Journal articles on the topic 'Meaningful work, Critical perspectives, Work and organizational psychology'

We review and develop two alternative conceptualizations of meaningful work: a predominant perspective we label realization and an underdeveloped, yet critical, perspective we label justification. We develop each conceptualization by identifying the core problem meaningful work is thought to address and accompanying solutions. Next, we build from this distinction to propose a research agenda that advances scholarly understanding of meaningful work from a justification perspective. Through building this research agenda, we elevate scholarly understanding on meaningful work by illuminating new foci for research, highlighting the relevance of social-cultural mechanisms, and suggesting alternative outcomes.

The focal article written by Bergman and Jean (2016) draws attention to a critical void in the industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology domain: the study of low- and medium-skill workers. Although segmenting employees based on their job status may provide new conceptualizations of employee work experiences, this approach may not provide the nuanced view necessary to fully comprehend the many ways in which employees differentially experience the workplace. Within this category of workers, experiences may vary based on employees’ race, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), or other identity-defining characteristics, and these person-specific identities may interact with one another. An intersectional research approach provides a foundation on which researchers can more fully understand how individuals’ multiple social identities interact to affect their workplace experiences. In the commentary that follows, we provide an overview of intersectional research and describe how such a perspective would lead to meaningful developments within I-O psychology.

Assessing the value of meaningful work among undergraduate students is important for guiding career counseling, especially because today’s students are often stereotyped as entitled and uninterested in prosocial or meaningful work. Additionally, understanding the value of meaningful work from the perspectives of career counselors would clarify if services are meeting students’ needs. In the current research, we addressed these issues with two studies. In Study 1, a sample of undergraduate students overwhelmingly indicated that they wanted meaningful work, that they thought finding meaningful work was an important goal of career counseling, and that they wanted career counseling to help them find meaningful work. In Study 2, a sample of career counselors reported that they viewed meaningful work as an important goal of career counseling and that meaningful work is something their clients desire. They also reported helping students find work or majors that are meaningful. Implications for practice are discussed.

Recent findings suggest that the role of specific cognitive abilities in predicting work-related criteria may be critical and may add to the widely demonstrated importance of general mental ability. To summarize and organize these findings, the current paper puts forward two perspectives on the role of specific cognitive abilities in predicting work-related outcomes. Similarities and discrepancies of these perspectives are outlined together with suggestions for boundary conditions of the dominance of general versus specific cognitive abilities. Finally, avenues for future research within and across the two perspectives are discussed.

Purpose Improving employees’ change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is important because of the work content and service nature of the National Immigration Agency (NIA). The purpose of this paper, which targeted immigration workers using the work design model (knowledge oriented), leadership types and organizational climate as perspectives, is to study immigration workers’ change-oriented OCB. Inspecting the knowledge-oriented work characteristics (KOWCs) of the NIA of Taiwan to find ways of stimulating change-oriented OCB through employees’ high self-efficacy is also critical. The investigators also explored how transformational leadership and organizational climate directly affect employees’ change-oriented OCB in a cross-level organization. Design/methodology/approach The subject of this research is the frontline immigration workers of Taiwan’s NIA, with its entire staff on duty at the country’s airports and ports as targets of the research. This study used a total of 312 questionnaires. Findings At the group level, transformational leadership shows significant positive influence on organizational climate. KOWCs can positively influence self-efficacy and affect change-oriented OCB on an individual basis; similarly, self-efficacy can also positively impact the individual’s change-oriented OCB. In addition, transformational leadership and organizational climate have a contextual effect on the outcome variable on an individual basis. Originality/value This finding is helpful for researching and practicing implications of HRM, such as in further understanding how the motivation from work characteristics, organization’s environment and interpersonal networks can increase employees’ change-oriented OCB.

Purpose The purpose of this paper was to analyse the academic context of the Hawthorne studies from 1936. More specifically, great attention was paid towards those articles that were critical of the Hawthorne studies. This study aimed to analyse why the Hawthorne studies were so criticized during the time period. Design/methodology/approach The author analysed various critical articles/books from the time period. The author developed the sample through the use of Landsberger’s Hawthorne Revisited. The author used one of the first critical articles, Daniel Bell’s, as a means to analyse the critics. In addition, secondary literature was used to place the articles in context. Findings The author found that the majority of the critics were sociologists; these criticisms reflected larger debates in sociology in terms of theory, method and ethics of research. They reflected the great changes that occurred in sociology during the time period, as opposed to industrial/organizational psychology, for example, where there was little criticism at the time. Originality/value The purpose of this study was to continue the work of Muldoon (2012) and Hassard (2012) and place the work of the Hawthorne studies in a larger academic context.

Purpose This paper aims to identify a possible solution as to how meaningful work could be considered as a lever in attracting and retaining Generation Y (Gen-Y) employees to work in the Singapore hotel industry. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on the perspectives of earlier conceptual papers by Chacko et al. (2012) and Solnet and Hood (2008) in an effort to identify root causes and a possible solution. The context of Singapore and the international literature are also reviewed to establish theoretical and practical gaps that need to be filled. Findings The results from this study can be used as a guide to enable hotels to improve the attraction, retention and management of Gen-Y employees. This is crucial in hotels where many properties are facing challenges in attracting and retaining hotel employee talent. Originality/value The paper provides a fresh examination of the characteristics and behaviours of Gen-Y employees, as well as suggests an improved organizational approach to attraction and retention. This methodology includes an element of positive psychology, in the form and experience of meaningful work.

Purpose To overcome the shortcomings of diversity training programs, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize an organizational diversity-learning framework, which features an organizational intervention for employees’ joint decision-making process with other employees from different statuses, functions, and identities. Borrowing key principles from the diversity learning (Rainey and Kolb, 1995); integration and learning perspective (Ely and Thomas, 2001; Thomas and Ely, 1996), and the key practices informed by deliberative democratic theories (Thompson, 2008), the authors develop a new organizational diversity learning framework for behavioral, attitudinal, and cognitive learning at workplaces. They conclude with directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach This paper first presents an overview of key shortcomings of diversity training programs in relation to their group composition, design, content and evaluation. Second, it borrows the key principles of diversity learning (Rainey and Kolb, 1995); integration and learning perspectives (Ely and Thomas, 2001; Thomas and Ely, 1996), and the key practices informed by deliberative democratic theories (Thompson, 2008) to delineate the organizational diversity learning framework. Third, it presents a table of the approach contrasted with the shortcomings of diversity training programs and discusses practical and theoretical contributions, along with directions for future research. Findings This paper conceptualizes an organizational diversity-learning framework, which features an organizational intervention for employees’ joint decision-making process with other employees from different statuses, functions, and identities. Research limitations/implications The organizational diversity learning framework developed in this paper provides an inclusive diversity learning paradigm in which diversity learning rests in the experience of the learner. As stated by experiential learning theory, this framework encourages workers to heuristically learn about diverse perspectives in a psychologically safe environment, to reflect on different perspectives, and to create a new awareness about learning from others. As the participants learn to apply new repertoires for interacting with others in their daily work interactions (e.g. listening to different perspectives shared by unfamiliar social group members), it proposes that their behaviors may create a ripple effect, changing other colleagues’ attitudes, behaviors, and thinking patterns on working with diverse coworkers. Practical implications This paper provides detailed instructions for practitioners to facilitate diversity learning. It highlights a few key practical implications. First, the framework provides a method of organization-wide diversity learning through intersecting networks within the workplace, which is designed to reduce the elitist organizational decision making that mainly occurs at the upper echelon. Second, unlike other stand-alone diversity initiatives, the framework is embedded in the organizational decision-making process, which makes employees’ learning applicable to core organizational activities, contributing to both employees’ diversity learning and organizational growth. Third, the framework provides a preliminary model for transferring employees’ diversity learning in daily work operations, nurturing their behavioral learning to interact with different social groups more frequently at work and inclusive of their colleagues’ perspectives, feelings, and attitudes. Social implications Workforces across nations are becoming increasingly diverse, and, simultaneously, the gap and tension between demographic representation in the upper and lower echelons is widening. By joining with other scholars who have advocated for the need to move beyond diversity training programs, the authors developed the organizational diversity learning framework for meaningful co-participation of employees with different statuses, functions, and identities. By inviting minority perspectives into the organizational decision-making process, top managers can explicitly send a message to minority groups that their perspectives matter and that their contributions are highly valued by the organization. Originality/value There has not been a conceptual paper that delineates the diversity inclusive decision-making process within a workplace. The authors established the organizational diversity learning framework based on the diversity learning, organizational diversity integration and learning perspectives, and deliberative democracy practices. The proposed framework guides organizations in structural interventions to educate employees on how to learn from multiple perspectives for better organizational decision making.

AbstractLanguage policies and school practices in Pakistan continually perpetuate gaps between the traditionally less versus the traditionally more privileged languages. About 95% of students receive their primary and post-primary education in languages other than their L1. Drawing on the continua of biliteracy framework (Hornberger. 2003. Continua of biliteracy: An ecological framework for educational policy, research, and practice in multilingual settings. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters), this paper uses teachers’ experiential insights from upscale English-medium schools to show how they employ their critical reflexivity to resist the English-only school policy, and assert their agency to transform pedagogies into meaningful, contextualized, and multilingual modes. Theoretically, such agency and policy-from-below signifies that teachers/actors can creatively negotiate institutional/organizational policies creating substantive ideological and implementational spaces for multiple languages/cultures. Such initiatives also demonstrate that power is not always fixed in the hands of the few; rather critically conscious individuals can generate power to their own advantage. Teachers’ agency can effectively dismantle linguistic discrimination and undo the English-centric monolingualism. The reported opening of spaces for meaningful multilingual and contextualized voices carries useful lessons for those actors who might find their work settings limiting their agency and power. The study concludes that however minor the degree of agency and resistance may be in a particular context, these initiatives have the potential to transform normative perspectives about English and native/indigenous languages.

Public discussions about trauma are circulating exponentially in the wake of global movements against structural violence, and efforts to mainstream “trauma-informed” approaches in mental health, human services, and organizational contexts. Within these discussions, the term “institutional trauma” is increasingly being deployed to make sense of structural violence and its impacts. However, such discussions typically reproduce highly individualistic understandings of trauma. Recent feminist advances in trauma theory articulate trauma as a distinctly socio-political form of distress, and critical feminist psychological work argues that gender and other institutions play a substantial role in defining and mediating experiences of trauma. However, the role of institutions in the (re)production of trauma remains under-theorized in the psychological literature. This paper applies feminist, critical mental health, and decolonial perspectives to identify the limitations of mainstream psychological perspectives on trauma and proposes a critical psychological theory of “institutional trauma”. I apply this critical analytic to argue that dominant biomedical and neoliberal frameworks fail to adequately account for the socio-political dimensions of trauma. I then consider institutional theory as a useful feminist psychological analytic through which to expand trauma theory and subvert pathologizing accounts of trauma as disordered and maladaptive.

AbstractThis article addresses the tensions between calls for civility and rights to free speech in public academic employment. We begin by summarizing relevant organizational science on workplace incivility. Next come critical perspectives from other fields, asserting that civility appeals infringe on rights to freedom of expression. Following this is a review of key court decisions within the jurisprudence of free speech in the workplace, especially as it applies to academics. We also address the protections afforded by tenure and (at some institutions) unions. Bringing these streams of scholarship together, we expose predicaments faced by public universities seeking to cultivate safe and civil work environments while, at the same time, respecting faculty rights to free speech. We conclude by suggesting compromises between these conflicting aims that would allow organizations (in academia and beyond) to protect workforce dignity without infringing on the rights of reasonable people.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to apply the self-concept theory and conservation of resources theory to develop a model that explains how both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical leadership influence turnover intention through work engagement and burnout. Design/methodology/approach A survey of employees from banking industry in Taiwan and the research hypotheses were empirically tested by two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) and regression analysis. Findings The empirical findings indicate that CSR and ethical leadership are both related to work engagement positively and burnout negatively. Turnover intention is affected by work engagement negatively and burnout positively. While the relationship between CSR and work engagement is positively moderated by ethical leadership, the relationship between burnout and turnover intention is negatively moderated by self-efficacy. Research limitations/implications This study confirms that both CSR and ethical leadership play critical roles for influencing turnover intention through the mediation of work engagement and burnout. The moderating effects of ethical leadership and self-efficacy are also presented in this study. Practical implications The authors’ findings bring some suggestions for managers who want to prevent high turnover intention from spreading all over their organization. Specifically, CSR and ethical leadership should be taken into account when managers develop their strategies to reduce turnover intention. Originality/value This study analyzes how turnover intention takes shape from ethical perspectives and through which work-related state of mind (such as burnout, work engagement) can turnover intention be eventually affected.

The article presents the study of the interaction between managers and their young subordinates where both sides discuss the subordinate’s mistake. Purpose. The purpose of the study is to determine the psychological characteristics of such an interaction. Method. As a research method four focus groups for managers and their young subordinates have been used. All participants (N = 34) work in different branches at the Ural commercial and industrial company (Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, Ufa, Tyumen and Perm). Each focus group was conducted remotely and lasted for 1.5 hours. The following variables were recorded for analysis: 1) the type of behavior of young subordinates (proactive or reactive); 2) interaction strategies (“win —win” or “win — lose”), 3) willingness of subordinates to acquire new knowledge through error analysis; 4) consistency of the positions of the leader and subordinate; 5) both sides’ mistakes in planning, organization of work and control. The total number of collected statements in the focus groups of managers turned out to be twice as high as the statements of young professionals. Findings. Two significant differences were revealed in the positions of managers and subordinates. They are the following: a) a different understanding of what kind of behavior is expected from a young employee — proactive or reactive; b) different attitudes towards compliance with organizational norms and standards. In addition, managers have shown that they do not have, or at least are not able to explicitly formulate their strategy for dealing with their subordinate’s mistakes. At the same time, they expect a “win — win” interaction strategy from him. Young subordinates also do not have sufficient competence to implement the win — win strategy when discussing their mistakes with the manager. The recommendations formulated based on the results of the study emphasize the importance of prescribing a strategy that is clear to managers for their work with the mistakes of a subordinate and an attentive attitude to his skills in planning, organizing and controlling work. As one of the effective tools, an algorithm for joint error analysisis proposed that allows you to transfer the conversation from an emotional plane to a constructive one. Practical value of the results and perspectives of the study. At the stage of professional growth, young specialists form the prerequisites for a strategy of systematic concealment of mistakes. This strategy’s psychological indicators are not only the fear of possible punishment, but also the lack of effective communicative, organizational, and operational competencies in both participants in the interaction “manager — specialist». In addition to the recommendations, this study allowed us totest the scenario of a focus group in organizational conditions, which can be used by organizational psychologists, consultants, personnel managers to identify contradictions in critical interactions abouterrors in the workplace. The recommendations proposed in the article may be relevant in the context of organizational changes, when employees’ errors become almost inevitable since the organization is implementing a new strategy. More in-depth research is needed to better understand the links between career orientations of a young specialist and his or her attitudes towards the “win — win” strategy in interaction with the employer.

Purpose – The employment relationship is beset by an incongruous mix of bases for cooperation and conflict. Scholars have attempted to reconcile the simultaneous presence of convergent and divergent interests between capital and labour in several ways and distinctive bodies of theory addressing this matter have emerged. However, to date, attempts to incorporate the role that the passage of time plays in changing the ratio of conflict to cooperation in the employment relationship have mostly been inadequate. This essay presents a theory about this issue based on six tenets. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A critical review of existing genres of literature addressing conflict and cooperation in the employment relationship and a conceptual contribution to a perceived generic limitation of these bodies of literature. Findings – A new conceptualization of the elements causing conflict and cooperation between employers and their employees. The theory presented is modular and mostly compatible with the work of earlier scholars. It has theoretical and practical application and aids in understanding the strategic management consequences of new employment forms when other pertinent variables are held constant. Practical implications – The paper offers a fresh perspective on new employment forms in particular Originality/value – A new conceptualization of the elements causing conflict and cooperation between employers and their employees. The new view is not necessarily incompatible with earlier perspectives but does have potential to create genuinely new research paradigms and reframe certain contemporary debates about non-standard work in particular.

This study tried to find the educational meaning of reflection by analyzing the concept of reflection in the development of adult learning theory and understanding the cognitive, critical, and philosophical perspectives on reflection. Reflection started from cognitive reflection in experiential learning. Reflection in experiential learning is reflection that seeks to generate meaningful results by relating it to prior knowledge. The ultimate goal of reflection is not only to acquire knowledge, but to think about our previous beliefs and assumptions and their meaning. They try to eliminate prejudice through discourse, and they make decisions about the justification of their thoughts through critical examination of evidence and arguments. Although reflection may not reach a complete and objective result, it can ultimately reach a rational and ideal result that the majority can trust. The educational meaning of the concept of reflection. First, the concept of reflection extends the approach related to learning. Second, the concept of reflection suggests a learning method that allows learners to actively cope with structural changes in our society. Third, the concept of reflection extends learning to work at all levels of human society. Fourth, reflection extends learning into a process of personal, social, and organizational transformation that goes beyond any intention or expectation of the instructor. The society we live in is facing rapid change and complex problems. Reflection is a necessary learning process for developing comprehensive thinking skills in children as well as adults. The concept of reflection goes beyond simple knowledge acquisition and pursues comprehensive and holistic human maturity. It's time to begin the discussion of reflective learning with positive beliefs about human nature.

Since the early 2000s the business sector has, as a matter of both professional and academic concern, repeatedly advocated the transfer of artistic practices, especially those deemed exemplary forms of creativity, to a management world grappling with new challenges – a claim we here call the ‘transferability thesis’ in order to consider the responses made to what Boltanski and Chiapello define as an artistic critique of capitalism. Drawing on the wide range of relevant academic literature, this article critically examines the plausibility of the ‘thesis’. To this end, we review analytical literature advocating artistic transfers alongside empirical work that examines art interventions within organizations. Both are important components of a broader organizational aesthetics approach even though, we contend, neither strands of research provide a plausible argument for meaningful transferability. We then draw on arts-based literature, management theory and psychology to compare notions of creativity at both ends of the proposed transferral process. We highlight convergence and variance in art and business thinking, noting fundamental mismatches with regard to utility, rationalization and heteronomy – three levels of incompatibility that make a genuine transplantation of art ideas highly unlikely. Finally, we discuss our critical contribution in relation to the specious status of the ‘thesis’ and the centrality of Boltanski and Chiapello’s triadic model of capitalism to our investigation. By way of a conclusion, we suggest that further research is needed to examine the symbolic nature of appeals to artistic creativity by management.

This article argues that understanding uncertainty in contemporary societies and its psychosocial consequences is possible through a transdisciplinary perspective. This integrates sociological, psychological, economic and political dimensions. To address this, we offer a critical theoretical reflection that draws on diverse conceptual perspectives within the social sciences. In recent years, in psychological research, uncertainty has been mainly analysed as an intrapsychic phenomenon and as a psychological trait through the concept of (in)tolerance of uncertainty. In contrast, we argue for a psychosocial analysis of uncertainty, considering its socio-economic and political origins, thereby challenging its trait-like analysis. For example, we highlight the inputs of attachment theory for the understanding of uncertainty, connecting it to Marris’s thesis of an unequal distribution of uncertainty and of the power to cope with it (1996). This analysis of uncertainty integrates psychological dimensions with social ones within contemporary western societies, proposing the use of the concept of psychosocial uncertainty. The consequences of uncertainties impact upon employment, relationships and communities, where we can locate the social origins of depression, anxiety, distrust, victim-blaming or lack of cohesion in communities. Besides precarity at work, we now face precarious forms of living, endangering the fundamental processes of psychic and social individuation. Finally, we locate the social origins of uncertainty and its psychological consequences within the responsibilities of social sciences. Drawing on psychology, from social and community psychology to clinical and organizational psychology, we query the relationship between theory and practice. Underpinning this argument is an appreciation of Marris’s contribution to the construction of ‘politics of collaboration/association and reciprocity, as opposed to politics of disempowering uncertainty/dissociation’.

