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Re-Valuing the 'Profane' in forging Meaningful Connections with the 'Sacred' Professor John Stevenson, Griffith University This paper uses concepts from psychological and sociological concepts to examine the idea of ‘enablement’ in terms of the ‘development of meaning’. Data are drawn from three main studies: one of people engaged in everyday work activities, one of people at university who were undertaking ‘mundane’ part-time work at the same time, and one of homeless people studying the humanities. From the studies, it is argued that different kinds of meanings are made in different kinds of activities, that not all of these meanings can be expressed in terms of the verbalisable, collective, ‘sacred’ concepts of the culture, and that there are cognitive, dispositional and physical struggles involved in connecting ‘mundane’ and ‘sacred’ meanings. It is concluded that enablement requires profound changes in the ways in which the dominant culture values ‘mundane’ activities and meanings, in the ways in which it is generally understood that new meanings are afforded legitimacy, and in dominant approaches to forging access to the ‘sacred’ meanings of the culture. |
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