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"France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime" by Jon Elster is a book that examines the period leading up to the French Revolution. The author explores different interpretations of the revolution and focuses on the psychology of social groups and the political actors of the time. Elster's extensive knowledge of French history and his use of various thinkers and philosophers contribute to his analysis. While some historians may question the inevitability of the revolution, Elster presents it as a result of changing circumstances and the reaction of the third estate. The book also highlights the need for further research on the subject. [Extracted from the article]

"Asbestos in Australia: From Boom to Dust" is a comprehensive and highly readable edited volume that explores the intersection of environment, industry, and public health in Australian life. The book synthesizes diverse literatures on asbestos in Australia, providing an overview of its business, economic, and social history from its rise as a "miracle mineral" in the late nineteenth century to its decline in the face of mounting medical evidence and public outcry. The collection includes historical, legal, and medical perspectives, as well as oral histories from communities affected by asbestos mining. It serves as a valuable reference work and highlights the ongoing challenges posed by industrial pollutants in Australia. [Extracted from the article]

The early modern book economy thrived on a system of bartering, swapping printed sheets for printed sheets or other valuable bookish material. Widely discussed as Tauschhandel in the context of the Frankfurt Book Fair, this practice continued to flourish in the Low Countries during the seventeenth century as the fair's popularity declined. This article examines the bartering practices between the Officina Plantiniana in the city of Antwerp, the best-documented print business of the handpress era, and merchants and booksellers in its northern neighbour Amsterdam. While the output of the Plantin presses is well studied, its input, including maps, lottery tickets, reams of high-quality French and Dutch paper, and even luxury objects such as sugar and globes, has gone unrecognised. Ultimately, I argue that Dutch sellers were motivated to barter with the Officina by their superior access to books, paper, and other luxury goods, and their robust professional and personal networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, citizenship status has become more important in immigrant lives and communities in the United States. Undocumented adults who arrived as children, the 1.5 generation, comprise a growing percentage of the immigrant population. Although they are similar to children of immigrants born in the United States (the second generation) they face a variety of barriers to integration due to their lack of legal status. Based on over five years of ethnographic fieldwork with mainly 1.5 and second generation Mexican-American men during a period of major healthcare reform, this paper addresses how citizenship status and embeddedness within multi-status communities impacts immigrant experiences in the healthcare domain. In particular, I argue that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has contributed to an institutionalization of the status differences and a further differentiation in the social integration of these groups of children of immigrants. The novel methodological approach and the data which emerges through fieldwork reveals important insights into the process whereby healthcare reforms have consequences for immigrant communities which I show through highlighting the status-signaling event that is generated through various forms of direct and indirect interaction with the ACA. The implications of this extend beyond healthcare, and I discuss its impact on issues including ethnic identity and psychological well-being. This paper makes contributions to both our understanding of intergroup dynamics in immigrant integration and the health implications of immigration policies more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's sense of place is important for wellbeing, development and belonging in a community or place. The VIP-CLEAR (Voices in a Pandemic – Children's Lockdown Experiences Applied to Recovery) project used creative methods and repeat engagement to capture children's experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in socially disadvantaged, urban settings, in Bristol, UK. This paper focuses on findings from the two-phased 'deep mapping' activity conducted in schools with 6–11-year-olds to consider children's sense of place at this time. Children's maps showed how their mobility was restricted to the home and/or adult-controlled, looped routes for functional tasks rather than child-directed exploration. Key locations - including school, family houses, and parks - were disconnected and highlighted as sites of 'absence', where children were excluded. These places were given meaning due to pre-COVID practice, sensory experience, and/or their relationship with valued people. As pandemic mitigation relaxed, children's maps showed increasing connections and greater visibility of the community and non-essential activities. As places changed, the amplification of existing social inequalities became apparent. In both phases, sense of place evolved and digital and natural spaces (through animals) showed potential for children to increase practice and connections with place. A strong sense of place may support adaptation to change, and this paper contributes to limited research on how children's sense of place is dynamic, altering with fluctuating social and environmental conditions, e.g. mitigation of a global pandemic. The implications of findings on future recovery planning involving children are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the writing, and lives, of two women, Wollstonecraft and the contemporary writer Catrina Davies. It focuses on their experience of trying to live independent, creative and worthwhile lives under social and economic conditions of precarity and debt which curtail their aspirations to freedom. Wollstonecraft's critique of property relations and of commercial society echoes through Davies's experience of navigating the current housing crisis and struggling to make a decent income from her writing. In Newington Green in the 1780s and a coastal Cornish village in the 2010s, the paper explores what it means for women's freedom when the monies will not answer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the juristic discussions about women’s access to their financial rights during late Ottoman Egypt. Taking fatwa collections as a source of social history, one can recognize that women sometimes gave up their financial entitlements to their male relatives voluntarily. This concession is thought to have occurred due to the influence of deeply ingrained social customs in some tribes. While various historical and anthropological studies have explored this social practice, this paper focuses instead on the Islamic law ruling concerning this phenomenon. I discuss in this paper how some ostensibly conservative ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt, in pursuit of upholding women’s financial rights against patriarchal oppression, recognized an important principle of social coercion. By considering fear of social stigma as a