For over 50 years I have been, and remain, an interdisciplinary social scientist seeking to develop and apply social science to improve the well-being of human individuals and social life. Sociology has been my disciplinary home for 48 of these years. As a researcher/scholar, teacher, administrator, and member of review panels in both sociology and interdisciplinary organizations that include and/or intersect with sociology, I have sought to improve the quality and quantity of sociolog ists and sociolog y. This article offers my assessment as a participant observer of what (largely American) sociology has been over the course of my lifetime, which is virtually coterminous with the history of modern (post–World War II) sociology, and what it might become. I supplement my participant observations with those of others with similarly broad perspectives, and with broader literature and quantitative indicators on the state of sociology, social science, and society over this period. I entered sociology and social science at a time (the 1960s and early 1970s) when they were arguably their most dynamic and impactful, both within themselves and also with respect to intersections with other disciplines and the larger society. Whereas the third quarter of the twentieth century was a golden age of growth and development for sociology and the social sciences, the last quarter of that century saw sociology and much of social science—excepting economics and, to some extent, psychology—decline in size, coherence, and extradisciplinary connections and impact, not returning until the beginning of the twenty-first century, if at all, to levels reached in the early 1970s. Over this latter period, I and numerous other observers have bemoaned sociology's lack of intellectual unity (i.e., coherence and cohesion), along with attendant dissension and problems within the discipline and in its relation to the other social sciences and public policy. The twenty-first century has seen much of the discipline, and its American Sociological Association (ASA), turn toward public and critical sociology, yet this shift has come with no clear indicators of improvement of the state of the discipline and some suggestions of further decline. The reasons for and implications of all of this are complex, reflecting changes within the discipline and in its academic, scientific, and societal environments. This article can only offer initial thoughts and directions for future discussion, research, and action. I do, however, believe that sociology's problems are serious, arguably a crisis, and have been going on for almost a half-century, at the outset of which the future looked much brighter. It is unclear whether the discipline as now constituted can effectively confront, much less resolve, these problems. Sociolog ists continue to do excellent work, arguably in spite of rather than because of their location within the current discipline of sociolog y. They might realize the brighter future that appeared in the offing as of the early 1970s for sociology and its impact on other disciplines and society if they assumed new organizational and/or disciplinary forms, as has been increasingly occurring in other social sciences, the natural sciences, and even the humanities. Society needs more and better sociology. The question is how can we deliver it.

Family relationships remain one of the most valuable and meaningful human experiences, within and outside of the military, and when loss or conflict occurs, this has profound effects on individuals and society. Furthermore, family support can influence occupational outcomes such as recruitment, retention, and military readiness. Family loyalty to the armed services can be transmitted intergenerationally and can influence public support for the military as an institution. The interplay between the family, the military, and broader society are considered throughout this special issue. This special edition on military families in Contemporary Military Challenges provides informative sociological perspectives on “military families” both in Slovenia and internationally. Each article tackles unique and significant issues related to military families and society. The lens of the socio-ecological model for risk and protective factor research, in combination with an implementation science approach and attention to contextual factors, is what is needed to move forward in supporting military families. Taken together, the articles in this special issue highlight the complexity and importance of military families and the related policy implications. In the field of family science, not enough attention has been given to the implementation of science research. To do this, one needs to consider both current and past policies and how they have affected families at different socio-ecological levels. As a basis for considering policies and research agendas, the historical context of the family and its relationship with the military in Slovenia and internationally is a good start (see article by Jelusic, Jeznic, & Juvan 2020). Research on military families in Slovenian Armed Forces is a relatively young field and of increasing importance given the changes in the last three decades, after becoming an all-voluntary force and the professionalization of the military. The authors detail the organizational and policy changes in Slovenia that have developed concurrently with military family research internationally and at home. The relevance of military families is now more widely recognized, yet barriers to the successful implementation of support programmes remain. The articles by Hess 2020, Jakopic 2020, and Kasearu et al. 2020 provide several examples of support programmes that can strengthen military families and bolster military family readiness. To achieve the best outcomes, the focus needs to not only be on the treatment of problems, but also on the primary prevention of risk factors and promotion of resilient families (e.g. through fostering high-quality intimate relationships). Promoting resilient families requires the provision of support at multiple levels of operation including psychological support, social care, legal counselling, and spiritual care. In addition to contextual perspectives and policy review, another fundamental part of military family research is identifying the risk and protective factors for socio-ecological outcomes through empirical research. Vuga 2020 provides an action plan for current research to identify factors at different socio-ecological levels that affect family behavioural health outcomes. The risk and protective factors which are most associated with outcomes in the Slovenian military context can be targeted in future programmes and policies. This public health based approach has been applied in other countries to inform military leaders about the needs of their armed forces. In our own work with the US military, we employed risk and protective factor models to identify unique modifiable factors in predicting behavioural and family health outcomes, which could be targeted in interventions at the individual, family, professional and community levels. Vuga and her colleagues’ expansion of the socio-ecological research model will be useful for the Slovenian Armed Forces and the results could be informative for other military organizations. Intervention derived from the risk and protective factor models from the MilFam project can then be tested in subsequent studies to ensure effective implementation and change in behavioural health outcomes. The MilFam project will serve as an important step in addressing the needs of military families in Slovenia. Several other relevant considerations for military sociological research are raised in the other articles, including cross-country differences, deployment challenges, and demographic changes impacting the concept of “military families”. The article by Kasearu et al. (2020) compares the concept of military families across three different countries. Whether families are seen as part of the military or separate, as is the case for some other professions, depends on how military service is defined in different countries. In some contexts, emphasis has been placed on policies for service members, and civilian family members are not considered. Although similar policies are common in many professions, there are certainly reasons unique to the military that suggest inclusive policies and programmes for civilian family members not only benefit military families but can also improve military preparedness. In the case of deployment, when policies are in place that do not support the significant other/spouse and children left behind it can lead to psychological distress, financial burdens, and impairment of family functioning. In the digital age, deployed service members are often well-informed about the problems at home and may become frustrated by the lack of policies in place to support military family members while they are deployed. Besides the challenges faced by separations, military families also face unique challenges related to being stationed abroad with their families. The importance of the infrastructure and network to provide informal and formal support for family members as they navigate a new environment is critical in these situations. This includes both tangible and emotional support for family members as they adjust to living in a foreign country. Housing, medical care, schooling, language, and job options for family members are some of the concerns facing families while abroad. Depending on the size of the military infrastructure abroad, these concerns may be supported internally through the military. However, in many cases, sufficient internal support infrastructures may not be available and agreements with host countries can fill some of these gaps. An added complexity is raised in the article by Švab (as well as in Jelušič et al. and Kasearu et al.), in that challenges facing military families not only depends on the military infrastructure and policies, but also on the family structure and dynamics. Jelušič et al. point out how the typical family of service members has evolved over time. Švab describes the dynamics of family structure across Slovenia and their interplay with military organizational needs. Family structure has changed significantly over the past few decades and this poses new challenges for military families. The changing family structures introduce diverse risks factors and areas to target with support programmes. The division of labour and family roles continues to evolve in Slovenia and internationally. There is a growing body of research that documents the relevance of gender and work division in the military context. Support for women service members with children varies from that of their male counterparts, and may require more targeted support programmes. In meeting the needs of diverse military family practices, attention to both formal and informal support networks in research and policy is necessary. Throughout this special issue, specific examples of programmes already offered to support military families are mentioned. It is important, however, that programmes are not just implemented, but that effective programmes are implemented with a sound base of empirical support for their implementation. One example of this is the PREP programme (Preparation and Relationship Enhancement/Education Programme), which is offered in several countries to support intimate partnerships among military couples. This programme has evidence to support its effectiveness in reducing relationship distress over time across numerous studies. This special issue makes it clear how important the military family is to effective professional functioning. Despite the clear importance of military families, they are often not supported sufficiently in various ways (e.g. through policies or evidence-based prevention offers). This not only influences professional outcomes such as job satisfaction, retention, days of missed work, and satisfaction with leadership, it also places families at risk of hardship and psychological distress. This in turn can cycle back into worse professional outcomes. Divorce/separations and living alone (i.e. social isolation) are associated with risks of depression and suicide, along with negative professional outcomes. Support programmes need to address changes in family structure that may be particularly stressful, as well as negative stressors that arise within family structures (e.g. family conflict and violence), which also, in turn, impact professional outcomes. This special issue draws attention to this cycle and will serve as a useful reference to generate further research studies and policies that will benefit the military and its families.

ABSTRACT: Teacher performance has been the focus of educational policy reforms in recent decades for the professional development of teachers. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of teaching experience and peer teaching skills on basic training on ECE teacher performance. This research uses ex-post facto quantitative method of comparative analysis and design by level. The population is all ECE teachers who attend basic-level education and training in Tangerang Regency, totaling 3358 people consisting of 116 male teachers and 3,242 female teachers. Data collection techniques using a questionnaire with data analysis include descriptive analysis. Requirements test analysis and inferential analysis. The results show that there are differences in the performance of ECE teachers between teachers with more than five years of teaching experience and less than five years, in the group of ECE teachers with high peer teaching skills and low peer teaching skills. 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Many victim service organizations are seeking to realign service delivery around principles of racial equity. Dismantling institutional racism is a complex, intensive, and long-term process. Therefore, despite this imperative from the field, our knowledge about how social service organizations can effectively advance anti-oppressive practice is limited. This study examined victim advocate perspectives on the role institutional racism played within their work and the supports needed to undo institutional racism within their organization. Six focus groups were conducted with a meaningful cross section of staff members ( n = 53) across the organization. Semi-structured interview guides included questions in four domains: (1) racism within client work, (2) challenges to addressing racism, (3) effective solutions, and (4) helpful organizational supports. Transcripts were thematically analyzed using modified constructivist grounded theory methods. Two overarching themes, Identifying Institutional Racism in the Workplace and Advancing Anti-racist Practice, and six subthemes emerged from the analysis . Advocates identified that naming and becoming comfortable talking about race was essential. Further, they believed it was important to acknowledge the ways in which that racism was implicitly built into helping systems at large. Advocates explored how internalized racial stereotypes influenced interactions between black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and white advocates and their clients in complex ways. Advocates highlighted organizational efforts that supported ongoing personal reflection, the creation of an accountable community, and staff empowerment within the organization as being critical to advancing anti-racist practice. Some advocates also wanted to see the organization move further in the direction of standing with BIPOC communities, particularly around criminal justice concerns. Findings provide important timely insights into how institutional racism manifests within victim service organizations and what organizational actions encourage anti-oppressive practices and culture.

Emerging from distinct perspectives, decent work and meaningful work are fundamental aspects of contemporary work with profound implications for individuals, organizations, and society. Decent work reflects basic workplace conditions to which all employees are entitled, whereas meaningful work is aspirational, reflecting significance at work. Following a conceptual and empirical review of scholarship on decent work and meaningful work, we draw from psychology of working theory to connect the two constructs. We argue that need satisfaction serves as the primary connector, and societal context, organizational conditions, and individual practices (in order of effectiveness) promote access to each type of work. We suggest future research directions broadening the available scholarship and methods used, promoting a focus on the complex intersection of macrolevel and psychological factors as well as interdisciplinary approaches in determining the quality of work, and engaging in intervention research to improve the way in which people live and work together. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 10 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

This paper argues that critical perspectives have constituted a marginal yet continued presence in work and organizational (W-O) psychology and calls for a reflexive taking stock of these perspectives to ground a critical research agenda. We argue that critical W-O psychology has been positioned between a psychology literature with limited development of critical perspectives, and an emergent critical management literature that has allowed their selective development. This in-between position has allowed critical W-O psychology to persist, albeit in a fragmented form, while limiting its potential for theoretical and applied impact. We use this diagnosis to reflect on how critical perspectives can best develop from within W-O psychology. We end with a call for developing a critical movement unique to the current historical moment, drawing upon without repeating the experiences of its home disciplines, in a future oriented and reflexive psychology research agenda.

This conceptual contribution aims to adapt and apply Psychology of Working Theory to the specificities of the school-to-work transition (STWT) process. The STWT is thus conceptualized as a first attempt to access decent work under the influence of specific predictors, mediators, and moderators and leading to particular outcomes. Based on recent literature, we consider that (1) socioeconomic constraints and belonging to marginalized groups are contextual predictors of a successful transition; (2) psychosocial resources, including self-efficacy and adaptability, and vocational and work role identity, are mediators of the relation between contextual factors and a successful transition; (3) moderator factors include the education system, labor market conditions, social support, and critical consciousness; and (4) decent and meaningful work are the optimal outcomes of the STWT process.

This study aimed to identify the capabilities of secondary school teachers – valued aspects of work that are enabled and can be realized – and investigate the effects of these capabilities on three functionings: flourishing at work, organizational citizenship behavior, and intention to leave. A convenience sample of secondary school teachers (N = 144) in the Gauteng province in South Africa participated in the study. The teachers responded to the Capability Set for Work Questionnaire, Flourishing-at-Work Scale – Short Form, Organizational Citizenship Behavior Questionnaire, and Intention to Leave Scale. The results showed that three capabilities were most likely to form part of the capability set of teachers: using knowledge and skills, building and maintaining meaningful relationships at work, and contributing to something valuable. Capabilities least likely to form part of the capability set included having a good income, involvement in important decisions, and developing knowledge and skills. The capability set was a strong predictor of emotional, psychological, and social well-being, and a moderate predictor of organizational citizenship behavior and intention to leave. A capability set for work, rather than single work capabilities, seemed to be critical for the sustainable employability of secondary school teachers.

This study investigates a pressing topic, related to the connection between employees’ perceptions that the COVID-19 pandemic represents a pertinent threat for their organization on one hand, and their exhibited creativity, a critical behavior through which they can change and improve the organizational status quo, on the other. This connection may depend on their work-related task conflict, or the extent to which they reach out to colleagues to discuss different perspectives on work-related issues, as well as their collectivistic orientation. Data were gathered from employees working in the real estate sector. The results inform organizational practitioners that they should leverage productive task conflict to channel work-related hardships, such as those created by the coronavirus pandemic, into creative work outcomes. This beneficial process may be particularly effective for firms that employ people who embrace collectivistic norms, so they prioritize the well-being of others.

Most individuals affected by common mental health problems are employed and actually working. To promote stay at work by workplace interventions, it is crucial to understand the factors perceived by various workplace stakeholders, and its relative importance. This concept mapping study therefore explores perspectives of employees with common mental health problems (n = 18), supervisors (n = 17), and occupational health professionals (n = 14). Per stakeholder group, participants were interviewed to generate statements. Next, each participant sorted these statements on relatedness and importance. For each group, a concept map was created, using cluster analysis. Finally, focus group discussions were held to refine the maps. The three concept maps resulted in several clustered ideas that stakeholders had in common, grouped by thematic analysis into the following meta-clusters: (A) Employee’s experience of autonomy in work (employee’s responsibility, freedom to exert control, meaningful work), (B) Supervisor support (being proactive, connected, and involved), (C) Ways to match employee’s capacities to work (job accommodations), (D) Safe social climate in workplace (transparent organizational culture, collective responsibility in teams, collegial support), and (E) professional and organizational support, including collaboration with occupational health professionals. Promoting stay at work is a dynamic process that requires joined efforts by workplace stakeholders, in which more attention is needed to the interpersonal dynamics between employer and employee. Above all, a safe and trustful work environment, in which employee’s autonomy, capacities, and needs are addressed by the supervisor, forms a fundamental base to stay at work.

