bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Communities of Practice and Organizational Performance
Authors: Lesser Eric L. , Storck John 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter explains how communities of practice play a critical role in the development of social capital, providing employees with the opportunity to expand their connections, develop relationships, and establish common norms and values that can lead to improved knowledge transfer. It describes a study of seven companies in which communities of practice are acknowledged to be creating value. For each of the companies that participated in the study, between five and ten members of existing communities of practice were interviewed regarding their perceptions of value at both an individual and organizational level. The research team then developed a “mind map” which led to the categorization scheme used to review the interview transcripts. From the categories, the key sources of individual and organizational value were abstracted.
Learning from the Connected Customer: Enhancing Customer Web Sites with Community
Authors: Lesser Eric L. , Fontaine Michael A. 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter extends the notion of community to include customers. It focuses on how organizations are bringing together informal groups of customers via the Internet to exchange knowledge, build brand loyalty, and provide unique insights into product design and use. The components of a customer community space and King Arthur Flour's creation of its online customer community — the Baking Circle — are discussed.
Using Mentoring and Storytelling to Transfer Knowledge in the Workplace
Authors: Swap Walter , Leonard Dorothy , Shields Mini , Abrams Lisa C. 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter examines the use of mentoring and storytelling in the context of venture capitalists sharing important learning with newly minted entrepreneurs. It argues that managerial influence over the transfer of knowledge assets depends upon understanding how individuals within and across organizations informally teach and learn.
Narrative Patterns: The Perils and Possibilities of Using Story in Organizations
Authors: Snowden David J. 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
Narrative techniques reveal the patterns of an organization and are in turn the means by which it can be patterned. Narrative is a powerful tool within organizations, but it is not susceptible to the engineering approaches that have dominated management practice in the last few decades. This chapter presents some cautionary comments and an overview of some of the newly developing areas of narrative work. It reflects the experience of the Institute for Knowledge Management and, more recently, the Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity in developing and patenting methods, tools, and techniques for narrative work in organizations.
Coming to the Edge of the Circle
Authors: Bado-Fralick Nikki 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis book offers an ethnographic study of the initiation ritual practiced by one coven of Witches located in Ohio. As a High Priestess within the coven as well as a scholar of religion, the author of this book is in a unique position to contribute to our understanding of this ceremony and the tradition to which it belongs. The book's analysis of this coven's initiation ceremony offers an important challenge to the commonly accepted model of “rites of passage.” Rather than a single linear event, initiation is deeply embedded within a total process of becoming a Witch in practice and in community with others. This book expands our concept of initiation while giving us insight into one coven's practice of Wicca and introduces readers to the contemporary nature religion variously called Wicca, Witchcraft, the Old Religion, or the Craft.
Dancing between Binary Poles
Authors: Bado-Fralick Nikki 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter presents the author's thoughts about Wicca and philosophy. The chapter talks about the author's initiation into the Craft, the insider/outsider dichotomy, and her study of religion and philosophy. The author believes that philosophy is not exactly a particular thing, a discrete disciplinary subject in a course of study at the university. Rather, philosophy is itself a doing, a practice, a temperament, an engaging of oneself with the world, a way of living in the world, a way of asking questions, a deep curiosity about the ways we are and why.
The Merry Circle
Authors: Bado-Fralick Nikki 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter introduces the author's coven and describes its basic ritual patterns. The author established her coven, called the Merry Circle, in 1984. The Merry Circle is composed of six Priestesses and two Priests. The Merry Circle usually performs its group rituals at night and, whenever possible, outdoors in nature. Formal group rituals are held in a specially prepared space called the Circle. The Circle is often marked off from the space around it by a ring of stones (if outdoors), a ring of red yarn (if indoors), or some other distinctive marking determined by the creativity of the individual Witch. The four directions — north, east, south, and west — are plotted as accurately as possible using a compass and then marked by specially blessed and prepared candles that are used in the ceremony.
The Path toward the Circle
Authors: Bado-Fralick Nikki 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the initiation of the path towards Wicca. Topics covered include the recruitment of new members, public education and outreach, teaching the craft to those interested in joining a coven, the skills and expertise needed by Wiccan practitioners to teach, the process of learning Wicca, hands-on practice, and ending the introductory class.
Epilogue
Authors: Bado-Fralick Nikki 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis short epilogue talks about the changes that have come to the Merry Circle. The Merry Circle no longer exists as a single practicing group, because some of its members either have already relocated or will relocate so far from one another geographically. This chapter talks about the last meeting between the four High Priestesses, and how it gave the author the strength to complete this book.
