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performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed
Get PDFperforming tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed requires the players to undertake a series of simple, repetitive activities that are in themselves relatively pointless. They are simultaneously given additional instructions which affect the way they carry out the tasks, accompanied by music from YouTube playlists matching the search terms ‘concentration music’, ‘work focus music’ and ‘relaxation music’. This constitutes the work of the piece; the players operate within a network of arbitrary rules and constraints, trying–or not–to complete the tasks as best they can. There is no explicitly stated aim or goal for them to achieve, and the piece explores how following instructions can be an end in itself. Any sense of purpose emerges from their choices and the way they respond to the tasks, and in the way these actions are viewed. The title comes from David Graeber’s book Bullshit Jobs (2018). It is well worth reading
The role of nostalgia in making for well-being
Get PDFWhile some maker activities and actions have clear and measurable outcomes with increasing research about the joys and benefits of creativity, there is an aspect of making which is infrequently considered, perhaps because it is largely unconscious or may even be viewed negatively or dismissively. This is the pleasure to be found in the nostalgic aspects of crafting and making. This article examines the current research on the benefits of nostalgia, and how craft activities invoke nostalgia in various ways. Nostalgia is implicated as an element which can contribute to well-being – the perception of purpose, control and satisfaction which supports health and happiness. Although nostalgia is also already a factor in some making projects designed around well-being and health, it might in the future be used more consciously to contribute to other well-making activities
Going beyond established model systems of Alzheimer’s disease: companion animals provide novel insights into the neurobiology of aging
Get PDFAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by brain plaques, tangles, and cognitive impairment. AD is one of the most common age-related dementias in humans. Progress in characterizing AD and other age-related disorders is hindered by a perceived dearth of animal models that naturally reproduce diseases observed in humans. Mice and nonhuman primates are model systems used to understand human diseases. Still, these model systems lack many of the biological characteristics of Alzheimer-like diseases (e.g., plaques, tangles) as they grow older. In contrast, companion animal models (cats and dogs) age in ways that resemble humans. Both companion animal models and humans show evidence of brain atrophy, plaques, and tangles, as well as cognitive decline with age. We embrace a One Health perspective, which recognizes that the health of humans is connected to those of animals, and we illustrate how such a perspective can work synergistically to enhance human and animal health. A comparative biology perspective is ideally suited to integrate insights across veterinary and human medical disciplines and solve long-standing problems in aging
Exploring possible worlds: open and participatory tools for critical data literacy and fairer data culture
Get PDFThis chapter is inspired by the webinar I was invited to give earlier in 2020 as part of the project Fair Data Cultures in HE. My doctoral research looks into the interplay between structure, culture and students’ agency in the context of open educational practices in HE from a critical realist perspective. Thus, this chapter is being addressed from that standpoint. That is, looking into the deeper levels of social reality where young people are embedded, in particular, students’ relationship with open and participatory tools in HE. I will explore how educators can offer pedagogical opportunities for open educational practices that enable students’ explorative and critical mindset, so that they transcend the blind acceptance of the socio-political structures within which they are embedded. In so doing, they can question apparatuses and structures that perpetuate mechanisms of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, S, The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Profile Books, 2019). Hopefully, students will be able to shape an alternative world in which they reflexively engage with alternative and more holistic digital practices
Art and creativity in an era of ecocide: embodiment, performance and practice
No full textWhat can creativity achieve in an era of ecocide? How are people using creative and artistic practices to engage with (and resist) the destruction of life on earth? What are the relationships between creativity and repair in the face of escalating global environmental crises? Across twelve compelling case studies, this book charts the emergence of diverse forms of artistic practice and brings together accounts of how artists, scholars and activists are creatively responding to environmental destruction.
Highlighting alternative approaches to creativity in both conventional art settings and daily life, the book demonstrates the major influence that ecological thought has had on contemporary creative practices. These are often more concerned with subtle processes of feeling, experience and embodiment than they are with charismatic 'eco-art' works. In doing so, this exploratory book develops a conception of creativity as an anti-ecocide endeavour, and provides timely theoretical and practical insights on art in an age of environmental destruction
Worldviews about change: their structure and their implications for understanding responses to sustainability, technology, and political change
Get PDFPeople hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change
The Routledge international handbook of homicide investigation
No full textThis book will be the first of its kind to bring together research and personal insights from detectives, practitioners, academics and experts internationally on various complexities that are involved in the investigation of homicides.
The handbook discusses the challenges faced by homicide detectives, especially since not every investigation will demand the same approach. The tools, techniques and expertise required also vary according to the type of homicide that is investigated. This handbook brings these issues and opportunities to the forefront while also illustrating the wider complexities and emotional impact of homicide investigations on detectives and those bereaved by homicide. The book is divided into four parts. Part I provides chapters that explore homicide investigation across the globe. Parts II and III offer an up-to-date insight into the ever-evolving tools and techniques that are used during a homicide investigation and explore how specific types of homicides are investigated. Part IV considers both those directly affected by the homicide and the role of indirect victims in the investigation, including the impact of homicide and its investigation. Chapters also consider some recent developments in homicide investigation that may shape its future as well as current issues that are facing homicide detectives
Diffractive encounters with empirical and theoretical understandings of children’s creativity in science enquiry
Get PDFDiffractive methodology is a recently established alternative to the interpretivist approach commonly used
in educational research. Unlike epistemological practices grounded in representation, it recognises knowledge making
as performative and emergent from difference.
This paper offers new insights into diffractive readings in early childhood science education through experimentation
with entangled empirical video data, theoretical perspectives and transdisciplinary space. A methodological
contribution is made by showing how critical points of difference are created when video footage of shared
understandings held by early childhood practitioners encounters existing research on early childhood science education diffractively. These points of difference are made to matter and illuminated as affecting emergent new connections which can reconfigure dominant ways of understanding creativity in early childhood science education. In doing so, children’s creative knowledge making practices in science enquiry are (re)presented as expansive, material knowing which is enacted at once through talk and materials
Transmedia selves: identity and persona creation in the age of mobile and multiplatform media
No full textThis book examines the mediated shift in the contemporary human condition, focusing on the ways in which we synthesise with media content in daily life, essentially transmediating ourselves into new forms and (re)creating ourselves across media. Across an international roster of essays, this book establishes a transdisciplinary theory for the ‘transmedia self’, exploring how technological ubiquity and digital self-determination combine with themes and disciplines such as celebrity culture, fandom, play, politics, and ultimately broader self-conception and projection to inform the creation of transmedia identities in the twenty-first century. Specifically, the book repositions transmediality as key to understanding the formation of identity in a post-digital media culture and transmedia age, where our lives are interlaced, intermingled, and narrativised across a range of media platforms and interfaces