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Making sense of absent-yet-present others: representing the liminal vegetative state beyond life and death
No full textClinically alive yet enduringly unaware, individuals in a vegetative state are caught in their transition between life and death. In turn, their carers struggle to signify the ontological and interactional dilemmas emerging from their liminal relations with an absent-yet-present other and their suspension in time. Drawing on social representations and liminality theories, this study investigates how relatives and professionals deal with these dilemmas. In doing so, the study focuses on the role of relations and time in signifying an absent-yet-present other. We analysed 65 semi-structured interviews with relatives (n = 35) and professionals (n = 30) recruited from five Italian nursing homes between February 2019 and September 2021. A discourse-oriented thematic analysis shows how carers de-anchor patients from dichotomous categories and temporalities (e.g., life/death, person/body, past/future), representing them as existing in an ontological paradox: both/neither and and/nor. The analysis also shows how carers deal with the dilemmas of interacting with a voiceless patient by engaging in collaborative identity work. On the one hand, relatives draw on – and share – memories from the patient's past to construct a ‘new identity’ and ‘present’ for their loved ones. On the other, professionals add ‘clinical identities’ rooted in medical characteristics and promote corporeal communication with voiceless patients. The study highlights how carers can signify their (shared) present, everyday caring activities, and deal with an only apparently meaningless situation by mobilising the patients' pasts and promoting a corporeal sociality
European Big Science has the potential to drive social and economic transformation
No full textInvestment in Big Science projects, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, are often seen as purely scientific ventures. Riccardo Crescenzi argues a more co-ordinated approach to Big Science across the UK and European Union could produce significant social and economic benefits, as well as catalysing innovation and increased competitiveness across the bloc
How the US' trading partners should respond to Trump's coercive strategy of ‘tariffication'
No full textThis week Donald Trump’s second administration threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and ten percent tariffs on China (at time of writing, there is a 30-day pause for Canada and Mexico). Mona Paulsen writes that Trump’s weaponisation of tariffs is a significant departure from international rules on trade. To reduce uncertainty for firms and supply chains, she argues that these governments need a coordinated response to the US tariff threats and actions
A new measure of quality of life explains why people like living in bigger cities
No full textPeople like to live in certain places, even when higher wages are on offer elsewhere. Gabriel Ahlfeldt, Fabian Bald, Duncan Roth and Tobias Seidel show that once you take into account people’s preferences, large cities offer a higher quality of life than previously thought
The question of family law after legal motherhood
No full textWhat does it mean to be a ‘mother’ in law? This is a question that arose in English and Welsh law only relatively recently, in a case brought by Freddy McConnell, a trans man who had given birth and sought to be registered on the baby’s birth certificate as the ‘father’ or alternatively as the ‘gestational parent’ or ‘parent’. The conceptualisation of legal motherhood that emerged from this case was one in which being a ‘mother’ was defined as being about the biological role of carrying a pregnancy and delivering a baby – a role that was considered not to be gender-specific. This contribution reflects on the debate that has followed in the family law literature and highlights the way in which it is underpinned by a sense that doing away with the current conceptualisation of legal motherhood would open up the capacity and potential of family law when it comes to the legal recognition and protection of family life. The question becomes, in this way, one of family law after legal motherhood – of what family law might look like after the current conceptualisation of legal motherhood
Swimming upstream: system-wide constraints of policy relevant and politically engaged feminist research
No full textThe inherently political orientation of feminist scholarship calls for careful examinations of how feminist knowledge is co-generated, interpreted across broader scholarly and policy debates, and mobilized across the policy and political arenas. Efforts to politically situate feminist research and articulate standpoints that prioritize the lived experiences of the most marginal subjects of observed political emancipatory projects are not enough to avoid research extractivism and tokenism of marginalized identities. Feminist researchers have the responsibility to ensure careful knowledge translation between research participants and the broader scholarly community, as well as key policy arenas in which feminist political projects are implicated. However, politically deploying feminist agendas towards emancipatory struggles requires resources that are generally unrecognized in traditional academic settings and research excellence frameworks. To support collective thinking about pre-requisites for decolonial and policy-oriented feminist research, this article highlights the triple burden of feminist researchers involved in this work: decolonial knowledge co-production, scholarly and policy knowledge translation, and political knowledge mobilization. Drawing on a case study of a two-stage research project conducted with Indigenous women resisting large-scale mining in Guatemala, I highlight the complexities of feminist scholarly engagement in overcoming the epistemic dissonance of decolonial knowledge and mainstream policy debates
