Search results

A humanist orientation is foundational to the educational right of students with disabilities to participate in the mainstream life of schooling communities. Social science researchers, however, are increasingly questioning the limitations of the humanist position, and making the ‘posthuman’ turn within their epistemological orientations (Coole & Frost, 2010). The history of disability has complicated clear distinctions between the human and not-human. Indeed, the posthuman character of disability affirms the concept of life beyond fixed boundaries of the self (Goodley & Runswick-Cole, 2016). For inclusive education researchers, this means that school-based phenomena cannot be explained by either an empiricist logic or a social constructionist logic. A posthumanist orientation to inclusive education research recognizes human and non-human agents as entangled within arrangements emerging from particular relations with each other. It seeks to uncover inclusion as a material-discursive arrangement of people, events, ideas and things that are always in a state of flux.

Technology is one of the crucial topics for the understanding of the content and meaning of creativity in management. More than ever knowledge and science determine technology and in turn technology determines the economy and management. The range of necessary creativity therefore risks to be highly determined by the evolution of technology. This will bring us to the crucial question whether in the future the diffusion of creativity is still possible when human-made environments are more and more determined by technology. Opdebeeck argues that the question about transhumanism and posthumanism on the relationship between technology and the enhancement of the human person is crucial for humanity and nature as well. With Jurgen Habermas he states that the problem is not modern science and technology per se, but the fact that the reified models of the science and technology migrate into the management life-world and gain power over our self-understanding. The solution must, therefore, rather be sought in keeping the distinction between the sphere of science and technology and the sphere of the human person.

This chapter lays out the conceptual foundations for this book. Grounded in the tradition of disability studies, the authors describe their orientation to ‘inclusion’ and the entangled institutions of general and special education. They explain their attachment to the many ‘articulations’ of inclusive practices rather than engage in discourses of ‘implementation’ which inadvertently divide world regions. In doing so, they briefly trace the evolution of inclusion as a global concept and its relation to conditions in different parts of the world. They subsequently offer an introduction to the different chapters in the book.

In this chapter, educational philosopher Michael Peters discusses the emergence of new movements in thought and educational research practice in an “epoch of digital reason” that encompass the posthuman and decentered intimate scholarship. Peters describes changes that have occurred at the juncture of philosophy, culture, and science, probing the notion of a “coming after” of postmodernism in a post-truth era that has seen a rise in reactionary, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant reaction across the Western world. Peters provides insight regarding this collection of changes in thinking, to which the decentering of subjectivity is critical, and even, as he suggests, one of the foundations of modern philosophy after Descartes. This shift in thinking across disciplines entails a turn to systems and ecological thinking; an understanding of consciousness as situated, distributed, and enacted; and a view of the world as constituted by productive difference. Other changes include connecting affect and cultural dimensions to research, which is expanding our view of science and what shapes science. Peters notes that these shifts turn us to new questions about rethinking concepts that are grounded in the liberal, intentional notion of the subject, such as agency and responsibility for one’s actions. As we engage in this rethinking, Peters suggests that we learn from indigenous studies, as indigenous peoples have been putting to work different forms of posthumanism for millennia.

This chapter explores the potential for and value of imagining a humanist paradigm for tourism studies. It explores how the idea of a “paradigm” in tourism can be conceptualized, arguing that dominant thoughtlines in other fields regarding the meaning of a paradigm are not sufficient for making sense of this idea in the context of tourism studies. The chapter introduces humanism as a philosophical position in the academy and as a lived cultural practice, explores examples of extant work in tourism studies that might be seen to provide the seeds of a humanist paradigm, and offers reflections on the value of imagining such a paradigm for our field.

In this conversation, renowned critical posthuman scholar Rosi Braidotti offers insights regarding what the posthuman turn means for intimate scholarship and broader questions of subjectivity. She discusses the methodological challenge of post-anthropocentrism for the humanities and stresses the need to move to a process ontology, which entails a non-essentialistic understanding of subjects as in process and connected up to networks of human and non-human elements, yet simultaneously situated and accountable. While acknowledging the possibilities of “auto” forms of research for keeping subjects politically located, she emphasizes the importance of practicing an outward-facing intimate scholarship – one not focused on one’s own pain and ego, but rather, one connected up and out, an affirmative becoming-intimate with the world, with otherness and diversity. To do so, she suggests we must think differently by experimenting with non-linearity, associative thinking, and transdisciplinarity. We must nurture intergenerational connections both for continuity of important knowledge and to create alternatives, all while using theory as a tool for counter-knowledge production.