncertainty remains, was it not a mother's prompting that disrupted heaven's intent or is love so strong even God can be swayed by its openness? Neil C. Fitzgerald 28 Review for Religious JAN P. SCHOTTE The Consecrated Life in Church and World: Toward the Synod On 30 December 1991 the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, called for the gathering in autumn 1994 of the Ninth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to treat the topic: "The Consecrated Life and Its Role in the Church and in the World." But what exactly is a synod of bishops? What are the various theological elements connected with this institu-tion? What are its pastoral aspects? Practically speaking, how does the synodal process work? And in what way does the treatment of specific topics bring benefit to the whole church? toward the synod A Synod of Bishops Etymologically speaking, the term "synod," derived from the elision of two Greek words, syn meaning "together" and hodos meaning "road" or "way," literally means "together on the way" or "sharing a journey." This idea immediately calls to mind the Vatican II image of the church as the people of God "on the move," always on pilgrimage, led and guided by the Holy Spirit through history to its ultimate fulfillment when the Lord shall Jan P. Schotte CICM serves as the general secretary of the Synod of Bishops. This presentation of his to the May 1993 Meeting of the International Union of Superiors General in Rome was orig-inally published in the UISG Bulletin, no. 92, 1993, pp. 68-78. Bishop Schotte may be addressed at Office of the General Secretary; Piazza Pio XII, 3; 00193 Rome; Italy. January-February 1994 29 Scbotte ¯ The Consecrated Life in the Church come again (see Lumen gentium, §6). The term also calls to mind some biblical associations. For example, in John's Gospel Jesus calls himself the "Way" (see Jn 14:6), and St. Paul makes reference to Christianity as the "Way" (see Ac 22:4). The term's rich theological and biblical associations can be saidto culminate in the concept of the church as communion. As quoted in Cbristifideles laici, "communion speaks of a double, life-giving participation: the incorporation of Christians into the life of Christ, and the communication of that life of charity to the entire body of the faithful, in this world and in the next, union with Christ and in Christ, and union among Christians in the church." Therefore, "communion" should not be looked upon as something static, but an active and dynamic reality which is both a hallmark of the church and the divine force continually enliven-ing her. This mystery of the church's communion is reflected in an unlimited number of ways in the church's life, from its most sub-lime aspect in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, to the var-ious encounters both personal and communal experienced by Christians everywhere. One instrument for celebrating the communal nature of the church on the local level is through archdiocesan and diocesan synods, which are becoming more frequent an occurrence. In convoking such a synod, a local bishop gathers around himself, as the source and foundation of communion or unity in his partic-ular church, various representatives of the church community-- lay, clerical, and religious--to pray and reflect in common and, using the eternal truths of the faith as set forth in the teachings of the church, to seek pastoral approaches and solutions to living the Christian life as a community and as individuals. The church's communal nature on the particular and univer-sal level also exists in the authority over the church which was established by Christ and subordinated to the task of preaching the gospel (see LG, §20 and §21). Therefore, where the synod of bishops uses the same word as that applied to celebrating the communal nature of the particular church, there is a basic theo-logical difference. The synod of bishops celebrates the mystery of church communion on the hierarchical level, that is, among the bishops. The Second Vatican Council describes this unity in the fol-lowing manner: "Just as, in accordance with the Lord's decree, 30 Review for Religious St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a unique apos-tolic college, so in like fashion the Roman pontiff, Peter's suc-cessor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another'~ (LG, §22). This fundamental unity of the episcopate is the basis for the teaching on the collegiality of bishops (see LG, §22 and §23), which is like-wise an essential element in understanding the synod of bishops. The highest and fullest expression of this mystery of hierarchical communion is manifested and celebrated in an ecumenical council where the whole .episcopal college is convoked by the Holy Father. On various occasions the doc-uments of the Second Vatican Council refer to the episcopal gathering as a "synod" (see LG, §54; Christus Dominus, §36; etc.). But in this sense the word has the same meaning and theological significance as "council." Where the "synod of bishops" might resemble a "minicoun-cil," there is a fundamental qualitative difference between the two. For example, a synod convenes only a representative por-tion of the world episcopate, and unlike an ecumenical council, the synod of bishops is convened by the Holy Father for consulta-tive and not deliberative purposes. Nevertheless, despite the dif-ferences, "the synod of bishops," according to the Holy Father, "expresses collegiality in a highly ifitense way." The institution of the synod over twen.ty-seven years ago was inspired by the collaboration among the bishops at the Second Vatican Council and its beneficial effects for the whole church. Pope Paul VI on 15 September 1965 in the motu proprio Apostolica sollicitudo, establishing the synod of bishops, used these words: "With the aim of providing for a continuance after the council of the great abundance of benefits that we have been so happy to see flow to the Christian people during the time of the council as a result of our close collaboration with the bishops [and] because The institution of the synod over twenty-seven years ago was inspired by the collaboration among the bishops at the Second Vatican Council and its beneficial effects for the whole church. January-February 1994 31 Schotte ¯ The Consecrated Life in the Church of our esteem and regard for all the Catholic bishops and with the aim of providing them with abundant means for greater and more effective participation in our concern for the universal church, on our own initiative and by our apostolic authority we hereby erect and establish here in Rome a permanent council of bishops for the universal church, to be directly and immediately subject to our power." Much more than a structure inspired by the Second Vatican Council, the synod of bishops has proven itself to be an apt instru-ment for the implementation of conciliar doctrine and the appli-cation of its pastoral directives. At the same time it has also been the forum for the interpretation and further development of the teachings and spirit of the council. An Instrument of Continuous Pastoral Renewal Though each session is called to respond to unique pastoral situations, no synod is ever an isolated event, but has a relation to other synodal gatherings. Because each synod calls together a representative portion of the episcopate with its head the pope, each synod has a relation to the whole church. At the same time, because the synod is a unique response of the episcopal college to the mandate or mission entrusted to it by the Savior, each synod has a relation to the fundamental salvific mission of the church through history as well. A brief look at the various synods which have