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In responding to Harvey Peskin's important paper, “Man Is a Wolf to Man,” I further deconstruct his proposition “what therapeutic neutrality is to psychic reality, the therapeutic witness is to the recovery of social reality.” This statement calls into question two principles of the orthodox Freudian canon, one theoretical and one technical. Beyond the stimulus barrier, traumatic reality collapses psychic reality, conscious and unconscious fold into one another, reality and fantasy merge, and nightmares are made flesh. In attempting to impose psychic reality on a traumatic experience, then, classical psychoanalysts disavow a significant portion of human experience. Technically, the analyst's neutrality or failure to acknowledge the significance of historical reality condemns the survivor to further dehumanization as her dehumanizing experiences go unmarked in treatment. Peskin contends that the need to have experience validated, to have a witnessing analyst before an interpreting one, arises not only in matters of extreme traumatization but in everyday life. Illustrating the importance of this claim with an example from my own life, I propose that extreme traumatization takes a different kind of therapeutic engagement, one that is beyond professional obligation; a moral imperative that requires imagination when recognition is not enough. I add a further caveat that in cases of extreme traumatization, rather than privileging a search for psychic reality or even historical reality, some contemporary analysts privilege an exploration of the treatment relationship, failing to recognize that in such cases historical reality must initially take precedence over an emphasis on the intersubjective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper unravels the politics of belonging, the legal-political regime of exclusion, and differentiated citizenship in the multi-layered social and political context of Arunachal Pradesh, India. This paper aims to engage with the institutional arrangements of the Indian state that accommodate the ethno-cultural differences in a multi-ethnic society. Set amidst the changing social and economic realities of Arunachal Pradesh, this study relates to the emerging contestations around the protection of Indigenous identity and the need for differential treatment of people in multiethnic societies by embedding these discussions within policy debates on Inner Line Regulation and land legislations in the state. This paper adopts an incisive approach to understand the implications of such protective measures on the conceptualization of citizenship in states with a significant Indigenous population. It argues for examining the implications of ethnicised forms of governance in favour of democratic power sharing structures and representative institutions of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of the ethnic minor is a heavily inscribed representational subject in PRC cinema. Coming out of a socialist cinematic tradition as images of thoroughly assimilated, phlegmatic adults-in-waiting, the portrayal of ethnic children in PRC cinema today assumes more nuances as an art-house cinema verité aesthetics demands ethnic children enact their social presence in a complex network of social relations fraught with the tension between modernity and tradition, identity structures and their restructures. This paper examines two 2018 films about ethnic minors in Tibet and the Uyghur region of China—Wangdrak's Rain Boots by Lhapal Gyal and A First Farewell by Wang Lina, respectively. Through the lenses of what Félix Guattari calls "partial subjectivity" and the "social machine," the article demonstrates how the two films portray weather forecast and linguistic ability in Mandarin Chinese as socializing conduit of Chinese state power and produce for the ethnic children an affect of authoritarian certainty. The paper argues that those two films critique the PRC's current ethnopolitical strategies in the said regions, which place a premium on a monoglot and monovocal articulation of a pan-Chinese identity at the cost of impoverishing a polyvocal ethno-social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue centralizes powerful leisure stories that may otherwise be understood as myths—sometimes recognized, often less so—that circulate in the field, and beyond. In everyday use, a myth perpetuates a popularly held belief that is false or untrue. However, in social and cultural theory, myths are more complex, as partial truths that privilege particular versions of a shared social reality. We want to know what myths are, what they "do", and how they circulate and shape people's leisure lives. Myths can do more than obfuscate—they often animate people's lives, motivate collective action, and inspire change. In this Introduction, we map out the aims of the Special Issue to establish the conceptual terrain of leisure myths and mythmaking, and explore definitions and uses of myths, which are then brought into sharper focus in the eight papers that comprise the collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the political philosophy of Marietta Kies (1853–1899), a progressive-era thinker who gained recognition as both a professional academic philosopher and a public intellectual. Kies' philosophy was grounded in neo-Hegelian theory, while also being responsive to the economic and social realities she observed in the world around her. She was one of the first women in the US to formally study philosophy and political theory at an advanced academic level. Yet she also gathered with fellow intellectuals, political activists, and feminists to discuss solutions to contemporary problems at chautauqua-style summer programmes. The paper introduces Kies in her intellectual and political context. It then examines distinctive elements of her thought: specifically her heightened notion of positive rights and her theory of public/political altruism. It also evaluates how effectively Kies intertwined a neo-Hegelian understanding of the state with her commitments to Christian socialism, to progressivism, and to a liberal conception of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we elucidate the notion of 'social wrongs'. It differs from moral wrongness, and is broader than narrowly political wrongs. We distinguish conceptually monadic wrongness (1.1), dyadic wronging (1.2), and the idea of there being something 'wrong with' an entity (1.3). We argue that social and political wrongs share a feature with natural badness or wrongness (illnesses of organisms) as well as malfunctioning artifacts or dysfunctional organizations: they violate so called ought-to-be norms; they are not as they ought to be; there is something wrong with them. In contrast, moral wrongs are violations of ought-to-do norms. Social wrongs typically, but not invariably, include dyadic wronging. We examine who or what can wrong whom or what, and by what means: we can be wronged by individuals and groups, as well as by practices, institutions or structures (2.1–2.3). The notion of structural injustice is compared to the notion of social wrongs in 2.4. Social wrongs are defined as there being something wrong with the social reality (3.3), in comparison to there