8 March, now known as International Women’s Day, is a day for feminist claims where demonstrations are organized in over 150 countries, with the participation of millions of women all around the world. These demonstrations can be viewed as collective rituals and thus focus attention on the processes that facilitate different psychosocial effects. This work aims to explore the mechanisms involved in participation in the demonstrations of 8 March 2020, collective and ritualized feminist actions, and their correlates associated with personal (...) well-being and collective well-being, collective efficacy and collective growth, and behavioral intention to support the fight for women’s rights. To this end, a cross-cultural study was conducted with the participation of 2,854 people from countries in Latin America and Europe, with a retrospective correlational cross-sectional design and a convenience sample. Participants were divided between demonstration participants and non-demonstrators or followers who monitored participants through the media and social networks. Compared with non-demonstrators and with males, female and non-binary gender respondents had greater scores in mechanisms and criterion variables. Further random-effects model meta-analyses revealed that the perceived emotional synchrony was consistently associated with more proximal mechanisms, as well as with criterion variables. Finally, sequential moderation analyses showed that proposed mechanisms successfully mediated the effects of participation on every criterion variable. These results indicate that participation in 8M marches and demonstrations can be analyzed through the literature on collective rituals. As such, collective participation implies positive outcomes both individually and collectively, which are further reinforced through key psychological mechanisms, in line with a Durkheimian approach to collective rituals. (shrink)

The focus of this article is community supported agriculture as an alternative food movement and a bottom-up response to the problems of the dominant food systems. By utilizing social innovation approach that explores the relationship between causes for human needs and emergence of socially innovative food initiatives, the article examines how the CSA projects emerge and why, what is their innovative role as part of the social economy and what is their transformative potential. Based on qualitative data from four different (...) models of CSA case studies in different regions of Wales, UK, and by using concepts from an alternative model for social innovation as analytical tool, the article demonstrates that the Welsh CSA cases play distinctive roles as part of the social economy. They satisfy the needs for ecologically sound and ethically produced food, grown within communities of like-minded people and they empower individuals and communities at micro level, while at the same time experiment with how to be economically sustainable and resilient on a small scale. The paper argues that in order to become ‘workable utopias’, the CSA initiatives need to overcome the barriers that prevent them from replicating, participating in policies and decision-making at macro level, and scaling up. (shrink)

In this study the effects of learning approaches, locus of control (LOC), socio-economic status and self-efficacy on undergraduate students in North Cyprus was investigated. Four questionnaires were administered on 99 students in order to collect data regarding the learning approaches, LOC, self-efficacy and demographic factors. High cumulative grade point average and self-efficacy were shown to be an indicator of academic achievement and high self-efficacy was related to the use of deep approach (DA). Students, whose mothers had lower levels of education, (...) were found to also predict academic success. No direct significant relationship between DA and academic achievement was found. (shrink)

Activists and progressive governments sometimes interfere in the working conditions of sweatshops. Their methods may include boycotts of the products produced in these facilities, bans on the import of these products or tariffs imposed by the home country, and enforcing the host country’s laws that aim at regulating sweatshops. Some argue that such interference in sweatshop conditions is morally wrong since it may actually harm workers. The reason is that the enterprise that runs the sweatshop may choose to lay off (...) some workers as the result of effective interference in order to maintain their profit at the desired level. If successful, this argument would prohibit any interference in sweatshop conditions on moral grounds. In this article, I argue in dissent and build a contractualist argument in favor of the moral permissibility of interference in sweatshops. I base my argument on an ex ante interpretation of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism. (shrink)

Bu çalışmamızda Kur’an’da ifadesini bulan tufan, çekirge, haşere, kurbağa ve kan ayetleri ile onların karşılığı olarak Tevrat’ta aktarılan kan, kurbağa, sivrisinek/bit, sinek/böcek, veba/sığır hastalığı, çıban, dolu, çekirge, karanlık ve ilk doğanların ölümü belaları ; rivâyetler, Tevrat verileri ve bilimselci yaklaşım ekseninde ele alınmıştır. Çalışmamızda, Kur’an’da firavun ve âline karşı Hz. Musa’ya dokuz ayet verildiğinden bahsedilmesine binaen bu mucizelerin neler olduğunun ortaya konulması ve ilgili ayet, rivayetler ve Tevrat’taki verilerin tekâbüliyet, nedensellik, tutarlılık, kozmik-büyüsel algı ve bilimsel veriler ekseninde değerlendirilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Bu (...) doğrultuda ilk olarak tefsir kaynaklarımızda dokuz ayetin neler olabileceğine dair ortaya konulan görüşler hakkında bilgi verilmiş ve tarafımızca da değerlendirmede bulunulmuştur. Ayrıca rivâyetler ile Tevrat’taki verilerin tekābüliyeti hususunda gerek ayetteki ilgili lafızların anlamsal çerçevesi gerekse bilimsel veriler üzerinden tarafımızca fikir yürütülmüş, söz konusu veriler; nedensellik ve tutarlılık gibi farklı açılardan değerlendirilmiştir. Konuyla ilgili olarak Doğu’da bilimselci yaklaşımların yok denecek kadar az olmasına bağlı olarak Batılı araştırmacıların Tevrat’taki veriler üzerinden geliştirdikleri bilimselci yorumlar üzerinde durulmuştur. Bu çerçevede dış faktör olarak Ege Denizi’ndeki Thera yanardağının patlaması üzerinde, iç faktör olarak da Mısır’da muhtemelen gerçekleşmiş olan tabii olaylar üzerinde durulmuştur. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of scaffolding computer-mediated discussions to improve moral reasoning and argumentation quality in pre-service teachers. Participants of this study were 76 teaching education students at a Turkish university. They were divided into three groups: a computer-supported argumentation group; a computer-mediated discussion group; and a control group. Participants in the computer-supported argumentation group were instructed in argumentation, and were provided with note starters and graphical argumentation tools. The computer-mediated discussion group, however, was engaged in unstructured interaction on (...) the Moodle forum, a free popular learning management system having a threaded discussion forum. The control group did not receive any instruction and neither did they participate in any discussions. As for the results, the computer-supported argumentation group outperformed the control group, but not the computer-mediated discussion group on DIT score and argumentation quality. Thus, it was concluded that both giving instruction on argumentation and appropriately designing the interfaces of computer-mediated discussion environments can enhance argumentation quality in students’ writings and also their moral reasoning. (shrink)