In this essay we challenge whether current conceptions of optimism, hope, and resilience are complete enough to account for the complexity and nuance of developing and maintaining these in practice. For example, a quick perusal of popular outlets (e.g., Forbes, Harvard Business Review) reveals advice to managers urging them to “be optimistic,” or “be happy” so that these types of emotions or feelings can spread to the workplace. One even finds simple advice and steps to follow on how to foster these types of things in the workplace (McKee; Tjan). We argue that this common perspective focuses narrowly on individuals and does not account for the complexity of resilience. Consequently, it denies the role of context, culture, and interactions as ways people develop shared meaning and reality. To fill this gap in our understanding, we take a social constructionist perspective to understand resilience. In other words, we foreground communication as the primary building block to sharing meaning and creating our worlds. In so doing, we veer away from the traditional focus on the individual and instead emphasise the social and cultural elements that shape how meaning is shared by peoples in various contexts (Fairhurst, Considering Context). Drawing on a communication, discourse-centered perspective we explore hope and optimism as concepts commonly associated with resilience in a work context. At work, leaders play a vital role in communicating ways that foster resilience in the face of organisational issues and events (e.g., environmental crises, downsizing). Following this lead, discursive leadership offers a framework that positions leadership as co-created and as the management of meaning through framing (Fairhurst, Power of Framing). Thus, we propose that a discursive leadership orientation can contribute to the communicative construction of resilience that moves away from individual perspectives to an emphasis on the social. From a discursive perspective, leadership is defined as a process of meaning management; attribution given by followers or observers; process-focused rather than leader-focused; and as shifting and distributed among several organizational members (Fairhurst Power of Framing). By switching from the individual focus and concentrating on social and cultural systems, discursive leadership is able to study concepts related to subjectivity, cultures, and identities as it relates to meaning. Our aim is to offer leaders an alternative perspective on resilience at the individual and group level by explaining how a discursive orientation to leadership can contribute to the communicative construction of resilience. We argue that a social constructionist approach provides a perspective that can unravel the multiple layers that make up hope, optimism, and resilience. We begin with a peek into the social scientific perspective that is so commonplace in media and popular portrayals of these constructs. Then, we explain the social constructionist perspective that grounds our framework, drawing on discursive leadership. Next, we present an alternative model of resilience, one that takes resilience as communicatively constructed and socially created. We believe this more robust perspective can help individuals, groups, and cultures be more resilient in the face of challenges. Social Scientific Perspectives Hope, optimism, and resilience have widely been spoken in the same breath; thus, in what follows we review how each is treated in common portrayals. In addition, we discuss each to point to further implications of our model proposed in this essay. Traditionally taken as cognitive states, each construct is based in an individual or an entity (Youssef and Luthans) and thus minimises the social and cultural. Hope Snyder, Irving, and Anderson define the construct of hope as “a positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (1) agency (goal-directed energy) and (2) pathways (planning to meet goals)” (287). This cognitive set therefore is composed of the belief in the ability to create strategies toward a goal and the belief that those plans can be realised. Exploring hope can provide insight into how individuals deal with stress and more importantly how they use past experiences to produce effective routes toward goals (Brown Kirschman et al.). Mills-Scofield writing in Harvard Business Review mirrors this two-part hope structure and describes how to integrate hope into business strategy. Above all she emphasises that hope is based in fact, not fiction; the need to learn and apply from failures; and the need to focus on what is working instead of what is broken. These three points contribute to hope by reinforcing the strategies (pathways) and ability (agency) to accomplish a particular goal. This model of hope is widely held across social scientific and popular portrayals. This position, however, does not allow for exploring how forces of social interaction shape either how these pathways are created or how agency is developed in the first place. By contrast, a communication-centered approach like the one we propose foregrounds interaction and the various social forces necessary for hope to be fostered in the workplace. Optimism Optimism centers on how an individual processes the causality of an event (e.g., an organisational crisis). From this perspective, an employee facing significant conflict with his immediate supervisor, for example, may explain this threat as an opportunity to learn the importance of supervisor-subordinate relationships. This definition therefore explores how the individual interprets his/her world (Brown Kirschman et al.). According to Seligman et al. the ways in which one interprets events has its origins in several places: (1) genetics; (2) the environment in the form of modeling optimistic behaviours; (3) environment in forms of criticism; and (4) life experiences that teach personal mastery or helplessness (cited in Brown Kirschman et al.). Environmental sources function as a dialectical tension. On one hand the environment provides productive modeling for optimism behaviours, and on the other the environment, through criticism, produces the opposite. Both extremes illustrate the significance of cultural and societal factors as they contribute to optimism. Additionally, life experiences play a role in either mastery or helplessness. Again, interaction and social influences play a significant part in the development of optimism. Much like hope, due to the attention given to social and interactive forces, the concept of optimism requires a framework rooted in the social and cultural rather than the individual and cognitive. A significant drawback related to optimism (Brown Kirschman et al.) is the danger of unrelenting optimism and the possibility this has on producing unrealistic scenarios. Individuals, rather, should strive to acknowledge the facts (good or bad) of certain circumstances in order to learn how to properly manage automatic negative thoughts (Brown Kirschman et al.). Tony Schwartz writing in Harvard Business Review argues that “realistic optimism” is more than putting on a happy face but instead is more about telling what is the most hopeful and empowering of a given situation (1). Thus, a more interaction-based approach much like the model that we are proposing could help overcome some of optimism’s shortcomings. If the power of optimism is in the telling, then we need a model where the telling is front and center. Later, we propose such a model and method for helping leaders’ foster optimism in the workplace and in their communities. Resilience Resilience research offers several definitions and approaches in attempt to examine the phenomenon. Masten defines resilience as a “class of phenomena characterized by good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development” (228). Luthar, Cicchetti, and Becker argue that resilience is “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (543). Interestingly, resilience and developmental researchers alike have positioned resilience as an individual consistently meeting the expectations of a given society or culture within a particular historical context. Broadly speaking, two central conditions apply toward resilience: (1) the presence of significant threat or adversity; and (2) the achievement of positive adaptation (Luthar, Cicchetti, and Becker. Masten goes on to argue that resilience is however ordinary and naturally occurring. That is, the adaptive systems required during significant threat are already present in individuals and is not solely retained by a select few. Masten et al., argues that resilience does not come “from rare and special qualities, but from the operations of ordinary human systems in the biology and psychology of children, from the relationships in the family and community, and from schools, religions, cultures, and other aspects of societies” (129). Based on this, the emphasis of resilience should be within adaptive processes, such that are found in supportive relationships, emotion regulation, and environment engagement (Masten et al.), rather than on individuals. Of these varied interpretations of resilience, two research designs drive the academic literature— outcome- and process-based perspectives (Kolar). Those following an outcome-focused approach tend to concentrate on functionality and functional behaviour as key indicators of resilience (Kolar). Following this model, cognitive states such as composure, assurance, and confidence are examples of resilience. By contrast, a process-focused approach concentrates on the interplay of protective and risk factors as they influence the adaptive capacity of an individual (Kolar). This approach acknowledges that resilience is contextual and interactive, and is “a shared responsibility between individuals, their families, and the formal social system rather than as an individual burden (Kolar 425). This process-based approach toward resilience allows for greater inclusion of factors across individual, group, and societal levels (Kolar). The rigidity of outcome-based models and related constructs does not allow for such flexibility and therefore prevents exploring full accounts of resilience. A process-based approach allows for the inclusion of context throughout measures of resilience and acknowledges that interplay of risk and protective factors across the individual, social, and community level (Kolar). Bearing this in mind, what is needed are more complex models of resilience that account for a multiplicity of factors. An Alternate Framework: Social Construction of Reality Language is the tool storytellers use to generate interest and convey ideas. From a social constructionist standpoint, language is the primary mechanism in the construction of reality. Berger and Luckmann present language as a system that allows us to categorise subjective ideas, which over time accumulates into our “social stock of knowledge” (41). As our language creates the symbols that we use to make sense of the world around us, we add to our social knowledge thereby creating a shared vision of our own social reality. Because we accumulate varying levels and amounts of social knowledge, what we know of the world constantly changes. For example, in organisations, our discourse and on-going interactions with each other serve to shape what we consider to be real in our day-to-day lives. In this view, subjective experiences of individuals are central to our understanding of various events (e.g., organizational change, crises, conflict) and the ways in which we cope with such occurrences (e.g., through hope, optimism, resilience). Alternative Models of Resilience We take Buzzanell’s framework as inspiration for an alternative model of resilience. Her communication-centric model is based in messages, d/Discourse, and narrative where communication is an emergent process involving the interplay of messages and interaction (Buzzanell). Furthermore, the communicative construction of resilience involves “a collaborative exchange that invites participation of family, workplace, community, and interorganizational network members” (Buzzanell 9). This alternative perspective of resilience explores human communication resilience processes as the focal point rather than examining the person or entity. This is essentially a design change, where the focus shifts from the individual or singular toward the communication processes that enable resilience. Essentially, according to Poole, “in process, we can see resilience as dynamic, integrated, unfolding over time and through events, evolving into patterns, and dependent on contingencies” (qtd. in Buzzanell 2). Buzzanell describes five processes included in the communicative construction of resilience: (1) crafting normalcy; (2) affirming identity anchors; (3) maintaining and using communication networks; (4) legitimising negative feelings while foregrounding productive action; and (5) putting alternative logics to work. Here, we highlight two that most directly relate to the alternative model we propose. First, legitimising negative feelings while foregrounding productive action may sound like repression, but in fact it emphasises that negative feelings (nonproductive emotions) are real and that focusing on positive action enables success while facing significant threat. Furthermore, as a communicative construction, this process includes reframing of a situation both linguistically and metaphorically. This communicative process address a major drawback related to the optimism construct presented by Brown Kirschman and colleagues regarding the potential danger of unrelenting optimism. Similarly, putting alternative logics to work, in its practical application, creates resilient systems through (re)framing. Through (re)framing, individuals, groups, and communities can create their own logics that enable them to reintegrate when facing adverse experiences. That is, (re)framing provides an opportunity to endure unfavorable situations while creating communicatively creating conditions that enable adaptation. This idea can also be seen in popular press such as in the Harvard Business Review blog “Craft a Narrative to Instill Optimism” (Baldoni). According to Baldoni, leaders have a choice in creating the narrative of our world. Thus, leaders serve as the primary meaning managers in the workplace. Leadership and the Management of Meaning Kelly begins our discussion toward an ongoing discursive turn in leadership research. Much like hope, optimism, and resilience, Kelly proposes that leadership has been wrongly categorised and therefore has been inadequately observed. That is, due to focusing on trait-based leadership models espoused by leadership psychology the area of leadership has been left with significant deficits surrounding the very core of leadership. The lessons learned about the reductionist treatment of leadership can be applied to our understanding of resilience. Thus, we draw on discursive leadership because it provides an example for how leaders can foster resilience in various settings. The discursive turn stems from the incongruity seen in these traditional trait or style-based leadership approaches. From a social constructionist perspective, researchers are able to explore the forms in which leadership contributes to the meaning construction process, much in the same way that a communication perspective, outlined above, emphasises resilience as a process. This ontological shift in leadership research not only re-categorises leadership but also changes the ways in which leadership is studied. Kelly’s emphasis on a socially constructed view of leadership combined with alternative methodological approaches contributes to our aim to explore how a discursive leadership orientation can contribute to communicative construction of resilience. Discursive Leadership Discursive leadership views leadership as more of an art rather than a science, one that is contested and inventive (Fairhurst, Discursive Leadership). Where leadership psychology emphasises the individual and cognitive, discursive leadership highlights the cultural and the communicative (Fairhurst, Discursive Leadership). Leadership psychology is analogous to common, social scientific understandings of resilience that typically confines resilience into something easily attainable by individuals. The traditional leadership psychology literature attempts to determine causality among the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural elements of leader actors, whereas, discursive leadership takes discourse as the object of study to view how we think, see, and attribute leadership. Discursive leadership offers an optimal resource to view the communicative practices involved in the management of meaning and communicative construction of reality, including resilient systems and processes. Thus, we draw everything together now, and introduce practical interventions organisations can implement to foster hope, optimism, and resilience. An Alternate Model in Practice Attention to human capabilities and adaptive systems that promote healthy development and functioning have the potential to inform policy and programs that foster competence and human capital and aim to improve the health of communities and nations while also preventing problems (Masten 235). Masten’s words point to the tremendous potential of resilience. Thus, we wish to conclude with the implications of our perspective for individuals, groups, and communities. In what follows we briefly explain framing, and end with two interventions leaders can use to help foster resilience in the workplace. A common and practical example of language creating reality is framing. Fairhurst, in her book The Power of Framing explores framing as a leader’s ability to construct the reality of a subject or situation. A frame is simply defined as a mental picture where framing is the process of communicating this picture to others. Although words or language cannot alter any physical conditions, they may, however, influence our perceptions of them. Fairhurst goes on to “frame” leadership as co-created and not necessarily found in specific concrete acts. That is, leadership emerges when leader actors are deemed to have performed or demonstrated leadership by themselves and/or others. Leadership in this case is determined by attribution. For Fairhurst, leaders are able to shape and co-create meaning and reality by influencing the here and now. From this perspective interventions should be designed around the idea of creating alternative logics (Buzzanell) by emphasizing the elements of framing. For the sake of brevity, we wish to emphasise two fundamental areas surrounding process-oriented and communicative constructed resilience. It is our hope that leaders may use these takeaways and build upon them as they reflect how to position resilience at the individual and organisational level. First, interventions should focus on identifying the supportive adaptive systems at the individual, group, and societal level (e.g., family, work teams, community coalitions). This could be done through a series of dialogue sessions with an aim of challenging participants to not only identify systems but to also reflect upon how these systems contribute toward resilience. These could be duplicated in work settings and community settings (e.g., community forums and the like). Second, to emphasise framing, interventions should involve meaningful dialogue to help identify the particular conditions within a significant threat that will (a) lead to productive action and (b) enable individuals, groups, and communities to endure. Overall, an increased emphasis should be placed on helping participants understand how they are able to metaphorically and linguistically (Buzzanell) create the conditions surrounding adverse events. Our aim in this essay was to present an alternate model of various human processes that help people cope and bounce back from troubling times or events. Toward this end, we argued that media and popular portrayals of constructs such as hope, optimism, and resilience lack the complexity to account for how these can be put into practice. To fill this gap, we hope our communication-based model of resilience, with its emphasis on interaction will provide leaders and community members a method for engaging people in the process of coping and communicating resilience. Honoring the processual nature of these ideas is one step toward bettering individuals, groups, and communities. References Baldoni, John. “Craft a Narrative to Instill Optimism.” Harvard Business Review 17 Dec. 2009: 1. Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Anchor Books, 1966. Brown Kirschman, Keri J., Rebecca J. Johnson., Jade A. Bender., and Michael C. Roberts. “Positive Psychology for Children and Adolescents: Development, Prevention, and Promotion.” Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. Eds. Shane J. Lopez and Charles R. Snyder. New York: Oxford. 2009. 133-148. Buzzanell, Patrice M. “Resilience: Talking, Resisting, and Imagining New Normalcies into Being.” Journal of Communication 60 (2010): 1-14. Fairhurst, Gail T. The Power of Framing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011. ———. “Considering Context in Discursive Leadership Research.” Human Relations 62.11 (2009): 1607-1633. ———. Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2007. Kelly, Simon. “Leadership: A Categorical Mistake?” Human Relations 61.6 (2008): 763 – 82. Kolar, Katarina. “Resilience: Revisiting the Concept and Its Utility for Social Research.” International Journal of Mental Health Addiction 9 (2011): 421033. Luthar, Suniya S., Dante Cicchetti., and Bronwyn Becker. “The Construct of Resilience: A Critical Evaluation and Guidelines for Future Work.” Child Development 71.3 (2000): 543-562. Masten, Ann S. “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development.” American Psychologist 56.3 (2001): 227-238. Masten, Ann S., J.J. Cutuli, Janette E. Herbers, Marie-Gabriel J. Reed. “Resilience in Development.” Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. Eds. Shane J. Lopez and Charles R. Snyder. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 117-132. McKee, Annie. “Doing the Hard Work of Hope.” HBR Blog Network Oct. 2008: 1-2. Mills-Scofield, Deborah. “Hope Is a Strategy (Well, Sort Of).” Harvard Business Review 9 Oct. 2012: 1-2. Poole, Marshall S. “On the Study of Process in Communication Research.” Montreal, Quebec, Canada. May 2008. Fellows address at the International Communication Association annual meeting. Postman, Neil. Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble about Language, Technology, and Education. New York: Vintage Books, 1988. Schwartz, Tony. “Fueling Positive Emotions in a World Gone Mad.” Harvard Business Review 2 Nov. 2010: 1-2 Seligman, Martin E., et al. The Optimist Child. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. Snyder, Charles R., et al. “Hope and Health: Measuring the Will and the Ways.” Handbook of Social and Clinical Psychology: The Health Perspective. Eds. Charles R. Snyder and Donelson R. Forsyth. Elmsford: Pergamon, 1991. 285-305. Tjan, Anthony K. “Lead with Optimism.” HBR Blog Network May 2010: 1-2. Youssef, Carolyn M., and Luthans, Fred. “Positive Organizational Behavior in the Workplace: The Impact of Hope, Optimism, and Resilience.” Journal of Management 33.5 (2007): 774-800.

PurposeDrawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study investigates the relationship between employees' perceived career progress and their championing behavior and particularly how this relationship might be invigorated by two critical personal resources at the job (work meaningfulness) and employer (organizational identification) levels.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative data were collected from a survey administered to 245 employees in an organization that operates in the oil industry.FindingsBeliefs about organizational support for career development are more likely to stimulate idea championing when employees find their job activities meaningful and strongly identify with the successes and failures of their employing organization.Practical implicationsThis study offers organizations deeper insights into the personal circumstances in which positive career-related energy is more likely to be directed toward the active mobilization of support for novel ideas.Originality/valueAs a contribution to extant championing research, this research details how employees' perceived career progress spurs their relentless efforts to push novel ideas, based on their access to complementary personal resources.

Interrelational power dynamics are intimately connected to the success of any relationship and are especially critical in developing and sustaining mutually beneficial, reciprocally engaged partnerships. This work analyzes how elements of power impact the negotiation of engagement in community-university partnerships. Although this piece is a general theoretical account of power, it indicates very specific implications for community partners. A hypothetical example is used to contextualize distinct power challenges that confront community partners and faculty members during the engagement process. Specific attention is given to how organizational structure, the academic calendar, and the creation of knowledge influence produced understandings of differentials in power and differentials in need. The paper concludes with a discussion of three applied strategies that can be used to neutralize differentials in power and recognize differentials in need associated with the development of community-university partnerships. The theoretical language of differentials in power and differentials in need will arm practitioners with analytical tools to shape more meaningful partnerships.

The digital revolution has generated huge changes in the world of work, with relevant implications for the Human Resources Management (HRM) function. New challenges arise in facing digital work, digital employees, and digital management, such that the connection between new technologies and HRM is now described as electronic HRM (e-HRM). Challenges and connection entail the possibility to review the notion of HRM itself, examining new research perspectives and lines of interpretation following a Critical Management Studies approach, thus developing a more contextualized view in conceiving HRM, a more expansive consideration of stakeholders, and a longer-term perspective in approaching the results of digital transformation and HRM outcomes. The article analyzes a specific organizational case, involving a multinational enterprise, and explores how the case study enhances the understanding of HRM as a social practice embedded in specific situated contexts. Such a conception enables the engagement of multiple rationalities, related to both internal and external stakeholders, overcoming a “mere antiperformance stance” and achieving forms of reconstructive reflexivity concerning the interconnection between the digital age, HRM, and the innovative generation of social value through an authentic corporate responsibility.

Background/Context: Unconscious racial bias (URB) can be a pernicious form of racism. In light of increased awareness of and research on the subject, URB work has become a key focus of equity work in health care, education, and corporate contexts as part of broader calls for racial justice. In Canada, targeting URB in education has become a policy priority at the national, provincial, and school board levels. The role of individual and organizational URB is now widely recognized in policy as central to equitable outcomes in schooling; however, research is limited on how to engage these forms of racism in educational contexts. Prevailing approaches to URB work in schools often include truncated one-off workshops, which leave unaddressed the connections between the individual racial biases, and the operations of white supremacy and racism at the institutional, systemic, and structural levels. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: While URB is increasingly well-understood by social psychologists, there has been limited engagement from critical scholars working in areas such as critical race theory (CRT), anti-colonialism, and critical whiteness studies—despite the popularity of interrogating URB as an anti-racism strategy in education. CRT in education has laid bare and problematized the central function of schooling in the safeguarding and management of white supremacy. This project emerged from a dual recognition of URB as a productive entry point for racial awareness and anti-racism work, alongside a significant concern about the failure of mainstream URB discourse to address structural racism and white supremacy—masking at times the deeper ways that Euro-colonial racism underpins social relations in contemporary U.S., Canadian, European, and other contexts. This work seeks to address these limitations in the design of the study through deep work with participants. Specifically, the study sought to understand better the impacts of reading critical texts focusing on systemic, structural, and institutional racism on teachers’ understandings of their own racial biases, as well as teachers’ perspectives on the impacts of reading critical texts in terms of their professional practices. Research Design: This article reports on the findings of a 10-month study with secondary teachers in Toronto, Canada, focusing on critical approaches to racial bias mitigation in education. In addition to asking participants to enact a series of URB mitigation strategies developed in the field of social psychology, this study also required participants to read and reflect on one of the following critical anti-racism nonfiction texts: White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (2018); Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada From Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard (2017); Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School, edited by Mica Pollock (2008); Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada by Paulette Regan (2014); and Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects by Christina Sharpe (2010). The project was designed using multiple data sources from participants, including electronic survey responses, ongoing journaling/reflection, a midpoint check-in questionnaire, and a final interview. These multiple entry points, as well as the duration of the project, aimed to go beyond the taken-for-granted and toward deeper understanding over time. Conclusions/Recommendations: Findings suggest that reading these works impacted teachers’ understandings of race and racism in terms of their teaching, as well as in terms of their personal relationships to race and racism, increasing their inclination and ability to address race and anti-racism. This work allowed for critical reflection to seep into the most intimate and invisible moments of operationalized whiteness in the professional and personal spheres of participants. This suggests an important complementarity between teacher intervention practices emerging from social psychology, and the introduction and engagement of critical anti-racist and anti-colonial texts in terms of teachers’ work for racial justice.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the influence of workplace spirituality on employee loyalty toward the organization, mediated through well-being at work. Furthermore, the study endeavors to test the difference in conceptual model estimates, across two groups of employees: those who work on contract/temporary and permanent basis. The study gains relevance particularly in the context of the emerging sharing economy, where jobs are primarily characterized by short-term contracts and freelancing.Design/methodology/approachThis descriptive study was conducted among a sample of 523 educators working in private educational institutions in India. Self-reporting questionnaires were administered among the respondents, who were selected through the purposive sampling method. Structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis were done to test the proposed hypotheses.FindingsThe analysis revealed that workplace spirituality enriched employee well-being and loyalty toward the organization and evidence were found for indirect effects too. Variances were observed in the relationships, with respect to the different employment statuses of the personnel. Significant differences in the relationships were not found across temporary and permanent employment statuses. Interestingly, temporary employees experienced stronger influences between meaningful work, well-being and word-of-mouth. Results suggest the relevance of understanding employees' differential work experiences and attitudes and thus facilitate human resource strategies accordingly.Originality/valueThis study is pioneering in conceptualizing and testing a theoretical model linking workplace spirituality, well-being at work and employee loyalty, particularly in the context of employees who differ in their employment status, which is a critical aspect of modern-day organizations. Unlike traditional workplaces, in recent times, people come together and work along for shorter terms, as the case of a sharing economy and the thus emergent interpersonal dynamics between each other and with the workplace has significant repercussions on the organization. Theoretical and managerial implications with regard to the experience of workplace spirituality and job outcomes are elaborated, thus striving to fill a gap in the existing literature.