being something wrong with an organism or a system (3.1), including the narrowly political wrongs of systems of governance (3.2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the role of women and, more broadly, the female imagery presented in Bogomil doctrine and practice, as reflected in the Bogomil myth, Biblical exegesis and social reality. The paper explores the relationship between the Bogomil mythological accounts and exegetical practice on the one hand, and the society on the other, in order to clarify whether these Bogomil literary techniques were disconnected from society, or not, and to what extent. Bogomil exegesis mirrored the underlying situational contexts, or vice versa. This analysis will also contribute to the wider topic of re-assessing the Bogomil religious identity, as shaped by the elements of the apostolic Christian tradition, but also by extra-canonical and heterodox textual strands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the development of a critical realist approach to discourse analysis by combining aspects of 'critical discourse analysis' (CDA) and 'the morphogenetic/morphostatic approach' (M/M). Unlike poststructuralist discourse theory, CDA insists on the maintenance of two distinctions: (i) between discourse and other aspects of social reality; (ii) between structure and agency. However, CDA lacks clarity on these distinctions. M/M, on the other hand, offers a coherent modelling of these distinctions that can underpin the application of CDA. The paper begins by introducing CDA, M/M and the existing literature on critical realist discourse analysis. It then establishes the M/M model of social change within CDA's existing social theory by focusing on 'analytical dualism' and 'social practice'. Finally, the paper locates the concept of discourse within M/M's model of social change by theorizing discourse as one of four objective structures of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case of "trauma by omission" as a product of the attachment process. The absence of intimate and specific recognition and response by the caretaker of a child can create, by their omission, a "freeze" version of the fight/flight/freeze trauma response. The frozen moments, then dissociated, can become confusion and paralysis at the cusp of adulthood. This state is illustrated in the case below of a 23-year-old Chinese woman being treated by a 29-year-old Chinese male psychoanalytic fellow. The role of cultural context in "omission" is highlighted regarding development and treatment, which is taking place in a Communist society with a recent violent history of extinguishing individuality, modifying how attachment and individuation are expressed. A relational/interpersonal treatment orientation is applied and advocated at this intersection of individual and social realities. This paper contributes to attachment theory by raising awareness of how its many forms and outcomes may or may not be deemed healthy and functional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a sociological reading of the concept of world order within the peace research debate, mindful of the complexity of systemic factors that influence changing interpretations. By addressing the clash of thought currents that have seen 'traditionalist' peace researchers interpret peace as a phenomenon opposed to conflict, while 'progressive' researchers view it as a social and sustainable development capable of mitigating conflict while containing disruptive aspects, this study critically reconstructs utopian conflict theories within a complex mosaic, which leads from conflict to a new vision of a peaceful world. In this view, there is no longer room for a concept of world order as expression of an arbitrary system of dominance, but a tendency to read social reality through the lenses of the complexity theories as a worldwide disorder. Following giants such as Kenneth Boulding and Johan Galtung, this paper investigates the four interconnected pillars of the new worldview – peace, society, economy, and nature – and the role played by conflict in defining its identity. Pursuing a vision that seeks to recompose the contents of positive peace and sustainable development, the researcher will try to understand the direction taken by the new sustainability paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent proposal by Quill Kukla and Mark Lance holds that surface appearances notwithstanding, gender ascriptions are closer to normative performatives than descriptions. As speech acts, they share more in common with pronouncing a marriage than a neutral description of a person, albeit this is not commonly recognized. This paper argues that the proposal faces a consistency problem. In order to affect social reality qua their illocutionary force, gender ascriptions must on average succeed. However, according to the authors most actual second- and third person gender ascriptions in fact violate the success conditions of the speech act type, which include respect for the individual's first-person gender ascriptions. Their main claim thus becomes that gender roles can be instituted as a series of misfires, though it is left open how this is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Press advertisements are a key source for the history of Jewish occultism in Eastern Europe. From the late nineteenth century, modern occult currents engaged many Jews in Eastern Europe, who consulted with mediums, attended occult performances and lectures, and consumed occult literature, whether in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, or Russian. For these Jews, the hidden realities represented by occultism conveyed practical knowledge, entertainment, assurance, and the possibility of belief in a higher reality. Their occult activities left a paper trail in the form of advertisements placed in Jewish newspapers across Eastern Europe. This article considers occult-related advertisements published in the Jewish press in early-twentieth-century Poland, arguably the centre of Jewish occultism in Eastern Europe. By tracing occult advertisements across four decades of the Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish press in Poland, a picture emerges of the dynamic occult marketplace that reached Jews across Eastern Europe, the economics of this marketplace, and the social changes that spurred its development. Jewish press advertisements thus not only shed light on the physiognomy of Jewish occultism in Poland in the early-twentieth century, but also tell us a great deal about Jewish experiences of modernity in these years as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is known for its capacity to reveal ideology reproduced through discourse, but when applied to educational research, its focus on mere language constrains its utility for understanding and improving social reality. In this paper, through the example of a textbook study, we explore how CDA can be strengthened by critical realism. As a theory of ontology and epistemology, critical realism seeks to explain how causal mechanisms in society constrain and enable the emergence of human agency. As a practical framework, it can offer a research design for the textbook study, featured by a stratified ontology, a dialectic epistemology