taken place to date is evidence enough of the importance of these episcopal gatherings for the church and their value in bring-ing about the reforms intended by the council. Pope Paul VI stated the goals for the First Ordinary General Assembly, held in the fall of 1967: "the preservation and the strengthening of the Catholic faith, its integrity, its force, its development, its doctrinal and historical coherence." One result of this meeting was the eventual establishment of the International Commission of Theologians to assist the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to broaden a discussion on approaches to theological research. The same assembly provided the stimu-lus for the 1983 publication of the revised Code of Canon Law and also made recommendations to the Holy Father on various pastoral questions. Two years later, in 1969, the First Extraordinary General Assembly was convoked to seek and examine ways and means of 32 Review for Religious putting into practice the collegiality of bishops with the pope. This meeting opened the door to greater collegiality in the pas-toral care of the universal church and in episcopal conferences and the relations between individual bishops. In 1971 the Second Ordinary General Assembly treated two subjects: "The Ministerial Priesthood" and "Justice in the World." In the former, treatment was centered on the theological nature of the priesthood with the intention of addressing certain diffi-culties experienced by priests in the course of their ministry. On the subject of justice, the bishops stated the need to relate the gospel to existing worldwide and local circumstances. "Evangelization in the Modern World" occupied the work of the Third Ordinary General Assembly held in 1974. At this assem-bly the bishops reemphasized the essential missionary character of the church and the duty of each member to bear wimess to Christ in the world. The bishops' recommendations and proposals sub-mitted to the pope were used in the formulation of the apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi. At the Fourth Ordinary General Assembly, which took place three years later, in 1977, the discussion of the bishops centered on "Catechesis in Our Times," with special attention given to the teaching of the faith to children and young people. Shortly after the synod, Pope John Paul II issued the apostolic exhortation Catecbesi tradendae, which utilized a great many of the bishops' insights and proposals. The First Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, popularly known as "The Dutch Synod," was convoked in 1980 to examine more thoroughly the teachings of the Second Vatican Council on the mystery of church communion and its practical implications on the universal and local level, and the figure of the bishop and his ministry. In this way the synod sought at that time to address its designated topic, "The Pastoral Situation in Holland." The Fifth Ordinary General Assembly in 1980 reaffirmed the church's teaching on the family, in particular defending marriage and the contents of Humanae vitae. From the discussion and the proposals of the assembly, the pope issued the apostolic exhorta-tion Familiaris consortio. In 1983 the Sixth Ordinary General Assembly, held during a specially called Holy Year commemorating the 1950th year of Redemption, appropriately discussed the need of applying the fruits of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection to the individ- January-February 1994 33 Schotte ¯ The Consecrated Life in the Church These different synodal gatherings which have taken place in the course of the synod's history appear more and more clearly as a continuous process of pastoral renewal. ual and society. The bishops' work during the synod served as the basis for the apostolic exhortation Reconciliatio et paenitentia, which for the first time was designated a "postsynodal" docu-ment. The Second Extraordinary General Assembly in 1985 com-memorated the "Twentieth Anniversary of the Conclusion of the Second Vatican Council" and assessed the state of church renewal according to conciliar teachings. The recently published Catechism of the Catholic Church was the result of a proposal by the bishops at this episcopal assembly. "The Vocation and Mission of the Laity in the Church and in the World" was the topic chosen for the Seventh Ordinary General Assembly in 1987. Through a con-sideration of vocation and mission in the context of church commu-nion, the bishops sought to empha-size the distinctive nature of the lay faithful in the church's life and her work of evangelization in the world. The fifty-four proposals of this assembly were used in the formulation of the postsynodal apostolic exhortation Christifideles laici. In 1990 the Eighth Ordinary General Assembly again took up the subject of priesthood. However, where in 1971 the bishops focused on the theological nature of priesthood and its implica-tions, this assembly's attention was more pastoral in tone, cen-tering. upon priestly formation and the "person" of the priest himself-both religious and diocesan--before and after ordination. The forty-one proposals from this assembly were used by the Holy Father in the formulation of the postsynodal apostolic exhor-tation, Pastores dabo vobis. The Special Assembly for Europe was called in the follow-ing year, 1991, to help discern the kairos of the situation on the European continent created by the historic fall of communism and to consider the role of the church in the various programs of renewal and construction. 34 Review for Religious In preparation are two other special assemblies. In his recent apostolic visitation to Africa last February, the Holy Father announced, in conjunction with the release of the assembly's Instrumenturn laboris, that this special assembly will take place in Rome in 1994, just after Easter. In March the Lineamenta of the special assembly for Lebanon was published, initiating the con-sultation phase of the preparation for that synod. These different synodal gatherings which have taken place in the course of the synod's history appear more and more clearly as a continuous process of pastoral renewal, giving opportunity through prayer and reflection to deepen a sense of the church's mission and to stimulate all the people of God to participate in this mission, each according to his or her state. Perhaps our under-standing of the synod of bishops can be further enhanced by fol-lowing the synod process which has taken place thus far in the preparation for the 1994 synod on "The Consecrated Life and Its Role in the Church and in the World." The 1994 Synodal Process The principles governing the synod of bishops and the synodal process are set forth in three basic documents: the motu proprio Apostolica sollicitudo of Pope Paul VI establishing the synod; Ordo synodi episcoporum celebrandae, or the Constitutions of the Synod of Bishops; and the Code of Canon Law, canons 342 to 348 inclusive. For the purpose of our presentation I will limit myself to those aspects of the process which immediately affect the synod topic, its documentation, and the various preparatory phases leading to the synodal gathering. Before the conclusion of the Eighth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, the synod fathers were asked to elect from their number, according to synod regulations, the required fifteen-member council to assist the general secretary in the follow-up work of the assembly and to work on the prepa-ration of the Ninth Ordinary General Assembly. At the same time the synod fathers were invited to make suggestions on a topic to be treated at the next general assembly. There is a certain value to this initial exchange on the topic during the general