Sacred devotion through social interaction: Group-based values and psychological pathways to political activism and radicalism

While existing research has focused on the predictors of conventional political actions and more radical forms of action, experimental demonstrations of the emergence of different collective actions are scarce. This thesis considers how people come to endorse different action strategies for social change. I experimentally tested the effects of social interaction (present / absent) and group-based values (sacred / instrumental) in bringing about support for both political and more radical forms of collective action (N = 133). I predicted that interacting with like-minded others would lead to increased support for political engagement, whereas support for radicalised solutions would shift only when the issue was perceived to involve sacred values. As hypothesised, results showed that social interaction increased endorsement of political actions, and when sacred values were salient, fostered support for more extreme solutions. Data also provided empirical evidence for specific psychological markers of both politicised and radicalised actions. This thesis highlights how the energising effects of social interaction can be consequential for social change, by increasing commitments to political activism and fostering support for more extreme, potentially illegal or violent, solutions

‘Quilting’ with the Mosaic approach: smooth and striated spaces in early childhood research

This article re-examines material from empirical studies carried out within a participatory paradigm involving the Mosaic approach (Clark, 2017), a particular visual, participatory approach, originally developed to research with young children their perspectives of their early childhood institutions. The work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) has been a catalyst for exploring alternative ways of thinking about how young children make sense of the material world in which they are immersed. This article focuses on their concept of quilting through exploring the notions of smooth and striated spaces. These concepts are applied at the meta and micro level. Firstly how might ‘quilting’ with the Mosaic approach create both smooth or open-ended spaces for improvisation and striated or prescribed spaces within the research process? Secondly at a micro level, what might the concepts of smooth and striated space combined with a participatory approach, open up about the material and pedagogical environment in early childhood

Germans in Illinois

Review of: Germans in Illinois, by Miranda E. Wilkerson and Heather Richmond

Reach for the sky: A typology of angelic discourse and its liturgical impact within the Yaḥad.

And God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years...'(Genesis 1:14). Time was created and a method for determining a calendar was invented. In creation, God gives us time and space, a separation of the heavenly and the earthly, and a Sabbath day on with which to worship God. Yet God also transcends time and space, being both the beginning and the end - 'the alpha and omega' - the past, the present and the future all at once. What if humans also had that ability: a way of being connected with the past, present and future; an intellectual transcendence of the earthly into the heavenly? This thesis uses spatial theory to analyse the angelic and priestly discourse of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Shirot), and its liturgical impact within the Yaḥad. Firstly, scriptural tropes and themes are investigated to show how these are later incorporated into the development of the Shirot and the inter-relationship between God, divine beings and humanity. Secondly, the placement of the Shirot within the liturgical calendar at Qumran is analysed. Thirdly, spatial theory is used to investigate the text of the Shirot, focussing on the heavenly hierarchy of angelic beings and their function within the priestly ministry of worship in heaven. Finally, the connection between angelic beings and the earthly community using the Shirot is scrutinised. The question of 'what does it mean to be a member of the Yaḥad?' is addressed, before investigating the formation or transformation of the use of communal liturgy like the Shirot, in order to understand to what extent liturgical worship like the Shirot contributed to the formation of identity and self within the Yaḥad's quest for perfection

Individual Differences in Word Association and Inference Generation From Brief Discourse

When people read a short discourse, both more and less skilled readers make word associations. However, it has also been found that, whereas more skilled readers generate inferences from the text, less skilled readers do not (Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1994). The present study partially replicates and extends the study of Long et al. (1994) by investigating the pattern of word associations and whether less skilled readers may be able to generate inferences if given more time to process the discourse. In particular, the study investigates whether word association are made and inferences are drawn as part of an automatic or an attentional cognitive process. Several models of cognitive processing are compared. The design of the study was a 2 skill level (more skilled/less skilled readers) x 2 target type (associate and inference words) x 2 target congruence (appropriateness or inappropriateness to the context of the discourse) x 3 SOAs (Stimulus Onset Asynchronies or processing time allowed) (400msec, 750msec, and 1500msec). Ninety-six university social sciences students (20 males and 76 females) undertook a lexical decision task, and their performance in terms of response times and error rates was analysed. The pattern of responses found for word associations in Long et al.\u27s study was not replicated in the present study as the priming effect for word associations did not occur. A priming effect for inferences did not occur andd it was found that giving less skilled readers more time to process inference words did not assist them to generate inferences. Both groups of readers were raster in their responses to associate words than to inference words. Future studies could investigate finding an accurate baseline from which to measure priming