To date, little understanding exists of how first-year students in professionally oriented higher-education (HE) programs (i.e., those that provide vocational education to prepare students for a particular occupation) experience their academic transition process. In the present study, we first argued how the constructs of academic adjustment and academic integration can provide complementary perspectives on the academic transition of first-year students in (professional) HE. Next, we examined what first-year students in professional HE contexts perceive to be the most important experiences associated with their academic transition process in the first semester of their first year of higher education (FYHE). To this end, we adopted the fundamentals of the critical incident technique and asked 104 students in a Flemish (Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) university college (which offers professional HE programs, such as nursing) to complete “reflective logs” with open questions at the start of the second semester of their FYHE, wherein they reflected on three critical academic experiences during their first semester. An inductive, cross-case content analysis of the collected narratives showed that students reported on nine themes of academic experiences, which relate to five adjustment themes (dealing with the organization of the study program, organizing study work, committing to the study, following class and taking notes, and processing learning content outside class) and four integration themes (feeling competent, feeling stressed, feeling prepared, and feeling supported). Further analyses showed that although some of the nine themes of academic experiences appear to be more important at different times in the first semester, they all seem to be meaningful throughout the whole semester.

Autism services in Qatar are expanding rapidly, but focus predominantly on young children. The shortage of qualified autism providers and minimal opportunities for autistic youth to participate in school, work, and community have led to a growing population of autistic youth transitioning to adulthood with substantial unmet needs for behavioral support and instruction in critical life skills. Our objective was to identify the needs and preferences for respite care for autistic adolescents and young adults in Qatar utilizing family and stakeholder input. Researchers from the United States collaborated with researchers and community leaders from Qatar to evaluate perspectives regarding respite care with families of autistic people ( n = 11) and providers/community stakeholders ( n = 20) through surveys and focus groups. Four main themes emerged including (1) a need for trust and reliability of individuals and of systems to support autistic adults, (2) prioritizing quality of life for autistic individuals and their families, (3) seeking meaningful inclusion, and (4) challenges stemming from service delivery systems. Families in Qatar endorsed clear interest in respite care services for young adults with autism, regardless of their child’s age. This study highlights the value of including both provider expertise and family concerns in developing new services for an under-served community. Lay abstract Qatar is expanding the services that it offers for autistic people, but these services focus mainly on diagnosing and treating young children. Because there are not enough autism providers in Qatar and few opportunities for autistic youth to participate in the community, more and more autistic teens and young adults have unmet needs during their transition to adulthood. The goal of this study was to conduct a needs assessment of transition-age autistic youth in Qatar and their families in order to inform the development of an adult respite care and support center. Respite care is a service that provides families with stress relief and time to participate in activities that are more difficult to do when their loved one with a disability is with them. The objective of this study was to use family and stakeholder input to identify the needs and preferences for respite care for autistic youth in Qatar. The project was conducted with a local research team in Qatar and a team of clinical researchers in the United States specializing in autism. Stakeholders, including parents of autistic people and providers working with individuals with autism, completed surveys and participated in focus groups. Families and providers in Qatar were very interested increasing services for young adults with autism to improve quality of life, although wanted to make sure the service providers would be reliable and trustworthy. Implications from this study may substantially improve the lives of autistic adults in Qatar.

PurposeWhile studying the association between leader–member exchange (LMX) quality and employee work outcomes, the existing scholarship has generally focused on employee perspectives of LMX quality. Being more inclusive, this study utilizes role theory to incorporate the dyadic (in)congruence in LMX quality and their effects on ratee feedback seeking behavior.Design/methodology/approachData elicited from N = 156 matched rater–ratee dyads comprising engineers working with telecommunication organizations of Pakistan. Purposive sampling was done to ensure that rater–ratee dyads were in continuous contact by their customized employee portals.FindingsResults of polynomial regression analysis revealed that leader–member congruence in their perceptions of LMX quality enhanced member's feedback seeking behavior. Asymmetrical incongruence, i.e. the member perceived higher LMX quality than the leader, is found to predict member's feedback seeking behavior, even higher than both levels of congruence (high- and low-quality LMX).Research limitations/implicationsThe scope of this study was members' reactions to performance appraisal. However, other performance appraisal outcomes are plausible such as, leader performance. This study explored the objective incongruence, yet subjective congruence can be more conclusive about the results of the present study.Practical implicationsLMX incongruence is more detrimental to members in high interaction situations. When the member perceives lower quality LMX than the leader, expectations regarding resource exchanges and behaviors are more likely to be unfulfilled for the member. Feedback seeking behavior being a member related outcome is likely to be affected more negatively in such conditions of incongruence. Second, it is likely that when there is a high degree of incongruence among the dyads, LMX congruence may become more critical to the members which in turn may give them a sense of belongingness within the dyad. Third, the relationship between leader–member dyads is affected by the social interactions facilitating the members' opinion sharing.Originality/valueThe study suggests that to fully grasp the implications of LMX theory, we need to consider the viewpoints of both the dyadic members at the same time.

A central concern of media studies is to understand the transactions of meaning that are established between the encoders and decoders of media messages: senders and receivers, authors and audiences, producers and consumers. More precisely, this discipline has aimed to describe the semantic disconnects that occur when organisations, governments, businesses, and people communicate and interact across media, and, further, to understand the causes of these miscommunications and to theorise their social and cultural implications. As the media environment becomes complicated by increasingly multimodal messages broadcast to diverse languages and cultures, it is no surprise that misunderstanding seems to occur more (and not less) frequently, forcing difficult questions of society’s ability to refine mass communication into a more streamlined, more effective, and less error-prone system. The communication of meaning to mass audiences has long been theorised (e.g.: Shannon and Weaver; Schramm; Berlo) using the metaphor of a “transmitted message.” While these early researchers varied in their approaches to the study of mass communication, common to their theoretical models is to characterise miscommunication as a dysfunction of the pure transmission process: interference that prevents the otherwise successful relay of meaning from a “sender” to a “receiver.” For example, Schramm’s communication model is based upon two individuals sharing “fields of experience”; error and misunderstanding occur to the extent that these fields do not overlap. For Shannon and Weaver, these disconnects were described explicitly as semantic noise: distortions of meaning that resulted in the message received being different from what was being transmitted. While much of this early research in mass communication continues to be relevant to students of communication and media studies, the transmission metaphor has been called into question for the way it frames miscommunication as a distortion of otherwise clear and stable “meaning,” and not as an inevitable result of the gray area that lies between every sender’s intention and a receiver’s interpretation. It is precisely this problem with the transmission metaphor that Derrida calls into question. For Derrida (as well as for many post-structuralists, linguists, and cultural theorists) what we communicate cannot necessarily be intended or interpreted in any stable fashion. Rather, Derrida describes communication as inherently “iterable … able to break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely unsaturable fashion” (“Signature” 320). Derrida is concerned that the transmission metaphor doesn’t account for the fact that all signs (words, images, and so on) can signify a multitude of things to different individuals in different contexts, at different points in time. Further, he reminds us that any perceived signification (and thus, meaning) is produced finally, not by the sender, but by the receiver. Within Derrida’s conception of communication as a perpetually open-ended system, the concept of noise takes on a new shape. Perhaps ambiguous meaning is not the “noise” of an otherwise pure system, but rather, perhaps it is only noise that constitutes all acts of communication. Indeed, while Derrida agrees that the consistency and repetition of language help to limit the effects of iterability, he believes that all meaning is ambiguous and never final. Therefore, to communicate is to perpetually negotiate this semantic ambiguity, not to overcome it, constrain it, or push it aside. With these thoughts in mind, when I return to a focus on mass media and media communication, it becomes readily apparent that there do exist sites of cultural production where noise is not only prolific, but where it is also functional—and indeed crucial to a communicator’s goals. Such sites are what Mark Nunes describes as “cultures of noise”: a term I specify in this paper to describe those organised media practices that seem to negotiate, function, and thrive by communicating ambiguously, or at the very least, by resisting the urge to signify explicitly. Cultures of noise are important to the study of media precisely for the ways they call into question our existing paradigms of what it means to communicate. By suggesting that aberrant interpretations of meaning are not dysfunctions of what would be an otherwise efficient system, cultures of noise reveal how certain “asignifying poetics” might be productive and generative for our communication goals. The purpose of this paper is to understand how cultures of noise function by exploring one such case study: the pervasive use of commercial stock images throughout mass media. I will describe how the semantic ambiguity embedded into the construction and sale of stock images is productive both to the stock photography industry and to certain practices of advertising, marketing, and communicating corporate identity. I will begin by discussing the stock image’s dependence upon semantic ambiguity and the productive function this ambiguity serves in supporting the success of the stock photography industry. I will then describe how this ambiguity comes to be employed by corporations and advertisers as “filler content,” enabling these producers to elide the accountability and risk that is involved with more explicit communication. Ambiguous Raw Material: The Stock Industry as a Culture of Noise The photographic image has been a staple of corporate identity for as long as identity has been a concern of corporations. It is estimated that more than 70% of the photographic images used in today’s corporate marketing and advertising have been acquired from a discrete group of stock image firms and photography stock houses (Frosh 5). In fact, since its inception in the 1970’s, increasing global dependence on stock imagery has grown the practice of commercial stock photography into a billion dollar a year industry. Commercial stock images are somewhat peculiar. Unlike other non-fiction genres of stock photography (e.g., editorial and journalistic) commercial stock images present explicitly fictive, constructed scenes. Indeed, many of the images of business workers, doctors, and soccer moms that one finds through a Google Image search are actually actors hired to stage a scene. In this way, commercial stock images share much more in common with the images produced for advertising campaigns, in that they are designed to support branding and corporate identity messages. However, unlike traditional advertising images, which are designed to deliver a certain message for a quite specific application (think ‘Tide stain test’ or ‘posh woman in the Lexus’), commercial stock images have been purposely constructed with no particular application in mind. On the contrary, stock images must be designed to anticipate the diverse needs of cultural intermediaries—design firms, advertising agencies, and corporate marketing teams—who will ultimately purchase the majority of these images. (Frosh 57) To achieve these goals, every commercial stock image is designed to be somewhat open-ended, in order to offer up a field of potential meanings, and yet these images also seem to anticipate the applications of use that will likely appeal to the discourses of corporate marketing and advertising. In this way, the commercial stock image might best be understood as undefined raw material, as a set of likely potentialities still lacking a final determination—what Derrida describes as “undecided” meaning: “I want to recall that undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of acts). These possibilities are highly determined in strictly concerned situations … they are pragmatically determined. The analyses that I have devoted to undecidability concern just these determinations and these definitions, not at all some vague “indeterminacy”. I say “undecidability” rather than “indeterminacy” because I am interested more in relations of force, in everything that allows, precisely, determinations in given situations to be stabilised through a decision … .” (Limited 148) A stock image’s ambiguity is the result of an intentional design process whereby the stock photography industry presents the maximum range of possible meanings, and yet, falls artfully short of “deciding” any of them. Rather, it is the advertisers, designers, and marketers who ultimately make these decisions by finding utility for the image in a certain context. The more customers that can find a use for a certain image, the more this image will be purchased, and the more valuable that particular stock image becomes. It is precisely in this way that the stock photography industry functions as a culture of noise and raises questions of the traditional sender-to-receiver model of communication. Cultures of noise not only embrace semantic ambiguity; they rely upon this ambiguity for their success. Indeed, the success of the stock photography industry quite literally depends upon the aberrant and unpredictable interpretations of buyers. It is now quite explicitly the “receiver,” and not the “sender,” who controls meaning by imbuing the image with meaning for a specific context and specific need. Once purchased, the “potentialities” of meaning within a stock image become somewhat determined by its placement within a certain context of circulation, such as its use for a banking advertisement or healthcare brochure. In many cases, the meaning of a given stock image is also specified by the text with which it is paired. (Fig. 1) Using text to control the meaning of an image is what Roland Barthes describes as anchorage, “the creator’s (and hence society’s) right of inspection over the image; anchorage is a control, bearing a responsibility in the face of the projective power of pictures-for the use of the message” (156). By using text to constrain how an image should be interpreted, the subjects, forms, and composition of a stock image work to complement the textual message in a clear and defined way. Fig. 1: Courtesy of Washington Mutual. Used by permission. Barthes’ textual anchorage: In advertising and marketing, the subject, form and composition of a stock image are made specific by the text with which the image is paired. Filler Content: Advertising and Marketing as a Culture of Noise In other marketing and advertising messages, I observe that stock images are used in quite a different way, as filler content: open-ended material that takes the place of more explicit, message-oriented elements. As a culture of noise, filler content opposes the goal of generating a clear and specific message. Rather, the goal of filler content is to present an ambiguous message to consumers. When stock images are used as filler content, they are placed into advertising and marketing messages with virtually the same degree of ambiguity as when the image was originally constructed. Such images receive only vague specificity from textual anchorage, and little effort is made by the message producer to explicitly “decide” a message’s meaning. Consider the image (Fig. 2) used in a certain marketing design. Compared with Figure 1, this design makes little attempt to specify the meaning of the image through text. On the contrary, the image is purposely left open to our individual interpretations. Without textual anchorage, the image is markedly “undecided.” As such, it stages the same ambiguous potential for final consumers as it did for the advertiser who originally purchased the image from the stock image house. Fig. 2: Courtesy of VISA.com. Used by permission. Filler content: What meaning(s) does the image have for you? Love? Happiness? Leisure? Freedom? The Outdoors? Perhaps you rode your bike today? While filler content relies upon audiences to fill in the blanks, it also inserts meaning by leveraging the cultural reinforcement of other, similar images. Consider the way that the image of “a woman with a headset” has come to signify customer service (Fig. 3). The image doesn’t represent this meaning on its own, but it works as part of a larger discourse, what Paul Frosh describes as an “image repertoire” (91). By bombarding us incessantly with a repetition of similar images, the media continues to bolster the iconic value that certain stock images possess. The woman with the headset has become an icon of a “Customer Service Representative” because we are exposed to a repetition of images that repeatedly stage the same or similar scene of this idea. As Frosh suggests, “this is the essence of the concept-based stock image: it constitutes a pre-formed, generically familiar visual symbol that calls forth relevant connotations from the social experience of viewers…” (79). Fig. 3: The image repertoire: All filler content depends upon the iconic status of certain stock photography clichés, categories and familiar scenes. Perhaps you have seen these images before? As a culture of noise, stock images in advertising and marketing function as filler content in two ways: 1) meaning is left undecided by the advertiser who intends for customers to create their own interpretations of an advertisement; 2) meaning is generated by the ideological constructs of an “image repertoire” that is itself promulgated by the stock photography industry. As such, filler content signals a shift in the goals of modern advertising and marketing, where corporate messages are designed to be increasingly ambiguous, and meaning seems to be decided more than ever by the final audience. As marketing psychologists Kim and Kahle suggest: Advertising strategy … may need to be changed. Instead of providing the “correct” consumption episodes, marketers could give … an open-ended status, thereby allowing consumers to create the image on their own and to decide the appropriateness of the product for a given need or situation. (63) The potentiality of meanings that was initially embedded into stock images in order to make them more attractive to cultural intermediaries, is also being “passed on” to the final audiences by these same advertisers and marketers. The same noisy signification that supported the sale of stock photos from the stock industry to advertisers now also seems to support the “sale” of messages that advertisers pass on to their audiences. In the same way as the stock photography industry, practices of filler content in advertising also create a culture of noise, by relying upon ambiguous messages that end customers are now forced to both produce and consume. Safe and Vague: The Corporate Imperative Ambiguous communication is not, by itself, egregious. On the contrary, many designers believe that creating a space for thoughtful, open-ended discovery is one of the best ways to provide a meaningful experience to end users. Interaction designer and professor Philip Van Allen describes one such approach to ambiguous design as “productive interaction”: “an open mode of communication where people can form their own outcomes and meanings … sharing insights, dilemmas and questions, and creating new opportunities for synthesis” (56). The critical difference between productive interaction and filler content is one of objective. While media designers embrace open-ended design as a way to create deeper, more meaningful connections with users, modern advertising employs ambiguous design elements, such as stock images, to elide a responsibility to message. Indeed, many marketing and organisational communication researchers (e.g.: Chreim; Elsbach and Kramer; Cheney) suggest that as corporations manage their identities to increasingly disparate and diverse media audiences, misunderstandings are more likely to bring about identity dissonance: that is, “disconnections” between the identity projected by the organisation and the identity attributed to an organisation by its customer-public. To grapple with identity dissonance, Samia Chreim suggests that top managers may choose to engage in the practice of dissonance avoidance: the use of ambiguous messages to provide flexibility in the interpretations of how customers can define a brand or organisation: Dissonance avoidance can be achieved through the use of ambiguous terms … organisations use ambiguity to unite stakeholders under one corporate banner and to stretch the interpretation of how the organisation, or a product or a message can be defined. (76) Corporations forgo the myriad disconnects and pitfalls of mass communication by choosing never to craft an explicit message, hold a position, or express a belief that customers could demur or discount. In such instances, it appears that cultures of noise, such as filler content, may service a shrewd corporate strategy that works to mitigate their responsibility to message. A Responsibility to Message This discussion of “cultures of noise” contributes to media studies by situating semantic noise as productive, and indeed, sometimes vital, to practices of media communication. Understanding the role of semantic noise in communication is an important corner for media scholars to turn, especially as today’s message producers rely and thrive upon certain productive aspects of ambiguous communication. However, this discussion also suggests that all media messages must be critically evaluated in quite a different way. While past analyses of media messages have sought to root out the subversive and manipulative factors that resided deep down in our culture, cultures of noise suggest that it is now also important for media studies to consider the deleterious effects of media’s noisy, diluted, and facile surface. Jean Baudrillard was deeply concerned that the images used in media are too often “used for delusion, for the elusion of communication … for absolving face-to-face relations and social responsibilities. They don’t really lead to action, they substitute for it most of the time” (203). Indeed, while the stock image as filler content may solve the problems faced by corporate message producers in a highly ramified media environment, there is an increasing need to question the depth of meaning in our visual culture. What is the purpose of a given image? What is the producer trying to say? Is it relying on end users to find meaning? Are the images relying an iconic repertoire? Is the producer actually making a statement? And if not, why not? As advertising and marketing continues to shape the visual ground of our culture, Chreim also warns us of our responsibility to message: What is gained in avoiding [identity dissonance] can be lost in the ability to create meaning for stakeholders. Over-reliance on abstract terms may well leave the organisation with a hollow core, one that cannot be appropriated by [customers] in their quest for meaning and identification with the organisation. (88) While cultures of noise may be productive in mitigating the problems of dissonance and miscommunication, and while they may signal new opportunity spaces for design, media, and mass communication, we must also remember that a reliance on ambiguity can sometimes cripple our ability to say anything meaningful at all. References Barthes, Roland. “The Rhetoric of the Image”. The Rhetoric of the Image. Trans. Richard Howard. Berkeley: U of California P, 1977. Baudrillard, Jean. “Aesthetic Illusion and Virtual Reality.” Reading Images. Ed. Julia Thomas. Houndmills: Macmillan, 2000. Berlo, David K. The Process of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1960. Chreim, Samia. “Reducing Dissonance: Closing the Gap between Projected and Attributed Identity”. Corporate and Organizational Identities: Integrating Strategy, Marketing, Communication and Organizational Perspectives. Eds. B. Moingeon and G. Soenen. Chicago: Routledge, 2002. Derrida, Jacques. “Signature, Event. Context.” Derrida, Jacques: Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: 1982. Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern UP, 1988. Frosh, Paul. The Image Factory. New York: Berg, 2003. Gettyimages.com. Getty Images. 20 Oct. 2007 http://gettyimages.mediaroom.com>. Kahle, Lynn R., and Kim Chung-Hyun, eds. Creating Images and the Psychology of Marketing Communication. New Jersey: Lawrence Elbaum Associates, 2006 Shannon, Claude F., and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana, Ill.: The University of Illinois Press, 1964. Schramm, Wilbur. “How Communication Works”. The Process and Effects of Mass Communication, ed. Wilbur Schramm. Urbana, Ill.: U of Illinois P, 1961. Van Allen, Philip. “Models”. The New Ecology of Things. Pasadena: Media Design Program, Art Center College of Design, 2007. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ward, Christopher Grant. "Stock Images, Filler Content and the Ambiguous Corporate Message." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0711/04-ward.php>. APA Style Ward, C. (Oct. 2007) "Stock Images, Filler Content and the Ambiguous Corporate Message," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0711/04-ward.php>.