assembly because the responses are spontaneous and unprepared. In making their suggestions the bishops were asked to keep in mind the following general criteria in selecting a synodal topic: (1) January-February 1994 35 Sctsotte ¯ Tlse Consecrated Life in rise Church that the topic have a universal character, that is, a reference and application to the whole church; (2) that the topic have a con-temporary character and a certain urgency, that is, have the capa-bility of exciting new energies and movement in the church towards growth; (3) that the topic have a pastoral focus and appli-cation as well as a firm doctrinal basis; and (4) that treatment of the topic be feasible, in other words, that it have the potential actually to be accomplished. In retrospect it is interesting to note that even in the initial consultation during the synod itself a con-vergence of ideas was evident regarding the treatment of some aspect of the consecrated life. Shortly after the conclusion of the general assembly, the gen-eral secretariat continued the consultation process by preparing a letter with the above criteria and sending it to the patriarchates, bishops' conferences, heads of offices of the Roman Curia, and the Union of Superiors General--the normal participants in the synod process. This communication requested the submission of three topics in order of preference. The suggestions coming from this consultation were then analyzed and discussed by the members of council of the general secretariat at one of its regularly sched-uled meetings, and a series of formulations of the theme in order of preference was submitted to the Holy Father. Until now the Holy Father has always selected the council's first choice, con-vinced that the consultation process provides a true indication of the desire of the universal church to treat a given subject. Such was the case for the topic of the 1994 synod. The general consultation process revealed a remarkable con-vergence of ideas indicating a preference for the topic of the con-secrated life. Initially some persons made a rather shallow interpretation to explain the choice, insisting that since the laity and the priesthood were treated in the two previous synodal assemblies, it was only logical that the consecrated life should receive attention. The truth of the matter is that in the course of the consultation a great number of reasons were given for calling a synod to treat the topic of the consecrated life. Many argued in the following manner. 1) With the importance of the consecrated life in the church today, there is necessity to reaffirm its true nature in various new social contexts and in the world at large. 2) The flourishing of vocations in some parts of the world 36 Review for Religious and the crisis of vocations in others requires a thorough exami-nation of the consecrated life. 3) After the Second Vatican Council, various efforts have been made to rewrite constitutions, to propose anew the charism of the founder, and so forth, and consecrated life in general has been subject to an overall renewal. Therefore, the time seems right to engage in an evaluative process. 4) The question of the relationship of those in consecrated life to bishops deserves renewed consideration as well as the sub-ject of the greater participation of women and men religious in the overall pastoral plan of a diocese, particularly in light of the unique charism proper to each. Where the document Mutuae relationes has been fruitful and productive on the whole, certain episcopal con-ferences have given indications that there remain some areas still needing attention. 5) The new forms of consecrated life appearing in many parts of the church require evaluation and proper guidance. The nature of religious institutes, secular institutes, and the societies of apos-tolic life needs to be clarified and their role in the church more clearly defined. Many of the new forms of unions and confrater-nities are appearing with the false notion that they are part of the consecrated life according to the evangelical counsels. 6) Some developments and interpretations have caused the common life for religious to be questioned. In some countries there are situations which deserve attention. 7) The prophetic character of consecrated life in certain cir-cumstances needs to be more clearly defined. How is a person in the consecrated life to respond in faithfulness to his or her voca-tion in the face of secularization, the crisis in culture, and the decline in moral values? 8) In some countries religious congregations have abandoned the work proper to them in favor of individual attempts at apos-tolic work. Such a situation raises the concern of religious con-gregations as well as bishops, requiring them to seek the proper pastoral approach to such situations. The above sampling of reasons underlying the choice of topic for the 1994 synod sufficiently indicates its universal appeal, pas-toral relevance, timely character, and feasibility. At the same time, it can be seen that they have a general inter-est for the entire church. In virtue of the church's unity, every part and every member will be affected by the exchange and out- January-Fetrruary 1994 37 Schotte * The Consecrated Life in the Church come. In this sense the synod will not simply treat a topic, but make suggestions to the Holy Father regarding the future. What does the consecrated life have in store for the future? How are those in consecrated life to live out their consecration in the apos-tolic mission of the church? What courageous and bold steps are required to meet the unique challenges made on consecrated life by the present state of affairs in the church and society? Before these questions can be faced by the bishops in syn-odal assembly, the church at large will have time to reflect on them and other aspects of the topic and be invited to make their observations known through the proper channels so that those required to make official responses on the topic to the general secretariat will have current information with which to work. The 1994 Lineamenta The synod process can be divided into four great moments: the Lineamenta, the Instrumentum laboris, the synodal assembly, and the postsynodal document. We logically pause to devote some time to explaining the Lineamenta document, the present stage of preparation for the Ninth Ordinary General Assembly. After the Holy Father's choice of topic, the council of the general secretariat at a regularly scheduled meeting held a roundtable discussion with the secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and with representatives from the various groups associated with con-secrated life, that is, women and men religious, members of sec-ular institutes, and members of the international organizations of consecrated life in the church, namely, the Union of Superiors General for Men and the International Union of Women Superiors as well as the International Congress of Secular Institutes. The observations resulting from this meeting were fur-ther discussed and developed in subsequent council meetings, and with the help of theologians an outline and texts of the Lineamenta were drafted and studied, before a definitive text was submitted to the Holy Father. As its Latin name suggests, the Lineamenta is an "outline" or general presentation of the synod topic followed by a series of questions intended to direct the prayer and reflection of the whole church on the subject. The information resulting from this stage will provide the raw material for the synod's Instrumentum laboris 3 8 Review for Religious or "working document," intended to present a composite picture of the present situation and prevailing attitudes in the church on consecrated