Journal articles on the topic 'Authors, argentine – 20th century – interviews'

AbstractChubut Province, in Patagonia, Argentina, is home to a group of Afrikaans-speaking Boers, descendants of those who–starting in 1902–came to Argentina from the region of present-day South Africa. Although little Afrikaans is spoken among fourth- and fifth-generation community members, many in the third generation (60 years and older) still maintain the language. According to Joshua Fishman’s model of generational language shift, the Boers’ Afrikaans should have been largely diluted by the third generation; older community members today should have little functional knowledge of the language, and their children and grandchildren none. The goal of this paper is to explore the persistence of bilingualism in the Argentine Boer community and explain why the changes normally associated with the third generation of immigrants are only now being seen in the fourth and fifth generations. On the basis of bilingual interviews with living community members, we argue that the community’s attitude toward Afrikaans as a language of group identity, as well as the relative isolation of the community in rural Patagonia in the first half of the 20th century, were both decisive factors in delaying the process of linguistic assimilation. Only in the middle of the 20th century, when the community came into greater contact with Argentine society as a result of modernization and schooling in the region, did the process of linguistic integration begin in a measurable way.

This article analyzes transnational migrations triggered by the dictatorships in Argentina (1976-1983) and Brazil (1964-1985), with attention to the representations associated to exile in these countries and in the Latin American context of the second half of the 20th century. The empirical data used are the memories narrated by Argentines who took exile in Brazil and by Brazilians exiled in Mozambique. By exploring the plurality of meanings that these authors attribute to their migratory experiences, we seek to understand how different political conjunctures in the countries of origin and destination implied varied forms of living and understanding exile. In a comparative perspective, the case studies also explore how the experience of exile was forged not only in relation to specific national and migratory contexts but also in relation to transnational social fields.

Argentina was born from the crossing of the ideas of “culture” and “barbarism”. Freedom was recognized as a driving force for its development from the beginning. Both works, Martin Fierro and Facundo, value and praise it (especially the first one), but always as a part of the civilization process undertaken by President Sarmiento, who accepted some people, forgetting about the victims of the Desert Campaign (1878-1885). The article reflects on freedom expressed by such authors as Sarmiento, Echeverría, Mármol or Gutiérrez. One of the lesser known authors, Lucio V. Mansilla, the author of Una excursión a los indios ranqueles (1870), is the one who sees the situation of the Indians with his own eyes, observing how the concept of freedom changes into its opposite when efforts are made to “civilize” Pampa and the border with the Andes by force. In the 19th century, only he was aware of the hypocrisy of the expected “progress”. Then, in the 20th century, there appear authors who want to renew patriotic consciousness. They suggest putting on a post -romantic “civilization” that is of little benefit to the nation. They see the falsehood in the concept of “freedom” when building an Argentine national identity, not including indigenous communities.

Although there may be strikingly different cultural explanations, in nearly every society women have had to struggle for equal rights. This study juxtaposes the position of U.S women in the 1910s and contemporary Pashtun women in Afghanistan and Pakistan to present an authentic picture of Pashtun women in an international context. Avoiding generalizations, the author focuses on select issues important to Pashtun women living in Swat, KP, Pakistan, the homeland of Malala Yousafzai. In addition to American scholarship, for the Pashtun part, the study relies on authentic sources: personal interviews with Malala, her father as well as a few notable indigenous professors and authors; literary/social surveys (of Swat); indigenous books. The study also includes a cross-section of native Pashtun men/women living in Swat, and the author's firsthand experiences as a native of Swat. The study reviews the struggle for women's rights in the U.S to ask what from that experience can aid Pashtun women one hundred years later.

Most hospitals in Poland date back to the 20th century. Due to developments in technology and medicine, these buildings need to be adapted to meet modern needs. Due to these needs and the possibility of EU funding for hospitals, modernisation has become an extremely topical subject. The aim of the research was to identify what types of modernisation work had been carried out after 2004 and to identify the main problems associated with this work. The subjects of the study were 38 hospitals from the Lubelskie Voivodeship in which various types of modernisation work had been carried out. Based on the data collected on these hospitals, interviews with selected managers and the authors' own experience of working on the modernisation of hospitals from the 20th century, seven main problems associated with the ten different modernisation works identified were distinguished. The authors formulated ten questions which can be helpful to hospital managers before embarking on building upgrades and that will help them define the main problems, objectives and a more holistic rather than fragmented approach to adapting hospitals to modern requirements.

In 1994 two books were published - "A contribution to ethno-history of the Torlaks" by Kosta Kostić and "Torlak" by Vitomir Zivković, in which the authors, independent of each other, tried to revive the term the Torlaks in Pirot region in the broad sense. Both books caused some reaction. This paper gives evidence of these attempts at reviving the Torlak identity in the Pirot region and reactions to them. Data were collected mainly through interviews, during my fieldwork in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 (I carried out the interviews for my PhD thesis ‚The construction of the Torlak identity in Serbia and Bulgaria' which I defended on the Faculty of philosophy, University of Belgrade in 2014). The content of this paper shows the motives of the two authors and promoters of the book for affirming of this term, the influence of the books on the wider population's awareness of its own identity and the response of local intellectual circles to them. In specific, complex and very frustrating local-political and identity-wise circumstances, the responses were mainly negative. Even though the authors and promoters didn't intend to use the term in order to endanger either national identity, they were misunderstood: in Dimitrovgrad, the term was considered as an ill-intended attempt at undermining national Bulgarian identity and regional Shop identity, and, on the other hand, in Pirot, it was seen as a danger to Serbian national identity. Yet, there were individuals who considered the term as acceptable.

Background. Argentina is one of the largest and most developed socio-economic countries in Latin America. The use of modern agricultural technologies in the Argentine plains and new methods of shipping allowed Argentina to start exporting agricultural products to Europe. A series of commodity booms enriched Argentina and made it one of the largest economies in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. Purpose is to analyze and identify problems and prospects for the development of the agricultural structure in Argentina. Materials and methods. In the study, the authors used analytical materials of the UN Economic Commission and other international organizations on the countries of Latin America, reviews and reports of the Central Bank, the Institute of Statistics, the Ministry of Economy and Public Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this work, dialectical, systemic, historical, logical, formal-legal, comparative research methods were used. Results. Due to the abundance of appropriate land and natural resources, the favorable climate in most of the country and the generally low activity of pests, agricultural in Argentina is not particularly limited by natural conditions. However, there are a number of other factors that prevent Argentine farmers from fully operating as efficiently as possible. Conclusion. Argentina’s agro-industrial policy is quite contradictory. Despite the development of digital services and modern information technologies to support agricultural producers, the introduction of progressive export support programs, a fairly powerful infrastructure throughout the entire production cycle of agricultural products, the Argentine government from time to time resorts to using serious export barriers to maintaining the domestic market, which in general affects the Agar sector is not always positive.

The article describes the history of studying Alaskan Russian (AR), a language that emerged from interactions between Russian furtraders and the aboriginal population during the Russian colonization of Alaska. In the late 18th century, AR became the native language of mixed-race persons who were officially referred to as “creoles” in the 19th century. AR was actively used in Alaska until the mid-20th century. Currently, several advanced-age individuals retain linguistic competence in AR. Since 1997, the authors have organized six field trips to the places of the historical existence of AR. The article follows the chronology of these trips, explaining their goals and findings. Interdisciplinary studies allowed the authors to compile a dictionary of the Ninilchik variety of AR, describe its phonetic and grammatical features, and collect corpora of audio and video recordings and sociolinguistic interviews to explore various linguistic practices. These corpora include over 90 hours of recordings from over 30 consultants from 12 locations in Alaska. Over 100 additional interviews were found in the repositories of other projects on the oral history of Alaska. Furthermore, several archival documents were discovered revealing the written mode of AR, previously only known as a spoken language. The anthropological research conducted in the Kodiak archipelago started the systematic historical study of the Russian language in Alaska, including its role, place, significance, practices, and functioning in the life of Russian fur-traders and their descendants throughout the colonization of Alaska until the present time, taking into account its interactions with native languages and English.

Abstract Souks have undergone functional and spatial changes in the Moroccan medinas since colonial times due to the tourist activities. The rate of the changes increased at the end of the 20th century because of the expansion of tourism projects. However, there are no publications on the evolution of Moroccan souks in the context of tourism development. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to determine the types of transformations the souks underwent as a result of the dynamic development in this sector of economy. The research focused on two imperial cities: Marrakech and Rabat. Data for analysis was obtained through observations and field interviews in 2014 and by bibliographic query. A retrospective study was carried out which included identification of mechanisms affecting the contemporary organization and physiognomy of the commercial streets. The authors’ work allowed for an identification of development phases of the Moroccan souks under the influence of tourism.

In Chukotka, reindeer herding is the most important element of traditional subsistence for the Chukchi, Koryak, Even and Yukaghir peoples. Despite substantial changes in reindeer herding, associated with modernization and commercialization of the industry, the herders of Chukotka were able to preserve their traditions, rituals and ethnic celebrations, associated with nomadic culture. The purpose of this work is to characterize contemporary reindeer herding as the most important component of ethnic culture in Chukotka. The article is based on the authors’ field materials collected in 1999–2023 among the reindeer herders of Anadyr, Bilibinsky, Iultinsky, Chaunsky and Chukotsky districts of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, interviews with agricultural specialists, statistical and analytical documents, scientific literature on the history and ethnography of reindeer herding. Chukchi reindeer herding developed on traditional basis until the first third of the 20th century. Then, under the influence of political and economic changes, a sharp transformation and breakdown of traditional management occurred among the indigenous peoples of the Northeast. Such intervention into the centuries-old system of nature management resulted in significant changes in the lifestyle of the Chukchi reindeer herders, system of their values, and brought significant social consequences. Nowadays, rein-deer herding in Chukotka is vital and the most important agricultural sector that provides food security for the region; it is also the element of traditional subsistence management, which preserves and develops the ethnic culture of the indigenous minority peoples of the North. Together with all the positive changes in reindeer herding during the Soviet era, it is worth emphasizing that during the crises periods of the 1990s and early 2000s, the herding enterprises with strong cultural traditions, such as social organization of camps, preservation of a nomadic family, development of riding reindeer husbandry, preference for the “old” nomadic way of life and its attributes – dwelling, fur clothing, vehicles – proved to be the most stable.

History of Soviet ‘Paper Architeture’ of 1980s is mostly oral: its fragments are scattered in architecture magazines, critical articles and interviews. It seems that it has come from nowhere — this phenomenon has a very weak connection with what was going on in ‘built’ architecture. Nevertheless, Paper Architecture is a prominent part of Soviet culture of 1980s that is impossible to neglect. Conceptual architecture in the 20th century has certain regularity: to totalitarian myths of 1940s and once again as the part of the ‘Space Age’ aesthetics of 1960s. Paper Architecture wasn’t supported by ‘real’ architecture except from a very small number of projects; nevertheless it has answered the postmodernist challenge — to make architecture talk. Restoration of events chronicle may be the key to understanding the development of Paper Architecture: its duality between art and architecture, weak interest of its authors in ‘real’ building and disbanded nature of working groups can be explained by outer circumstances, not some program of the group. This article tries to connect this puzzle from recollections and events to describe the beginnings of this phenomenon.

Based on the methodological practice of oral history, as well as the method of in-depth interviews, the article reveals factors, content and results of the development of the socio-cultural and professional identity within the academic and teacher community consisting of the post-war generation born in 1943–1953. It establishes that markers of the identity of the generation include joint historical experience, models, and programs of socialization cultivated during the Soviet era, general life experience in the process of professional communication. When reconstructing the socio-cultural identity of baby boomers, the authors take into account the thesis, according to which the differentiation of generations is due to the experience of significant historical events, perceived as historical caesura. It also establishes that crises, scientific revolutions, socio-political innovations that influence many age groups are experienced differently in the certain phase of a certain generation. This study identifies the stages of the development of the communicative consent of the representatives of the baby boomer generation, the ethical principles of community contacts in the context of the socio-cultural background of the 2nd half of the 20th century. The authors pay particular attention to intergenerational communication, which defined the system of moral and ethical ideas of baby boomers, influenced the choice of strategies and practices of social behavior in the conditions of generally accepted norms of the USSR.

This research deals with urban housing in Brazil, notably in the period that goes from the second half of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, having as its north the transformations resulting from the search for modernity, health and comfort and their relationship with the architectural styles adopted. For that, it analyzes the residences built in the central region of the city of Teresina, founded to become the capital of the State of Piauí, which, together with social and economic factors, technical limitations and local climatic conditions, originated an architecture of very peculiar characteristics. It seeks, therefore, to understand and characterize the transformations that took place, as well as their diffusion in the city, focusing on the agents involved in this process and on the appropriation of the Teresina society of the different residential typologies. It is based mainly on documentation consulted in local and private archives - such as almanacs, newspapers, reports, legislation and images from the time -, surveys, interviews, as well as bibliography of local historians, with emphasis on Teresinha Queiroz, Monsenhor Chaves and Odilon Nunes. In order to support the analyses, it also seeks theoretical support in consolidated authors such as Carlos A. C. Lemos and Nestor Goulart Reis Filho. It contributes, in this way, to broaden the knowledge of the production of urban housing in Teresina-PI, so little present in the historiography of Brazilian architecture.

The article investigates the monuments of Irkutsk Soviet modernism and early postmodernism in order to reveal their identity and peculiarities, to determine the significance of these structures for the specific urban environment of the Eastern Siberian capital, as well as for the history of modern architecture as a research discipline. The research involved a review of bibliographic sources, a full-scale survey of objects belonging to the mentioned periods, and in-person interviews with the architects of the buildings under study and other Irkutsk citizens. Along with attracting interest to the urgent problems of cultural significance, objective assessment, and modern appearance of the heritage of the second half of the 20th century, the authors clarified the chronological framework of the main stages in the development of the modern city and provided a scientific definition of the Irkutsk regionalism term. As a result, it was established that the response to the challenges of the late Soviet years became a recognizable architectural segment, which, although rapturing the fabric of historical urban environment, reassembles it for functional aspiration for the future. The Irkutsk architecture, having an industrial beginning, has nevertheless remained authorial, and even uncompromising in the doctrines of Vladimir A. Pavlov and his followers, who supported his initiatives in the following era of postmodernism.

This article analyzes Lithuanian youth subcultural group publications – fanzines (zines) – which have not yet received broader attention from researchers. Paper fanzines started to be created at the end of the 20th century and became popular in the 1990s, spreading Western culture ideas and changing the political, and socio-cultural environment in Lithuania along with technological copying and reproduction possibilities. Using resources from Lithuania’s Youth Culture Digital Archive “Lithuanian Zine Collection” and additionally collected sources, the article analyzes the trends in the creation and publishing of fanzines. By comparing the publishing similarities and differences of fanzines attributed to different subcultural groups, the aim is to understand the cultural context of these publications, their relationship with readers, and the publishing possibilities of fanzine creators. The study applies descriptive metadata analysis and systematization of fanzines, as well as ethnographic research methods (targeted interview, questionnaire, and qualitative interviews with fanzine authors, publishers, and collectors). The research results showed that in Lithuania, mainly in the 1990s, metal music fanzine authors, unlike punks and science fiction fans, created more publications written in English. Metal music fanzines were characterized by greater volume. Science fiction fans’ publications differed from those of metalheads and punks by a greater number of continuous issues and fewer one-time publications. Authors of fanzines associated with punk ideology mostly chose to independently reproduce publications using a copying machine, while creators of metal music and science fiction fanzines more often used professional printing services. The language used in fanzines and its style helped to form a close relationship with readers, revealed the identity traits of subcultural groups, and helped metal music fanzine authors to integrate into the international fanzine culture context. Seeking independence and individuality, fanzine creators disregarded professional publishing standards. Fanzine publishing depended on individual choice, motivation, creativity, reader interest, and technological possibilities (publication reproduction, layout). Fanzines created in Lithuania became one of the main forms of idea dissemination, creative freedom, and self-expression for alternative youth communication.

