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As cousins, we discovered a treasure trove of family papers, revealing the intricate relationship between precarity and privilege of our family from Salonica navigating the post-Ottoman transition. Recognising the potential of family history to provide a more intimate and complex historiography, this article offers our initial study of these family papers. By highlighting the challenges posed by the scarcity of such documents in Middle Eastern studies, emphasising women’s roles in preserving family memory and focussing on the interplay between personal and political domains, we identify the preparation of a family tree as a gendered and socioeconomic project of preserving the past and shaping the present. By tracing our family's origins, including unsettling discoveries, we address matters of identity and memory before embarking on our analysis. By reconstructing the biographies of two generations, we characterise the family’s socioeconomic struggle to sustain their precarious privilege amid shifting frontiers and along their journey from Ottoman Salonica to Kemalist Turkey. Ultimately, this article underscores the significance of family history as a transnational, intergenerational, intersectional and social history that enriches our understanding of the post-Ottoman transition through the lives of ordinary (and some extraordinary) Ottomans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper engages with the Freirean concept of politicity for critical policy studies in education. The first part lays the ground to expand the conceptualisation of teachers' politicity. I argue this entails an examination of the limits and possibilities within a juncture. To develop the argument, the second part focuses on a teacher strike that took place in Chile and draws on corpus-driven discourse analysis to explore news from a national teacher organisation and from an influential newspaper. Through the angle of politicity, I identify and discuss ideational projects during the strike with an emphasis on counterhegemonic resources for change.

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

This paper explores the role of housing in the achievement of prosperity from a capabilities perspective. Prosperity, according to Jackson (Prosperity without growth: economics for a finite planet, Earthscan, Oxford, 2009), is built on Amartya Sen's notion of capabilities for flourishing. Then, in the pursuit of understanding the role of housing as an enabler of capabilities for the achievement of prosperity, this paper investigates the gaps in the views/concepts of housing through comparisons of the ten central capabilities, the right to adequate housing, and meanings of home. Data from a recent qualitative study in rural and urban Kenya is used for empirical analysis as a way to develop a localised application of the discussion. Looking through the lens of the Capabilities Approach brought a useful framework that made it possible to capture human and social housing values that are many times neglected. In that sense, the paper explores housing both as the physical conditions of the house and as the social and psychological dynamics that construct the meanings of home. The research demonstrated that the extent to which housing enables the enjoyment of capabilities for flourishing increases or diminishes insofar housing acknowledges and incorporates both material and non-material functions. Hopefully, this exercise can serve to inform and enrich future localised housing design, research and policy, where a more comprehensive understanding and conceptualisation of housing seems imperative: Housing, as House + Home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of Social Medicine in France in 1848 as a movement led by doctor Jules Guérin is not adequately documented. Why would an orthopedist write the call to doctors in Paris proposing a union around Social Medicine? What is the meaning of the formulation on Social Medicine made by Jules Guérin in 1848? An analysis of Jules Guérin's trajectory supported by primary and bibliographic sources was made to answer these questions. The material analyzed allows us to conclude that there was no movement around Social Medicine, unlike hygiene, and closer to the revolutionary proposals of 1848. Jules Guérin was a liberal doctor who aimed to have a place in the new revolutionary government for the medical corporation. His scientific and professional work was fundamentally related to orthopedics, and the paper on Social Medicine was a circumstantial essay with liberal content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper examines the contours of the Comintern journey 'from below', through the figures of the communist Humbert-Droz family. Following on from the work of Brigitte Studer, the paper rethinks the notions of clandestinity and political work within the communist 'national sections'. The question of borders and the way in which they were crossed by the protagonists is at the centre of this examination. Borders did not only appear in their physical and geographical forms; they also appeared in immaterial conceptions of the border, and as the border between the individual and the rest of society. Life on the margins of European political life and the bourgeois moral enterprise is conveyed, as the authorities, the press and the police each played a role in the anti-communist crusade. To study the relationship between the Comintern and society is to understand the mechanisms of exclusion, and the specific nature of the work of officials of the Communist International. This paper looks at the socio-political relationship between the individual and the Comintern, and the networks that could be created, while also acknowledging the power dynamic that existed and persisted within the relationship of this Comintern family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Drawing on the standpoints of Critical Pedagogy and the Emancipatory view of education, this paper addresses the issue of developing alternative educational practices that can lead to a change in relationships in the classroom and possibly in the broader social context. In relation to some of the contemporary pedagogical views, some alternative pedagogical models are presented that promote changes in the relationships between teachers and students, and between students themselves. In an effort to create a more democratic environment, we address the question of how these models can also be establisheded in contemporary schools. Starting from the promotion of didactic teacher strategies that support student autonomy, some theoretical and practical pedagogical implications are highlighted that can encourage teachers to actively and cooperatively change the classroom and wider social relations and conditions with students. In addition, the paper provides an overview of contemporary education and gives a general recommendation for education workers who want to actively work for education based on ideas of emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMobility practices in everyday life are often highly routinised and resistant to change. But they can also change significantly over the life course, reflecting sudden ruptures linked to incisive life events and more gradual shifts related to changing societal and environmental conditions. Combining insights from practice-theoretical mobility studies and mobility biographies research, this paper critically examines the role of material, social and cultural elements in transforming routine mobility practices, focusing on car ownership and use across the life course. Drawing on mobility-biographical interviews with people who live in Munich (Germany) and who do not own a car, it reveals the complexity of both one-off and daily decisions that help to establish and routinise carless mobility practices, linking them to social and material conditions past and present. The paper also documents the role of environmental and climate-related arguments in the transition towards carlessness, alongside shifts in infrastructure, social and economic circumstances and mobility-related skills and meanings. It concludes with some recommendations for sustainable mobility policy that works with the dynamics of car ownership and use across the life course and that incorporates both social and material aspects underpinning people’s decision to give up their private car. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