constraint on women’s free will and thus as a form of legal duress, those ulama enabled women to reclaim their rights when possible— likely following the death of their male relatives. This paper urges us to rethink the position of the ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt regarding women’s rights. Furthermore, it illuminates an overarching concept of coercion in Islamic law, which holds relevance to various modern debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid‐19 lockdown in India in March 2020 revealed the presence of Adivasi communities in the marine fishing industry of Goa, a coastal state in India. While the migration for work of Adivasi communities from the central regions of the country is well recorded, their movement across geographies of the forest and the coast is relatively unknown. Working with initial data collected during the lockdown, interviews conducted after the pandemic and using secondary materials, the paper sought to understand the social and material conditions in the forest and the coastal regions that shape this movement. Centring the waged relation of Adivasi workers opened the door to thinking about the marine fishing sector in India as a capitalist industry, while paying attention to social reproduction highlighted how the coastal and forest regions are spatially linked through their movement and labour. This highlights that the coasts and forests are going through distinct processes of capitalist intensification and expansion. Making connections between ecological appropriation, historical processes of resource extraction and marginalization, the paper finds that the extraction of fish resources in Goa is made productive through the hierarchization and differentiation of Adivasi workers. It reveals how the social relations of identity and caste mediate access to and define conditions of work at sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractiWiW was one of the first Hungarian online social networks (OSNs) and the largest ever. The site was launched in 2002, and at its peak in 2010 it had 4.5 million members, more than two-thirds of all internet users in the country. The site was shut down in 2014 by its then-owner, Hungarian Telekom. As the first socio-historical account of the site, based on oral history interviews, this paper aims to shed light on a lesser-known chapter of local digital media history by providing insights into the development of iWiW. This examination includes a focus on the social meanings and values that underpinned the OSN’s development strategies, which were contested by a changing set of relevant social groups. The paper shows how the debates of the five main relevant social groups (entertainers, early enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, mass users, and corporate entrepreneurs) shaped the development of the site during the OSNs three main eras. In each era, the site had different goals, technological features, business and development strategies, favoured and represented by the most influential relevant social groups at the time. In this sense, the "offline part" of the network has always played a decisive role in the history of iWiW, from the beginning to the end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the multifaceted cultural history of ghost trains in Victorian fiction by situating three little-known ghost stories in the publishing and social history of the second half of the nineteenth century. The figure of the ghost train offers a route into the entangled history of publishing and railways by contextualising the anxieties presented in railway ghost stories with the real-world experiences of passengers. Taking ideas of mobility as a focal point, this paper brings together discussions of virtual travel and the supernatural to demonstrate some of the impact railways had on reading and writing about train travel. More so than tales of other haunted transport technologies, it is the ghost train's unnatural capacity for movement that disturbs both passengers and readers. By both enhancing and warping reality, railways are ripe source material for Victorian ghost stories to entertain and demand questions of spatio-temporal experience from their reading passengers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes how some Jews survived on "Aryan papers" in Poland during World War II and how the experience of passing as non-Jewish influenced survivors. Discusses the role of attachment theory, "true self" and "false self," and posttraumatic stress disorder. Unless otherwise referenced, personal testimonies in this article are drawn from the book Holocaust and Identity: Polish Jews Who Survived on "Aryan Papers": Analyzing Biographic Experience, by Polish sociologist Małgorzata Melchior, and from an original tape-recorded interview with Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser and Apolonia ("Pola") Gorzkowska-Nikodemska. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between women's football and lesbianism during the 1970s in Spain as well as the invisibility characteristics of this group of women in the context of the invisibility of women's football in this period and in the context of the political transition until 1982. In the repressive context of late Francoism and given the validity until 1978 of laws that expressly persecuted homosexuality, social, cultural, legal, and political pressure had a very important impact on lesbian women who participated in the incipient practice of football in Spain in the 1970s. Some of these players built gay social networks through sports clubs and later started clandestine meetings in bars and private celebrations. The period studied—between 1970 and 1982—coincided with the rebirth of women's football in Spain and the international emergence of this sport. The research has been based on the use of in-depth interview as a method and historiographical technique that has allowed us to obtain the life stories of nine lesbian or heterosexual women football players in different Spanish cities (who in general have lived and live in a private sexual identity) and two coaches linked to women's teams. These sources have been expanded and contrasted from others of a documentary nature (specialized press and bibliography) to reconstruct the context studied and contrast the reliability of the information collected. In conclusion, it has been established that, despite the low visibility of women's football and homosexuality, the legal pressure of the period and the opposition of the public authorities and institutions of the dictatorship, the field of football allowed these women to overcome some of the difficulties in the process of building their identity and discrimination based on sexual orientation. In turn, support networks—especially of teammates—private parties and atmosphere bars, were fundamental to the life experience of young lesbian athletes in the still repressive context of the end of the Franco dictatorship and the first years of the young democratic regime in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the subject of cigarette smoking among U.S. laborers in factories, corporate spying on workers, and the social culture of shopfloors in the U.S. during the 20th century. It examines the records of Erie, Pennsylvania, paper manufacturer Hammermill Paper Company concerning employee cigarette consumption, how employees attempted to evade corporate surveillance of their smoking, and labor relations in the U.S.