life and its role in the church and in the world. The Lineamenta document is divided into three major parts, each treating a specific aspect of the topic: (1) "The Nature and Identity of the Consecrated Life"; (2) "The Consecrated Life in the church and in the World of Today"; and (3) "The Role of Consecrated Life." The document's initial pages immediately address the prob-lem of terminology. Strictly speaking, the term "consecrated life" in Canon Law refers to religious con-gregations and secular institutes only. What, then, is to be done with soci-eties of apostolic life? Since canon 731, § 1, states that the societies of apostolic life are "comparable to the institutes of consecrated life," it was agreed that the synod topic would also include their treatment. Therefore, when the term is used in the Lineamenta, it is meant to be all-inclusive. After a brief introduction, Part I begins with an explanation of the essential characteristics of the conse-crated life, namely, vocation, conse-cration, mission, the evangelical counsels, the common life, eschato-logical witness, its essential values, and the commitment to the spiritual life. The section then proceeds to speak of the charismatic nature of the consecrated life, as wit-nessed in its variety of charisms and multiplicity of forms. In this regard attention is given to the charism of the founder or foundress, the various forms of consecrated life, institutes of con-templative life, brothers, secular institutes, societies of a.postolic life, and the new forms of consecrated life emerging today. The second part of the document describes the present situ-ation of the consecrated life in the church and in today's world, seeking on this basis to suggest various subtopics which merit consideration, for example, the direction to be taken by the con-secrated life with the approach of the third millennium, the fruits of renewal, new values and aspects of the consecrated life, nega- The synod process can be divided into four great moments: the Lineamenta, the Instrumentum laboris, the synodal assembly, and the postsynodal document. Jam~ary-February 1994 39 Schotte ¯ The Consecrated Life in the Church tive aspects (even these must be addressed), the necessity of a clear witness in responding to the challenges of modern society, and finally the situation in various countries and cultures (Africa and Asia come especially to mind). This section ends with a call to those in consecrated life to continue the renewal begun after the Second Vatican Council. The third section speaks in practical terms of the role of the consecrated life in the church and society, beginning with a pre-sentation on the ecclesial dimensions of the consecrated life, its relation to the church hierarchy, its coordinating structures in fostering communion, its place on the level of the local church, and its communion with the lay faithful. With this in mind, var-ious topics related to the role of the consecrated life within the universal church community are treated, including the new evan-gelization, authentic apostolic creativity, acceptance of the call to evangelization, remaking the fabric of society, promoting the unity of all the baptized, and the dialogue with followers of other religions. The concluding portion of Part III turns its attention to the church's mission in the world, emphasizing features associ-ated with the consecrated life, for example, its specific witness to God's love through the works of mercy; its attention to young people and their needs; its presence in schools, hospitals, and social programs; its dedication to work on behalf of the poor; its role--past and present--in the transmission and formation of cul-ture; and its part in the church's work of safeguarding the values of nature and conscience in today's world. The closing pages of the Lineamenta then offe~ a brief look at Mary as the model and mother of the consecrated life and a reflec-tion on the consecrated life in terms of a renewed presence of Christ in the world of today. The presentation concludes with a section containing the document's endnotes, followed by a table of contents. Incorporated in the Lineamenta text and appearing at the con-clusion of each section is a series of twenty-five consecutively numbered questions which are meant to focus the prayer and dis-cussion of the universal church on various aspects of the synod topic. At the same time, these questions and numbers are to pro-vide an orderly structure for the responses from various individ-uals and church bodies which will be formulated and submitted in the lively exchange on all levels of the church community dur-ing the consultation period. 40 Review for Religious Official responses are expected to be filed with the general secretariat by those normally involved in the consultation pro-cess, that is, patriarchates, episcopal conferences, offices of the Roman Curia, and the Union of Superiors General for Men. Given the synod topic, the International Union of Women Superiors and the International Congress for Secular Institutes are also to submit responses. All responsible for such responses are to work on the best possible manner of facilitating the reading of the document by individuals and groups associated with them, and of seeking information from them so that the responses may be truly complete and reflect the richness of the exchange on the various levels of the local church community. With the publication of the Lineamenta on 20 November 1992, a significant and important stage in the preparation for this synodal assembly was initiated. I would even go so far as to say a most critical phase, because the richness and depth of the Instrumentum laboris, the reference point and source of discus-sion during the actual synodal assembly, depends on the widespread participation of the whole church and a thorough-ness in answering the series of questions posed in the Lineamenta. For this reason, it is incumbent upon each individual in the church, no matter what his or her state or circumstance, to con-tribute through the accustomed channels in this presynodal prepa-ration period, thereby providing the necessary information which will be eventually used in the official responses to be sent to the general secretariat. From my experience over the years I am becoming more aware and convinced of the very real contribution and impact of synodal assemblies in the life of the church. These beneficial results come about not simply from a month-long meeting, but from the whole synodal process, from the consultation regard-ing the theme, the prayer and reflection period, the actual cele-bration of the synod, and its follow-up. Not only do the reflection and prayer which are a part of the Lineamenta phase assist in setting the agenda in the Instrumentum laboris or "working paper," but the process itself taps and exer-cises the dynamism of church communion in the listening, shar-ing, and stirring up of new energies on various levels of the church community. And after the synodal assembly, where there is a con-centrated effort at intensely living the communion which has come beforehand, the effects make themselves felt years later. January-February 1994 41 Scbotte ¯ The Consecrated Life in the Church The Lineamenta itself makes reference to this fact when it states that the occasion of this synod will provide the opportunity for "all members of the church, particularly the institutes of con-secrated life, to reconsider the subject of their own renewal in light of the challenges and the opportunities of the present moment," based on the church's appeal in these days "for a renewed endeavor towards evangelical life, towards a profound spirituality, and towards a generous presence in the new