Resilience is a term often applied to students of refugee backgrounds having survived traumatic experiences of war, displacement and resettlement; but how is it acquired? To many, it is a function of some inner strength, a perspective that tends to ignore the considerable labour involved in acquiring the skills and capacities to be resilient. This article examines these differing understandings and their implications in working with students of refugee backgrounds in schools in New South Wales, Australia. In particular, it considers the different approaches they elicit and the affective dimensions of these, proffering a view that resilience is reliant on the accumulation of certain affects that sediment into dispositions ensuring a sound foundation for learning.
The reactionary American intellectual Christopher Rufo has made German critical theorist Herbert Marcuse the centre of his campaign to purge the American academy of radical ideas and movements. Marcuse’s ideas have significant influence in contemporary psychosocial scholarship, so attacks on his work may have negative consequences for psychosocial scholars. Rufo’s critique of the influence of Marcuse’s ideas is mostly exaggerated but it contains elements of truth. This article will outline ways in which some of Marcuse’s ideas are echoed in elements of the contemporary left/liberal intellectual and political orthodoxy. We revisit the Fromm/Marcuse debate from the 1950s, and offer an analysis of why Rufo might have picked Marcuse for attack when Fromm might well have been a viable target, as Fromm was in the 1980s when he was famously scapegoated by Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind (1987). I then offer an analysis of how Erich Fromm’s alternative psychosocial radicalism can help better defend the psychosocial perspective in mass politics than Marcuse’s framework. Fromm’s framework also offer a theoretical foundation for radical psychosocial studies that can help our field defend itself against the new McCarthyism of Rufo and his allies on the global right who are likely to attack radical psychosocial perspectives in the near future.
Scientific evidence highlights the pivotal role for structural change in pursuit of the sustainability transformation. A particular challenge for research on structural aspects of sustainable consumption and lifestyles, however, is the assessment of their impact. Especially quantifying the impact of structural change remains a serious problem. While some forms of structural change can be quantified, like the rate of building renovations, changes in the energy mix at the production level, or trends in access to health care or education, the impact of other changes such as societal narratives about wellbeing, political campaigns on energy technologies or policies, or the abandonment of the growth paradigm defy easy quantification. This article aims to shed light on potential avenues for quantitatively assessing the impact of structural change drawing on insights gained by a group of international and interdisciplinary research consortia funded by the European Union in the area of sustainable consumption, citizenship, and lifestyles research. It delineates strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, foci and blindspots of associated data types. Thereby, it highlights fundamental decisions that need to be made in research designs, but also important aspects to consider in the interpretation of results. Finally, the article highlights the particular challenges related to assessing the impact of deep political and ideational structures.
The article demonstrates how graphic narratives become a medium for managing inherited emotions in Vietnamese American second-generation works, GB Tran’s Vietnamerica and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do. Highlighting the intergenerational transmission of emotions in Vietnamese American families through parental stories about the Vietnam War, the article argues that the authors’ attempts to represent these family stories transform graphic literature into a medium for postmemorial emotion work. While drawing theoretical insights from the sociology of emotions, the study employs textual analysis to thematically close read Vietnamerica and The Best We Could Do to understand the graphic strategies that aid emotion work. The graphic recreation of stories, which are narrativised versions of their inherited trauma memories, can offer potential trauma resolution and autobiographical clarity while fostering communal bonding. The analysis finds that in the works, emotion work is facilitated by various literary strategies, such as affective genealogies, affective geographies, affective pasts, and postmemorial re-embodiment. In a broader sense, the study concludes that graphic narrative strategies can aid in postmemorial emotion work for second-generation refugees grappling with inherited trauma, incoherent autobiographical knowledge, and detachment from the community or family.
One of the main career stages that contributes to the gender imbalance among academic staff in physics is the transition from PhD to postdoc. At this stage, many woman physics students give up on an academic career path. To explore the causes of the gender imbalance at this stage, we focused on the decision-making juncture between PhD and postdoc. We used the mixed-methods paradigm, combining a nationwide representative survey among PhD students in Israel (n=267/404) and interviews with PhD students and postdoctoral fellows (n=38). The theoretical novelty that we suggest is viewing the career decision-making in this context as a ‘deal’, which involves contextual, organizational, and individual variables and their intersection. We argue that women are examining the components of this deal: what it offers them and what prices they will have to pay, but their decisions are made within a gendered power structure. Studying both context factors and agency, we reveal the multiple and hidden ways in which gender operates as a power structure, putting up barriers to women’s academic careers. This latent power structure influences women’s decision-making and experiences in several ways. In the academic field, it produces unequal competition in a male-dominated playground. In the social sphere, choosing a demanding academic career is seen as disrupting the gender order in Israel. Within the family, Israeli culture determines that women carry a greater burden of family work and give precedence to their husband’s career and preferences. Within this social structure, women who decide to follow an academic career feel that they must excel. The demand for ‘excellence’ acts as a hidden mechanism within the gender power structure that may prevent talented women from pursuing an academic career in physics.