One of the contingents of Karlag prisoners were children who shared the tragic fate of their mothers, many of whom ended up in the camp as “MFTM” – “members of the families of traitors to the Motherland”. The article considers the historiography of the children's camp theme in Karlag, the authors summarize that the problem of “children of Karlag” in domestic historiography has been studied fragmentarily and superficially, there are no systemic, fundamental works. In this publication, an attempt is made, based on archival materials,memoirs, and interviews of former little prisoners of the Karaganda FLC, to trace the conditions of detention and fragments of camp life that ended up in one of the most sinister camps in Kazakhstan. The source base of the article is represented by three main types of written historical sources of the 30s-50s. of the 20th century: legal documents on the GULAG camps, records management documentation of the Karlag and statistical materials from the archival funds of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation on the number, mortality of children, etc. The article uses fragments of the memories of the prisoners of Karlag from published collections, as well as interview materials taken by one of the authors of this publication from former prisoners of the Karaganda FLC. The article involves documents from the archival funds of the Republic of Kazakhstan (the fund of the Political Department of the Karlag from the State Archive of the Karaganda region; the fund of the Karlag Administration from the Archive of the Office of the Committee for Legal Statistics and Special Records of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the Karaganda region) and the Russian Federation (the fund of the Main Directorate of Places of Detention (GUMZ) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR from the State Archive of the Russian Federation).

Professor of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Grigoriy R. Konson interviews the rector of the Gnesins Russian Academy of Music, professor Aleksander S. Ryzhinskiy. The interview focuses on how film directors and composers see the role of music in films, with music considered as a twofold phenomenon: film score as such and film scores presented at the First KINOREX Film Music Festival. In the preamble, the interlocutors review current trends in film music. In this vein, they touch upon the psychological concept of the French cinematography, interpretation of the Indian song tradition in endowing films with musicality, Baroque music and modern performance practices applied in the 20th century cinema dramaturgy, the Hollywood way of soundtrack composition as a dominating model in the world cinema, and studies devoted to the works of Alfred Schnittke and Thomas Newman. Based on these examples, the interlocutors come to the conclusion that at the heart of different approaches to the film music composition there must be an organic commonality of views of the film director and the composer. Beyond that, a binding force in the process is the reliance on classical traditions of their artistic interaction: expressing the very essence of a film’s drama through music. The discussion of the First KINOREX Film Music Festival, which was held by the Gnesins Russian Academy of Music in April 2021, naturally fits into this humanistic concept. Analyzing the winning project created by director Nadezhda Shibalova and composer Nikita Yamov, the authors of the interview come to the conclusion that the musical fabric of the screen work reveals the fundamental role of music as an analogue of the film’s ethical idea, which increases the cognitive capacity of the content.

The article analyzes the memoirs of veterans of Cheboksary electric actuators plant. These memoirs contain a description of the activities of the enterprise’s team from the moment of its foundation to the end of the 80’s of the 20th century. The research methodology is based on the methods of «oral history», which involve the analysis of materials obtained by conversations and interviews with participants and witnesses of historical events. This gives the authors the opportunity to draw unconventional conclusions about already known historical facts and to identify previously unknown social phenomena. The novelty of the research is based on the analysis of memoirs that were not previously used as oral historical sources. In addition, the authors’ research approach is new, since the method of «oral history» has become widespread in the historical science of Russia only recently. The results of the study show that the data obtained by the above-mentioned method is an important addition to another group of sources – official documents, statistical reviews, and regulations. Memoirs of the enterprise employees contain estimates of historical events, reflecting the attitude of participants and witnesses to them. The analysis of such value judgments enables to update our knowledge and bring it closer to modern understanding. At the same time, the assessments present in the memoirs do not idealize the historical past. They go beyond official documents and are independent judgments, contributing to a more objective understanding of the historical processes that took place in the USSR in the second half of the twentieth century. Memoirs make it possible to recreate the first years of the plant’s existence, the process of forming its team, and see the assessments of the most important events in the plant’s history through the eyes of insiders. It is since that time that an electrical engineering cluster has been created in Chuvashia, which includes training of highly qualified specialists. This circumstance allows us to draw another conclusion – about the broad prospects of the chosen research direction. Memoirs contain a large array of materials that require repeated processing and continued research. This type of source should continue to be collected in the form of oral conversations and interviews. Such work should eventually result in the formation of a database with the prospect of their storing in various areas for subsequent use by other researchers in accordance with their field of scientific interests. This is also related to the practical significance of the research topic. Its results can be applied in the development of other problems in modern history, and become an example for the further development of modern methodology of historical science.

This paper explores the works of K.H. Muhammad Burkan Saleh (1912-2010) as one of the Kerinci scholars who was productive wrote his works. Initially, the manuscripts found in Kerinci contained more traditional issues written in the Incung script and discussed very little on religious issues. The Kerinci manuscript, which contains religious themes, was only written in the late 19th century. This study is a qualitative study that focuses on the text domain and context. In addition, the authors also conducted interviews with manuscript collectors and their families to obtain data related to the manuscript descriptions and biographies of K.H. Muhammad Barkan Saleh. This paper shows that the tradition of writing among the Kerinci ulama continued until the 20th century as practiced by K.H Muhammad Burkan Saleh who wrote some of the information obtained using Arabic and Malay Arabic characters. The discussion themes he wrote also varied, such as the issue of Musṭalaḥ al-Ḥadîṡ, the knowledge of the Koran, the science of astronomy, he even wrote things related to amulets. Keywords: Kerinci, K.H Muhammad Burkan Saleh, manuscript.  Tulisan ini mengeksplorasi karya-karya K.H. Muhammad Burkan Saleh (1912-2010) sebagai salah satu ulama Kerinci yang produktif menulis karya-karyanya. Pada awalnya naskah-naskah yang ditemukan di Kerinci lebih banyak memuat permasalahan-permasalahan adat yang ditulis dengan menggunakan aksara Incung dan sangat sedikit membicarakan persoalan keagamaan. Manuskrip Kerinci yang memuat tema keagamaan baru ditulis pada akhir abad ke-19. Kajian ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif yang terfokus pada domain teks dan konteks. Selain itu, penulis juga melakukan wawancara dengan kolektor manuskrip dan keluarga untuk memperoleh data terkait deskripsi manuskrip dan biografi K.H. Muhammad Barkan Saleh. Tulisan ini menunjukkan bahwa tradisi tulis di kalangan ulama Kerinci masih terus berlanjut hingga abad ke-20 sebagaimana yang dilakukan oleh K.H Muhammad Burkan Saleh yang menulis beberapa informasi yang diperoleh mengunakan aksara Arab dan Arab Melayu. Tema pembahasan yang ia tulis pun beragam, seperti persoalan Musṭalaḥ al-Ḥadîṡ, ilmu Al-Qur’an, ilmu falak, bahkan ia juga menulis hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan azimat. Kata Kunci: Kerinci, K.H Muhammad Burkan Saleh, manuskrip.

The article deals with the academic research of the founders of the Kyiv philosophical school S. Krymskyi and V. Horskyi on the history of philosophical thought and culture of the Kyivan Rus as an important page of revival in the H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy in the late 1950s – 1980s of interrupted by the Stalinist regime studies on the history of philosophy of Ukraine. These studies, in particular the ones of S. Krymskyi and V. Horskyi in the 1980s – 2000s, were resumed at the beginning of the Khrushchev "thaw" era by the generation of philosophers of the sixties of the Ukrainian SSR and became the object of attention of their authors in independent Ukraine in the pilot innovative projects on the oral history of philosophy. The autobiographical reconstructions of S. Krymskyi and V. Horskyi initiated by T. Chaika in the ptoject "The Philosophers' Oral Histories", as well as more than ten years of interviews of the first of them to the all-ukrainian newspaper "Day", became important alternative sources of post-Soviet – uncensored, historical and philosophical reproduction of the formation of the history of philosophy of Ukraine as an academic discipline in the 20th century. Both of them interpreted there in an autobiographical way their own more than thirty years of "Kyivan Rus" studies as their two leading initiators in the Kyiv philosophical school. They revealed their original visions of the "philosophical culture" of Kyivan Rus in the light of the high appreciation of its "spiritual luminaries" as embodiments of Christian virtues (V. Horskyi) and "Sophianess" of Ukrainian culture since the times of Kyivan Rus as a subject of "European culture of the Greco-Slavic type" (S. Krymskyi). They jointly emphasized the exceptional role in their scholar and personal development of ethical principles and moral ideals of this stage of ancient Ukrainian culture as an important source and model of socio-cultural progress of Ukraine.

Historical advertisements and their language reflect tendencies and activities of the particular time period. When studying historical advertisement and its language, certain skills are required nowadays in order to understand the peculiarities, usage and significance of the language of the time. Advertisement is the source of history of its time, and its research provides an insight into both the history of the particular place, the city and the society of the time, its habits and values. Also, the political history of the age leaves an impact on the content of the advertisement. In its turn, comprehension of the language is a significant factor, as the text dominates in historical advertisements, and there are few pictures. An insight into the history of printed advertisement proves that a concise “text of advertisement” had to be created in order to get the advertisement printed in a publication, naming and advertising a particular product or service, it was important to show the information where the particular product could have been bought. The aim of the article is to provide an insight into the history of printed advertisement, using advertisements published in Liepāja publications during the 30s of the 20th century, mostly paying attention to the language of advertisements. In the article, the language of origin and problems of printed advertisements of the 30s of the 20th century have been analysed; differences in the language application have been studied comparing them with advertisement language nowadays. Analysis of literature and other resources, students’ surveys, and expert interview methods have been used to achieve the aim of the article. Research methods have been used in order to understand texts of old advertisements as resources of historical evidence, to study the written language of the time, as well as to understand that the advertisement of the time in the language context differs from the modern advertisement language and also from the Latvian literary language in general. It has been concluded that the Latvian language in the course of time is changing and developing. The language used in advertisements is simple; in order to attract attention, the superlative degree of adjectives is used. Advertisements are printed in black-and-white; the effect is achieved with bold letters and font size; the personification of the advertisement is common. Nowadays, youth can perceive the historical advertisement and be surprised that it was also used earlier in order, e. g. to attract customers to products. Some similar advertising slogans can be found that are still used nowadays. However, some difficulties are encountered when reflecting on the language of the time – separate words, expressions, also the applied orthography, as well as the old (Gothic) print. Youth justify difficulties of text perception with language development in the course of time, application of archaisms; they see the impact of the German language. The text of advertisements seems simple, even primitive, topical; it is an offer of practically applicable things. Nevertheless, the expert interviews confirm that the impact of a foreign language can be noticed in the advertising language, forms, words that are not used in the modern Latvian literary language any longer. To sum up, the authors of the article think that the research of the advertising language in the context of history is essential. Also, nowadays, when the digital marketing has developed, the issue about the communication with the consumer is still topical from the advertising point of view, and also the language application and content are important – what and how we want to say to consumers.

Introduction: Many nursing and midwifery schools in many countries around the world awarded or still award graduation badges or pins to their graduates. All graduates from different parts of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia and later the Republic of Yugoslavia educated in Slovenian healthcare schools received badges from these schools. Some of the graduates later employed in medical institutions across former Yugoslavia wore these badges on their uniforms. The main purpose of this historical research was to establish which Slovenian health care schools awarded the graduation badges and what they looked like. It was also investigated why the badges ceased to be awarded and what motivated Angela Boškin Faculty of Health Care in Jesenice to reintroduce awarding the badges. Methods: Due to a lack of written sources, we conducted 393 face to face and telephonic interviews with former badge recipients across Slovenia. Their existing badges were photographed. On the authors’ initiative, a private collection of badges was started.Results: It has been established that in the 20th century all Slovenian secondary health schools awarded badges. The Nursing College, Ljubljana also awarded graduation badges. Five different types of badges in many variants were issued. The first badges were awarded to graduates by Slovenian oldest Nursing School, Ljubljana in 1925. The badges ceased to be awarded in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Some questions about probable reasons for cessation of awarding badges remain unanswered. Less than a fifth of interviewees kept their badges. Graduating nursing badges were reintroduced in Slovenia in 2017 with a new badge which is presented and depicted in this article. The motivation for the reintroduction of graduating badges is also investigated.Discussion and conclusion: Unfortunately, many Slovenian nurses and midwives are not sufficiently aware of the meaning and importance of their badges. Although badges are important for professional image and identity of nurses, badges as a symbol of nursing have become almost completely forgotten. Graduation badges are miniature works of art and are proof of the existence and development of Slovenian healthcare schools. Nursing badges present a part of nursing history as well as being our cultural heritage. The badges deserve to be written and talked about and should be displayed in a planned future Slovenian Health Care Museum.

In the CR (Czech Republic), there are a lot of prefabricated housing estates built in the 70s and 80s of the 20th century, which are at the end of their life cycle. The main goal of the project was to evaluate the rate of energy savings in the long term due to the revitalization of prefabricated apartment buildings, and thus provide feedback to the relevant authorities on its effectiveness. Another goal was to evaluate selected parameters of living comfort in the locality for the purposes of the real estate market with the possibility of providing them to those interested in living in the locality. A complex of methods was used, which evaluate criteria from various spheres, such as environment, spatial relationships, social aspects, etc. The authors used a combination of multi-criterial analysis methods (MCA) and spatial analysis within a Geographical Information System (GIS). Of all MCA methods, weighted linear combination (WLC) was chosen as the most suitable. In the spatial analyses, the matter of solution was, above all, the distance to the center and the transport within the given locality. The above-mentioned methods served as a model for evaluating whether a panel house in question is or is not suitable for reconstruction. The input data of the model are spatial data—national map series of the CR, environmental data (noise maps, energy demands of buildings)—and statistical data obtained from various sources (city administration of Brno, relevant organizations, and interviews with respondents). Within Inquiry Form 3, potential groups of respondents were addressed: Group A—people over fifty, group B—young families with children, group C—students under 25. The projected model was tested in Brno city in the locality of Nový Lískovec (CR). The proposed model provided information on the quality of housing in a given locality in terms of energy intensity, noise pollution, transport accessibility, and civic amenities. The output is a multi-criteria model with GIS support, which is generally applicable. The results of the model analyses led to the demonstration of the effectiveness of revitalization. The results can be used for estate offices or other organizations in the form of graphical outputs of appropriate variants on the basis of solving a lot of criteria when searching for a suitable residence.

