Search

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun (2021) philosophizes on how in the current technologically saturated culture, the gradual evolution of the empathetic humanoids has, on one hand, problematized our normative notions of cognitive and affective categories, and on the other, has triggered an order of emotional uncanniness due to our reliance on hyperreal real objects for receiving solace and companionship. The novel may be conceived to be a commentary on the emerging discourse in the domain of cognitive and emotional computing that aspires to transform the inner life and social relationships of the human community. The novelty of the paper lies in its ability to showcase how Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021) creates a rupture in the existing research and literary narrative by critiquing the theoretical underpinnings of emotional computing that optimistically foresees a future where simulated empathetic minds will be able to decode the complexities of the human emotions. It discusses how literature turns into an apt tool to reflect on the limitations of the programmed machines to decode the elusiveness of the human mind that defies the one-to-one correlation between words, multiple connotations, and their underlying emotions. Through the lenses of the fictional narrative, the paper foregrounds how the concept of the social robot designed to offer empathy, care, and companionship turns into a failed project. The paper draws on critical perspectives from disposability theory, posthuman affect, and immaterial bodies to foreground the noncodified feature of affective experientialities that emerge as a result of the interface between humans and nonanimate beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the informational practices shared between human and computer machine learners as they train to sense the world through lines of order, or vectors. The paper does this by exploring the affective conditions through which vectors draw relations of data over a persistent, colonial image of race. Through analysis of pedagogical practices at the Summer Institute for Computational Social Science in Chicago, and a corresponding year-long machine learning design group, this paper examines how contemporary machine learning practitioners train themselves to sense calculative relationality on the basis of racialized difference. The paper compares this vectorized sensibility with 20th century enumerative practices in the United States by analyzing the racial statistics of W.E.B. Du Bois, Kelly Miller, and Frances Kellor to trace out affective histories of the vector. Ultimately, this paper asks how machine learners – whether algorithms or their human users – often project lines of colonial order upon other forms of life, and how, by questioning the claim of vector relations and their informational objects, we can confront this sense-training and reimagine ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits discussions about the pursuit of a singular location for ethnographic research. Citing challenges to the fixity of location, from circulation of people to the impossibility of containing digital worlds, scholars have proposed multi-sited, multi-scalar, multi-modal and multi-sensorial ethnographies, advocating that the researcher 'follow the actor'. Drawing upon these innovations, this paper traces the affects generated in the process of following the actors as well as the consequent blurring of the division between the researcher and the researched so that they together constitute the category of 'actors' who co-produce the field. Using the example of an ethnography with young lower middle class women in Delhi, this paper deploys the researcher's experience of dislocation or unexpected shuttling in the field to develop 'dislocation' as a methodological and analytical strategy for studying marginalisation in the context of socio-economic change by embracing intersubjective relations, affects and partiality of knowledge in ethnographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A move beyond static and representational accounts of science learning and becoming through relations is needed. In this paper extra-learning activities in science offered by a community organization to an elementary class over one academic school year are assessed in light of their contributions to science learning and becoming. The latter is explored through a theoretical grounding and focus on the entanglements of bodies, materials, and affect. In doing so, the paper speaks to the affective turn in science education. The study is grounded in a non-representational and subjective reading of the work affect is doing yet also attends to the role of materials and bodies within that process, speaking to materialism, embodiment, and dignity. One elementary school class, participating in a one-year long activity assumed by a community organization (CO). Data was collected through a video ethnography of the science activities assumed by the CO. Through interaction analysis, telling moments of joint-engagement in science were analysed by centering body-material-affect entanglements. By juxtaposing these moments with background information from interviews of the teacher and the instructor, a bricolage of data sources led to narratives presented as three stories. Making evident entanglements through three stories, the paper offers insights into ways non-representational embodied and material forms of learning and becoming can be studied and documented and the insights they might offer into understanding learning and becoming in science. The stories speak to the kind of work entanglements make evident in terms of lived affect in science but also moments of relations between participants and dignity affirming or undermining work in science learning and becoming. More studies are needed to engage with body-material entanglements in and through affect and report on the manner affect supports dignifying forms of engagement with science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines teachers' understandings of affective indoctrination in a conflict-affected society, focusing on how teachers' political orientations are entangled with these understandings. The exploration is conducted through a qualitative study of Greek-Cypriot primary and secondary school teachers who are