In “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” urban planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber outline what they term “wicked problems.” According to Rittel and Webber, wicked problems are unavoidably “ill-defined,” that is, unlike “problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable…[wicked problems] are never solved. At best they are only re-solved—over and over again” (160). Rittel and Webber were thinking specifically of the challenges involved in making decisions within immensely complex social circumstances—building highways through cities and designing low income housing projects, for example—but public policy-making and urban design are not the only fields rife with wicked problems. Indeed, the nub of Rittel and Webber’s articulation of wicked problems concerns a phenomenon common to many disciplines: interdisciplinary collaboration. As anyone who has collaborated with people outside her area of expertise will acknowledge, interdisciplinary collaboration itself is among the wickedest problems of all. By way of introduction, we direct the Learning Games Initiative (LGI), a transdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group that studies, teaches with, and builds computer games. In the seven years since LGI was inaugurated, we have undertaken many productive and well-received collaborations, including: 1) leading workshops at national and international conferences; 2) presenting numerous academic talks; 3) editing academic journals; 4) writing books, book chapters, journal articles, and other scholarly materials; 5) exhibiting creative and archival work in museums, galleries, and libraries; and 6) building one of the largest academic research archives of computer games, systems, paraphernalia, and print-, video-, and audio-scholarship in the world. We thus have a fair bit of experience with the wicked problem of collaboration. The purpose of this article is to share some of that experience with readers and to describe candidly some of the challenges we have faced—and sometimes overcome—working collaboratively across disciplinary, institutional, and even international boundaries. Collaborative Circle? Michael Farrell, whose illuminating analysis of “collaborative circles” has lent much to scholars’ understandings of group dynamics within creative contexts, succinctly describes how many such groups form: “A collaborative circle is a set of peers in the same discipline who, through open exchange of support, ideas, and criticism develop into an interdependent group with a common vision that guides their creative work” (266). Farrell’s model, while applicable to several of the smaller projects LGI has nurtured over the years, does not capture the idiosyncratic organizational method that has evolved more broadly within our collective. Rather, LGI has always tended to function according to a model more akin to that found in used car dealerships, one where “no reasonable offer will be refused.” LGI is open to anyone willing to think hard and get their hands dirty, which of course has molded the organization and its projects in remarkable ways. Unlike Farrell’s collaborative circles, for example, LGI’s collaborative model actually decentralizes the group’s study and production of culture. Any member from anywhere—not just “peers in the same discipline”—can initiate or join a project provided she or he is willing to trade in the coin of the realm: sweat equity. Much like the programmers of the open source software movement, LGI’s members work only on what excites them, and with other similarly motivated people. The “buy-in,” simply, is interest and a readiness to assume some level of responsibility for the successes and failures of a given project. In addition to decentralizing the group, LGI’s collaborative model has emerged such that it naturally encourages diversity, swelling our ranks with all kinds of interesting folks, from fine artists to clergy members to librarians. In large part this is because our members view “peers” in the most expansive way possible; sure, optical scientists can help us understand how virtual cameras simulate the real properties of lenses and research linguists can help us design more effective language-in-context tools for our games. However, in an organization that always tries to understand the layers of meaning-making that constitute computer games, such technical expertise is only one stratum. For a game about the cultural politics of ancient Greece that LGI has been working on for the past year, our members invited a musical instrument maker, a potter, and a school teacher to join the development team. These new additions—all experts and peers as far as LGI is concerned—were not merely consultants but became part of the development team, often working in areas of the project completely outside their own specialties. While some outsiders have criticized this project—currently known as “Aristotle’s Assassins”—for being too slow in development, the learning taking place as it moves forward is thrilling to those on the inside, where everyone is learning from everyone else. One common consequence of this dynamic is, as Farrell points out, that the work of the individual members is transformed: “Those who are merely good at their discipline become masters, and, working together, very ordinary people make extraordinary advances in their field” (2). Additionally, the diversity that gives LGI its true interdisciplinarity also makes for praxical as well as innovative projects. The varying social and intellectual concerns of the LGI’s membership means that every collaboration is also an exploration of ethics, responsibility, epistemology, and ideology. This is part of what makes LGI so special: there are multiple levels of learning that underpin every project every day. In LGI we are fond of saying that games teach multiple things in multiple ways. So too, in fact, does collaborating on one of LGI’s projects because members are constantly forced to reevaluate their ways of seeing in order to work with one another. This has been particularly rewarding in our international projects, such as our recently initiated project investigating the relationships among the mass media, new media, and cultural resource management practices. This project, which is building collaborative relationships among a team of archaeologists, game designers, media historians, folklorists, and grave repatriation experts from Cambodia, the Philippines, Australia, and the U.S., is flourishing, not because its members are of the same discipline nor because they share the same ideology. Rather, the team is maturing as a collaborative and productive entity because the focus of its work raises an extraordinary number of questions that have yet to be addressed by national and international researchers. In LGI, much of the sweat equity we contribute involves trying to answer questions like these in ways that are meaningful for our international research teams. In our experience, it is in the process of investigating such questions that effective collaborative relationships are cemented and within which investigators end up learning about more than just the subject matter at hand. They also learn about the micro-cultures, histories, and economies that provide the usually invisible rhetorical infrastructures that ground the subject matter and to which each team member is differently attuned. It is precisely because of this sometimes slow, sometimes tense learning/teaching dynamic—a dynamic too often invoked in both academic and industry settings to discourage collaboration—that François Chesnais calls attention to the fact that collaborative projects frequently yield more benefits than the sum of their parts suggests possible. This fact, says Chesnais, should lead institutions to value collaborative projects more highly as “resource-creating, value-creating and surplus-creating potentialities” (22). Such work is always risky, of course, and Jitendra Mohan, a scholar specializing in cross-cultural collaborations within the field of psychology, writes that international collaboration “raises methodological problems in terms of the selection of culturally-coloured items and their historical as well as semantic meaning…” (314). Mohan means this as a warning and it is heeded as such by LGI members; at the same time, however, it is precisely the identification and sorting out of such methodological problems that seems to excite our best collaborations and most innovative work. Given such promise, it is easy to see why LGI is quite happy to adopt the used car dealer’s slogan “no reasonable offer refused.” In fact, in LGI we see our open-door policy for projects as mirroring our primary object of study: games. This is another factor that we believe contributes to the success of our members’ collaborations. Commercial computer game development is a notoriously interdisciplinary and collaborative endeavor. By collaborating in a fashion similar to professional game developers, LGI members are constantly fashioning more complex understandings of the kinds of production practices and social interactions involved in game development; these practices and interactions are crucial to game studies precisely because they shape what games consist of, how they mean, and the ways in which they are consumed. For this reason, we think it foolish to refuse any reasonable offer to help us explore and understand these meaning-making processes. Wicked Problem Backlash Among the striking points that Rittel and Webber make about wicked problems is that solutions to them are usually created with great care and planning, and yet inevitably suffer severe criticism (at least) or utter annihilation (at worst). Far from being indicative of a bad solution, this backlash against a wicked problem’s solution is an integral element of what we call the “wicked problem dialectic.” The backlash against attempts to establish and nurture transdisciplinary collaboration is easy to document at multiple levels. For example, although our used car dealership model has created a rich research environment, it has also made the quotidian work of doing projects difficult. For one thing, organizing something as simple as a project meeting can take Herculean efforts. The wage earners are on a different schedule than the academics, who are on a different schedule from the artists, who are on a different schedule from the librarians. Getting everyone together in the same room at the same time (even virtually) is like herding cats. As co-directors of LGI, we have done our best to provide the membership with both synchronous and asynchronous resources to facilitate communication (e.g., conference-call enabled phones, online forums, chat clients, file-sharing software, and so on), but nothing beats face-to-face meetings, especially when projects grow complex or deadlines impend mercilessly. Nonetheless, our members routinely fight the meeting scheduling battle, despite the various communication options we have made available through our group’s website and in our physical offices. Most recently we have found that an organizational wiki makes the process of collecting and sharing notes, drawings, videos, segments of code, and drafts of writing decidedly easier than it had been, especially when the projects involve people who do not live a short distance (or a cheap phone call) away from each other. Similarly, not every member has the same amount of time to devote to LGI and its projects despite their considerable and demonstrated interest in them. Some folks are simply busier than others, and cannot contribute to projects as much as they might like. This can be a real problem when a project requires a particular skill set, and the owner of those skills is busy doing other things like working at a paying job or spending time with family. LGI’s projects are always done in addition to members’ regular workload, and it is understandable when that workload has to take precedence. Like regular exercise and eating right, the organization’s projects are the first things to go when life’s demands intrude. Different projects handle this challenge in a variety of ways, but the solutions always tend to reflect the general structure of the project itself. In projects that follow what Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede refer to as “hierarchical collaborations”—projects that are clearly structured, goal-oriented, and define clear roles for its participants—milestones and deadlines are set at the beginning of the project and are often tied to professional rewards that stand-in for a paycheck: recommendation letters, all-expenses-paid conference trips, guest speaking invitations, and so forth (133). Less organized projects—what Lunsford and Ede call “dialogic collaborations”—deal with time scheduling challenges differently. Inherently, dialogic collaborations such as these tend to be less hampered by time because they are loosely structured, accept and often encourage members to shift roles, and often value the process of working toward the project’s goals as highly as actually attaining them (134). The most common adaptive strategy used in these cases is simply for the most experienced members of the team to keep the project in motion. As long as something is happening, dialogic collaborations can be kept fruitful for a very long time, even when collaborators are only able to contribute once or twice a month. In our experience, as long as each project’s collaborators understand its operative expectations—which can, by the way, be a combination of hierarchical and dialogical modes—their work proceeds smoothly. Finally, there is the matter of expenses. As an institutionally unaffiliated collective, the LGI has no established revenue stream, which means project funding is either grant-based or comes out of the membership’s pockets. As anyone who has ever applied for a grant knows, it is one thing to write a grant, and another thing entirely to get it. Things are especially tough when grant monies are scarce, as they have been (at least on this side of the pond) since the U.S. economy started its downward spiral several years ago. Tapping the membership’s pockets is not really a viable funding option either. Even modest projects can be expensive, and most folks do not have a lot of spare cash to throw around. What this means, ultimately, is that even though our group’s members have carte blanche to do as they will, they must do so in a resource-starved environment. While it is sometimes disappointing that we are not able to fund certain projects despite their artistic and scholarly merit, LGI members learned long ago that such hardships rarely foreclose all opportunities. As Anne O’Meara and Nancy MacKenzie pointed out several years ago, many “seemingly extraneous features” of collaborative projects—not only financial limitations, but also such innocuous phenomena as where collaborators meet, the dance of their work and play patterns, their conflicting responsibilities, geographic separations, and the ways they talk to each other—emerge as influential factors in all collaborations (210). Thus, we understand in LGI that while our intermittent funding has influenced the dimension and direction of our group, it has also led to some outcomes that in hindsight we are glad we were led to. For example, while LGI originally began studying games in order to discover where production-side innovations might be possible, a series of funding shortfalls and serendipitous academic conversations led us to favor scholarly writing, which has now taken precedence over other kinds of projects. At the most practical level, this works out well because writing costs nothing but time, plus there is a rather desperate shortage of good game scholarship. Moreover, we have discovered that as LGI members have refined their scholarship and begun turning out books, chapters, and articles on a consistent basis, both they and the organization accrue publicity and credibility. Add to this the fact that for many of the group’s academics, traditional print-based work is more valued in the tenure and promotion economy than is, say, an educational game, an online teachers’ resource, or a workshop for a local parent-teacher association, and you have a pretty clear research path blazed by what Kathleen Clark and Rhunette Diggs have called “dialectical collaboration,” that is, collaboration marked by “struggle and opposition, where tension can be creative, productive, clarifying, as well as difficult” (10). Conclusion In sketching out our experience directing a highly collaborative digital media research collective, we hope we have given readers a sense of why collaboration is almost always a “wicked problem.” Collaborators negotiate different schedules, work demands, and ways of seeing, as well as resource pinches that hinder the process by which innovative digital media collaborations come to fruition. And yet, it is precisely because collaboration can be so wicked that it is so valuable. In constantly requiring collaborators to assess and reassess their rationales, artistic visions, and project objectives, collaboration makes for reflexive, complex, and innovative projects, which (at least to us) are the most satisfying and useful of all. References Chesnais, François. “Technological Agreements, Networks and Selected Issues in Economic Theory.” In Technological Collaboration: The Dynamics of Cooperation in Industrial Innovation. Rod Coombs, Albert Richards, Vivien Walsh, and Pier Paolo Saviotti, eds. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1996. 18-33. Clark, Kathleen D., and Rhunette C. Diggs. “Connected or Separated?: Toward a Dialectical View of Interethnic Relationships.” In Building Diverse Communities: Applications of Communication Research. McDonald, Trevy A., Mark P. Orbe, and Trevellya Ford-Ahmed, eds. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002. 3-25. Farrell, Michael P. Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics & Creative Work. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. Mohan, Jitendra. “Cross-Cultural Experience of Collaboration in Personality Research.” Personality across Cultures: Recent Developments and Debates. Jitendra Mohan, ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 313-335. O’Meara, Anne, and Nancy R. MacKenzie. “Reflections on Scholarly Collaboration.” In Common Ground: Feminist Collaboration in the Academy. Elizabeth G. Peck and JoAnna Stephens Mink, eds. Albany: State U of New York P, 1998. 209-26. Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Weber. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155-69. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ruggill, Judd, and Ken McAllister. "The Wicked Problem of Collaboration." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php>. APA Style Ruggill, J., and K. McAllister. (May 2006) "The Wicked Problem of Collaboration," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php>.

