integration

Posts Tagged ‘integration’

Scaffolding Developmental Transformation Among Immigrants in Order to Facilitate Self-Directed Integration: Practices and Theories of Change

Thomas Jordan

Abstract:This article reports findings from an empirical study of six Swedish programs using dialogue-based approaches to bridge gaps in views and norms, support relevant knowledge acquisition and support empowerment of immigrants who are still living on the margin of the Swedish society. The main purpose of the study was to investigate the program theories of the programs included in the study, with particular emphasis on their theories of change and practices used to scaffold developmental transformation of the meaning-making systems of immigrants. Several adult development frameworks and program theory provided the analytical framework for the study.

The analysis of the program theories of the six programs included in the study yielded an inventory of 72 practices used by all, most or some of the interviewed program leaders. A large share of these practices were regarded as very important in all or almost all of the six programs we studied. The inventory of practices can be regarded as a framework that can be used both by researchers in further investigations and by practitioners who want to reflect on and develop their skills and practices.

Tags: dialogue, Developmental transformation, empowerment, immigrants, refugees, integration, Thomas Jordan, scaffolding

Re-viewing Self and Societal Development from a Postformal Perspective: An Artistic De-concealiation, Reconciliation and Trans-formation

Marc G. Lucas

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to attempt to do justice to the chosen topic, including regarding its design. In a conscious distinction from the more conventional, materialistic, rationalistic, and quantitative approaches that prevail today in the economic and social sciences, the focus of this study will first be placed on consideration of images, contextualising the way in which I perceive them (first person perspective). Thus the paper is structured along sequential instances of experience and concomitant reflection bringing together such different paradigmatic positions as artistic and scientific approaches to individual and collective developments within an integrated approach that includes and transcends conventional thought. Together with statements from several artists and their works of visual arts (second person perspective) and in a mutual exchange with third person approaches from current psychological, economic, and neuro-scientific debates this will create an integrated systemic image, which in particular allows a deeper look into the underlying overall developmental theme. Every section of the article will be introduced by two correspondent statements, one written from an artistic more introspective perspective and one from a philosophical or scientific position to point out the main tension experienced and discussed within the section. Main aim is to allow to arise cross-fertilization in the sense of a hermeneutic circle. This circle finds its dynamically-sustaining shape in the form of a Mobius strip. Philosophical contributions in particular from phenomenology and complexity theory complete the picture, thus creating a conscious draft, which is aware of its own subjectivity. Ultimately the simultaneous inclusion of artistic and creative skills carried out in this article, goes beyond individual paradigms of a formal logic inherent in existing theories of development toward a more inclusive and visionary logic of the art looked at/and artistic lens seen through.

Tags: knowledge, art, dual-process theory, inclusive logic, integrative complexity, neuro-psycho-economics, postformal reasoning., integration, adult development, epistemology

Integrative Research: Integral Epistemology and Integrative Methodology

Bahman A.K. Shirazi

Abstract: This article provides an introduction to integral epistemology and integrative methodology through a discussion of basic ontological principles of integralism and their implications for developing integrative approaches to knowledge. After a review of classification of approaches to research, integration is introduced as a research strategy that can be applied to various modes of scholarship and within specific research methods. It is argued that the current dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research methods may be reconciled by showing that various research methods belong to a wide spectrum of methodologies that correspond to an integral epistemological gradient. Lastly, three basic strategies for integrative research: Integral Dialectical Synthesis, Unity-in Diversity, and Analytico-Synthetic Integration are discussed.

Tags: integrative methodology, research methodology, Bahman A. K. Shirazi, Haridas Chaudhuri, Sri Aurobindo, integration, integral dialectics, integral epistemology

The Restoration of Wholeness

Karabi Sen

Abstract: Wholeness is an innate state, a quality which is lost with our exposure to the world. Our life is spent in efforts to restore the state of wholeness in us. The world takes from us our tranquility and balance. Yet it is only from this giving of us that we can recover our lost self. That which takes also gives. Integration is a process which takes place in time and space. It is a developmental experience that admits of degrees, failures and regenerations. The integral self is not a finished perfect product. The self is born in nature and to nature. As such, it can mature, shine and bring itself to fruition only through trials and tribulations. Without the loss of wholeness we would never even have a vision of what constitutes wholeness; nor would we aspire after its retrieval. Creation is an evolutionary process which travels a path with many perils and also rewards. The journey to integration is difficult when we separate ourselves from our fellow humans and other forms of life or see ourselves as different from the soil and air and water that make us. Once we see ourselves in all that surrounds us and recognize them in ourselves uniting is not hard any longer. When we unite with the world we achieve a united, harmonious, whole self within as well.

