Civil society as a social sphere is constantly subjected to change. Using the Dutch context, this article addresses the question whether religiously inspired engagement is a binder or a breakpoint in modern societies. The author examines how religiously inspired people in the Netherlands involve themselves in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and voluntary activities. Religious involvement and social engagement in different European countries are compared and discussed. In addition, the author explores the models of civil society and applies these to both the Christian and Islamic civil society in the Netherlands. Using four religious ‘identity organizations’ as case studies, this article discusses the interaction of Christian and Islamic civil society related to secularized Dutch society. The character and intentions of religiously inspired organizations and the relationship between religious and secular involvement are examined. This study also focuses on the attitude of policymakers towards religiously inspired engagement and government policy on ‘identity organizations’ in the Netherlands.
DOCUMENT
This dissertation aims to strengthen socioscientific issues (SSI) education by focusing on the resources available to students. SSI education is a type of science and citizenship education that supports students’ informed and critical engagement with social issues that have scientific or technological dimensions. This dissertation explores students’ SSI-related resources relevant to their engagement with SSI, such as their attitudes and social resources. The dissertation consists of four papers. The first is a position paper that introduces the concept of socioscientific capital and argues why it is important to pay attention to students’ resources in SSI-based teaching. The other three papers involve empirical, quantitative studies. Two questionnaires were developed that were used to investigate student differences regarding engagement with SSI: the Pupils’ Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues (PASSI) questionnaire and the Use of Sources of Knowledge (USK) questionnaire. The final study is an exploration of the effects of SSI-based teaching on students’ attitudes toward SSI, considering socioscientific capital.
MULTIFILE
This article investigates the transformative impacts of regular nature-based adventure activity engagement and its long-lasting effects on eudaimonic well-being (EWB), specifically mental health. Although extant research highlights a wide range of well-being and mental health benefits from participation in such pursuits, less is known about experienced outdoor adventure enthusiasts for whom adventure is a fundamental and transformational part of their lives. The study builds on an existing conceptual framework that synthesizes pertinent research concepts on nature-based activity engagement and subjective well-being benefits. It presents key findings from 40 semi-structured in-depth online interviews with respondents from the UK, Germany, and Serbia. Interview data were collated and analyzed using a thematic framework approach. The findings highlight the importance of outdoor adventure activity engagement for respondents’ mental and physical health and long-term well-being. Regular activity participation can be transformational in reducing feelings of ill-being and enhancing EWB. It can improve self-efficacy and identity development and promote the fulfilment of psychological needs, facilitated by key transformational catalyzers. Continually entering a liminal state, experiencing emotions, and overcoming challenges and risks during engagement are crucial to “successful” long-lasting transformation. Further research should continue to explore adventure’s transformational and EWB benefits to develop long-term data.
DOCUMENT
Nature areas in North-West Europe (NWE) face an increasing number of visitors (intensified by COVID-19) resulting in an increased pressure on nature, negative environmental impacts, higher management costs, and nuisance for local residents and visitors. The high share of car use exaggerates these impacts, including peak pressures. Furthermore, the almost exclusive access by car excludes disadvantaged people, specifically those without access to a car. At the same time, the urbanised character of NWE, its dense public transport network, well-developed tourism & recreation sector, and presence of shared mobility providers offers ample opportunities for more sustainable tourism. Thus, MONA will stimulate sustainable tourism in and around nature areas in NWE which benefits nature, the environment, visitors, and the local economy. MONA will do so by encouraging a modal shift through facilitating sustainableThe pan-European Innovation Action, funded under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme, aims to promote innovative governance processes ,and help public authorities in shaping their climate mitigation and adaptation policies. To achieve this aim, the GREENGAGE project will leverage citizens’ participation and equip them with innovative digital solutions that will transform citizen’s engagement and cities’ effectiveness in delivering the European Green Deal objectives for carbon neutral cities.Focusing on mobility, air quality and healthy living, citizens will be inspired to observe and co-create their cities by sensing their urban environments. The aim to complement, validate, and enrich information in authoritative data held by the public administrations and public agencies. This will be facilitated by engaging with citizens to co-create green initiatives and to develop Citizen Observatories. In GREENGAGE, Citizen Observatories will be a place where pilot cities will co-examine environmental issues integrating novel bottom-up process with top-down perspectives. This will provide the basis to co-create and co-design innovative solutions to monitor environmental problems at ground level with the help of citizens.With two interrelated project dimensions, the project aims to enhance intelligence applied to city decision-making processes and governance by engaging with citizen observations integrated with Copernicus, GEOSS, in-situ, and socio-economic intelligence, and by delivering innovative governance models based on novel toolboxes of decision-making methodologies and technologies. The envisioned citizens observatory campaigns will be deployed and fully demonstrated in 5 pilot engagements in selected European cities and regions including: Bristol (the United Kingdom), Copenhagen (Denmark), Turano / Gerace (Italy) and the region of Noord Brabant (the Netherlands). These innovation pilots aim to highlight the need for smart city governance by promoting citizen engagement, co-creation, gathering new data which will complement existing datasets and evidence-based decision and policymaking.
