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This paper reports the findings of a mixed-methods study which investigates the socio-cultural impacts of UK gendered school sport uniform and the role uniform plays in shaping female school sport experiences. Drawing on an extensive analytical survey with over 400 women of all-ages and 8 interviews with women aged 18–24, it explores how school sport uniform directly impacts female sporting experiences and participation in physical activity, and how uniform policy could be changed to promote greater female sport participation. Gendered school sport uniform continues to operate as a socio-spatial mechanism that names, frames and positions young people in heteronormative school sport spaces. This paper assesses how gendered school sport uniform contributes to the disciplining of the 'ideal feminine body' in schoolgirls and the construction of behavioural gender binaries in sport. The data reveal gendered sport uniform influences the development of a 'fear of masculinisation' in sport and common athletic-feminine identity tensions in teenage girls. The research finds gendered school sport uniform plays a major role in the high drop-out rates of teenage girls in school sport and offers practical insight into how policy could be changed to promote inclusivity, comfort and greater female sport participation. This paper proposes redesigning traditional gendered school sport policy to focus on 'enabling' participation has huge potential to transform female embodied and psychological experiences of school sport and increase school sport participation and enjoyment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper investigates the articulation of metamodernism at the beginning of the 21st century and how this new paradigmatic apparatus of interpretation of the world can be applied to Kate Atkinson’s novel, Life After Life (2013). Metamodernism was firstly formulated by Dutch theorists Robin van den Akker and Timotheus Vermeulen and comes as a response to postmodernism. Metamodernism explores the topics of informed naivety, affect in fiction, authenticity, transcendence and the function of historical hybridity, while acknowledging and using the postmodernist pastiche and parody, combined with the modernist ambiguity, openness to innovation and importance of grand narratives. This paper examines the applicability of metamodernism to Kate Atkinson’s novel, Life After Life, a historical fiction novel about the multiple lives and deaths of Ursula Todd as she navigates through various historical events in 20th-century Europe, exploring the themes of fate, resilience, and the impact of individual choices on the course of one's life. By incorporating the metamodernist “manifesto”, a theoretical and critical corpus and by using a close-reading method on the novel, this paper demonstrates that metamodernism is a paradigm that tries to adapt to the contemporary state of constant crisis and its applicability toAtkinson’s fiction. This analysis showcases the degree to which metamodernism contributes to understanding the complexity of the 21st century and whether it fits the aesthetic of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Merleau-Ponty's perspective on intercorporeality to inquire into the role of the body in virtual collaboration. Merleau-Ponty redefines the human body beyond pure physicality, as material-semiotic processes between self and other. From this perspective, meaningful engagements are based on the intertwinement of bodily activities including gestures and displays. Drawing on a rich case of an exclusively virtual collaboration, this paper illuminates how bodily expressivity is rematerialised through digital technology. The findings show how distributed bodies pattern an intercorporeal armature constituted of processes of co-presencing, co-orienting, and co-investing. The paper problematises claims of virtual disembodiment and advances current understanding of how body and technology merge to make virtual collaboration possible. The rich empirical insights are synthesised into four main theoretical propositions that constitute a novel perspective on virtual intercorporeality. This perspective advances our understanding of virtual embodiment and elaborates the role of technology and language in the process of mutual attunement between bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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I argue that the social reproduction discourse from the 1970s onwards, or the so-called domestic labour debate, has been about two things: value on the one hand, and the body and intimacy on the other. While there is a highly visible stake in how domestic labour is understood from the viewpoint of value, which is still debated today, the contribution of the discourse to understanding the body and intimacy in capitalism is more hidden and less discussed. In this paper, I review the discourse on social reproduction from the perspective of value, with a particular focus on recent contributions, Jared Sacks' and Alessandra Mezzadri's works. Then, I will discuss the discourse of social reproduction from the perspective of the body and intimacy and finally link this aspect to the lessons around value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the memoirs of two Bengali revolutionary women, Bina Das’ Srinkhal Jhankar published in 1948, translated as Bina Das: A Memoir, and Kamala Dasgupta’s Rakter Akshare (Written in Blood) in 1954 to argue how their subjective desire and experience dismantle the gendered rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal. The accounts of Bina and Kamala present their involvement in militant activism and subsequent imprisonment. Notably, there is an inherent urge in their writings to sacrifice life for the nation and a determination not to retreat from the torturous conditions of the colonial prison. The paper contends that the rhetoric of nationalism in colonial Bengal is embedded in hegemonic masculinity that initially confined women to the spiritual and domestic realm and later allowed them to be educated and modern without acknowledging their subjectivity. Activities of these political women thus destabilise the gender discourse prevalent in the private and public sphere of colonial society, which calls for a revision of the nationalist historiography. So, this essay will examine how tropes of the body, self-sacrifice, and penal experience, as produced in these memoirs, negotiate the nationalist ideology, subvert the binary of masculine and feminine, and establish their political subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the disagreement and even radical opposition between Gilles Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's conceptualizations and those of Jacques Lacan: for example, about desire, psychotherapy, the subject and the radically opposed political consequences that result from their approaches. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate from a Lacanian perspective that in the case of a central concept such as the body, there are rather more similarities than differences. Its main thesis is that Deleuze's and Guattari's body without organs is very close to Lacan's notion of the Other jouissance and that with slightly different strategies they both provide arguments to fight the same enemy: that is, the control and repression of singularity under capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that the body psychotherapy model of Formative Psychology can be combined successfully with the emotion-centric model of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) to enhance clinical outcomes for individuals. AEDP softens defenses and regulates anxiety by privileging positive experience, and being actively responsive in order to access adaptive core affective experience or seek to transform maladaptive affect. The Formative Psychology How technique can be applied to the somatic shapes of the AEDP defense/survival strategies, maladaptive affect, or complex self-states. The How technique increases a somatic shape to understand its meaning and function, then undoes the shape to discover a more resilient, resourceful body organizing. The paper explores and analyzes two case studies that illustrate and offer qualitative evidence for the paper's thesis. The conclusion is that Formative Psychology and AEDP are complementary models that successfully work together to access adaptive core affective experience, deepen it with congruent somatic shapes, and help undo the stuck places of maladaptive affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physicality has been, and still is, an important part of the embodied identity of many physical education (PE) teachers. PE teachers' understanding and representation of their bodies influence both their teaching and act as role models for their students. PE is therefore an important site for exploring how ideals of the body shape both understandings and practices within this school subject. In this study we employed participatory visual methodologies in the form of participant-produced drawings to explore primary school children's experiences of PE teacher bodies and subjectivities. By drawing on poststructural and Foucauldian understandings of the body, we in this paper explore the construction and embodiment of PE teacher bodies as inextricably linked to students' understandings and experiences of this school subject. The findings demonstrate how dominant discourses of fitness, health, sport and even consumerism shape expectations around PE teacher bodies. They also draw attention to how those bodies enable and restrict certain educational purposes and practices. We argue that the ongoing reproduction and perpetuation of idealized PE teacher bodies is responsible for (re)producing meanings around the normal versus the abnormal PE teacher body with significant impact on students' bodily understandings and experiences in PE. We conclude by reasserting the need to challenge how dominant discourses of PE teacher bodies has the cumulative effect of restricting the possibilities for a multiplicity of bodies and physicalities to co-exist in PE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrutinising Santner's comments on his own method in his recent book Untying Things Together, the paper argues that at the heart of Santner's theoretical endeavour lies something that might be called "the flesh of all words." To elaborate this thesis, I begin, following a corresponding hint by Santner himself, with a description of Freud's peculiar "way of working with concepts" in his The Interpretation of Dreams. From there I move on to the analysis of an author who has been one of Santner's main points of reference at least since his Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Franz Rosenzweig. The paper outlines Rosenzweig's self-interpretation in his essay "'The New Thinking'" and compares the specific methodology explained and developed in this text with the main work of Ferdinand Ebner, whose closeness to his own work Rosenzweig himself emphasised. Finally, against the background of these theoretical conceptions, I will borrow one of Santner's own neologisms and use it to describe his work as the "encystance" on/of this flesh of all words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theatre has been an amalgamation of history, society, and its representation where it connects with the audience directly. It has been a medium of resistance, protest, and entertainment and a cultural and social tradition in various countries. This paper is an analytical study of feminist theatre and its nuances, showing that theatre, which has been used as a mode to protest and resist, becomes a tool to reclaim and re-own space and body for women. It is essential to theorize Feminist Theatre so that its congruency can be established with the socio-cultural and historical paradigm. All the genres that were written to stabilize feminist thought in the discourse fell back on the conventional praxis of mythology and other texts. For example, Indian narratives borrowed feminine tropes from the classical texts whether it was Rabindranath Tagore or Girish Karnad, women were phenomenal yet subdued. Hence, when men wrote women, there was always a hint of "othering" the female gender in these write-ups; there was always a moralistic judgment of these women. Thus, this study is an attempt to theorize women playwrights and feminist performances that have made an attempt to pave the way for feminist scholarships and feminist theatres to evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggle with becoming a tree in Sylvia Plath’s poems reveals her struggle to create a subjectivity for herself as a female poet in a patriarchal world. Becoming a tree epitomizes the tradition in which Plath strives to create her poetic subjectivity: the opposition between the male Romantic poet and the feminine nature that inspires him, the prototype of which is Ovid’s myth of Daphne becoming the tree muse for Apollo. Plath internalizes the death of the body imposed on the woman in the formula and creates out of the negativity within her. Instead of treating nature as an object in order to become a poet, she accepts that she is both the articulate poet and the nature that can never be fully expressed. Torn between the one who expresses and the one who is expressed, the bodies of trees