This article provides a critical reading of Alaa Al Aswany's novel The Yacoubian Building (2002), evoking important questions about the nature of terrorism in Egypt and how young men are transformed into religious fanatics. While certainly not excusing terrorists' violent acts, we try to use the novel as a guide to understand what makes a terrorist tick. The novel invites us to witness the fall into the abyss of terror of a young man who dreams of being a policeman. The novel shows that while Taha struggles to change his fate, he faces marginalisation, police corruption, oppression and torture, which finally set him on the path to violence. The paper thus uses the novel as a focal point to broaden our understanding of who a terrorist figure is. Furthermore, we are interested in the literary representations of terrorism and why this novelist chooses terrorism as a main structuring element. By offering a qualitative, different understanding of the fundamental aspects of terrorism, we try to reveal that while it is the terrorist's finger that pulls the trigger, there is a disorienting history of social, political and economic circumstances behind each bullet. The paper concludes that Al Aswany neither demonises nor offers an apology for extremists. He simply presents them as humans so that we can understand what they are angry about. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historiographical debate over the Great War continues. This essential tome is a good example of how the Great War has been instrumentalized over the years by various individuals and groups eager to achieve their political objectives, no matter how reasonable and legitimate they were. [Extracted from the article]

Muslims in Italy are an increasingly large and relevant part of the social fabric, although their social condition is still characterized by a "precarious" status. This is explained by a relationship with State institutions that is not yet fully defined in formal terms and by resistance to legitimizing their presence in the public space. In addition, international events have led to the spread of a securitarian political rhetoric and to the intensification of "control" devices on the organized forms and public manifestations of Muslim religiosity. One issue that has concerned political interlocutors has been the training of "imams". This paper presents the Italian case of training "on" and "of" Islam, analyzing it as a contested field, albeit in a not open and hostile form, between the different social and institutional actors, that is Italian universities, Islamic organizations and transnational Islam and Islam "of the States". It then analyzes the approach that has been developed and experimented by an Italian State university for the training of imams and murshidat, in collaboration with Italian Islamic organizations and some universities in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries, and it also discusses how it fits in as a possible innovative model among the various "assemblages" that have emerged in Europe in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a novel Social Reproduction feminist approach to re‐evaluate the Soviet experience of industrialization within the context of global research on primitive accumulation. I analyse the first Five‐Year Plan as a unique process of 'primitive Soviet accumulation,' focusing on the Zhenotdel collectivization campaign and the often‐overlooked role of Zhenotdel peasant women delegates [krestyanki delegatki]. The study explores their involvement in peasant women's revolts against collectivization, emphasizing the significance of these events for the Zhenotdel's emancipatory programme in the village. Considering class as a social relation to the conditions of life's reproduction, I demonstrate: (1) how primitive Soviet accumulation reshaped the gendered metabolic relationship between land and labour during the first Five‐Year Plan and (2) yet, the allocation of surplus into the expanded Soviet state apparatus laid the foundation for the distinctive Soviet mother–worker gender contract and social citizenship model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a paper on social media postings by a publishing company focusing on issues of humane qualities of a diverse society, Sage Publishing (Sage). Part of a global academic community, Sage developed uniquely positive messaging for social media and is a model for other organizations. Starting with a background of Sage, this study includes a brief history of publishing in the United States and world, and continuing with the history of social media, with a focus on LinkedIn. Sage's communication approach is not to sell products and services via social media, but to educate its followers and stakeholders on the important issues of the day. The research methods used are Historical and Descriptive Research, Content Analysis, and Elite and Specialized Interviewing. The result is a model for communication via social media for organizations wanting to communicate effectively to its publics. A Content Analysis looks at four broad categories, 14 specific categories, and 90 topics. The study covers the people behind the Sage LinkedIn postings; purpose of the postings; Sage corporate morals, ethics, social responsibilities, values, and philosophy; Sage today and prospects for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the archaeological recording and recovery of a MK II Fairey Barracuda from the Solent, Hampshire, off the south coast of England. As its location precluded the aircraft being left in situ, the decision was made to recover the aircraft. Despite adverse visibility, and a significant amount of overburden, the extant remains of the aircraft were successfully recovered and delivered to the Fleet Air Arm Museum for conservation, as part of an ongoing project to rebuild an example of a Fairey Barracuda. In being