G Smith

This book draws together thinking on the notion of improvisation as liberatory praxis for popular music education. There is growing recognition that improvisation is a vital artistic and ontological practice that can promote developments in many areas of musicianship and beyond. Although improvisation is taught and assessed in education institutions throughout the world, pedagogical research on improvisation has hitherto often been disparate, emerging mainly from case-specific accounts of particular musical traditions, for instance jazz and free improvisation. Furthermore, improvisation is often viewed primarily as a means to musical ends such as constructing musical artifacts. This volume affords authors the opportunity to move away from considering improvisation as a “means to an end ” and instead to explore improvisation as liberatory praxis—praxis in the Freirian sense, meaning “reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed” (Freire, 1970, p. 126). The editors view improvisation and improvisatory thinking within education as means to enhance, challenge, rethink or disrupt normative pedagogic approaches within and around popular music education. Improvisation offers liberatory potential through resisting, undermining, and refocusing many of the forces in music education and cultures of music learning that can have dehumanizing effects on learners, teachers, scholars, and practitioners alike. The book’s editors have curated herein a unique collection of essays wherein improvisation as liberatory praxis works as an exploratory framework to consider ways in which educators, musicians, and scholars develop popular music education as a diverse area of musical learning that prioritizes humanization toward effecting meaningful change.

This book is a joint effort of like-minded researchers to define the concept of process within a psychological setting. Although minor differences exist as regards choice of background theory, their common focus is on personality in a broad psychodynamic context. Their definition of personality rests on a series of test instruments that have been validated during decades of thorough and vigorous empirical work. These were originally designed to open up micro-processes underlying the adaptation to or construction of reality, and have subsequently proven diagnostically efficient. Coming from both sides of the Atlantic, the contributors have their background in psychological as well as medical institutions. The contributions in the book are examples of a vital source sustaining our efforts to get a more profound understanding of the vicissitudes of the human mind.

Not everyone finds a in suffering. Indeed, even those who do subscribe to this interpretation recognize the responsibility of each individual to show not only sensitivity and compassion but render assistance to those in distress. Pharmacologic hypnosis, morphine intoxication, and terminal sedation provide their own type of medical to the terminally ill patient suffering unremitting pain. More and more states are enacting legislation that recognizes this need of the dying to receive relief through regulated administration of controlled substances. Wider legislative recognition of this need would go far toward allowing physicians, in the exercise of their reasonable medical judgment, to administer a range of narcotics and barbiturates to the terminally ill without fear of legal sanctions. Sadly, social attitudes and governmental concerns about the spread of drug addiction provide an undeniable policy nexus that impedes unduly a rational approach or exception for the treatment of pain experienced by the dying

1. Humans & Future vs. Now • People naturally oscillate between past, present, and future. • Those who plan for the future (“preppers,” religious believers) focus on security, salvation, or long-term goals. • Those who focus on the present (“live now”) seek pleasure, freedom, and immediate satisfaction. 2. Religions & End-of-World Thinking • Religions with afterlife or apocalypse teachings push people to live for the future — prepare now for rewards or avoid punishment later. • Satanism flips this: it emphasizes living fully in the present, taking responsibility, and enjoying life without guilt. 3. Modern Money & Consumer Culture • Instant access to money, credit, and online shopping encourages present-focused living. • People are subtly pushed to spend now rather than save or plan, creating dependence on consumption. 4. Influencers & Corporate Influence • Many influencers promote a “live now” lifestyle, often sponsored by big companies. • They appear as personal guides or friends, but their messaging serves corporate profit. • This can trap people in debt, anxiety, and constant comparison, disguised as freedom or self-expression. 5. Twisted Self-Help & Control • Self-help and empowerment messages are co-opted: they inspire people to take charge of life, then guide them into consumption loops. • People feel liberated, but in reality, their attention, money, and desire are being directed — creating an addictive cycle. 6. Core Insight • True “live for now” philosophy (like Satanism) is about freedom and conscious choice. • Modern consumerism twists it, making present-focused living profitable for corporations while subtly controlling people. • The result: people think they are free, happy, and empowered — but many are caught in a cycle of consumption, distraction, and addiction.

This chapter explores mental health nursing practice within an ethics context. It teases out the ethical challenges that mental health nurses can face on a daily basis. A short case study highlights potential solutions to those challenges.For mental health nurses, having the power to control and being expected to control people diagnosed with a mental disorder can be morally distressing, especially where situations do not always have clear outcomes. The case study part of the chapter will consider how in these difficult circumstances mental health nurses can control and potentially restrict service user freedoms in a way that reduces moral distress and is beneficent and sensitive. A challenge for the contemporary mental health nurse is to know how to wield this power in a way that acknowledges their societal responsibilities while at the same time respecting the rights of the individuals they are required to control. It is important to recognise that restricting freedoms through the use of sanctioned coercion can be a good thing; however, this is dependent on coercion being used by the mental health nurse in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the mental health service user and is recovery-focused.

On the fortieth anniversary of its first broadcast in 1984, this article will consider the main themes of the BBC TV series The Sea of Faith, written and presented by the Cambridge philosopher and theologian Don Cupitt. It will attempt to evaluate its significance, then and now. We argue that Cupitt’s ‘radical’ reputation for his advancement of a broadly ‘non-realist’ understanding of God may have overshadowed other equally significant features, not least his central argument that unless Christianity responded constructively to modern thought it would be doomed to irrelevance. The article will close with some reflections on what Cupitt’s manifesto for religion might mean for those who continue to identify with his critiques of traditional theology today.

