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How are we to understand the contemporary preoccupation—at least in many English‐speaking societies—with 'random acts of kindness' and the idea of kindness more generally? Should this be seen as a challenge to the logic of capitalism or reinforcing of it, an example of commodification of emotion within our everyday lives? By introducing and mapping the contours of an emergent 'kindness industry', placing emotion (and enchantment) at the heart of how attachment to the idea of kindness is theorised, and marshalling existing empirical research on contemporary framings of everyday kindness, I argue that there is a need for a critical sociological engagement with the 'pro‐social' that does justice to its profound ambivalence. In the case of contemporary kindness this involves understanding both the regulatory nature of the enchantment sold by a kindness industry and the problem‐solving potential of the enchantment of kindness in the everyday, where it both helps address contemporary feelings of hopelessness and shame and facilitates the possibility of making life materially liveable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the Romantics, Charles Darwin was deeply though fruitfully torn between the mechanist dictate to banish agency from nature and the organicist impulse to naturalize agency, to make agency synonymous with life. His conflicting intellectual inheritances and allegiances put him in a state of profound and extraordinarily productive ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of humor, specifically banter, in addressing gendered organizational tensions within the UK Fire and Rescue Service during a period of modernizing change. Such tensions reflect who holds authority and who is deemed to belong, and we explore how banter is used to both contest and confirm authority associated with the formal rank system and the informal, masculinist ideal‐typical worker in this context. We discuss banter's various roles as a cohering mode of humorous workplace communication, one that can reduce tension and consolidate authority and belonging, as well as its boundary setting, testing, and crossing capacities. In terms of the latter, we ask whether banter can genuinely trouble masculinist organizational norms. We conclude that specific humorous episodes that go "beyond banter" create particular ambivalence, but their impact is significantly limited by widespread discursive acceptance of banter as a central and permissible communication mode in the Service's culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1940 saw the mass internment of so‐called ‘enemy aliens’ within Britain as a response to the rapid advance of Nazi forces on the continent; this meant that innocent civilians—including many who were already refugees from Nazism—were incarcerated in camps across the country, particularly within the tourist spaces of the Isle of Man. We do not seek to argue that internees simply experienced internment as being akin to a holiday, or that the overarching internment process itself shared any similarity with leisure time per se. Nonetheless, the appropriation of tourist infrastructures for use within the internment process contributed towards the presence of a lingering tourist gaze in a situation to which it should not, ostensibly pertain. A state of ambivalence may not accurately capture internment's effects—exclusion and imprisonment—but it certainly captured the dissonances experienced, how it was remembered (particularly with the passage of time), and how the internment camp's exceptional level of control was rendered much more fragile and complex (Katz 2015, p. 49, 84). We interrogate how residual touristic ways of seeing, infrastructures, practices and sensibilities, are evident in a variety of archival source material, contemporaneous newspaper articles, and eyewitness accounts, and consider the rhythms and practices of camp life, deportations abroad on ships such as the SS Arandora Star and the HMT Dunera, and the gaze of locals and the press. The holiday—as a geography of ideas, spaces, practices, movements and sensibilities—became a frame of reference, both by those in charge of the process, and the internees who had to make sense of it. We proffer an exploration of internment and ‘the holiday’ to the burgeoning geographies of camp and detainment spaces, (im)mobilities and their politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Suicidal ambivalence is increasingly understood as the result of the interplay of two conflicting motivational orientations, the wish to die (WTD) and wish to live (WTL). However, research is scarce regarding the nature of their relationship, their temporal structure, and their relevance in predicting suicidal desire. Methods: Fifty psychosomatic/psychiatric inpatients (17 reporting suicide attempts) took part in an intensive longitudinal design with 10 signal‐contingent prompts per day over 10 days; assessing WTD, WTL, and suicidal desire. We calculated mean values and variability of WTD, WTL, suicidal ambivalence, and suicidal desire and tested mixed‐effects models of suicidal desire. Results: The mean number of answered prompts was 40.98 (SD = 21.68). Repeated‐measures correlation of WTD and WTL was r = −0.60. Patients with a history of suicide attempts reported higher WTD, lower WTL, more suicidal ambivalence, stronger suicidal desire, and showed higher variability in all constructs. At the same assessment, WTD was the strongest statistical predictor of suicidal desire. Only WTL and the interaction of WTD and WTL predicted suicidal desire prospectively. Conclusion: Wish to die and WTL are likely two distinct (although correlated) constructs that should not be reduced to a single ambivalence score. A stronger focus on WTL holds potential for suicide research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ambivalence in attitudes towards life and death are associated with suicide ideation (SI) among adolescents. However, previous research was mainly cross‐sectional and did not examine through which psychopathological mechanisms (such as depression) attitudes towards life and death are associated with SI. Objective: The current longitudinal study examined the mediating role of depression at follow‐up in the association between attitudes towards life and death at baseline and SI at follow‐up among at‐risk adolescents referred to an outpatient psychiatric clinic. Methods: 129 adolescents aged 10–18 years (75.2% females) with a history of suicidal thoughts and behaviors were assessed at clinic intake and 1 month follow‐up (80% retention rate at follow‐up). All participants completed a questionnaire assessing attitudes towards life and death and SI severity at clinic intake, and depression and SI severity at 1 month follow‐up. Results: While controlling for SI severity at intake, attraction towards life at baseline, rather than attraction and repulsion towards death at baseline, led to higher SI severity at follow‐up, while depression at follow‐up fully mediated this association. Conclusions: Attitudes towards life, as well as depression play critical roles in the development of SI among adolescents. Interventions targeting reasons for living and promoting meaning of life may be beneficial in preventing depression and SI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Research has largely conceptualized suicidal ambivalence as the difference between one's wish to live and wish to die without fully considering other suicide ideation (SI) experiences included on measures like the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS). We utilized BSS items to identify SI latent classes and examined relevant correlates and outcomes. Methods: We collected self‐report data from two samples of US adults who: (1) self‐identified as LGBTQ+ (N = 349; cross‐sectional) and (2) self‐reported past‐week SI (BSS score ≥ 11; N = 133; 3 timepoints). Results: Latent class analyses supported three‐class (Sample 1) and four‐class solutions (Sample 2), which included ambivalent classes. In Sample 1, sexual orientation, gender, depression, anxiety, SI, and suicide‐specific rumination were concurrently associated with class membership. In Sample 2, depression, SI, suicide‐specific rumination, and physical/psychological distance from suicide methods were concurrently associated with class membership. In Sample 2, at both follow‐ups, suicide plans/preparations and Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance symptom frequencies were provided by class membership, and suicidal intent significantly differed by class membership. Conclusions: SI classes differed by sample and evidenced nuances in SI and suicidal ambivalence. Risk factors and suicide‐related outcomes also differed by class membership. Implications and limitations are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Suicidal ambivalence is a recognized phenomenon in suicidology, yet not much is known about it in the context of progression from suicidal ideation to action. The current study addresses this gap. We explore narrative dynamics of suicidal ambivalence in stories about transition from suicidal ideation to action. Methods: We employ an experiential qualitative approach to gain in‐depth understanding of narrated experience of suicidal ambivalence. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with 22 patients hospitalized after a suicide attempt. For a detailed analysis, we selected 11 interviews in which the interviewees' accounts spontaneously referred to their ambivalence about attempting suicide. We used a text‐oriented version of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to analyze the semantics and syntax, as well as the functions of what was said within the local context, and the social actions thus accomplished. Results: Our study shows primarily that ambivalence is not resolved. Rather, it is set aside and removed from the narrative and replaced by an action‐focused narrative with no references to mental activities. Conclusion: We propose that ambivalence recedes and gives way to action and that qualitative research provides a useful evidence base for conceptualizing and understanding the role of ambivalence in transition from suicidal ideation to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Suicide risk is highly fluctuating. There is a need for predictors of short‐term change in suicide risk to optimize risk assessment and treatment, especially among individuals who already attempted suicide. Methods: Based on 1776 daily assessments of 16 former psychiatric inpatients with a history of suicide attempts, we examined how suicidal ambivalence and, respectively, wish to die (WTD) and wish to live (WTL) predicted same‐day and change in perceived suicide risk (i.e., next‐day perceived suicide risk, controlled for same‐day perceived suicide risk) in multilevel regression models. Additionally, based on the assumptions of nonlinear dynamics, we examined the associations between levels of fluctuations in the WTD/WTL and perceived suicide risk within the same time period. Results: Suicidal ambivalence, WTD, and a WTL significantly correlated with same‐day suicide risk. Suicidal ambivalence and WTD significantly predicted change in suicide risk. Fluctuations in WTD were significantly associated with concurrent suicide risk. Conclusion: The results suggest that suicidal ambivalence and WTD are drivers of suicide risk among individuals who already attempted suicide. The association between fluctuations in WTD and suicide risk was small and warrants further investigation on the practical utility as a warning sign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Suicidal ambivalence is considered a characteristic condition of suicidal individuals. At the same time, there is a lack of a uniform definition, conception and assessment of suicidal ambivalence. On this background, the current scoping review aims to explore the extent, range, and nature of research activity on suicidal ambivalence and to summarize research findings. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in four different databases (PubMed, Psychinfo, Web of Science, and Google Scholar) using an array of search terms (e.g., ambivalence, internal suicide debate, reasons for living and reasons for dying, wish to live and wish to die). Results: In total, 28 articles published between 1977 and 2023 were included in the scoping review. The study situation lacks a clear definition, conceptualization and operationalization of suicidal ambivalence. Nonetheless, suicidal ambivalence is a common experience in persons contemplating suicide and suicidal ambivalence seems to be present before, during and after a suicide attempt. Suicidal ambivalence is associated with diverse markers of negative/positive mental health as well as suicidal ideation and behavior. Conclusion: Results point to the relevance of suicidal ambivalence. At the same time, there are large gaps in knowledge about the development, impact and therapeutic responsiveness of suicidal ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Findings on the role of suicide ambivalence, an individual's wish to live (WL), and wish to die (WD) in the development of suicidality have been heterogenous. The main goal of this study was to examine associations of these constructs within the past week with sociodemographic factors and to longitudinally investigate their predictive power for suicidal ideation (SI) and suicide attempts (SA). Methods: N = 308 patients (54% female; M = 36.92 years, SD = 14.30), admitted to a psychiatric ward due to suicidality, were assessed for all constructs after admission, after six, nine, and 12 months. Data were analyzed with univariate fixed‐effect models and lagged mixed‐effect regression models. Results: Decreased, WL increased post‐baseline. Gender showed no significant link to ambivalence, WD, and WL. Ambivalence and WD correlated negatively with age and positively with depressiveness. More participants in a relationship showed a WL compared with single/divorced/widowed participants. More single participants or those in a relationship showed ambivalence than divorced/widowed participants. More single participants showed a WD than participants in a relationship/divorced/widowed. Longitudinally, ambivalence and WD predicted SI and SA. Conclusion: The findings underscore the importance of taking suicide ambivalence and WD into account in risk assessment and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the friendships that young refugees make in Germany as their country of arrival. Although friends are highly relevant in children's lives, little attention has been paid to this subject regarding young refugees. We conducted ego‐network interviews with 17 young refugees aged 9–15, with which we explored the opportunity structures in which young refugees choose their friends and their ways of establishing and deepening friendships, as well as the limitations thereof. Core dimensions of friendship, as proposed by Shmuel Eisenstadt, are used as sensitizing concepts: voluntariness, moral quality, unconditionality, trust, deep meaning/brittleness, and ambivalence. By reinterpreting them through an interactionist lens, the analysis reveals the complex work young refugees invest into making friends and establishing themselves in the social world of their school and peer groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of recognition in political and social thought, focusing on the ambivalence of recognition and its implications for ideological recognition. The author critiques Axel Honneth's theory of ideological recognition, proposing an alternative epistemic structural account that considers epistemic trust and structural power. The epistemic structural account aims to identify unjustified recognition by examining the violation of the basic norm of trust and the operations of structural power. The article also explores the theoretical and practical implications of the epistemic structural account for critical theory, social pathology, power dynamics, and the recognition of racial identities. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Powell and Pressburger's War: The Art of Propaganda, 1939-1946" by Greg M. Colón Semenza and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr. explores the wartime cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The authors argue that the films produced by Powell and Pressburger during this period were both works of art and effective pieces of cinematic propaganda. They examine the filmmakers' engagement with propaganda and their self-conscious approach to creating propaganda that questioned its own nature and objectives. The book provides analysis and historical context for eight films made by Powell and Pressburger between 1939 and 1946. The authors emphasize the films' artistry and draw on original scholarship and archival writings to enhance understanding of the filmmakers and their works. [Extracted from the article]

This article begins by commenting on recent work on legal consciousness, concentrating especially on the pioneering work of Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey and later commentary, including research by Ayelet Oz that attempts to extend their ideas to cases of non‐state private ordering such as Wikipedia. It goes on to outline some of the distinctive features of Wikipedia's legal system and its ambivalence about (state) law and discusses the objections to what is called ‘wikilawyering’. To illustrate ‘wikilegality’, it offers a brief examination of how a dispute develops and is processed. The article concludes with some brief comments about what this case study can tell us about Ewick and Silbey's claims about hegemonic legality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household biogas is an off‐grid energy technology that converts human, animal, and agricultural waste into fuel. This article analyses the emergence and use of household biogas technologies in Tanzania to theorize energy ethics in a postcolonial world. It engages Jane Bennett's theorization of the ‘energetics’ and aestheticization of ethics to ask how people assert and think through their own notions of good energy in postcolonial Africa. It documents two distinct registers people use to evaluate the ethics of biogas. The ‘circle of life’ register mobilizes popular environmental aesthetics of circle, cycle, and reuse as well as neoliberal and socialist political aesthetics of self‐containment and self‐reliance to enchant biogas with an ethical aura. The ‘excremental ambivalence’ register, alternately, disenchants biogas through referencing the polyvalent semiotics of shit and the sedimentation of racial and economic inequalities that condition the propagation of biogas. People engage both registers in the context of specific political economic and ecological conditions that also affect biogas uptake or refusal. The article thus argues that political economy, materiality, and aestheticization all play a role in people's ethical orientation to biogas and that ambivalence is a defining feature of energy transition in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research examined whether consideration of individuals' certainty in their holism can enhance the ability of this individual difference to predict how they respond to contradiction‐relevant outcomes. Across four studies, participants first completed a standardized measure of holistic‐analytic thinking. Then, they rated how certain they were in their responses to the holism scale or were experimentally induced to feel high or low certainty. Next, participants were exposed to dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), to a counter‐attitudinal change induction (Study 2), or to a paradigm of attitudinal ambivalence (Study 3). Results revealed that participants with higher certainty in their holistic thinking exhibited higher preference for dialectical proverbs (Study 1a and 1b), changed their attitude less following a counter‐attitudinal task (Study 2) and showed weaker correspondence between objective and subjective ambivalence (Study 3). Beyond examining new domains and discovering novel findings, the present work was designed to be the first to show moderation of previously identified effects in the domain of holistic thinking and responses to contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, it is mandatory for separating couples to attempt Family Dispute Resolution (FDR/mediation) before taking a parenting matter to court. In this context some clients may attend FDR solely as a means of accessing court processes. This article examines key outcomes across a large sample of FDR clients in a community sector organization. Participation, rates of agreement, levels of satisfaction, and levels of acrimony are assessed for the sample as a whole and for a subgroup of those indicating their intention to proceed to court. Strong rates of participation, agreement, and satisfaction are reported for the full sample, and significant reductions in acrimony are evident among those who reached agreement in FDR. We find that those who indicate ambivalence to negotiating parenting matters in FDR nevertheless derive benefit from participation in terms of reduced acrimony, satisfaction with the process, and reaching some level of agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the the existing studies of the 1917 food‐supply crisis none has examined in detail the role and impact of grain registration. This article fills that gap by investigating the implementation of grain registration in Penza province, thus adding to and complicating the increasingly decentered picture of food‐supply policy and its impact in 1917. This study asserts that a major turning point during 1917 was the poor Volga harvest, which contributed to the threat of a prolonged subsistence crisis in an intermediary province already enduring the collapse of critical resupply channels. In this context, initially ambivalent volost officials and peasants came to embrace grain registration in the post‐harvest period as a way to document a legitimate claim to receive grain. This article adds to our understanding of the variability of peasant agency exhibited during 1917. The main post‐harvest struggle was over competing interpretations of the registration process between volost and district officials. The latter were pressed by provincial and central superiors to increasingly utilize armed force, not to compel compliance with registration, but to hasten the delivery of grain to urban consumers. This study illustrates how the Provisional government's turn to state violence to establish its procurement authority was a function of how its policies, combined with deteriorating local conditions, produced competing entitlements to grain. Rather than a continuum of crisis in which Provisional government food‐supply policies repeatedly exacerbated crisis by failing to overlap with local demands and provoked resistance among grain producers and consumers, a combination of state and non‐state factors produced an economic environment in which the interests of both volost officials and peasants were served by key features of the state grain monopoly, especially grain registration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A masterclass in Serbia on documentary film debates creativity. Experimental