recovered for reuse and exhibition some of the Barracuda's value to the wider community changed from that of a lost military aircraft to that of an historic object, drawing out the social history around it, and giving insights into military aircraft construction during the World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a qualitative methodological framework grounded in the interpretation of skeuomorphs. Scholarly attention to this phenomenon has largely come from the spheres of archaeology and design/technology. Drawing on Benjamin's ideas about the interpretive scope of objects, I propose that skeuomorphs reflect the social conditions of their creation and can therefore be the starting point for generating a series of contemporary sociological insights. The proposed framework is applied to two case studies for the purpose of clarification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to study the impact that networks of contacts and circles of musicians have in generating work opportunities within the musical field of jazz. The research has been framed within the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu's artistic field (1984, 1987) and the main characteristics of conformation of collaborative circles studied by Michael P. Farrell (2003). The methodology used is qualitative and is based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted between 2015 and 2016 with musicians from the jazz scene of the city of Barcelona. From this fieldwork, we have analyzed the main contributions that contact networks and collaborative circles of jazz musicians offer to generate work opportunities within the musical artistic field. We have also studied how the collective work and the conformation of musical groups become a crucial artistic and creative platform both for the development of the individual careers of musicians and in the field of joint exploration of the musical language itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, nature has often been thought to be structured by essential forms providing the generic features of natural things and thus the foundations for scientific explanations. In contrast, human history and the social domain have been thought to be the realm of ever‐changing appearances, where contingency prevails. The paper argues that the existence of essential forms is compatible with the contingent, mind‐dependent and historical character of the social world, and that essential forms can also be found in the social domain. Two categories of entities are discussed that suggest themselves to be identified as social forms, namely social kinds and social identities. To this end, it is shown that standard arguments for the existence of essential forms also apply to the social domain, and objections to the existence of social forms are rebutted. Particular attention is paid to the explanatory appeal of social forms. The paper concludes by suggesting that, far from being oppressive, essential social forms are presupposed by liberating social practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developmental state research highlights state-society configurations and contentious politics in shaping industrialization. Still, much of this work focuses on East Asia and tends to sidestep racialized labor exploitation, imperialism, and uneven incorporation into the global capitalist system through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism as important drivers. Through an historical analysis of Trinidad and Tobago, this paper examines how interventionist industrial policies emerged out of such structures and conditions. It highlights the role of anti-imperial and anti-racist struggles exemplified by the Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago – a social movement comprising workers, marginalized youth, and civic leaders, which sought to overturn a colonial economy, reconfigure hierarchical race relations, address economic injustices, promote democratically negotiated industrialization, and chart a new course for a post-independent, multiracial Trinidad and Tobago. Utilizing archival data, this paper argues that Trinidad and Tobago's government shifted from a passive industrial strategy characteristic of the colonial era to a more active approach from 1970 to 1984 largely in response to forceful demands and demonstrations by the Black Power Movement, which, in turn, led to improved social conditions, nationalization of key industries, the creation of state-owned enterprises, new skills and technological investments, and more. These findings advance developmental state theory by specifying the heretofore largely unacknowledged role of racial justice and anti-imperialist social movements in bringing about a different path from the East Asian model toward industrial and social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines research in the area of leadership and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) by scoping literature through a systematic approach. The purpose of this study is to identify trends and gaps relating to issues addressed, theoretical and conceptual approaches, methodologies, geographical representation of research, and future research directions in the area. In all, 45 articles were sampled through a predetermined selection criteria and analysed using descriptive statistics. The results indicate that four major issues investigated in multiple sectors dominate the area. Besides, a number of theories were found to have been used in understanding the topic, while in terms of methodology, there appears to be a fair distribution of papers using qualitative and quantitative approaches but an imbalance between cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs. Again, most of the studies were conducted at the meso and micro levels and were produced in Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, Australia, and South