in her poems painfully shine with layers of darkness. The trees represent a female subjectivity that closely communicates with the darkness, which is fairly dangerous for a formed subjectivity. This paper analyzes the complex layers of the question of becoming a tree imposed on the female body. It then discusses how Plath responds to this burden by creating a subjectivity expressed by black trees that intimately identify with the flourishing death and articulate the darkness within themselves as a landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jane Austen normally avoids discussing appearance throughout her works. Persuasion constitutes the exception to the rule, as the story focuses on the premature aging experienced by her protagonist, Anne Elliot, seemingly due to disappointed love. Much has been written about Anne's "loss of bloom," but never from the perspective of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that researches the interrelation between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems. In this paper, we adopt a perspective of psychoneuroimmunology to argue that Austen established a connection between psychological distress, specifically lovesickness, and the development of early senescence signs, and vice versa, since the recovery of love is associated with happiness and physical glow. From a gender perspective, we discuss how Austen brightly reflected these interrelationships through the story of Anne, when the latest psychoneuroimmunological research has actually shown that women age earlier than men as a consequence of psychological turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While athletes are at increased risk for developing disordered eating, there is little consensus on the most effective treatment. While behavioral and cognitive behavioral approaches are most commonly used, we propose that psychoanalysis has the potential to revolutionize treatment for athletes with eating disorders (EDs). In this paper, we use the theories of Winnicott and Bion to frame our arguments, proposing that psychic overwhelm resulting from impingement as well as failures in containment may drive an individual to concretize their emotional and relational experiences through the body via EDs and sport. While historically sport and athletic involvement have been thought to perpetuate and maintain EDs, we propose that sport participation may also provide a unique path to ED recovery for athletes, a claim that is consistent with recent recommendations. Sport involvement may serve as a bridge to facilitate the process of emotion regulation, psychic symbolization, and self-reflection that is necessary for ED recovery. Through the facilitative function of a containing, therapeutic relationship, one may feel safe enough to practice curiosity and creatively explore the metaphor and meaning behind one's concrete relationship to food and sport, paving the way to recovery from EDs for athletes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, the Romani in Slovakia identified with the prevailing religion, mainly with the Roman Catholic Church. However, the missionary activities of various Christian denominations after 1990 resulted in the conversion of the Romani to Pentecostal Christian communities. This launched a long, creative process of the formation of Pentecostal Romani music. Romani believers consider music and the ability to play and sing to be a gift from God and view these as a form of prayer that should serve for the praise of God. That is why many have given up their worldly music making and now play only praise songs. They gradually modified the hymns they borrowed and replaced them with their own creations. The soundscape of religion does not lie only in religious singing and music, as the emotional sermons and prayers, glossolalia and sounds during the healing and blessing rituals can also be considered religious sounds. During the worship services, this mixture of various sounds leads to the gradual spiritual and emotional unification of the community. The music and the rituals create feelings of intense sensory and emotional character that reflect in bodily expressions. Movements, dance, and the positions of the hands can help glorify God and experience the worship service more intensely. However, under certain circumstances, they might become sources of temptation and sin. This is related to the concepts of "purity" and "impurity". The premises, whether sacral or profane, interior or exterior ones, also play a significant role in creating the sound. In writing this paper, I have also drawn on my own research on Romani Christian songs, which I carried out in (2012–2013 in Eastern Slovakia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper explores the integration of technology and virtual spaces into preadolescents' lives, blurring the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds. It emphasises the profound implications of this integration on various aspects, including perception, reality, and interactions. The younger generations, deeply immersed in this reality, experience a transformation in their perception of the world, well-being, identity, and selfhood due to technology's pervasive influence. The fusion of online and offline experiences gives rise to a new form of existence, shaping a hybrid identity that can be manipulated and reconstructed in the virtual realm. However, this fluidity and transience of virtual life also pose risks and challenges to personal identity and societal ruptures. Educators face the dual challenge of effectively integrating technology into education while understanding its impact on the new generations. Social media usage influences the interlink between body and identity processes, challenging traditional notions of embodiment and raising questions about the malleability and multiplicity of identities in technologically mediated spaces. The proposed reflections seek to provide valuable guidance for educators in navigating this complex digital reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that correlative thinking, a fundamental aspect of Chinese thought often distinguished from rational thinking, is rooted in our situated bodily experiences, constituting a unique mode of sensemaking. It performs a comparative analysis between Zhuangzi's Fish Parable and Merleau‐Ponty's philosophy of embodied perception, focusing on the self‐attunement in our embodied experience and Dao, which remains invisible but gradually reveals its presence as the parable unfolds. The paper illuminates the embodied nature of correlative thinking by exposing the intricate interplay between the self and others, as well as the self and its lived environment. This