How social problems are constructed within social partnerships has significant effects on the management, impact, and survival of those partnerships. To explore how social problems are constructed, we adopt a social-symbolic work perspective, which highlights the variety of forms of work involved in this process, how they interact, and the impact of context on that process. Empirically, we focus on two social partnerships in Turkey that both addressed gender inequality but constructed that problem in very different terms. Our study suggests that the differences in how they came to construct the problem of gender inequality in Turkey was tied to the qualities of two forms of social-symbolic work—relational work and practice work—in which they engaged: the partnership that constructed gender inequality as an embedded problem engaged in extensive relational work and deep practice work; in contrast, the partnership that constructed the problem as disembedded engaged in efficient relational work and shallow practice work. Further, we observed that the construction of the problem of gender inequality was tied to different outcomes: an embedded social construction of the problem was associated with holistic outcomes on a more limited scale; a disembedded construction of the problem was associated with simpler outcomes on a greater scale. The paper contributes to the literature on social partnerships by showing how social problems are constructed through partners' work and how this affects their impact and sustainability. It also extends the literature on social-symbolic work by highlighting the interplay of different forms of work in constructing social problems. Finally, it contributes to research on gender inequality and organizations by showing how the work of social partnerships can shape conceptions of gender inequality at the meso level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

In order to enhance the effectiveness of social governance and accelerate economic development, this paper explores the role of diversified and inclusive policies introduced by local governments in service innovation and competitive performance, as well as their impact on improving local governance. From the perspective of social governance, several hypotheses are proposed, including: what role inclusive policies play in service innovation and competitive performance; Has diversification policy improved service innovation and competitive performance; Can the government's diversified and inclusive policies improve the social governance environment and enhance binding laws and regulations; Can service innovation and competitive performance provide conditions for social governance. The analysis results indicate that diversified and inclusive policies can effectively improve service innovation and competitive performance, and directly affect social governance. Inclusive and diverse policies can significantly improve service innovation and competitive performance, and drive them towards a positive direction. Service innovation and competitive performance are good conditions for social governance, providing support for the improvement of relevant laws and regulations. Therefore, the government should introduce diversified and inclusive policies to promote the development of service innovation and competitive performance, create a good external environment for social governance, and promote the improvement of relevant laws and regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

