Augustana College (Illinois)

About: Augustana College (Illinois) is a education organization based out in Rock Island, Illinois, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Higher education & Population. The organization has 491 authors who have published 763 publications receiving 14274 citations. The organization is also known as: Augustana College and Theological Seminary.

Hortas Comunitárias in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro: How New Ideas Are Adopted and Spread Across Communities

Abstract: This paper applies the Diffusion of Innovation Theory popularized by Everett Rogers to examine the adoption and dissemination of community gardens in favelas in Rio de Janeiro. The study involved interviewing adopters of hortas comunitarias in ten communities. The findings suggest that the five traits that Rogers puts forward to explain diffusion of innovation fit reasonably well the adoption and dissemination of hortas. The results also suggest that, with minimal support from the municipal government, experiments in Urban Agriculture in general can become more widespread, which is especially important as food insecurity increases in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Leveraging the social networks and developing robust linkages with existing NGOs that support urban agroecology are key to the dissemination of this socioenvironmental innovation.

Facilitated Conversation: A Useful Tool in an Ethicist’s Toolbox

Abstract: Soto’s syndrome is a rare form of genetic disorder, which is often non-life threatening. However, this case study will examine the case of a young lady with Soto’s syndrome who developed a pediatric cancer. The team and family had opposing goals of care. Ethical dilemmas in surrogate decision-making for mentally challenged individuals can often be resolved through facilitated conversation between the patient’s family and healthcare team.

Book Reviews: God's Phallus and other Problems for Men and Monotheism, How Fathers Care for the Next Generation: A Four Decade Study, Unreasonable Men: Masculinity and Social Theory, the Psychology of Gender, the Male Experience

Abstract: For most theists, one of the surest marks of a childish theological imagination is the notion that God is an old man with a white beard seated on a throne somewherc beyond the clouds. Wc may have thought in this crude fashion as children, we tell ourselves, but surely no mature person seriously entertains such belief. We take it as virtually self-evident that if God exists, embodiment is not one of thc divine qualities. “God is spirit,” avers one New ‘Ikstment writer, “and those who worship God must worship in the spirit.” Despite our purported theological maturity, traces of God’s body continue to crop up in individual and collective imaginations. Sonic of the most sophisticated theists will continue to use male imagery to talk about God, even when they are fully aware their theology does not logically allow an embodied deity. In graduate school, I remember a colleague trying to persuade a young woman to stop referring to God as He. “You don’t really believe,” asked the colleaguc, “that God is sitting up there with a penis?” If God has no body, it makes little sense to allude to God’s maleness. Yet male imagery for God persists, although most persons fail to think through the logical implications of this idea. No one, apparently, wants to contemplate the divine penis. This reticence has engendered an image of God who is a lot like the Wizard of Oz: a hazy tatking head with no body and therefore no troubling tallywacker. This aversion to the idea of God’s phallus also characterizes the religious discourse of ancient Judaism, argues Howard Eilberg-Schwartz in this original and provocative monograph. Eilberg-Schwartz finds great significance in a matter that many modem theologians and biblical scholars deem unremarkable: that many myths of ancient Israel portray God as an embodied male but carefully avoid what that image logically cntails. Analysis of the maleness of the Hebrew God, of course, is not new. Feminist