analysis underscores the reciprocal relationship between Dao and correlative thinking: Dao acts as the origin of correlative thinking, while correlative thinking, in turn, unveils the presence of Dao. This analysis could enrich our understanding of the interplay between the self, others, and the world they inhabit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the complex and evolving portrayal of intimacy in Malayalam cinema, particularly through the lens of eco-theological settings and remote locations. Examining films from the 1970s to the present day, the analysis highlights how these narratives have employed problematic tropes to introduce eroticized content, often framing it within sacred spaces or remote landscapes to achieve a sense of forbidden allure and potentially mitigate audience disapproval. This paper contends that the ecotheological spaces depicted in Malayalam cinema are not neutral but laden with socio-cultural and gendered meanings. Examining intimacy within these spaces provides a unique vantage point for understanding how cinematic representations reinforce prevailing power structures, especially concerning gender dynamics. It prompts a deeper exploration of how ecological practices and spiritual beliefs intersect with notions of femininity and masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractRecently, the concept of mobile labour has garnered increasing attention among mobilities scholars. Yet, the preponderance of research has emphasised workers’ movements that are fairly large-scale and routes-based. This paper proposes another kind of mobility that is of equal significance—that of micro-mobilities by labour, or more accurately by their bodies. Using original research conducted through semi-structured interviews with 40 customer service agents working in an international airport in Asia, the paper examines three kinds of aesthetic labour that these workers perform alongside passengers. Enacted through various bodily motions intended to speed up aeromobile processes and augment productivity, I argue that these performances produce a (tenuous) aesthetics of assuring presence, orderly movement, and passing time. As more and more work tasks are redistributed across the airport between staff and passengers, ‘new’ automation presents an opportunity to reflect on the mobile practices being invented as self-service technologies infiltrate customer service and other work where human relations and decision-making skills are required. More broadly, it also uncovers the gendered politics of bodily comport, gaits, gestures and other micro-movements in labour (re)production in a wider age of technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intricate relationship between our personal experiences of space and the autobiographical nature of our geography. Our geographical awareness is profoundly shaped by the places we have been, encompassing a rich tapestry of places such as childhood homes, educational institutions, vacation spots, and bustling city streets. These spaces become imbued with personal memories and significance, forming the backdrop of our individual narratives. While these experiences are inherently personal and unique, they are also shared in a broader sense. This duality of personal fand communal experience adds layers of complexity to our understanding of space. Furthermore, our experiences of space are deeply intertwined with the passage of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on original ethnographic research in Australia focussing on the handling, management, and conceptualisation of death and the dead human body in 2020–2021. Analysis produced themes of secrecy and (in)visibility regarding both death and the collection of data. Key findings discussed are the withdrawal of information and off-the-record comments from participants, controlling of public access to information, and the (in)visibility of death and the body in the context of the mortuary, viewings and identifications, and the presentation of the body in virtual spaces. The paper argues that those who work with death and the dead in this particular context have power to shield their work, the body, and their processes from the public. Future research exploring the attitudes held by the general public towards death and the body and whether they align or challenge the death industry is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews contemporary geography literature pertaining to the development and experience of underwater spaces. Examining the underwater world as a space of practices, experiences, and visions that are both phenomenologically and geopolitically rich, the review covers research studies from human geography and cognate fields concentrating on the tourism and travel literature. After a brief overview of the many activities taking place underwater worldwide—from the evolution of the mythical Atlantis to the development of modern‐day Atlantis such as underwater hotels—the paper focuses studies in three areas: the consumption of cultural and natural heritage, Self‐contained underwater breathing apparatus diving and divers' experiences, and the possibility of human inhabitation of underwater realms in habitats such as underwater hotels and submarine research sites. It is argued that by becoming more familiar with underwater spaces, geographers who concentrate on tourism and marine environments can gain new perspectives that are likely to challenge the terrestrial imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the body is a common topic for discussions concerning competitive gaming, also known as electronic sport (esport). In esport, the focus on the body shifts from its physical presence towards digitality and therefore differs significantly compared to traditional sports. It is therefore questionable whether disciplinary mechanisms typical for sport that originate from the physical body being surveyed can be observed in competitive gaming as well. This conceptual paper uses Michel Foucault's concept of panopticism to theorize what consequences of deviant or normative behaviour can be derived from a (partially) absent physical corporeality in esport. Our approach reveals that esport and competitive gaming are lacking disciplinary mechanisms typical for traditional sports. We introduce the term dysopticon as a concept where players are not exposed to surveillance like in traditional sports, because of a perceived absence of the players' physical bodies while competing. This can result in arbitrariness and deviant behaviour but also be an opportunity for inclusion or self-expression regardless of hegemonic corporeal norms and standards. Stakeholders, including players, clubs, associations, and