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

The unique neighborhood style of San Francisco Chinatown is influenced by Chinese and American culture, history and social system. Through field investigation, Chinese and English literature collection, and spatial analysis, this paper interprets the motivation of its style evolution. In the process of research, the author tries to analyze the changes and driving forces of Chinatown in San Francisco from three dimensions: the city scale, the blocks scale, and the building scale. The results show that the formation process of Chinatown in San Francisco and the range of its blocks are deeply influenced by the world political pattern in the early 20th century, the Sino-American multi-party regulations and Sino-American relations. The architectural style of the block is influenced by the Eastern and Western cultures, which is a distinctive architectural feature. The traditional architecture is deeply influenced by the architectural style of southern Fujian, while the new architecture is mainly based on the modernist architectural style. Among the main factors affecting the evolution of Chinatown in San Francisco, gold rush, earthquake, traditional Chinese architectural style and immigration policy to China are the internal mechanisms of the formation of Chinatown's spatial characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The museum exhibition, Indo + Caribbean: The Creation of a Culture, which ran at the Museum of London Docklands, offers a captivating and insightful exploration of the rich heritage and diverse traditions of the Indo-Caribbean community. Through a combination of artefacts, personal miscellany, for example, jewellery, letters petitioning the government from planter Sir John Gladstone, contracts, shipping company records, postcards and papers from the Parliamentary Archives and artworks, the exhibition provides a decent, albeit not exhaustive, overview of the historical, cultural and social aspects of Indo-Caribbean identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Financial inclusion (FI) relates to the access and availability of financial services to society, especially in low-income groups. FI is pivotal in achieving 7 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper explores the level of FI in the rural areas of Maharashtra and measures the impact of FI on the social conditions of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) prevalent in these areas. The study is based on a 424 SHGs survey conducted in the Pune, Thane, and Palghar districts of Maharashtra, India. The impact of FI on SHGs is evaluated using a Structural Equation Model (SEM). The results of the study show that physical banking services, Business Facilitators (BFs), and Business Correspondents (BCs) improve the social conditions of rural SHGs. Additionally, BCs and BFs mediate the relationship between physical banking services and social conditions. The study also reveals an insignificant association between BCs and BFs and insurance services. The present study highlights the importance of increasing the awareness of insurance policies through financial literacy programs and making timely availability and accessibility of BCs and BFs to enhance financial inclusion in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language's capacity to shape and perpetuate ideologies, cultural values, and social conditions is well-established across linguistic theory. From this perspective, combatting linguistic prejudice and promoting language equity are key to contemporary cultural concerns around challenging prescriptivist worldviews and disrupting hegemonic historical perspectives. Institutional collections represent promising staging grounds for such efforts, with wide reach and accessibility, but are typically focused and curated in mainstream language varieties. This paper explores how institutional collections may correct this homogeneity, through connecting materials containing regional/social language varieties, including those of community archives, into collections more representative of diverse linguistic and cultural landscapes. Using an AHRC-funded project integrating communitygenerated content into the UK national collection as example, this paper addresses challenges and makes recommendations for effectively valorising language varieties in institutional collections. Consequently, this paper argues for the potential of linguistically diverse institutional collections as transformative tools for promoting language equity and reducing linguistic prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ethos (0860-8024) is the property of John Paul II Institute, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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