This article presents the analysis of the language situation, done as part of sociolinguistic study among representatives of the German etnic minority in the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region which has been a place of concentrated residence of German immigrants since the second half of the 20th century. Using recorded monologic and dialogic speech as well as questionnaire data, the authors identify subject-specific areas that have communicative significance in the speech behavior of Russian Germans in the area. The purpose of this article is to examine the functioning of the German dialect in the speech of representatives of the German ethnic minority from the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region as an exogloss component of the language situation. The study uses data from a sociolinguistic analysis of the language situation conducted on the territory of the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region in 2017. The main research methods are observation, comparison and interpretation, oral interviews and questionnaires. The analysis of the language situation in the indicated region has revealed a significant dominance of the Russian language over German in all areas of everyday communication. Thus, 99% of the Russian German surveyed use the Russian language, which has become their native language (54%) and serves as the main means of communication among the informants. Since, due to its long-term residence in a Russian-speaking environment, the Molchanovo German ethnic minority has been isolated from the German-speaking parent community in Germany, this has brought about a widespread use of Russian in oral (72%) and written (63%) speech as well as communication in the workplace (72%). Of no small importance is the belief of these Russian Germans in the importance of the Russian language for the development of Tomsk region (63%) as well as the use of Russian in religious practice when reading texts and prayers (45%), caused by more than fifty years of living in the area dominated by a different religious tradition (Russian Orthodox). Thus the language situation among Russian Germans in the Molchanovo district of Tomsk region is characterized by a significant dominance of the Russian language as its endoglossic exponent.

Klára Kokas was a music teacher and music psychologist (1929-2010). Her method is based on music, motion and manual arts, therefore it can be defined as a form of reform pedagogy, otherwise it is called complex art pedagogy. The main elements and characteristics of Klára Kokas’s pedagogy were revolutionary new ideas in the fields of personality development, and music education – compared to the practices of reform pedagogy trends in the 20th century Europe and the United States (Pukánszky-Németh, 1996). The main elements of this concept are music, dance improvisation, motion, imaginative stories, visual arts, painting and drawing. However, its most important component is the very specific and intimate relation, which connected her to children. This distinctive feature of the Kokas-method is hard to teach. Klára Kokas approached to people with problems, suffering and disabilities, especially to marginalized and disadvantaged children with utmost empathy. She struggled to develop the social-cognition skills and affectionate behavior of the handicapped children through her own invented musical method.Her writings reflected her relationship with God, namely the presence of Him which can be felt behind the scenes. His name was mostly unspoken, yet when she named Him, it was to reveal that God was always in her mind, like in her words and musical activities too.The goal of this paper is to search and frame that text corpus, which can outline the spirituality of Klára Kokas with the aim of drawing up her relationship with God and children – according to her publications, writings, essays, books, short-film compilations, movie archives and interviews (Kokas, 1992; 1999; 2002; 2007; 2012; 2013). The contours of her spirituality from her teachings, manuscripts and publications couldn’t be attributed to any religious denomination. Also, to be presented are her notions about youth and teenage spirit and a unique relation with the world, her own students, the talents, the music and the holiness: the spirituality of Klára Kokas. The importance of beliefs and moral convictions in the art of education will be outlined.A single paragraph of about 150-200 words maximum. For research articles, abstracts should give a complete overview of the work. We encourage authors to use the following style of abstracts: background, methods, results and conclusion. The abstract should give an objective representation of the article.

<p>Mass settlement of Latvian rural inhabitants in towns and cities started just a little more than a hundred years ago, therefore bond with nature is a specifically Latvian identity sign. Studying the peculiarities of a nation, garden and plants give an opportunity to see and understand what is hard to get in a direct way as garden reveals the hidden and open processes that have taken place and are still happening in the economic, political, and social life of an individual person or the whole society. To form a perspective on the plants existing in the cultural environment as a socially significant phenomenon in Latvian identity development and preservation, in 2008 interdisciplinary research „Plants as a sign of Latvian identity” was initiated in Latvia.</p><p>The present article „Plants as a sign of Latgalian identity in cultural landscape, writing, and stories” covers the results of the fifth cycle of the above mentioned research. The goal of the research was to make out which plants are assumed to be the sign of Latgalian identity. The authors of the present paper were interested in singling out the factors that were considered essential by respondents in the formation of the notion of Latgalian plants, the colours believed to belong with Latgalian garden. Collecting stories was also considered important because not everything is preserved in written sources and, as the previous studies revealed, respondents’ stories were those that made it possible to understand the role of plants in the sustaining of identity. The research made use of questionnaire and written interview. The obtained results were analyzed by means of the comparative method using evidence of the cultural landscape, popular works by Latgalian authors, press periodicals published in Latgalian, literature in horticulture and gardening, archive materials of the Open-Air Ethnographical Museum of Latvia, internet resources, postcards from the private collection of Andrejs Svilāns and the prior results gained within the interdisciplinary research „Plants as a sign of Latvian identity”. We set to reveal in the research what opportunities for investigating Latgalian identity are offered by the plants grown in the cultural landscape of Latgale and the way the obtained results extend the existing studies of Latvian identity.</p><p>Summarizing the results of 93 questionnaires and oral interviews, 139 diversities were recognized as Latgalian plants including 54 caulescent plants – decorative plants, 35 vulnerary plants and herbs, 22 trees and 28 shrubs. The notion of the Latgalian as well as Latvian plants, according to the respondents, has been formed mostly by the gardens seen by their parents, grandparents, relatives as well as their stories. The impact of fiction and classical folklore is recognized as most essential in case of Latvian plants. The plants growing in the cultural landscape used by writers of fiction are signs that are understood and unite people belonging to a particular cultural space, they function as symbols of Latgale and the native homestead. Works produced both in Latgalian and Latvian literary language by Latgalian authors have cultivated and continue to cultivate Latgalian self-awareness, but print bans and works produced before emigration and during emigration by Latgalian writers have attributed specific worth to fiction and folklore.</p><p>The research revealed that identity signs are rather stable; both Latvian and Latgalian plants were most often assumed to be those grown by a couple of preceding generations – basically at the end of the 19th –beginning of the 20th century in estate and peasant gardens. These plants are considered to be Latgalian though their origin in most cases is not the local flora. At the same time in their replies to the question what should not be grown in a Latgalian garden respondents replied – „foreign plants”, meaning plants that had entered rural homesteads later on (in recent decades).</p><p>The research showed that, unlike respondents from other regions, Latgalians perceive their regional landscape in a more syncretic way, not excluding plants that, due to some stereotypical notions or symbolism, do not „fit” into it, e. g. alders, asps, osiers, etc.</p><p>Traditions are formed in a long-term period, but those originated in the second half of the 19th century had a special significance. Under conditions of Russification, they helped to maintain Latgalian identity, also planting particular plant combinations in line with the notion of a Latgalian garden.</p><p>The information concerning plants grown in peasant homesteads in Latgale is rather scarce in the materials of the Open-Air Ethnographical Museum of Latvia, as compared to other regions. Investigation of detached homestead and village garden cultures might be a task of the further research, as village was a closed community that maintained Latvian traditions.</p><p>The research brought out several debatable issues that remain unanswered. To find answers to them, a necessity to address directly the supplier of information emerged clearly in further research as well as to prepare visual material – photographs, drawings that would make it easier to identify plants and reduce the problem of taxonomic differentiation that appeared in the preceding research. For instance, it is not clear where is the border between „briar-roses” – wild rose species (Rosa sp.) and cultivated rose species and old cultivars as well as between willows (Salix fragilis), pussy willows (S. caprea or S. acutifolia x daphnoides ‘Pashal’) a. o. taxa of the genus Salix.</p><p>The present paper does not pretend to provide an exhaustive study and analysis of the factors affecting the notion of the Latgalian plants. This is the task of further studies, as, according to the prior studies of Latvian plants, each such factor is worth a separate voluminous research.</p><p>The authors of the present paper intend to proceed with the studies of garden culture as well as collecting the Latgalian names of plants grown at home, in the garden, growing in the forest, meadow, field, studying the use of plants and their economic and social significance as well as collecting stories in order to preserve this non-material culture legacy as complete and correct as possible. We hope that the paper will encourage researchers of various fields to participate in the study to use the opportunities provided by garden plants for a more unusual insight.</p>

In the broadest sense, cosmopolitanism can be described as a belief and action in accordance with the view that all human beings belong to a unique world political community. However, such a simplified definition overlooks the multidimensionality of the concept. The term cosmopolitanism has been present in public discourse since ancient times and has carried different connotations throughout history, which contributes to its ambiguity. The preconditions for the development of cosmopolitanism in its present sense arose in the mid-20th century, after the world wars and the onset of new globalisation processes. Within the social sciences, a significant interest in a more specific definition and conceptualisation of cosmopolitanism emerged in the second half of the 20th century. However, numerous theoretical discussions since then have not yet offered such a definition of the concept. An additional problem lies in the fact that those theoretical discussions, which defined multiple aspects and types of cosmopolitanism, are not accompanied by a corresponding number of empirical research. By considering previous theoretical and empirical research on the topic, this paper aims to offer a clearer conceptualisation and operationalisation of cosmopolitanism, with the focus on constructing a valid instrument for its measurement. While it is difficult to offer a clear and unambiguous theoretical definition of cosmopolitanism, most researchers have moved in the direction of a clearer definition of certain aspects of the concept. There were a few attempts of such conceptualisation that have been met with wider acclamation, some of which were more complex and some simpler. Vertovec and Cohen (2002) established the most sophisticated conceptualisation by defining cosmopolitanism as a sociocultural condition, a philosophy or worldview, a political project, an attitude or disposition, and a practice or competence. With the aim of capturing multiple aspects of the concept, Boucher, Aubert and de Latour (2019) defined four types of cosmopolitanism: moral, institutional, civil and cultural. Furthermore, Delanty (2009) offered a different approach by distinguishing moral, political and cultural cosmopolitanism. The various definitions agree, however, on including the political and the cultural aspects of cosmopolitanism. Therefore, this paper is based on the robust typology offered by Hannerz (2006), which distinguishes between the cultural and political faces of cosmopolitanism. The author sees the political face of the concept as the one that tries to solve macro problems of human, economic, legal, environmental and other processes that transcend nation-state borders. Hannerz (2006) defines the cultural face as an identity characteristic of individuals who enjoy new cultures, people, tastes, sounds and the like. The cultural dimension of cosmopolitanism, which arises from the awareness and practices of individuals, is the focus of this research. It is important to mention that numerous researchers define certain types (banal, patriotic, thin, ordinary) of cosmopolitanism. However, it is questionable to what extent the determination of such types contributes to a clearer understanding of the concept, especially when they are defined solely on the basis of theoretical considerations. Before establishing the framework for the empirical research, it was important to clarify the source of contemporary cosmopolitanism. Most researchers link cosmopolitanism to globalisation processes. Beck and Sznaider (2010) explain globalisation as processes that take place “out there” in the world and define cosmopolitanism as “globalization from within”, a process that is closely related to globalisation but takes place within society. Such a connection becomes questionable when the terms glocalisation, which includes micro as well as macro processes, and segmented globalisation, which refers to the different dynamics by which globalisation occurs in places around the world, are introduced into the discourse. These concepts also suggest that all individuals involved in globalisation trends will express cosmopolitan views, which is not the case. On the other hand, Roudometof (2005) emphasises the link between cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, a view that is elaborated in this paper. The author defines the concept of transnationalism as a social condition that arises in the stage of internal globalisation and is not influenced by the emotions and attitudes of individuals but its most important feature is that it can stimulate individuals to develop an open attitude, that is, cosmopolitanism, or a defensive attitude towards differences. The lack of a clear theoretical definition of cosmopolitanism has influenced the disproportion between the theoretical considerations and empirical research of the concept. One part of the researchers used secondary data to examine attitudes about cosmopolitanism in a certain population. These studies have led to important insights, but they have not contributed to the creation of a valid and reliable instrument for measuring cosmopolitanism. Another problem with such research is that it is conducted using data that are focused on examining other concepts. One such example is the study by Olofsson and Öhman (2007), where the authors interpreted views contrary to nationalism as cosmopolitan views. The other part of empirical research on the subject of cosmopolitanism is focused on constructing an instrument for its measurement. While most such studies were conducted to explore a particular aspect of the concept, Saran and Kalliny (2012) offered an instrument to measure general cosmopolitan attitudes, values, and practices within a particular population. The authors first conducted interviews, the results of which were used to construct questions for the survey. After collecting survey data, the authors defined a valid and reliable, one-dimensional 14-item scale of cosmopolitanism by conducting exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The findings of other authors pointed to the connection between cosmopolitanism and other concepts like transnational experiences, political orientation, and sociodemographic characteristics. The empirical part of this research aimed to define a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the presence of cosmopolitanism in a given population. For this purpose, the scale offered by Saran and Kalliny (2012) was used in a slightly modified form to further test its construct validity, reliability and applicability. The instrument was tested on the student population of the University of Zadar via an online survey in October 2020. In addition to the cosmopolitanism scale, the questionnaire contained questions about the number of countries the respondents had visited, the number of foreign languages they spoke, their political orientation, their support for general human rights and certain sociodemographic characteristics, with the purpose of testing the convergent validity of the instrument. In order to determine the metrics of the cosmopolitanism scale, bivariate (correlation analysis) and multivariate statistical procedures (exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis) were conducted in the statistical programming language R. First, exploratory factor analysis was performed on the cosmopolitanism scale with parallel analysis as a factor retention method, which extracted one 13-item factor with a high level of reliability (α=0.93). To examine the construct validity of the scale, confirmatory factor analysis was further performed, resulting in an acceptable goodness-of-fit. In order to define a scale that shows even better psychometric properties, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on a reduced 6-item scale that Saran and Kalliny (2012) found to show stronger construct validity. Following their results, the 6-item scale showed even better goodness-of-fit (χ²=25, df=9, SRMR=0.05, RMSEA=0.09, CFI=0.95, TLI=0.91), and its factor scores were used in further analyses. Correlation analysis was used to measure the relationship between the cosmopolitanism scale and transnational experiences and political views. It was found that respondents who express stronger cosmopolitan views speak more foreign languages, have visited a greater number of foreign countries, express stronger support for leftwing political options, and a stronger need to protect universal human rights, of which the latter correlation proved to be the highest. Lastly, multiple regression was conducted, where the cosmopolitanism scale factor scores served as the dependent variable and sociodemographic variables as predictors. The regression model confirmed the previous finding that women express stronger cosmopolitan attitudes than men. The results of the statistical analysis indicate a high level of reliability and validity of the reduced 6-item cosmopolitanism scale. On that basis, it can be stated that the scale serves as a valid instrument for measuring cosmopolitan attitudes within a population. The scope of the study is limited because it was conducted on a relatively homogeneous sample of the University of Zadar student population. In future research, the 6-item scale should be tested on a more heterogeneous sample which could indicate the applicability of the instrument to a wider population. Besides, in future research, it would be advisable to pay more attention to examining indicators and constructs related to cosmopolitanism, based on which clearer types of cosmopolitan could potentially be defined.