and documentary filmmakers in the region assert the boundaries of documentary in order to transgress them. Creativity offers a means to authenticity, animated through viewers' projection. Approaching authenticity as animated rejects preoccupations with the mechanical indexicality of the camera. Rather than focusing on index as trace, the ambivalence of indexicality productively moves between representation and reality. This highlights two paradoxes of documentary: that fictional techniques create a real world and that individuals animate types. Authenticity is fragile. Documentary creativity celebrates this vulnerability, inviting visual anthropology to experiment, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between schizophrenia, divine encounters, and therapeutics based on ethnographic research in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Contributing to a long history of single‐subject ethnographies in psychological anthropology, this article narrates the events leading up to the diagnosis and the emerging life worlds post‐diagnosis of an interlocutor I call Dhruv. I depart from symbolic constructions of the divine to an affective divine, a kind of force that enters and alters embodied existence. Following scholars who call for theories that move beyond Western metropolitan epistemologies, I draw upon the Bhagavad Gita, a poetic scripture from the Hindu tradition, as a form of psychological theory to contend how an encounter with the divine might be too much to bear, even traumatic. In doing so, the article offers an alternative entry point to the commonly held assumption of the therapeutic efficacy of divine encounters and religious sites in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In polarized societal debates, it is often assumed that perceiving polarization leads individuals to take sides (e.g., "pro‐life" or "pro‐choice"). However, perceiving polarization can also make individuals ambivalent because they feel "caught in the social crossfire" of the debate. We conducted a survey study (Ntotal = 863 women) on ambivalents' perspectives of the U.S. abortion debate. Findings supported the hypothesis that ambivalents' perceived polarization related positively to their felt ambivalence. This relationship can be explained by their feeling of being "caught in the social crossfire": they feel torn while also understanding both sides of the debate. Moreover, felt ambivalence was positively related to tendencies toward avoidance of the debate but also toward conciliatory efforts (e.g., to create mutual understanding between the groups). We discuss the implications of these findings for the relationship between perceived polarization and felt ambivalence among ambivalents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes the understudied practice of collecting, marketing, and displaying colonial plant commodities as garden ornaments in nineteenth‐century Britain. From the early modern period onward, British garden writers discussed tobacco, sugarcane, coffee, tea, and other colonial crops in their books and magazines, often citing colonial agriculture as a point of interest to curious gardeners. As I will argue, this mode of collecting and aestheticizing plants discloses the deep ambivalence of the British horticultural press toward the realities of plantation agriculture. Building on previous analyses of plants and empire, I show how the cultivation of tobacco in nineteenth‐century flower gardens contributed to a broader mediation of Britain's colonial past in horticultural literature. Paying attention to this collecting trend will not only recover an overlooked chapter in the history of British horticulture, but also show how nineteenth‐century garden writing operated as a space for transmitting (and manipulating) narratives about colonial agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Several attitude scales have been developed to measure students' attitudes toward computer programming, including the prominent one developed by Cetin and Ozden. The development of these scales stemmed from the elusive nature of attitude and the lack of specific constructs to measure attitude. These instruments measure students' attitudes based on one‐dimensional perspective, thus, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of some attitude evaluations such as the meaning of neutral points in a 10‐point scale (for example). Objectives: The computer programming attitude scale was modified to measure ambivalence. The study also investigate attitude differences across demographic variables and used these variables to predict ambivalence. Methods: The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the instrument was validated using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. In the second phase, the revised scale was administered to another 547 students in four research universities for empirical investigation. Results: Results show that the instrument is valid and suitable for measuring students' programming attitudes. Participants' attitudes skewed toward the negative attitude dimension. Lastly, we found that both attitude and ambivalence are factors of programming experience. Conclusions: We discussed the findings, recommend the instrument to programming tutors, and strongly emphasise the evaluation of students' ambivalent attitudes. Lay Description: What is currently known: There are numerous scales developed to measure students' attitude toward computer programming, such as the computer programming attitude scale (CPAS).The development of these inventories stemmed from the elusive nature of attitude and the lack of specific construct to measure attitude.These instruments measure students' attitude based on one dimensional perspective, thus, making it difficult to interpret the meaning of some attitude evaluations such as the meaning of neutral points in a 10‐point scale (for example). What this paper adds: The present research brings a novel approach to instrument development by acknowledging the presence of attitude toward computer programming.This novel approach advances the knowledge of instrument development in the field of attitude measurement by introducing a paradigm shift from conventional attitude evaluation to a more diverse approach.The study has introduced new items to the existing CPAS, and subsequently, indicates the possibility of validating an attitude inventory using data obtained from ambivalence evaluation.By using this instrument, students' attitude is measured accurately rather than adopting the conventional measures that ignored the presence of negative and positive evaluations. Implication to practitioners: Through the findings of the study, computer science and programming educators would come to know that many positive and negative attitude elements are occasionally subsumed toward an attitude object, thereby leading to an ambivalence attitude.The instrument can be used by the practitioners to accurately measure students' positive and negative attitude toward programming across all levels of education.Using the instrument, practitioners can predict the identified attitude using wide range of variables such as gender, age, computational thinking skills, programming proficiency levels, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This essay is part of a forum on Srila Roy's (2022) book, Changing the Subject. I suggest that Roy's book offers a way to sit with the paradoxes of feminist praxis by engaging with its everyday messiness and conflict. I read Roy's book through the lens of my research with sex worker activists in India, focusing on how Roy's attention to ambivalence helped me to rethink my analysis. Through ethnography, the book shows how her interlocutors strategize creatively under disempowering conditions, challenging narratives