This article offers a political reading of Franz Kafka's posthumous work The Trial. In this novel, the main protagonist (Joseph K.) is subject to an arrest and trial conducted by the ambiguous authority of a shadowy court and its officials. This article explores Joseph K.'s experience of being subject to the Law, and relates this to our own understanding and experience of political subjectivity in modern times. K.'s doomed search for order through a ‘permanent resolution’ of his case is related to the modern desire for order: Specifically, the desire for both philosophical and political frameworks that provide narratives or certainty. Here modernity is understood to be characterized by an anxiety brought about by a crisis in authorship and authority. The article then considers K.'s desire for justice and the Law, and his entanglement with the power of the court, as analogous to the modern experience of the triad of justice–law–power, which is subsumed under the banner of ‘sovereignty’. In particular, the article explores K.'s inability to locate, read, or fix the Law; a problem that is also reflected in the aporia of sovereignty as justice–law–power. K.'s experience alerts us to the contradictions in the triad justice–law–power; contradictions that occur as although each member of the triad is dependent upon the other two, each member of the triad also seeks to exclude or deny this dependency. Thus, read politically, K.'s struggle in The Trial can be seen as a reflection of the modern struggle with sovereignty as the triad justice–law–power, and the impasse that K. reaches is also the impasse that modernity has reached.

For decades, the dominant research paradigm has included trials conducted in clinical settings with little involvement from communities. However, concerns about the relevance and applicability of the processes or outcomes of such research have led to calls for greater community engagement in the research process. As such, there has been a shift in emphasis from simply recruiting research participants from community settings to engaging community members more broadly in all aspects of the research process. The move toward community engaged research is in part driven by the recognition that inclusion of diverse perspectives in multidisciplinary teams is essential to addressing complex problems. Investigators have come to recognize the inherent value of engaging community members as collaborators in multidisciplinary teams that are conducting research on issues of concern to communities. The insider perspective from community members is now recognized as essential in designing effective and well-received recruitment strategies, culturally appropriate measures, and identifying meaningful and broad-reaching venues for dissemination.

In this paper we will take a careful look at the well-known fact that a complete 2 rotation in three dimensional space, while leaving vectors, tensors and generally the integral representations of the rotation group unchanged, causes a sign change in the half-integral spinor representations of the rotation group. First, in a brief introduction, we review the origin of the sign change of spinors by a 2 rotation. Next, we analyze Aharonov and Susskind's (hereafter referred to as A. & S.) (1967) original proposal for detecting such a sign change and compare it with a later proposal1 for detecting the sign change using neutron beams that are coherently split and recombined. While the A. & S. experiment is, we think, conceptually more interesting, the neutron beam experiment has actually been carried out. And finally, we discuss the philosophical significance of the rotationally induced spinor sign change.

Between 1993 and 1998 I served as magazine editor and then publications officer for the Christian Socialist Movement. The article reflects on this experience and in particular the attempt to relate theological ideas to political activity. It is argued that theological ideas were less important than political allegiances. This said, theological ideas did help motivate people to become involved in politics and offer general ideological direction especially through the notion of an eschatological vision. This type of theological reflection tended to support those who were critical of the New Labour project. What seemed to be lacking was a theology of governance and so in the final section some consideration is given to the issues for this type of theology

Foundations of Space-Time Theories, by Michael Friedman, falls naturally into two parts. In the first, he presents the general framework within which he will characterize and discuss space-time theories, and then he devotes a chapter each to Newtonian physics, special relativity, and general relativity. Although there is some rich philosophical discussion along the way, these chapters are, of necessity, somewhat technical expositions of the general framework in action. It is in the second part, consisting of two substantial chapters, one on relationalism, the other on conventionalism, that more general philosophical issues are addressed.

This paper examines the role that attention to emotions around climate change can play for third sector climate change engagement initiatives, an area to which the literature on such initiatives has paid little attention. It focuses on Carbon Conversations, a programme that explicitly acknowledges the role of difficult emotions and underlying values in people's engagement with climate change. While there are limitations to this approach, results show that it can help certain audiences engage more deeply with issues around climate change and carbon reduction. Important lessons can be drawn for other initiatives that aim to engage the public on climate change.

Against the backdrop of cultural and political ideals, this article highlights both the significance of mental health nursing in meeting population needs and the regulatory barriers that may be impeding its ability to adequately do so. Specifically, we consider how ambiguous notions of ‘proficiency’ in nurse education—prescribed by the regulator—impact the development of future mental health nurses and their mental health nursing identity. A key tension in mental health practice is the ethical‐legal challenges posed by sanctioned powers to restrict patients' freedom at the same time as the desire (and obligation) to promote patients' self‐determined recovery. The genericism of the UK's Future Nurse Standards do little to prepare mental health nurses to navigate the tensions that ensue. This has consequences for nurses and patients alike, as both risk experiencing the distress and dissonance that attends giving or receiving poor care. We argue that more needs to be done to enable mental health nurses to define and articulate the nuances of the profession as part of becoming critical, thoughtful and confident practitioners. Educators can contribute to this mission by aligning curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to create meaningful opportunities for mental health nursing students to engage with the complexities of mental health nursing practice. Without this, the credibility of the profession will continue to be questioned; its future uncertain.