Don't shoot the pianist: creative firms, workers, and neighborhood gentrification
No full textWe examine links between creative activity and gentrification at the neighborhood level. These dynamics are both complex and important to understand. Artists may help upgrade inexpensive neighborhoods before being displaced, including by higher-paid creative services workers. Alternatively, creative activity may follow patterns of high-income customers and locales. Many city leaders hope creative industries can drive urban growth while worrying about these highly localized impacts. However, outside case studies, these links are poorly understood. Drawing on urban theory and recent creative industries debates, we frame neighborhood upgrading in larger processes of competition for urban space, then identify distinct creativity–gentrification channels for firms, workers, and arts/service activities. We explore impacts on neighborhoods in England and Wales, via rich microdata on firms and workers between 2001 and 2021. We test aggregate links between creative activity and subsequent gentrification, then explore channels across actors, activity types, level of clustering, the urban hierarchy, and property types. Largely, we find very small associations between creative clustering and gentrification in the following decades. Associations are larger for creative workers than firms, though less stable. Links are stronger in London and larger cities; in neighborhoods with denser clusters of creative firms, changes in gentrification scores are three to seven times larger. Overall, arts workers and businesses are most implicated in gentrification, though the former lead and the latter follow neighborhood change. The findings have important implications for urban economic development and urban planning policy
Varieties of economic elites? Preliminary results from the World Elite Database (WED)
No full textThe strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder comparative analysis. The World Elite Database (WED) addresses this dual challenge, by generating, based on a consistent definition, standardised data for 16 countries. This research note introduces WED, its construction principles, and presents preliminary findings on how economic elites differ across countries
Scorching doubts: unveiling climate change skepticism among gulf cooperation council residents
No full textAs climate change poses an escalating global threat, resistance to mitigation and adaptation efforts remains widespread. Public reluctance to support climate policies may stem not only from skepticism about the reality of climate change but also from doubts regarding its human causes, potential harm, or the costs associated with mitigation and adaptation measures. While climate change beliefs vary across regions, limited scholarly attention has been devoted to public skepticism in the Arabian Gulf, particularly in resource-dependent nations with large transient expatriate populations – a defining characteristic of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in this region. This study investigates the factors influencing climate change skepticism in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), two key GCC members. Using primary survey data, we examine the role of socio-demographic characteristics, resident status, and personal beliefs in shaping public opinion on climate change. Our findings reveal that skepticism varies by age, education, gender, income, religious affiliation, residency and ethnicity. Our findings highlight the complex nature of climate skepticism in the UAE and KSA, offering insights for policymakers. Strengthening climate communication strategies, fostering public engagement, and aligning sustainability goals with public perceptions can enhance support for climate initiatives. Targeted awareness campaigns and policy interventions aimed at reducing skepticism may facilitate a successful implementation of climate efforts, ensuring long-term environmental and economic resilience in the region
Will the IMF survive to 100?
No full textAfter almost 80 years of the IMF’s existence, the distribution of influence in key decisions is still much as it was at the organization’s founding in 1945, during the era of Western colonialism - still mostly in the hands of a small set of high-income nation. It is as though the emerging “multipolarity” of the world order had not taken place. This essay sets out the imbalance between the relative “weight” of a country (or set of countries) in the world economy and the relative weight in Fund governance. After explaining the quota system and other determinants of influence (including occupancy of positions) and the history of failed attempts to change the distribution of influence, the essay outlines several measures of incremental reform which would not challenge the US, European, and Japanese grip on institution but still improve the way it works in practice and also benefit the smaller and poorer member countries in particular. However, without more radical shifts in the distribution of influence, the answer to our title question is, probably not