America in that ranking order. Overall, it was realised that because of the emerging nature of the 4IR phenomenon, research work in the area is now rising, requiring further research output to address the gaps identified through this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between urban density and social conditions in urban areas has received increasing attention in recent research. However, there is a lack of understanding of the dynamics between urban densification and these social conditions from a place-specific perspective, taking into account the institutional, socio-cultural, and contextual complexities. This paper seeks to enhance this understanding by unpacking the relationship between soft densification and place attachment in Tehran, Iran. The paper develops a framework for studying 'soft densification' as a process of incremental place change by prioritising local knowledge. The findings suggest that soft densification impacts place attachment by disrupting the everyday functionality of place, eroding its physical characteristics, erasing some of its collective and personal memories, and altering its socio-demographic structure. The paper highlights the importance of thinking 'procedurally' and 'topologically' about urban densification and calls for incorporating local knowledge and experiences into policy planning and urban decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the quality of information collected by a self-administered survey responded to by a general population, who were offered the possibility of answering using the post or Internet. The analysis will be focused on the use of three grid questions with using rating scales with 6, 6 and 8 items, respectively. There was a polar point labelled scale (0–10) with verbal labels only at the endpoints. The postal survey showed greater acquiescence, a greater choice of extreme response categories and ‘easy’ answers, and a greater number of incomplete questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ongoing conflicts in various countries, including Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. It emphasizes the importance of studying the archaeology and history of conflict to understand the reality of mass violence and its impact on communities. The article also highlights the need for diverse perspectives and the inclusion of indigenous voices in conflict archaeology research. Additionally, it presents summaries of three papers published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, focusing on topics such as the preservation of a Civil War battlefield, glass artifacts from World War I, and the military archaeology of the Italian occupation of Croatia during World War II. [Extracted from the article]

A call for papers and panels is presented in regards to the International Society for Public Law's Inaugural Conference which is scheduled to be held on June 26-28, 2014 in Florence, Italy, and it also provides an introduction to the journal and acknowledgments for contributors such as Asli Bali

The article discusses the increasing trend of using social media for verbal violence and brutal attacks, on anybody expressing a moderate opinion in Israeli Society. It looks at the polarity within the Israeli Society among the groups of people using social media and extreme rightists. It also discussed include role of lack of a moderating and containing leadership in controlling emotions on social media sites as Facebook and WhatsApp.

Loneliness is most often understood as resulting from individual deficits that shape poor social engagement and unsatisfying interactions. As a consequence, interventions to address loneliness most often focus on fixing the lonely individual, for example, by modifying their social appraisals and skills, or encouraging them to get out more. In this paper, we characterize and contribute to changing this dominant narrative by arguing that it is both unhelpful and incomplete. We explain that this dominant narrative (1) increases loneliness and makes people feel worse about this experience, (2) does not account for important predictors of loneliness, (3) guides us to interventions that do not produce sufficiently effective or sustainable change, and (4) hinders broader understandings of the societal impact of loneliness. In this way, we argue that the dominant narrative around loneliness contributes to further setting those who feel lonely apart from the rest of society. We propose that attention to individual factors needs to be complemented by the acknowledgement that loneliness is heavily determined by social and structural conditions that render it unequally distributed in society, a situation that qualifies loneliness as a social justice issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss Moses Mendelssohn's argumentation on religious tolerance in his "Vorrede" ("preface") that he added to his translation of Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel's letter "Vindiciae judaeorum" in 1782. Instead of solely deducing Mendelssohn's idea of religious tolerance, I examine Mendelssohn's argumentation strategies. For this purpose, I firstly determine the political and social conditions in which Mendelssohn wrote the "Vorrede". Secondly, I examine the normative reasons or resources that Mendelssohn argues for tolerance with. In my observation, he is legitimizing religious tolerance on the normative resources of philosophical reasons (natural law/universal reason) and pragmatic reasons (utility). Further, I will analyse Mendelssohn's concept of a tolerant Judaism in the "Vorrede". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An expansive and methodologically varied literature designed to investigate racial disparities in health now exists. Empirical evidence points to an overlapping, complex web of social conditions that accelerate the pace of aging and erodes long-term health outcomes among people of color, especially Black Americans. However, a social exposure—or lack thereof—that is rarely mentioned is time use. The current paper was specifically designed to address this shortcoming. First, we draw on extant research to illustrate how and why time is a critical source of racial disparities in health. Second, we employ fundamental causes theory to explain the specific mechanisms through which the differential distribution of time across race is likely to give rise to unequal health outcomes. Finally, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that identifies and distinguishes between four distinct forms of time use likely to play an outsized role in contributing to racial disparities in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infidel to academic disciplinarity, and employing a poetic, feminist reading of two vignettes and a case study, this paper presents "embodied infrastructures" as a fundamental grammar of prefigurative politics through which a redirected society rehearses an "otherwise" political future. Embodied infrastructures are identified in the people's mic of the Occupy movement (2011), and the human chain and "home thrown in the mud" in the women's antinuclear protest practices at the Greenham Common Peace Camp (1982-early 2000s). Acknowledging the interdependence of bodies, materiality, and democracy, and rejecting delegating their beliefs, morality, and intentionality to technologies, participants in prefigurative political movements are determined to become infrastructure themselves. Infrastructures of embodied resource circulation are seen in continuity with "corporeal infrastructures" found in communities of scarcity during which bodies are activated as social actants—evident in Chandigarh's appropriation of autochthonous capacities of auto-construction, and a cautionary tale of the inherent vulnerability of bodily employment when co-opted by conditions of alienated social relations. Embodied infrastructures are radical in their transgression of the boundaries between collectivity and individuality, users and designers, labor and work, privacy and publicity, futures and presents. They bring "life making" and "thing making" together as entangled, mutually constitutive paths to collective emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses poverty dynamics and checks for the existence of poverty traps among refugee and host communities living close to each other in Uganda. Although some non-linearities emerge in asset dynamics, there is convergence towards one stable equilibrium for the whole sample that suggests the existence of a structural poverty trap. However, households are quite heterogeneous: when analysing refugees and hosts separately, refugees converge to a lower own-group equilibrium than hosts. The household size and education are asset growth enablers for both communities. Noticeably, access to land, past history and social cohesion are also significant correlates of refugees' asset dynamics. From a policy perspective, structural poverty traps are bad news, because standard anti-poverty interventions would not unlock the trap. Our results stress the need of more structural approaches aimed at promoting economic growth in the whole area where refugee and host communities live, targeting both communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese ' Madams' as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers ( MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer-employee relationships, especially the abusive Arab ' Madam.' In this paper, I argue that the portrayal of violations of MDW rights as abuse of one set of women by another is inherently problematic on several fronts. It privatizes the structural problem of workers' and immigrant rights violations, delegates it to the household, and absolves the state of its responsibility. Moreover, the focus on abusive employers takes attention away from the root of the problem - the inherently exploitative system of migration and recruitment in the region, the sponsorship system. The sponsorship system not only creates conditions for much of these violations, but also systematically produces a new population of readily exploitable worker - the category of 'illegal workers.' Oral histories and interviews with individual workers are employed to analyze the process by which illegal workers are 'produced' in Lebanon. Finally, focus group discussions highlight critical policy recommendations made by the workers themselves, which address the systemic bases of their exploitation in Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how influential policy advice constructs a stable Congo image and upholds the belief in intervention benefits. By investigating analytical blind spots and the way counter evidence is dealt with, this article shows that current policy papers imagine the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)'s economy, politics and society in a reductionist way. The economy is seen as criminal, illegal and unproductive. The state is portrayed as weak, despite obvious examples of its influence. Finally, society is seen as dominated by sexual violence. This ‘functional pathologization’ allows for self-referential reasoning about Western interventions, security sector reform for example, and serves as a recipe to perpetuate them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents information related to a paper in psychology presented at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine. Over the course of development of bourgeois science, psychology has, however, fatefully lost its place, its area, its object. In this is the crisis of psychology, the roots of which must be sought in those social conditions, within whose depths psychology developed and which of necessity had to give rise to a mystified concept of the human psyche and human consciousness.