evange-lization" (§33). This time of synodal preparation, then, is an occa-sion for hope, a hope that this profound examination of the status of renewal and the prospects for future growth of the consecrated life in all its aspects will be a moment of grace and revitalization, and bring great benefits to all those in consecrated life and to the church as a whole. Message from a Coreopsis Lanceolata (Daisies Do Tell) Some of us are past our prime, And one of us has lost a few petals; Another--will never see the sun. Yet we all rejoice That we reflect our Maker And celebrate a loving God Who signs each one of us With his own life's Blood. Joann Stuever, ASC postulant 42 Review for Religious A. PAUL DOMINIC Charism, Charisms, and Faddism d sexagenarian religious superior who keeps abreast of the times asked me if I had read the recent document on reli-gious life produced by the council of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops. I said yes, adding hesitantly: "But it is not very interesting." Without hesitation she agreed completely. The Point of Departure: The Lineamenta Surely the Lineamenta, the preliminary agenda on "The Consecrated Life and Its Role in the Church and in the World" prepared in view of the forthcoming Ninth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, is not a particularly charismatic piece of writing. After all, it is not from the pen of a theologian like Rahner, or a biblicist like Elsa Tamez, or a feminist like Ruether, or a third-world figure like Amalorpavadass, or a cardinal like Martini. On the contrary, it is an official document with its strengths and weaknesses, treating the topic "in a complete organic manner, indicating the topic's precise content and its necessary limits''1 and touching upon "only the essential points of doctrine" (§4).2 As such, therefore, it would read somewhat like a protocol without the charismatic cadence or resonance of your fa~,orite author. However, considering that the document is the product of the pastoral office of the church, we would not be wrong if we rec-ognized in it the charismatic teaching included by Paul in his lists A. Paul Dominic SJ can be addressed at Satyodayam; S. Lallaguda; Secunderabad 500 017; India. .~anuary-Felrruary 1994 43 Dominic * Charism, Cbarisms, and Faddism of charisms. And so what it says about religious life as a charism that includes many a charism can serve for our mental nourish-ment and impart to us a spiritual gift (Rm 1:11). It can set us thinking about religious life as a matter of charismatic experi-ence, that is, an experience of living a fundamental charism through as many different charisms as there are societies of"con-secrated" or "apostolic" life. Any serious reflection on this mat-ter will prove to be relevant, for the prevailing confusion in religious life concerns partly the lack of clarity about charism and charisms.3 Religious Life as Charism Religious life, like all life, is best observed in its relationships. On the one hand, it is a part of the church; and, on the other, it is itself the church and so serving, like the church, the rest of the world (§3, §25, and §44). In the first perspective, religious life is one of the many charisms of the church; in the second, it is, as we said earlier, a fundamental charism giving rise to a wide variety of expressions of itself. The religious state of life is a "particular gift in the life of the church" (Lumen gentium, §43). As such it can be properly appre-ciated only when we see it in place, beside many other similar gifts enjoyed by the church. That is why the Lineamenta begins the consideration of charisms (§14-§17) recalling the mystery of the church as the Mystical Body of Christ endowed with many gifts, quoting Paul: "There are many different gifts, but it is always the same Spirit; there are many different ways of serving, but it is always the same Lord. There are many different forms of activ-ity, but in everybody it is the same God who is at work in all" (1 Co 12:4-6). By the parallelism of the verses, the different ways of service or activity are all to be understood as gifts in a variety of forms. Paul goes on to list such gifts in the immediate context (i Co 12:8-10, 28) and also in other letters (Rm 12:6-8 and Ep 4:11). A look at all the lists can give us an idea of the wide range of gifts enjoyed by the growing church. Though it would be anachronistic to look for the mention of religious life among the listed gifts of the Spirit bestowed on the church, note that celibacy is proposed as a special gift (1 Co 7:7). In the course of time the church came to recognize many more gifts in its ongoing life, gifts like asceticism, monasticism, vir- 44 Review for Religious ginity, choice of poverty, and social virtues, to speak only of those that have an obvious reference to religious life.4 As the church grew in self-awareness, it came to discover many elements that we now associate with religious life as its specific gifts; and so today we can speak about "the charism of the consecrated life" (§14), that is to say, the consecrated life itself viewed as a gift or charism. However various and heterogeneous the different charisms may be in the manner of their working, they are one and homo-geneous in intent and purpose. They are all meant to build up the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is built up when the mem-bers are well nourished and so live to the full, reaching unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and forming the perfect Person fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself (Ep 4:13). This fullness of Christ is the same as the life permeated by the Spirit ever filling us or even overwhelming us with all her gifts and charisms. Such a life energized by the working of the Spirit is spiritual and holy. M1 the charisms of the Spirit nourish the life of the church, making it ever more holy with the life of Christ himself. Situating religious life thus in the sphere of the church's life of holiness and recognizing in it a universal reality in the church's makeup, the Lineamenta concludes: "With this in mind one speaks of 'the charism of the consecrated life'" (§14). Here is surely an echo of the approach to religious life taken by Lumen gentium, §39-§47. Such an affirmation of religious life, however, is slightly marred by the way the Lineamenta, following of course Vatican expresses it. After describing the way of holiness of religious life marked by vows that establish a special bond to God, Lumen gen-tium concludes: "Thus, although the religious state., does not belong" to the hierarchical structure of the church, nevertheless it belongs inseparably to her life and holiness" (see L §1; see also §14 and §36). One can discover a patronizing voice here, rightly or wrongly. Anyway, what a difference it would make if the state-ment were to read towards the end: "nevertheless, like the hier-archy, the religious state too belongs inseparably to her life and holiness." Does not Vatican II after all state in the chapter on universal holiness, "In the various types and duties of life, one and the same holiness is cultivated by all who are moved by the Spirit of God" (LG §41), and further go on to describe the way of holiness of the different classes of persons and finally end with a clear reference to the life of the religious (LG §41 and §42)? January-February 1994 45 Dominic ¯ Charism, Cbarisms, and Faddism There is a good reason why we can parallel religious life and hierarchy in this way. Of all the charisms enumerated by Paul-- who, incidentally, developed the terminology of charisms--the pastoral office of the hierarchy is the only one that concerns a state of life. This idea gets all the greater force because