This essay aims to show some approaches in the understanding of the lifelong learning concepts, knowledge, competence, from a literature review with the contributions of Dewey, Bruner, Freire, Schon and Tardif among others. Coming from theoretical studies carried out by Italian researchers and a Brazilian researcher, through their Research Centers/Laboratories and international collaborative partnership between Brazilian and Italian Universities, this text addresses from the undertake scientific literature, key terms which support the held studies. From the considerations, it is highlighted the regular understanding around lifelong learning concept, which considers the human condition for the permanent learning and valuing experiences from different contexts, such as family and school (basic and higher education). In view of this, the approximation between the concepts of competence and knowledge was also highlighted, recognized and valued as fundamental elements for the learning process and for the development of critical and reflexive thinking, and consequently transforming daily problems and challenges. The task reinforces the research network, pursuing the improving theoretical knowledge to subsidize the scientific research production in the educational field, besides Brazilian or Italian academic walls.SommarioQuesto saggio ha l’obiettivo di presentare gli approcci sulla definizione dei concetti di apprendimento permanente, saperi e competenze, partendo da una revisione della letteratura, con i contributi,tra gli altri, di Dewey, Bruner, Freire, Schon e Tardif. A partire dall’analisi teorica condotta da ricercatori italiani e una ricercatrice brasiliana, mediante i loro centri di ricerca/laboratório, e l’accordo di collaborazione internazionale tra l’università brasiliana e italiana, questo testo affronta, in base alla letteratura scientifica, i termini chiave che supportano gli studi realizzati. Dalle argomentazioni espresse, emerge la posizione comune sul concetto di apprendimento permanente o per tutta la vita, che considera l’approccio umanistico e la valorizzazione delle esperienze provenienti da diversi contesti come la famiglia e la scuola (in particolare di base e superiore). In questa prospettiva, si mette in evidenzia anche l'approssimazione semantica tra i concetti di competenza e saperi, riconosciuti e valorizzati come elementi fondamentali per il processo di apprendimento e per lo sviluppo del pensiero critico e riflessivo, e di conseguenza trasformatore rispetto ai problemi e alle sfide quotidiane della vita. Il presente contributo rafforza la rete di ricerca congiunta, con l'obiettivo di migliorare le conoscenze teoriche per supportare lo sviluppo di ricerche in campo educativo, al di là delle mura accademiche brasiliane o italiane.Keywords: Lifelong learning, Knowledge, Strategic competence, Reflexive competence.Parole chiave: Apprendimento permanente, Saperi, Competenze strategiche, Competenze di riflessione.Palavras-chave: Aprendizagem permanente, Conhecimento, Competência estratégica, Competência reflexiva.ReferencesALBERICI, A. La possibilità di cambiare. Apprendere ad apprendere come risorsa strategica per la vita. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2008.ALBERICI, A.; DI RIENZO, P. Learning to learn for individual and society. In: R. Deakin CRICK, C. S.; K. REN (Eds), Learning to Learn. International perspectives from theory and practice. New York: Routledge, 2014, p. 87-104.BALDACCI M. Trattato di pedagogia generale, Roma: Carocci Editore, 2002.BANDURA A. 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Sometimes a particular concept—a simple term—is the spark to a series of ideas. It might be ostentatious and perhaps hubristic that the editors of an issue on persona might imagine that their choice of the term persona has provided this intellectual spark. Fully aware of that risk, we want to announce that it has. The response to the call for papers related to persona was our first sign that something special was being initiated. The sheer number and interdisciplinary breadth of the abstracts and ultimate submissions was evidence that the term ‘persona’ was the catalyst to an explosion of ideas. As the responses flowed into the journal and to us, we became aware of the meme-like qualities of the many interpretations and history of the term, each with its own idiosyncratic coding of patterned similarity. The reality of this development is that it was not entirely unexpected. The editors have been developing the concept of persona and persona studies over the past four years, and persona studies has emerged from a congruence in our collective research interests as an interdisciplinary investigation of the presentation of the self in the contemporary moment. Together, we have been involved in the development of the Persona Celebrity Publics Research Group (PCP) at Deakin University. Within that group, we have concentrated ourselves in the Persona Research cluster, made up of a group of 15 or so academics along with another smaller group from other institutions. Emerging from our work is the forthcoming book entitled Persona Studies: Celebrity, Identity, and the Transformation of Public Culture (forthcoming Wiley 2015). Both the book and the research group are intent on exploring what has been altering in our worlds, our cultures, and our communities that make us think the new intensified play of the personal in public needs closer scrutiny. The impetus for us as a team of scholars is quite clearly linked to the uses of online culture and how greater aspects of our lives are now involved in public displays, mediated displays, and a peculiar new blend of interpersonal and presentational constructions of identities and selves. Persona as a specific area of inquiry has emerged from the close study of the public self. Its immediate intellectual past has its strongest links with research on celebrity. In the Celebrity Studies Reader collection, Marshall began forming the idea that a new public self was emerging through new media (New Media). In subsequent work, Marshall identifies celebrity culture as one of the pedagogic sources for how the wider population presented itself in online culture and social media (Marshall, Promotion). Barbour and Marshall expanded their thinking about the presentation of the self through a closer study of online academic persona and the different strategic ways individuals were managing and building reputations and prestige through these techniques. Terms such as the ‘comprehensive,’ ’networked’, and ‘uncontained’ self, mapped the various kinds of public personalities that were emerging through the most prominent academics (Barbour and Marshall). In a similar vein, Barbour’s research has looked closely at the online and public personas that fringe artists—specifically tattoo artists, craftivists, performance poets and street artists—produce and maintain in the contemporary moment (Hiding; Finding). Her work has advanced the concepts of “registers of performance” (Registers), where a closer analysis of how the personal, the professional, and sometimes the intimate registers are constructed and deployed to produce a public persona that demonstrates ‘artistness’. By analysing persona through registers of performance, Barbour is able to differentiate between the types of identity building activity that occurs online. This provides insight into the ways that impression management occurs in spaces that suffer from context collapse due to the intersection of friends, family, fans, and followers. Moore’s work (Hats; Magic; Invigorating) on the player’s assembly of a networked online ‘gamer’ persona considers the intersection of social media and video game culture and contributes analysis of the affective dimensions of player-oriented game objects and their public curation and display. His recent research visualising Twitter and Flickr data (Screenshots, forthcoming) advances an understanding of the accumulation and online presentation of the self through digital game artefacts, specifically video game screenshots. He is currently researching the interaction of social media activity, reputation management, and everyday identity ‘play’ within public game cultures and the larger dynamics of production and consumption of games and play in the video game industry. Most recently, Marshall called for what he titled a “persona studies manifesto”: the public presentation of the self demands a more extensive analysis of the play and deployment of persona in contemporary culture. Beyond popular culture, the development of reputation and persona and its intersection with online culture especially needs to be explored in those professions, disciplines and activities where this form of investigation has never been attempted (Marshall, Persona Studies). The initiative of persona studies then is in some ways turning the cultural studies’ approach to the study of the audience on its head: it is a study of agency and the processes by which agency has been individualized and assembled across contemporary culture, but highly privileged in online culture (Marshall, Personifying). Persona studies involves a close investigation of the personalized and negotiated presentation of the self. So, what is persona? The articles here assume different, but connected, understandings of the term, each with levels of deference to writers such as Jung, Goffman, Butler, and Foucault, along with some expected allusions to the ancient Greeks and Romans who coined the term. The Greek origins identify that persona is a mask and derived from performance and acting. From Hannah Arendt’s reading of the Greeks this mask of public identity was not seen in a derogatory way; rather it was natural to assume a public/political persona that was quite removed from the private and home sphere. A political persona defined by citizenry was a clearly conscious separation from the household of activity. Jung’s take on persona is that it was designed for collective experience and for the outside world and therapy would lead to an understanding of the individual that delved beneath the persona. The resurgence in interest in Goffman’s dramaturgical analogy allows us to consider persona as an everyday performance, where the purpose of the presentation of self is to convince the audience (and at times, the performer) that the performance is genuine and authentic. All of us know what it is like to act in a role, to wear a uniform or costume, to create a profile. More than a few of us know what it is to suffer through the ‘individualising’ categories of a social networking sign-up survey that do not adequately account for distinctions. Persona is all these things, or rather, through the various everyday activities of our work, social, and online selves we contribute to the accretion of the identity at the base of its structure. Persona functions like the construct or automated script that we assemble to interact with the world with on our behalf. This involves the technologies of computation and mediation and their interfaces that function to automate, produce and filter communication with us; email, blogs, Twitter accounts, and so on. These golems interconnect and can interact on their own in unpredictable ways on our behalf; connecting our Facebook account to a product, brand or petition; using Google as a portal to login into other web enabled services; or authorising an app to record our location. Then there are the traces that we leave scattered across digital networks, intranets, hard drives, and lost USB memory sticks, from scattered collections of digital photos to the contact lists of our mobile devices and the ‘achievements’ in our online gaming profiles. Persona can also be something that happens to us, as friends tag unflattering images via Facebook, or another Twitter user publicly addresses us with a unwanted, or unwarranted commentary, using the ‘@’ and the ‘#’ functions. We have an extensive degree of control over the ways we assemble ourselves online and yet the contemporary experience is one of constant negotiation with forces that seeks to disavow their responsibilities to us, and maximise the limitations under which we can act. Our personas serve as a buffer to these forces. We can strategically assemble our persona to participate in, influence and use to our advantage to transmit messages across the network and communicate a mediated form of ourselves. The many ways to account persona stands as a primary and apparently Sisyphean task for persona studies: no sooner than when we might assemble a complete topology of the many accounts, traditions, domains, methodologies and theories for account of for the self, we will have arrived at possibly entirely new way of conceptualising the presentation of online persona through some post-Facebook, Oculus Rift, or Google Glass augmented reality experience. One of the challenges of persona studies will be to provide a series of methodological and theoretical tools, as well as a common touchstone from which multiple perspectives may converge around the meme-like qualities of this dramatic term. It will be necessary to consider the future of the presentation of the self, as much as the past accounts for the understanding of the self and its compositions. In the contemporary moment we consider a series of common currents and features of the iterations of persona with which we might begin this endeavour. The collective objective of the ‘persona’ theme edition is to coalesce around the emerging significance of the public self, and to map that activity within disciplinary traditions, historical precedents and the cultural and technological predispositions that have made this kind of reading of the contemporary world valuable, important, and ultimately, sensible. This collection of articles on persona is innovative in terms of the diversity of issues it tackles through the term. Given the massive change in public identity that we have identified as an elemental part of online culture, it is not surprising that social media and online constructions of persona figure prominently throughout the issue. However, we are also pleased to include papers that consider fictional performances from both television and film and even character studies of public figures. Marshall’s feature article for the edition continues his theorisation of persona. Seriality is identified as one of the ways that a consistency of persona is developed and the article charts the usefulness in analogizing how the construction of a serial character or ‘personnage’ for an actor/performer provides insights into the relationship between the person and persona in other settings that are emerging in the contemporary moment. In ‘Darkly Dreaming (in) Authenticity: The Self/Persona Opposition in Dexter,’ Glenn D'Cruz uses Dexter Morgan, the novelised serial killer and Showtime TV anti-hero to examine the connections between self and persona and the discourse of authenticity. D’Cruz foresees a series of challenges for persona studies and considers key concerns ahead, in terms of the critical vocabulary and scholarly agenda and addresses the need for critical genealogy of the term ‘persona’. Talia Morag, in ‘Persons and Their Personas: Living with Yourself’, considers the tensions identified in the persona of the private domain, and examines the patterns of social interaction that work to affect an ‘endorsed’ private persona, compared to those patterns classified as ‘hidden’. She frames the negotiation of these tensions as a move to better understand the sphere of the private self, as well as the those strains which arise on the private persona and the grounds from which they come to occupy our time. Together these two approaches predict the convergence of the private, the performed and the public persona which occupies Neil Henderson’s ‘The Contingency of Online Persona and Its Tension with Relationship Development’. Henderson’s engagement with the dimensions of online persona in the short film, Noah, takes a position at the crossroads between Marshall’s celebrity-inscribed approach to persona studies and the application of actor-network theory in order to map the potential pitfalls of identity management through ubiquitous technologies and broader critical questions about the play of our online selves in the everyday. Moving to the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life, Lesley Procter draws on the symbolic interactionist theories of social identity and the role of the avatar in ‘A Mirror without a Tain: Personae, Avatars, and Selves in a Multi-User Virtual Environment’. Procter’s contribution to persona studies highlights the actual and conceptual mirroring involved in the sense of the self involved in the interaction with others online. Taina Bucher’s ‘About a Bot: Hoax, Fake, Performance Art’ is a revealing examination of the Twitter bot phenomenon. Bucher’s case study on ‘bot fakeness’ considers the automation and performance of persona and the interactions and relationships between people and bots. Brady Robards, in ‘Digital Traces of the Persona through Ten Years of Facebook’, offers a critical reading of the Facebook ‘look back’ video creation application made to celebrate the social network’s ten year. As with Bucher and Proctor, Robards is concerned with the ways persona is created through highly mediated social networking platforms, where the agency of the individual is countered by the intervention of the software itself. Robards considers in particular two functions of Facebook: first as a site for the performance of life narratives, and second as a location for reflection on public and private disclosure. Taking a specific element of this idea of disclosure—the sharing of one’s legal name—as a starting point, Ellen Moll’s ‘What’s in a Nym?: Gender, Race, Pseudonymity, and the Imagining of the Online Persona’ is a study of the reactions of feminist and anti-racist bloggers in the ongoing battles over pseudonymity online. Moll’s contribution centres around current concerns with the ‘real name policies’ of social media and web-based platforms and services. What is at stake here in the negotiation between the individuals, technologies and institutions over the rights of self-determination and agency in the digital and online environments. Narrowing the focus to a single case study, Emma Maguire’s study of author website as a site of self-presentation in ‘Home, About, Shop, Contact: Constructing an Authorial Persona via the Author Website’ examines the authorial persona produced for consumption within literary markets. Framing of the authorial website as ‘automedial text’, rather than as direct representations of a pre-existing self, Maguire employs authorship theory to understand the website as a genre of persona performance and textuality. Shifting away from the focus on social media, this issue concludes with a trio of character studies, each of which involves a detailed and critical account of the dimensions of a public assembly of a persona. Nathan Farrell’s ‘From Activist to Entrepreneur: Peace One Day and the Changing Persona of the Social Campaigner’ is the first, and considers the ways that an individual manages his persona for different audiences. Farrell’s focus is Jeremy Gilley, a documentary filmmaker and peace campaigner, and the paper speaks to the dimensions of overlapping audiences connected to an articulation of a socially aware entrepreneurial persona. Sally Totman and Mat Hardy have a very different figure in their contribution as they examine the many different public personas of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. In ‘The Many Personas of Colonel Qaddafi’, Totman and Hardy interrogate the multiple aspects of Qaddafi’s construction as a brotherly revolutionary, philosopher, liberator, leader, and clown. The authors chart the progression of his often conflicted and chaotic legacy, and of this political, ideological and even messianic presentation of the self to the Western and Arab worlds. Anastasia Denisova, completes the triptych of persona case studies for this collection, with ‘How Vladimir Putin's Divorce Story Was Constructed and Received, or When the President Divorced His Wife and Married the Country Instead’. Denisova contends Vladimir Putin’s divorce is representative of the degree to which political and private persona are mediated and merged across often competing channels of communication. The analysis contends with online discourse, images, and texts, which reveal the extensive personification of politics in Putin’s public persona in an environment of reception by an audience which also consider the values and attributes of their own country as a national persona. Conclusion We have structured the narrative flow of articles in this issue on persona from the fictional through to the online transformations of the self and then even further into the analyses of the public and political dimensions that are part of the constitution of public selves. No doubt, you as a reader will see different connections and intersections and will play with what makes the idea of persona so meaningful and valuable in understanding the strategic construction of a public identity and so central to comprehending the contemporary moment. We invite you to engage with this further with the issue editors’ planned 2015 launch of a journal called Persona Studies. Until then, this issue of M/C Journal certainly represents the most comprehensive and, we think, interesting, collection of writing on persona as we explore the implications behind the mask of public identity. We hope the issue stimulates discussion and with that hope, we hope to hear from you.AcknowledgmentsThe editors would like to thank Alison Bennett for creating an original gif for the cover image of this issue. More of Bennett's work, including her augmented reality images of tattoos from the internationally acclaimed exhibition Shifting Skin, can be found at her website, alisonbennett.com.au.Thanks also to Trent Griffiths for his copy-editing assistance. References Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Charles R. Walgreen Foundation Lectures. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Barbour, Kim. “Hiding in Plain Sight: Street Artists Online.” Platform Journal of Media and Communication. 5.1 (2013). Barbour, Kim. “Registers of Performance: Negotiating the professional, personal, and intimate.” MeCCSA 2014. Bournemouth, 8-10 Jan. 2014. Barbour, Kim. “Finding the Edge: Online persona creation by fringe artists.” Contemporary Publics International Symposium. 24-25 Feb. 2014. Barbour, Kim, and P. David Marshall. "The Academic Online: Constructing Persona through the World Wide Web." First Monday 17.9 (2012). ‹http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3969/3292›. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. USA: Anchor Books, 1959. Jung, Carl Gustav. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. Bollingen Series. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966. Marshall, P. David. "New Media New Self, the Changing Power of the Celebrity." The Celebrity Culture Reader. Ed. P. David Marshall. London: Routledge, 2006. 634-44. Marshall, P. David. "The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media." Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 35-48. Marshall, P. David. "Personifying Agency: The Public–Persona–Place–Issue Continuum." Celebrity Studies 4.3 (2013): 369-71.Marshall, P. David. "Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self." Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-70. Marshall, P. David, Chris Moore and Kim Barbour, Persona Studies: Celebrity, Identity and the Transformation of Public Culture. Hoboken NJ: Wiley, forthcoming 2015. Moore, Chris. “Hats of Affect: A Study of Affect, Achievements and Hats in Team Fortress 2.” Game Studies 11 (2011). ‹http://gamestudies.org/1101/articles/moore›. Moore, Chris. “The Magic Circle and the Mobility of Play.” Convergence 17 (2011): 373-387. Moore, Chris. “Invigorating Play: The Role of Affect in Online Multiplayer FPS Game.” Guns, Grenades, and Grunts: First-Person Shooter Games. Ed. Gerald A. Voorhees, Josh Call, and Katie Whitlock. London: Continuum, 2012. 341-363. Moore, Chris. “Screenshots as Virtual Photography: Cybernetics, Remediation and Affect.” Advancing Digital Humanities. Ed. Paul Longley Arthur and Katherine Bode. Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming 2014. .

