Our actions in education, business, and government are no longer guided by conscious ideals, but by entrenched practices that are products of expediency, indolence, and even tyranny. Inveterate and ubiquitous problems abound. Students hate school. Employees dislike their jobs. Professors become disinclined toward teaching. Boredom and procrastination are everywhere. There are promotion requirements (such as scholarly publications by college professors) that promote nothing and benefit none except to move the person into the next nominal category along the spectrum of the organizational ladder. We are plagued with senseless competitive patterns and numerical evaluations that make life a mere matter of "rat race", the winning of which does not uplift us into the sublimity of humanity, but trammel us in the degradation of being "rats". Essays in this book reflect on and search for answers to widespread and inveterate problems that degenerate modern life into mere livelihood. Products in sober solitude rather than in the societal cacophony, most essays in the book were written during the author's doctoral studies.

This timely book brings together activist scholars from a range of disciplines to provide new insights into a growing trend in publicly engaged research and scholarship. Bridging Scholarship and Activism creatively redefines what constitutes activism without limiting it to a narrow range of practices, with an ultimate goal of creating a decolonized and democratized forum for scholar activists worldwide.

Our actions in education, business, and government are no longer guided by conscious ideals, but by entrenched practices that are products of expediency, indolence, and even tyranny. Inveterate and ubiquitous problems abound. Students hate school. Employees dislike their jobs. Professors become disinclined toward teaching. Boredom and procrastination are everywhere. There are promotion requirements (such as scholarly publications by college professors) that promote nothing and benefit none except to move the person into the next nominal category along the spectrum of the organizational ladder. We are plagued with senseless competitive patterns and numerical evaluations that make life a mere matter of "rat race", the winning of which does not uplift us into the sublimity of humanity, but trammel us in the degradation of being "rats". Essays in this book reflect on and search for answers to widespread and inveterate problems that degenerate modern life into mere livelihood. Products in sober solitude rather than in the societal cacophony, most essays in the book were written during the author's doctoral studies.

Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this handbook explores both social scientific and humanities approaches to understanding the physical processes of religious life, tradition, practice, and belief. It reflects the cultural turn within the study of religion and puts theory to the fore, moving beyond traditional theological, philosophical, and ethnographic understandings of the aesthetics of religion. Editors Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens bring together research in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts, and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity, and postcolonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space to move beyond a sensory understanding of aesthetics. Emerging areas of research are covered, including secular aesthetics and the aesthetic of spirits. This is an important contribution to theory and method in the study of religion, and is grounded in research that has been taking place in Europe over the past 20 years. Case studies are drawn from around the world with contributions from scholars based in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The book is illustrated with over 40 color images and features a foreword from Birgit Meyer.

Birth, death and the rituals that take us from one to the other tell us a lot about humanity and our quest to understand ourselves. It is cross-disciplinary analyses of the life course that have generated the most profound insights into religion and spirituality, challenging the concepts and methods we commonly use to understand these universal aspects of human experience. Douglas Davies' work is a rare example of this kind of scholarship, challenging the boundaries that separate theology from the social sciences and that divide academia from public life. This book serves as a tribute to Davies' work and a critical commentary on the questions that arise from it. Featuring essays by renowned international scholars, this book brings cutting-edge research into conversation with ongoing debates about disciplinary difference and the nature of scholarship.

Shifting faculty roles in a changing landscape Ernest L. Boyer's landmark book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate challenged the publish-or-perish status quo that dominated the academic landscape for generations. His powerful and enduring argument for a new approach to faculty roles and rewards continues to play a significant part of the national conversation on scholarship in the academy. Though steeped in tradition, the role of faculty in the academic world has shifted significantly in recent decades. The rise of the non-tenure-track class of professors is well documented. If the historic rule of promotion and tenure is waning, what role can scholarship play in a fragmented, unbundled academy? Boyer offers a still much-needed approach. He calls for a broadened view of scholarship, audaciously refocusing its gaze from the tenure file and to a wider community. This expanded edition offers, in addition to the original text, a critical introduction that explores the impact of Boyer's views, a call to action for applying Boyer's message to the changing nature of faculty work, and a discussion guide to help readers start a new conversation about how Scholarship Reconsidered applies today.

Digital networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter have revolutionized everyday human interaction by facilitating the search for, and access to, information, entertainment, and social connection. But with the rise of digital surveillance and data extraction for profit, more people are seeking not just to disconnect from technology but to fully disentangle themselves from the widespread social, economic, and political networks of digital communications. Disentangling offers an interdisciplinary global analysis of this growing trend toward disconnection. Moving beyond technological disconnection, this volume proposes the term "disentangling" as a lens for re-thinking the structures of our digital world and categorizing the ways in which people reject, avoid, or rework their digital networks. Across twelve chapters, contributors explore the existential issues stemming from digitally entangled lives, including cultural capital and digital "detox" retreats, and investigate how geographies of disconnection relate to wider societal challenges. Additional chapters explore connections between digital disconnection and other forms of disconnection, including death, sleep, and the abandonment of human settlements. The volume closes with a reflection on connectivity in the post-pandemic society and how we might rework our connections to fit a "socially distanced" world. Blending philosophy and sociology with media geography, Disentangling offers a crucial reflection on how we might unravel our digital dependence by reasserting resilient boundaries between ourselves and the surrounding political, economic, cultural, and technological systems.

In this definitive reference volume, almost fifty leading thinkers and practitioners of autoethnographic research—from four continents and a dozen disciplines—comprehensively cover its vision, opportunities and challenges. Chapters address the theory, history, and ethics of autoethnographic practice, representational and writing issues, the personal and relational concerns of the autoethnographer, and the link between researcher and social justice. A set of 13 exemplars show the use of these principles in action. Autoethnography is one of the most popularly practiced forms of qualitative research over the past 20 years, and this volume captures all its essential elements for graduate students and practicing researchers.

As we begin to fundamentally redefine our world, informed through the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) lens, entire industries are gearing up for this disruptive event. Library practices have been no exception. With the advent of advanced digital technology, knowledge is becoming more readily accessible. This book focuses on how libraries need to respond, adapt, and transform to become meaningful spaces in our rapidly changing 21st century, within the 4IR and coupled with the restrictions of the pandemic. Tracing the evolution of technology over the centuries, the changing role of the library as a response to disruptions is discussed.

Integrating Curricular and Co-Curricular Endeavors to Enhance Student Outcomes reports on innovative approaches taken in universities in a number of nations of their experience in bringing together learning in courses with learning in co- and extracurricular activities.