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

Active travel ("walking and cycling") is promoted because of its benefits to environmental sustainability and public health and wellbeing. Neighbourhood design, including provision of infrastructure for walking and cycling, can increase social cohesion and can positively affect sense of belonging and pride in the community. This paper investigates the experience of residents living in a suburb of the "Cycling City" of Oxford, UK, who endeavoured to walk and cycle for local journeys. We generated in-depth qualitative insights into regular active travel activity, first through biographical interviews, followed by micro-ethnographic mobile methods with members of the local community to observe and understand how everyday activities on foot or by cycle are performed and experienced. Jensen's "Staging Mobilities" framework is used to reveal how active travel is "staged from above" and how it is choreographed within the neighbourhood, "from below". By adopting this framework, we demonstrate how moving beyond the collection of "hard" data of movements between origins and destinations, to a more situated approach generating tacit knowledge from the ground up, can provide a more informed understanding of the broader social and cultural conditions under which active travel operates. This can help policy makers develop both physical and social infrastructures to support active travel so that it may contribute more effectively to increasing community wellbeing as well as contributing to sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

The theorization of social sciences in the 20th century walked forward with difficulty. Clifford Geertz's essay, "Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture", which comprehensively explored the fundamental problems in the process, is an essential document in the history of thoughts in the social sciences in the twentieth century. In response to Geertz's reflection, this paper tries to reveal the predicament of interpretive anthropology and the entire social sciences and its methodological roots through an epistemological analysis of social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theater proposes an alternative reality and different possible identities offering a framework of how representation works in performances, and it further provides an understanding of the transformative potential of enactment. The attempt to retrieve and re-write women's histories through performances develops a culture of reconstructive capacities that resists absorption into the dominant culture. In theater, women have asserted their own vision and exercised their own viewpoints, expanding feminist space and communicating with spectators by employing publicly encoded signs. The folk theater of India, in particular, provides a public space to the (silenced) subaltern to assert agency and question the modalities of power, exclusion, images, and strategies that marginalize women. The paper examines Indian women's roles on stage and in the folk theater of Chhattisgarh from the 1980s onwards and shows how feminist performances redefine gender binaries and contest popular consciousness. By voicing women's perspectives, the women performers and women narrators of the epic Mahabharata in folk performances restructure and alter the stage. This paper explores themes of gender, power, construction of theatrical space, and the shifts in feminist positioning created by Teejan Bai and other women Pandwani performers and Kathagayakas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper concerns several elements of social structure as defined within the records of the Oradea Register (Regestrum Varadinense). This collection, known in the literature for almost five centuries, has been studied as a source of legal proceedings, ordeals or substantive law of the high Middle Ages in the Kingdom of Hungary. It was later explored as a source of topography, personal names and Hungarian and Slavic elements in medieval Latin. In the 19th century, the collection also became an important source on the history of medieval Hungarian society and administration. As such, social structure and social relations are not based on class definitions only. Records of the Oradea Register show interesting differences between men and women in law; while in legal proceedings, there were not any substantiated important differences, in substantive law, we find a different structure of delicts related to women. For many reasons, the Oradea register became an important role for studying societal stratification (udvornici, iobagiones, castrenses, servants, dusnici, et al.). In reflection with other diplomatic material from the Kingdom of Hungary in the first third of the 13th century, we are witnesses of a society on the verge of great changes, before the completion of the nobility and before the creation of medieval towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of land was central to livelihoods in the villages of the Horthy era. The majority of Hungary's agricultural land is under the cultivation of large estates and manors, while the majority of the village population owns small, fragmented estates. Thus, they are dependent on large estates and the natural environment for their supplementary livelihoods, to varying degrees and in different forms. In this paper, after a national overview, I present examples from two settlements to illustrate the rural livelihoods of the period, along which options and strategies are outlined - without claiming completeness. My sources include local historical works, official statistics, periodical press publications, and studies on the social history of the era. The first settlement is Tiszaigar from Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county, which is basically an agrarian proletarian settlement, most of its land is owned by large estates, the population is highly vulnerable to the surrounding large estates. The other settlement, Dudar's location in Veszprém County offers several opportunities for additional livelihoods: the mountainous environment and the proximity of forests provide the population with the possibility of multiple livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread presence of Anglicisms in the Macedonian language is undisputable. Anglicisms are particularly conspicuous in political discourse as politicians seem to have pronounced tendency to insert English borrowings in their public statements, speeches, discussion and debates quite frequently. While politicians thus clearly attempt to reinforce the persuasiveness of the political messages they impart to the masses, the question that arises is whether the general public endorses or condemns such a linguistic strategy. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on Macedonian native speakers' perceptions and understanding of a list of Anglicisms that have become an integral part of Macedonian political discourse. For the purposes of this research, a tailor-made questionnaire was conducted among Macedonian speakers of different ages and educational levels. The aim was twofold - to inspect the influence of age and education on the informants' understanding of Anglicisms, and to ascertain whether they perceive Anglicisms as a serious threat to the purity of their mother tongue or as a welcome addition that enriches it and increases its expressive potential. The insights gained from this research point in the direction of a tacit agreement between political authorities and general public about the usefulness of Anglicisms in Macedonian political discourse, but they also indicate that the (lack of) understanding and (non) acceptance of Anglicisms used in political discourse, to a great extent, are conditioned by the profile of Macedonian native speakers, i.e. their age and education, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has paralysed many countries' social and economic lives. COVID-19 has pushed the world towards drastic social distancing and sterilisation measures to limit the spread and impact of the infection. However, it remains unclear what the long-term physical, psychological, socio-economic, and political decisions will be and their consequences. Scientists today have a great responsibility to study this period. Therefore, expert data contributes to the individual and collective development of citizens. The analytical method used in this study involved a theoretical analysis of publications on social and human sciences from the Scopus database, mainly focusing on the year 2020, to develop a framework for understanding the societal repercussions of the pandemic. The study defines a wide range of social consequences and effects of COVID-19, shows the impact pandemic on education in the context of social policy, establishes the socio-political and economic consequences of COVID-19, and substantiates psychological reactions to COVID-19. A review of the literature can help determine the impact of COVID-19 on social policy. Based on the analysis of the papers, it can be concluded that COVID-19 has increased inequality, widened the gap between the rich and the poor, and threatened the stability of society in low-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