identified as either conservative or progressive. The findings highlight that regardless of political orientation, teachers interpret the term indoctrination through a negative lens. However, teachers of progressive orientation view affective indoctrination as a part of everyday educational practices, whereas teachers of conservative orientation understand affective indoctrination as an exceptional case. The paper discusses the implications for teaching and teacher education. The relevance of teachers' political orientation makes it all the more necessary that teachers and teacher educators delve deeper into the political and pedagogical implications of the entanglement between political orientations and understandings of affective indoctrination in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to explore Affect as a potential source of both personal and political subjectivity, with special reference to Bangladeshi author Hasan Azizul Haque's historical novel Agun Pakhi (The Bird of Fire). Published in 2008, The Bird of Fire chronicles a highly eventful time in the history of the Indian subcontinent. The novel begins around twenty years before the partition of Bengal and goes on to document a number of socio-political upheavals of the time, including, for example, the Second World War, the Bengal famine of 1943, the partition of Bengal, and the ensuing unrest between the Hindus and Muslims. In The Bird of Fire, however, these events are documented not as external, 'outside' activities, and are instead mediated by and presented through the everyday domestic experiences of the novel's unnamed female protagonist. As a consequence, the 'mundane' in Haque's novel acquires political salience. In Haque's novel, qualities like tenderness and affection, which are usually taken to be signs of 'passive' femininity, come to play a crucial role in the protagonist's attempts to subjectivize her. This 'feminine' expression, in turn, is largely driven by Affective dimensions. By the virtue of her emotional response-ability, the protagonist succeeds in forging a new mode of resistance that challenges both political violence and patriarchy. By studying the form and content of Haque's novel, this paper explores how the notion of resistance in The Bird of Fire recalibrates itself in terms of the 'ordinariness' of the protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman's theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply a critical concept of "agitational aesthetics" to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although gender expansive views are increasingly evident amongst young people, segregation according to binary notions of gender underpins the organisational structures of single-sex secondary schools. While claims of educational benefits are common, particularly for girls, gender is difficult to disentangle from socioeconomic advantage and other factors. Evidence suggests that such schools contribute to homogenised and limiting notions of gender. While some schools are moving towards desegregation in response to parental demand, little is known from the perspectives of young people in non-elite schools who have experienced segregated schooling. This paper turns to the accounts of 14 recent school leavers in NSW to consider the underpinning logics of segregated schooling, including the imbrication and erasure of socioeconomic dis/advantage, cultural, social, and locational factors that complicate claims about segregated schooling. Affective intensities of single-sex schooling are traced through micronarratives that touch on relations with peers, teachers, school spaces and practices, learning experiences, and their implications for gendered subjectivities and gender justice. Their accounts suggest that student experiences of segregated schooling are ambivalent and do not support claims of educational advantage and that configurations of single-sex schooling may be anachronistic for these times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses performance-based research evaluation for the higher education sector in a postcolonial context through a Foucauldian lens. Using Hong Kong as an example, this paper examines the formulation of and receptions towards the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It is argued that Hong Kong academics, especially those working in the humanities and social sciences, associate the key concepts of 'world-leading' and 'internationally excellent' research in the RAE framework with Western knowledge that undermines local and regional research. They respond to RAE in four main ways: pragmatic compliance; refusal to conform to the demands of RAE; adoption of a dualistic strategy by publishing internationally and locally; and re-imagining of research assessment coupled with the promotion of indigenous knowledge. Two significant implications are highlighted in this article. First, the preservation of a research evaluation mechanism inherited from a colonial government perpetuates and entrenches external control and dominance in the former colony. Secondly, there is a need to re-construct the research appraisal apparatus as well as advance indigenous and hybrid knowledge in a postcolonial educational landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises the role of men and mobilising masculinities in organisational change towards gender equality by investigating how change agents in academia give meaning to their involvement in such change. Via narrative inquiry I compare the working of emotions and affective solidarity in narratives of 15 male and female change agents at nine universities in four countries. The analysis shows that both male and female change agents mobilise different types of masculinities to foster gender equality: chivalrous masculinity, disruptive masculinity and inclusive masculinity. This paper contributes to the gender equality change literature by theorising masculinities as not only hindering but also potentially transforming organisations in the direction of gender equality. The interplay between knowledge and affect in the narratives of gender equality change agents suggests that interventions should aim to move emotions and support affective solidarity through recognising and understanding participants' experiences with systems of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines designerly