Reinventing spiritual care in a secular context: the chaplain as entrepreneur

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Hetty Zock

This paper discusses the state of chaplaincy—professional spiritual care—in the secularized context of the Netherlands. The present religious and cultural climate is sketched, as well as the organization of chaplaincy and the daily practices of chaplains. Two important recent developments are highlighted: the rise of non-denominational spiritual care and spiritual caregivers getting involved in extramural care (community care). Finally, the Guideline Spiritual Care—an interdisciplinary model for providing spiritual care—is presented. It is argued that chaplaincy in the Netherlands has gone through a process of transformation, in which the relation between the professional and the religious identity of the chaplain had to be redefined. Spiritual care may still be denominationally organized in the Netherlands, but the spiritual caregivers share a common professional identity as professionals who focus on meaning, belief systems, and ethics.

2011 ◽  
Vol 08 (01) ◽  
pp. 09-15
Author(s):  
D. McDaid

SummaryNew forms of psychiatric remuneration linked to levels of activity undoubtedly will have an increasing role to play in mental health systems right across Europe. Potentially they can be more efficient and promote choice, but valid concerns have been raised about their impact on the sustainability and nature of psychiatric care. This article looks in particular at recent developments in England and the Netherlands and reflects on how remuneration mechanisms may need to develop further both to improve efficiency and quality within the context of an ever more fragmented and multi-sectoral mental health system. Any introduction of activity- based reimbursement should be introduced gradually. This should be accompanied by investment in adequate information systems to help better understand service utilisation patterns, transitional funding safeguards to reduce the risk of financial instability and incentives/ contractual measures to ensure that services strive to offer services of the highest possible quality that meet the needs of service users.


Author(s):  
Pål Kolstø ◽  
Helge Blakkisrud

Russian societal nationalism comes in various guises, both ethnic and imperialist. Also Putin’s rhetoric is marked by the tensions between ethnic and state-focused, imperialist thinking. Noting the complex interplay of state nationalism and societal nationalism, this introductory chapter examines the mental framework within which Russian politicians were acting prior to the decision to annex Crimea. The chapter develops a typology of Russian nationalisms, surveys recent developments, and presents the three-part structure of this book: official nationalism, radical and other societal nationalisms, and identities/otherings. It concludes that after the annexation of Crimea, when the state took over the agenda of both ethnic and imperialist nationalists in Russia, societal nationalism finds itself at low ebb.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ringo Ringvee

The article focuses on the relations between the state , mainstream religions and new religious movements in Estonia from the early 1990s until today. Estonia has been known as one of highly secular and religiously liberal countries. During the last twenty years Estonian religious scene has become considerably more pluralist, and there are many different religious traditions represented in Estonia. The governmental attitude toward new religious movements has been rather neutral, and the practice of multi-tier recognition of religious associations has not been introduced. As Estonia has been following neoliberal governance also in the field of religion, the idea that the religious market should regulate itself has been considered valid. Despite of the occasional conflicts between the parties in the early 1990s when the religious market was created the tensions did decrease in the following years. The article argues that one of the fundamental reasons for the liberal attitude towards different religious associations by the state and neutral coexistence of different traditions in society is that Estonian national identity does not overlap with any particular religious identity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6101
Author(s):  
Rishi Sharma ◽  
Henning Winker ◽  
Polina Levontin ◽  
Laurence Kell ◽  
Dan Ovando ◽  
...  

Catch-only models (COMs) have been the focus of ongoing research into data-poor stock assessment methods. Two of the most recent models that are especially promising are (i) CMSY+, the latest refined version of CMSY that has progressed from Catch-MSY, and (ii) SRA+ (Stock Reduction Analysis Plus) a recent developments in field. Comparing COMs and evaluating their relative performance is essential for determining the state of regional and global fisheries that may be lacking necessary data that would be required to run traditional assessment models. In this paper we interrogate how performance of COMs can be improved by incorporating additional sources of information. We evaluate the performance of COMs on a dataset of 48 data-rich ICES (International Council for the Exploration of Seas) stock assessments. As one measure of performance, we consider the ability of the model to correctly classify stock status using FAO’s 3-tier classification that is also used for reporting on sustainable development goals to the UN. Both COMs showed notable bias when run with their inbuilt default heuristics, but as the quality of prior information increased, classification rates for the terminal year improved substantially. We conclude that although further COM refinements show some potential, most promising is the ongoing research into developing biomass or fishing effort priors for COMs in order to be able to reliably track stock status for the majority of the world’s fisheries currently lacking stock assessments.