This paper explores the relations between self-esteem and competition. Self-esteem is a very important good and competition is a widespread phenomenon. They are commonly linked, as people often seek self-esteem through success in competition. Although competition in fact generates valuable consequences and can to some extent foster self-esteem, empirical research suggests that competition has a strong tendency to undermine self-esteem. To be sure, competition is not the source of all problematic deficits in self-esteem, and it can arise for, or undercut goods other than self-esteem. But the relation between competition and access to self-esteem is still significant, and it is worth asking how we might foster a desirable distribution of the latter in the face of difficulties created by the former. That is the question addressed in this paper. The approach I propose neither recommends self-denial nor the uncritical celebration of the rat race. It charts instead a solidaristic path to support the social conditions of the self-esteem of each individual. The paper proceeds as follows. I start, in section 2, by clarifying key concepts involved in the discussion. In section 3, I identify ten mechanisms that support individuals' self-esteem and impose limits on competition. I focus, in particular, on the challenges faced by people in their practices of work. In section 4, I outline prudential and moral arguments to justify the use of the proposed mechanisms. Section 5 concludes with remarks on the role of social criticism in the processes of change implementing the mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analogies have been drawn between therapeutic recovery and decolonization. This will mean that one can interrogate psychological effects of trauma on cultures or nations that undergo or have undergone colonization. If decolonization is perceived a form of therapy, colonialism is adjudged potential trauma. This paper is interested in understanding how colonialism could potentially traumatize a nation or given culture. It equally explores decolonization as a form of therapy. It thus analyses the trauma of colonialism in Kunle Afolayan's October 1 (2014). No scholarly work has been done on the analysis of colonial trauma in Nollywood film texts. This might be as a result of the paucity of film texts that speak to the theme. This paper is therefore interested in understanding how Nollywood ace filmmaker, Kunle Afolayan, uses his October 1 as a metaphor to mirror the traumatic effect of colonialism on Nigeria as a nation. It explores how the film's major characters' relations to their traumatic pasts provide insight to Nigeria's social history. This study attempts to visualize in Afolayan's characters, a Nigeria traumatized by colonialism. It further envisions the possible paths to Nigeria's survival of colonial trauma in these characters' chosen paths to recovery. Using psychoanalysis as framework, this qualitative analysis explores decolonization as therapeutic and contributes to decolonization discourses in African film studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the work of a group of Railwaymen Poets, whose verse has been collected as part of the Piston, Pen and Press project. It explores their writings both as part of an emerging theme of accident and loss poetry surrounding the railways in Victorian culture but also more specifically as interrelated texts produced by workers sharing common experiences. Whilst many wrote about all manner of subjects, not just the railway accident, public fascination with accident reporting allowed them to both pursue their literary endeavours and also to use poetry as a form of catharsis. Their poetry, this paper argues, should be read as a collective expression of emotion around the dangerous and loss-ridden nature of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses issues pertaining to the future of work and sustainability through the lens of a case study of ecological deterioration and how it destroys and creates green jobs in a forest village of Istanbul. As elsewhere in major urban centres of developing countries, the hyper-expansion of city regions due to authoritarian developmentalism fosters the state-led construction sector in Turkey. Growth-driven economic policies continue to have adverse effects on the environment, resulting in deforestation among an array of ecological damage. Based on a qualitative analysis of oral history interviews and observations informed by a larger interdisciplinary research project, we observe resilience in the forest village under scrutiny as certain types of work are abandoned, and new forms are created by adaptation to the ecological and social conditions. The perceptions of changing conditions by locals vary across existing ethnic, gender, and class hierarchies in the local community. Moreover, our findings indicate that the types of work available in the village prior to urban transformation were not all decent or green. In face of ongoing ecological deterioration in a (formerly) forest community, participatory micro-initiatives, and grassroots, utilizing local community projects emerge that nevertheless pursue a green and just transition. We focus on one such initiative, the Community Fungi platform, to demonstrate the possibility of working towards a collective imagination of a green future inspired by past but unforgotten sustainable communal practices, in the context of the forest village under scrutiny in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that everyday life in housing contains the possibility to shape and transform its material, cultural, and social conditions. Mobilizing a materialist ontology and insights from human geography, we examine how shared spaces manifest practices of togetherness which prefigure the enactment of socioecological degrowth. We draw on ethnographic fieldwork on a housing estate in Manchester (UK) to identify practices that characterize everyday housing geographies, including reappropriation, commoning, accepting limits, and territorializing tendencies. These constitute a therapeutic assemblage, facilitating wellbeing while simultaneously enfolded with(in) the political possibilities being realized on the estate to form a contingent, yet durable, instantiation of everyday degrowth. We thus contribute to revealing how transformative degrowth politics are sustained in everyday housing contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of scholarly studies and literary works on Egyptian Copts as a persecuted or a faith community has diverted attention from seeing them as active agents who challenge hegemonic powers within the complex overlapping of national and religious discourses. As a diasporic Copt, Shady Lewis voices in his 2018 novel Turuq al-Rab (Ways of the Lord) a counternarrative of resistance, scrutinizing the prevailing