intervention, a novel art of governing cities, by investigating reflexive technologies in urban planning/design that transformed infrastructure for street vendors in Seoul, South Korea. Influenced by behavioural economics and cognitive sciences, designerly intervention endeavours to be human-scaled, inclusive and participatory. It focuses on designing little devices as an interface between individuals and the environment to elicit city dwellers' behaviour that enacts massive infrastructure in everyday life. This paper traces how street vendors are incorporated into urban fabric through relational, affective and administrative changes created by the mediation of little devices — standardized street vending stalls. This paper develops new modes of critical inquiry to diagnose the power relations of designerly intervention that are often hidden and implicit in its seemingly reflexive methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the ongoing academic discussion regarding what happens to our data after we die, how our data are utilised for commercial profit-making purposes, and what kinds of death-related practices our posthumous data figure in, the notion of digital afterlife is attracting increasing attention. While the concept of digital afterlife has been approached in different ways, the main focus remains on the level of individual loss. The emphasis tends to be on the role of posthumous digital artefacts in grief practices and death-related rituals or on data management issues relating to death. Building on a socio-technical view of digital afterlife, this paper offers, as a novel contribution, an understanding of digital afterlife as a techno-affective assemblage. It argues for the necessity of examining technological and social factors as mutually shaping and brings into the discussion of digital afterlife the notions of relationality, materiality, and the affective potential of data. The paper ends with ruminations about digital afterlife as a posthumanist project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Scholars and practitioners alike wish to understand what makes workplace conflict beneficial or injurious to, for example, performance and satisfaction. The authors focus on parties' personal experience of the conflict, which is complementary to studying conflict issues (i.e. task- or relationship-related conflict). Although many authors discuss the personal experience of conflict, which the authors will refer to as conflict personalization, different definitions are used, leading to conceptual vagueness. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop an integrative definition of the concept of conflict personalization. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a systematic literature review to collect definitions and conceptualizations from 41 publications. The subsequent thematic analysis revealed four building blocks that were used to develop an integrative definition of conflict personalization. Findings: The authors developed the following definition: Conflict personalization is the negative affective as well as cognitive reaction to the self being threatened and/or in danger as a result of a social interaction about perceived incompatibilities. Practical implications: The integrative definition of this study enables the development of a measurement instrument to assess personalization during workplace conflict, paving the way for developing effective research-based interventions. Originality/value: Conceptual vagueness hampers theoretical development, empirical research and the development of effective interventions. Although the importance of conflict personalization is mentioned within the field of workplace conflict, it has not been empirically studied yet. This paper can serve as the basis for future research in which conflict issue and personal experience are separated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Applied Linguistics is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This autotheoretical paper exploring a collaborative project we engaged in during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (March–May 2020) is structured as two intertwined stories. The first, a series of autotheoretical vignettes, expresses our process of sense-making about affect as well as multiple affective productions that spurred learning, personal and relational growth, and becomings-otherwise. The second delves into posthuman methodology, autotheory, affect, and affirmative ethics. Together these highlight the ways that our collaborative work of attending to affect helped us enact an affirmative ethics by tapping into traumatic lived experiences of COVID-19, isolation, and academic work, and transforming them into knowledge-producing, connection-creating, hopeful encounters. These encounters gesture to ways that enacting affirmative ethics as a collaborative critical posthuman praxis can help us collectively thrive in neoliberal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals' sensitivity to climate hazards is a central component of their vulnerability to climate change. In this paper, we introduce and outline the utility of a new intraindividual variability construct, affective sensitivity to air pollution (ASAP)-defined as the extent to which an individual's affective states fluctuate in accordance with daily changes in air quality. As such, ASAP pushes beyond examination of differences in individuals' exposures to air pollution to examination of differences in individuals' sensitivities to air pollution. Building on known associations between air pollution exposure and adverse mental health outcomes, we empirically illustrate how application of Bayesian multilevel models to intensive repeated measures data obtained in an experience sampling study (N = 150) over one year can be used to examine whether and how individuals' daily affective states fluctuate with the daily concentrations of outdoor air pollution in their county. Results indicate construct viability, as we found substantial interindividual differences in ASAP for both affect arousal and affect valence. This suggests that repeated measures of individuals' day-to-day affect provides a new way of measuring their sensitivity to climate change. In addition to contributing to discourse around climate vulnerability, the intraindividual variability construct and methodology