An examination of the imperative of interreligious dialogue within the world and within the United States: an introduction to both individuals and study-groups to the exciting and necessary enterprise in its several modalities.

The essays collected in the present volume introduce the reader to the phenomenological work done in the Nordic countries today. The material is organized under three general headings: metaphysics, facticity, and interpretation. The volume is of interest to researchers and students working in the areas of epistemology and ontology as well as philosophy of language, history, and intersubjectivity.

Maurice Hamington is associate professor of women's studies and philosophy at Metropolitan state College of Denver --Book Jacket.

A critical inquiry into the value and experience of participation in design research. In Taking [A]part, John McCarthy and Peter Wright consider a series of boundary-pushing research projects in human-computer interaction (HCI) in which the design of digital technology is used to inquire into participative experience. McCarthy and Wright view all of these projects—which range from the public and performative to the private and interpersonal—through the critical lens of participation. Taking participation, in all its variety, as the generative and critical concept allows them to examine the projects as a part of a coherent, responsive movement, allied with other emerging movements in DIY culture and participatory art. Their investigation leads them to rethink such traditional HCI categories as designer and user, maker and developer, researcher and participant, characterizing these relationships instead as mutually responsive and dialogical. McCarthy and Wright explore four genres of participation—understanding the other, building relationships, belonging in community, and participating in publics—and they examine participatory projects that exemplify each genre. These include the Humanaquarium, a participatory musical performance; the Personhood project, in which a researcher and a couple explored the experience of living with dementia; the Prayer Companion project, which developed a technology to inform the prayer life of cloistered nuns; and the development of social media to support participatory publics in settings that range from reality game show fans to on-line deliberative democracies.

Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.

Examining the relationship between strangers, embodiment and community, Strange Encounters challenges the assumptions that the stranger is simply anybody we do not recognize and instead proposes that he or she is socially constructued as somebody we already know. Using feminist and postcolonial theory this book examines the impact of multiculturalism and globalization on embodiment and community whilst considering the ethical and political implication of its critique for post-colonial feminism. A diverse range of texts are analyzed which produce the figure of 'the stranger', showing that it has alternatively been expelled as the origin of danger - such as in neighbourhood watch, or celebrated as the origin of difference - as in multiculturalism. The author argues that both of these standpoints are problematic as they involve 'stranger fetishism'; they assume that the stranger 'has a life of its own'.

This study takes the work of transforming violence and conflict online and offers insight into the practice of dialogue in virtual settings for peacebuilding purposes. In the field of peace and conflict studies and peacebuilding practices, a significant amount of literature has dealt with the theory and practice of dialogue in face-to-face settings. This project is unique as it takes the peacebuilding practice of dialogue and explores it within an online context. The research is framed and analyzed through the dialogue theories of Martin Buber and Paulo Freire. This project is distinct in its exploration of the connection between dialogue encounters and positive peace, the practical linkages of which are often difficult to articulate or identify. As such, this book offers unique contributions to the knowledge and understanding of dialogue-based peacebuilding in online settings and provides an understanding of how dialogue practices enable outcomes within the construct of positive peace. This book is aimed at academics as a presentation of research into a relatively unexplored field of inquiry. However, it is also relevant and applicable for peacebuilding practitioners who want to navigate taking their practices into online settings and provide a framework for linking practices to intended positive peace outcomes.

The Politics of the Encounter is a spirited interrogation of the city as a site of both theoretical inquiry and global social struggle. The city, writes Andy Merrifield, remains "important, virtually and materially, for progressive politics." And yet, he notes, more than forty years have passed since Henri Lefebvre advanced the powerful ideas that still undergird much of our thinking about urbanization and urban society. Merrifield rethinks the city in light of the vast changes to our planet since 1970, when Lefebvre's seminal Urban Revolution was first published. At the same time, he expands on Lefebvre's notion of "the right to the city," which was first conceived in the wake of the 1968 student uprising in Paris. We need to think less of cities as "entities with borders and clear demarcations between what's inside and what's outside" and emphasize instead the effects of "planetary urbanization," a concept of Lefebvre's that Merrifield makes relevant for the ways we now experience the urban. The city—from Tahrir Square to Occupy Wall Street—seems to be the critical zone in which a new social protest is unfolding, yet dissenters' aspirations are transcending the scale of the city physically and philosophically. Consequently, we must shift our perspective from "the right to the city" to "the politics of the encounter," says Merrifield. We must ask how revolutionary crowds form, where they draw their energies from, what kind of spaces they occur in—and what kind of new spaces they produce.