of loss and depoliticization in feminist movements. Finally, I reflect on questions the book raises about the practice of feminist research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This essay responds to the contributions to the forum centered on my book Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India. It addresses questions posed by the contributors, from the role of the state to the digital when it comes to a rapidly changing terrain of queer and feminist organizing in contemporary India. While the book rallied against defensiveness, in this commentary I revisit defensiveness as a queer feminist political affect. Through the provocations offered in this book forum conversation, I find renewed faith in asserting friction, inconvenience, ambivalence, and defensiveness as ways of expanding queer feminisms as ongoing sites of struggle, transformation, trust, solidarity, and hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household sector innovators often create solutions to address their own personal needs, but while need‐solution pairs can have important functions in creativity and design, the solutions that are initially devised as part of a working prototype are likely to be imperfect. This presents an adoption‐related puzzle that revolves around how an imperfect solution created to meet a unique personal need can subsequently be used by others. I develop a multilevel model to propose that creative ambivalence is an in‐between state for describing how mixed emotions, which capture reflective accounts in the creation of need‐solution pairs, can influence implementation. Using Thingiverse, a longitudinal dataset of designers in an online community, the designers' own reflective accounts and commentaries on their creative work, I find that creative ambivalence encourages implementation and that creative ambivalence at a personal level positively increases the implementation of need‐solution pairs in the production of household products, whereas ambivalence at an artefact level reveals no influence. In addition, solution adoption in follow‐on design derivatives accentuates the effect of creative ambivalence on implementation, so that the positive relationship between creative ambivalence and implementation is stronger when solution adoption is high. The multilevel model and results offer important theoretical contributions to research on affect and creativity and lead userness and practical implications for identifying lead users in online communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this article, we investigate the effects of leader subjective ambivalence on team performance. Integrating the ambivalence literature and social learning theory, we propose a multi‐level model of whether, when, and why team leaders' subjective ambivalence enhances team performance outcomes. The results of two laboratory experiments (Studies 1 and 2) demonstrate initial support for the relationship between leader subjective ambivalence and information‐seeking behaviors. The results of a longitudinal field study (Study 3) based on 164 projects (164 leaders and 725 subordinates) show that leader subjective ambivalence has a positive indirect effect on team task performance first through leader information‐seeking behaviors and later through team information‐seeking behaviors. Our results further indicate that project complexity is a boundary condition for the proposed conditional indirect effect of leader subjective ambivalence on team performance outcomes. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We aimed to identify profiles of ambivalence among individuals with a history of non‐suicidal self‐injury (NSSI) and tested whether profiles differed across various theoretically informed constructs: NSSI‐related characteristics, cognitive (outcome expectancies, self‐efficacy to resist NSSI), emotional (psychological distress, difficulties in emotion regulation), personality, and incentives to engage/not engage in NSSI. Methods: Individuals with a lifetime history of NSSI (n = 224) reported the extent to which they wanted to and did not want to engage in NSSI and completed well‐validated measures of the constructs of interest. Results: Latent profile analysis indicated four ambivalence profiles (avoid: n = 39; moderately ambivalent: n = 85; highly ambivalent: n = 30; approach: n = 70). The profiles differed across a number of NSSI‐related characteristics, cognitive, emotional, and incentive‐related variables. Differences between the ambivalence profiles and the avoid/approach profiles varied across constructs. For example, the ambivalence and approach profiles were similar for NSSI‐related outcome expectancies, but the ambivalence and avoidance profiles were similar for self‐efficacy to resist NSSI. Conclusion: Findings highlight variation between the desire to engage or not engage in NSSI that are consistent with the notion of ambivalence. Understanding these differences may allow for a more person‐centered approach in treatment for NSSI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of the emotions elicited by loving‐kindness meditation (LKM) at early stages of practice is limited, despite the influence that these emotions may have on later engagement. Past work suggests that LKM may elicit emotional ambivalence at early stages of the practice, but it is still unclear whether the content of LKM activates this ambivalence and who is more likely to experience it. Given the specific content of LKM, we defend that this meditation is likely to elicit empathetic emotions, both positive (compassion and gratitude) and negative (guilt), to a greater extent than an active control. Guilt is likely to be elicited by memories of incidents where naïve meditators were not able to experience compassion and/or by the difficulties in sending compassionate love to disliked others during the meditation. Furthermore, individuals with greater self‐discrepancy and lower self‐esteem are more likely to experience guilt. These hypotheses were tested in two experimental studies with community and student samples (n = 55 and n = 33, respectively) and using a brief intervention. The results support the hypotheses. These findings have implications for instructors of LKM, especially when organizing meditation practices with naïve meditators who should be aware of the potential negative emotions elicited by this meditation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of behaviour, choice, and action have long presented an "act" as a kind of bottleneck of meaning‐making, where the action is either a cocktail of partial preferences or the survival of one over the rest. I argue that action is often something very (if subtly) different and propose "ambivalent action" as a category of moral action defined by the actor's conflicting intentions, in which the conflict is reified (not resolved) by the act. Situated in past and contemporary context, the term is an interdisciplinary bridge, with links from classical (if vague) theoretic treatments of "ambivalence" to new sociological analogies in the realm of quantum physics. I explore this duality through the case study of #BlackoutTuesday, a social media movement connected with global protests against police brutality and racism. The black square that characterized the movement is best understood as ambivalent action, as an act of two‐fold narrative‐making: "both" silence and speech. The "success" of an ambivalent action in remaining in two narratives at once is determined by the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This piece presents a narration of a dream by a rural migrant, Yang Cui, who works in the city of Shantou in China. It reveals her inner struggles to end an affair with another migrant worker, Lao Bo. This piece is written as a part of an ethnographic book project on rural–urban migration in China, in which I experiment with different genres of writing in an attempt to address migrants' bewildering existential multiplicity of interior experience, among which some are presented more analytically, some more subjectively, and some more imaginatively. Understanding the human condition in terms of the limits of knowing others and ourselves requires anthropologists to seek creative forms of ethnographic narrative to give shape and voice to existential struggles, ambivalence, and uncertainty of everyday life. This piece attempts to use Yang Cui's narration of her dream as an evocative form of describing her inner struggles being with Lao Bo as a so‐called linshi fuqi ("temporary couple"), through which her self‐knowledge unfolds, reflection takes place, and consciousness finds expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of behaviour, choice, and action have long presented an "act" as a kind of bottleneck of meaning‐making, where the action is either a cocktail of partial preferences or the survival of one over the rest. I argue that action is often something very (if subtly) different and propose "ambivalent action" as a category of moral action defined by the actor's conflicting intentions, in which the conflict is reified (not resolved) by the act. Situated in past and contemporary context, the term is an interdisciplinary bridge, with links from classical (if vague) theoretic treatments of "ambivalence" to new sociological analogies in the realm of quantum physics. I explore this duality through the case study of #BlackoutTuesday, a social media movement connected with global protests against police brutality and racism. The black square that characterized the movement is best understood as ambivalent action, as an act of two‐fold narrative‐making: "both" silence and speech. The "success" of an ambivalent action in remaining in two narratives at once is determined by the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of populism have suggested that it might best be described as 'unpolitical', rather than apolitical or anti‐political. This term captures the populist claim to stand morally above the sphere of politics (which it deems inherently corrupting), while being simultaneously drawn to engage in it. But such ambivalence towards politics is not limited to populist actors; indeed, 'unpolitics' might be considered intrinsic to British political culture. Most obviously, Conservatives historically portrayed themselves as unsullied by ideology, above party competition, and deriving their values from embodied experience rather than political reasoning. But, while traditional Conservative unpolitics emphasised hierarchy, new anti‐deferential forms of unpolitics emerged in the postwar period. These were based on claims to be 'ordinary', which was defined in opposition to the 'political' in ways that made the latter seem necessarily illegitimate. Focussing on unpolitics shows that populism grew out of mainstream British political culture, as well as in opposition to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Part 1 of 'Encountering Berlant', we encounter the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. In 1000‐word contributions, geographers and others stay with what Berlant's thought offers contemporary human geography. They amplify an encounter with their work, demonstrating how a concept, idea, or style disrupts something, opens up a new possibility, or simply invites thinking otherwise. The encounters range across the incredible body of work Berlant left us with, from the 'national sentimentality' trilogy through to recent work on negativity. Varying in form and tone, the encounters exemplify and enact the inexhaustible plenitude of Berlant's thought: fantasy, the case, love, impasse, feel tanks, slow death, ellipses, gesture, attrition, intimate public, ambivalence, style. Part 2 of 'Encountering Berlant' focuses on Berlant's most influential concept: 'cruel optimism'. Across these heterogeneous encounters, Berlant's enduring concern with the tensions and possibilities of relationality and how to enact better forms of common life shine through. These enduring concerns and Berlant's commitment to the incoherence and overdetermination of phenomena are summarised in the Introduction, which also explores how Berlant's work has been engaged with in geography. The result is a repository of what an encounter with Berlant's thought makes possible. Part 1 of 'Encountering Berlant' explores the promise and provocation of Lauren Berlant's work. Contributors amplify an encounter with Berlant's concepts, tones, and styles, drawing out their implications for understanding relationality and how to invent and live better ways of being in common. The result is a repository of what Berlant's thinking offers geographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Part 2 of Encountering Berlant amplifies the promise of Lauren Berlant's influential concept of 'cruel optimism'. Cruel optimism names a double‐bind in which attachment to an 'object' holds out the promise of sustaining/flourishing, whilst simultaneously harming. The lines between harming, sustaining, damaging and flourishing blur, sometimes collapsing entirely. By holding together opposites the concept exemplifies and performs the centrality of ambivalence to Berlant's thought, as well as their orientation to overdetermination and incoherence. Geographers and others have found in the concept a way of understanding the intersection between affective and political economies in the crisis‐present following the 2008 financial crisis. Together with Berlant's linked concepts such as 'crisis ordinariness' and 'impasse', cruel optimism has offered a way of understanding why detachment can be so difficult and how damaging conditions endure. Contributors begin from these starting points, amplifying the concept's promise: a new way of researching and writing about the reproduction of ordinary damage and harm. By writing from diverse encounters with Berlant's work, they move the concept in multiple directions, juxtaposing it with other optimisms across a variety of empirical scenes and locations. The result is a repository of what cruel optimism, and Berlant's mode of thinking‐feeling more broadly, offer geographers and others. In Part Two of Encountering Berlant, contributors engage with the promise of Lauren Berlant's most influential concept – 'cruel optimism'. By writing from multiple locations and empirical scenes, they find in the concept a new way of understanding the reproduction of everyday harms and damages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common assumption in prior research on social networking sites (SNS) has been that users' orientations toward SNS use are positioned somewhere along a bipolar, univalent continuum, stretching from negative to positive orientation. However, considering recent findings unfolding the intricacy and variety of SNS use patterns, such a linear conceptualization of users' orientations is too simplistic with limited ability to explain the intricate patterns of SNS use. To alleviate this deficiency in this paper, we draw on the ambivalence literature and explain that users can simultaneously experience both positive and negative orientations toward SNS use based on the positive and negative aspects of their SNS use experience. Focusing on post‐ adoptive SNS use context, we theorise archetypes of SNS users' attitudinal responses to ambivalence, and their associated behavioural outcomes in terms of SNS use patterns. We first follow a typological perspective and develop typologies of attitudinal and behavioural responses to ambivalence toward SNS use. Then, we offer six hypotheses that explain the relations between the archetypes of attitudinal responses to ambivalence toward SNS use and users' SNS use patterns. Lastly, we empirically test our hypotheses using latent profile analysis and ANCOVA applied to two‐wave data collected from 370 ambivalent SNS users. The findings support the hypotheses and validate our typologies. The findings ultimately point to likely choices from a range of post‐adoption SNS use patterns as plausible outcomes of SNS users' attitudinal responses to ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID‐19 has led to an unprecedented increase in the use of technology for teaching and learning in higher education institutions (HEIs), including in engineering, computing, and technology programs. Given the urgency of the situation, technologies were often implemented with a short‐term rather than long‐term view. Purpose: In this study, we investigate students' perceptions of the use of video‐based monitoring (VbM) for proctoring exams to better assess its impact on students. We leverage technological ambivalence as a framing lens to analyze students' experiences and perceptions of using VbM and draw implications for responsible use of educational technology. Method: Qualitative data were collected from students using focus group interviews and discussion board assignments and analyzed inductively to understand students' experiences. Findings: We present a framework of how a technological shift of existing practice triggered ambivalence that manifested itself as a sustained negative outlook among students regarding the use of VbM, as well as their institution and instructors. Students accepted the inevitability of the technology but were unconvinced that the benefits of VbM outweighed its risks. Conclusions: As instructors use educational technologies that are inherently driven by user data and algorithms that are not transparent, it is imperative that they are attentive to the responsible use of technology. To educate future engineers who are ethically and morally responsible, engineering educators and engineering institutions need to exhibit that behavior in their own practices, starting with their use of educational technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of polarized societal debates (e.g. abortion, racism, climate change), scholars often assume that individuals have clear‐cut positions, either in favour of or against the debated issue. However, recent work suggests that such debates can also be breeding grounds for felt ambivalence. Moving beyond previous work that mainly focused on ambivalence as internal cognitive conflict, we propose and test a social discrepancy hypothesis, which suggests that the discrepancies ambivalents perceive between and within their own opinion and the opinion of actors in their social network and society (e.g. friends, family, opinion‐based groups) positively explain their levels of felt ambivalence. In doing so, we quantitatively extend recent qualitative work by examining whether these social tensions are indeed felt within. To this end, we employed a multi‐survey research project (Ns = 184, 181, 187) in the context of different societal debates in the Netherlands. Supporting our hypothesis across different debates, results showed that ambivalents' perceived opinion differences in the social environment explained their felt ambivalence. This suggests that polarized societal debates offer social discrepancies that, for ambivalents at least, can facilitate an internalization of social tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many things in life are ambivalent, and it might sometimes be useful or necessary to ignore their positive attributes when judging their negative attributes and vice versa. Cross‐valence inhibition may complicate this task, leading people to underestimate the positive and negative attributes of ambivalent stimuli. In three studies (total N = 155), participants learned to associate combined evaluative information (gains and losses) with attributes of unfamiliar objects (size and colour of Chernoff faces). Participants then estimated (Studies 1–3) or experienced and recalled (Study 3) the gains and losses associated with novel ambivalent attribute combinations. As predicted, both in estimation and recall, participants rated gains (losses) to be lower, the higher the losses (gains) associated with the stimulus. The effect occurred only when the two attributes were evaluatively conflicting (Study 2). Cross‐valence inhibition might lead to maladaptive behaviour when positive and negative attributes are in fact separable in hedonic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finally, according to I the Narrative Account i , an upward-sloping life is better than a downward-sloping life when and because it features certain narrative relations between discrete events in one's life, such as when one suffers a misfortune and then learns from it, or when an effort is turned into a success rather than a waste. These lives are permutations of each other - in the sense that, for every temporal segment with some amount of well-being in one life, there is exactly one such segment in the other life, and so on - so the simple view regards them as equally good. According to Michael Slote's I Temporal Location Account i , an upward-sloping life is better than a downward-sloping life because what happens later in life has greater weight in determining the life's overall value. Perhaps we find Germain's life to be in one respect tragic because, although her life is worth living in virtue of all the good things that happened to her, the fact that she fell short of her potential somehow makes her life not worth creating. [Extracted from the article]

The well‐known metaphor of 'panopticon', derived from Bentham's project and popularized by Foucault, has long informed scholarly conversations in management and organization studies (MOS). Herein, we question the power of this emblematic metaphor. Through an in‐depth literature review specifying its form, principle and goal, coupled to an investigation of Bentham's original writings, we identify two readings of the panopticon. First, we disentangle the uses of this concept in MOS literature and highlight a rather uniform and negative interpretation of the panopticon as a mechanism of social control and surveillance (first reading). Beyond this dominant interpretation, we contend that the panopticon is a richer concept than MOS literature acknowledges. Going back to Bentham's initial project, entailing not only one but plural types of panopticons, we propose a more comprehensive conceptualization of the panopticon (second reading) as: (1) a rewarding functional dispositive based on freedom and autonomy (form); (2) relying on information sharing, transparency and visibility (principle); and (3) striving for harmony and efficiency as ultimate ends (goal). In doing so, we generate a new way of seeing the panopticon in MOS research. We also reveal an inherent tension between both readings, interpreted as dystopia and utopia, and show that their combination allows grasping the ambivalence of panopticism in practice in ways that can inform further research on liberal management. As a practice of freedom, panopticism in practice might indeed turn into an instrument furthering control. To conclude, we highlight some analytical paths to help MOS scholars disentangle such ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a critical reflexive process (An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 1992; Theory, Culture & Society, 13, 1996, 17), this article identifies and examines issues of power, complicity and knowledge production as they emerged in the first author's master's research on migrant women farmers' economic and reproductive health experiences in the middle belt of Ghana. We examine the ambivalent positionality of the international graduate student researcher as "other of the other" (Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30, 2005, 2017, p. 2025), and how diverse fields of power, including the researcher's educational institution and cultural norms regarding gender relations, mediated interactions among various actors in the research process. Specifically, we examine how the student researcher was complicit in reinforcing patriarchal standards, perpetuating western saviourism and committing symbolic violence. Situating these reflexive findings in relation to insights from feminist postcolonial theories, we highlight how power relations, gender and social class informed these ambivalent complicities. Rather than erase/silence these tensions in the research process, we argue that such ambivalences may be an inevitable dimension of transnational knowledge creation, and thus, it is imperative that researchers consider how their ambivalent positionalities and complicities may be navigated and leveraged most productively and with the least harm to research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian economic theology is distinguished from Christian social ethics by its methodological reflection on the emergence, formation, and proper boundaries of the economic sphere, as well as transcendental reflection on the conditions of possibility of economic science. In practice, this often amounts to anxiety about the authority of Christianity in the economic sphere, as well as about the extent to which Christianity can be held responsible for the system of impersonal economic domination known as capitalism. This review essay draws upon three recent works on or about Christian economic theology, and argues that this genre's anxiety about Christian authority manifests in the ways that it draws temporal boundaries between ancient, medieval, and modern economies. Ultimately, its ambivalence about economy itself is traceable to Aristotle's understanding of money as containing two natures, one defined by quality (use value) and the other by quantity (exchange value). Christianity here becomes a cipher for quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writings on recognition and ambivalence highlight the limits of narrowly dyadic and teleological accounts of recognition. In this article, I extend the work on ambivalent recognition by proffering a conception of recognition as vulnerable. I emphasise the need to come to know the self as part of the journey toward recognition and to interrogate the role of the privileged in the dance of recognition. I illustrate vulnerable recognition with reference to literature that highlights this more complicated reading of recognition in practice, including calls for white settlers to come to understand the way settler culture shapes relations with others and Indigenous refusal of recognition. I maintain that a vulnerable and processual conception of recognition takes seriously the demand to re‐cognise or to 'know again', which is at the heart of Hegel's agonistic account of recognition. A vulnerable conception of recognition enables us to better understand our interconnectedness and the place we occupy in particular histories and structures, with their ongoing legacies of privilege and oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The current study investigated the developmental trajectory of adolescents' career decision-making self-efficacy (self-efficacy) and ambivalence in career decision-making (ambivalence) as well as the longitudinal impact of career-related parental behaviors (parental behaviors) on self-efficacy and self-efficacy on ambivalence.Methods: We recruited 588 students from two elementary schools and three middle schools from city of Guangzhou, Province Guangdong in China. Participants were from Grade 4 to Grade 9 with an average age of 11.88 (SD = 1.63), 321 (54.6%) were male, and 9 (1.53%) were missing for gender. We applied a latent growth model using data from all three waves.Results and Conclusion: After applying a latent growth model using data from all three waves, the results have indicated that self-efficacy decreased as these participants transitioned from childhood to early adolescence, and that their ambivalence fell on an increasing trajectory. Cross-sectionally, it indicated that "support" of parental behaviors was positively associated with self-efficacy, and "interference" of parental behaviors was positively associated with ambivalence. Longitudinally, "interference" of parental behaviors was negatively predicting the change rate of self-efficacy. A predictive relation did not exist between self-efficacy and ambivalence, such that a negative correlation was observed on a cross-sectional level. Implications and limitations are discussed as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a paradox approach (Mick & Fournier) to explore how consumers use and experience their smartphones. To do so, we use a mixed method approach where we interviewed 28 participants across seven focus groups to learn more about when and how they used their smartphones. Participants reported many tensions with regard to their smartphone use, from which we derived one overarching paradox and five specific paradoxes, including two new paradoxes. To support and extend our qualitative findings, we also administered a questionnaire examining the proposed paradoxes and their possible connections to important consumer consequences such as ambivalence, attachment, and well‐being. Overall, we found evidence of a push and pull (or ambivalent) relationship between participants and their smartphones. Specifically, its great functionality and reliability make the connection cherished, but this ongoing reliance takes away the very same things it was meant to help build. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Understanding how pregnancy preferences shape contraceptive use is essential for guiding contraceptive interventions and policies that center individuals' preferences and desires. Lack of rigorous measurement of pregnancy preferences, particularly on the population level, has been a methodologic challenge. Methods: We investigated associations between prospective pregnancy preferences, measured with a valid instrument, the Desire to Avoid Pregnancy (DAP) scale, and contraceptive use in a representative sample of 2601 pregnancy‐capable self‐identified women, aged 18–44 years, in Alabama and South Carolina (2017–2018). We used multivariable regression with weighting to investigate how probability of modern contraceptive use, and use of different contraceptive method types, changed with increasing preference to avoid pregnancy. Results: Desire to Avoid Pregnancy scale scores (range:0–4, 4 = greater preference to avoid pregnancy, median = 2.29, IQR: 1.57–3.14; α:0.95) were strongly associated with contraceptive use among sexually active respondents (aPR = 1.15 [1.10, 1.20]; predicted 45% using contraception among DAP = 0, 62% among DAP = 2, 86% among DAP = 4). Method types used did not differ by DAP score. The most common reasons for nonuse were concern over side effects and not wanting to use a method (32% each) among respondents with mid‐range and high DAP scores. Among those with mid‐range DAP scores, 20% reported nonuse due to not minding if pregnancy were to occur (vs. 0% among those with high DAP scores). Conclusions: Pregnancy preferences strongly influence likelihood of contraceptive use. Providion of appropriate contraceptive care to those not explicitly desiring pregnancy must differentiate between ranges of feelings about pregnancy, perceived drawbacks to contraceptive use, and legitimate psychological and interpersonal benefits of nonuse to promote autonomy in contraceptive decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]