This special issue of JDR features 18 papers and reports on an international 2010 to 2015 cooperative project entitled gEnhancement of Earthquake and Volcano Monitoring and Effective Utilization of Disaster Mitigation Information in the Philippines.h This project is being conducted under the SATREPS program (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development), cosponsored by the JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) and JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency). The Philippines is one of the worldfs most earthquake and volcano disaster-prone countries because it is located along the active boundary between the Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasian Plate. Collisions by the two plates generate plate subductions and crustal stress that generates earthquakes and volcanic activities on the archipelago. The Philippines has experienced numerous disastrous earthquakes, the most recent being the 1990 M7.8 Luzon earthquake, which killed over 1,000 local residents. A damaging earthquake also occurred during this 5-year project, in October 2013, on Bohol Island, causing about 200 deaths when houses and other buildings collapsed. Volcanoes are another major killer in the Philippines. The largest in the last century was when the Taal volcano erupted in 1911, killing 1,300 by a base surge. The 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption is known as the largest volcanic event in the 20th century. The Mayon volcano is also known to be a beautiful but dangerous volcano that frequently erupts, causing lahars ? steaming moving fluid masses of volcanic debris and water ? that damaged villages at the foot of the mountain. The PHIVOLCS (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology), a governmental agency mandated to monitor earthquakes and volcanoes, provides earthquake and volcano information and alerts to the public. It also conducts research on the mechanisms behind such natural phenomena and on evaluating such hazards and risks. The PHIVOLCSfs other mission is educating people and society on being prepared for disasters. Earthquake and volcano bulletins and alerts, research output, and educational materials and training provided by PHIVOLCS have enriched knowledge and enhanced measures against disaster. The primary target of this SATREPS project is to enhance existing monitoring networks, whose equipment has been provided by Japanese ODA (Official Development Aid). Through the SATREPS project, we have introduced the latest technology to provide the public with more accurate information more quickly. This project also promotes research for deepening the understanding of earthquakes and volcano activities in better assessing hazard and risk. Project components, tasks, and main Japanese organizations are as follows: 1) Earthquake and tsunami monitoring, NIED 1-1) Advanced real-time earthquake source information, Nagoya University 1-2) Real-time seismic intensity network, NIED 1-3) Tsunami monitoring and forecasting, NIED, JMA 2) Evaluation of earthquake generation potential, Kyoto University 2-1) Campaign and continuous GPS observation, Kyoto University, GSI 2-2) Geological and geomorphological studies of earthquake faults, Kyoto University 3) Integrated real-time monitoring of the Taal and Mayon volcanoes, Nagoya University 3-1) Seismic and infrasonic observation, Nagoya University 3-2) Continuous GPS monitoring, Kyoto University 3-3) Electromagnetic monitoring, Tokai University 4) Provision of disaster mitigation information and promotion of utilization, NIED 4-1) Simple seismic diagnosis, NIED 4-2) Tsunami victims interview manga (comic book form) and DVD, NIED 4-3) Disaster information portal site, NIED <span style="font-size: xx-small;">*NIED: National Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention; JMA: Japan Meteorological Agency; GSI: Geospatial Information Authority of Japan</span> This issuefs first article by Melosantos et al., reports on results of installing a broadband seismometer network to provide seismic data used in the next two articles. Papers by Bonita and Punongbayan detail the results of SWIFT, a new earthquake source analysis system that automatically determines the location, size, and source mechanisms of moderate to large earthquakes. The report by Inoue et al. describes the development of the first instrumental intensity network system in the Philippines, followed by a report on its deployment and observation by Lasala et al. The article by Igarashi et al. describes the development of a tsunami simulation database for a local tsunami warning system in the Philippines. The next five papers represent the 2) Earthquake Generation Potential project component. Ohkura et al. detail the results of campaign GPS observations on Mindanao Island, which first delineated the detailed plate movement and internal deformation of Mindanao. Tobita et al. report the results of the first continuous GPS observations across the Philippine Fault. The next three papers describe the results of geological and geomorphological studies of the Philippine Fault on Mindanao Island by Perez et al., the 1973 Ragay Gulf Earthquake by Tsutsumi, and submarine mapping of the Philippine Fault by Yasuda et al.. These results provide insights on the recurrence and sizes of large damaging earthquakes in different areas. An electromagnetic study of the Taal volcano reported by Alanis et al. and the GPS monitoring of the Mayon volcano detailed by Takagi et al. are a part of intensive studies of these two volcanoes. Scientific research results were published in advance in other international journals by the research group concerning 3) Integrated Real-Time Volcano Monitoring of the Taal and Mayon Volcanoes. Real-time information on these volcanoes are telemetered to Manila and checked regularly as a part of standard operational procedures. Real-time earthquake and tsunami information by 1) Earthquake and Tsunami Monitoring has already been implemented in the monitoring system. The last five papers and reports cover results for 4) Provision of Disaster Mitigation Information and Promotion of Utilization. Imai et al. report on a full-scale shaking table test of typical residential Philippines houses made of hollow concrete blocks. They demonstrate the importance of following building codes. A paper by Imai et al. introduces simple seismic diagnosis for masonry houses as a practical tool for raising peoplefs awareness of housing vulnerability to earthquakes. Salcedo et al. report a dissemination strategy for the practical tools. The last two papers, by Villegas, report on video interviews made with Philippino tsunami survivors in the Tohoku area following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The results are compiled and selected stories published in comic-book form as easy-to-understand educational materials on tsunami disaster awareness. Information on earthquakes and volcanoes provided by the enhanced monitoring system, research output, and educational materials obtained through the SATREPS project are provided to stakeholders to enhance measures against disasters at various levels and in different timeframes. Readers of this special issue can reference information through a newly established SATREPS project portal site, the PHIVOLCS Disaster Information Portal, at <a href="http://satreps.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/">http://satreps.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/</a>. It can also be accessed from the PHIVOLCS web page at <a href="http://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/">http://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/</a>. Finally, I extend my sincere thanks to all authors and reviewers involved in this special issue.

Argentina and South Korea are often used to exemplify, respectively, an exceptional episode of economic failure and a rare developmental success story of the second half of the 20th century. As it is argued in the literature, the main reasons for the economic downfall of Argentina were excessive state intervention and regulation. The authors of this article, however, presume that these were rather unsuccessful policies than fundamental problems of the Argentine economy. The level of economic complexity of Argentina was traditionally low, which was a result of an underdeveloped system of mass education and relatively sparse technology adoption. Without serious efforts to diversify its exports and increase its level of economic complexity, this country had little chance to stay among the world’s richest economies. That these efforts did not succeed in bringing about a higher level of economic complexity in Argentina did not, at the same time, imply that they were the main reason of its long-term economic stagnation. In this paper, the authors use the economic complexity theory framework to describe the development story of the Argentine economy in the second half of the 20th century in terms of economic complexity and export diversification. The authors show that this country’s efforts to develop its industry have resulted only in a minor increase in its level of economic complexity, especially if East Asian economic miracle stories—the one of South Korea in particular—are used as a reference point. The main reasons of this result include a slow pace of human capital accumulation in Argentina. This makes an immense contrast with the vast expansion of secondary and tertiary education in South Korea. Challenges of the Korean government’s new industrial policy in the mid-60s and gradual economic diversification stimulated a large-scale education reform, which made South Korea one of the most prominent high-tech economies of the modern world

This paper analyses intertextuality between two novels, Juan José Saer’s La pesquisa and Ricardo Piglia’s Blanco nocturno, in the context of detective fiction, that both writers explore in their narrative. The paper is divided in four parts: “Cruces introductorios” is an introductory form to produce connections between the most important authors of the last quarter of 20th-century Argentine; in “Primeros rastros” communicating vases are set between both poetics in detective genre; in “Subgéneros policiales” some important aspects of La pesquisa and Blanco nocturno are analysed while some differences are identified: the first work belongs to enigma novel and the last work connects with hard boiled; finally, the paper analyses Detective Morvan and Detective Croce aiming at identifying opposite pairs: intelligence and dementia, reason and madness, civilisation and barbarism. Thus, these concepts are establishing new relationships between Saer and Piglia based on their approaches to detective genre and their criticism to capitalist system.

This paper analyses intertextuality between two novels, Juan José Saer’s La pesquisa and Ricardo Piglia’s Blanco nocturno, in the context of detective fiction, that both writers explore in their narrative. The paper is divided in four parts: “Cruces introductorios” is an introductory form to produce connections between the most important authors of the last quarter of 20th-century Argentine; in “Primeros rastros” communicating vases are set between both poetics in detective genre; in “Subgéneros policiales” some important aspects of La pesquisa and Blanco nocturno are analysed while some differences are identified: the first work belongs to enigma novel and the last work connects with hard boiled; finally, the paper analyses Detective Morvan and Detective Croce aiming at identifying opposite pairs: intelligence and dementia, reason and madness, civilisation and barbarism. Thus, these concepts are establishing new relationships between Saer and Piglia based on their approaches to detective genre and their criticism to capitalist system.

In today’s Georgia most of the songs by contemporary authors, which are referred to as “folk” have little to do with traditional musical regularities; the examples, disseminated as specific, established variants are also called "folk". Modernized instruments created in the 20th century are also regarded as folk. It is strange that their consideration as folk examples is often acceptable to their authors. The article aims to study contemporary author’s songs and to reveal their connection with the regularities of folk musical language. In the modern era the author’s songs on folklore motives have not yet been given name in science. Georgian researchers refer to such examples as “para folklore”, “modernized folklore” and “pop-folk”. In all three definitions they are called folklore. The difference between them is shown only by the pre word. The article poses specific problems and shows possible solutions to them, for example: what approximates contemporary author’s songs with folk tradition? Why are they considered folk? What are their characteristic musical features? What factor contributes to the popularity of these examples? Also, basing on the musical analysis and personal interviews, discussed is folk character of the repertoire of contemporary author’s song performers (trio “Mandili”, Gogochuri sisters, group “Bani”, Davit Kenchiashvili).

Each country has specific regions, which differ mainly in social, demographic, cultural, and economic aspects. Our subject of interest is the study of peripheral environment that has undergone several migratory transformations in the 20th century that have affected it up to the present day. For this reason, the Sudetenland has become the subject of our research interest. The paper aims to show how the selected respondents from the studied region perceive everyday life and how it influences their political attitudes by combining three steps: the theoretical definition of the periphery, specific aspects of life in the selected Central European region, and qualitative structured interviews. For this purpose, we chose respondents' experiences with the political regime until 1989, quality of life, public services, the consequences of the transformation, access to education, the functioning of the community, and their attitudes towards supporting selected political parties. The paper shows how positive experiences of the past regime, but also emotions, mainly nostalgia, frustration and anger, are interwoven into support for political parties for some of the respondents. These factors lead to the choice of populist and radical parties. The authors uniquely extend existing theories of the periphery with a political science approach.

This article examines how the use of emergent smart baby monitors re-mediates parent–baby touch, notions of connection, parental sensing and the interpretation of babies’ bodies, and contributes to the formation of subjectivities. Domestic baby monitors are a mid 20th-century phenomenon which normalizes parental anxieties. While baby monitoring is not new, the ‘next generation’ of wearable bio-sensing baby monitors offers a different relationship to the body via the physiological tracking of babies, and the sending of information or alerts to parents’ via connected mobile apps. These devices have been associated with creating unnecessary parental anxiety and the digital ‘replacement’ of parental touch, although little research exists on their use in the context of parent–infant interaction or touch. The authors present a qualitative case study of one such technology, Owlet, to explore how parents experienced, understood and negotiated the discourses of parent–infant touch that circulate around and through Owlet, with particular attention to the relationship between visual and tactile resources. The study focuses on both its multimodal design and take-up by parents through analysis of interviews with the Owlet designer, Owlet as a product, focus groups with parents and families’ home experiences of Owlet. Data is analysed through a tri-part lens, which first combines multimodal social semiotic and sensory ethnographic approaches, and then the analytical concept of governmentality. The findings are discussed in relation to four analytical themes: (1) creating a desire for digitally mediated touch; (2) spatiality of digitally mediated connection; (3) formulating the ‘right kind’ of touch; and (4) reconfiguring ‘knowing touch’. The authors discuss multimodal discourses pertinent to the shaping of parent–baby touch practices including: rationality and efficiency; individualism, autonomy and freedom; and self-improvement and empowerment. They conclude that the discourses that coalesce around Owlet contribute to the reconfiguration of parent–baby touch and the formation of neoliberal subjectivities.

The rise of digital technologies since the second half of the 20th century has transformed every aspect of our lives and has had an ongoing effect even on one of the most conservative fields, education, including chemistry education. During the Covid-19 pandemic, chemistry teachers around the world were forced to teach remotely. This situation provided the authors with an opportunity to investigate how chemistry teachers integrate technology into their teaching, compared with how the research literature suggests that it is done. The theoretical framework used in this explorative qualitative study involves chemistry teachers' technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK). In particular, the study focused on different modes of technology integration (MOTIs) in chemistry teaching, which is a part of the teachers’ TPACK. In the first stage, five expert chemistry teachers were interviewed so that they could share their extensive experience with technology during online chemistry teaching. Analysis of their interviews revealed that the teachers applied 7 MOTIs in their chemistry teaching. Of these MOTIs, 4 were reported in the chemistry teaching literature: (1) using digital tools for visualization, (2) using open digital databases, (3) using computational methods, and (4) using virtual laboratories and videos of chemical experiments. In addition, the interviews revealed three new MOTIs in chemistry teaching not previously reported: (5) supporting multi-level representations, (6) enabling outreach of chemistry research, and (7) presenting chemistry in everyday life phenomena. In the second research stage, we collected the perspectives of other chemistry teachers (N = 22) regarding the 7 MOTIs. This stage enabled us to validate the findings of the first stage on a wider population and provided data to rate the importance of the seven different MOTIs according to the teachers. We wish to stress that understanding the MOTIs will not only enrich teachers’ theoretical knowledge base regarding integrating technology into chemistry teaching—it will also contribute to chemistry teachers' preparation and professional development programs.