proposed here can help better integrate affect and mental health in climate adaptation policies, plans, and programs., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Ng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The present study examined cognitive mechanisms underpinning the increased tendency of individuals with high trait anxiety to experience inflation of negative affect when approaching potential stressors. Specifically, the roles of (1) disproportionately negative relative to positive expectancies (i.e., negative expectancy bias) and (2) disproportionately interrogating negative relative to positive information (i.e., negative interrogation bias), each concerning the potential stressor, were examined. High and low trait anxiety participants (N = 286) completed the experimental session, in which they were informed they may view a potentially stressful film. As participants approached the putative film viewing, participants' negative and positive affect, as well as their negative and positive expectancies were assessed. Additionally, negative interrogation bias was assessed by providing participants the opportunity to selectively interrogate information from a larger pool of negative and positive information concerning the putative film viewing. Our findings provide evidence indirect associations between trait anxiety and inflation of negative affect is serially mediated via negative interrogation bias and, in turn, negative expectancy bias. Findings are discussed with regards to limitations and potential implications for public health campaigns, and cognitive interventions for anxiety, highlighting the utility of further examining negative interrogation bias as an avenue for improving the efficacy of each., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Comparisons of the beneficial effects of nature-based versus indoor physical activity have been extensively reported, but existing research addresses mainly aerobic activity (running, jogging), not resistance or mixed (aerobic and resistance) exercise. It is unclear if the psychological benefits extend to functionality, i.e., if participants perform their activities better in nature, and how movement is expressed in nature-based and indoor environments, during similar exercise. The present registered report was a randomized controlled trial investigating how engaging in similar resistance-based exercise (calisthenics) in nature-based and indoor settings differed in affective valence, perceived exertion, visual attention, movement adaptability, heart rate variability, and performance. Nature-based exercisers (N = 51) showed increased performance output than indoor exercisers (N = 53) (p < 0.001). There were no group differences in affective valence, perceived exertion, or visual attention. However, psychological states of nature-based exercisers showed stronger associations to performance output (r < 0.33) than those of indoor exercisers (r < 0.03). Nature-based exercisers' movement variability and structure, measured with non-linear and fractal techniques (Sample Entropy and Detrended Fluctuation Analysis), were more regular (p < 0.001) and more functionally adaptive (long-term Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, p = 0.022) to achieve better performance output. Heart rate variability measures were not different between groups. Distinct environments can influence movement adaptability in a calisthenics exercise routine, and ultimately contribute to better performance. These results show how action is specific to task environment, and how action implies not only the task, but also the characteristics of the environment. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT05090501 (Clinicaltrials.gov). Registered October 21, 2021., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

This registered report tested the effects of a novel exercise protocol, namely affect-guided interval training, on motivationally relevant variables of remembered pleasure, forecasted pleasure, enjoyment, and autonomy. Affect-guided interval training (AIT) consisted of 60-s intervals that alternated between the highest pleasant intensity and lowest pleasant intensity for 20 min; this was intended to minimize the potential displeasure of traditional high-intensity interval training. The novel protocol was compared to self-selected exercise intensity (30 min) and high-intensity interval training (60-s intervals for 20 min). All sessions were, on average, vigorous in intensity (80-89% peak heart rate). Data indicate that the AIT session was experienced as the most pleasant, had the most pleasant slope of affect, was remembered as the most pleasant, resulted in the most positive affective forecasts, and was the most enjoyable. Both the affect-guided interval session and self-selected exercise session resulted in greater autonomy than high-intensity interval training. Several evaluative and motivationally relevant variables, including (a) remembered pleasure, (b) enjoyment, and (c) forecasted pleasure were predicted by (a) experienced pleasure, the (b) pleasure experienced at the end of exercise, and (c) the slope of pleasure experienced throughout the exercise session. Overall, this study suggests that affect-guided interval training is a feasible and positive alternative that can be included as a viable option for exercise programming., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

While many believe that affective polarisation poses a significant threat to democratic stability, the definition and operationalisation of the concept varies greatly. This leads to conceptual slippage as well as imprecise tests of the causes and consequences of affective polarisation. In order to clearly identify and target its micro-foundations, we must understand the degree to which political divides are, in fact, affective. In this paper, we do so. We begin by delineating affective polarisation, a social divide that is purportedly distinct from policy-based disagreements. Subsequently, we explore the influence of emotions in politics, including how affect is conceptualised within the framework of polarisation. Where possible, our literature review is supplemented with analyses of existing datasets to support our points. The paper concludes by proposing a series of questions emotion researchers could address in the study of polarisation.