corporations, can build upon these insights to develop and promote esport beneficially for sport and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates Martin Buber's notion of the unconscious. To accomplish this task, I will first need to come back to Buber's late philosophical anthropology, and secondly, I will need to give an in-depth analysis of his text on the issue of the unconscious. The first task will be a broader one, namely it will address certain philosophical and anthropological theories of Buber's which could have led him to propose an alternative theory of the unconscious, contra the psychoanalytical schools of his time. The second task will be an analysis of the philosophical context in which Buber elaborated his theory of the unconscious. This analysis will address the philosophical forerunners of the issue of the unconscious, at the same time providing a framework for developing further Martin Buber's notion of the unconscious in a philosophical manner. Buber's novelty is provided by the fact that he proposed a non-dualistic account of the unconscious, which could designate the wholeness of the human being before the split or division into body and mind phenomena. This point concerning the wholeness of the human person is in our opinion the "missing link" between Buber's late philosophical anthropology and his theory of the unconscious. Our aim would be to connect these two chapters in the development of Martin Buber's thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores embodied practices and relations of students’ ‘hexis’, the bodily part of habitus, during middle school years in a Danish state school setting, focusing on how these practices are shaped by classroom dynamics and grade level. Drawing on field notes and vignettes from 12 visits across 3 grade levels in 2 state schools – fifth grade (ages 11–12), seventh grade (ages 13–14), and ninth grade (ages 15–16) – the study reveals distinct patterns of body practices. Fifth graders exhibit a collective hexis in flux, seventh graders express more still and individual practices, and ninth graders demonstrate a complex mix characterised by individual stillness and collective in-flux. Notable gender differences emerge in the incorporation of school norms at seventh and ninth grades, with girls more likely to embody and take advantage of doxic orders of stillness. Highlighting the significant role of institutional and social contexts in shaping students’ embodied practices, this study offers a nuanced understanding of the interplay between body, time, and space in educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The portrayal of disability within sacred and dramatic narratives offers an avenue for the examination of societal and theological paradigms. Such an examination is attempted in this study by investigating the representation of disability in the Bible and Ola Rotimi's play Hopes of the Living Dead through the theoretical frameworks of Ableism and Reynolds' hermeneutical approach. Biblical stories depicting disability as a curse, a tool, and a subject of divine healing are used in the research to explore the complex interplay between societal perceptions and theological implications. Rotimi's dramatization of people with leprosy further elucidates themes of marginalisation and resilience within a predominantly secular context. Integrating Ableism theory, this paper critiques normative conceptions of ability and disability, while Reynolds' hermeneutical methodology facilitates a nuanced interpretation of the often-conflicting representations found in both sacred texts and dramatic literature. This interdisciplinary approach yields comprehensive insights into the cultural, religious, and social constructs surrounding disability, advocating for more inclusive and empathetic interpretative practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rag Doll Plagues, by Mexican American writer Alejandro Morales, underlines the racial dimension of the environmental crisis while also demonstrating the material interdependence between human and more-than-human worlds through the lens of trans-corporeality. By exploring the material connection between the poisoned body and the environment; the interaction between the marginalized body and nonhuman as subject; and the mutant body’s agency as a “habitat” and “thing,” this paper highlights the evolving and dynamic relationship between the porous human body and various forms of living and non-living entities within and beyond its borders. Morales's plague reminds humanity to break away from narrow, teleological thinking in the face of disaster and to adopt a mode of thought that is interconnected with the world as well as attentive to, and appreciative of, the vitality of non-living entities, thus fostering a nonlinear, open “material ethics”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city comprises of a wide variety of heterogeneous territorial units (e.g. districts or neighbourhoods). In many – especially larger – cities, social capital assets (like community bonds) are mirrored at the level of neighbourhoods which form the home for many sociocultural communities or distinct socio‐economic classes. We postulate in this study that the big city is essentially an 'archipelago' made up of 'urban villages'. We analyse the residents' perceived attractiveness regarding their daily local neighbourhood by introducing the concept of 'village love' (or 'neighbourhood love'), inspired by the recent literature on 'city love' (comprising 'body', 'soul' and 'community' constituents of urban life). Based on an extensive and detailed multi‐annual database for all neighbourhoods in Rotterdam, the present paper seeks to identify the background factors shaping 'village love' in the city, with particular attention to the citizens' subjective appreciation for and access to a great variety of (physical and immaterial) urban amenities shaping the place‐based satisfaction of residents. The theoretical framing of our research resembles the basics of traditional central place theory here transmitted to the urban space in which local proximity to amenities plays a key role. A wide array of relevant amenities impacting on the place‐specific well‐being feelings ('village love') of residents in various neighbourhoods in the city of Rotterdam is distinguished using inter alia‐rich multi‐annual survey data. This approach is empirically tested and verified by means of LISA statistics and advanced spatial econometric dependence models ('urbanometrics'). The findings confirm the usefulness of a central place interpretation of 'urban village love' in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Mate choice, and sex