Developing Social Science and Religion for Liberation and Growth.

Intro -- Introduction and Overview of Chapters -- Chapter 1 -- Humanism, Religious and Secular: Charting Childhood and Humanistic Psychology -- What is humanism? -- 'Innate goodness': the crucial link between positive humanism, religious humanism, and positive social science -- Humanism's history: Our personal review -- René Descartes -- Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow: Founders of modern humanistic psychology -- Rollo May -- Child-Centred Humanism -- Carl Rogers -- Children's rights -- Abraham Maslow -- The Social Contract -- Thomas Hill Green, 1836 to 1882 -- Margaret Scotford Archer -- Maslow, Kelly and Rogers -- Five levels of "The Social Contract" involving reciprocal obligations and social relationships -- Education and humanism -- Quakers and the humanist education movement -- Erik Erikson and the humanist journey -- Behavioral psychology's translation to a humanist model -- Conclusions -- Chapter 2 -- Critical Realism and Autoethnography: A Review -- Introduction: Autoethnography and self-other relationships -- Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism: A model for social action and social change -- Matthew Wilkinson: Dialectical Critical Realism and Islam -- Margaret Scotford Archer -- Critical Realism's Marxist dimension -- Application of Critical Realism models in contrasted fields of research -- Reflections on Critical Realism -- Child-Centred Humanism (CCH): A guiding or underlabouring principal -- Margaret Archer, Critical Realism and morphogenesis -- Conclusions -- The Children's Charter of Development Rights -- Chapter 3 -- A Social Scientist's Journey from Quaker to Muslim: Developing A Theology for Social Action -- Introduction and purpose -- Islam in Europe today: The life of the Mosque -- The experience of becoming Muslim -- Three books of monotheism -- The Qur'an -- Fundamentalism and jihad -- The prophets of Islam.

The message of prophet Jesus -- Women and Islam -- Islam and education -- Islam as a minority group in the West: The plural society debate -- Islam and non-violence -- God's light shining -- Challenges for Islam's peace-making and the journey on the straight path -- Studies in social science -- Studies in Gaza -- Studies in Bangladesh -- Studies in Pakistan -- Conclusions -- End Notes -- Chapter 4 -- Explaining Evil in a World Where Humans are Motivated by a Spirit of Inward Goodness -- The problem -- Start with stable families, loving parents, and children who flourish -- Secular scholars on 'human goodness' -- Social structures and psychohistory: Ways to explain both good and evil in human affairs? -- Goodness emerging from evil: Humanist accounts of the Holocaust by Etty Hillesum, Elie Wiesel, Eugene Heimler and Viktor Frankl -- Etty Hillesum -- Eugene Heimler -- Elie Wiesel -- Viktor Frankl -- Learning to be empathic: Simon Baron-Cohen and transcending the evil of the Holocaust -- Ending hatred: Goodness stemming from tragedy in Izzeldin Abuelaish's account of Palestinian and Israeli conflict -- Mehnaz Afridi's Shoah Through Muslim Eyes: A story of empathy and tolerance -- Ken Plummer's critical humanism, and 'the telling of stories' -- The positive psychology movement: Overcoming evil by 'learning to be good' -- Evil remains: But humanity can transcend evil -- Conclusions -- Chapter 5 -- The Retelling of Our Stories - Abraham Maslow, Religion and Human Transcendence -- Beginning with Edward Said … -- Varieties of religious experience: Their purpose and meaning -- William James and modern research on religious experience -- Benefits of being religious? -- Abraham Maslow: The scholar of transcendence -- Maslow's short but productive life, 1908 to 1970 -- In the master's footsteps -- Maslow's well-known pyramid of human needs and their achievement.

Maslow and 'peak experiences' -- Maslow, personality theory and 'the Big Five' (OCEAN) dimensions -- Big Five personality profiles: Occupational success, Maslow and Islamic ideals -- Developmental pathways: Overcoming early disadvantage in achieving self-actualization and beyond -- Scott Barry Kaufman's transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization (2020) -- In the master's footsteps … -- Interpreting Maslow's ideas for human service and management professionals -- Applying Maslowian principles in human service and health care -- Conclusions -- General References and Bibliography -- Index.

This book integrates humanist approaches in enabling both spiritual growth and social science knowledge in advocating for the emancipation of exploited women, children and youth, based on critical realism. Through an autoethnographic account of the first author's journey from being a secular Jew, through Anglicanism, to Quakerism and then Islam, a pacifist-based social science methodology is developed. This approach describes attempts to understand and liberate sexually exploited youths in Bangladesh; exploited women and girls in Pakistan; and struggling women in Gaza, Palestine. The model attempts to integrate moral goals of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in seeking peaceful co-operation. Secular humanism is added, creating a research model which seeks the enhancement of human welfare through the universal ethic of the social contract, in which humans and their welfare are both interesting and exciting. A review of research on child sexual exploitation elaborates the model of child-centred humanism.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.