Objective: Negative affect, alexithymia, and other predisposing traits (such as health anxiety) can influence an individual's symptom perception. In this study, we used the affective picture paradigm (APP, Bogaerts et al., 2010) to induce symptoms using affective picture stimuli. We aimed to cross-sectionally test the effect of high vs low-frequency symptom queries and analyze the time course of the APP, including interactions with health anxiety and somatic symptom distress., Methods: Participants (N = 124) completed a modified APP and filled out various questionnaires. In the APP, participants were randomized to either a highly-frequent-query condition (18 symptom checklists) or a less-frequent-query condition (6 checklists). Data were analyzed using ANOVAs, cross-lagged panel models, moderation models, and multilevel models., Results: Both groups had comparable symptom baseline values, but people in the highly frequent as opposed to less frequent condition reported significantly higher symptom levels once the experiment started (F (1,120) = 14.319, p < .001, η 2 =.107). Symptom levels stayed stable over the course of the experiment and were best predicted by symptom levels at earlier timepoints in the experiment (β = 0.43 and β = 0.68, both p < .001). Health anxiety levels significantly predicted symptom levels (F(1,121) = 10.054, p = .002, η 2 =.077) and moderated the relation between condition and symptom levels (F(2,121) = 16.253, p < .001, η 2 =.212)., Conclusion: In terms of the predictive processing model (e.g.,[1]), repeated symptom queries following negative affective cues may activate prior beliefs about symptoms, resulting in elevated levels of symptom reports in interaction with health anxiety., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests. Michael Witthöft reports financial support was provided by Horizon 2020 European Innovation Council Fast Track to Innovation. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The rise of short-form video content has prompted research into its impact on body image; however, little remains known regarding the effects of exposure to food-related content of this type. The present study aimed to fill this gap in the literature by conducting a between-subjects experiment (N = 316) examining the effects of exposure to low-calorie versus high-calorie "What I Eat in A Day" food diary TikTok videos on young adults' body appreciation, body dissatisfaction, and diet intentions. Additionally, this study sought to explore how social comparison and mood might affect participants' responses to these videos. Results indicate that social comparison mediated the relationship between video type (low- vs high- calorie) and positive mood, such that low-calorie videos increased upward social comparison and decreased positive mood, and high-calorie videos increased downward social comparison and increased positive mood. Positive direct effects of positive mood on body appreciation and diet intentions occurred, and a negative direct effect on body dissatisfaction was found. Additionally, positive mood mediated the path from social comparison to diet intentions. These findings highlight the importance of further research into the nuanced impacts of food diary social media content on young adults' body image and behaviors., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper is born of the joy and pain of institutional life. It responds to recent work by Craig Thompson and is a response to an invitation to participate from the Editor of the JMM (Mark Tadajewski). It seeks to take seriously the role of consumer research and consumption within society. It seeks to tell 'better stories' about the past, present and what it sees as a reimagined future for consumer research. To do so, it revisits some of the canonical works of consumer research, such exemplary work it suggests are worthy of revisiting and critiquing if we are to chart a rejuvenated form of consumer research that takes seriously our contemporary predicament and is more critical and incisive in its intent. With renewed purpose it takes on board the insights around Bauman's notion of 'liquid times', offers a range of opportunities, possibilities and dangers around the conflicted consumer self and puts forward an ABC of critical consumer research, where notions of affect, breakdown, contradiction are taken seriously for their theoretical and practical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambulatory research - such as daily-diary or experience sampling studies - captures experiences as they naturally occur in people's daily lives. It shows that older adults' daily affective experiences, on average, are more positive and more stable, compared to younger age groups. Recent advances in ambulatory research contribute a more refined understanding beyond the valence dimension, demonstrating that the arousal of affective experiences matters as well, and that discrete emotions, such as sadness, may be differently prevalent and adaptive in different phases of adulthood. Another recent contribution is evidence that cross-sectional adult age differences in daily affect may not map onto within-person change over time. While longitudinal improvement in daily affect is observed across young and into early middle adulthood, stability and decline in affective well-being are typical throughout late middle and older adulthood, respectively. Likewise, empirical support for the claim that emotion regulation is a prime reason for age differences in daily affect remains mixed. Older as compared to younger adults are indeed more motivated to feel better, and more confident that their affect-regulation is successful. However, there is no consistent support that older adults' daily affect-regulation strategies, effectiveness, or flexibility differ from younger age groups., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Background: There is increasing interest in measuring wellbeing and mental health in a range of settings and services outside conventional mental health care settings. However, ensuring that measurement does not intrude on the primary service activity whilst promoting inclusion through minimizing literacy demands, requires ultra-brief and easy to use tools., Aims: To develop and test a brief emoji-based tool to assess mental health, wellbeing, resilience and community connection., Method: In study 1, 672 adults completed an online questionnaire study comprising a new emoji measure and established questionnaires assessing mental health, resilience, community connection and wellbeing. In study 2, 415 participants completed a paper-and-pencil version of the emoji measure, mental health and community connection, with 212 individuals providing data at a second time point., Results: Multidimensional scaling revealed a meaningful structure to the emoji measure with validity demonstrated through relationships to existing scales. Stability over time and sensitivity to change were also demonstrated., Conclusions: The emoji-based measure presented here provides an ultra-brief measure of mood and current experience, with minimal literacy demands on participants. Further research is now needed to test the properties and utility of the scale with other participant groups.