This study sought to explore the practice and philosophical foundation of Kwaku Asaku-Gyapon (1932 – 2018), an artist educationist of the African modernist stock, from the 1960s to the 1980s that shaped the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) artistic traditions and generally the Ghanaian sculptural representation. The study seeks to contribute to existing literature on African modernism, following up on karî’kachä Seid’ou’s “J. C. Okyere’s Bequest of Concrete Statuary in the KNUST Collection: Special Emphasis on “Lonely Woman” which sheds light on the artist’s ethos and practice in the midst of seeming erasure and wrong attributions. The study looked at the artist’s three-decade practice, in mainly concrete statuary, terra cotta, wood, and metal (rarely), as part of mid-20th century Ghanaian nationalist repositioning. This is part of the African art that evolved by blending foreign materials and techniques with native African concepts in which artists used revolutionary tools and methods, along with indigenous storytelling practices, to tell their stories in various forms. The study adopted archival research and interviews of the artist as well as descriptive-analytic research methods of the qualitative approach. The study revealed that the artist’s concepts and themes emerged from his personal experiences, sociocultural environment, and political events of his era. It also shows the artist’s practice as commission-dependent in which personal explorations of materials (cement, metal, terrazzo, wood, clay) and techniques in life modelling, casting, and carving were prioritized. The Authors conclude that Kwaku Asaku-Gyapon was a prolific but less exposed Ghanaian modernist artist educationist, in the light of how he adopted the indigenous Asante storytelling approaches through the application of traditional and non-traditional materials and techniques. Keywords: Asaku-Gyapon, Ghanaian Idiom, Artworks, African Modernist Sculptor, Indigenous Storytelling

<h4 class="text-primary">Resumen</h4><p style="text-align: justify;">Jorge Basadre dejó muchos aportes a la cultura nacional. Uno de ellos fue su interés y su trabajo por la educación rural, fue ministro de educación aparte de docente e historiador de la República. Hemos querido investigar qué fuentes y qué autores influyeron en él, para convertirse en un entusiasta de la temática educacional y rural. Esto es parte de una tesis sobre el maestro Encinas y la educación de Puno de principios del siglo XX, para lo cual recurrimos a los archivos de manuscritos de la época y a fuentes bibliográficas, textos del propio Encinas, entrevistas a Basadre. Descubrimos que el maestro JoséA. Encinas fue su gran inspiración, que tuvieron mucha vinculación amical y académica, que pasaron semejantes vicisitudes y compartieron anhelos hacia el Perú rural.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>PALABRAS CLAVE: </strong>* educación * campesinado * Perú</p><h4 class="text-primary">ABSTRACT</h4><p><strong>JORGE BASADRE AND RURAL EDUCATION</strong></p><p style="text-align: justify;">One of Jorge Basadre’s many contributions to national culture was his interest and work for rural education. Basadre was a Minister of Education as well as teacher and historian of the Republic. We wanted to investigate what sources and authors influenced him; What inspired him to become an enthusiast of educational and rural issues in Peru? This is an abstract of a thesis on Professor Encinas and education in Puno from the beginning of the 20th century. We examine manuscripts and bibliographic sources from the era, as well as texts from Professor Encinas himself. In interviews with Basadre, we discover that Professor José. A. Encinas were his great inspiration. These two teachers shared an academic and amicable friendship, finding unforeseen similarities and shared aspirations for rural Peru.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>KEY WORDS: </strong>* education * peasants * Peru</p>

There are no other sense-altering aspects of culture that equate with language’s effect on aural perception (hearing). Increased sensitivity to pitch is a cognitive characteristic in the 60% of the world’s ethnolinguistic cultures that speak tone languages (Yip 2002). Lexical tone is a pitch contrast akin to the contour of a melody that distinguishes between words. An example is [íké] (high-high, like a repeated note) and [íkè] (high-low, like a falling interval) which forms a minimal pair between the Ìgbò words for strength and buttocks. Being a tone language speaker also impacts ways of musicking, especially singing. This is the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where “language and music are tied, as if by an umbilical cord” (Agawu 2016:113). A favorite tool for evangelism among 19th- and 20th-century European missionaries in West Africa was to translate European hymn texts into the language of the missionized and teach them to sing the translation to the original hymn tune. An example included in the video is “All hail the power of Jesus’ name” which is often sung to the Coronation hymn tune by Oliver Holden (1792). Unfortunately, early missionaries would translate the texts metrically (to preserve the number of syllables) but had no understanding of the necessary tone. Because of the link between lyrics and melody in tone languages, composers of vocal music in tone languages have argued that one should not compose vocal music in isolation from text or vice-versa. In 1974, Laz Ekwueme, a doctoral advisee of Allen Forte, published an article on Ìgbò text setting and harmonization. In addition to parallel harmony, Ekwueme recommends staggering text (as in European polyphony or African call-and-response) and using alliterative sounds (vocables and onomatopoeia) in subordinate voices. Drawing on field recordings gathered in Nigeria from 2011–2020 by the authors, and commentary by Ekwueme and Dr. Christian Onyeji, this SMT-V article studies the phenomenon of “tone-and-tune” in Ìgbò culture. Compositions by Laz Èkwúèmé, Sam Òjúkwū, Christian Ònyéji, Joshua Úzọ̀ígwē Commentary by Laz Èkwúèmé, Christian Ònyéjì Performances by Ogene Uzodinma, Laz Ekwueme Chorale, Agbani-Nguru Ikorodo, Lagos City Chorale, Elizabeth Ime Ònyéjì, University of Lagos Choir, Morehouse College Glee Club Video scores by Ebruphiyor Omodoro Field recordings and interviews are provided by the Africana Digital Ethnography Project (ADEPt), with support from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Introduction: Our current obsession with the lives of others “Biography—that is to say, our creative and non-fictional output devoted to recording and interpreting real lives—has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance in recent years,” writes Nigel Hamilton in Biography: A Brief History (1). Ian Donaldson agrees that biography is back in fashion: “Once neglected within the academy and relegated to the dustier recesses of public bookstores, biography has made a notable return over recent years, emerging, somewhat surprisingly, as a new cultural phenomenon, and a new academic adventure” (23). For over a decade now, commentators having been making similar observations about our obsession with the intimacies of individual people’s lives. In a lecture in 1994, Justin Kaplan asserted the West was “a culture of biography” (qtd. in Salwak 1) and more recent research findings by John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge affirm that “the undiminished human curiosity about other peoples lives is clearly reflected in the popularity of autobiographies and biographies” (218). At least in relation to television, this assertion seems valid. In Australia, as in the USA and the UK, reality and other biographically based television shows have taken over from drama in both the numbers of shows produced and the viewers these shows attract, and these forms are also popular in Canada (see, for instance, Morreale on The Osbournes). In 2007, the program Biography celebrated its twentieth anniversary season to become one of the longest running documentary series on American television; so successful that in 1999 it was spun off into its own eponymous channel (Rak; Dempsey). Premiered in May 1996, Australian Story—which aims to utilise a “personal approach” to biographical storytelling—has won a significant viewership, critical acclaim and professional recognition (ABC). It can also be posited that the real home movies viewers submit to such programs as Australia’s Favourite Home Videos, and “chat” or “confessional” television are further reflections of a general mania for biographical detail (see Douglas), no matter how fragmented, sensationalized, or even inane and cruel. A recent example of the latter, the USA-produced The Moment of Truth, has contestants answering personal questions under polygraph examination and then again in front of an audience including close relatives and friends—the more “truthful” their answers (and often, the more humiliated and/or distressed contestants are willing to be), the more money they can win. Away from television, but offering further evidence of this interest are the growing readerships for personally oriented weblogs and networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook (Grossman), individual profiles and interviews in periodical publications, and the recently widely revived newspaper obituary column (Starck). Adult and community education organisations run short courses on researching and writing auto/biographical forms and, across Western countries, the family history/genealogy sections of many local, state, and national libraries have been upgraded to meet the increasing demand for these services. Academically, journals and e-mail discussion lists have been established on the topics of biography and autobiography, and North American, British, and Australian universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in life writing. The commonly aired wisdom is that published life writing in its many text-based forms (biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, and collections of personal letters) is enjoying unprecedented popularity. It is our purpose to examine this proposition. Methodological problems There are a number of problems involved in investigating genre popularity, growth, and decline in publishing. Firstly, it is not easy to gain access to detailed statistics, which are usually only available within the industry. Secondly, it is difficult to ascertain how publishing statistics are gathered and what they report (Eliot). There is the question of whether bestselling booklists reflect actual book sales or are manipulated marketing tools (Miller), although the move from surveys of booksellers to electronic reporting at point of sale in new publishing lists such as BookScan will hopefully obviate this problem. Thirdly, some publishing lists categorise by subject and form, some by subject only, and some do not categorise at all. This means that in any analysis of these statistics, a decision has to be made whether to use the publishing list’s system or impose a different mode. If the publishing list is taken at face value, the question arises of whether to use categorisation by form or by subject. Fourthly, there is the bedeviling issue of terminology. Traditionally, there reigned a simple dualism in the terminology applied to forms of telling the true story of an actual life: biography and autobiography. Publishing lists that categorise their books, such as BookScan, have retained it. But with postmodern recognition of the presence of the biographer in a biography and of the presence of other subjects in an autobiography, the dichotomy proves false. There is the further problem of how to categorise memoirs, diaries, and letters. In the academic arena, the term “life writing” has emerged to describe the field as a whole. Within the genre of life writing, there are, however, still recognised sub-genres. Academic definitions vary, but generally a biography is understood to be a scholarly study of a subject who is not the writer; an autobiography is the story of a entire life written by its subject; while a memoir is a segment or particular focus of that life told, again, by its own subject. These terms are, however, often used interchangeably even by significant institutions such the USA Library of Congress, which utilises the term “biography” for all. Different commentators also use differing definitions. Hamilton uses the term “biography” to include all forms of life writing. Donaldson discusses how the term has been co-opted to include biographies of place such as Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography (2000) and of things such as Lizzie Collingham’s Curry: A Biography (2005). This reflects, of course, a writing/publishing world in which non-fiction stories of places, creatures, and even foodstuffs are called biographies, presumably in the belief that this will make them more saleable. The situation is further complicated by the emergence of hybrid publishing forms such as, for instance, the “memoir-with-recipes” or “food memoir” (Brien, Rutherford and Williamson). Are such books to be classified as autobiography or put in the “cookery/food & drink” category? We mention in passing the further confusion caused by novels with a subtitle of The Biography such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The fifth methodological problem that needs to be mentioned is the increasing globalisation of the publishing industry, which raises questions about the validity of the majority of studies available (including those cited herein) which are nationally based. Whether book sales reflect what is actually read (and by whom), raises of course another set of questions altogether. Methodology In our exploration, we were fundamentally concerned with two questions. Is life writing as popular as claimed? And, if it is, is this a new phenomenon? To answer these questions, we examined a range of available sources. We began with the non-fiction bestseller lists in Publishers Weekly (a respected American trade magazine aimed at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents that claims to be international in scope) from their inception in 1912 to the present time. We hoped that this data could provide a longitudinal perspective. The term bestseller was coined by Publishers Weekly when it began publishing its lists in 1912; although the first list of popular American books actually appeared in The Bookman (New York) in 1895, based itself on lists appearing in London’s The Bookman since 1891 (Bassett and Walter 206). The Publishers Weekly lists are the best source of longitudinal information as the currently widely cited New York Times listings did not appear till 1942, with the Wall Street Journal a late entry into the field in 1994. We then examined a number of sources of more recent statistics. We looked at the bestseller lists from the USA-based Amazon.com online bookseller; recent research on bestsellers in Britain; and lists from Nielsen BookScan Australia, which claims to tally some 85% or more of books sold in Australia, wherever they are published. In addition to the reservations expressed above, caveats must be aired in relation to these sources. While Publishers Weekly claims to be an international publication, it largely reflects the North American publishing scene and especially that of the USA. Although available internationally, Amazon.com also has its own national sites—such as Amazon.co.uk—not considered here. It also caters to a “specific computer-literate, credit-able clientele” (Gutjahr: 219) and has an unashamedly commercial focus, within which all the information generated must be considered. In our analysis of the material studied, we will use “life writing” as a genre term. When it comes to analysis of the lists, we have broken down the genre of life writing into biography and autobiography, incorporating memoir, letters, and diaries under autobiography. This is consistent with the use of the terminology in BookScan. Although we have broken down the genre in this way, it is the overall picture with regard to life writing that is our concern. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a detailed analysis of whether, within life writing, further distinctions should be drawn. Publishers Weekly: 1912 to 2006 1912 saw the first list of the 10 bestselling non-fiction titles in Publishers Weekly. It featured two life writing texts, being headed by an autobiography, The Promised Land by Russian Jewish immigrant Mary Antin, and concluding with Albert Bigelow Paine’s six-volume biography, Mark Twain. The Publishers Weekly lists do not categorise non-fiction titles by either form or subject, so the classifications below are our own with memoir classified as autobiography. In a decade-by-decade tally of these listings, there were 3 biographies and 20 autobiographies in the lists between 1912 and 1919; 24 biographies and 21 autobiographies in the 1920s; 13 biographies and 40 autobiographies in the 1930s; 8 biographies and 46 biographies in the 1940s; 4 biographies and 14 autobiographies in the 1950s; 11 biographies and 13 autobiographies in the 1960s; 6 biographies and 11 autobiographies in the 1970s; 3 biographies and 19 autobiographies in the 1980s; 5 biographies and 17 autobiographies in the 1990s; and 2 biographies and 7 autobiographies from 2000 up until the end of 2006. See Appendix 1 for the relevant titles and authors. Breaking down the most recent figures for 1990–2006, we find a not radically different range of figures and trends across years in the contemporary environment. The validity of looking only at the top ten books sold in any year is, of course, questionable, as are all the issues regarding sources discussed above. But one thing is certain in terms of our inquiry. There is no upwards curve obvious here. If anything, the decade break-down suggests that sales are trending downwards. This is in keeping with the findings of Michael Korda, in his history of twentieth-century bestsellers. He suggests a consistent longitudinal picture across all genres: In every decade, from 1900 to the end of the twentieth century, people have been reliably attracted to the same kind of books […] Certain kinds of popular fiction always do well, as do diet books […] self-help books, celebrity memoirs, sensationalist scientific or religious speculation, stories about pets, medical advice (particularly on the subjects of sex, longevity, and child rearing), folksy wisdom and/or humour, and the American Civil War (xvii). Amazon.com since 2000 The USA-based Amazon.com online bookselling site provides listings of its own top 50 bestsellers since 2000, although only the top 14 bestsellers are recorded for 2001. As fiction and non-fiction are not separated out on these lists and no genre categories are specified, we have again made our own decisions about what books fall into the category of life writing. Generally, we erred on the side of inclusion. (See Appendix 2.) However, when it came to books dealing with political events, we excluded books dealing with specific aspects of political practice/policy. This meant