Tags: Integral Philosophy, integration, wholeness, Karabi Sen

The Transdisciplinary Moment(um)

Julie Thompson Klein

Abstract: There is no universal theory, methodology, or definition of transdisciplinarity (TD). Nevertheless, keywords reveal similarities and differences across explanations. This overview tracks five major clusters of meaning: (a) meta-level conceptions of interdisciplinarity, (b) the changing nature and status of unity in the discourse of TD, (c) new alignments with participatory and collaborative problem-oriented research, (d) the forms of knowledge that TD engages, and (e) a transgressive imperative that interrogates the existing structure of knowledge, culture, and education. These categories of meaning are not air-tight. However, with widening use of the core word “transdisciplinarity,” it is important to be alert to these patterns and their underlying values and priorities.

Tags: transcendent, transgression, trans-sector, complexity, unity., integration, Julie Thompson Klein, transformation, transdisciplinarity, participation, Collaboration, interdisciplinarity

Cybersemiotics: A New Foundation for Transdisciplinary Theory of Information, Cognition, Meaningful Communication and the Interaction Between Nature and Culture

Søren Brier

Abstract: Cybersemiotics constructs a non-reductionist framework in order to integrate third person knowledge from the exact sciences and the life sciences with first person knowledge described as the qualities of feeling in humanities and second person intersubjective knowledge of the partly linguistic communicative interactions, on which the social and cultural aspects of reality are based. The modern view of the universe as made through evolution in irreversible time, forces us to view man as a product of evolution and therefore an observer from inside the universe. This changes the way we conceptualize the problem and the role of consciousness in nature and culture. The theory of evolution forces us to conceive the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities together in one theoretical framework of unrestricted or absolute naturalism, where consciousness as well as culture is part of nature. But the theories of the phenomenological life world and the hermeneutics of the meaning of communication seem to defy classical scientific explanations. The humanities therefore send another insight the opposite way down the evolutionary ladder, with questions like: What is the role of consciousness, signs and meaning in the development of our knowledge about evolution? Phenomenology and hermeneutics show the sciences that their prerequisites are embodied living conscious beings imbued with meaningful language and with a culture. One can see the world view that emerges from the work of the sciences as a reconstruction back into time of our present ecological and evolutionary self-understanding as semiotic intersubjective conscious cultural and historical creatures, but unable to handle the aspects of meaning and conscious awareness and therefore leaving it out of the story. Cybersemiotics proposes to solve the dualistic paradox by starting in the middle with semiotic cognition and communication as a basic sort of reality in which all our knowledge is created and then suggests that knowledge develops into four aspects of human reality: Our surrounding nature described by the physical and chemical natural sciences, our corporality described by the life sciences such as biology and medicine, our inner world of subjective experience described by phenomenologically based investigations and our social world described by the social sciences. I call this alternative model to the positivistic hierarchy the cybersemiotic star. The article explains the new understanding of Wissenschaft that emerges from Peirce’s and Luhmann’s conceptions.

Tags: Peircean semiotics, second-order-cybernetics, Wissenschaft., Søren Brier, integration, phenomenology, transdisciplinarity, Biosemiotics

Integral Politics as Process

Tom Atlee

Abstract: Using the definition proposed here, integral politics can be a process of integrating diverse perspectives into wholesome guidance for a community or society. Characteristics that follow from this definition have ramifications for understanding what such political processes involve. Politics becomes integral as it transcends partisan battle and nurtures generative conversation toward the common good. Problems, conflicts and crises become opportunities for new (or renewed) social coherence. Conversational methodologies abound that can help citizen awareness temporarily expand during policy-making, thus helping raise society’s manifested developmental stage. Convening archetypal stakeholders or randomly selected citizens in conversations designed to engage the broader public enhances democratic legitimacy. With minimal issue- and candidate-advocacy, integral political leaders would develop society’s capacity to use integral conversational tools to improve its health, resilience, and collective intelligence. This both furthers and manifests evolution becoming conscious of itself.