An ongoing debate exists on the role of sport for fostering hope in the lives of marginalised communities. Research acknowledges the complexity of agency, hope and emotions within sport in the lives of forced migrants and the danger of evangelical beliefs when thinking of hope as a solution to social problems. This paper presents the case of the ongoing Mediterranean crossings, where asylum-seekers go through deadly journeys to reach safety in Europe. It explores how the interplay between hope and football shapes their journeys, and how the widely popularised dreams of football success can result in extreme consequences for those willing to pursue them. It does so by taking into account primary data (n = 29 refugee participants) and secondary biographical data, of both accomplished footballers and aspiring footballers with a refugee background. Results show that there is a crucial necessity to acknowledge the multiplicity of identities and experiences contained within the refugee label. Attempts to associate refugees with conditions of stardom can be counterproductive towards beneficial outcomes, to the extent of being dangerous. Nonetheless, not all hope should be lost. The paper presents alternative avenues to better address the concept of hope in football for refugee well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caste in the South Asian context is a deeply felt phenomenon, practised through bodily and sensory regimentation, and the prescriptive social organization of bodies in space. These relationships between caste and embodiment have historically been closely regulated in norms around the partaking, sharing and cooking of food, and meat in particular. This paper examines how these gastronomic prescriptions endure and take on new meanings in digital food media, which disrupts physical space and food's relationships to the body and sensory experience. Drawing on two years of ethnography with creators who produce home-cooking content in the emerging Indian "creator economy," this paper considers how caste is embodied, articulated and remediated online during a time of violent Hindu nationalist food politics in India. How is caste articulated even when it is not explicitly named by creators in their posts? How are caste-based disgust and humiliation, and conversely, caste intimacy elicited by creators as they labor for the creator economy? Bringing together feminist and anti-caste theories of experience, articulation and embodiment, the paper theorizes caste as affect, and in doing so, illuminates how it comes to have a digital life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on three ludic journeys through an autoethnographic account of Wellington, New Zealand, this paper explores how the performance of playful movements can alter the meaning, practice, and feeling of urban spaces. Attention is drawn to becoming hybrid, how technology mediates and augments the power to transform the everyday and support playful engagement with the city. These three ludic stories focus on e-scootering, cycling, and playing an augmented reality game, and highlight how play orientates our bodies through a sense of 'with-ness', with our environment and others. It also looks at orientations of 'against-ness', a leaning away from the materiality of objects, spaces, and events through play. This paper concludes by drawing on how space feels, and how it may open up the design potentials that these mediated practices offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a Lacanian theory of shame linked to the era of Lacan's work starting with Seminar X and the invention of the object a. From a Lacanian perspective, shame is not evoked by the exposure of a deficit, but rather by the exposure and witnessing of the divided subject's constitutive lack. This paper proposes that the affect of shame is an index pointing to the divided subject's structural lack when it is exposed and witnessed by object a instantiated as the gaze of the scopic drive and the voice of the invocatory drive. Since shame can freeze speech as well as provoke flight from the analytic work, we suggest that it is helpful for the clinician to understand how the structure of shame manifests in the patient's speech and in the transference. Clinical examples are given throughout. The paper concludes with a case discussion of Lacanian analytic work with a female patient confronted with multiple existential dilemmas that evoked shame in relationship to her body, sexuality and death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the growing pervasiveness of affect recognition tools as an emerging layer human-centric automated management in the global workplace. While vendors tout the neoliberal incentives of emotion-recognition technology as a pre-eminent tool of workplace wellness, we argue that emotional AI recalibrates the horizons of capital not by expanding outward into the consumer realm (like surveillance capitalism). Rather, as a new genus of digital Taylorism, it turns inward, passing through the corporeal exterior to extract greater surplus value and managerial control from the affective states of workers. Thus, empathic surveillance signals a profound shift in the ontology of human labor relations. In the emotionally quantified workplace, employees are no longer simply seen as physical capital, but conduits of actuarial and statistical intelligence gleaned from their most intimate subjective states. As a result, affect-driven automated management means that priority is often given to actuarial rather than human-centered managerial decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses epistemic violence in social science research, drawing on a multiyear study with marginalized teenagers in Old Havana, Cuba to articulate an onto-epistemological approach to knowledge production that can contribute to the decoloniality of knowledge production. Building on decolonial, feminist, Indigenous, and poststructuralist theories, the heuristic presented here contributes an alternative to conventional positivist understandings of knowledge, by defining knowledge as social, created, performed and resistant, and illustrates how these theoretical tenets can be made material in research practice, in this case through the use of arts-based methods. Responding to calls to decolonize knowledge within the field of children’s geographies and adjacent disciplines, this paper addresses the attendant need to reconceptualize what counts as knowledge and identify methodological innovations to support the achievement of these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are there certain shared feelings that orient contemporary feminists? And what does it mean to feel like a feminist now, at a time when digital networks and media culture significantly shape the conditions for what feminism 'is' (Banet-Weiser 2018)? This paper considers how digital culture, as a crucial but potentially disorienting site of feminist encounter and contestation, may reshape norms of feminist feeling, and what feminist feeling is used to do. Feminists have long understood feeling as an 'orienting device' (Ahmed 2006). in the question of how subjects come to know the world and situate themselves in it. Feminism itself has been associated with a 'willfulness' creating dissident subjectivities moving