The Lab The Temple And The Market

[This book] meshes a discussion of development issues and processes with four different systems of religious beliefs: Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baha'i Faith. The authors - each a scientist as well as a person of faith - show how religious belief and personal faith can be deeply motivational and strikingly fruitful in scientific pursuits. Further, they emphasize how their faith has brought them a profound understanding of interconnectedness and compassion, and thus a wider perspective and greater sense of personal meaning to their research. -- Book jacket.

Alexander Schieffer and Ronnie Lessem introduce a groundbreaking development framework and process to address the most burning issues that humanity faces. While conventional top-down, outside-in development has reached a cul-de-sac, a new, integral form of development is emerging around the world. Integral Development uniquely articulates this emergent approach, and invites us to fully participate in this process. The integral approach has been researched and framed over decades of in-depth experience in transformative development education and practice all over the world. It uniquely combines four mutually reinforcing perspectives: nature and community; culture and spirituality; science, systems and technology; and enterprise and economics. Conventional development theory and practice has prioritized the latter two perspectives, neglecting the former two. This has caused massive imbalances in today’s world. The four interconnected perspectives allow for a transformative and integrated engagement with core development issues in a way that is locally relevant and globally resonant. Throughout, the practical impact of Integral Development is brought to life through highly innovative cases from around the globe, drawing on the authors` first-hand experience. This makes the book a living demonstration of the power of this pioneering approach. Integral Development shows how individual, organizational and societal developments need to be interconnected to release a society’s full potential. It shifts the responsibility for large-scale development from often-distant experts and organizations to each individual, community, enterprise and institution within the society. It is essential reading - and a call to action - for everyone concerned with the current state of local and global development.

Technology, tourism, politics, and law have connected human beings around the world more closely than ever before, but this closeness has, paradoxically, given rise to fear, distrust, and misunderstanding between nation-states and religions. In light of the tensions and conflicts that arise from these complex relationships, many search for ways to find peace and understanding through a “global public sphere.” There citizens can deliberate on issues of worldwide concern. Their voices can be heard by institutions able to translate public opinion into public policy that embraces more than simply the interests and ideas of the wealthy and the empowered. Contributors to this volume address various aspects of this challenge within the context of Bahá’í thought and practice, whose goal is to lay the foundations for a new world civilization that harmonizes the spiritual and material aspects of human existence. Bahá’í teachings view religion as a source of enduring insight that can enable humanity to repair and transcend patterns of disunity, to foster justice within the structures of society, and to advance the cause of peace. Accordingly, religion can and ought to play a role in the broader project of creating a pattern of public discourse capable of supporting humanity’s transition to the next stage in its collective development. The essays in this book make novel contributions to the growing literature on post-secularism and on religion and the public sphere. The authors additionally present new areas of inquiry for future research on the Bahá’í faith.

This book aims to go beyond merely confrontational or complementary treatments of the relationship between market participation and business ethics. Reviewing the attitudes towards the market embedded in religious ethics and scholars, it explores the symbiotic relationship between the economy, ethics and morals. Moving the discussion beyond a static and traditional economy envisaged by scripture, it explores the impact of an evolving and globalised economy based on the value systems of moral philosophy and religious ethics. The Author aims to expand the conventional view of business ethics, encouraging readers to interpret markets and morality as intertwined concepts, and use them to inform further research.

This book explores the dynamics of interaction between pragmatism and spirituality in the constitution and working of consciousness, freedom and solidarity. This book is cross-cultural and transdisciplinary in nature and brings critical and transformative perspectives from different philosophical and spiritual traditions of the world. It discusses the works of seminal thinkers such as William James, Rudolf Steiner, John Dewey, Swami Vivekananda, Martin Heidegger, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jordan Peterson, Slavos Zizek, Paul Valeri and O.V. Vijayan. It also explores dialogues between pragmatism and other philosophical and intellectual traditions such as Semiotics, Saiva Siddhanta, Vedanta, Trika Shaivism and Tantra. It explores themes such as pragmatism and belief, evolution of consciousness and happiness, spiritual pragmatism and economics of solidarity, value levels democracy, the perforamtive as an aspect of spirituality and transformation of political theology from Kingdom of God to Gardens of God.

Whilst education has been widely recognised as a key tool for development, this has tended to be limited to the incremental changes that education can bring about within a given development paradigm, as opposed to its role in challenging dominant conceptions and practices of development and creating alternatives. Through a collection of insightful and provocative chapters, this book will examine the role of learning in shaping new discourses and practices of development. By drawing on contributions from activists, researchers, education and development practitioners from around the world, this book situates learning within the wider political and cultural economies of development. It critically explores if and how learning can shape processes of societal transformation, and consequently a new language and practice of development. This includes offering critical accounts of popular, informal and non-formal learning processes, as well as the contribution of indigenous knowledges, in providing spaces for the co-production of knowledge, thinking and action on development, and in terms of shaping the ways in which citizens engage with and create new understandings of ‘development’ itself. This book makes an important and original contribution by reframing educational practices and processes in relation to broader global struggles for justice, voice and development in a rapidly changing development landscape.

While African Christianity has wholeheartedly appropriated the symbols, scriptures, and traditions of historic Christianity elsewhere, it has also built on the rich history of the continent's indigenous spiritual beliefs.

Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today’s India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class. It is this “State-Temple-Corporate Complex,” she claims, that now wields decisive political and economic power, and provides ideological cover for the dismantling of the Nehru-era state-dominated economy. According to this new logic, India’s rapid economic growth is attributable to a special “Hindu mind,” and it is what separates the nation’s Hindu population from Muslims and others deemed to be “anti-modern.” As a result, Hindu institutions are replacing public ones, and the Hindu “revival” itself has become big business, a major source of capital accumulation. Nanda explores the roots of this development and its possible future, as well as the struggle for secularism and socialism in the world’s second-most populous country.

The must-have business guide for visual artists, written by the leading specialist in the global art trade