Harnessing Hope

Tourism is often viewed as a phenomenon that brings out the worst in human nature. Self-interest, overuse of resources, injustice and cultural erosion are but a few examples. This book explores the contrasting view that tourism can be a pathway to hope and happiness. The chapters address areas including wellbeing, positive psychology, hopeful tourism, mindfulness, peace, responsible tourism and spirituality. The volume examines the role of tourism in preserving natural wonders and architectural masterpieces, bringing out the best in tourists and locals and adding economic value if planned, developed and managed sustainably. It will be a useful resource for students and researchers in tourism, psychology and philosophy.

Men who act abusively have their own story to tell, a journey that often begins in childhood, ripens in their teenage years, and takes them down paths they were hoping to never travel. Men Who Batter recounts the journey from the point of view of the men themselves. The men's accounts of their lives are told within a broader framework of the agency where they have attended groups, and the regional coordinated community response to domestic violence, which includes the criminal justice workers (e.g., probation, parole, judges), and those who staff shelters and work in advocacy. Based on interview data with this wide array of professionals, we are able to examine how one community, in one western state, responds to men who batter. Interwoven with this rich and colorful portrayal of the journey of abusive men, we bring twenty years of fieldwork with survivors and those who walk alongside them as they seek safety, healing and wholeness for themselves and their children. Women who have been victimized by the men they love often hold out hope that, if only their abusers could be held accountable and receive intervention, the violence will stop and their own lives will improve dramatically as a result. While the main purpose of Men Who Batter is to highlight the stories of men, told from their personal point of view, it is countered by reality checks from their own case files and those professionals who have worked with them. And finally, interspersed within its pages is another theme: finding religious faith or spiritual activity in unlikely places.

Daily existence is more interconnected to consumer behaviors than ever before, encompassing many issues of well-being. Problems include unhealthy eating; credit card mismanagement; alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and gambling abuse; marketplace discrimination; and ecological deterioration; as well as at-risk groups who are impoverished, impaired, or elderly. Opportunities for well-being via consumer behaviors include empowerment via the Internet, product sharing, leisure pursuits, family consumption, and pro-environmental activities, among others. In 2005 the Association for Consumer Research launched Transformative Consumer Research (TCR). Its mission is to foster research on quality of life that is both rigorous and applied for better assisting consumers, their caregivers, policy administrators, and executives. This edited volume includes 33 chapters on a wide range of topics by expert international authors. All royalties from sales of this book are donated to the Association to support TCR grants.

If your current situation is not the ultimate condition envisioned for your life, are you contemplating change? While our internal being experiences metamorphosis constantly, our view of what is possible externally, gets corrupted very early on in life. We adopt a routine out of fear, never attempting to try out the ideas we ponder daily. Why should you and how will you change? The truth about who we are and what we can do is instinctively known to each and everyone of us, but we settle for what comes standard - paychecks, perks and pension. We all have, buried deep within us, mediocrity and mightiness co-existing side by side. The power to push ourselves from the orbit of the ordinary to the place of our fullest potential lies dormant in each and every one of us. We, however, see the climb as cumbersome and so we yield with the masses on the path of least resistance. This book's dual purpose is firstly to explain and affirm that YES! it is possible to change course even when our responsibilities or obligations seem insurmountable. It shows how one man's courage to stick his existence on finding where he comes alive was made manifest. We must endeavor to find that unique place where we can distribute our true talent overtime. Until we operate on our center frequency, we will never find our ultimate condition.

Universities teach courses in ethics, but do they teach students how to be ethical in practice? Lisa Kretz’s Ethics, Emotion, Education, and Empowerment explores the ways that philosophical ethics are currently taught and argues that dominant approaches fail to adequately support ethical action, in part because emotions are all too often ignored or repressed in university classrooms. In isolation, abstract theoretical content fails to motivate. The ability to reason through an ethical dilemma does not, by itself, of necessity impact ethical action. Empowered action requires intentional emotional engagement. Kretz argues that part of the reason affective pedagogy fails to get sufficient uptake is due to the operations of oppression. There is a long history of the reason-emotion dualism undermining recognition of the necessary and valuable epistemic roles emotions play in moral life, and serving as a political tactic to undermine the experience of oppressed groups. This impoverishes ethical pedagogy because it is to the detriment of their ability to teach ethics in a comprehensive way and strips the potential of supporting students to enact their own reflectively held ethical beliefs and values. Using the example of the environmental crisis, Kretz makes a case for supporting students as engaged activists aware of their capacity to ethically change the world.

Architectures of Hope examines how communal idealism, electoral politics, and low-income consumer markets made first-time homeownership a reality for millions of low-income Brazilians over the last ten years. Drawing on a five-year-long ethnography among city planners, architects, street-level bureaucrats, politicians, market and bank representatives, community leaders, and past, present, and future beneficiaries, Moisés Kopper tells the story of how a group of grassroots housing activists rose from oblivion to build a model community. He explores the strategies set forth by housing activists as they waited and hoped for—and eventually secured—homeownership through Minha Casa Minha Vida’s public-private infrastructure. By showing how these efforts coalesced in Porto Alegre—Brazil’s once progressive hotspot—he interrogates the value systems and novel arrangements of power and market that underlie the country’s post-neoliberal project of modern and inclusive development. By chronicling the making and remaking of material hope in the aftermath of Minha Casa Minha Vida, Architectures of Hope reopens the future as a powerful venue for ethnographic inquiry and urban development.

This edited collection aims to provoke discussion around the most important question for contemporary higher education – what kind of education (in terms of purpose, pedagogy and policy) is needed to restore the health and wellbeing of the planet and ourselves now and for generations to come? The book contains contributions from colleagues at a single UK University, internationally recognised for its approach to sustainability education. Introducing a conceptual framework called the ‘Paradox Model’, the book explores the tensions that underpin the challenge of developing sustainability in higher education in the 21st century. It asks probing questions about the purpose of higher education in the 21st century given growing concerns in relation to planetary safety and justice and calls for a rethinking of educational purpose. It draws upon the theory and practice of education and explores how these can develop an understanding of sustainability pedagogies in practice. Finally, it delivers thought-provoking discussion on what constitutes a ‘good’ higher education that meets the needs of a world in crisis. Drawing on a planetary health lens, the book concludes with a ‘manifesto’ that brings together the key insights from the contributing authors. This will be an engaging volume for academics and educators from a wide range of disciplines in higher educational settings interested in translating sustainability theory into educational practice.