against the grain of prevailing patriarchal gender norms. Following Ahmed's queer phenomenology where feeling is theorized as an 'orientation' towards objects, this paper considers how the affective infrastructures and dynamics of digital culture orient and draw boundaries for feminists along particular lines. We explore self-identifying feminists' accounts of learning, interaction and deliberation as feminists within digital environments, suggesting that what it means to be feminist is significantly determined by what it means to feel feminist. While digital culture makes feminism more 'accessible' to many, we suggest that the commercialized architectures and rhythms of digital culture complicate and intensify the politics of emotion connected to differences and histories of power relations within feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper treats of phenomenal consciousness and its relation to an organism's capacity to be hedonically perturbed by its environment. This paper offers an empirically informed, phenomenologically descriptive conceptual analysis of subjective character in terms of an organism's ability to feel with its body. The subjective character of phenomenal consciousness is at least partially constituted by embodied affect, that is, by our ability to feel what is happening on and inside our living bodies. It is in virtue of our being able to feel with our bodies that our experiences disclose the world as seeming a certain way for us. I call this the "affectively embodied perspectival view" of subjective character (AEP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School uniforms are proliferating as a staple in figurations created of successful students around the world. In Australia the uniform as compulsory formal school wear is a growing phenomenon in both public and private education sectors. School uniforms have often been adopted as unproblematic, by schools, parents, policymakers, and students themselves. It remains unclear from the previous limited and often contradictory research, precisely how uniforms materially affect student academic and social outcomes. Research that considers how students themselves not just perceive but feel about their uniforms is scarce. I focus on the affective response of students to their school uniforms at one government co-educational selective science high school. A PhEmaterialist approach deprivileges human agency, accounting for matter as dynamic, affective and of consequence in activities, performances, and events. The school uniform as matter is explored as a dynamic and powerful affective force in education and is situated as an integral part of a school's iteration of binary gender differentiations. Uniforms matter twofold, as a conception that materializes what matters and the differential affect on the bodies that wear them. Bodies respond affectively to the uniform with a sense of comfort or discomfort, consciously and unconsciously. Bodies that do not fit easily with the required uniform hurt as students undergo everyday activities at school. This paper considers the affect of the uniform, with a filmic response from one high achieving 'smart' girl through a fine-grain analysis of her feelings of belonging and dis/comfort with and through her school uniform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper reexamines the meanings and values of Lin Tianmiao’s (born 1961) The Proliferation of Thread Winding (1995) through an analysis of its materialities. Lin’s Thread Winding has received much attention in feminist discourse, which tends to draw attention to the symbolic manifestations embedded in the act of winding, and in textiles and domestic objects—techniques and materials often associated with “women’s work” within certain Western feminist critiques of women’s art. This paper moves beyond the gendered lens of interpreting Lin’s art, which has built on symbolic and metaphorical readings of the underlying visual representations, and instead turn to investigate how her work can be understood from the perspective of its discursive materialities, through which the art objects produce material signs (phenomenological effects) that indicate its previous process of art making. Drawing upon new materialist theories and the notion of affect, this paper understands the materialities of Lin’s work as dynamic phenomena, emerging from ongoing intertwining relationships between human and nonhuman agencies. It examines how Lin’s work constitutes a series of inquisitive investigations into multiple processes of making, and how affective qualities and critical knowledge can materialize in and through this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being a central topic, current theories of motivation in sociology remain underdeveloped. This paper supplements existing sociological theories on motivation with insights from affective and cognitive neuroscience to address this issue. The resulting sociological affective model of motivation treats affect as an independent force that sometimes coordinates with cognition while taking charge at other times. Drawing on recent work in the neuroscience of motivation and reward, the paper shows how two affective mechanisms—wanting and liking—can shed light on various behavioral outcomes of interest while allowing for sharper theorizing of key distinctions that need clarification in the literature. By examining the distinctive contribution of each process, the paper reveals a proactive, desire‐driven agent often overlooked by prevailing sociological models emphasizing a reactive actor responding creatively and deliberately when internal meanings and external cues are incongruent. The paper concludes by outlining the broader implications of this synthetic affective model of motivation for sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Precarious work is one of the most studied concepts related to work, and its effects have been analyzed in relation to variables such as mental health and wellbeing. However, there is a tendency to atomise the analysis of precarious work, without understanding that people's working life is intertwined with other areas of their life., Objective: Faced with this situation, this paper presents the concept of perceived precarious life, which is aligned with contemporary models of social inclusion and exclusion. Thus, perceived precarious life comprises variables of labor precariousness, social support and hopelessness in the family economic situation., Methods: To test this idea, a structural equation model (SEM) is presented, which tests the structure of the construct of perceived precarious life by relating it to mental health and coping strategies., Results: After testing the fit of the model in both men and women, a SEM path analysis is designed between the variables, observing that perceived precarious life has an effect on mental health (β = 0.635, p < 0.01). This relationship is mediated by unproductive coping strategies (β = 0.142, p < 0.01)., Conclusion: This model exposes a broad and integrated conceptualization of precariousness, combining aspects of work, relationships and hopelessness, which allows for an understanding of the integral experience of precariousness., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Llosa, Agulló-Tomás, Menéndez-Espina and Rivero-Díaz.)

