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The purpose of this article is to investigate attempts to safeguard classical humanism in secondary schools by appealing to a cultural-historical link with Antiquity, voiced in the face of educational reforms in Sweden between 1865 and 1971.

By focusing on the content of the pedagogical journal Pedagogisk Tidskrift, the article highlights a number of examples of how an ancient historical lineage was evoked and how historical knowledge was mobilized and contested in various ways.

The article argues that the enduring negotiation over the educational need to maintain a strong link with the ancient past was strained due to increasing scholarly specialization and thus entangled in competing views on reform and what was deemed “traditional” or “modern”.

From a larger perspective, the conflict over the role of Antiquity in Swedish secondary schools reveals a trajectory for the history of education as part of and later apart from a general history of the humanities. Classical history originally served as a common past from which Swedish culture and education developed, but later lost this integrating function within the burgeoning discipline of Pedagogy. The findings demonstrate the value of bringing the newly (re)formed history of humanities and history of education closer together.

One potential lesson to be learned from the academic “culture wars” of the past few decades, regardless of which position one prefers, is that the humanities as a discipline continue to matter, perhaps more so than ever in a multi-cultural, globalized world. The systematic marginalization, even elimination, of the humanistic disciplines available represents a significant weakness for education in the Gulf; bolstering the study of the humanities – including literature, philosophy, and art history – offers a proven route towards achieving certain goals publicly avowed as priorities for education in the region. This paper proposes that engaging the humanities builds an awareness and appreciation of otherness; encourages abstract (critical) thinking; fosters language development; and, perhaps most importantly, asks students to be inspired by great ideas beautifully rendered. To become a knowledge-based society, a culture of reading deeply and independently needs to be cultivated. To empower students to become lifelong learners requires that they are, by default, lifelong readers. Furthermore, I propose that in an unsettling time of growth, change and challenges in the region, there is a reassuring possibility for humanistic inclusion that transcends the standard categories of identity politics. Students in the Gulf, just as readers everywhere else in this human world, can be shown that there is more to unite us than to divide us.

The purpose of this article is to consider cultural ethos of philanthropy that has proved effective in minimising the plight of the vulnerable in general and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. By discussing the divergent philanthropic approaches that have been adopted to counter the challenge of the pandemic, this article fulfils one of comparative laws' crucial tenets to improve the local environment by learning from other jurisdictions.

An exploratory and qualitative method through categorical and theoretical analysis of recent and historical scholarship on the Islamic culture is undertaken. An extensive use of journalistic and editorial reports on the South Af rican context is explored to demonstrate the plight of the vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how economically and structurally fragmented South African society is. More specifically, it has reinforced the existence of an “invisible” group of people – the poor and vulnerable – who have been hit harder by the government's responses aimed at containing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The depiction of an unequal and uncaring society has spurred extensive rhetoric and reflection centred on the need to regain society's conscience as regards the plight of the poor. This article finds that much as there has an awakening towards societal inequality and vulnerability, there are, however, no concrete suggestions upon which change of attitude can be founded. Further, it can be argued that the plight of the vulnerable could have been softened had society cherished a culture of charity. Taking a cue from Islamic culture, this article avers that there is a need to embed philanthropy within society's cultural norms so as to forge effective bonds and maintain social cohesion.

The practical implications of this article relate to the need for the revaluation of the moral campus of South African communities. It supports calls for the alignment of community attitudes with humanity so as to improve the lives of the less privileged members of the society. Additionally, this discussion adds value to the scholarship, which aims to engender community-based welfare schemes for the benefit of the vulnerable.

By highlighting socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the vulnerable and highlighting the Islamic approaches to ameliorating the condition of the poor, it is hoped that this article will stimulate debate that can bring change for marginalised groups. The analysis provides some crucial discussions for potential societal interventions, which could assist in revisiting how society takes care of the poor and vulnerable.

This paper maps utopian theories of technological change. The focus is on debates surrounding emerging industrial technologies which contribute to making the relationship between humans and machines more symbiotic and entangled, such as robotics, automation and artificial intelligence. The aim is to provide a map to navigate complex debates on the potential for technology to be used for emancipatory purposes and to plot the grounds for tactical engagements.

The paper proposes a two-way axis to map theories into to a six-category typology. Axis one contains the parameters humanist–assemblage. Humanists draw on the idea of a human essence of creative labour-power, and treat machines as alienated and exploitative form of this essence. Assemblage theorists draw on posthumanism and poststructuralism, maintaining that humans always exist within assemblages which also contain non-human forces. Axis two contains the parameters utopian/optimist; tactical/processual; and dystopian/pessimist, depending on the construed potential for using new technologies for empowering ends.

The growing social role of robots portends unknown, and maybe radical, changes, but there is no single human perspective from which this shift is conceived. Approaches cluster in six distinct sets, each with different paradigmatic assumptions.

Mapping the categories is useful pedagogically, and makes other political interventions possible, for example interventions between groups and social movements whose practice-based ontologies differ vastly.

Bringing different approaches into contact and mapping differences in ways which make them more comparable, can help to identify the points of disagreement and the empirical or axiomatic grounds for these. It might facilitate the future identification of criteria to choose among the approaches.