the pas-toral letters signal a development in the idea of charism which continued to prevail in postapostolic times. Paul's reminder to Timothy, "You have in you a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the body of elders laid their hands on you" (i Tm 4:14), a reminder repeated again in 2 Timothy 1:6, certainly refers to Timothy's charism as one of grace of state or office. If we add to this way of looking at the hierarchical charism the reference to the charism of married life in 1 Corinthians 7:7, where there is a simultaneous reference to the charism of celibacy too, we can discern a line of thinking in which the various particular vocations in Christian life can be considered charisms establishing people in different states of life. So we can now speak in particular of the charism of religious life as the grace of the religious state of life; contributing to the holiness of the church in a particular way. In this context it is enlightening and inspiring to recall an old nomenclature of the religious state of life, namely, the state of perfection, proclaiming visibly the prophetic office of Christ wit-nessing to the kingdo~n here and hereafter. What is basic about states of perfection is the perfection to be acquired by way of the evangelical counsels in a community set-up. The function of any particular way of religious life, contemplative or active, lies. in this: that religious, by their very striving after holiness, call upon all Christians to do the same in their own way. So remarking, Bernard H~iring quotes papal authority in support: "The church would not fully respond to the mind of her Divine Bridegroom, men would not fix their eyes on her as on the 'the signal unto the nations'., if they did not find in her men who reflected the splendor of the gospel more through the example of their life than by means of words.''s All this is not so old-fashioned. A few years ago America carried an article describing religious as those who, unlike the laity, make religion their very career with its own particular structures that not only favor and promote it but also witness to it.6 The charism of religious is to be identified with striving for perfection, as the Lineamenta often repeats (§3, §5, §8, and §16). 46 Review for Religious To speak of the state of perfection is perhaps not a post-Vatican practice. However, in avoiding the falsity of perception possible in the expression, one need not altogether abandon its right use. Rather, we need to rediscover in the correct meaning of the phrase some essentials of religious life. Here is one: "It is not so much we who profess as others (the church, the community) who recognize that we. at least have received an explicit call and have come to a state of commitment to pursue it relentlessly, wholeheartedly; and radically.''7 But even in so reflecting on religious life as a state of perfec-tion, one should beware of a dan-ger. If one were to emphasize the personal pursuit of perfection that religious undertake, one is liable to overemphasize all their many undertakings on the path to perfection, thereby forgetting that any and every charism is a pure and simple gift of God. The story of Peter is apt here, as Bonhoeffer tells it. "Three times Peter heard himself proclaim that Christ is his Lord and God--at the beginning, at the end, and at Caesarea Philippi. Each time it is the same grace of Christ calling Peter to follow, and revealing itself to him in his confession." To reiterate the idea with Bonhoeffer: "This grace was certainly not self-bestowed. It was the grace of Christ himself.''8 Quoting all this, J.M.R. Tillard concludes; "Now, this costly grace., is for Simon Peter and for every religious the charism which makes existence as such a sign of the gospel. This charism comes from the Lord's Spirit . It is truly a gift made by the risen Lord, through his Holy Spirit, to his people. The Lord passes by. his grace seizes certain men and women. Poor sinners, they are nonetheless of those who will say to . . . the world: 'We have found what we were looking for! Come and see!' This is their charism.''9 One may, then, delve into the experience of religious life and discover in its depths not so much a for but a because of. No one enters religious life primarily for some thing or some work, but rather because of the One Who calls. "The for will come later, nec-essarily, but in the radiance and as the evangelical fruit of the No one enters religious life primarily for some thing or some work, but rather because of the One who calls. ~tanuar2/-Febrttary 1994 47 Dominic ¯ Charism, Cbarisms, and Faddism because of," as Tillard says.~° Can anything be clearer than this? Yet in the culture shock that religious were exposed to after Vatican Council II, not a few sought their identity in their works and tasks, in their of religious life. But the more they did so, the more elusive they found it. For their real existence as religious was concentrated in the call of Christ to which they had once com-mitted themselves because of the altogether new experience of being seized by the Lord's power. Their existence, therefore, became, or ought to have become, a new existence, a charismatic existence, a charism. Such a vision of religious life as the charism in itself appears distinctly, though in a less charismatic expression, in the Lineamenta when it speaks of the profession of the gospel as the supreme rule for all institutes, whatever their particular ministries may be (§8; see also Perfectae caritatis, §2). The Charisms of Religious Life Once religious life is understood in terms of one unique exis-tential charism underlying all forms of it, one may be able to appreciate the more familiar experience of the particular charisms that at once characterize and distinguish the various institutes. It is in this way that the Lineamenta would seem to interpret the charismatic nature of religious life as taught in the conciliar and postconciliar documents (§ 14). Logically and theologically, the consideration of the charism that constitutes religious life leads to that of the many charisms of religious life. It is the one charism of religious life that begets many a charism in it. Are not the latter "like branches sprouting out wondrously and abundantly from a tree growing in the field of the Lord"? (LG §43, quoted in L §16). Historically, however, what attracted the attention of people was the variety of charisms and not the one charism beneath and beyond all charisms. So, tracing the beginning of religious life from the very infancy of the church, Perfectae caritatis could point out: "Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, many., pursued a solitary life, or founded religious families . And so it happened by divine plan that a wonderful variety of religious communities grew up" (§ 1, partly quoted in L § 16). The mention of solitary life and religious families obviously refers to the twin charisms of original religious life, namely, 48 Review for Religious eremiticism and cenobitism (§9 and §19c). Cenobitism itself in the course of history developed two other charisms, namely, divine contemplation and human service. These in turn became spe-cialized in their ways of focusing on God and on people. In what-ever century religious live out their days, they adopt or develop distinct varieties of direct service of God and humanity, in imita-tion of Christ. Through them, therefore, Christ comes to be shown "contemplating on the mountain, announcing God's king-dom to the multitude, healing the sick and the maimed, turning sinners to wholesome fruit, blessing children, doing good to all, and always obeying the will of the Father" (LG §46, quoted in L §15). Often enough, charisms are considered, or