The adoption and maintenance of physical activity (PA) is an important health behavior. This paper presents the first comprehensive empirical test of the Physical Activity Adoption and Maintenance (PAAM) model, which proposes that a combination of explicit (e.g., intention) and implicit (e.g., habit,, affect) self-regulatory processes is involved in PA adoption and maintenance. Data were collected via online questionnaires in English, German, and Italian at two measurement points four weeks apart. The study included 422 participants (Mage= 25.3, SDage= 10.1; 74.2% women) from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Canada, and the U.S. The study results largely supported the assumptions of the PAAM model, indicating that intentions and habits significantly mediate the effects of past PA on future PA. In addition, the effect of past PA on future PA was shown to be significant through a mediation chain involving affect and habit. Although the hypothesis that trait self-regulation moderates the intention-behavior relationship was not supported, a significant moderating effect of affect on the same relationship was observed. The results suggest that interventions targeting both explicit and implicit processes may be effective in promoting PA adoption and maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging from in-depth research on mobility and displacement in relation to gender and sexual diversity on the Mexico-Guatemala border, this paper reflects on the complexities of lived, queer mobility over space and time as told by Andrea, a 27-year-old Salvadoran trans woman. Her narrative – told to the reader through video – provides a rich account of her affective journeys and the forces behind them, which go beyond movement as migration. The work is part of an improvised mobile, longitudinal ethnography which evolved as a way of exploring the small and large-scale realities of mobility as lived over time. The discussion engages with Andrea’s mobility as non-linear, multi-scalar, spatially and sensorially significant, and emotionally ambiguous. It invites reflection about the powerfully productive and damaging edges of precarious queer mobility, and points to the radical potential of an affective engagement with queer narratives. The queerness of mobility and survival exists not only as an abstract or symbolic edginess, but rather in, and as, constant frictions produced by the struggle for a life worth living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends recent examinations of neoliberalism’s affective impact through a close reading of Kae Tempest’s 2016 piece Let Them Eat Chaos. Building upon the work of Rachel Greenwald Smith, I demonstrate how Tempest locates geopolitical discussions of neoliberal affect in London’s particular geo-historical contexts. The significance of this approach lies in the insights Tempest offers into the digital infrastructures that underpin neoliberalism’s affective atmosphere. These findings are expounded through a close reading of Tempest’s work in dialogue with the writings of Paul Gilroy, Byung-Chul Han, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Mark Fisher. Through such a framework, I foreground how gentrification is a key driver in establishing, and maintaining, neoliberalism’s digitally enervating affects. The paper concludes via the work of Hans Blumenberg – whose meditations on maritime disaster help unpack the emancipatory humanism Tempest seeks to salvage from London’s ruin. Offering no grand political alternatives, Tempest’s critique of neoliberal technology aims, instead, at redrawing the parameters of political solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategic mobilization of humor by Hindutva groups online contributes to the mainstreaming of supremacist ideologies that inform extremist behavior. Analyzing the social media recontextualizations of the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition as case studies, this paper examines how online instantiations of Islamophobic humor contribute to the Hindutva revisioning of popular memory. This paper expands the understanding of how Islamophobia is normalized through the shifting affective framing of the Babri Masjid demolition, from shame to schadenfreude, from tragedy to comedy, and from a threat to Indian secularism to a necessary act of paternalistic disciplining. Studying these shifts through specific examples of Islamophobic humor builds upon previous insights into: (1) the affective regimes by which Islamophobic ideas are made palatable to a wider audience, (2) discriminatory speech as an act of pleasure, and (3) how both of these work toward the reworking of popular memory in service of the Hindutva political project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important aspect of Carlos Gamerro's novels is a subtle and nuanced focus on emotions. This paper begins by outlining the "affective technique"—precise, often metaphorical descriptions, of imprecise, hard-to-describe feelings—in his early works, in a nod to the "affective turn" in Latin American studies. Gamerro's most recent novels— Cardenio and La jaula de los onas —offer funny and provocative digressions from known historical events, but rely on moving depictions of human frailty, pleasure, and interdependence. Gamerro links these through a central emotion: tenderness. Moreover, these novels display a "structural tenderness," and with it, a relationship between the vulnerability of this emotion and a readerly response—an uncertainty or self-doubt—of being pushed into and out of fiction. La jaula de los onas uses this depiction of mutual vulnerability to tell a moving and politically acute story of violence and cultural erasure in the far south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]