The inner journey: Mindset shifts of transformation. Call for papers July 31st, 2024

Our multiplying and interconnected eco-social crises will not get solved with old ways of thinking, being and doing.
ARJ Special Issue

All humanity knows we’re being called to embrace change. As you and I are considering that, do we qualify it? Is it consciously or un-consciously present for everyone regardless of an individual’s resistance to change? How we make sense of this can point to a shift in our meaning-making.

That is inner change, mindset re-conceptualizations such as perspective changes when we see ourselves and the world around us in new ways. Many argue it is fundamental for the work of transformation and to assist softer landings, lives worth living for all sentient species.

This exploration underpins the Action Research Journal’s recent call for papers: The inner journey and mindset shifts of transformation. We are asking: how does social reality actually transform under the surface of our doing?

You’ll find the full call for papers here>

The call recognises our potentials:

The world around us can seem daunting when we look at its multiple challenges. Yet, we humans are capable of significant growth and step-like changes, consider the global Covid era innovation. We saw it is possible to shift perspectives, break old boundaries and respond creatively both as individuals and collectives. Our call highlights that our times call for non-linear approaches. Moreover, our global difficulties are intertwined and developing more capacity for making a positive difference may lie in integrating personal, relational and systems awareness. 

Action researchers will be familiar with this combination of subjectivity and objectivity as first, second and third person research and practice. Additionally, you will recognise this as working with complexity and emergence:

The entanglement of challenges is sometimes called our meta-crisis. To meet this we are called to act and we ask authors to consider if there are ways to join up promising efforts to deliver a future worth living. We invite papers that integrate inner change with impact in the world to learn of truly new formats and overarching approaches. What are transformative approaches to meaning-making and action-taking that allow more of us to hold and nurture what is emerging from the inherent complexity of it all? 

The call consequently is for papers addressing: 

• Values, beliefs and mindsets of growth as catalysts for transformation;
• Constructivist adult development frameworks; 
• Explorations of multiples ways of knowing that invite a greater intelligence and reflexivity, e.g. embodiment; 
• Theories and systems that connect richer understanding of human psychology with external consequences and visible outcomes.

This highlights capacity to (creatively) reach further into what is empowering these shifts, unfolding deeper realities, within you and collectively. Including:

• The creation of new ways of knowing, new ways of understanding ourselves and the ways in which we are creating (and co-creating) knowledge. 
• The importance of our own creatureliness, with its embodied intelligence.
• Feminist engagement with gendered/embodied knowledge.
• Eastern takes on mind (all intelligence known to the nervous system) versus western cerebral focus.
• Consideration of bigger pictures such as through integral pluralism and/or multidimensional experiences including the role of plant medicines.

Please see the call for papers for the full breadth of what is included.

We’re really looking forward to your contributions and feel free to reach out, comments and email, about this too!

Simon Divecha for the Special issue editorial team which includes Haley Roth, Denny Kwok Leung Ho and Hilary Bradbury.

Picture credit:
Festina Lentívaldi, (be) Benevolution. Reuse: Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 US. I’m illustrating this post with this picture as the experience of being here is a feeling of the liminal spaces. That’s the storm, the horizon, the sea, the shafts of sun, warmth, drenching wet and more. All of that is meeting at this point, in that time and none of that is detracting from the intensity of each component. The sense of being in and within these edges is re-evoked in me by this picture. Beyond that, the ‘new thinking’ here is partly that the picture includes AI graphics assistance to enhance these feelings.