excluding books on, for instance, George Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror,’ of which there were a number of bestsellers listed. In summary, these listings reveal that of the top 364 books sold by Amazon from 2000 to 2007, 46 (or some 12.6%) were, according to our judgment, either biographical or autobiographical texts. This is not far from the 10% of the 1912 Publishers Weekly listing, although, as above, the proportion of bestsellers that can be classified as life writing varied dramatically from year to year, with no discernible pattern of peaks and troughs. This proportion tallied to 4% auto/biographies in 2000, 14% in 2001, 10% in 2002, 18% in 2003 and 2004, 4% in 2005, 14% in 2006 and 20% in 2007. This could suggest a rising trend, although it does not offer any consistent trend data to suggest sales figures may either continue to grow, or fall again, in 2008 or afterwards. Looking at the particular texts in these lists (see Appendix 2) also suggests that there is no general trend in the popularity of life writing in relation to other genres. For instance, in these listings in Amazon.com, life writing texts only rarely figure in the top 10 books sold in any year. So rarely indeed, that from 2001 there were only five in this category. In 2001, John Adams by David McCullough was the best selling book of the year; in 2003, Hillary Clinton’s autobiographical Living History was 7th; in 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton reached number 1; in 2006, Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman was 9th; and in 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8th. Apart from McCulloch’s biography of Adams, all the above are autobiographical texts, while the focus on leading political figures is notable. Britain: Feather and Woodbridge With regard to the British situation, we did not have actual lists and relied on recent analysis. John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge find considerably higher levels for life writing in Britain than above with, from 1998 to 2005, 28% of British published non-fiction comprising autobiography, while 8% of hardback and 5% of paperback non-fiction was biography (2007). Furthermore, although Feather and Woodbridge agree with commentators that life writing is currently popular, they do not agree that this is a growth state, finding the popularity of life writing “essentially unchanged” since their previous study, which covered 1979 to the early 1990s (Feather and Reid). Australia: Nielsen BookScan 2006 and 2007 In the Australian publishing industry, where producing books remains an ‘expensive, risky endeavour which is increasingly market driven’ (Galligan 36) and ‘an inherently complex activity’ (Carter and Galligan 4), the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal that the total numbers of books sold in Australia has remained relatively static over the past decade (130.6 million in the financial year 1995–96 and 128.8 million in 2003–04) (ABS). During this time, however, sales volumes of non-fiction publications have grown markedly, with a trend towards “non-fiction, mass market and predictable” books (Corporall 41) resulting in general non-fiction sales in 2003–2004 outselling general fiction by factors as high as ten depending on the format—hard- or paperback, and trade or mass market paperback (ABS 2005). However, while non-fiction has increased in popularity in Australia, the same does not seem to hold true for life writing. Here, in utilising data for the top 5,000 selling non-fiction books in both 2006 and 2007, we are relying on Nielsen BookScan’s categorisation of texts as either biography or autobiography. In 2006, no works of life writing made the top 10 books sold in Australia. In looking at the top 100 books sold for 2006, in some cases the subjects of these works vary markedly from those extracted from the Amazon.com listings. In Australia in 2006, life writing makes its first appearance at number 14 with convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s My Story. This is followed by another My Story at 25, this time by retired Australian army chief, Peter Cosgrove. Jonestown: The Power and Myth of Alan Jones comes in at 34 for the Australian broadcaster’s biographer Chris Masters; the biography, The Innocent Man by John Grisham at 38 and Li Cunxin’s autobiographical Mao’s Last Dancer at 45. Australian Susan Duncan’s memoir of coping with personal loss, Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life makes 50; bestselling USA travel writer Bill Bryson’s autobiographical memoir of his childhood The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid 69; Mandela: The Authorised Portrait by Rosalind Coward, 79; and Joanne Lees’s memoir of dealing with her kidnapping, the murder of her partner and the justice system in Australia’s Northern Territory, No Turning Back, 89. These books reveal a market preference for autobiographical writing, and an almost even split between Australian and overseas subjects in 2006. 2007 similarly saw no life writing in the top 10. The books in the top 100 sales reveal a downward trend, with fewer titles making this band overall. In 2007, Terri Irwin’s memoir of life with her famous husband, wildlife warrior Steve Irwin, My Steve, came in at number 26; musician Andrew Johns’s memoir of mental illness, The Two of Me, at 37; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography Infidel at 39; John Grogan’s biography/memoir, Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, at 42; Sally Collings’s biography of the inspirational young survivor Sophie Delezio, Sophie’s Journey, at 51; and Elizabeth Gilbert’s hybrid food, self-help and travel memoir, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything at 82. Mao’s Last Dancer, published the year before, remained in the top 100 in 2007 at 87. When moving to a consideration of the top 5,000 books sold in Australia in 2006, BookScan reveals only 62 books categorised as life writing in the top 1,000, and only 222 in the top 5,000 (with 34 titles between 1,000 and 1,999, 45 between 2,000 and 2,999, 48 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 33 between 4,000 and 5,000). 2007 shows a similar total of 235 life writing texts in the top 5,000 bestselling books (75 titles in the first 1,000, 27 between 1,000 and 1,999, 51 between 2,000 and 2,999, 39 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 43 between 4,000 and 5,000). In both years, 2006 and 2007, life writing thus not only constituted only some 4% of the bestselling 5,000 titles in Australia, it also showed only minimal change between these years and, therefore, no significant growth. Conclusions Our investigation using various instruments that claim to reflect levels of book sales reveals that Western readers’ willingness to purchase published life writing has not changed significantly over the past century. We find no evidence of either a short, or longer, term growth or boom in sales in such books. Instead, it appears that what has been widely heralded as a new golden age of life writing may well be more the result of an expanded understanding of what is included in the genre than an increased interest in it by either book readers or publishers. What recent years do appear to have seen, however, is a significantly increased interest by public commentators, critics, and academics in this genre of writing. We have also discovered that the issue of our current obsession with the lives of others tends to be discussed in academic as well as popular fora as if what applies to one sub-genre or production form applies to another: if biography is popular, then autobiography will also be, and vice versa. If reality television programming is attracting viewers, then readers will be flocking to life writing as well. Our investigation reveals that such propositions are questionable, and that there is significant research to be completed in mapping such audiences against each other. This work has also highlighted the difficulty of separating out the categories of written texts in publishing studies, firstly in terms of determining what falls within the category of life writing as distinct from other forms of non-fiction (the hybrid problem) and, secondly, in terms of separating out the categories within life writing. Although we have continued to use the terms biography and autobiography as sub-genres, we are aware that they are less useful as descriptors than they are often assumed to be. In order to obtain a more complete and accurate picture, publishing categories may need to be agreed upon, redefined and utilised across the publishing industry and within academia. This is of particular importance in the light of the suggestions (from total sales volumes) that the audiences for books are limited, and therefore the rise of one sub-genre may be directly responsible for the fall of another. Bair argues, for example, that in the 1980s and 1990s, the popularity of what she categorises as memoir had direct repercussions on the numbers of birth-to-death biographies that were commissioned, contracted, and published as “sales and marketing staffs conclude[d] that readers don’t want a full-scale life any more” (17). Finally, although we have highlighted the difficulty of using publishing statistics when there is no common understanding as to what such data is reporting, we hope this study shows that the utilisation of such material does add a depth to such enquiries, especially in interrogating the anecdotal evidence that is often quoted as data in publishing and other studies. Appendix 1 Publishers Weekly listings 1990–1999 1990 included two autobiographies, Bo Knows Bo by professional athlete Bo Jackson (with Dick Schaap) and Ronald Reagan’s An America Life: An Autobiography. In 1991, there were further examples of life writing with unimaginative titles, Me: Stories of My Life by Katherine Hepburn, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography by Kitty Kelley, and Under Fire: An American Story by Oliver North with William Novak; as indeed there were again in 1992 with It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography of Norman Schwarzkopf, Sam Walton: Made in America, the autobiography of the founder of Wal-Mart, Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, Every Living Thing, yet another veterinary outpouring from James Herriot, and Truman by David McCullough. In 1993, radio shock-jock Howard Stern was successful with the autobiographical Private Parts, as was Betty Eadie with her detailed recounting of her alleged near-death experience, Embraced by the Light. Eadie’s book remained on the list in 1994 next to Don’t Stand too Close to a Naked Man, comedian Tim Allen’s autobiography. Flag-waving titles continue in 1995 with Colin Powell’s My American Journey, and Miss America, Howard Stern’s follow-up to Private Parts. 1996 saw two autobiographical works, basketball superstar Dennis Rodman’s Bad as I Wanna Be and figure-skater, Ekaterina Gordeeva’s (with EM Swift) My Sergei: A Love Story. In 1997, Diana: Her True Story returns to the top 10, joining Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and prolific biographer Kitty Kelly’s The Royals, while in 1998, there is only the part-autobiography, part travel-writing A Pirate Looks at Fifty, by musician Jimmy Buffet. There is no biography or autobiography included in either the 1999 or 2000 top 10 lists in Publishers Weekly, nor in that for 2005. In 2001, David McCullough’s biography John Adams and Jack Welch’s business memoir Jack: Straight from the Gut featured. In 2002, Let’s Roll! Lisa Beamer’s tribute to her husband, one of the heroes of 9/11, written with Ken Abraham, joined Rudolph Giuliani’s autobiography, Leadership. 2003 saw Hillary Clinton’s autobiography Living History and Paul Burrell’s memoir of his time as Princess Diana’s butler, A Royal Duty, on the list. In 2004, it was Bill Clinton’s turn with My Life. In 2006, we find John Grisham’s true crime (arguably a biography), The Innocent Man, at the top, Grogan’s Marley and Me at number three, and the autobiographical The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama in fourth place. Appendix 2 Amazon.com listings since 2000 In 2000, there were only two auto/biographies in the top Amazon 50 bestsellers with Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life about his battle with cancer at 20, and Dave Eggers’s self-consciously fictionalised memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius at 32. In 2001, only the top 14 bestsellers were recorded. At number 1 is John Adams by David McCullough and, at 11, Jack: Straight from the Gut by USA golfer Jack Welch. In 2002, Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani was at 12; Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro at 29; Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper by Patricia Cornwell at 42; Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative by David Brock at 48; and Louis Gerstner’s autobiographical Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround at 50. In 2003, Living History by Hillary Clinton was 7th; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson 14th; Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How President Bill Clinton Endangered America’s Long-Term National Security by Robert Patterson 20th; Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer 32nd; Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor of Jordan 33rd; Kate Remembered, Scott Berg’s biography of Katharine Hepburn, 37th; Who’s your Caddy?: Looping for the Great, Near Great and Reprobates of Golf by Rick Reilly 39th; The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship about a winning baseball team by David Halberstam 42nd; and Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong 49th. In 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton was the best selling book of the year; American Soldier by General Tommy Franks was 16th; Kevin Phillips’s American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush 18th; Timothy Russert’s Big Russ and Me: Father and Son. Lessons of Life 20th; Tony Hendra’s Father Joe: The Man who Saved my Soul 23rd; Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton 27th; Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation 31st; Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty 42nd; and Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan was 43rd. In 2005, auto/biographical texts were well down the list with only The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion at 45 and The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls at 49. In 2006, there was a resurgence of life writing with Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman at 9; Grisham’s The Innocent Man at 12; Bill Buford’s food memoir Heat: an Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany at 23; more food writing with Julia Child’s My Life in France at 29; Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust at 30; CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival at 43; and Isabella Hatkoff’s Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (between a baby hippo and a giant tortoise) at 44. In 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8; Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe 13; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography of her life in Muslim society, Infidel, 18; The Reagan Diaries 25; Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI 29; Mother Teresa: Come be my Light 36; Clapton: The Autobiography 40; Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles 45; Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life 47; and Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant at 49. Acknowledgements A sincere thank you to Michael Webster at RMIT for assistance with access to Nielsen BookScan statistics, and to the reviewers of this article for their insightful comments. Any errors are, of course, our own. References Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). “About Us.” Australian Story 2008. 1 June 2008. ‹http://www.abc.net.au/austory/aboutus.htm>. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “1363.0 Book Publishers, Australia, 2003–04.” 2005. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1363.0>. Bair, Deirdre “Too Much S & M.” Sydney Morning Herald 10–11 Sept. 2005: 17. Basset, Troy J., and Christina M. Walter. “Booksellers and Bestsellers: British Book Sales as Documented by The Bookman, 1891–1906.” Book History 4 (2001): 205–36. Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 1 June 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. Carter, David, and Anne Galligan. “Introduction.” Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2007. 1–14. Corporall, Glenda. Project Octopus: Report Commissioned by the Australian Society of Authors. Sydney: Australian Society of Authors, 1990. Dempsey, John “Biography Rewrite: A&E’s Signature Series Heads to Sib Net.” Variety 4 Jun. 2006. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117944601.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1>. Donaldson, Ian. “Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography.” Australian Book Review 286 (Nov. 2006): 23–29. Douglas, Kate. “‘Blurbing’ Biographical: Authorship and Autobiography.” Biography 24.4 (2001): 806–26. Eliot, Simon. “Very Necessary but not Sufficient: A Personal View of Quantitative Analysis in Book History.” Book History 5 (2002): 283–93. Feather, John, and Hazel Woodbridge. “Bestsellers in the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 23.3 (Sept. 2007): 210–23. Feather, JP, and M Reid. “Bestsellers and the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 11.1 (1995): 57–72. Galligan, Anne. “Living in the Marketplace: Publishing in the 1990s.” Publishing Studies 7 (1999): 36–44. Grossman, Lev. “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” Time 13 Dec. 2006. Online edition. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1569514%2C00.html>. Gutjahr, Paul C. “No Longer Left Behind: Amazon.com, Reader Response, and the Changing Fortunes of the Christian Novel in America.” Book History 5 (2002): 209–36. Hamilton, Nigel. Biography: A Brief History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Kaplan, Justin. “A Culture of Biography.” The Literary Biography: Problems and Solutions. Ed. Dale Salwak. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. 1–11. Korda, Michael. Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900–1999. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001. Miller, Laura J. “The Bestseller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction.” Book History 3 (2000): 286–304. Morreale, Joanne. “Revisiting The Osbournes: The Hybrid Reality-Sitcom.” Journal of Film and Video 55.1 (Spring 2003): 3–15. Rak, Julie. “Bio-Power: CBC Television’s Life & Times and A&E Network’s Biography on A&E.” LifeWriting 1.2 (2005): 1–18. Starck, Nigel. “Capturing Life—Not Death: A Case For Burying The Posthumous Parallax.” Text: The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs 5.2 (2001). 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct01/starck.htm>.