The program is structured in five tasks, of which three are technical by nature and two are on integration and enabling aspects. The technical tasks are infrastructure, offshore and large-scale storage of hydrogen. The enabling task is safety, standardization and regulation, which is a key boundary condition for the successful development of a hydrogen infrastructure. As overarching task the aspect of upscaling and system integration is analysed. Both the enabling and overarching tasks are strongly linked to the technical tasks and require active interaction between those tasks to be successful. Our consortium enables productive interactions by facilitating knowledge sharing, joint research projects, technology transfer, policy advocacy, public engagement, and standardization efforts. These interactions not only enhance the research and development outcomes within the consortium but also contribute to the broader societal and economic benefits of a hydrogen-based energy transition.
In leaving the more traditional territories of the concert performance for broader societal contexts, professional musicians increasingly devise music in closer collaboration with their audience rather than present it on a stage. Although the interest for such forms of devising co-creative musicking within the (elderly) health care sector is growing, the work can be considered relatively new. In terms of research, multiple studies have sought to understand the impact of such work on musicians and participants, however little is known about what underpins the musicians’ actions in these settings. With this study, I sought to address this gap by investigating professional musicians’ emerging practices when devising co-creative musicking with elderly people. Three broad concepts were used as a theoretical background to the study: Theory of Practice, co-creative musicking, and Praxialism. Firstly, I used Theory of Practice to help understand the nature of emerging practices in a wider context of change in the field of music and habitus of musicians and participants. Theory of Practice enabled me to consider a practice as “a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Secondly, I drew the knowledge from co-creative musicking, which is a concept I gathered from two existing concepts: co-creation and musicking. Musicking (Small, 1998), which considers music as something we do (including any mode of engagement with music), provided a holistic and inclusive way of looking at participation in music-making. The co-creation paradigm encompasses a view on enterprise that consists of bringing together parties to jointly create an outcome that is meaningful to all (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy & Ozcan, 2014). The concept served as a lens to specify the jointness of the musicking and challenge issues of power in the engagement of participants in the creative-productive process. Thirdly, Praxialism considers musicking as an activity that encompasses “musical doers, musical doing, something done and contexts in which the former take place” (Elliott, 1995). Praxialism sets out a vision on music that goes beyond the musical work and includes the meanings and values of those involved (Silverman, Davis & Elliott, 2014). The concept allowed me to examine the work and emerging relationships as a result of devising co-creative musicking from an ethical perspective. Given the subject’s relative newness and rather unexplored status, I examined existing work empirically through an ethnographic approach (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Four cases were selected where data was gathered through episodic interviewing (Flick, 2009) and participant observation. Elements of a constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) were used for performing an abductive analysis. The analysis included initial coding, focused coding, the use of sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1969 in Hammersley, 2013) and memoing. I wrote a thick description (Geertz, 1973) for each case portraying the work from my personal experience. The descriptions are included in the dissertation as one separate chapter and foreshadow the exposition of the analysis in a next chapter. In-depth study of the creative-productive processes of the cases showed the involvement of multiple co-creative elements, such as a dialogical interaction between musicians and audience. However, participants’ contributions were often adopted implicitly, through the musicians interpreting behaviour and situations. This created a particular power dynamic and challenges as to what extent the negotiation can be considered co-creative. The implicitness of ‘making use’ of another person’s behaviour with the other not (always) being aware of this also triggered an ethical perspective, especially because some of the cases involved participants that were vulnerable. The imbalance in power made me examine the relationship that emerges between musicians and participants. As a result of a closer contact in the co-creative negotiation, I witnessed a contact of a highly personal, sometimes intimate, nature. I recognized elements of two types of connections. One type could be called ‘humanistic’, as a friendship in which there is reciprocal care and interest for the other. The other could be seen as ‘functional’, which means that the relationship is used as a resource for providing input for the creative musicking process. From this angle, I have compared the relationship with that of a relationship of an artist with a muse. After having examined the co-creative and relational sides of the interaction in the four cases, I tuned in to the musicians’ contribution to these processes and relationships. I discovered that their devising in practice consisted of a continuous double balancing act on two axes: one axis considers the other and oneself as its two ends. Another axis concerns the preparedness and unpredictability at its ends. Situated at the intersection of the two axes are the musicians’ intentionality, which is fed by their intentions, values and ethics. The implicitness of the co-creation, the two-sided relationship, the potential vulnerability of participants, and the musicians’ freedom in navigating and negotiation, together, make the devising of co-creative musicking with elderly people an activity that involves ethical challenges that are centred around a tension between prioritizing doing good for the other, associated with a eudaimonic intention, and prioritizing values of the musical art form, resembling a musicianist intention. The results therefore call for a musicianship that involves acting reflectively from an ethical perspective. Doctoral study by Karolien Dons