and a methodological requirement for self-reflexivity. Such a design can overcome the limitations of positivism and interpretivism. It can enable CDA to demonstrate both criticalness and a higher level of explanatory power, with the potential to identify real (rather than Utopian) possibilities for human emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to expand José Bleger’s classic, metapsychological descriptions of the psychoanalytic frame to formulate and emphasize the role of the analyst’s internal frame in establishing a psychoanalytic observational perspective in the analytic situation. The rationale for doing so follows from clinical necessity, especially when working with patients and psychic organizations that are ‘beyond neurosis’ and in non-traditional settings such as distance and telemetric analyses. Clinically speaking, in its most effective state, the analyst’s internal frame can inform the possibility of an observational vertex aimed at the intuitive grasp of psychic reality rather than a sense-based, empirical observation of parameters denoted by the elements of a consensually validatable social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Saudi 2030 vision states it is committed to empowering women through education and employment, but the literature scarcely addresses their everyday realities. This paper utilises a critical realist perspective to examine the mechanisms emerging from the interplay of structural and cultural factors that impact women's empowerment concerning local realities in Saudi Arabia. Situated within a broader study, this research explores the qualitative element of women's work and education experiences by analysing policy documents and semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that structure and culture have a diverse impact on education and employment, which may ultimately lead to disempowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergent performance context of social virtual reality (social VR) as the latest manifestation of the continuing disruption of theatre as axiomatically local. Against the backdrop of Double Eye Studio's 2020 adaptation of the Pandora mythos, Finding Pandora X, analysis centers on the ways in which social VR simultaneously expands and contracts theatre's 'localness', a reconfiguration with pragmatic and theoretical implications for practice and scholarship in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many critical educational philosophies assume that learners are naïve and unable to critically read their social reality. Critical educational gerontology (CEG) aims to emancipate learners from oppression, to which they are oblivious. This strand of older adult education charges teachers with the task of raising learners' naïve consciousness, by leading them on the (Freirean) path of critical reflection and critical action. Literature employing CEG concludes that this path often ends with learners being reluctant to engage in critical action because of their ongoing (internalised) oppression. In this paper, we adopt a critical stance towards CEG's logic of emancipation guided by Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. As such, we question the inability of older learners to understand, and act on, their social reality independently from teachers. Starting from Giddens' theory, we apply a reflexive thematic analysis to interview data tackling the socio-economic reality of 11 older learners at a university for the third age in Lebanon. The results support the conclusion that older learners at the U3A can decode their social reality and reflexively engage in social change, but their efforts or reluctance are influenced by constraints, not necessarily naïve consciousness. Consequently, we recommend a revisit of CEG's logic of emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are multiple indices based on positive psychology and the economics of happiness for measuring, evaluating and developing social policies. Based on univariable scales, they reflect a more hedonic view rather than a complex perspective on social reality and human behavior, which renders them unfit for purpose in the field of sociology. This paper proposes a multidimensional model that includes social relationships and human happiness, focusing more on eudaimonic than hedonic happiness. It contains an affective dimension, an ethical dimension, and a welfare system's evaluation dimension. Based on the sociology of emotions, it includes elements from Shalom Schwartz's theory of values and Jacques Thomassen's study of societies with consolidated political and welfare systems. The model was validated using an Exploratory Factor Analysis with 28 variables from the European Social Survey (ESS). A multidimensional index is proposed, composed of five factors: the welfare system, positive and negative emotional states, altruism, and egocentrism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding the place of 'worldviews' in Religious Education. We examine the British Commission on Religious Education proposal that the subject be renamed 'Religions and Worldviews' from the perspective of Worldview Theory and Critical Religious Education and make the following suggestions: (a) the twin notion of 'ultimate nature of reality' and 'our place in the 'ultimate order-of things' provides a substantial content for RE largely absent from the Commission's vision; (b) worldviews are frequently implicit rather than explicitly affirmed in religious creeds and philosophical assertions; (c) worldviews are complex, interpersonal and take varying communal forms, surpassing the polarity of 'personal' and 'institutional'; (d) the concept of 'worldview' has pedagogic and hermeneutical potential transcending content-driven curriculum development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse analysis can reveal what texts leave out, and how texts transform and evaluate the social realities they represent butcriticaldiscourse analysis must alsoevaluatethe findings of discourse analysis, and, this paper argues, this cannot be done on discourse-internal grounds alone. To develop this argument, the paper will first discuss how critical discourse analysts might establish whethermisrepresentations have taken place, and then how they might assess whether such misrepresentations legitimate and promote unacceptable forms of inequality, in other words, how discourses might be morally evaluated. Special reference is made to the issue of ‘marriage equality’ as it has recently played out in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper applies different analytical frameworks to explore processes of family bargaining about providing care for dependent older people in Mexico and Peru. These frameworks include cultural norms, life course effects and material exchange. The paper is based on 19 in-depth qualitative family case studies, which are linked to a wider set of quantitative survey data. Care arrangements and bargaining processes are revealed to be highly gendered, and largely conform to prevailing cultural norms. Rather than neutral and objective, the self-identified role as main carer is found to be subjective and potentially ambiguous. The few men who self-identify as main carers are more likely to play an