Photo by Hédi Benyounes on Unsplash ABSTRACT The current incarceration facilities for the growing number of women are depriving expecting mothers of adequate care crucial for the child’s mental and physical development. Programs need to be established to counteract this. INTRODUCTION Currently, Diana Sanchez was eight months pregnant when she was arrested for identity theft and put in a prison cell in Denver. At five a.m., two weeks after being incarcerated, she announced to a deputy outside her cell that she was going into labor. Footage from a camera in her cell shows her pacing anxiously or writhing in her bed for the five hours preceding the arrival of her son. She banged on the door and begged for help. All she received was an absorbent pad. She gave birth alone in her prison cell on July 31, 2015, around 10:45 am. At 11:00 am, a prison nurse walked in to cut the umbilical cord and take Sanchez’s newborn baby without offering postnatal care. Sanchez was later sent to a hospital, and her baby was separated from her until she was put on probation. In 2018, on behalf of her three-year-old son, Sanchez sued Denver Health and Denver Sheriff Department and won a $480,000 settlement.[1] Though many more men are incarcerated than women, the rate of growth of female incarceration has exceeded that of male incarceration for decades. One study estimated that 231,000 women are currently incarcerated in the US,[2] 80 percent of whom are mothers, and 150,000 pregnant.[3] Another recent study of 1,396 incarcerated pregnant women found that 92 percent had live births, 6.5 percent had stillbirths or miscarriages, and 4 percent terminated the pregnancy. The authors found that there is no system of reporting pregnancy outcomes in US prisons. There is a noteworthy ethical lapse in mental, emotional, and medical care that threatens the well-being of pregnant women in prison. According to Carolyn Sufrin, “Pregnant incarcerated people are one of the most marginalized and forgotten groups in our country… and women who don't get counted don't count.” [4] Poor documentation, visibility, and transparency contribute to the systemic abuse of incarcerated women. Studies document women giving birth alone in cells and shackles in solitary confinement. Their complaints regarding contractions, bleeding, and other pains of labor are often ignored.[5] l. Prenatal Care in American Prisons Diana Sanchez was not offered any prenatal care after she was incarcerated. And neither she nor her son received appropriate postnatal care.[6] Sanchez was on medication for opioid withdrawal while pregnant, which could have been detrimental to her baby’s health.[7] There is an unacceptable absence of pre- and postnatal care in most US prisons. A lack of regulation makes the availability of perinatal care unpredictable and unreliable. Several studies confirmed that there is not a standard for prenatal care for women incarcerated during pregnancy. [8] Knowledge of the appropriate mental and physical care pregnant women require, addiction support, and support for maternal-infant bonding all exists outside the prison system and ought to be used as a benchmark. At the very least, pregnant women, birthing women, and new mothers should not be placed in solitary confinement or shackled.[9] In the prenatal arena, depriving an individual of adequate healthcare is not appropriate and could be cruel and unusual. Only 18 percent of funding in prisons goes to health care for the prisoners. That is roughly $5.7 thousand per prisoner, according to an NIH study done in 2015.[10] There should be an adequate amount of funding for the health needs of incarcerated pregnant women. By depriving pregnant women of healthcare, the prisons are depriving the fetus of adequate care. ll. Respect for Autonomy During Incarceration Women maintain healthcare autonomy even when incarcerated. The purpose of a prison sentence is retribution for crimes and rehabilitation to prevent reoffending.[11] The separation of a mother and newborn causes significant developmental and psychological harm to the child and the parent. Parent-child separation does not serve the purpose of retribution or rehabilitation and is authorized only due to prisons’ limited space and resources that make it difficult to accommodate children, as well as a state interest in children’s best interests or the custody rights of the other parent. When it is possible to keep a family together, prisons should make every effort to do so for the health of the mother-child relationship. Incarcerated people may become a burden to family or society due to prison medical neglect. For example, diabetes and hypertension, which can occur during pregnancy, can worsen without treatment. The inability to access the care they would otherwise want and need endangers women and poses a burden to the healthcare system after incarceration, Depersonalizing individuals convicted of crimes must be placed in the context of historical eugenics practices. State-sanctioned sterilization and efforts to prevent women from reproducing were widespread during the early 20th century.[12] Cases of coerced and nonconsensual sterilization of incarcerated women and men evidence the history of eugenics.[13]Abortions are offered to some incarcerated women.[14] However, many incarcerated women are denied the right to see healthcare providers to thoroughly discuss abortion or other options.[15] Although the abortions are consensual, the quality of consent is questionable. lll. Prison Nursery Programs, “I need something to live for…” Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP), a max security female prison, has a program called Wee Ones that enables women convicted of nonviolent crimes to spend 30 months bonding with their newborn child. It is one of eight programs in the country that allows pregnant mothers to spend the last few months of their sentence with their children. It is a voluntary program that allows pregnant offenders a private room in a housing unit. It offers parent education, resources that are accessible after release, and career education. The program application process and the rules to which women must adhere to remain in the program are stringent. The programs generally have a zero-tolerance policy. Even simply sleeping in the same bed as the child or arguing with other mothers can result in termination from the program. Kara, a pregnant woman incarcerated for drug possession, had a history of abuse in her family and tended to act out in anger against her peers in the program. She was learning how to have healthy reactions to anger when handling her child, but her temper ultimately led to her removal from the program. Her son was placed in foster care, and Kara returned to the regular cells. In an interview before her transfer, she told the camera that Charlie gave her a purpose. With tears in her eyes, she said, “Charlie was my way of life here [...] I need something to live for [,] and I screwed up.”[16] Pregnancy in prison can be a way to improve quality of life for some women. Studies demonstrate that nursery programs improve mental health of the incarcerated women.[17] The secure attachment of the infant to its primary caregiver promotes healthy development in the child and a bonded relationship with the mother.[18] The close bond between mother and child in prisons has been shown to decrease recidivism and to reduce the burden on the foster care system.[19] Women who do not qualify for these programs, or are incarcerated in prisons without them, are separated from their newborn babies and their other children. The disconnect can lead to the child rejecting the incarcerated mother once she is released.[20] Programs like Wee Ones honor women’s autonomy while they are incarcerated. During interviews, the women expressed that although raising a child in that environment is difficult, it was better than not being with their children. While rocking a baby in her lap, one inmate expressed her frustrations with Wee Ones but then paused to express gratitude and said, “After all, it’s prison. And prison ain’t supposed to be nice.”[21] The ethical issue of autonomy reflects a more difficult dilemma in the prison landscape. lV. Counter Arguments: Do the Nursery Programs Work for the Children and the Women Typically, newborns are taken from their incarcerated mothers within two to three days of birth and sent to live with a relative or placed in foster care. Many women are never reunited with their babies. There is much debate over whether the programs are beneficial to the children. One ethical issue is whether children, as innocents, are being punished either by being in the prison system or by being separated from their mothers. Skeptics, like James Dwyer, have argued against keeping innocent babies in the custody of incarcerated mothers asserting that there is little evidence demonstrating that the programs rehabilitate the women.[22] Dwyer commented on the “reckless” hopefulness the programs provide: "It might, in fact, be the babies distract them from rehabilitation they should be doing instead. […] They're so focused on childcare and have this euphoria — they think they'll be just fine when they get out of prison and they're not. We just don't know."[23] One study showed that 58 percent of incarcerated women are arrested again after release, 38 percent are reconvicted, and 30 percent return to prison within three years.[24] Dwyer uses this data to argue that the programs are not worthwhile. However, the data is not limited to the special population that had the prison nursery experience. The data applies to all incarcerated women limiting its applicability. More importantly, there is compelling evidence to support prison nursery programs.[25] The programs do decrease recidivism[26] and prison misconduct,[27] and they allow women to create stronger bonds with their children.[28] Bev Little argues that allowing mothers to bond with their babies only delays the inevitable separation and will cause trauma and have other ill effects on the baby. [29] But others feel that stronger maternal-fetal attachment is best for both parties. There is evidence that the bond, once formed, is long-lasting. Later in life, there is less drug addiction among children who stayed in the nursery rather than being separated from their mothers.[30] Another counterargument is that the policies in prison nurseries are not as useful for motherhood outside of the facility; thus, an issue with recidivism occurs because the women are less prepared for motherhood upon release from prison. Prison nursery programs establish methods and procedures for successful motherhood that are unique to operation within correctional environments. Yet, fortunately, parenting classes offered by prisons and jails emphasize sacrifice, self-restraint, and dedicated attention to the baby. These classes aptly apply to motherhood outside of prison.[31] One incarcerated mother experiencing addiction, Kima, was described as ambivalent toward her pregnancy. “It’s something about knowing but not knowing that makes me not accountable or makes me think I’m not accountable,” Kima shared.[32] After the nurse confirmed her pregnancy, she acknowledged fear and knew she would be held accountable to the baby. The occurrence of pregnancy ambivalence is common.[33] A study of a population of prisoners from Rhode Island found that 41 percent of the women expressed ambivalent attitudes about pregnancy. 70 of the women from a population in San Francisco expressed ambivalent or negative attitudes towards pregnancy.[34] But the ambivalence of some women toward pregnancy is not a reason to prevent women who feel differently from reaping the full benefits of programs that support them during pregnancy. Another counterargument is that prison is becoming a comfort that women might seek if they are homeless or housing insecure. For example, Evelyn was released from a San Francisco jail after being arrested for using cocaine. She was 26 weeks pregnant and had a four-year-old son in the custody of her aunt. Following her release, she was homeless and using drugs in the streets. She felt that her only hope of keeping her baby safe was to go back to jail. Like Kima, she had been in and out of jail from a young age. She grew accustomed to and dependent on the care provided there. While incarceration can provide a home and a nursery, there is no ethical reason to argue for making prison less comfortable by separating babies and children from incarcerated women. Instead, these facts suggest we are not doing enough for women outside prisons either. CONCLUSION Many experts stress the dearth of research and information on these women and their babies. There is no empirical data to show how big the problem is, but there is evidence that programs providing nursery care for the children of incarcerated women have many benefits. Because the research is not largescale enough, many pregnant women in the prison system are ignored. Many women give birth in unacceptable conditions, and their children are taken from them the moment the umbilical cord is cut. While the US incarcerates too many women, a movement to expand prison nurseries could help new mothers bond with their children. Strong educational programs could aid in lowering the rates of recidivism by providing therapeutic resources for mothers.[35] There is a growing problem of mass incarceration in the US as many women are placed in correctional facilities. Most of these women are convicted of possession or use of illegal substances.[36] Many women come from disadvantaged backgrounds, poverty, and have experienced addiction. Depriving an expectant mother of adequate care is cruel and irresponsible both to the mother and her innocent child. The criminal justice system is harming children both mentally and physically. Reform of the system is needed to provide the basic care those children need. Programs like IWP’s Wee Ones are necessary for physical, psychological, and social development. A program that offers a place for mothers to raise their babies in the community of other mothers would incentivize and facilitate healthy parental habits. Further programs for mothers who are released from prison would give them valuable resources to keep them from returning and encourage healthy relationships between the mother and the baby. - [1] Li, D. K. Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance. Denver: NBC News, 2019. [2] Kajstura, Aleks. “Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019.” Prison Policy Initiative, 29 Oct. 2019, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019women.html. (“Including those in prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities.”) [3] Swavola, E, K Riley and R Subramanian. "Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform." Vera Institute of Justice August 2016. [4] Sufrin, C. Pregnant Behind Bars: What We Do and Don't Know About Pregnancy and Incarceration Allison Chang. 21 March 2019. Transcript. [5] Sufrin, C., 2019. (Suffrin expressed that she had seen such practices firsthand working as an OB/GYN for incarcerated women.) [6] Padilla, M. “Woman Gave Birth in Denver Jail Cell Alone, Lawsuit Says,” New York Times, Sep. 1, 2019. [7] Li, D. “Video allegedly shows woman giving birth in Denver jail cell alone, with no assistance,” NBC U.S. News, Apr. 29. 2019. [8] Knittel, A. and C. Sufrin. "Maternal Health Equity and Justice for Pregnant Women Who Experience Incarceration." JAMA Network Open 3.8 (2020). A study in Ontario, Canada, coincided with a study done in Australia. [9] Sufrin, C., et al. "Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016–2017." p. 803-804. [10] Sridhar, S., R. Cornish and S. Fazel. "The Costs of Healthcare in Prison and Custody: Systematic Review of Current Estimates and Proposed Guidelines for Future Reporting." Frontiers in Psychiatry 9.716 (2018). [11] Kifer, M., Hemmens, C., Stohr, M. K. “The Goals of Corrections: Perspectives from the Line” Criminal Justice Review. 1 May 2003 [12] Perry, D. M. "Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated." The Marshall Project: Sterilization of Women in Prison 26 July 2017. [13] Rachel Roth & Sara L. Ainsworth, If They Hand You a Paper, You Sign It: A Call to End the Sterilization of Women in Prison, 26 Hastings WOMEN's L.J. 7 (2015); See Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535 (1942) (procreation considered a fundamental right; fact pattern of male sterilization in prison based on type of crime.) [14] Sufrin, C., M. D. Creinin, J. C. Chang. “Incarcerated Women and Abortion Provision: A Survey of Correctional Health Providers.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. p. 6-11. 23 March 2009. [15] Kasdan, D. “Abortion Access for Incarcerated Women: Are Correctional Health Practices in Conflict with Constitutional Standards?” Guttmacher Institute. 26 March 2009. [16] Born Behind Bars. Season 1, Episode 5, “They Can Take Your Baby Away,” produced by Luke Ellis, Francis Gasparini, & Jen Wise, aired on 15 Nov. 2017 A&E Networks [17] Bick, J., & Dozier, M. (2008). Helping Foster Parents Change: The Role of Parental State of Mind. In H. Steele & M. Steele (Eds.), Clinical applications of the Adult Attachment Interview (pp. 452–470). New York: Guilford Press. [18]Sroufe, L. A., B. Egeland, E. A. Carlson, W. A. Collins. (2005). The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood. New York: Guilford Press. [19] Goshin, L. S., & Byrne, M. W. “Converging Streams of Opportunity for Prison Nursery Programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 15 Apr 2009. [20] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. Another IWP pregnant woman is Taylor. At the time of the show, she was pregnant and expecting twins. In interviews throughout the episode, she expressed how her pregnancies in prison had put her in a better mood and felt beneficial to her. She had tried to sign up for the nursery program for her previous pregnancy, but her sentence was too long to get it. Her child was sent to live with a caregiver, and when Taylor was on probation, Taylor’s daughter didn’t want to be around Taylor. Taylor was so distraught that she messed up and went back, this time, pregnant with twins. After she was reincarcerated, she was able to be accepted into Wee Ones. She expressed to the camera man that the program might help her feel more like a mother so that when she gets out, she will have someone to care for. Taylor, Kara, and many other women depend on their children or their pregnancy for a purpose while behind bars. They relied on their babies to be a boon for them. [21] Babies Behind Bars. Dirs. W. Serrill and S. O'Brien. 2015. [22] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [23] Corley, C. "Programs Help Incarcerated Moms Bond with Their Babies in Prison." Criminal Justice Collaborative (2018). [24] Owen, B. & Crow, J. “Recidivism among Female Prisoners: Secondary Analysis of the 1994 BJS Recidivism Data Set” Department of Criminology California State University (2006) p. 28 [25] Prison Nursery Programs: Literature Review and Fact Sheet for CT. Diamond Research Consulting, 2012, www.cga.ct.gov/2013/JUDdata/tmy/2013HB-06642-R000401-Sarah Diamond - Director, Diamond Research Consulting-TMY.PDF. [26] New York Department of Correction Services (NYDOCS). (1993). Profile of Participants: The Bedford and Taconic Nursery Program in 1992. Albany, NY. Department of Correction Services.Rowland, M., & Watts, A. (2007). Washington State’s effort to the generational impact on crime. Corrections Today. Retrieved September 12, 2007, from http://www. aca.org/publications/pdf/Rowland_Watts_Aug07.pdf. [27] Carlson, J. R. (2001). Prison nursery 2000: A five-year review of the prison nursery at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 33, 75–97. [28] Carlson, J.R. [29] Little, B. "What Happens When a Woman Gives Birth Behind Bars?" A+E Networks, 29 October 2019. <https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/what-happens-when-a-woman-gives-birth-in-jail-or-prison>. [30] Margolies, J. K., & Kraft-Stolar, T. When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother: The Collision of Child Welfare and the Incarceration of Women in New York State 1, 9 (Correctional Association of N.Y. Women in Prison Project 2006) [31] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017. [32] Sufrin, C. Jailcare: p. 155. [33] Peart, M. S. & Knittel, A. K. “Contraception need and available services among incarcerated women in the United States: a systematic review.” Contraception and Reproductive Medicine. 17 March 2020 [34] LaRochelle, F., C. Castro, J. Goldenson, J. P. Tulsky, D.L. Cohan, P. D. Blumenthal, et al. “Contraceptive use and barriers to access among newly arrested women.” J Correct Health Care. (2012) p. 111–119. [35] Goshin, L., & Byrne, M. (2009). “Converging streams of opportunity for prison nursery programs in the United States.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation. 2009. p.271–295. [36] Elizabeth Swavola, Kristine Riley, Ram Subramanian. Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2016.

