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Ecology and social energetics: the Podolynsky-Vernadsky connection
Full text linkIn 1880 Serhiy A. Podolynsky (1850–1891) described the human economy as a metabolic flow of energy and was later praised for it by ecologist Vladimir Vernadsky, whereas his work encountered strong criticism by Friedrich Engels. However, the notes taken by Karl Marx were rather neutral in tone. In this article, we use primary sources in Ukrainian and Russian, including Vernadsky’s diaries and correspondence, to shed light on the ecological aspects of Podolynsky’s accounting of energy flows in agriculture and, more broadly, on the economic implications of his social energetics. In addition to a contribution to European intellectual history of the environment and the history of Ukrainian radical political movements in the 1870s, we provide arguments for the continued relevance of Podolynsky’s work for today’s planetary ecologists, ecological economists, political ecologists and eco-Marxists
Pictorial Rationalities and why they matter in our struggles for identity and community
No full textIn this chapter I show how and why pictorial rationality (a notion derived from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s 1954-55 lecture ‘The Institution of a Work of Art’ and pluralised in my own writing) is strategically significant when navigating identity, community, and difference in contexts of transcultural violence and socio-political struggle – however counter-intuitive this may sound given that such problematics are so often triggered by visual cues. In making my argument, I combine an exegesis of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas with an image-based approach, in which insights drawn from two works of art play a key role. The first image is the Jamaican-born, British photographer Neil Kenlock’s ‘Keep Britain White’ graffiti, Balham (1972) and the second is Chinese artist Yang Xinguang’s installation Thin, of 2009, in which the discarded branches of pruned fruit trees are violently transfigured and arranged within the gallery space to resemble a disjointed ‘community’ of bleached bone-like entities. This leads to an intercorporeal, non-ego-centric or non-self-seeking understanding of identity in which questions of how we are in the world are presented as just as crucial as questions of self-definition and demographics – indeed, more so. In this regard, I bring phenomenological into conversation with virtue ethics. Here, too experiences of loss must inevitably be experienced, examined and re-negotiated
‘What Is It That We’re Doing Here?’: Pedagogical Tensions, Uncertainties and Reflexivity in Higher Popular Music Education
No full textThis chapter focuses on a specific sector within the contemporary music ecosystem; music education. This has been suggested to be of particular importance given its conceptualisation as part of ‘the talent pipeline’ in producing both artists and wider music industry professionals. Presenting new empirical data, we reveal how a sample of Higher Popular Music Education (HPME) academics in the United Kingdom reflexively negotiate pedagogical uncertainties experienced working in this dynamic but relatively immature scholarly discipline. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, alongside the personal reflections of authors both working in the same field, interviewees are seen to ask themselves fundamental questions and confront profound pedagogical challenges: What should we teach this highly diverse and technologically astute cohort? How can we or should we assess the learning and the creativity of students? Even, at times, there was an existential questioning of the role of HPME is in the context of a contemporary employability agenda in HE, and uncertainty over how to best articulate the value of this kind of creative education. In response, we will articulate potential new avenues for consideration in the realm of HPME teaching, assessment, curriculum design, and industry-institution relations, and reflect on how this key domain can and should relate to other spheres of activity within the music ecosystem going forward
Witnessing the State in its Disappearances: The Forensic Architecture Investigation on the Killing of Tahir Elçi
No full textCommon and unique menopause experiences among autistic and non-autistic people: A qualitative study
Full text linkBackground: Autistic people face both similar challenges to non-autistic people as they navigate menopause and additional unique challenges.
Methods: Semi-structured interviews with fifteen autistic and fourteen non-autistic adults (assigned female at birth), explored experiences of menopause. Thematic analysis was carried out for the autistic and non-autistic groups separately.
Results: Analysis yielded four overarching themes: information about menopause, experiences of menopause, medical support for menopause and backdrop to the menopause. Each of these contained subthemes which indicated both shared and unique experiences between the groups. Both groups reported a lack of information about menopause, endured negative psychological changes during menopause and experienced menopause alongside other important life events. Autistic people faced unique challenges during menopause, including medical professionals not accommodating autistic differences, uncertainty-induced anxiety and the lifelong impact of living without an autism diagnosis.
Conclusions: This study highlights the need for tailored care for this group during the menopause transition
Loneliness and Personality: Noise- and Bias-Free True Correlations Between Loneliness and the Big Five Personality Domains
Full text linkObjective
While loneliness is intertwined with many mental and physical health problems, its origins are not yet well understood. We sought to better understand its link to personality in a large national cohort.
Methods
Combining self- and informant ratings in multiple samples, we conducted the largest study to date to examine loneliness' true correlations (rtrues) with the Big Five personality traits, free of single-method biases and transient and random errors.
Results
Across three samples (Estonian-speaking, N = 20,893; Russian-speaking, N = 762; English-speaking, N = 599), we found a strong relationship between loneliness and Neuroticism (rtrue = 0.60–0.70). Loneliness also had robust but much weaker associations with Extraversion (rtrue = −0.20 to −0.30), and only weak associations (rtrue = 0.10 to −0.20) with Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. Collectively, the Big Five accounted for over 50% of loneliness variance. In a subsample, the associations were only slightly smaller longitudinally over approximately 10 years.
Conclusion
Overall, feeling lonely is more closely related to Neuroticism than previously understood, and the association endures over time
Management consultants and university futures: Academic capitalism and the capture of UK public higher education
Full text linkIMPACT STATEMENT
This article shows how management consultancy firms, particularly the Big Four, leveraged their position to become key brokers in English higher education, expanding their influence across multiple areas of governance and management. Aided by legislative changes designed to promote competition and enable for-profit providers to capture the rents provided by public higher education, these firms promote forms of marketization and privatization that are radically re-purposing the mission of the public university. Unbundling and financialization of university assets is central to that project. The article reveals how consultancy firms used the Covid 19 crisis not only to increase their influence but, through a series of ‘crisis narrative’ reports, to advocate strategies for fundamentally altering the entire public university system, locking in permanent changes and structures of managerialism that are anathema to the principles of public higher education. The article is a warning to policy-makers to beware the free-market fantasies and self-serving scenarios that these consultancy firms advocate.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the extraordinary growth of private management consultancy involvement in UK higher education. Analysing a series of ‘thought-leadership’ reports on university futures published between 2012 and 2023 it examines how these firms have embedded themselves in universities and cemented their expertise, profitability and power. Examining the future scenarios they imagine, the author suggests that these reports reflect a new phase in the evolution of academic capitalism, one characterised by consultancy-driven strategies for market-making and unbundling. Finally, the author asks, what are the implications of these interventions for the future of public higher education
Digital Arctic: Through Machine Eyes
No full textBook section on the role of remote sensing imagery in the construction, negotiation, and expression of place.
This visual essay explores ways in which the far north shapes (and is shaped by) a range of visual encounters and sensory practices and contend with the fact that the majority of images of the region are currently produced by extractive industries and nation states. I make the case that this lends an outsized degree of agency to those in power in shaping imaginaries of the far north—producing a skewed and incomplete sense of place – and put forward a series of provocations and propositions for alternative visual cultures surrounding remote sensing infrastructures, which allow for more collaborative, creative, and inclusive processes in the production of remote imagery and sense of place in the Arctic.
‘Visual Ecologies of Placemaking’, edited by Pamela Stewart and Leslie Atzmon, is a research volume which considers the ways that abstract spaces are transformed into particular kinds of place through visual, performative, and bodily acts. Specifically, this multidisciplinary collection explores the roles that visualness – visual experience in concert with other senses – plays in the construction, negotiation, and expression of place across a range of historical and contemporary contexts