conformist culture fraught with control and repression orchestrated primarily by the state and secondarily by the church. This paper examines the ways in which Lewis offers a new paradigm for understanding Coptic identity in light of Egypt's socio-history that has produced this culture. It argues that the novel's interlacing of the twofold church-state and Copts-church asymmetries of power informs Coptic contentions of citizenship, belonging, and relation to the church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In periods of history with rapid social and economic change, it is useful to examine the long-term history of particular arrangements. Money is one of these institutions that seems eternal and unchanging, but that has changed dramatically over time. For example, money was typically conceived as coins made of precious metal and stamped with the image of the ruler. As long-distance trade expanded in the early modern period, money was represented by paper, most often letters of exchange among merchants who trusted one another because of common membership in a community. The emergence of the fiscal/military state enabled populations to have some role in the issue and uses of money, such as the Italian city-states of Republican form, like Florence and Venice. After the "Glorious Revolution" in 1688, the Bank of England (BOE) innovated with merchant monopoly corporations engaging in state-supported long-distance trade, the stock of which backed public debt. The political controversies surrounding the formation of the BOE reveal some of the alternative possibilities, a merchant-oriented bank, supported by the Whigs, or a land bank supported by the Tories. After the industrial revolution, the use of credit for real investment aided the accumulation of surplus, by the productivity treadmill. After the Great Depression, the extension of finance into the lives of the citizens proceeded, with debt financing for housing, education, and retirement, encompassing the entire life cycle. The dominance of the United States after World War II enabled that country to sustain a hegemonic currency, based on the expansion of trade and supply chains to Emerging Market Countries. Along with the tech bubble in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the crypto bubble expanded hopes for an alternative form of money. Such a long-term history can be informed by analysis of the role of money as a symbol, mobilized by meanings enacted in human institutions. Such a view can provide a method of interpreting the long term evolution of money, restoring the political dimension and human agency to the abstract impersonal mechanical notion of the market. Such a perspective can better inform consideration of alternative institutions to accommodate challenges like geopolitical competition, war, and climate change. JEL Classification: B51, B52, G20, N20, P48 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Englishmen at Sea: Labor and the Nation at the Dawn of Empire, 1570–1630" by Eleanor Hubbard is a book that offers a new perspective on the social history of English seafarers during a crucial period in the development of England's maritime empire. The author draws on state papers, printed sources, and detailed depositions to explore the experiences of seafarers and their role in the development of imperial and commercial networks. The book challenges traditional notions of hierarchy on ships and examines the complex construction of English identity among seafarers. While the book has received praise, some critics argue that it may oversimplify the relationships between seafarers, the state, and employers, and that the transition from plunder to commerce was not as clear-cut as the author suggests. Overall, "Englishmen at Sea" is a significant contribution to the field of maritime social history and is likely to generate further discussion on the role of seafarers in early imperial expansion. [Extracted from the article]

The academic study of grammatical voice (e.g., active and passive voice) has a long history in the social sciences. It has been examined in relation to psychological distance, attribution, credibility, and deception. Most evaluations of passive voice are experimental or small‐scale field studies, however, and perhaps one reason for its lack of adoption is the difficulty associated with obtaining valid, reliable, and replicable results through automated means. We introduce an automated tool to identify passive voice from large‐scale text data, PassivePy, a Python package (readymade website: https://passivepy.streamlit.app/). This package achieves 98% agreement with human‐coded data for grammatical voice as revealed in two large validation studies. In this paper, we discuss how PassivePy works, and present preliminary empirical evidence of how passive voice connects to various behavioral outcomes across three contexts relevant to consumer psychology: product complaints, online reviews, and charitable giving. Future research can build on this work and further explore the potential relevance of passive voice to consumer psychology and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malacologists took notice of tree snails in the genus Liguus during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since then, Liguus have undergone repeated shifts in identity as members of species, states, shell collections, backyard gardens, and engineered wildernesses. To understand what Liguus are, this paper examines snail enthusiasts, collectors, researchers, and conservationists—collectively self-identified as Liggers—in their varied landscapes. I argue that Liguus, both in the scientific imaginary and in the material landscape, mediated knowledge-making processes that circulated among amateur and professional malacologists across the United States and Cuba during the twentieth century. Beginning with an examination of early Liggers' work in Florida and Cuba, this paper demonstrates how notions of taxonomy and biogeography informed later efforts to understand Liguus hybridization and conservation. A heterogeneous community of Liggers has had varied and at times contradictory commitments informed by shifting physical, social, and scientific landscapes. Genealogizing those commitments illuminates the factors underpinning a decision to undertake the until now little-chronicled large-scale and sustained transplantation of every living Floridian form of Liguus fasciatus into Everglades National Park. The social history of Liggers and Liguus fundamentally blurs distinctions between professional scientists and amateur naturalists. The experiences of a diverse cast of Liggers and their Liguus snails historicize the complex character of human-animal relations and speak to the increasing endangerment of many similarly range-restricted invertebrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]