Introduction Resilience is, as a concept and as a discourse, a cultural resource that has experienced a growing importance over the last two decades, especially in the field of psychology. In September 2013, the most important database for scientific productions in psychology (www.psycinfo.org) contained more than 14,000 references concerning resilience. In French-speaking countries, for example, each new book by Boris Cyrulnik, the famous neuropsychiatrist who imported the notion of resilience into the psychological field, sells like hotcakes, with total sales of several million copies (see Marquis). Generally considered as the individual’s tendency to cope with stress and adversity, resilience is not only a successful but also a much-debated concept. Is every human potentially resilient, as Masten puts it, or should this notion only apply, in a Darwinian perspective, to the strongest of us? Should resilience be understood as a process in which culture and environment play important roles, as Ungar shows, or as an individual ability? Should we make a distinction between resilient and non-resilient? Does resilience automatically imply having been deeply traumatised, as Cyrulnik puts it? The main reason why these debates have taken such an important place in psychology is that using the concept of resilience is likely to take on, except for its scientific use, a normative or an evaluative dimension. To avoid this shortcoming, most recent works on resilience clearly insist upon the fact that being resilient is not a character trait or an indicator of the power of a person's will (Rutter). It is a multidimensional ecological process. However, nowadays resilience has become a common sense notion, a cultural resource mobilised by the layman or by self-help (SH) books. Accordingly, “resilience” will not be considered here as a scientific concept but rather as a common sense category. Drawing on an analysis of the success of such books, this article intends to show why a description of the common sense uses of this cultural resource is of prime importance when it comes to understanding some salient characteristics of liberal-individualistic societies, especially by comparison with traditional societies. In fact the success of the discursive category of resilience tells something about ourselves, as people living in societies where personal autonomy is highly valued. Therefore, the description of these common sense uses will show how the “resilience” category also constitutes a resource to evaluate both oneself and others as well as an tool to measure one’s own will or the others’, which is exactly what most psychologists try to avoid doing in their theorisation of resilience. Confidence and Breach in Everyday Life Risk management is part of human life. Actually, we spend most of our time minimising the risks we are running when engaging with the world. This attitude is neither a rational action nor a conscious one. It is, in fact, quite the reverse. In everyday life, we simply trust the world. As Luhmann says, confidence is a sine qua non condition of our existence. Our everyday life turns into a close-meshed fabric that makes us feel secure as it ensures consistency over time. This security enables us to avoid the issue of the relevance of our expectations or of the success of our acts. The common sense attitude we are describing here refers to what the American pragmatists call the “practice regime”, in which our main concern is to make sure that life goes on. But a breach might arise (in the form of a more or less tragic event, a change in one’s routine, a vague unease, etc.). What used to be obvious (and above all unquestioned) now becomes uncertain. Such a breach may seriously lead us to question our involvement with a world that has suddenly become strange, threatening, or complete nonsense. The Reading of Self-Help Books: Mobilising Resilience as a Cultural Reaction to Breaches It may be interesting to observe what people do, in the moments when disquiet has invaded their existence, in order to overcome misfortune, both at a symbolic and operative level. My hypothesis is that our attitude towards misfortune is in line with a specific cultural context. Like Illouz, I understand culture as the way we make sense of who we are through actions shaped by values, key images and scenarios, ideals, and habits of thought; through the stories we use to frame our own and others’ experience; through the accounts we use to explain our own and others’ failures and successes; through what we feel entitled to; through the moral categories we use to hierarchize our social world. (8) In other words: in order to allow life to come back to normal after a breach, people resort to the resources their own culture makes available to them. Nowadays resilience has become one such cultural resource that we use to construct our attitude towards misfortune. The question put here is not whether people are really resilient or not, but why this category experiences such traction in liberal-individualistic societies. Therefore, I have made a sociological study of a well-know social phenomenon: in particular, the reading of SH books, in which the discursive tropes of trauma and resilience are indeed very present. Sociologists too often refer to SH books as having hypothetical effects, or consequences. However, unlike what one might find in a literature review, I haven’t tried to make the success of these books a sign or a cause of the decline of society or of the individual, or of a more reflexive society with happier citizens. As numerous authors shown (including Barker and Petley), it is extremely difficult to assess the impact of cultural resources (for example cinema, books, and all forms of media) on individuals and a fortiori on groups of human through scientific procedures. Needless to say, these books have a bad reputation in academic circles, and this negative reputation is maintained because we actually know very little about how they are used by their readers. To overcome this shortcoming, I have tried to provide an answer to the apparently naïve question as to how reading SH literature can make sense to people who praise the virtues of these books, and the claim that they “have changed their life”, readily resorting to the tropes of resilience and trauma. To put it another way, I tried to understand how readers could know “how to go about” these books and have the expertise “to perform these texts” (Alexander) so they can bring them a degree of help, relief and satisfaction. With this objective in mind, I have explored an empirical field of about a hundred SH books, conducted 50 in-depth conversations with readers of SH books, and examined around 300 letters to three well-known authors of such texts. So why do people that read SH books containing such specific content have no trouble finding a meaning, as well as a symbolic and operative effectiveness, in them? My hypothesis is that these books make use of what Wittgenstein calls a “language game”. A “language game” is constituted by a set of (common sense) words and concepts that we mobilise when confronted with specific situations. In contemporary societies, people experiencing a breach in the fabric of their life will probably summon up a particular “language game” influenced by a psychological vision of the world to express and explain what has happened, what the consequences of this breach are, and what possibilities there are to get out of this situation. “Resilience” is one of the most prominent notions of this “language game”. It is not only to be found in the SH books, but also in the discourse of the readers of such books. What does this particular “language game” look like? What role does resilience play in it ? Two characteristics can be observed. First, this “language game” seems to give an extremely important signal of "interiority", an entity that pervades SH readers’ discourse. More precisely SH readers experience (and explain) that they are being inhabited by a “true self” that is the guardian of the “truth” about themselves, but is also the source of an unsuspected power of action. In a supposedly democratic anthropology, people making use of this “language game” consider that all human beings have such interiority, and can therefore harness the hidden resources it contains. In such narratives the pursuit of and engagement with this “true self” are endowed with important qualities. In short, these actions are considered to be the solution to most of our problems. The second characteristic, leading from the first, is that when faced with misfortune, be it big or small, the readers of SH books place great value on "working on the self”. Generally speaking, only efficient action in dealing with our problems finds favour in their eyes. To be precise, in such people’s discourses, having been traumatized is endowed with the power of revealing who we really are and what we are really capable of. Furthermore, such people come to believe that having suffered makes you a survivor, from now on entitled to become a reference for other people on their road to their “true self”. Let us look at a letter to a famous French-speaking SH book author: I want to thank you for your book “Being Genuine: Stop Being Nice, Start Being Real”, which allowed me to identify two problems that stop me from being who I really am: my lack of self-esteem and of self-confidence. Your book was a revelation to me. At the age of 39, I have at last understood how the 26 years spent with my parents created an attitude of submission and passivity in myself, which caused my lack of self-esteem and self-confidence. I have now decided to tackle these problems and to begin a therapy, in order to get rid of all these limiting issues. I feel that it will offer me a rebirth. Thank you so much. (my translation) This letter illustrates clearly how the “language game” is mobilised. It is used first to translate (or to put words on) a vague unease that relies on interiority (“who I really am”, “lack of self-esteem”, “in myself”, etc.) and secondly to create possibilities action to deal with the unease that has now been defined (“tackle the problem”, “begin a therapy”, “get rid of”, etc.). To sum it up, there is no doubt that, contrary to the stance often observed in the scientific literature on resilience, in the SH readers’ eyes, resilience is first a personal capacity, and even more precisely a question of will, and only second a process depending on contextual elements. The Discourse around Sorcery in Azande’s Society as a Point of Comparison I would like now to give an indication of the way reading such books and drawing on this “language game” constitute a practical attitude towards everyday risks, and how this is particularly adapted to our liberal-individualistic culture, in which the question of personal autonomy and individual responsibility is of unprecedented importance (Ehrenberg): in such cultural contexts each individual is expected to be the entrepreneur of his own life. To make this point clearer, I will briefly sketch a comparison with another practical attitude that has been well-documented in anthropological work: the “language game” of sorcery, which is practiced in many traditional societies but also in some parts of the western societies (Favret-Saada). The first anthropologist to have gone beyond the issue of the reality of magic was Evans-Pritchard. During the first half of the 20th century, he studied the use of sorcery in a tribe of South Sudan: the Azande. Evans-Pritchard thought that such a phenomenon could only be understood if the social institutions making a form of magical thinking plausible were taken into account. On the basis of his fieldwork, he considered the types of situations in which the Azande resorted to magic. His answer was that magic (which is notably present in accusations of sorcery) only intervenes in difficult times and more precisely when two things coincide. The first is the fact that an event (even a totally explicable one) arises, the second is the fact that it happens to the person in question, at that precise moment. For example the Azande understand that it was lightning that made the tree fall down, but they wondered why lightning struck in that place, at that time, above the head of that person in particular. For them, such phenomenon could not remain unexplained. They understood what caused their misfortune, but they needed to find a reason for it all the same. When faced with adversity, the Azande will always wonder: "who is holding a grudge against me”, and “who has got reasons to cast a spell on me?" The discourse around sorcery is what Winch later called an "attitude towards contingencies", which he defines as the “way of dealing (symbolically) with misfortunes and their disruptive effect on a man’s relations with his fellows, with ways in which life can go on despite such disruptions” (321). In this sense, reading SH books and mobilizing the category of resilience both have a similar function, just as praying does: this practice and the corresponding “language game” also testify of an attitude towards contingencies. As is the case with magical practices, both are socially instituted systems of interpretations that enable the people in question to find some meaning to misfortune and to go on living after it (in this matter, Masten’s consideration of resilience as “ordinary magic” is interesting). Nevertheless, the ways these two attitudes towards contingencies enable people to make sense and to set up possible actions are very different. The two systems of accountability are not alike. The Azande’s attitude is fundamentally projective (the responsibility or blame for a misfortune is shifted to somebody else, most of the time to a sorcerer). On the other hand, the attitude of the readers of SH books is introspective: the question that is socially valued is not “who is holding a grudge against me?”, but “what can I do to get out of it?”. In SH readers’ eyes, this is the very question to be answered in order to be considered as a resilient person. The sorcery system makes it possible to consider that the responsibility for the misfortune and the responsibility for the end of it go to the same entity: the sorcerer. In the SH readers’ attitude towards contingencies, these two responsibilities are uncoupled: while “another” is often held responsible for the misfortune, the person that experienced the misfortune is always considered responsible for getting over it: they are supposed to pick themselves up and improve themselves. Likewise, the projective attitude (which is characteristic of the discussions on sorcery) is highly discredited in the “language game” of resilience used by the SH readers. It is considered as the sign of a fake resilience. This is obvious from the distrust that is present in their discourse towards the character of the "victim", as well as towards the figure of the “complaint”, as the following excerpts from interviews with readers clearly show:Woman, 64 years old: People reading SH books are people who want to feel good, find their place in the world and solve the problems arising from their past. They are people who try to get over victimisation and to responsibilise themselves. Woman, 35 years old: I find it a good thing that more and more people read SH books. But a lot of other people continue to consider themselves as the genuine victims of their parents or of their education, and they need a lot of time to get through it. As for me, I believe that we have what we need in ourselves: we choose what we want, and we have what we want. Man, 40 years old: We need to get out of the vicious circle that makes us consider that “the others” are always responsible for our problems. For example: “Oh if I am unemployed, it is because society does not provide me with a job”. Well, maybe, but the good question is “why don’t you have a job while other people do?” It is useless to accuse society. The question is: “which actions do you take to get a job? (my translation for the three quotes) This “language game”, which so enhances both interiority as the resource of meaning and power, and efficient work on one’s own self, allows us to consider others or the environment as responsible for our own misfortune. Yet, it certainly doesn’t allow us to wait passively for things to improve on their own. In the common sense use of resilience, improvement must be caused in a proactive way by exploring our inner resources. In the end, this “language game” is indeed what people try to put into practice when they read SH books: these books build up their conviction that, whatever the situation they find themselves in (and whoever is responsible for it), they can always do something to it, they can always make use of this event to improve themselves. SH books and the “language game”, which resilience is a part of, enable the readers to consider all their problems as finding a solution in a more efficient practice of their interiority. Conclusion: The Evaluative Dimension of Resilience The “language game” of SH books is not only employed by readers as a means to make problems manageable. It is also experienced as a powerful resource for assessing oneself and others. The main finding of this article is the hiatus that exists between the scientific interpretations of resilience as an analytic (thus not normative) resource and the way this notion is mobilized in the common sense by laypeople in their everyday lives order to evaluate responsibilities. It is exactly as if people could not help asking the question: “if this person is not resilient and can’t cope with adversity, isn’t it, at least partly, their own fault?” The reason of this hiatus is that resilience is used in a cultural context where autonomy has taken an unprecedented importance. The key message of SH books, which is endorsed by most readers, is that happiness, well-being and resilience are a matter of personal choice. Behind the democratic proposition of SH books: “everybody has the ability to manage, everybody might be resilient,” lurks a much more meritocratic attitude: namely, “if you cannot come to terms with a problem, it is because you don’t really want to”. In the world of SH books, people who do not “put on a brave face”, or who do not work at being consistent with themselves, who content themselves with the secondary benefits of a life that does not really suit them, who expect solutions to drop down from heaven, – in a word people who do not show what SH readers consider as a genuinely resilient behaviour – only have themselves to blame. This phrase (“only have themselves to blame”), has negative connotations in French-speaking sociological discourses, but is not attached to such negativity in the mind of SH readers that get the most out of such books. “Blaming oneself as the only one responsible”, not for what happened but for what we do/don’t do to get through it, is exactly what the “language game” mobilising resilience and its emphasis on interiority and efficient activity allow. This is what readers are seeking when reading SH books. Indeed, people seeking a solution to their problems would ask: what is the use of reading books saying there is nothing to do to improve our situation? Thus, when using the “language game” of resilience, the SH book readers willingly accept the consequence that their problems have now been brought out into the open: the consequence being that people should take the responsibility for the fact that their problems persist (due to their own failure to act) or disappear (due to their actions). This theory of the consequence of one’s actions is today criticised by sociologists, notably French-speaking ones. References Alexander, Jeffrey. “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy.” Sociological Theory 22 (2004): 527–573. Barker, Martin, and Julian Petley, eds. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate: London: Routledge, 2001. Cyrulnik, Boris. Parler d’Amour au Bord du Gouffre. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004. Ehrenberg, Alain. La Société du Malaise. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2010. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Sorcellerie, Oracles et Magie chez les Azandé. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Favret-Saada, Jeanne. Les Mots, la Mort, les Sorts. La Sorcellerie dans le Bocage. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. Hazleden, Rebecca. “Promises of Peace and Passion: Enthusing the Readers of Self-Help.” M/C Journal 12.2 (2009). 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/124>. Illouz, Eva. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008. Luhmann Niklas. La Confiance: Un Mécanisme de Réduction de la Complexité Sociale. Paris: Economica, 2006. Marquis, Nicolas. “Se Remettre en Jeu quand Rien ne va Plus: Une Réflexion Sociologique sur la Catégorie de la Résilience. ” Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques 40.1 (2009): 93–110. Masten Ann S., “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development.” American Psychologist 56.3 (2001): 227–238. McGee Micki. Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Rutter, Michael. “Resilience Reconsidered: Conceptual Considerations, Empirical Findings, and Policy Implications.” Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention. Eds. Jack P. Shonkoff and Samuel J. Meisels. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000. 651–682. Ungar, Michael. “Resilience across Cultures.” British Journal of Social Work 38.2 (2008): 218–235. Winch, Peter. “Understanding a Primitive Society.” American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1964): 307–324. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Recherches Philosophiques. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.