The gender gap in education is not limited to the subject of mathematics or only to be found in high-income countries, and its repercussions can have generational consequences. Previous literature has sought to explain why the gender gap persists in most high- and middle-income countries vis-à-vis social gender inequality without drawing from similarly comprehensive data from the African context with its unique gender gap landscape. This paper examines the correlation between more gender-equal countries and the gender gap in student test scores for reading, mathematics, and HIV-AIDS awareness in southern and eastern Africa. We use ordinary least squares and quantile regression to analyse student information from the SACMEQ III dataset in comparison with measurements of social gender inequality such as the Gender Inequality Index and the Global Gender Gap Index. As such, this analysis draws on data from roughly 60,000 African students and includes test scores from reading comprehension and HIV-AIDS awareness, a unique subject that is critical for health, wealth and wellbeing on the continent. Our study finds that in each subject at every quantile, the gender gap displays a robust inverse relationship with more gender-equal countries specifically demonstrating higher educational performance among girls. With youthful populations and burgeoning economies, these countries in Africa have much to gain from addressing the gender gap in education. These findings encourage policymakers to consider how the social condition of gender-equality might influence the academic performance of students, especially for girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Can 'health resilience' explain international differences in COVID‐19 mortality? This paper aims to understand the significant diversity in mortality rates between countries in terms of their degree of preparedness for the crisis and the underlying health conditions of the population. We integrate COVID‐19 data from the first year of the pandemic with panel data from 2009 to 2017 for 188 countries around the world in order to investigate international variation in COVID‐19 mortality rates. Country‐level data on health, medical, social and policy variables are compared with COVID‐19 mortality rates, with further controls imposed to adjust for infection rate, population and health spending. The results show that prior health conditions, social deprivation and the demography of the country all have significant effects on the mortality rates associated with the virus. The evidence also suggests that countries with higher levels of health‐related policy targets demonstrated lower levels of mortality during the crisis. Finally, we confirm that social habits such as smoking, alcohol consumption and over‐eating create a highly vulnerable group of individuals who were exposed to a greater risk of mortality during the outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Laura Frost's The problem with pleasure: Modernism and its discontents has blazed a new trail and annexed the concept of pleasure to the notion of modernism in her reading of Jean Rhys's fiction. For all her meticulously traced genealogy of pleasure, however, communal pleasure is conspicuously absent. This paper argues against a simplistic generalization of Rhys's treatment of various kinds of pleasure. It is true that Rhys's female protagonists all make choices that steer them away from pleasure and happiness, but a close-up look at the socio-historical contexts of their life shows that they are often forced to make such choices rather than doing so of their own accord. It is also true that they deserve sympathy, but this sympathy is not earned through their refusal to take part in collective pleasure, as Frost has claimed, but by their sufferings caused by mercenary men who take advantage of their poverty and dislocations, which reflect or refract such socio-historical factors as intense industrialization and globalized colonization. Each of Rhys's novels contains some moments, however brief, that throw insight into her female protagonist's genuine love for the pleasure afforded either in nature or in art whose appreciation cannot be achieved unless through taste. And they are capable of sharing such pleasure with people around, and even with strangers, which implies a sense of communal well-being and a yearning for communal feelings. Indeed, part of Rhys's contribution to modernism is her redefinition of pleasure, but an integral part of that reconceptualization is her reshaping of communal pleasure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is presented in the form of an interview, encompassing the key voice of Troy Phili, the former Unit Manager for Burial Grounds and Graves, at South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) between 2005-2013. The paper aims to highlight the distortions in the profiling of Charlotte Maxeke and how this could lead to misrepresentations of her unique role in the struggle. From an oral history perspective, an interview with Troy Phili contributes to the correction of such distortions. Thus, the paper is embedded in this oral testimony. The interview emphasized oral history as a means of correcting historical distortions, as was the case of Troy while working towards the declaration of Maxeke’s gravesite as a national heritage site. This paper also relied on desktop analysis of both primary and secondary sources of data. The authors perceive these tendencies not as seeking to downplay Maxeke’s catalytic life, but how oral history as methodology and technique can be used to rectify historical misrepresentations. The paper contributes to the correction of distortions of representations of Maxeke during the declaration of her gravesite. This adds to the understanding of the historical declaration of gravesites in historicizing the role played by individuals such as Maxeke in South Africa.

