The Fractured Community

"The Fractured Community: Landscapes of Power and Gender in Rural Zambia" is a book written by Kate Crehan. The University of California Press originally published the book in October 1997 and presents its online version, as well as a summary of its contents.

While environmental disputes and conflicts over fossil fuel extraction have grown in recent years, few issues have been as contentious in the twenty-first century as those surrounding the impacts of unconventional natural gas and oil development using hydraulic drilling and fracturing techniques—more commonly known as “fracking”—on local communities. In Fractured Communities, Anthony E. Ladd and other leading environmental sociologists present a set of crucial case studies analyzing the differential risk perceptions, socio-environmental impacts, and mobilization of citizen protest (or quiescence) surrounding unconventional energy development and hydraulic fracking in a number of key U.S. shale regions. Fractured Communities reveals how this contested terrain is expanding, pushing the issue of fracking into the mainstream of the American political arena.

Congregational leaders are charged with caring for those inside and outside of faith communities. The care required is not only personal but involves dealing with deeply rooted fractures within the community. Fractures like racism, education inequality and poverty, to name a few, plague those inside and outside of the church. Given our fractured landscape and the diversity of contexts where congregations exist, "How can congregational leaders be both healers and agitators at the same time?" The danger of simply being a healer ignores the underlying causes of the fracture(s) in a community. The danger of simply being an agitator is others ignore you because your voice is monotone. Being a leader who lives in this tension inside a faith community and the public square requires nimbleness. A nimbleness that allows for being an ointment and an irritant when needed. Each chapter of Healing Fractured Communities is written by a pastoral leader engaged in the work of renewal, resilience, and resistance in congregations, on college campuses, and in communities. Each chapter paints a picture of the work of healing, includes takeaways, and questions for reflection.

'I loved it! Brilliantly written, probing and necessary' PANDORA SYKES 'Skinner goes in search of a different way of life . . . a sensitive and colourful account' New Statesman From the author of Jailbirds and one of Elle's '50 Game Changers' (2019) comes a timely exploration of different forms of living together. Seventy-six per cent of British adults feel that we've become more distanced from our neighbours in the last 20 years. We are less likely than our grandparents, or even our parents, to know the names of our neighbours, to enjoy multi-generational friendships or to share resources and childcare. With mental health at epidemic levels, the climate crisis worsening, and society feeling increasingly divided, this game-changing book asks whether there are better ways to live. Mim Skinner sets out to explore communities that have rejected individualism and nuclear family life in order to embrace a more collective way of living. As she meets those who have had the courage to imagine a better world and start living it - in countercultural hippy communes, the disability led L'Arche communities, queer safe spaces, environmental campaign groups, rehab support networks and more - she asks how each is tackling the social issues of our time and finding greener and more connected ways to be together. Mixing memories and reflections of her own unconventional upbringing with interviews and research into the international history of communalism, Mim Skinner challenges her own assumptions as well as ours as she searches for a more meaningful way of life and finds multiple options for alternative ways of living - from commercial co-living developments for time-starved urbanites to off-grid farm communities, low-cost co-operative estates and collaborative parenting schemes. The result is an eye-opening snapshot of alternative communities and a much-needed new perspective on the concept of wellness. It asks whether individualism can ever give us the tools to live in healthy and equal ways and offers a glimpse into the possibility - and also the pitfalls - of life lived differently.

This book brings together the refereed proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the Australian Association of Professional and Applied Ethics (AAPAE) 'Applied Ethics in the Fractured State', held at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney in June 2017.

The Fractured Subject investigates the relationship of the work of Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud, centered around the concept of the fractured subject. Through a reading of Benjamin’s work on sovereignty and myth, Betty Schulz establishes the emergence of this fractured subject in the Baroque and links these themes to ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ and two of Freud’s case studies, showing that melancholia and possession emerge as two responses to the baroque loss of a cosmological horizon. Turning to Benjamin’s work on the nineteenth century in the Arcades Project, Schulz delineates the persistence of this fractured subject, showing how Benjamin conceptualises its development over the course of modernity while analyzing the change of memory and experience in modernity. Finally, having introduced the importance of the dream in the Arcades Project and associated work, Schulz examines Benjamin’s dream theory, establishing the ways it draws from Freud, as well as Benjamin’s concept of awakening as a therapeutic, collective, political gesture that points beyond the fractured subject.

Effective, real-life strategies, tools, and encouragement for those desiring to help others find healing from severe trauma and discover the Father's truth and love.