The aim of this chapter is to explore personal stories of physicists including their own experiences and views on under-representation of women in physics. Discussions around the under-representation in physics often focus on structural factors that influence the attraction and retention of minorities into the field. In this chapter we focus on individual perceptions of the culture and environment in physics and the common themes that emerge from physicists’ experiences.
Plastic consumption is posing a critical challenge to global sustainability. Yet our understanding of the social and everyday dynamics of how and why people use plastics remains limited. Particularly, significant gaps in understanding exist concerning how plastics are embedded in households’ daily routines and practices and how this varies across different daily life settings. This article aims to bridge this gap by offering an in-depth exploration of the social and material dimensions of plastic consumption in varied Dutch households. Employing a theoretically and methodologically innovative approach, the article advances understanding of the connectivity of daily practices influencing household plastic use. Combining a social practice theoretical framework with a future-oriented, multi-modal imaginary methodology, we explore practice dynamics across diverse households of distinct life stages and compositions. Our analysis uncovers the complex interplay between daily practice arrangements and their systemic integration, revealing how daily life’s material, spatial and temporal dimensions are shaped and enabled by plastics. The study highlights the nuanced ways in which social variations in the organisation and institutional structures of daily life and engagement with socio-technical systems lock people into plastic consumption or enable transformative possibilities for sustainable change. By shedding light on the often overlooked social and everyday dynamics of plastic consumption, the article deepens theoretical understanding of practice connectivity while also opening new avenues for envisioning and facilitating transformation towards circular plastic consumption.
This chapter overviews the contribution of the collection to our understanding of the under-representation of women in physics. The chapter is divides into four sections: (1) it demonstrates the loss to physics as a discipline through the marginalization of women; (2) we address the question of why the under-representation of women in physics remains endemic and slow to change; (3) we argue that strategic leadership, evidence-based policies, and successful role models are essential for change to be effective; and (4) we conclude by offering recommendations for policy to achieve a sustainable culture shift in academic physics.
This chapter examines gendered experiences of women in physics through the analytical lens of microaggressions. It identifies subtle forms of discrimination faced at work by European women physicists, explores the strategies women use to cope with the unfriendly climates of their workplaces, and investigates the consequences of being exposed to microaggressions. The analysis is based on a qualitative study performed under the framework of the H2020 project Gender Equality Network in the European Research Area (GENERA). It covers the results of 40 semi-standardized interviews conducted in 2017 with women physicists working in 12 European research-performing organizations and higher education institutions. The study reveals microaggressions that European women physicists face at different career stages. The most prevalent themes include presumed incompetence, restrictive gender roles, invisibility, sexist jokes, and sexual objectification. The perceived negative consequences of being exposed to microaggressions include feeling bad and experiencing frustration about being treated differently than a person would like to be treated, feeling obliged to constantly provide evidence of being equally competent as men, and questioning one’s ability to continue with an academic career. In order to cope with covert sexism, women physicists employ various strategies, which – while bringing some individual advantages – hardly allow them to challenge the masculine culture of physics.
The discipline of physics is exemplified by many metaphors and superlatives that reflect the perpetuation of a culture purporting objectivity, elitism, and masculinity. In order to counter this physics needs to be supported by gender-sensitive institutional processes and strategies, requiring a vision of gender equality that crosses disciplinary boundaries and engages with a variety of gender and feminist perspectives. This chapter sets out a blueprint for action that includes institutional, structural, and cultural interventions that challenge prevailing behaviours, attitudes, cultures, and even the popular (among physicists at least) epistemology. Specific measures are required to create a more gender-sensitive discipline of physics thereby attracting a more inclusive, diverse, and gender-balanced quorum of students, researchers, academic staff, and decision-makers. Gender-sensitizing physics will involve meeting and countering resistance against change towards a more gender-inclusive academy.