Author(s):  
Cornell Collin

Is God perfect? The recent volume entitled The Question of God’s Perfection stages a conversation on that topic between mostly Jewish philosophers, theologians, and scholars of rabbinic literature. Although it is neither a work of biblical theology nor a contribution to the theological interpretation of scripture, The Question of God’s Perfection yields stimulating results for these other, intersecting projects. After briefly describing the volume’s central question and contents, the present essay situates the volume’s offerings within the state of the biblical-theological and theological-interpretive fields. In its next section, it considers—and compares— The Question of God’s Perfection with one twentieth-century theological antecedent, the Dutch theologian K.H. Miskotte. In closing, it poses questions for ongoing discussion. The Question of God’s Perfection: Jewish and Christian Essays on the God of the Bible and Talmud, edited by Yoram Hazony & Dru Johnson. Philosophy of Religion – World Religions 8. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019. ISBN 9789004387959


Author(s):  
Kevork Oskanian

Abstract This article contributes a securitisation-based, interpretive approach to state weakness. The long-dominant positivist approaches to the phenomenon have been extensively criticised for a wide range of deficiencies. Responding to Lemay-Hébert's suggestion of a ‘Durkheimian’, ideational-interpretive approach as a possible alternative, I base my conceptualisation on Migdal's view of state weakness as emerging from a ‘state-in-society's’ contested ‘strategies of survival’. I argue that several recent developments in Securitisation Theory enable it to capture this contested ‘collective knowledge’ on the state: a move away from state-centrism, the development of a contextualised ‘sociological’ version, linkages made between securitisation and legitimacy, and the acknowledgment of ‘securitisations’ as a contested Bourdieusian field. I introduce the concept of ‘securitisation gaps’ – divergences in the security discourses and practices of state and society – as a concept aimed at capturing this contested role of the state, operationalised along two logics (reactive/substitutive) – depending on whether they emerge from securitisations of the state action or inaction – and three intensities (latent, manifest, and violent), depending on the extent to which they involve challenges to state authority. The approach is briefly illustrated through the changing securitisation gaps in the Republic of Lebanon during the 2019–20 ‘October Uprising’.


Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 634
Author(s):  
Tarek Frahi ◽  
Francisco Chinesta ◽  
Antonio Falcó ◽  
Alberto Badias ◽  
Elias Cueto ◽  
...  

We are interested in evaluating the state of drivers to determine whether they are attentive to the road or not by using motion sensor data collected from car driving experiments. That is, our goal is to design a predictive model that can estimate the state of drivers given the data collected from motion sensors. For that purpose, we leverage recent developments in topological data analysis (TDA) to analyze and transform the data coming from sensor time series and build a machine learning model based on the topological features extracted with the TDA. We provide some experiments showing that our model proves to be accurate in the identification of the state of the user, predicting whether they are relaxed or tense.


1984 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 607-616
Author(s):  
R. R. Shannon

The requirements on gratings and coatings for astronomical use differ from the general industrial requirements primarily in the scale of the components to be fabricated. Telescopes have large primary mirrors which require large coating plants to handle the components. Dispersive elements are driven by the requirement to be efficient in the presence of large working apertures, and usually optimize to large size in order to efficiently use the incoming radiation. Beyond this, there is a “new” technology of direct electronic sensors that places specific limits upon the image scale that can be used at the output of a telescope system, whether direct imagery or spectrally divided imagery is to be examined. This paper will examine the state of the art in these areas and suggest some actions and decisions that will be required in order to apply current technology to the predicted range of large new telescopes.


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