http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/201/4359/899.2.full.pdf

Phenomenology of perception.

The Ganges River particularly in the old and religious city of Varanasi is polluted by the discharges of cities and towns into the river. Human corpses and raw sewage are the major sources of the rivers pollution. There is no sewage system for 90% of the population. Coliform levels are 120000 colonies/100 milliliters of water. Industry must pay for a permit to dump into rivers but there is no rule governing urban contributions to pollution control. In 1992 members of an environmental group Swatch Ganga attended a conference conducted by the Friends of the Ganges in order to gain moral technical and financial support for cleaning up the river. A strong point was made about fertility levels being lowered when infant mortality declined particularly infant mortality due to water-borne diseases. 50 teachers were also trained to test for water quality by a simple method that students could use. The engineers in attendance discussed the construction of a deep water gravity system for transporting sewage which would not harm the citys ancient architecture but would be costly. Other suggestions were a Chinese-style composting of sewage and an American method for chemical treatment of water. There was no perfect method suggested. The publicity attracted the attention of the Minister of Environment; Dr. Mishra an elite Brahmin founder of Swatch Ganga was asked to personally present the conference recommendations. Friends of the Ganges was also able to raise funds for a community water testing laboratory and to send Dr. Mishra to the USA to study successful river cleanup models. There is a great love of the river and an estimated 70000 pilgrims come to Varanasi every day. There is a need to unite the Moslems Buddhists Jains and Sikhs in a grass-roots effort to clean up the river. There is also need for strong national government financial support. The late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi spearheaded the Ganga Action Plan to construct and renovate treatment plants for 24 cities along the river but the program ended with much to be done; monsoons overwhelm the sewage pumps many months of the year. There are fights over regional cost-sharing.

The sacred and the profane.

Writing at the Margin: Discourse Between Anthropology and Medicine. By Arthur Kleinman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xiii, 314 pp. $16.95.

Managers today increasingly find themselves facing unexpected problems, needing to learn how to cope with complex environments and to take action in an often chaotic flow of events. This article discusses how researchers can engage managers in a form of dialogical action research, capable of nurturing knowledge and change. This is achieved by creating space for collaborative dialogue between managers and researchers, and supplementing it with the integration of a reflexive writing practice. We first present methodological reflections related to the challenges of sustaining management practice through action research. Second, we explicate dialogical action research and illustrate the reflexive writing practice through two vignettes which provide opportunities to reflexively explore “how things work” in managers’ organizational contexts. This forms the basis for sustaining participation and learning at individual and collective levels. Finally, we identify and discuss the specific conditions and limits of s...

Pushing Action Research Toward Reflexive Practice

Critical reflexivity has been acknowledged as fundamental in higher education. For facing complex situations in turbulent environments, students nowadays need not only to be taught technical knowle...

Reconstructing the internship program as a critical reflexive practice: the role of tutorship

Literature underscores the complex role of coaches in sport organizations, especially in youth sectors. Their need for support, not only on the technical level, is emerging. In recent years an interesting international debate has evolved regarding what education is most suitable to support coach development. The article intends to enter this debate by proposing an educational model for youth soccer coaches. This educational proposal is the outcome of reflection that originated from various experiences with about 110 Italian youth soccer coaches over the past six years. The first part is dedicated to a review of the literature on coaching education, and the second to the educational model presented (e.g., theoretical background, characteristics, setting, outcomes, and considerations regarding the management of this educational process). The strength of this model was precisely to have put some recurrent issues in dialogue with the specific organizational contexts in which the educational programs were impl...

Connecting Personal History and Organizational Context: Suggestions for Developing Educational Programs for Youth Soccer Coaches

This reflection is focused on the anthropologic study of cities and their origins. A thought is on the birth of urban reality, its spaces and symbolisms that are responsible for their modern and postmodern transformation. Exchange and contemporary common life follow old traditional schemes, reminding us of lifestyles in villages rather than those of modern cities. These forms of living are reproposed by the groups of migrants who inhabit squares and streets and connote them with their own symbolisms in a multi-ethnic space, where more frequent are the moments of social and cultural fragmentation as opposed to the hosting community's life.

Anthropology of Urban Space: Identities and Places in the Postmodern City

/pdf/transiti-psichici-e-culturali-di-gabriele-profita-giuseppe-1usdxei0na.pdf

Transiti psichici e culturali, di Gabriele Profita, Giuseppe Ruvolo e Valentina Lo Mauro, Cortina: Milano, 2007

Training Paths and Knowledge Processes.  The Role of Narrative Imagery This article proposes narration as a tool to more thoroughly understand knowledge, training and psychological processes by analyzing narrative descriptions of actions and their context, rules, beliefs and motivations at the basis of people's experiences. Here we will give space to the educational and training contexts following a reading key of cultural psychology.

/pdf/percorsi-di-formazione-e-processi-di-conoscenza-il-ruolo-3bxh6xu0dh.pdf

Percorsi di formazione e processi di conoscenza. Il ruolo dell'immaginario narrativo

Come afferma Gian Carlo Caselli nella sua prefazione a questo lavoro, questo testo e un insostituibile strumento per chi vuole affrontare il complesso tema dei “pentiti” con rigore scientifico. Il volume riporta un’ampia trattazione dei e sui collaboranti che permette di rispondere a domande come: chi sono i pentiti? Quanti sono? Quali sono i motivi che li hanno spinti ad uscire dalla mafia? Come vivono dopo aver servito lo Stato? E, per finire, quali sono le loro difficolta legate alla vita sotto protezione?

Dalla Mafia allo Stato. I Pentiti: analisi e storie, con prefazione di Gian Carlo Caselli, a cura di Gruppo Abele, ed., EGA, Torino, 2005, pp., 560, Euro 20,00

Giuseppe Licari

Papers

Connecting Personal History and Organizational Context: Suggestions for Developing Educational Programs for Youth Soccer Coaches

Anthropology of Urban Space: Identities and Places in the Postmodern City

Transiti psichici e culturali, di Gabriele Profita, Giuseppe Ruvolo e Valentina Lo Mauro, Cortina: Milano, 2007

Percorsi di formazione e processi di conoscenza. Il ruolo dell'immaginario narrativo

Dalla Mafia allo Stato. I Pentiti: analisi e storie, con prefazione di Gian Carlo Caselli, a cura di Gruppo Abele, ed., EGA, Torino, 2005, pp., 560, Euro 20,00