The Changing Face of Christianity
Authors: Sanneh Lamin 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This essay provides the global context for the local studies that follow: the emergence of Christianity as a world religion, its rising prominence in the global south and east and its waning influence and adherence in the North Atlantic region. Sanneh highlights the cultural repositioning of African Christianity and Asian Christianity away from their old intellectual and political cradle in Europe. These new forms of “world Christianity” are expressed in more languages, cultural traditions and models of faith and practice than ever before, and they are engaged in a growing cultural conflict with European Christianity and its expressions in North America. This interdisciplinary study shows that expounding the story of world Christianity requires new combinations of scholarly skills and experience.
Religion Bridge: Translating Secular into Sacred Music
Authors: Harkins-Pierre Patricia 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter examines new Christian literary and musical styles arising in the U.S. Virgin Islands and the eastern Caribbean more generally. The islands’ struggles with colonialism, slavery, freedom, migration, and dependency have provoked a gospel response in drama, music, and preaching. These new expressions depict Jesus as a person of color and the Christian as a radical soldier, a gospel music knight errant armed with Bible, drums, and guitar. A new Christian people’s idiom is emerging at a global crossroads.
Culture, Christianity, and Witchcraft in a West African Context
Authors: Vanden Berg Todd M. 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter describes the changing terms upon which the Longuda people of northeast Nigeria engage their beliefs about witchcraft. Lutheran and other forms of Christianity have wide influence in the region, but despite missionaries’ dismissals, belief in witchcraft persists. Using the tools of theology, comparative religions, and anthropology, the author shows how Longuda Christians are adapting and synthesizing a traditional worldview and Christian doctrines to make sense of the forces they encounter. Vanden Berg shows that anthropological and theological assumptions about syncretism, non-negotiable worldviews, and truth claims need revising in the face of the Longuda people’s Christian embrace of a spiritually animated world.
A View of Ghana's New Christianity
Authors: Gifford Paul 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter observes and interprets new forms of independent Pentecostal Christianity emerging in Ghana, West Africa. The new churches emphasize faith healing, a prosperity gospel, and deliverance from demons. Some of the pastors have become prominent on local media outlets with their own television and radio programs, and in some cases, broadcasting stations. One group established a private university. These groups compete and contend with more traditional churches, but some have begun to shift toward more classically Christian approaches to social ministry and personal spirituality. The current popularity of prosperity gospel teaching suggests that materialism and an instrumental approach to religion may be integral to African traditional values and worldviews.
The Role of Churches in the Peace Process in Africa
Authors: van Butselaar G. Jan 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter recounts the early development of Christianity in Mozambique as a Portuguese colony with a strong Roman Catholic influence. The Marxist Frelimo regime in newly independent Mozambique denounced Christianity as a colonial, antirevolutionary force, confiscated its institutions, and suppressed its practice. Yet the local churches continued to play a significant local role as civil war broke out and people came to them for help and shelter. Both Catholic and Protestant communities played roles in the peace negotiations, but the Catholics had the resources and the ties to the Renamo rebel forces to lend some diplomatic leverage. After the peace agreement, churches played a major role in bringing reconciliation to fractured communities. The chapter ends with brief comparisons to the conflicts in South Africa and Rwanda and concludes that while in each case Christian denominations and ecumenical groups had little effect on effecting justice, peace, and reconciliation, individual Christian leaders and local ministries played powerful roles.
Interpreting Karen Christianity
Authors: Case Jay Riley 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter recounts American Baptist missionaries’ and church leaders’ responses in the mid-nineteenth century to the Christian conversion of the Karen people, a tribal group in Burma. Christianity preceded civilization among the Karen people, and their culture appeared to be more hospitable to Christianity than the “higher” civilization of the dominant Burmese. The Karen people apparently did not have to become westerners to be good Christians. This news made little sense back in the United States, where western hierarchical notions of society had no place for Christianity flourishing in so-called primitive cultures. Moral philosopher Francis Wayland reconciled these facts to American Baptists’ populist and democratic ideas about the ability of ordinary people to understand God’s truth and organize churches. Yet the idea that Asian Christianity need not adopt western civilization made little headway in mission theory for decades thereafter.