Although I'm a rich white guy, I'm also a feminist anti-racism activist who fights for the rights of the poor and oppressed. (Carl Kenner)Systemic bias is a scourge to the pillar of neutrality. (Cerejota)Count me in. Let's leave the bias to the mainstream media. (Orcar967)Because this is so important. (CuttingEdge)These are a handful of comments posted by online editors who have banded together in a virtual coalition to combat Western bias on the world’s largest digital encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This collective action by Wikipedians both acknowledges the inherent inequalities of a user-controlled information project like Wikpedia and highlights the potential for progressive change within that same project. These community members are taking the responsibility of social change into their own hands (or more aptly, their own keyboards).In recent years much research has emerged on Wikipedia from varying fields, ranging from computer science, to business and information systems, to the social sciences. While critical at times of Wikipedia’s growth, governance, and influence, most of this work observes with optimism that barriers to improvement are not firmly structural, but rather they are socially constructed, leaving open the possibility of important and lasting change for the better.WikiProject: Countering Systemic Bias (WP:CSB) considers one such collective effort. Close to 350 editors have signed on to the project, which began in 2004 and itself emerged from a similar project named CROSSBOW, or the “Committee Regarding Overcoming Serious Systemic Bias on Wikipedia.” As a WikiProject, the term used for a loose group of editors who collaborate around a particular topic, these editors work within the Wikipedia site and collectively create a social network that is unified around one central aim—representing the un- and underrepresented—and yet they are bound by no particular unified set of interests. The first stage of a multi-method study, this paper looks at a snapshot of WP:CSB’s activity from both content analysis and social network perspectives to discover “who” geographically this coalition of the unrepresented is inserting into the digital annals of Wikipedia.Wikipedia and WikipediansDeveloped in 2001 by Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and academic Larry Sanger, Wikipedia is an online collaborative encyclopedia hosting articles in nearly 250 languages (Cohen). The English-language Wikipedia contains over 3.2 million articles, each of which is created, edited, and updated solely by users (Wikipedia “Welcome”). At the time of this study, Alexa, a website tracking organisation, ranked Wikipedia as the 6th most accessed site on the Internet. Unlike the five sites ahead of it though—Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube (owned by Google), and live.com (owned by Microsoft)—all of which are multibillion-dollar businesses that deal more with information aggregation than information production, Wikipedia is a non-profit that operates on less than $500,000 a year and staffs only a dozen paid employees (Lih). Wikipedia is financed and supported by the WikiMedia Foundation, a charitable umbrella organisation with an annual budget of $4.6 million, mainly funded by donations (Middleton).Wikipedia editors and contributors have the option of creating a user profile and participating via a username, or they may participate anonymously, with only an IP address representing their actions. Despite the option for total anonymity, many Wikipedians have chosen to visibly engage in this online community (Ayers, Matthews, and Yates; Bruns; Lih), and researchers across disciplines are studying the motivations of these new online collectives (Kane, Majchrzak, Johnson, and Chenisern; Oreg and Nov). The motivations of open source software contributors, such as UNIX programmers and programming groups, have been shown to be complex and tied to both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, including online reputation, self-satisfaction and enjoyment, and obligation to a greater common good (Hertel, Niedner, and Herrmann; Osterloh and Rota). Investigation into why Wikipedians edit has indicated multiple motivations as well, with community engagement, task enjoyment, and information sharing among the most significant (Schroer and Hertel). Additionally, Wikipedians seem to be taking up the cause of generativity (a concern for the ongoing health and openness of the Internet’s infrastructures) that Jonathan Zittrain notably called for in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. Governance and ControlAlthough the technical infrastructure of Wikipedia is built to support and perhaps encourage an equal distribution of power on the site, Wikipedia is not a land of “anything goes.” The popular press has covered recent efforts by the site to reduce vandalism through a layer of editorial review (Cohen), a tightening of control cited as a possible reason for the recent dip in the number of active editors (Edwards). A number of regulations are already in place that prevent the open editing of certain articles and pages, such as the site’s disclaimers and pages that have suffered large amounts of vandalism. Editing wars can also cause temporary restrictions to editing, and Ayers, Matthews, and Yates point out that these wars can happen anywhere, even to Burt Reynold’s page.Academic studies have begun to explore the governance and control that has developed in the Wikipedia community, generally highlighting how order is maintained not through particular actors, but through established procedures and norms. Konieczny tested whether Wikipedia’s evolution can be defined by Michels’ Iron Law of Oligopoly, which predicts that the everyday operations of any organisation cannot be run by a mass of members, and ultimately control falls into the hands of the few. Through exploring a particular WikiProject on information validation, he concludes:There are few indicators of an oligarchy having power on Wikipedia, and few trends of a change in this situation. The high level of empowerment of individual Wikipedia editors with regard to policy making, the ease of communication, and the high dedication to ideals of contributors succeed in making Wikipedia an atypical organization, quite resilient to the Iron Law. (189)Butler, Joyce, and Pike support this assertion, though they emphasise that instead of oligarchy, control becomes encapsulated in a wide variety of structures, policies, and procedures that guide involvement with the site. A virtual “bureaucracy” emerges, but one that should not be viewed with the negative connotation often associated with the term.Other work considers control on Wikipedia through the framework of commons governance, where “peer production depends on individual action that is self-selected and decentralized rather than hierarchically assigned. Individuals make their own choices with regard to resources managed as a commons” (Viegas, Wattenberg and McKeon). The need for quality standards and quality control largely dictate this commons governance, though interviewing Wikipedians with various levels of responsibility revealed that policies and procedures are only as good as those who maintain them. Forte, Larco, and Bruckman argue “the Wikipedia community has remained healthy in large part due to the continued presence of ‘old-timers’ who carry a set of social norms and organizational ideals with them into every WikiProject, committee, and local process in which they take part” (71). Thus governance on Wikipedia is a strong representation of a democratic ideal, where actors and policies are closely tied in their evolution. Transparency, Content, and BiasThe issue of transparency has proved to be a double-edged sword for Wikipedia and Wikipedians. The goal of a collective body of knowledge created by all—the “expert” and the “amateur”—can only be upheld if equal access to page creation and development is allotted to everyone, including those who prefer anonymity. And yet this very option for anonymity, or even worse, false identities, has been a sore subject for some in the Wikipedia community as well as a source of concern for some scholars (Santana and Wood). The case of a 24-year old college dropout who represented himself as a multiple Ph.D.-holding theology scholar and edited over 16,000 articles brought these issues into the public spotlight in 2007 (Doran; Elsworth). Wikipedia itself has set up standards for content that include expectations of a neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and the publishing of no original research, but Santana and Wood argue that self-policing of these policies is not adequate:The principle of managerial discretion requires that every actor act from a sense of duty to exercise moral autonomy and choice in responsible ways. When Wikipedia’s editors and administrators remain anonymous, this criterion is simply not met. It is assumed that everyone is behaving responsibly within the Wikipedia system, but there are no monitoring or control mechanisms to make sure that this is so, and there is ample evidence that it is not so. (141) At the theoretical level, some downplay these concerns of transparency and autonomy as logistical issues in lieu of the potential for information systems to support rational discourse and emancipatory forms of communication (Hansen, Berente, and Lyytinen), but others worry that the questionable “realities” created on Wikipedia will become truths once circulated to all areas of the Web (Langlois and Elmer). With the number of articles on the English-language version of Wikipedia reaching well into the millions, the task of mapping and assessing content has become a tremendous endeavour, one mostly taken on by information systems experts. Kittur, Chi, and Suh have used Wikipedia’s existing hierarchical categorisation structure to map change in the site’s content over the past few years. Their work revealed that in early 2008 “Culture and the arts” was the most dominant category of content on Wikipedia, representing nearly 30% of total content. People (15%) and geographical locations (14%) represent the next largest categories, while the natural and physical sciences showed the greatest increase in volume between 2006 and 2008 (+213%D, with “Culture and the arts” close behind at +210%D). This data may indicate that contributing to Wikipedia, and thus spreading knowledge, is growing amongst the academic community while maintaining its importance to the greater popular culture-minded community. Further work by Kittur and Kraut has explored the collaborative process of content creation, finding that too many editors on a particular page can reduce the quality of content, even when a project is well coordinated.Bias in Wikipedia content is a generally acknowledged and somewhat conflicted subject (Giles; Johnson; McHenry). The Wikipedia community has created numerous articles and pages within the site to define and discuss the problem. Citing a survey conducted by the University of Würzburg, Germany, the “Wikipedia:Systemic bias” page describes the average Wikipedian as:MaleTechnically inclinedFormally educatedAn English speakerWhiteAged 15-49From a majority Christian countryFrom a developed nationFrom the Northern HemisphereLikely a white-collar worker or studentBias in content is thought to be perpetuated by this demographic of contributor, and the “founder effect,” a concept from genetics, linking the original contributors to this same demographic has been used to explain the origins of certain biases. Wikipedia’s “About” page discusses the issue as well, in the context of the open platform’s strengths and weaknesses:in practice editing will be performed by a certain demographic (younger rather than older, male rather than female, rich enough to afford a computer rather than poor, etc.) and may, therefore, show some bias. Some topics may not be covered well, while others may be covered in great depth. No educated arguments against this inherent bias have been advanced.Royal and Kapila’s study of Wikipedia content tested some of these assertions, finding identifiable bias in both their purposive and random sampling. They conclude that bias favoring larger countries is positively correlated with the size of the country’s Internet population, and corporations with larger revenues work in much the same way, garnering more coverage on the site. The researchers remind us that Wikipedia is “more a socially produced document than a value-free information source” (Royal & Kapila).WikiProject: Countering Systemic BiasAs a coalition of current Wikipedia editors, the WikiProject: Countering Systemic Bias (WP:CSB) attempts to counter trends in content production and points of view deemed harmful to the democratic ideals of a valueless, open online encyclopedia. WP:CBS’s mission is not one of policing the site, but rather deepening it:Generally, this project concentrates upon remedying omissions (entire topics, or particular sub-topics in extant articles) rather than on either (1) protesting inappropriate inclusions, or (2) trying to remedy issues of how material is presented. Thus, the first question is "What haven't we covered yet?", rather than "how should we change the existing coverage?" (Wikipedia, “Countering”)The project lays out a number of content areas lacking adequate representation, geographically highlighting the dearth in coverage of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and parts of Eastern Europe. WP:CSB also includes a “members” page that editors can sign to show their support, along with space to voice their opinions on the problem of bias on Wikipedia (the quotations at the beginning of this paper are taken from this “members” page). At the time of this study, 329 editors had self-selected and self-identified as members of WP:CSB, and this group constitutes the population sample for the current study. To explore the extent to which WP:CSB addressed these self-identified areas for improvement, each editor’s last 50 edits were coded for their primary geographical country of interest, as well as the conceptual category of the page itself (“P” for person/people, “L” for location, “I” for idea/concept, “T” for object/thing, or “NA” for indeterminate). For example, edits to the Wikipedia page for a single person like Tony Abbott (Australian federal opposition leader) were coded “Australia, P”, while an edit for a group of people like the Manchester United football team would be coded “England, P”. Coding was based on information obtained from the header paragraphs of each article’s Wikipedia page. After coding was completed, corresponding information on each country’s associated continent was added to the dataset, based on the United Nations Statistics Division listing.A total of 15,616 edits were coded for the study. Nearly 32% (n = 4962) of these edits were on articles for persons or people (see Table 1 for complete coding results). From within this sub-sample of edits, a majority of the people (68.67%) represented are associated with North America and Europe (Figure A). If we break these statistics down further, nearly half of WP:CSB’s edits concerning people were associated with the United States (36.11%) and England (10.16%), with India (3.65%) and Australia (3.35%) following at a distance. These figures make sense for the English-language Wikipedia; over 95% of the population in the three Westernised countries speak English, and while India is still often regarded as a developing nation, its colonial British roots and the emergence of a market economy with large, technology-driven cities are logical explanations for its representation here (and some estimates make India the largest English-speaking nation by population on the globe today).Table A Coding Results Total Edits 15616 (I) Ideas 2881 18.45% (L) Location 2240 14.34% NA 333 2.13% (T) Thing 5200 33.30% (P) People 4962 31.78% People by Continent Africa 315 6.35% Asia 827 16.67% Australia 175 3.53% Europe 1411 28.44% NA 110 2.22% North America 1996 40.23% South America 128 2.58% The areas of the globe of main concern to WP:CSB proved to be much less represented by the coalition itself. Asia, far and away the most populous continent with more than 60% of the globe’s people (GeoHive), was represented in only 16.67% of edits. Africa (6.35%) and South America (2.58%) were equally underrepresented compared to both their real-world populations (15% and 9% of the globe’s population respectively) and the aforementioned dominance of the advanced Westernised areas. However, while these percentages may seem low, in aggregate they do meet the quota set on the WP:CSB Project Page calling for one out of every twenty edits to be “a subject that is systematically biased against the pages of your natural interests.” By this standard, the coalition is indeed making headway in adding content that strategically counterbalances the natural biases of Wikipedia’s average editor.Figure ASocial network analysis allows us to visualise multifaceted data in order to identify relationships between actors and content (Vego-Redondo; Watts). Similar to Davis’s well-known sociological study of Southern American socialites in the 1930s (Scott), our Wikipedia coalition can be conceptualised as individual actors united by common interests, and a network of relations can be constructed with software such as UCINET. A mapping algorithm that considers both the relationship between all sets of actors and each actor to the overall collective structure produces an image of our network. This initial network is bimodal, as both our Wikipedia editors and their edits (again, coded for country of interest) are displayed as nodes (Figure B). Edge-lines between nodes represents a relationship, and here that relationship is the act of editing a Wikipedia article. We see from our network that the “U.S.” and “England” hold central positions in the network, with a mass of editors crowding around them. A perimeter of nations is then held in place by their ties to editors through the U.S. and England, with a second layer of editors and poorly represented nations (Gabon, Laos, Uzbekistan, etc.) around the boundaries of the network.Figure BWe are reminded from this visualisation both of the centrality of the two Western powers even among WP:CSB editoss, and of the peripheral nature of most other nations in the world. But we also learn which editors in the project are contributing most to underrepresented areas, and which are less “tied” to the Western core. Here we see “Wizzy” and “Warofdreams” among the second layer of editors who act as a bridge between the core and the periphery; these are editors with interests in both the Western and marginalised nations. Located along the outer edge, “Gallador” and “Gerrit” have no direct ties to the U.S. or England, concentrating all of their edits on less represented areas of the globe. Identifying editors at these key positions in the network will help with future research, informing interview questions that will investigate their interests further, but more significantly, probing motives for participation and action within the coalition.Additionally, we can break the network down further to discover editors who appear to have similar interests in underrepresented areas. Figure C strips down the network to only editors and edits dealing with Africa and South America, the least represented continents. From this we can easily find three types of editors again: those who have singular interests in particular nations (the outermost layer of editors), those who have interests in a particular region (the second layer moving inward), and those who have interests in both of these underrepresented regions (the center layer in the figure). This last group of editors may prove to be the most crucial to understand, as they are carrying the full load of WP:CSB’s mission.Figure CThe End of Geography, or the Reclamation?In The Internet Galaxy, Manuel Castells writes that “the Internet Age has been hailed as the end of geography,” a bold suggestion, but one that has gained traction over the last 15 years as the excitement for the possibilities offered by information communication technologies has often overshadowed structural barriers to participation like the Digital Divide (207). Castells goes on to amend the “end of geography” thesis by showing how global information flows and regional Internet access rates, while creating a new “map” of the world in many ways, is still closely tied to power structures in the analog world. The Internet Age: “redefines distance but does not cancel geography” (207). The work of WikiProject: Countering Systemic Bias emphasises the importance of place and representation in the information environment that continues to be constructed in the online world. This study looked at only a small portion of this coalition’s efforts (~16,000 edits)—a snapshot of their labor frozen in time—which itself is only a minute portion of the information being dispatched through Wikipedia on a daily basis (~125,000 edits). Further analysis of WP:CSB’s work over time, as well as qualitative research into the identities, interests and motivations of this collective, is needed to understand more fully how information bias is understood and challenged in the Internet galaxy. The data here indicates this is a fight worth fighting for at least a growing few.ReferencesAlexa. “Top Sites.” Alexa.com, n.d. 10 Mar. 2010 ‹http://www.alexa.com/topsites>. Ayers, Phoebe, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates. How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It. 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IntroductionInteractive improvisational musical spaces (which is to say, nearly all musical spaces) involve affective relations among bodies: between the bodies of human performers, between performers and active listeners, between the sonic "bodies" that comprise the multiple overlapping events that constitute a musical performance’s unfolding. Music scholarship tends to focus on either music’s sonic materialities (the sensible; what can be heard) or the cultural resonances that locate in and through music (the political or hermeneutic; how meaning is inscribed in and for a listening subject).An embodied turn, however, has recently been manifesting, bringing music scholarship into communication with feminist theory, queer theory, and approaches that foreground subjectivity and embodiment. Exemplary in this area are works by Naomi Cumming (who asks a critical question, “does the self form the sound, or the sound the self?;” Cumming 7), Suzanne Cusick, Marion Guck, Fred Maus, and Susan McClary. All of these scholars, in various ways, thematise the performative—what it feels like to make or experience music, and what effect that making or experiencing has on subject-formation.All of these authors strive to foreground the role of the performer and performativity in the context of the extended Western art music tradition. While each makes persuasive, significant points, my contention in this paper is that improvised music is a more fruitful starting place for thinking about embodiment and the co-constitutive relationship between performer and sound. That is, while (nearly) all music is improvised to a greater or lesser degree, the more radical contexts, in which paths are being selected and large-scale shapes drawn in the “heat of the moment,” can bring these issues into stark relief and serve as more productive entry points for thinking through crucial questions of embodiment, perspective, identity, and emergent meaning.Music-Improvisational ContextsA musical improvisational space is a “context,” in Lawrence Grossberg’s sense of the term (26), where acts of territorialisation unfold an ongoing process of meaning-constitution. Territorialisation refers to an always-ongoing process of mapping out a space within which subjects and objects are constituted (Deleuze and Guattari 314). I posit that musical acts of territorialising are performed by two kinds of bodies in mutually constitutive relationships: interacting corporeal performing bodies, with individual pasts, tendencies, wills, and affective attunements (Massumi, Semblance), and what I term musical-objects-as-bodies. This second category represents a way of considering music’s sonic materiality from an affective perspective—relational, internally differentiating, temporal. On the one hand musical-objects-as-bodies refer to the materiality of the now-ongoing music itself: from the speeds and slownesses of air molecules that are received by the ear and interpreted as sound in the brain, to notes and rhythms and musical gestures; to the various ways in which abstract forms are actively shaped by performers and interpreted by listeners, with their own individuated constellations of histories, tendencies, wants, attunements, and corporeal perspectives. On the other hand, musical-objects-as-bodies can refer to the histories, genres, dislocations, and nomadic movements that partially condition how sonic materialities are produced and perceived. These last two concepts should be read both in terms of how histories and genres become dislocated from themselves through the actions of practitioners, and as a priori principles—that is, not as aberrations that disrupt a norm, but as norms themselves.This involves two levels of abstraction: ascribing body-status to sound-complexes, and then doing the same for historical trajectories, cultural conditionings, and dislocations. Elizabeth Grosz asks us to theorise the body as “the threshold or borderline concept that hovers perilously and undecidably at the pivotal joint of binary pairs” (Grosz, Volatile 23); one such binary that is problematised is that of production and perception, which within the context of an improvising music ensemble are really two perspectives on the same phenomenon. The producers are also the perceivers, in other words. This is true of listeners too: acts of perception are themselves productive in the sense that they create contexts in which meanings emerge.In Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s language (46–54), an emerging context represents a plurality of milieux that are brought together in acts of territorialisation (and deterritorialisation; see below). The term “milieu” refers to the notion that acts of territorialisation always take place in the middle—they are always already bound up in ongoing processes of context-building. Nothing ever emerges from whole cloth; everything modifies by differential degree the contexts upon which it draws. In musical contexts, we might consider four types of milieux. External milieux are articulated by such factors as syntactic norms (what makes a piece of music sound like it belongs within a genre) and cultural conditionings. Internal milieux refer to what gives the elements of a piece of music a sense of belonging together, including formal designs, motivic structures, and melodic or harmonic singularities. An intermediary milieu involves the way gestures acquire sign-status in a context, thereby becoming meaningful. Annexed milieux are locations where new materials are absorbed and incorporated from without.Bodies ImprovisingA small example should put these points into focus. Four jazz musicians are on stage, performing a version of the well-known (in that community) song “Stella by Starlight.” External milieux here include the conventions of the genre: syntactic expectations, prescribed roles for different instruments, certain perspectives on historical performance practices. Internal milieux include the defining features of this song: its melody, harmonic progression, formal design. The performers’ affective attunements to the history of the song’s complex life so far form an intermediary milieu; note that that history is in a process of modification by the very act of the now-ongoing performance. Annexed milieux might include flights into the unexpected, fracturings of stylistic norms, or incorporations of other contexts into this one. The act of territorialisation is how these (and more) milieux are drawn together as forces in this performance, this time. Each performer is an agent, articulating sounds that represent the now-emerging object, this “Stella by Starlight.” Those articulated sounds, as musical-objects-as-bodies, conjoin with each other, and with performers, in ongoing processes of subject-formation.A double movement is at play in this characterisation. The first is strategic: thinking of musical forces as bodies in order to consider how relationships unfold between them in embodied terms—in terms of affect. But simultaneous with this is a reverse move that begins with affective forces and from there constructs those very bodies—human performing bodies as well as musical-objects-as-bodies. In other words, in order to draw lines between bodies that suggest contextual co-determinations where each exists in a continual process of engendering the other, we can turn to a consideration of the encounters between, and impingements of, affective forces through which bodies are constructed and actions are mobilised. This double movement is a paradox that requires three presuppositions. First, that bodies are indeed constituted through encounters of affective forces—this is Deleuze’s Spinozist claim (Deleuze, Spinoza 49–50). Second, that identity is performative within the context of a discourse. This is Judith Butler’s position, which I modify slightly to consider the potential of non- (or pre-) linguistic discourse, such as what can stem from drastic (active, experiential) music-syntactic spaces (Abbate). And third, that concepts like agency and passivity involve force-relations between human actors (with embodied perspectives, agencies, histories, tendencies, and diverse ranges of affective attunements), and the musical utterances expressed by and between them. Therefore, there is value in considering both actor and utterance as unfolding along the same plane, each participating in the other’s constitution.What is at stake when we conceive of sonic materiality in bodily terms in this way? The sounds produced in interactive music-improvisational settings are products of human agency. But there is a passive element to human musical-sound production. There is a degree of passivity that owes to learned behaviors, habits, and the singularities of one’s own history—this is the passive nature of Deleuze’s first synthesis of time (Deleuze, Difference 71–79), where past experiences and activities are drawn into a now-present action, partially conditioning it. Even overtly active selection in the living present is founded on this passivity, since one can only draw upon one’s own history and experience, which provides a limiting force on technique, which in turn directs expressive possibilities. In music-improvisation pedagogy, this might be phrased as “you can only play what you can hear.” Another way to say this is that passive synthesis conditions active selection.One way to overcome the foreclosure of possibility that necessarily falls out of passive synthesis is through interaction and engagement with the affective forces at play in interactive encounters. Through encounters, conditions for new possibilities emerge. The limiting concept “you can only play what you hear” is mitigated by an encounter with newly received stimuli: a heard gesture that invites further excavation of a motivic idea or that sparks a “line of flight” into a thus-far unthought-of next action. The way a newly received stimulus inspires new action is an affective encounter, and it re-conditions—it deterritorialises—the ongoing process of subject-formation. The encounter is a direct line drawn between the two types of bodies—that is, between the situated body of a producing and perceiving subject and the sonic materiality of a musical-object-as-body. While there are other kinds of encounters that unfold in the course of interactive musical performance (visual cues, for example, or tactile nearnesses), the events of heard sounds are the primary locations where bodies are constituted or subjects are formed. This is made transparent in a recent study by Schober and Spiro, where jazz musicians improvised together with no visual or tactile connection, relying solely on sound for their points of interactive contact. This suggested that jazz musicians are able to communicate effectively with only sonic data exchanged. That many improvisers play with their eyes closed, or with their backs to one another, only reinforces this.There are three aspects of sound that I wish to offer as support for a reading of musical objects as bodies. First is that sounds are temporally articulated and perceived. The materiality of sound is bound up with its temporality in ways that are more directly perceivable than many other worldly materialities. The obviousness of its temporally bound nature is one reason that music is used so often as an entry point for thinking through the ontological nature of time and process; viz. Husserl’s utilisation of musical melodies to explicate his phenomenology of internal time-consciousness, and Deleuze and Guattari’s location of acts of territorialisation in the (musical) refrain. Of course the distinction between sonic and other materialities is only a matter of degree: all matter, including bodies, is “continually subjected to transformation, to becoming, to unfolding over time” (Grosz, Time 79), but music foregrounds temporality in ways that many philosophers have found vivid and constructive.Second, musical sounds acquire meaning through their relationships with other sounds in contexts, both in the immediate context of the now-ongoing performance and in extended contexts of genre, syntax, and so on. Those relationships are with histories of past sounds, now-ongoing sounds, and future sounds expressed as results of accumulations of meaning-complexes. A gesture is played, and it acquires meaning through the ways it is “picked up” by differently attuned performers and listeners.In this sense, third, the line is blurred between action and agent; the distinction between the gesture and the execution of the gesture is effectively erased. From the performer’s perspective, how a gesture is “picked up” is made somewhat evident by the sonic materiality of the next gesture. This next gesture is a sign that represents the singularity of the performer’s affective attunement, or an expression of a stage (or, better, some now-ongoing aspect) of what Whitehead would call her “eventful” subjectivity (166–167). What is expressed is the way the performer is (actively or passively) attuning to the constellations of meanings that resonate in the event of the encounter with the musical-object-as-body, as that musical-object-as-body in turn expresses the history of past encounters that (actively or passively) engendered it. The present action as most-contracted expression of the past is Deleuze’s second synthesis of time, while the eventful way an action cuts into the future marks the time of his third synthesis (Deleuze, Difference 80–91).What is at stake in a turn to corporeality in music analysis? Nietzsche admonishes us to turn from the “facts” that the senses take in, process, and evaluate and re-begin our inquiry by questioning the body (272). This means, for music analysis, turning away from certain quantifiable aspects of sonic materiality (pitches, chords, rhythms, formal designs), towards the ways in which sounds are articulated by bodies in interactive contexts. This has been attempted from various perspectives in recent music scholarship, but again the reading of musical bodies I am pursuing foregrounds affective forces, eventful subject-formation, and performativity as identity, on the ground of improvised interaction. Improvising bodies engage in spaces where “all kinds of affects play their game” (Nietzsche 264), and they exist in constant states of change as they are impinged on by events (and as they impinge on events), those events also forming conduits to other bodies. Subjects are not just impinged on by events; they are events, processes, accumulations, and distributions of affective forces. As Grosz puts it, “the body codes the meanings projected onto it” (Volatile 18). In musical improvisation, performers are always in the process of becoming a subject, conditioned by the ways in which they are impinged upon by affective forces and the creative ways those impingements are taken up.Musical-objects-as-bodies, likewise, unfold as ongoing processes, their identity emerging through accumulations and distributions of relationships with other musical-objects-as-bodies. A musical gesture acquires meaning through the emerging context in which it participates, just as a performer acquires a sense of identity through acts of production and perception in, and that help create, a context. Moreover, an affective consideration of performer (as corporeal body) and musical gesture (as sonic utterance) involves “the torsion of one into the other, the passage, vector, or uncontrollable drift of the inside into the outside and the outside into the inside” (Grosz, Volatile xii). Grosz is describing the essential irreducibility of body and mind, but her language is compelling for thinking through the relationships between bodies and musical-objects-as-bodies as an ongoing co-constitutive, boundary-dissolving process.Bodies and/as AffectAffect begins in the in-between, in the productive space of the event in which bodies encounter one another. This is not, however, a pure in-between. Bodies are constructed by the ways in which affective forces impinge on them, but affective forces also stem from bodies. Bodies affect and are affected by one another, as Deleuze is fond of repeating (Spinoza 49). No affect, no bodies, but also no bodies, no affect. What does this mean? The in-between does not subvert corporeality, perspective, intention, or subjectivity, nor is there a hierarchical relation between them (that is, bodies do not emerge because of affective relations, nor the reverse). If we think of bodies as emergent subjectivities—as processes of subject-formation irreducibly connected to the ecological conditions in which they are acting—then the ways in which their identities come to be constructed are intricately connected to the performative utterances they are making and the variable ways they are taking up those utterances and folding them into their emergent processes of becoming. Here, the utterer–utterance distinction begins to break down. Judith Butler (24-25) argues that the ways in which bodies are defined emerge from performative acts, and that every such act constitutes a political action that contributes to the constitution of identity. As Butler writes, “that the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality” (136). Gender is a status that emerges through one’s actions in contexts—we perform gender, and by performing it we undergo a process of inscribing it on ourselves. This is one of many key points where music scholarship can learn from feminist theory. Like gender, musical identity is performed—we inscribe upon ourselves an emergent musical subjectivity through acts of performance and perception (which is itself a performance too, as an interaction with a musical-object-as-body).Performative acts, therefore, are not simply enacted by bodies; if identity is performed, then the acts themselves are what define the very bodies performing them. Again, the hierarchy breaks down: rather than beginning with a body (a subject) that acts, actions comprise what a body is, as an emergent subject, as the product of its actions. For Deleuze and Guattari, performed acts involve masks; masks do not disguise expression or identity but rather are expressions through which identity is drawn. “The mask does not hide the face, it is the face” (115); “the mask assures the […] construction of the face, the facialization of the head and the body: the mask is now the face itself, the abstraction or operation of the face. […] Never does the face assume a prior signifier or subject” (Deleuze and Guattari 181). In Butler’s terms, the performance does not presuppose the performer; the performer is the performance.Affect corresponds, then, not only to the pre-linguistic (Deleuze’s “dark precursor;” Difference 119–121) but also to the super-discursive: to the multiple embedded meaning-trajectories implicit in any discursive utterance; to the creative ways in which those meaning-trajectories can be taken up variably within the performance space; to the micro-political implications of both utterance and taking-up. Bergson writes: “[m]y body is […] in the aggregate of the material world […] receiving and giving back movement, with, perhaps, this difference only, that my body appears to choose, within certain limits, the manner in which it shall restore what it receives” (Bergson 4–5; also cited in Grosz, The Nick 165). This is exactly Grossberg’s “context,” by the way. The “manner in which it shall restore what it receives” refers, in the case of musically performing (corporeal) bodies, to how a gesture is taken up in a next performed action. In the case of musical-objects-as-bodies, conversely, it refers to how a next gesture contributes to the ongoing sense of meaning-accumulation in response to the ongoing flux of musical-objects-as-bodies within which it locates.In music-improvisational spaces, not only does the utterer–utterance, agent–action, or performer–­performed gesture distinction break down, but the distinction between performed and received gesture likewise blurs, in two senses: because of the nature of eventful subject-formation (whereby a musical gesture’s meaning is being drawn within its emergent context), and because the events of individual musical gestures are subsumed into larger composite events. This problematises the utterer-utterance breakdown by blurring the threshold between individual performed events, inviting a consideration of a paradoxical, but productive, excluded middle where musical-objects-as-bodies are both expressions of corporeal performative acts (engendering contextual subject-formations) and constituent elements of an emergent musical subjectivity (“the performance.” See Massumi (Parables) for more on productive engagements with the excluded middle). While beyond the scope of this paper, we might consider the radical co-constitution of different kinds of bodies in this way as a system, following Gregory Seigworth’s description: “the transitive effect undergone by a body (human or otherwise) in a system—a mobile and open system—composed of the various, innumerable forces of existing and the relations between those forces” (161).Performing Bodies and the Emergent WorkThis, ultimately, is my thesis: how to think about musical performance beginning with performing bodies rather than with a reified notion of musical materiality. Performing bodies are situated within the emerging context of improvised, interactive music-making. Musical utterances are enacted by those bodies, which are also taking up the utterances made by other bodies—as musical-objects-as-bodies. The context that is being built through this process of affective exchange is the performance (the this performance, this time of the jazz example above). Christopher Hasty writes,to perform, from per-formare is to really, actually (fully) form or shape. The ‘-ance’ of performance connotes action and process. The thing performed apart from or outside the forming is problematic. Is it a fixed, ideal form above or beyond (transcending), or beneath or behind (founding) the actual doing, a thing that can be known quite apart from the situated knowing itself? (200)The work–performance dichotomy that animates Hasty’s question (as well as those of Abbate, Goehr, and others) is not my question, since I suggest that using improvised music as an entry point into musical inquiry makes a turn to performance axiomatic. The improvised work is necessarily an active, emergent process, its particularities, boundaries, and meanings being drawn through its performed actions. Perhaps the question that underlies my query is, instead, how do we think about the processes of subject-formation that unfold through interactive music-making; how are performing and performed bodies being inscribed through what kinds of relationships with musical materialities?Is there, in the end, simply a musical body that subsumes both utterer and utterance, both subjectively-forming body and material sonic gesture? I do not wish to go quite that far, but I do wish to continue to problematise where one body stops and the next begins. To paraphrase one of themes of this special issue, where do the boundaries, thresholds, and intersections of musical bodies lie? Deleuze, following Spinoza, tells us frequently that we do not yet know what a body is capable of. This must be at least in part because we know not what a body is at any given point—the body, like the subject which we might now think of as no more than a sign, is in a process of becoming; there is no is (ontology), there is only and (conjunction). And there is no body, there are only bodies, for a body only exists in a complex and emergent ecological relationship with other bodies (see Grosz, Volatile 19). To conceive of porous thresholds between performing bodies and musical-objects-as-bodies is to foreground the performative aspects of improvised music-making and to break down the hierarchy, and possibly even the distinction, between agent, action, and the content of that action. Bodies of all types inscribe one another in ongoing acts of meaning-constitution: this is the properly drastic starting place for inquiry into the nature of musical process.ReferencesAbbate, Carolyn. “Music—Drastic or Gnostic?” Critical Inquiry 30.3 (2004): 505–536.Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1919.Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.Cumming, Naomi. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2000.Cusick, Suzanne. “Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem.” Perspectives of New Music 32.1 (1994): 8–27.———. “On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex.” Audible Traces: Gender, Identity, and Music. Eds. Elaine Barkin and Lydia Hamessley. Zurich: Carciofolo Verlagshaus, 1999. 25–48.Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Trans. Robert Hurley. Eugene, OR: City Lights Books, 1988.———. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.Goehr, Lydia. The Quest for Voice: On Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Grossberg, Lawrence. Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham: Duke UP, 2010.Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994.———. The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely. Durham: Duke UP, 2004.———. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Durham: Duke UP, 2005.Guck, Marion. “A Woman’s (Theoretical) Work.” Perspectives of New Music 32.1 (1994): 28–43.Hasty, Christopher. “If Music Is Ongoing Experience, What Might Music Theory Be? A Suggestion from the Drastic.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (Sonderausgabe 2010): 197–216.Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. Trans. John Barnett Brough. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2002.———. Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurent Arts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.Maus, Fred Everett. “Musical Performance as Analytic Communication.” Performance and Authenticity in the Arts. Eds. Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 129–153.McClary, Susan. “Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music.” Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. Ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas. New York: Routledge, 2006. 205–234.Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and Reginald John Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.Schober, Michael, and Neta Spiro. “Jazz Improvisers’ Shared Understanding: A Case Study.” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014). 10 Mar. 2016 <http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00808/abstract>.Seigworth, Gregory. “From Affection to Soul.” Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts. Ed. Charles J. Stivale. Montreal: McGill–Queens UP, 2005. 159–169.Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978.