indirect, organisational role than engage directly in daily care. As such, bargaining mainly relates to which woman performs the main care role, and large family networks mean that there is usually more than one candidate carer. Bargaining can occur inter-generationally and conjugally, but bargaining between siblings is of particular importance. Bargaining is framed by the uncertain trajectory of older people's care needs, and arrangements are sometimes reconfigured in response to changing care needs or family circumstances. Taking the narratives at face value, the influence of life course effects on bargaining and care arrangements is more obvious than material exchange. There are, however, indications that economic considerations, particularly inheritance, still play an important behind the scenes role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a given time, the sum of the layers that make up the phenomenon of society, "consist" of distinct attributes that emerged in different epochs; for example, different generations or indigenous and natural science knowledge. This is the normal state of affairs in modern societies. Society lacks, in this respect, distinctiveness. First, I am describing the twin concept as the idea of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous as a cultural phenomenon itself, including many specimens, for example, Werner Sombart's stimulating reflections about the social complexity of the social organization of capitalism. Next, I illustrate the concept in more detail, assisted by a brief description of three well-known social science phenomena: (1) the emergence, present and importance of generations as a macro sociological phenomenon, (2) the moralization of the markets as a mix of micro- and macro themes and what I designate as the (3) compartmentalization in everyday that allows for the presence of contradictory beliefs and activities as a genuine micro sociological topic. The discovery of layers of social phenomena as essential attributes of social reality. In closing the paper, I refer to many of the persisting virtues of the in-between concepts in theorizing and in mobilizing methodological caution in social science reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arab Spring has had noticeable effects on Tunisia in socio-economic, political, and cultural terms. Few predicted that the music of hip hop and rap could engage with the socio-political situation in Tunisia, especially after the downfall of Ben Ali's regime. Having survived as an underground music since the year 2000, the genre of hip hop and rap remains an aberration from the folkloric tradition. By adhering to the socio-economic reality of the Tunisian street, rappers attempt to claim authenticity in both thematic and language use, and by usurping the power of 'space' from the regime's control. With the songs' fast-paced rhythms, catchy phrases, puns, vulgarisms, and linguistic innovations that use metaphor, hip hop and rap have struck a chord with Tunisia's youth. Tunisia's new social reality has allowed Tunisian rappers to express dissent and voice people's despair over the socioeconomic and political situation. The language and themes of rap and hip hop music offer a cultural mirror which shows the other side to the reported success of the Arab Spring in Tunisia. This paper argues that rap artists use language as a vehicle to claim the authenticity of their message. It also explores how the performative nature of the language of hip hop and rap interacts with the Tunisian culture and argues for the power of music in the context of political and socio-economic grievances in post-Arab Spring Tunisia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subjective documentary genre emerged in the context of the "subjective turn" in Argentina (Sarlo2005), when testimony became the main instrument to mobilise memory. In these films, the narrative of truth is driven by a subjective identity rather than an objective observer, focussing on introspective and private narratives rather than social and political realities. These documentaries have largely been regarded as less politically relevant than their predecessors. This paper seeks to challenge this dominant perspective by theorising the links between the political and the affective in four recent works: La TV y yo (2002) and Fotografías (2006), by Andrés Di Tella, Familia tipo (2009) by Cecilia Priego, and Madres con ruedas (2006) by Mónica Chirife and Mario Piazza. These films explore the identity of the director in relation to the family through narratives that are clearly influenced by psychoanalytic discourses. Pursuing the implications of the link between psychoanalysis and neoliberalism, this paper seeks to theorise the exploration of the self in relation to the family. The aim is to reconceptualise the intimate as political, ultimately understanding the production of subjectivity in these films as closely intertwined with the experience of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textual and visual app-based communication is standard everyday interaction. I argue that, as researchers, we have to be better equipped to include various ways of interacting digitally with participants in qualitative research interviews. In this paper, I do a methodological focused analysis of app-based textual interviews (n = 98) with young people selling illegal drugs online. I challenge the earlier skepticism towards interviewing through text, while also placing the interview in a new context of encrypted mobile phone applications. App-based textual interviews prove to be highly flexible and create a socially informal character of semi-structured interviews that interviewees perceive as safe. At the same time, the interviewer's position is decentered as the interviewee takes full control of the interview context behind the screen. App-based textual interviews proved highly useful when interacting with a younger generation, also on a sensitive topic like illegal drugs. It also introduces several ethical dilemmas for discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thinking and working politically is an approach to manoeuvring within social and political realities to achieve development goals, which some see as a new orthodoxy [Teskey 2017. Thinking and Working Politically: Are We Seeing the Emergence of a Second Orthodoxy? Governance Working Paper Series, Issue 1. Massachusetts: Abt Associates]. This research explores the practice of thinking and working politically in the Pacific, through in-depth interviews and observation with nine Pacific Islander staff working within a bilateral aid programme in Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands. The findings provide a rich description of what thinking and working politically entails in small, highly connected island communities, with insights into how these processes can be supported in official aid programmes. Highlights This research unpacks thinking and working politically from the unique perspective of Pacific staff working in a bilateral aid programme. Thinking politically involves knowing the context, who to work with, and when to act. Working politically entails good communication, intuition, flexibility, influence, connecting people, and "playing different cards" at appropriate moments. Building and maintaining relationships is the cornerstone of thinking and working politically but is not always valued by within aid programmes. Moving away from political analysis as donor-led, intelligence-gathering exercises towards investment in locally led processes necessitates genuinely valuing relational work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents ways in which animated cartoons influence primary school children's views of social reality based on students' relationships with these characters and their perception of these characters as being 'real'. For this purpose, a mixed methods approach was adopted, in which 9/10-year-old Maltese primary school children were provided with an opportunity to participate in activities related to cartoon characters. In these activities the children (n = 10) provided their interpretations of animated cartoon characters through drawings, writings and verbally during semi-structured interviews and cartoon watching. