Search

The recycling concept is useful for understanding changes to the self that are less radical than rebirth and are carried out as part of a continuous process of self-improvement. Recycling implies that a number of different mechanisms may shape this self whereas metaphors such as rebirth and prodigal return are linked to a step-wise process with a singular focus. In this paper, I examine the case of what I refer to as a "hybrid" social and religious movement, which blends an instrumental focus social activism and politics aimed at changing the world together with a focus on identity, embodying an ideal self, and other personal concerns. This movement, called Reclaiming, is a case where researchers can establish whether or not recruitment and conversion for both sides of the movement proceeds simultaneously and answer questions about what the process is like. Drawing on field observation and in-depth interview data gathered between 2004 and 2007 at Reclaiming recruiting events, I answer two research questions: 1) how does Reclaiming conceive of the self and how does its conceptualization compare to that of other new religious movements, and 2) how do recruitment and conversion processes proceed for participants at Reclaiming's week-long recruiting events? I present evidence that shows how Reclaiming imagines and creates a flexible, sustainable self. Reclaiming's recruitment process is better understood using the image of recycling the pre-movement self into a movement-oriented self that sees both the movement's religious and activist sides as crucial for changing the self and world at large. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that emotions should be considered as being structured. I show that emotional shifts take different forms over time that can be graphed in two dimensions. Approaching emotions as being structured over time allows theorists to shift between levels of analysis, and expand knowledge about emotions during medium-term time frames such as a week. This structural view can explain emotional changes from the micro to the macro level of analysis. I examine positive and negative emotions during week-long recruiting events held by a progressive movement called Reclaiming. There are three basic goals for the paper: 1) to describe how emotions are structured over the course of a week using data from Reclaiming's week- long Summer Intensive recruiting events, 2) to compare emotion structures between different events using data from six different events in the U.S. and Canada between 2004 and 2007, and 3) to discuss the impact of factors such as the presence a majority of street activists and adults-only versus all-ages groups on emotion structures. I also discuss how my findings compare to other studies of emotion structures present at social and religious movement events and long-term residential settings. The goal of these groups is to get the individual self to completely merge with the collective and to create positive emotions. In contrast to this, Reclaiming focuses on building up the individual self through a process involving intense negative and intense positive emotions that I refer to as an emotional arc of the week. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I maintain that it is useful and revealing to analytically separate glamour and charisma from each other because treating glamour and charisma as synonymous obscures certain social processes whereby glamour, charisma, or both are played up or played down to achieve particular goals. This is conceptual work that will add to a general understanding of charisma by drawing limits around the concept. I discuss charisma and glamour at two levels, building from an examination of individual-level glamour and charisma into an examination of group-level glamour and charisma. At either level of social life, the distinction between glamour and charisma appears to be useful because it helps uncover a cool, less energetic type of appeal as well as a hot, high-energy type. Conceptualizing glamour and charisma as somewhat separable phenomena also opens the door for future theorizing about how the mechanics of maintaining each phenomenon may differ and testing these propositions empirically. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the predictive effect of positive, negative, and mixed emotions within dyads on the survival of adult friendships over a 25 year period. Mean age at the start of the study was 25. At the end, the average respondent was 50 years old. Prior research on this population of participants in adult communal households showed strong predictive effects of dyadic emotional loadings on commune membership turnover and household survival within a one year period of time. We therefore ask whether, and to what extent, positive, negative, and mixed emotional sentiments can also predict the endurance of friendships over 1, 12, and 25 year intervals from the baseline in three of the communes (one secular, one Christian, one guru-led) drawn from this same population. Taking advantage of highly detailed baseline emotion responses from all 'egos' about all possible 'alters' within each commune, we classify all dyads within each commune as initially positive, negative, mixed, or neutral in emotional loading. We find that the predictive power of emotions on friendship durability exists but decays slowly over time. This decay is slower for women than for men. Dyadic gender equivalence, sentiment-reciprocity, and residential propinquity all are seen to be significant covariates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses social movement recruitment and how interest of members is sustained by movements in the United States. It also throws light on how religion and emotions influence these processes. In this context, a case of an event titled "Summer Intensive," which was held in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States has been used by the author. People participated in the event for learning about Reclaiming tradition witchcraft, magical abilities, and activism. The author on the basis of the case study says that magic acts as a bridge which connects the religious and activist sides of the group. It is the main focus of rituals designed to provoke conscious and subconscious emotion work.

Businesses are now considering strategic alliances with partners and customers in order to bring about company benefits such as cost savings, better communications and ultimately competitive advantage. These strategic alliances require and involve an unprecedented level of collaborative information flows within the corporate information systems, which now consist of a number of databases, the Internet, extranets and intranets. Portals allow access to information in internal databases and stimulate this collaborative approach by giving all stakeholders access to the corporate information systems. This brings about customer and employee empowerment leading to increased satisfaction. Universities are large businesses that rely on corporate information systems (e.g. HR, payroll, finance, CRM, student records) for efficient and effective administration and management. Glasgow Caledonian University considers that the adoption of e-business techniques is essential to enable it to fulfil its strategic plans. Additionally, the knowledge economy requires students to be exposed to an ICT pervasive environment as preparation for their future contribution to the work force. Hence it is essential that the University not only looks towards e -learning but must also adopt an e -business approach to its administration and management. The initial impact of portal development at Glasgow Caledonian University has been seen as a means of providing access to a wide variety of information held on web servers or in its legacy databases and to provide a means of communicating with specific users. However the power of portal t echnology has much wider application than just communication and information provision. The development of the portal at Glasgow Caledonian University is seen as a means of integrating its corporate information systems, improving the quality of the information held within these systems and allowing both staff and students access to its information systems, thereby cutting costs and improving information flows. This paper focuses on the development of the My Caledonian portal as a central focus for Glasgow Caledonian University's corporate information systems development. My.Caledonian has been recognised as an innovative development (many other Universities are only at the planning stage with portals) that will evolve as new business processes are implemented and is an integral part of the planned Managed Learning Environment developments. My.Caledonian therefore plays a central role in integrating our corporate applications and providing self-service to both staff and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use survey and in-depth interview data from members of a hybrid movement that combines Neo-Pagan, feminist religion with progressive social activism to make the case for one particular metaphor for self-transformation, self-recycling. This new metaphor helps make sense of dynamic, on-going transformative processes that cultivate multiple forms of flexibility involving somatic, emotional, and cognitive shifts within both activists and religious people. Certain self-transformations that follow a circular process and involve multiple revisions to the self do not involve a clean break between one worldview and another. Instead flexibility takes time to cultivate and involves multiple transformations that repeatedly revise certain parts of how people think, feel, and perceive the world rather than abrupt, pivotal about-faces between worldviews and selves. Thus, the recycling metaphor is a particularly good fit for transformative processes that are cyclical and push people to flexibly embrace beliefs and experiences that may seem at odds with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]