differences in romantic behaviours, represented one of the first major applications of evolutionary biology to human behaviour. This paper reviews Darwinian approaches to heterosexual mate assessment based on physical characteristics, placing the literature in its historical context (1871–1979), before turning (predominantly) to psychological research on attractiveness judgements based on physical characteristics. Attractiveness is consistently inferred across multiple modalities, with biological theories explaining why we differentiate certain individuals, on average, from others. Simultaneously, it is a judgement that varies systematically in light of our own traits, environment, and experiences. Over 30 years of research has generated robust effects alongside reasons to be humble in our lack of understanding of the precise physiological mechanisms involved in mate assessment. This review concludes with three questions to focus attention in further research, and proposes that our romantic preferences still provide a critical window into the evolution of human sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractWhy are the objects we place on our bodies not considered art? In this paper, I argue that distance between an object and the body is a criterion for a craft object to become an art object. Art objects are kept at a distance from most bodies. The distance is tightly maintained by the art world and used within the art world to control art and access to it. In the process, this distance defines an object as art. I present the case of jewelry – objects that do not transition from craft to art and are generally not accepted as art by the art world. I argue that this is because jewelry necessarily requires closeness between the body and the object, a violation of the rules of art. The argument I present here is relevant to questions of fashion and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents the issue of the development of internal space, as a function of the relationship of intimacy and synchrony with the caregiver, with the purpose of rendering more tolerable the experience of space outside the body. This paper argues that if this relationship does not stabilise by the end of the first year of life, an absence of representation of an internal space in the unidimensional realm might ensue. The psychoanalytic treatment of autistic children offers windows to certain developmental challenges associated with the representation of both internal and external spaces, the consequent development of dimensionality and its deviations. The case of a young autistic child in the first year of her four-session-a-week analysis is described as an illustration of the child's struggle to overcome precipitation anxiety around the experience of falling by using her movements in the external space. The child's autistic defences and deficits at first functioned to keep her in a liquid state, and later denied gravity by means of repetitive movements of her body while exploring the space of the analyst's room. Her mouth was experienced as a hole to be completely blocked with either food or a pacifier, preventing exchanges with the analyst. Her subsequent compulsive use of strings in activities revealed at the same time the search for links, and her difficulty connecting and establishing communication. At the end, the analyst realised an archaic equivalence between their room and body, as a 'concrete transference', revealing the child's attachment and motivation to explore it, which could be interpreted as an affective link between the analyst and patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: There are some rules that furniture designers must take into consideration to design ergonomic furniture. The main design principle is the target group for which the furniture will be designed, considering the dimensions of people who use the furniture. OBJECTIVE: The paper presents the correlation between 12 parts of children's body, as well as the proportion between stature and 11 other parts of the body which are used for the purposes of furniture and interior designers. METHODS: Field measurements include: Stature (S), Sitting height (She), Shoulder height (Sh), Popliteal height (Ph), Hip width (Hb), Elbow rest height (Erh), Buttock-popliteal length (Bpl), Buttock-knee length (Bkl), Thigh clearance (Tc), Eye height sitting (Eh), Knee height (Kh) and Shoulder breadth (Sb) to pupils aged 6–11 (grades 1 to 5). The measurements were done in 687 children in 12 primary schools in 4 different regions in Kosovo. RESULTS: The data of the study shows that, in general, there is a correlation (in some parts strong and in some medium) for the measured parts. Also, the study presents the proportion between the stature and other parts of the body which are necessary for the design of children's furniture. CONCLUSION: Using this data will enable furniture designers to easily target the dimensions of the group they will design, even by measuring only one dimension, i.e. stature and then setting the proportions for each piece separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of research and analysis in this paper is how the female body was represented in the novel The Bridge written by Jasmina Musabegović. The novel The Bridge was published in 1994. and represents a kind of sequel to the novel Switches from 1986 and a connection with the novel Women. The voice from 2005. Metaphorically and literally this novel represents the connection between the two novels, in fact, a transitional narrative about the maturation and growing up of the main protagonist who, during her stay in a sanatorium, realizes changes in her own body and enters puberty and becomes the body of a women. At the same time, there is a process of identification with the mother and other women who play an important role in the life of the storyteller and who represent a connection during transitions from one stage of life to another. The body as a place in on which meanings are inscribed, becomes the reason for external and internal changes through which the girl who narrates experiences. Because of the sick body, she went to the sanatorium, the biological maturation of the body causes understanding and identification with the mother and sisters, only to remember performative repetition and observation of movements towards and over the bridge, rhythmic combing, and similar body repetitive gestures felt a closeness, understanding, and existence of transgenerational patterns that are transmitted along the female line in the family. This paper brings an analysis and interpretation of those elements in which the female body is represented as one of the primary determinants for self-identification and gender belonging. The theoretical starting point for the analyses of various aspects of the body in this novel is contemporary feminist research based on Elizabeth Grosz's study Volatile Bodies. Special attention will be paid to how a particular image of the human body is formed, as well as the factors that have a direct impact on it.

