Val Plumwood’s Philosophical Animism: Attentive Inter-actions in the Sentient World

Towards the end of her eventful and productive life, Val Plumwood was turning toward Indigenous people and cultures as a way of encountering the lived experience of ideas she was working with theoretically. At the same time, she was defining herself as a philosophical animist. As I understand her term, she was making connections with animism as a worldview, but rather than mimic or appropriate indigenous animisms she was developing a foundation that could be argued from within western philosophy. Her beautiful definition of philosophical animism is that it “opens the door to a world in which we can begin to negotiate life membership of an ecological community of kindred beings.” Thus, her animism, like indigenous animisms, was not a doctrine or orthodoxy, but rather a path, a way of life, a mode of encounter. In the spirit of open-ended encounter, I aim to bring her work into dialogue with some of my Australian Aboriginal teachers. More specifically, I focus on developing an enlarged account of active listening, considering it as the work participants engage in as they inter-act with other sentient creatures. I take a country or place based perspective, engaging with life on the inside of the webs and patterns of connection

Nursing Education in Complementary Alternative Modalities: A Case Study

Purpose: The purpose of this embedded case study was to describe the preparation for and utilization of complimentary alternative modality (CAM) interventions by an experienced Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) prepared nurse practitioner (NP) working in an outpatient setting. Background: Given the widespread use of CAM by the American public and the potential complications involved in combining CAM and standard medical care, a lack of educational preparation in CAM interventions by NPs delivering primary care in outpatient health care settings represents both a potential risk and a missed opportunity to provide holistic patient care. Such a lack of knowledge also constitutes a tremendous gap for NPs working in an outpatient health care setting to provide symptom management and comfort care to populations most in need of it, particularly palliative care patients. Methods: Leininger’s Theory of Cultural Care served as a sensitizing theory for the development of the two lines of inquiry of CAM education and utilization. A DNPprepared NP with substantive knowledge of CAM and extensive integrating CAM into a primary care outpatient practice who met Yin’s (2018) criteria for an embedded case study participated in an open-ended interview focusing on CAM as the phenomenon of interest. The six thematic steps developed by Braun and Clark (2006) were used in performing data analysis. These steps include data familiarization, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining/naming themes, and producing the report. Findings: Five major themes emerged from the study’s two lines of inquiry. Line of inquiry one (perception of formal CAM education throughout the participant’s nursing education) yielded the three themes of: (1) Extreme deficiency in CAM education at all levels of nursing education (deficiency); (2) CAM education as imperative in NP-level education (imperative); and (3) opportunities for improved CAM education (opportunities). Line of inquiry two (utilization of CAM as an NP in a primary care outpatient setting) yielded two additional themes of: (4) CAM as life-altering for patients (life-altering) and (5) importance of cultural collaboration (cultural collaboration). Implications for Research: Data from this study support the need for future studies of level of CAM inclusion in nursing curricula, particularly at the NP level, and documentation of subsequent uptake of CAM interventions by practicing NPs. Key words: nursing education, complimentary therapy, alternative therap

Dreaming Ecology

In the author's own words, Dreaming Ecology 'explores a holistic understanding of the interconnections of people, country, kinship, creation and the living world within a context of mobility. Implicitly it asks how people lived so sustainably for so long’. It offers a telling critique of the loss of Indigenous life, human and non-human, in the wake of white settler colonialism and this becoming ‘cattle country’. It offers a fresh perspective on nomadics grounded in ‘footwalk epistemology’ and ‘an ethics of return sustained across different species, events, practices and scales’. ‘This is the final and most substantial of Debbie’s love letters to the Aboriginal people of the Victoria River Downs. I say this because there is such a sense of reverence, wonder and respect throughout the book. The introduction of concepts of double-death, footwalk epistemology, wild country … are not only organising ideas but characterisations arising from what Debbie hears, sees and feels of herself and Aboriginal others … I think of it in terms of love, if love is care, reciprocal respect, deep connectivity and a strong desire to never make less of the people she chose to commit herself to.’ —Richard Davis ‘This book was a pleasure to read, filled with careful description of people, places, and various plants and animals, and insightful analysis of the patterns and commitments that hold them together in the world.’ —Thom van Doore

Dislocating the Frontier

History; Frontier; Pioneer life; Australi

Governance and Susceptibility in Conflict Resolution: Possibilities Beyond Control

Governmentality analysis offers a nuanced critique of informal Western conflict resolution by arguing that recently emerged alternatives to adversarial court processes both govern subjects and help to constitute rather than challenge formal regulation. However, this analysis neglects possibilities for transforming governance from within conflict resolution that are suggested by Foucault's contention that there are no relations of power without resistances. To explore this lacuna, I theorise and explore the affective and interpersonal nature of governance in mediation through autoethnographic reflection upon mediation practice, and Levina's insights about the relatedness of selves. The paper argues that two qualitatively different mediator capacities - technical ability and susceptibility - operate in concert to effect liberal governance. Occasionally though, difficulties and failures in mediation practice bring these capacities into tension and reveal the limits of governance. By considering these limits in mediation with Aboriginal Australian people, I argue that the susceptibility of mediator selves contains prospects for mitigating and transforming the very operations of power occurring through conflict resolution. This suggests options for expanded critical thinking about power relations operating through informal processes, and for cultivating a susceptible sensibility to mitigate liberal governance and more ethically respond to difference through conflict resolution