Missionary Thinking about Religious Plurality at Tambaram 1938
Authors: Plantinga Richard J. 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
This chapter examines the thought of Hendrik Kraemer, a Dutch neo-orthodox theologian, well-versed in Islam, who had served as a missionary to Indonesia. Kraemer was commissioned by the International Missionary Council (IMC) to write a definitive Christian theology regarding other world religions, to be discussed at the IMC’s great international missionary conference in Tambaram, near Madras, India, in 1938. Kraemer’s book, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (1938), insisted that there is no salvation to be found outside of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. For the next half-century, Kraemer’s work was the starting point for ongoing debates over a Christian theology of religion and interfaith dialogue. Plantinga argues that a proper Christian view of non-Christian religions must give more recognition of continuity in God’s revelation, but it does well to insist, as Kraemer did, on salvation only through God alone, in Jesus Christ.
Contextual Theology
Authors: Shenk Wilbert R. 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
In this chapter, Shenk shows how the postcolonial climate growing immediately before and after World War II prompted new self-criticism and theological reflection among western missionaries and among the leaders of newer non-western Christian churches. Nowhere was this more true than in China and the post-1949 Chinese diaspora, as Chinese Christian leaders were under pressure to show that Christianity was not merely a western import but could engender profound and original thinking out of a Chinese cultural context. A key figure in the Chinese and pan-Asian attempts to reconceptualize Christian theology was Shoki Coe (before 1966, known as C. H. Hwang), a leader of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Coe developed what he called a contextual theology, which was meant, in postcolonial times, to free churches from western cultural baggage and rethink the mission of the local church in own cultural context. This theological quest for authentic local expressions of the Christian faith spread rapidly across the global south and east, and has begun to have an effect in the mission theology of the global north as well, where some Christian thinkers are reasserting a missionary stance for the church in a post-Christian culture.
Conclusion
Authors: Sanneh Lamin 
Published: October 2005

Abstract
Beginning with a brief look at the controversy in the worldwide Anglican communion over the northern churches’ attempts to normalize homosexual relationships, editor Sanneh insists that this conflict is evidence of a serious cultural gap between the northern churches and those of the global south and east. Northern forms of Christianity are trying to regain a hearing by becoming deeply accommodated to the demands of post-Christian culture, while after decades of hardship and persecution (e.g., in Ethiopia under the Dirge, a Marxist regime), non-western Christianity is emerging more vigorous and self-confident than ever. A fault line on a global scale is emerging, but because of massive emigration, world Christianity is present everywhere. Non-western or world Christianity has grown up amid the failure of nation-states and economies and has learned to carry much civic freight. It is better equipped than the northern churches to function in a new world order where state jurisdiction is less relevant. These new expressions of Christianity are opening up a new chapter in the history of religion.
Burdened Virtues
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractLisa Tessman’s Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles engages questions central to feminist theory and practice, from the perspective of Aristotelian ethics. Focused primarily on selves who endure and resist oppression, the book addresses the ways in which the devastating conditions confronted by these selves both limit and burden their moral goodness, and affect their possibilities for flourishing. The book describes two different forms of “moral trouble” prevalent under oppression. The first is that the oppressed self may be morally damaged, prevented from developing or exercising some of the virtues; the second is that the very conditions of oppression require the oppressed to develop a set of virtues that carry a moral cost to those who practice them, and that are referred to as “burdened virtues.” These virtues have the unusual feature of being disjoined from their bearer’s own well being. It is suggested that eudaimonistic theories should be able to account for virtues of this sort.
Regretting the Self One Is
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter examines a practice known by feminists as the politics of personal transformation, a practice that has attempted to respond critically to the fact that selves have been morally damaged under oppression. This practice recognizes that participants in social justice movements must remake their own desires or inclinations so that they better reflect the commitments of the movement. While feminists such as Claudia Card have used the concept of moral luck to characterize oppression and its resulting moral damage as a matter of systemically patterned bad luck, this chapter points out that luck also has an impact on the possibilities of transforming one’s own character in the context of political resistance, so that one may be unable to alter one’s own problematic character traits. Given such luck, one may end up experiencing what Bernard Williams has called “agent-regret,” an attitude that one can have toward what one would not have chosen, but came to enact anyway precisely because of one’s own lack of control. Experiencing this discomforting agent-regret about one’s own character—as well as experiencing anger at the systemic forces that ingrained objectionable values into one’s self—is appropriate, and yet the very need for a self-reflective attitude that is so disturbing should be considered a harm.