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the children's verbal expressions and interpretations. From the outcomes of the analysis, educational implications and cross-curricular pedagogical suggestions were then derived through the use of the MIRROR multimodal framework. These educational implications indicate that children can be taught critical thinking skills through the integration of animated cartoons in different curricular subjects. Moreover, the results indicate that students need to be offered the possibility to express themselves through various modes as exemplified in the pedagogical suggestions proposed. These pedagogical suggestions can be used by primary school educators, parents and guardians in order to teach creativity, expressive skills and literacy skills to primary school children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several papers related developments in economics as realist social theory. According to the author, social theory expressly committed to work out the nature of social being, and, or how people access social reality is going through something of a revival in economics. The papers presented, provide numerous results, arguments, conjectures, and critiques have been produced in recent years, and aim to take some of these specific developments further. Context of the papers and basic ideas and results are presented.

Professional coach educators are key to the success of coach education and play a crucial role in developing coaching practice. However, coach education research remains remarkably coach centric with little attention paid to the coach educator or the broader role of the socio-cultural context that frames the learning process. Four professional coach educators working for a Sport Governing Body in-situ with twenty five professional clubs took part in interviews and focus groups over the course of a year. In addition, interviews were undertaken with nine academy managers and thirty two coaches as well as observations in eight of the clubs. This paper focuses on the coach educators specifically and aims to understand the nature of coach educators' social reality and practice by examining something of the relational nature of the coach educators and their practice in context. Using the work of Bourdieu the paper engages in epistemic reflexivity and attempts to uncover coach educators' social and intellectual unconscious embedded in and reflected through their social practice. Findings show the operation of a number of socially constructed legitimating principles where the success or failure of the coach educator's practice and learning was inextricably linked to power. Each club (field) was a field of struggles, and coach educators had to play a symbolic and relational game being defined by and, at the same time, struggling to define these relations. Hence practice for the coach educators was both social and embodied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within an emerging body of work on queer mobilities, a marked interest in sexuality and migration/asylum has left ample room to consider the complex experience of everyday mobility and displacement. In addition, despite its centrality to survival and its imbrication with mobility, work has been given little attention in queer migration and trans scholarship. Based on detailed narratives created over a number of years with two Central American trans women as they continue to move, the paper explores the ways in which material and social realities of work shape and are shaped by marginal queer(ed) mobility. It proposes the idea of messy survival to explore the complex navigation of marginal existence, and uses this to explore the intersections between work, mobility and trans subjectivity, arguing that this framework is a useful means of engaging with the gap between how trans, mobile lives are written, and how they are lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euro-modern colonisation produced many truths, which, despite having been recognised as false information, continue to shape the social order of today. Artist Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa's lifelong quest was to build a subjective artistic relationship with the physical traces of colonial disinformation, which still resonate in Ugandan art education. But sometimes it is impossible to make clean separations. The post-conceptual practice of the British–Ugandan artist Wolukau-Wanambwa challenges and subverts the experience of complex contemporary social realities which were triggered by colonialism. Her artistic stress test exposes the instability of facts and the liquid ambiguity of archived information. This article explores the artist's conscious and radical act of subjective entanglement with her research. The visual and textual analysis of her works' conceptual layering unlocks politically charged archival truths to release new fictions for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by the rapid technological development and adoption of augmented reality (AR) in retail, academic research has grown rapidly. Our purpose is to understand the reasons why consumers use augmented reality in retail and what outcomes retailers can expect. This study presents a systematic literature review and summarizes the current empirical knowledge on consumer behavior with AR in retail. This topic remains scattered between various literature streams showing that the potential of AR to create value for consumers lays in its ability to generate utilitarian and hedonic value, to improve decision-making, and to enhance personalization of the virtual self. Then, this study warns about negative effects of AR usage. The contribution is a systematic literature review and a conceptual framework covering the most important consumer behaviors with AR and their brand-related, transactional, and technology-related outcomes. In addition, this paper adopts a holistic view to propose future research directions and emphasize the need for more research on social augmented reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the contested concept of social innovation by using the ideas of discourse and framing as a lens to explore the contested definitions of social innovation. A selection of definitions