Rural regions across the OECD depend on a wide range of economic engines for growth, as well as the quality of place to attract and retain people. Social innovation seeks new answers to social and environmental problems, using new solutions that improve the quality of life for individuals and communities. Social innovation can be a tool to create vibrancy in rural areas by filling public service gaps, experimenting with new business models, and creating a stronger sense of community. However, not all rural areas are equally equipped to engage in social innovation. This paper provides guidance for policy makers and proposes an approach alongside a dashboard of indicators for measuring readiness and capacity to engage with social innovation in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that humour plays a significant role in the formation of a collective identity and 'creates a sense of internal cohesion' based on shared experiences [Fominaya, C. F. (2007). The role of humour in the process of collective identity formation in autonomous social movement groups in contemporary Madrid. International Review of Social History, 52(S15), 243–258. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859007003227]. In this paper, we focus on humour in jihadi English magazines. This study is based on 82 English magazines published by the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Tahrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). This research takes a mixed method of analysing data both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings point to a statistically significant difference amongst these groups in the type of humour they utilise. In general, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and TTP show similar patterns in the types of humour they employ, a pattern that often stands in stark contrast with ISIS. ISIS is more likely than Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or TTP to use dehumanising and mocking humour while less likely than these groups to use situational humour, which is a less negative form of humour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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