The Ordinary Vices of Domination
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractVirtue ethics seems to present a puzzle about the privileged: If moral virtue is necessary for flourishing (which is a core assumption of virtue ethics), then members of privileged groups can only flourish if they are morally good, but it is more plausible to conceive of the privileged as morally deficient than as morally good, since their privileges result from unjust social positions. Thus it appears that they are barred from flourishing, which is odd since one would expect conditions of oppression to prevent the victims rather than the beneficiaries of these conditions from living the good life. The puzzle begins to dissolve when one distinguishes between the contemporary understanding of happiness and the ancient Greek conception of flourishing, for it turns out that privileged people can be said to be happy without granting that they flourish. The distinction helps uncover a key assumption of interdependence behind the belief that even the so-called other-regarding virtues (and not just self-regarding virtues) are necessary for one’s own flourishing; if people are interdependent in such a way that the flourishing of one is tied to the flourishing of all, then for the privileged to flourish they would have to worry a lot more about the well-being of the disadvantaged. This suggests a critical revision to Aristotle’s eudaimonistic theory, by the addition of the claim that a trait that contributes to one’s own well-being cannot count as morally praiseworthy if it detracts from the flourishing of an inclusive social collectivity.
Between Indifference and Anguish
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter begins with a search for a praiseworthy trait in the realm of sensitivity and attention to others’ suffering, a trait that ought to lie somewhere between the poles of indifference and anguish (and that those who are confident that there is such a praiseworthy trait tend to call “compassion”). Because of the very enormity of unjust suffering in the world, every possible level of sensitivity and attention to others’ suffering is at once too indifferent (for one always turns one’s back on so many) and too anguished (by the pain of those to whom one does attend). Even if one can determine a “best” disposition to have and make the right decisions regarding which actions to take in the face of all this suffering, one still leaves strong moral demands unsatisfied. The resultant moral remainder (in the form of regret and guilt at what one cannot do) burdens the moral agent, and what one can successfully do in the way of being attuned to others’ suffering is burdensome too, for such sensitivity, even in moderation, is intrinsically painful. Thus even the best possible trait to have turns out to be a “burdened virtue.”
The Burden of Political Resistance
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter examines the way that liberatory movements—including both feminist movements and Black liberation movements—offer praise for their best members, holding them up to model the character traits that enable political resistance. This praise appears strange given a eudaimonistic ethics in which character traits that are morally praiseworthy are usually conducive to or constitutive of flourishing, for the character traits recommended for resistance often disable resisters themselves from flourishing. Based on Aristotle’s discussion of “mixed actions,” a description is given of the political resister as displaying “mixed traits” that are routinely unlinked from flourishing and thereby burdened. The problematic traits of the politically resistant self include those such as anger that contribute to maintaining a hard resolve against the oppressors, those such as courage that help resisters take risks and accept loss and sacrifice, and those that resisters must display in their relationships with one another, such as loyalty coupled with an openness to criticism and self-criticism. The chapter includes an extended analysis of one of these questionable virtues, namely anger.
Dangerous Loyalties
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThis chapter suggests that not only might a loyal disposition be detrimental for the one who is loyal, but it may actually turn out not to truly support liberatory ends. In order for group loyalty to even be available as a virtue, there must be a worthy object of loyalty. While feminist communities and communities that ground liberatory racial movements are potential objects of group loyalty, loyalty forbids doing anything aimed at undermining the existence of the object of loyalty. Because liberatory principles sometimes do indeed call for dissolving the identities to which one might have allegiances, there may be no morally acceptable opportunities for group loyalty for a political resister. Political resisters who do sustain loyalty to a community by accepting the challenge of being a loyal critic may become burdened in several ways: they may find themselves tied to a community whose practices reflect internal dynamics of dominance and subordination, and they may belong to the community only uncomfortably, for their critical activities will tend to alienate them from other community members.
Conclusion
Authors: Tessman Lisa 
Published: October 2005

AbstractThe conclusion addresses a question that emerges given all of the critical revisions to a eudaimonistic virtue ethics that are suggested in the course of the book, and especially given the proposed addition of an odd category of virtues—burdened virtues—that lack the usual feature of virtues because they are exercised in contexts in which flourishing tends to be diminished or unattainable. The conclusion considers how one could identify the virtues under conditions in which the link between virtue and flourishing is so unreliable. Given that the burdened virtues tend to fail to enable their bearers to flourish, one cannot find these virtues simply by beginning with a conception of flourishing and then working backwards from there to see which traits are conducive to or constitutive of such flourishing. What is proposed instead is a variety of ways in which a trait, despite being costly or detrimental, could be otherwise identifiably praiseworthy.