is then deconstructed in relation to these discourses and framings. It is argued that the political pressures which create interest in social innovation have resulted in a confused and contested series of definitions, which remain largely unconnected to wider debates and theories about innovation. Instead, many authors contrive an almost alchemic status for social innovation when the reality of social innovation in practice may be rather more prosaic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a reflection onWhat is policy? Texts, Trajectories and Tool Boxes, which was first published in 1993, inDiscourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. It looks back to what the 1993 paper was trying to do and at some of the developments of the ideas first sketched there in my later work, in particular in the bookHow Schools Do Policy(2012). It also considers the continuing tensions between domination and agency, discourse and text, in policy research and the misuse of the concept of discourse in some policy analysis work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Zimbabwean political landscape has provided fertile ground for the breeding of very interesting linguistic as well as discursive expressions. These linguistic expressions to some extent signify socio-political dementia of the populace as reflected in the political and behavioural acts of the same in the negotiation for political and socio-cultural space in the country. The political realities in Zimbabwe, especially from 2013 to present, has clearly marked the landscape as a theatre, where political players and their institutions, illustriously use language to onion-peel-off the socio-political drama and cultural realities for historians to document, political scientists to analyse, journalists to report, the povo to debate and academics to study. Using semiotics, the paper dissects one instance of this linguistic inventive; what has now become a popular expression, ‘munhu wese kuna amai’ (Everyone should go to the mother), among the many, in the Zimbabwean socio-political performance from which various ideological, historical and cultural realities are presented. The paper further argues that such expressions are strategies which reflect efforts by ZANU (PF) to declare, define, demarcate, command, propagate as well as express socio-political and cultural dogmas the populace should adhere to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines class dynamics in Kenya's urban cities using television theatre episodes that dramatise the interaction between marginalised and privileged citizens. In the main, the analysis in the article focuses on selected Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) television theatre texts. Through a critical examination of Siku ya kimataifa ya mtoto Mwafrika (The International Day of the African child), and Marehemu Ocholla (The late Ocholla), both episodes of Vioja Mahakamani (incidents/drama in the courtroom) aired on KBC, the paper postulates that the different social classes advanced in the texts represent the everyday struggles that sections of city dwellers grapple with partly because of their class positioning. In addition, the article holds that the marginalisation of a majority of urban dwellers, such as street children, predispose them to crime and other anti-social behaviour as the only means to survive in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RamutsindelaM. Experienced regions and borders: the challenge for transactional approaches,Regional Studies. This paper appreciates the intellectual value of relational thinking but cautions that dismissing ‘region’ as a meaningful territorial entity and concept, and asserting that borders are irrelevant in a supposedly borderless world, severely limits one's understanding of how both regions and borders are constructed, interconnected and experienced on the ground where they become ‘real’ to people. The paper affirms the region–border nexus as a promising theoretical avenue for analysing the ways in which regions are not only social constructs that are contingent and contested, but also having a material basis that profoundly shapes human consciousness and action. 区域 边界 交易方式 边界对抗 RamutsindelaM. 经验区域与边界：来自交易方式的挑战，区域研究。本文在相对论思考的基础上，一方面避免将区域贬抑为一个有意义的领域整体及概念，同时指出边界在无界时间中的非相关性会制约人们对区域及边界是如何被建构、相互关联以及在特定场合中对于人们的‘真实性’经验的理解。文章肯定了区域边界联合体这一理论视角对于区域不仅仅是耦合且充满矛盾的社会构建体方式的分析，同时具备影响人们意识与行为的物质基础。 Régions Frontières Approches transactionnelles Manifestation à la frontière RamutsindelaM. Les régions et les frontières expérimentées; le défi pour les approches transactionnelles,Regional Studies. Cet article se rend bien compte de la valeur intellectuelle de la pensée relationnelle mais avertit que refuser de considérer la ‘région’ comme une entité et une notion territoriales significatives, et affirmer que les frontières sont hors du sujet dans un monde qui est censé être sans frontières, limite sensiblement la compréhension de comment à la fois les régions et les frontières sont construites, entrelacées et expérimentées sur le terrain où elles deviennent de ‘vrais’ pour la population. L'article affirme que l'interconnexion région-frontière constitue une possibilité théorique prometteuse pour analyser les façons dont les régions sont non seulement des constructions sociales mais ont aussi une base matérielle qui influe profondément sur la conscience et l'action humaines. Regionen Grenzen Transaktionsansätze Grenzproteste RamutsindelaM. Erlebte Regionen und Grenzen: die Herausforderung für Transaktionsansätze,Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag wird der intellektuelle Wert von relationalem Denken gewürdigt, doch zugleich davor gewarnt, dass durch ein Verwerfen der Region als aussagekräftiger territorialer Einheit und Konzept und durch die Behauptung, Grenzen seien in einer angeblich grenzenlosen Welt irrelevant, das eigene Verständnis der Frage, wie Regionen und Grenzen aufgebaut und miteinander verbunden sind und wie sie von den Menschen vor Ort als Realität erlebt werden, erheblich eingeschränkt wird. Stattdessen wird die Verknüpfung zwischen Region und Grenze als vielversprechender theoretischer Weg zur Analyse der Frage bestätigt, inwiefern Regionen nicht nur gesellschaftliche Konstrukte darstellen, die kontingent und angefochten sind, sondern auch eine materielle Grundlage aufweisen, die das Bewusstsein und Handeln der Menschen grundlegend prägt. Regiones Fronteras Enfoques transaccionales Protestas fronterizas RamutsindelaM. Regiones y fronteras percibidas: el reto de los enfoques transaccionales,Regional Studies. En este artículo apreciamos el valor intelectual del pensamiento relacional, sin embargo también advertimos que al marginar el concepto de ‘región’ como una entidad territorial significativa, y al afirmar que las fronteras son irrelevantes en un mundo supuestamente sin fronteras, se limita gravemente la propia comprensión de cómo están construidas e interconectadas las regiones y fronteras y de qué modo se perciben sobre el terreno donde se convierten en algo ‘real’ para las personas. En este artículo afirmamos que el nexo región–frontera sirve de posibilidad teórica prometedora para analizar el modo en que las regiones no son solamente construcciones sociales contingentes y refutadas, sino también una base material que da forma fundamental a la conciencia y las acciones humanas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper engages in a critical discussion of the key features delineated by the other authors in this Special Issue thus serving as an end-piece for the issue. In particular it touches on three significant concepts. Firstly, it reinforces the importance of context, particularly cultural context in the conduct of research in Confucian cultural settings. Second, as an illustration, it offers a critical perspective on the cultural assumptions that underpin the development of Chinese higher education. Finally, it concludes with some reflections on how other papers in this Special Issue contribute to our understanding of research in CHC contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this article is to elaborate some conceptual tools for clearer analysis of social reality, power relations and their visual representations. One of these instruments through which power relations are established in society is photography. The paper focuses on different strategies by which, in photography, the 'people' are constructed as a homogeneous whole of specific historical self-reflection of culture. The first part of the paper discusses the relationship between the theory of hegemony as elaborated by Ernesto Laclau and the semiotics of culture of Yuri Lotman. The ground for believing this incorporation of the two thinkers to be successful is the very apparent theoretical congeniality between them. They both belong to the Saussurean ontological terrain. The second part of the paper tries to develop a bridge between the given theoretical framework, especially Laclau's concept of empty signifier and Barthes's concepts of studium/punctum, and 'iconic photograph' from visual rhetoric. I will distinguish four hegemonical strategies of signification: visual naming, dominant text, code text, and dominant language. The analysed material is taken from Stalin-era soviet Estonia's newspaper and magazine photographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critiques and re-imagines current research approaches to the field of social entrepreneurship. Taking a theoretical view of research as 'enactment', this paper explores research as a constitutive act and explores a range of ways of relating with and constructing the subject of inquiry. Three models of enactive research are presented, each based on three verbs which denote the contours of a 'dangerous' research agenda for social entrepreneurship. These include: (a) 'critiquing' approaches to research through denaturalizing, critically performing and reflexivity; (b) 'inheriting' approaches through contextualizing, historicizing and connecting; and (c) 'intervening' approaches through participating, spatializing and minorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the findings of a formative evaluation of the mentorship support programme run by the Maskh'iSizwe Centre of Excellence for recipients of its bursaries. Learning theory traditions have typically been divided into those that prioritise individual cognition versus those that prioritise the context in which learning occurs. In both these traditions, the individual agent is dissolved. This paper interrogates the ontological assumptions held by dominant learning theories regarding relations between individual and society that neglect agency in the learning process. Archer's social realist ontology offers a way forward by reinstating the full properties and powers of learners as agents. Archer's social theory supports theories of learning that emphasise ontology and practice, as well as epistemology. It is therefore suggested that support programmes for undergraduate financially disadvantaged learners ensure that they first develop a sense of personal identity and social agency as a pre-condition for succeeding academically and developing a professional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While assuming, as a starting point, that communities in Lebanon are 'spaces' where various techniques of domination and control are reproduced to prevent their members from questioning the religious, identitarian or political hegemony, in this paper we argue that the Maronite community's resizing process has created in-between border spaces within this community, where new discourses aimed at questioning this system of control arise. To justify this in-between border spaces' relevance to understanding discourses of dissent, the analytical category of liminality will be explored. This will help answer the questions of why counter-hegemonic discourses arise in marginal spaces and how these spaces become liminal. We contend that the manifest incapacity of the Maronite elites with regard to bordering and ordering the 'margins' of their own community is weakening the elites' (political and religious) control over these new spaces: they became 'arenas' where dissent potentially coagulates and new social realities free from the community control system can emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world awaits a cure or a vaccine for the deadly Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), prevention etiquette of social distancing is being championed as a mechanism of reducing the rate of infections. This prevention etiquette (social distancing), however, has become an unattainable goal for the majority of slum dwellers and the homeless in Ghana, owing to the absence of standardized housing conditions and basic services that support such a practice. This article sheds light on some strategic actions that must be adopted by government and other groups (Non-Governmental Organisations and Civil Society Organizations inclusive) towards making COVID-19 prevention etiquette of social distancing a reality for the homeless and slum dwellers in Ghana. Among other things, the paper recommends that instant moratorium should be placed on evictions of slum dwellers during the span of the pandemic since their displacement would predispose the evicted to the vulnerability of COVID-19 infection. Additionally, basic human needs such as water and sanitation should be provided for the slum dwellers while dilapidated classrooms and community centres are used to house the homeless and decongest the slums and provide for social distancing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morocco is a country with one of the highest migration rates in the world. With 29% of Moroccan films dealing with migration as the main topic, the objectives of this paper are to establish the most recurrent migration thematic lines and to determine how migration topics have evolved from 1958 – the year in which the first postcolonial film was produced- to 2015. A sample of 89 migration films included in the Moroccan Cinematographic Center's catalogue has been explored by way of narrative and contextual analysis. The methodology has been complemented with in-depth interviews with eleven Moroccan directors. Our findings allow us to confirm that there is a close relationship between the production of migration films in Morocco and the socio-political evolution of the phenomenon. The most active production period occurred from 2008 to 2011. The largest number of films belongs to the category 'migration/immigration cinema' (18 films, 20, 2%). Secondly, the most talked about topic has been the 'return home' (16 films, 17,9%), and thirdly, that of 'diasporic cinema'. Furthermore, Moroccan cinema has covered all the different phases of migration in a very balanced way, showing coherent cinematographic reaction mechanisms towards social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group of South Sudanese women came together in 2018 to share artistic and cultural practices with one another during a series of creative workshops at a community art gallery in Sydney, Australia. We collaborated with the women to organise workshop activities and a community event to showcase their cultural artefacts and items created during the workshops. Through a research-arts partnership, we documented women's conversations about their artistic and cultural traditions and practices during weekly gatherings and pre and post-workshop discussions. This paper suggests that the women involved in these participant-designed and driven workshops were redefining their culture and cultural practices in a different place, and shaped new notions of cultural continuity, defined as the process of maintaining and passing on traditional knowledge. They conceptualised cultural traditions as everyday practices in their lived realities, and as points of connections with the past. The creation of a women-only space for artistic practices in a resettlement context provided regular opportunities for women of different ages to discuss culturally-prescribed gender norms and traditions candidly. Participant-led research-arts collaborations represent a flexible approach to exploring women's notions of art and culture and gender-based experiences to understand how they navigate everyday social realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phrase ‘North – South divide’—as well as variations such as ‘North – South gap’ or ‘North – South cleavage’—has become well established in public discourse and scholarly writing. The phrase, however, is highly problematic, as it is simplistic and as there is a substantial danger of misapprehending it for ‘reality’ as such. The indiscriminate usage of the phrase ‘North – South divide’ overlooks the ways in which words create and shape our understanding of the world, on which we, in turn, base our judgements and decisions. The aim of the present paper is to point out specific ways through which this linguistic distinction—as much as any other—shapes our conception of (social) reality. The paper is in two parts. In the first we will initially draw out some pitfalls that inhere in the notion of a ‘North – South divide’qua notion, and then point to other pitfalls that relate to the usage of the expression. In the second part two case studies are presented to illustrate our arguments: one of them deals with China, the other with intellectual property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Wi-Fi, a mundane wireless networking technology, in terms of a cultural flow of meanings concerning movement of people and data. The principal analytical problem addressed in the paper is how to make sense of the profusion of images, practices, events, objects and social groupings associated with Wi-Fi. Rather than treating the abundance as driven by the IT industry's desire to find the Next Big Thing, or as hype that obscures actual social realities, the paper suggests that different ideas, ambivalences, frustrations and problems with Wi-Fi form part of an ongoing contestation of the meaning and value of information infrastructures. Using a model of culture drawn from Ulf Hannerz, the paper describes how meanings flow in three axes: ideas or modes of thought, forms of externalization and social distributions. Wi-Fi offers a significant opportunity to analyse how different movements of people and data are collectively negotiated and figured. The reflexive and tactical uses of wireless networks to contest ideas of information and movement are key elements of this negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a discussion of eight constructs students identified as supports to their classroom learning about diversity and strategies for incorporating them for classroom use. It draws on research focusing on how adults learn about diversity conducted with 25 Master of Social Work students at a Midwestern University who were engaged in a course about diversity. The need for the development of ongoing critical, dialectic awareness about social reality and the need for human dignity for all, is not limited solely to the students in the classroom. Faculty, too, are faced with the challenge of transformation in changing contemporary times. It would be unauthentic for faculty to ask students to embark on this learning journey, unless faculty, too, are willing to face the challenges and opportunities inherent in this process. This study presented the voices and experiences of adult learners as they learned to find and embrace commonality across differences. The words of the students are instructive if used to design powerful, pro-social learning experiences which will enable learners to address social inequities and vision a positive human future.

This paper explores the ways in which one of Australia’s cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at bringing Australia closer to Asia – the Asialink Arts Residency Program – may provide valuable insights for reimagining cultural diplomacy with a revised understanding of the national interest that reflects the increasingly transnational realities of the contemporary world. Drawing on extensive data gained from interviews and an online survey, the author found that program participants are engaging in exceptionally complex and at times unintended activities, and that policy concerns, such as positive image projection abroad, are rarely high on the residents’ list of priorities. However, these experiences are of particular value for the national interest, in ways not yet formulated by or included in existing cultural diplomacy discourses. With the findings in mind, the author takes a critical cosmopolitan approach to reconceptualising cultural diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relationship between voluntary agencies and their consumers has been the subject of very little, if any, empirical research. The burden of this paper is to highlight questions appropriate for investigation. It explores the idea of a `power' relationship between voluntary agencies and consumers, and makes particular reference to the theory of a social construction of disability. Questions are raised about the meaning of `consumer participation' and the rote of the disability movement. Consumer participation depends upon the exercise of power; which itself requires the fulfilment of three re-conditions. Successful implementation hinges on more than just structural and operational change. Participation must be seen as a process of re-definition: a reconstruction of the social reality in which voluntary groups exist. Such a process fundamentally alters the relationship between voluntary agencies and consumers; and so transforms the ethos and nature of voluntary action itself [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]