This paper, based on 15 months of fieldwork and archival research carried out in 2018/2019 for my PhD in Social Anthropology, takes as its object the everyday coexistence with the Second World War military dead scattered across the rural landscape of Brandenburg, formerly part of the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990). Focusing on the practices through which the living relate to the war dead 'out of place', I argue that the construction of the war dead as valued members of the social collectivity does not necessarily depend upon their ritual 'separation'. Indeed, the physical proximity of the misplaced and unrelated war dead in my fieldsite results in their adoption and conceptualization as local dead. I contextualize attachments to the fallen in the local history of chaotic 'total war', which collapsed the boundary between the military and civilian experience of war, and transformed the spaces of everyday life into battlefields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore sex and fear in the therapy room through a Sartrean lens. It aims to engage with his ideas on love, desire and sexuality as a response to Heidegger's ontology, and to ask whether we can find a link between fear and our relationship to freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2022, the dynamic zero-COVID control policy came to an end, marking the conclusion of a three-year pandemic that affected 1.4 billion Chinese people. The pandemic and related policies created a unique, temporary, and historic social ecosystem where walking became more crucial than ever before. The pandemic not only severely restricted people's movement in public spaces but also exposed the longstanding contradictions between human bodies, modern mobility, and urban space. Over the three years of the pandemic, walking became an aesthetic survival attempt by Chinese people to cope with their limited freedoms under the pandemic. As the pandemic stagnated and worsened over time, walking-dominant activities gradually became a widespread social phenomenon that encouraged urban residents to participate in rebuilding society across various fields such as politics, art, nature, etc. The development of walking as an artistic form during this period represents a new aesthetic strategy and political awakening while reflecting humans' need to reconnect with land, social space, and their own bodies. This paper reviews how walking art has evolved historically through three periods – before, during, and after the pandemic – aiming to highlight both the public value of walking art and challenges within China's social ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dichotomy of physically fit to fit in physical standards has emerged as a new question. Does the bikini industry promote the idea of appealing sizes or competitions that show beauty pageants and bodybuilders on popular media? The body has always been the contested site of people as whenever we meet someone after the first acquaintance, they ask why you are so thin. Or why do you look so fat? This narration is now changing into the new mold of being fit into that new dress. What if it doesn't, the detrimental effect of not losing or not fitting into the set criteria has emerged in new disorders. The most recurring is the body dysmorphia which evolves due to the rule created by these competitions. Double XL movie produced in 2022, showcases a narrative about the body and for the body. Fashion movie produced in (2008), on models and beauty pageants that tries to cover the deformity of being the best yet ruins the foundation of being human. Bodybuilders and beauty pageants either create history and fame through steroids, unnecessary medication, and surgeries or just distort themselves physically as well as mentally. Physical attractiveness, prowess, and aesthetic appeal are just words that would wipe but talent, capability, and personality would stay forever. Thus, the body is nude yet crude, and therefore, the paper attempts to unwrap the problems staying in the heads of pageants and bodybuilders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magahiya Doms have historically suffered from the double stigma of criminality and untouchability. They were notified as a Criminal Tribe in 1913 but also came to be recognised as useful for the colonial state due to their role as sweepers and scavengers. The missionaries and colonial officials attempted to order and fix the identities of communities such as these. In this paper, I discuss the concept of touch and untouchability in relation to the caste system in India. I juxtapose the idea of the body proposed by Ambedkar in Annihilation of Caste against the caste body and colonised body. Against the static and closed identity which the state attempted to bestow on the Doms, I seek to understand the body itself as processual, moving and relational. Magahiya Doms resisted colonial moves to stabilise social identities every step of the way. I also discuss the role of the colonial apparatus as a mediator that sought to impose a new order of hygiene. The colonial mechanisms of governance cut off the older ties and relational tendencies and placed themselves and their logistics as chains through which frozen identities could communicate. In this way, they partitioned off bodies and settled themselves as chains connecting the partitioned bodies. After being de-notified as a Criminal Tribe, the Magahiya Doms were categorised as a Scheduled Caste in 1952. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies an argument in the prologue of the Charmides which defends the view that it is impossible to cure the body independently of the soul. I argue that Socrates is committed to an account of the psychē as an embodied soul, causally responsible for the biological condition of the body. Furthermore, the prescription of kaloi logoi as a treatment for the soul's biological failures suggests that Socrates appears to initially regard the ethical and biological dimensions of the soul as intimately connected. But I also show that Socrates is unable to maintain this position consistently throughout the passage. A similar conflation of functions can be traced in R. X.608d–611a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop a phenomenological account of community which would not be pervaded by Eurocentric assumptions. Such Eurocentrism is what Husserl's phenomenological framework has been accused of. I first reconstruct Husserl's phenomenology of community in his late transcendental phenomenology by examining the Vienna Lecture. I show that Husserl's Eurocentrism is encapsulated in his account of corporeity, which simultaneously recognizes the importance of corporeity and its necessary overcoming in theoria , which originates in the European philosopher. I then argue that Merleau-Ponty, through his rigorously embodied phenomenology, can offer a non-Eurocentric phenomenology of community. Elaborating on the Husserlian insight of corporeity, notably the perceptual experience and the écart at stake in the encounter with other bodies, allows Merleau-Ponty's ontology of the flesh to recast community from and with the body as an open, situated, and non-archeo-teleological structure, allowing phenomenology to reimagine inter-cultural encounters away from tropes of European exemplarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine Aristotle's position on the theory of the soul as a self-moving entity in the light of a less negative conception of his discussion with his predecessors. For this purpose, I discuss the hypothesis according to which Aristotle is producing the concepts necessary for his own research through a critique of Plato's claims. I show that, more than a criticism, what we are witnessing is a process of conceptual appropriation where Aristotle filters an opinion to make a better use of it. I support my argument by showing how Aristotle's exegetical device works and how it could be connected to his own definitional procedures in De Anima's book II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to study Cassirer's philosophy of the body, and some of its foundations developed in the report entitled "Pathology of Symbolic Consciousness." It details how patients with cerebral aphasia and apraxia are characterized by a loss of symbolization abilities in the performance of operational tasks, as well as in their linguistic performance, which translates into a decrease in the ability to create cultural meaning. These cases allow one to evaluate the definition of the human being as a "symbolic animal" that is presented in An Essay on Man. An interpretative reading of both works is proposed to underline the role of the body in the development of (a) the symbolic formation process and (b) cultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

José Bleger’s paper on the setting (encuadre) is integral to his 1967 book Symbiosis and Ambiguity. Relevant concepts from the book are summarised before examining his view of the setting as a “non-process” consisting of “constants”, complementing the “variables” of the analytic process. Process and setting are related as figure and ground in Gestalt psychology. The ideally maintained setting is studied as a thought experiment, uniting the categories of institution, personality, body schema, and body. Deposited in the setting, the psychotic part of the personality, or “agglutinated nucleus”, is a remnant of early symbiosis with the mother. Bleger distinguishes two settings: the analyst’s and the patient’s. The latter can only be analysed by strictly maintaining the former. Ritualisation of the setting denies temporal reality. De-symbiotisation is not always possible. A concept of “internal” setting is suggested, but Bleger nowhere mentions this and the concept is problematic, leaving open the question of how to listen to the silence of the setting. Bleger’s concept of encuadre can be applied to constants (invariants) in the wider world, the psychotic part of the personality being deposited in everything that is familiar and felt to be constant, including technology, which creates a “platform” for human activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Editorial presents the papers of the Special Issue "Intersecting the Body", providing a dialogue between them and previous literature on the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From early Greek philosophers to Descartes' machinic metaphors of humans-as-machines, to the emergence of physical machine-like humans, the intersections of the human body with machines circle back through hundreds of years of debates on human-technology relationships. We live in an age when robots are becoming increasingly human-like with artificial intelligence that mimics and sometimes exceeds our own. At the same time, we humans are adopting cyborg-like modifications to improve ourselves through biological, mechanical, and computer technologies. This conceptual paper presents a historical overview of the human-machine merger as both a metaphor and material reality. We show that the body has no intrinsic meaning for its distinct social constructions in technophilic and bioconservativist perspectives. This leads to a critical need for discussions about the issues related to dehumanization and personhood. These two topics must inform future research efforts to explore a future when current concepts of humanness may not hold anymore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how violence is mobilised for control purposes in organisations. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted at the total institution we name Arrival – a German refugee reception centre – we develop how private security guards engage in practices of signalling and exerting violence vis-à-vis Arrival's residents to enforce rules. Our research contributes to the extant literature in three ways. First, we elucidate how practices of violence, following a logic of escalation and deterrence, work for organisational control purposes. Second, our research shifts the extant focus from discursive to embodied forms of invisibilisation by showing how violence is made simultaneously visible and invisible in its very enactment. Third, it provides insights into situational interactions rather than conditions of violence in total institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to offer an understanding of the body as an archive while analysing poems written by queer and non-binary poet and performer Danez Smith. Seen as a conflicting field for power and control disputes, the archive can be read in different ways and this paper approaches it in order to theorise what a queer archival practice may signal when elements such as gender, sexuality and desire are interrogated in Smith’s poems. Taking into consideration theoretical contributions from Celia Pedrosa et al. (2018), Julietta Singh (2018), David Lapoujade (2017), Ann Cvetkovich (2003) and others, it is concluded that Smith’s poems display a complex negotiation of feeling and the world, allowing new meanings to erupt from the archive.