even identified with, graces meant for the common good. Such a consideration is incomplete because it misses something important, namely, the source of the power of service. Charisms are particular graces imparted to us by which we bear or image or reflect or even become Christ in ourselves in a particular limited way, and so are able to render appropriate service in a specific context in a par-ticular part of the world in the manner of Christ himself. So they highlight in us "a specific aspect of the mystery of Christ" (§ 17). However, the gospel, or for that matter Christ himself, if under-stood with proper nuance, is not apart from the church. So the Lineamenta does well in describing charisms as bearing upon a specific aspect, not only of the mystery of Christ, but also of the church's life, and thus manifesting in the makeup of the Mystical Body the multiform grace of Christ (§15). One should not miss here how charisms are at once incarnational and ecclesial (§46). Charisms and Service Once it is grasped that charisms have to do primarily with a fundamental religious way of being, one cannot go wrong in insist-ing that charisms are out-and-out oriented towards service, "des-tined for service of the kingdom" (§3); for surely charisms have an inalienable reference, not only to the way of being, but also to the way of doing. The Lineamenta spells out the nexus between charism and service forcefully thus: "Each charism . . . brings with it a particular manner of faithfully and intensely living the evangelical counsels. In addition, it implies a particular and con-crete style of spiritual life, a determined form of apostolate, a .~anuary-February 1994 49 Dominic ¯ Charism, Cbarisms, and Faddism specific experience of community life, and a particular involvement in the world" (816 [emphasis added]; see also $8). What, then, are the specific paths of service in the building of the earthly city (§44)? Not forgetting the contribution of the contemplatives to society through their divine service of worship (§2)--the first permanent foundation of women in the United States was Carmelites~l--the Lineamenta illustrates the service of active charisms thus: "Today the consecrated life is present in our society through the multiplicity of apostolic services rendered to others, each according to its diverse charisms, in one magnificent expression of the charity of Christ on behalf of the integral for-mation of persons; in the education of children and young people, in the care of the sick, the suffering, the elderly, and those in want; and in aid to persons with special needs and those marginal-ized by society" (§44a). What do all such services intend except "to make operative the gospel of the beatitudes and the works of mercy" (§44a)? One particular element of service rendered by charisms con-cerns life of communion within the church. Different forms of religious life characterized by their different charisms do not con-stitute exclusive churches within the church, but, forming part of the one church, ought to feel themselves to be the church and so identify themselves with her (~3 and ~35; see also Perfectae car-itatis, §2c). The charisms of the different religious families, with their charismatic and yet ecclesial-minded founders, belong as much to the whole church as to the religious themselves (~16, §26e, and §46). For not only are they meant for the growth of the chhrch, but they also have their origin, regulation, guarantee, and approval in and from the church (§6, §15, and §16). Therefore, far from being closed in upon themselves, religious offer a rich fare for communion, reflecting ideal church commu-nion (§9). There is every reason, then, to identify the religious living together by the term community. Incidentally, the hierarchy as such can only contribute, in terms of sociology, to the culture of societas with role differentiation; but the religious as such plunge themselves into the heart of society with their charisms of ser-vice (§3, ~42, and §44) and break through segmentations in soci-ety and initiate the culture of communitas in our world.~2 In bringing about this new culture of communion in the world church, the religious, as "experts in communion" (§35), have nec- 50 Review for Relig~otts essarily to act locally in the particular church, but with their hearts spanning universally in the global church (§27a). The exercise of religious charisms "assists everyone--clergy and faithful--to open themselves to the universal and missionary dimension of the church, and., makes the particular churches an image of the uni-versal church" (§39). For a con-crete example of communion resulting from the enduring charisms, the Lineamenta points out the flourishing of lay third orders, lay associations, and lay-volunteer groups "whose mem-bers are bound under different titles to the spirituality and apos-tolic work of various institutes" (}41). Where the charisms do not serve the cause of church com-munion, they are likely to become mere means of some service or religious themselves. other without the underlying spirit. The Lineamenta warns of the danger of reducing the pres-ence of institutes to parochial ser-vice "without encouraging and welcoming the richness of the spirituality and their proper charismatic service" (~40). More plainly, in the church Body each part can do only the service it is meant for. As charisms are vivifying and beautifying graces of the differ-ent members of the Body of the church (§46), they complement one another; and so they cannot healthily coexist without mutual encounter and influence. Perhaps, in the pre-Vatican "ghetto" church, religious congregations developed their own ghettos, pos-sibly without even knowing it. But the time has come, especially in the era of ecumenism, for % better understanding of the sense of communion among foundational charisms" (§27b). It is high time, therefore, for religious to realize how a particularly har-monious communion among themselves, sharing one another's charism, "can and should contribute to express better the full-ness and richness of Christ" (§46), not only in his Body the church, but also in his extended body, the world in need of union. The charisms of the different religious families, with their charismatic and yet ecclesial-minded founders, belong as much to the whole church as to the Jan~ry-Febrz~ry 1994 51 Dominic ¯ Charism, Cbarisms, and Faddism As charisms serve the cause of communion in the church, so do they contribute to the unity of the separate congregations them-selves. It is unthinkable that a religious family could maintain its unity of life amid all its committed involvement in the world if it failed to cling to its essential charism for nourishment (§32b). Each particular charism, bringing with it a particular manner of intense eyangelical life, makes the presence of the one Lord pres-ent in space and time (§46) and thus "enriches the legacy of life, history, and spirituality characterizing each family identity, shared in common through the spirit of the founder or foundress" (§16). Keeping Charisms Alive The dynamism of religious life in its variety depends on the vitality of its true charisms. Once charisms turn false, they lose their vitality and spell the ruin of institutes. Present-day insti-tutes can continue their existence faithfully only if they recog-nize, recover, retain, and renew their particular charisms in their past originality and present timeliness (~ 17). What, then, can we say about the renewal of charisms? "In keeping with their proper charism" (§40) and similar phrases recur in the Lineamenta, as in the Code of Canon Law, emphasizing that the charisms are to be preserved with fidelity and continued without alteration, avoiding all subtle deviation from the original spirit (§16). This supposes in religious a healthy appreciation and pride in the early traditions of their congrega-tion, as advocated by Perfectae caritatis. Given the evangelical inspiration of all charisms, one can say more, drawing a compar-ison between keeping to the purity of the gospel and maintaining the primitive charism. As Paul insisted on an anathema for those who dare preach a different gospel (Ga 1:8-9), religious founders and foundresses could do likewise, enjoining their followers to abide by the spirit of their constitutions without any dilution or dissimulation on their part.13 In this spirit, while expressing appre-ciation of the general progress in the awareness of the separate charisms in the different congregations in the postconciliar era, the Lineamenta adds affirmatively: "This consciousness ought to find expression in a spiritual commitment and a working pres-ence which effectively enlivens and makes operative for the good of the church the spirit of the founder orfoundress and the legacy of each institute" (§3 lc). 