Tags: integral politics, process, Tom Atlee, integration, perspectives, evolution, Collective intelligence, conversational methodologies, democratic legitimacy, developmental stage

Paranada: Beyond Beyond

Hector Currie with Juan Pacheco

Abstract: “Paranada: Beyond Beyond” represents the culmination of the author’s research findings of geometric evidence in the Pythagorean design of the temple and theatre complex of the ancient Greek Temple of Delphi. Rather than a dualistic moral judgment, Delphic rites sought a dynamic equipoise between Apollonian and Dionysian psychic forces, transcending the self/boundless dichotomy. The temple has a deflection of 7.5 degrees—1/12th the 90-degree gravitational fall of all existents, the gravitational factor in music theory (as in the Pythagorean “harmony of the spheres”) in each note’s descent in the 12-tone scale’s octaval fall. Significantly, this means that the Delphic design encapsulates a space/time concordance. The design reveals that Pythagoras’ epochal concept of a transcendent kosmos is realized in both space (the sacred site’s cosmic plan) and in time (the nightly celestial whirl of constellations above it). “Paranada” traces this discovery of a divine order at the Delphic center to the sages of the kingdom of Bharat in ancient India and the birth of speculation on the meaning of existence in their most sacred Rig Vedic “Creation Hymn” X. 129. “Paranada” thus suggests that the Western cultural tradition is derived not ultimately from Greece, but from India, and contemplates the significance such ancient visionary philosophical insight might have for the daunting challenges continually confronting us. This work constitutes an eclectic integration of transdisciplinary insights into the known and the unknown, the arts and the sciences, and science and religion. In descriptive and poetic forms, “Paranada” seeks to find vital correspondences and affinities among Pythagorean geometry; numerology; cosmology; ancient psychologies; nature philosophy and mysticism; Greek mythology; Greek, Shakespearean, and modern tragedy; quantum physics and astrophysics; and transcendent cosmic consciousness.

Tags: Temple at Delphi, Anaximander, tragedy, cosmology, transcendence, equipoise, gravitational factor, Greek, harmony of the spheres, nature philosophy, integration, quantum physics, Pythagoras, Hector Currie, Shakespeare, Juan Pacheco

Integral Review and its Editors

Abstract: In this introduction to Integral Review’s inaugural issue, we explain the meaning we give to the title of this electronic journal which is open-access, both refereed and peer-reviewed, and why that meaning is important for us in today’s world. The draft of the basic article, which was intensely discussed among the members of the editorial committee, was written by Sara Ross and Reinhard Fuhr,* and following it, other members of the editorial committee added their personal emphases in reference to the integral paradigm as well as their (critical) evaluation of the premises made in the basic article. Thus Thomas Jordan offers a set of categories and criteria for integral qualities which turned out to be most important in practice and evaluation processes. Michel Bauwens makes distinctions about the multi-perspectival nature of the integral paradigm, points out ways to avoid four different kinds of reductionism, and highlights layers of awareness. Russ Volckman emphasizes the connection between the diversity of worldviews and methodologies, which allow us to also integrate recent developments in behavioral approaches in his professional field of organization and leadership development. Jonathan Reams emphasizes the new, transcendent quality of an integral approach that enables us to use different qualities of “reflection” flexibly and – as we have a meta-framework of human perceptions and values – to recognize everybody’s truth and feel compassionate with it. We then close with a discussion of the relationship between Integral Review and the mission of its non-profit publisher, ARINA, Inc.

Editor’s note: Sara Ross is president of ARINA, Inc. and coordinator of IR, Reinhard Fuhr is editor-in-chief of IR

Tags: Wilber, change agents, Sara Ross, complexity, Reinhard Fuhr, consciousness development, Michel Bauwens, Gebser, Thomas Jordan, integral, Jonathan Reams, integration, Russ Volckmann, paradigm, research, social change, transformation

Integral Review

A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis