17837 research outputs found
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Belief in Belief:Even Atheists in Secular Countries Show Intuitive Preferences Favoring Religious Belief
Full text linkWe find evidence of belief in belief – intuitive preferences for religious belief over atheism, even among atheist participants – across 8 comparatively secular countries. Religion is a cross-cultural human universal, yet explicit markers of religiosity have rapidly waned in large parts of the world in recent decades. We explored whether intuitive religious influence lingers, even among nonbelievers in largely secular societies. We adapted a classic experimental philosophy task to test for this intuitive belief in belief among people in eight comparatively nonreligious countries: Canada, China, Czechia, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and Viet Nam (total N = 3804). Our analyses revealed strong evidence that (1) people intuitively favor religious belief over atheism and that (2) this pattern was not moderated by participants’ own self-reported atheism. Indeed, (3) even atheists in relatively secular societies intuitively prefer belief to atheism. These inferences were robust across different analytic strategies, and across other measures of individual differences in religiosity and religious instruction. Although explicit religious belief has rapidly declined in these countries, it’s possible that belief in belief may still persist. These results speak to the complex psychological and cultural dynamics of secularization
Who Is Excluded from the Future? The Invisible Women of Cambodia’s Garment Sector
Full text linkFor many countries in the Global South, the garment sector is presented as the pathway to a bright and prosperous future: a source of wealth for both nations and workers. Yet for many women the reality is insecure contracts, cramped dormitories away from the family home, overcrowded and dangerous trucks to factory sites, and underpaid work. This thesis explores how this disjuncture is sustained in discourse and policy and how the everyday struggles of workers are invisibilised by the received wisdom of industrial growth. This thesis contributes to scholarly debates on invisible labour and the future of work for a workforce of women with a very physical presence in Cambodia. Human geography is increasingly concerned with the future but there’s a gap in how people interact with futurity in their everyday lives. Building on literature on the future of work and invisible labour, I provide a space for workers to consider their own futures and to understand how women on the factory floor are interacting with the future in their day to day lives, as well as how the future of their every day is being shaped by power structures beyond the factory walls.Future of work scholarship has recently have focused on the industry moving beyond its current state, and this futurology is hard wired into policy. This thesis therefore focuses on labour, its complexities and the fact that some elements of labour are more visible than others. Building on feminist conceptualisation of invisible labour, I extend ‘invisible labour’ beyond the home. I address a gap in the literature to understand invisible labour within formal labour spaces through firstly, cognitive dissonance, commodity fetishism and alienation whereby consumer and producer as individuals are separated intentionally by the global factory system. And secondly, through power and governance structures in which workers are subjugated, and their voices are marginalised and silenced within factory settings. Their invisibility takes the form of de-valuation and expendability as individuals, hidden from past, present and most likely the future of decent work. Ultimately women are excluded from the modelling of the future. Alternative futures of work are therefore being pursued by women currently driving economic activity in Cambodia’s manufacturing sector, rejecting the prescribed futures set out by top-down decision makers and policy. <br/
Understanding the journeys of online crime victims through law enforcement and support organisations in Britain
Full text linkDigital technology has broadened online crime (the term here denotes cybercrime andfraud) enabling transnational offending. This research concerns victims of online crime and asks whom individuals and organisations can approach for help and advice after becoming a victim of online crime. Adopting an exploratory methodology, the research maps organisations, processes and connections between organisations supporting victims. The mapping process and the resulting data displays illustrate the journeys that victims of online crime take and how law enforcement, support organisations and service providers support victims. Snowball sampling was used to recruit 46 participants in the UK, who either worked with or were victims of online crime. Recruited participants worked in Britain’s law enforcement, government, businesses and support organisations. Through semi-structured interviews in addition to analysing official documents and reports, the research uncovered the roles and connections between specialist law enforcement units and support organisations supporting victims of online crime. Since 2010, the UK has categorised cybercrime as a Tier One threat and a Serious and Organised Crime (SOC). The research uncovered how Britain’s law enforcement considered cybercrime a SOC after WannaCry and adopted the 4P (Protect, Prevent, Pursue and Prepare) strategy from counterterrorism. In Britain, law enforcement operates within designated geographical boundaries which complicates their work concerning online crime that disregards boundaries. The research shows that law enforcement and its partners duplicate efforts and highlights that while support organisations support individuals, generally, they do not assist businesses. Further, the sheer volume of online crime seems to have overwhelmed law enforcement despite increased resourcing levels. While Action Fraud’s reporting systems are outdated and victims rarely report online crimes, participants reveal how victims struggle with feelings of blame, shame and embarrassment. The main contributions are the data displays and uncovering the vastly different journeys travelled by victims of cybercrime and online fraud
Terra Metaphora:How Game Mechanics Communicate Narrative Information to Players
Full text linkThis thesis seeks to explore some of the ways game mediate representative and narrative information to players via their game mechanics, suggesting that game mechanics embody games’ unique form of narrative discourse. Previous attempts to reconcile and model the storytelling function of narrative games have taken disparate approaches that are not compatible with “classical” narratological models traditionally developed for the analysis of other narrative media, such as film and written prose. This research identifies some of the problems with “exceptional” treatment of games as narrative objects and proposes a model of narrativity for games more in line with other narrative texts. This “classical” model is then used as the basis for several “post-classical” narratological analyses to identify specific game mechanics and describe how games uniquely work to construct audience understanding of key narrative elements such as character, time, space, and plot. This is done through close textual analyses of several games, particularly role-playing games. These are identified here to be excellent sites of both narrative and ludic (game-like) content, and which employ both in concert in intricate ways to narrative effect. In addition to a written thesis, this research takes the form of PhD-by-practice, incorporating a custom-built video game designed to demonstrate, elaborate on, and inform the written material. The game, Terra Metaphora, is built to manipulate its own textual fabric to draw attention to the clandestine ways video game rules, systems, and procedures help craft story
Piloting a Universal ACT-Informed Intervention for Non-Clinical Paranoia in Young People Transitioning to Secondary School
Full text linkMeta-analysis finds large variation but no general patterns in the relationship between climate and parasitism in terrestrial animals
Full text linkClimate can vary spatially and temporally and is becoming increasingly unpredictable due to climate change. It can have a large impact on host–parasite interactions and investigating this effect is vital both for understanding current parasite distribution and epidemiology, and predicting how this will change in the future. Here, we conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether temperature and precipitation have an overall effect on parasite prevalence and infection intensity in terrestrial animals. This is a phylogenetically controlled quantitative synthesis to assess parasite prevalence and infection intensity in terrestrial animals across contrasting temperatures and precipitation. We found large variation in the effect of temperature on parasite prevalence, precipitation on parasite prevalence, and temperature on infection intensity. This provides robust quantitative evidence against the controversial “warmer sicker world” hypothesis. There was no effect of climate on parasitism, irrespective of whether the parasite was an endoparasite or ectoparasite, or across different parasite lifecycles. Although some host and parasite taxa were understudied, we found no consistent taxonomic patterns. Importantly, we revealed large gaps in the literature, including the relationship between humidity, prevalence, and infection intensity. Ectoparasites and reptile hosts were also very underrepresented, and deserve further study. Focusing future research on these gaps will help to confirm whether certain types of host–parasite interactions are more or less sensitive to changes in climate, with implications for conservation
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