52 Review for Religious Two modern experiences with regard to charisms are note-worthy. One, the preferential choice for the poor, which has been "a constant feature of charisms in the apostolic life, often inspired by the words and actions of the Lord" (§44c; see also §27d), is becoming more and more a serious concern for religious life, leading communities to share the very life of the poor and the marginalized with all their risks, trials, and problems. Second, reminiscent of the early successes of many a congregation, there is the geographical spread of extant charisms in the younger churches of the third world and in the newly liberated Eastern European countries (§27c), giving rise to new cultural expres-sions of them (§32c). The above-mentioned experiences are two fine examples of how charisms rise to the occasion and serve their purpose today, provided they are ever deepened and constantly developed (Mutuae relationes, §1 i; L ~16) according to the signs of the times (Perfectae caritatis, §2; L §17). The sign today is the oncoming of the third millennium, throwing up opportunities and challenges (§33) and giving rise to the sprouting of new charisms and new forms of evangelical life (§24 and §27c). One aspect of this deepening and developing of surviving charisms lies in the direction of their "being called upon today-- inspired by the spirit of the founder or foundress--to serve as the basis for making new commitments and responses in Christian charity to the new and old expressions of poverty in our world" (§29g) and, more generally, to the changed atmosphere of the world "because of the social and cultural happenings which have rapidly come about in modern society" (§25). This is reminiscent of the call of Mutuae relationes to be innovative enough for bold enter-prising initiatives (§12; L §42). Which persons are inspired enough and thus inspiring enough to make new initiatives and refound their congregations, warding off the subtle temptation to be wise in their own eyes? Only fer-vent people (§29e). Only they can update discerningly for today the expressions of their original charism. But in the absence of such people "a certain leveling in behavior and in the tenor of the spiritual and communal life has brought a certain loss of prac-tical identity in charism and works" (§28b)--as surely happened in India, for instance, when some religious working with the masses wanted no public association whatever with their congre-gation. So the apparently clever and outspoken members certainly ~tammry-February 1994 53 Dominic ¯ Charism, Cbarisms, and Faddism need to be cautioned, against tendential postures, theoretical and practical, regarding charisms that go against their.genuineness (§3 lc). A case in point was that of a Jesuit who spoke of the need to rewrite the Ignatian rules for thinking with the church, to the applause of the gathering of course, with scant awareness of their foundation in the mystical union of the church and Christ that inspired Ignatius's Eharacteristic service of the church. While there have been new, positive, and worthy initiatives-- the switch of women religious in the United States from the ser-vice of the clergy to frontier ministries should be hailed as one such measure though grudged by not a few men even in the highly progressive United States of Americal4--there have also been negative, unworthy, and false initiatives--which brings me to the discussion of faddism. Faddism Faddism, the cultivation of fads, has to do with "a rapid, sud-den, and ephemeral collective adoption of novel behavior which affects only superficial or trivial areas of life.''s It was certainly the fad of hasty paradigm shifting when some persons clamored for implementing changes in religious life at a faster pace than peo-ple could cope with. Even when people were willing to change, it was not without the grief of losing the familiar past or the fear of the unknown future. So whoever rushed their fellow religious into the world of Vatican II without at the same time providing them time to grapple with their fear or to grieve over or even rage about their apparent loss were carried away more by an itch for change (2 Tm 4:3) than by the breath of the Spirit, for whom there are times for everything. It was also a fad whenever an opinion gained ground that this or that particular individual was the resource person for renewal. To venture an example, it would seem that a certain fad of what may be called spiritual consumerism surrounded Anthony de Mello of Sadbana fame, for numbers of people kept looking to him alone for renewal, almost as if he were the director of world-wide renewal. In any case, whenever one individual looms too large in some endeavor, the result tends to be superficial, whereas all renewal worth the name happens deep within people, where the creative Spirit works in the innermost recesses of hearts. Another similax: fad, which coflld be called hybridization, was 54 Review for Religious the adoption of a celebrated model as the sole means of renewal, whether or not it squared with the blueprint of one's own origi-nal charism. If the one-month retreat according to the Spiritual Exercises appeared to be such a fad some twenty years ago, today in certain circles external dialogue--whether with native tradi-tions or modern situations--would seem to hold sway more than inner dialogue within one's own charism. Among all those who were "zealous" about reforms in reli-gious life, precious few resorted to a real praxis. Not only did individuals and small groups indulge in the fad of stylized ideo-logical talk.~6 Even entire provinces, if not whole congregations, could be all talk, adopting popular phrases about the poor, for example, rather than making sincere options for them. How pro-ductive can all this exercise be except for inviting occasional out-right condemnation. A bold village woman responded to a group of young religious whose actions were not as forthcoming as their words, "These are not the kind of shepherds who will save the sheep; they swallow the sheep." What is absent in feverish talk, namely, action, can itself become a fad and go beyond all proportion. The slogan (not the idea itself) "formation for mission in mission" suits such a fad, giving the go-by to minimum privacy and seclusion for necessary growth in maturity and personalization. Showmanship and one-up- manship feed this fad, causing each one's action to be largely unproductive. These things are the very opposite of prophetic action. They may have the imaginativeness of the prophets of old, but not their soundness of inspiration. The craze of using anything and everythin