The debate on the social role of museums trundles along in an age where complex associations between community, collections, and cultural norms are highly contested (Silverman 3–4; Sandell, Inequality 3–23). This article questions whether, in the case of community groups whose aspirations often go unrecognised (in this case people with either blindness or low vision), there is a need to discuss and debate institutionalised approaches that often reinforce social exclusion and impede cultural access. If “access is [indeed] an entry point to experience” (Papalia), then the privileging of visual encounters in museums is clearly a barrier for people who experience sight loss or low vision (Levent and Pursley). In contrast, a multisensory aesthetic to exhibition display respects the gamut of human sensory experience (Dudley 161–63; Drobnick 268–69; Feld 184; James 136; McGlone 41–60) as do discursive gateways including “lectures, symposia, workshops, educational programs, audio guides, and websites” (Cachia). Independent access to information extends beyond Braille on toilet doors.Underpinning this article is an ongoing qualitative case study undertaken by the author involving participant observation, workshops, and interviews with eight adults who experience vision impairment. The primary research site has been the National Museum of Australia. Reflecting on the role of curators as storytellers and the historical development of museums and their practitioners as agents for social development, the article explores the opportunities latent in museum collections as they relate to community members with vision impairment. The outcomes of this investigation offer insights into emerging issues as they relate to the International Council of Museums (ICOM) definitions of the museum program. Curators as Storytellers“The ways in which objects are selected, put together, and written or spoken about have political effects” (Eilean Hooper-Greenhill qtd. in Sandell, Inequality 8). Curators can therefore open or close doors to discrete communities of people. The traditional role of curators has been to collect, care for, research, and interpret collections (Desvallées and Mairesse 68): they are characterised as information specialists with a penchant for research (Belcher 78). While commonly possessing an intimate knowledge of their institution’s collection, their mode of knowledge production results from a culturally mediated process which ensures that resulting products, such as cultural significance assessments and provenance determinations (Russell and Winkworth), privilege the knowing systems of dominant social groups (Fleming 213). Such ways of seeing can obstruct the access prospects of underserved audiences.When it comes to exhibition display—arguably the most public of work by museums—curators conventionally collaborate within a constellation of other practitioners (Belcher 78–79). Curators liaise with museum directors, converse with conservators, negotiate with exhibition designers, consult with graphics designers, confer with marketing boffins, seek advice from security, chat with editors, and engage with external contractors. I question the extent that curators engage with community groups who may harbour aspirations to participate in the exhibition experience—a sticking point soon to be addressed. Despite the team based ethos of exhibition design, it is nonetheless the content knowledge of curators on public display. The art of curatorial interpretation sets out not to instruct audiences but, in part, to provoke a response with narratives designed to reveal meanings and relationships (Freeman Tilden qtd. in Alexander and Alexander 258). Recognised within the institution as experts (Sandell, Inclusion 53), curators have agency—they decide upon the stories told. In a recent television campaign by the National Museum of Australia, a voiceover announces: a storyteller holds incredible power to connect and to heal, because stories bring us together (emphasis added). (National Museum of Australia 2015)Storytelling in the space of the museum often shares the histories, perspectives, and experiences of people past as well as living cultures—and these stories are situated in space and time. If that physical space is not fit-for-purpose—that is, it does not accommodate an individual’s physical, intellectual, psychiatric, sensory, or neurological needs (Disability Discrimination Act 1992, Cwlth)—then the story reaches only long-established patrons. The museum’s opportunity to contribute to social development, and thus the curator’s as the primary storyteller, will have been missed. A Latin-American PerspectiveICOM’s commitment to social development could be interpreted merely as a pledge to make use of collections to benefit the public through scholarship, learning, and pleasure (ICOM 15). If this interpretation is accepted, however, then any museum’s contribution to social development is somewhat paltry. To accept such a limited and limiting role for museums is to overlook the historical efforts by advocates to change the very nature of museums. The ascendancy of the social potential of museums first blossomed during the late 1960s at a time where, globally, overlapping social movements espoused civil rights and the recognition of minority groups (Silverman 12; de Varine 3). Simultaneously but independently, neighbourhood museums arose in the United States, ecomuseums in France and Quebec, and the integral museum in Latin America, notably in Mexico (Hauenschild; Silverman 12–13). The Latin-American commitment to the ideals of the integral museum developed out of the 1972 round table of Santiago, Chile, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Giménez-Cassina 25–26). The Latin-American signatories urged the local and regional museums of their respective countries to collaborate with their communities to resolve issues of social inequality (Round Table Santiago 13–21). The influence of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire should be acknowledged. In 1970, Freire ushered in the concept of conscientization, defined by Catherine Campbell and Sandra Jovchelovitch as:the process whereby critical thinking develops … [and results in a] … thinker [who] feels empowered to think and to act on the conditions that shape her living. (259–260)This model for empowerment lent inspiration to the ideals of the Santiago signatories in realising their sociopolitical goal of the integral museum (Assunção dos Santos 20). Reframing the museum as an institution in the service of society, the champions of the integral museum sought to redefine the thinking and practices of museums and their practitioners (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 37–39). The signatories successfully lobbied ICOM to introduce an explicitly social purpose to the work of museums (Assunção dos Santos 6). In 1974, in the wake of the Santiago round table, ICOM modified their definition of a museum to “a permanent non-profit institution, open to the public, in the service of society and its development” (emphasis added) (Hauenschild). Museums had been transformed into “problem solvers” (Judite Primo qtd. in Giménez-Cassina 26). With that spirit in mind, museum practitioners, including curators, can develop opportunities for reciprocity with the many faces of the public (Guarini). Response to Social Development InitiativesStarting in the 1970s, the “second museum revolution” (van Mensch 6–7) saw the transition away from: traditional roles of museums [of] collecting, conservation, curatorship, research and communication … [and toward the] … potential role of museums in society, in education and cultural action. (van Mensch 6–7)Arguably, this potential remains a work in progress some 50 years later. Writing in the tradition of museums as agents of social development, Mariana Lamas states:when we talk about “in the service of society and its development”, it’s quite different. It is like the drunk uncle at the Christmas party that the family pretends is not there, because if they pretend long enough, he might pass out on the couch. (Lamas 47–48)That is not to say that museums have neglected to initiate services and programs that acknowledge the aspirations of people with disabilities (refer to Cachia and Krantz as examples). Without discounting such efforts, but with the refreshing analogy of the drunken uncle still fresh in memory, Lamas answers her own rhetorical question:how can traditional museums promote community development? At first the word “development” may seem too much for the museum to do, but there are several ways a museum can promote community development. (Lamas 52) Legitimising CommunitiesThe first way that museums can foster community or social development is to:help the community to over come [sic] a problem, coming up with different solutions, putting things into a new perspective; providing confidence to the community and legitimizing it. (Lamas 52)As a response, my doctoral investigation legitimises the right of people with vision impairment to participate in the social and cultural aspects of publicly funded museums. The Australian Government upheld this right in 2008 by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (and Optional Protocol), which enshrines the right of people with disability to participate in the cultural life of the nation (United Nations).At least 840,700 people in Australia (a minimum of four per cent of the population) experiences either blindness or low vision (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009). For every one person in the Australian community who is blind, nearly five other people experience low vision. The medical model of disability identifies the impairment as the key feature of a person and seeks out a corrective intervention. In contrast, the social model of disability strives to remove the attitudinal, social, and physical barriers enacted by people or institutions (Landman, Fishburn, and Tonkin 14). Therein lies the opportunity and challenge for museums—modifying layouts and practices that privilege the visual. Consequently, there is scope for museums to partner with people with vision impairment to identify their aspirations rather than respond as a problem to be fixed. Common fixes in the museums for people with disabilities include physical alterations such as ramps and, less often, special tours (Cachia). I posit that curators, as co-creators and major contributors to exhibitions, can be part of a far wider discussion. In the course of doctoral research, I accompanied adults with a wide array of sight impairments into exhibitions at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, the Australian War Memorial, and the National Museum of Australia. Within the space of the exhibition, the most commonly identified barrier has been the omission of access opportunities to interpreted materials: that is, information about objects on display as well as the wider narratives driving exhibitions. Often, the participant has had to work backwards, from the object itself, to understand the wider topic of the exhibition. If aesthetics is “the way we communicate through the senses” (Thrift 291), then the vast majority of exhibits have been inaccessible from a sensory perspective. For people with low vision (that is, they retain some degree of functioning sight), objects’ labels have often been too small to be read or, at times, poorly contrasted or positioned. Objects have often been set too deep into display cabinets or too far behind safety barriers. If individuals must use personal magnifiers to read text or look in vain at objects, then that is an indicator that there are issues with exhibition design. For people who experience blindness (that is, they cannot see), neither the vast majority of exhibits nor their interpretations have been made accessible. There has been minimal access across all museums to accessioned objects, handling collections, or replicas to tease out exhibits and their stories. Object labels must be read by family or friends—a tiring experience. Without motivated peers, the stories told by curators are silenced by a dearth of alternative options.Rather than presume to know what works for people with disabilities, my research ethos respects the “nothing about us without us” (Charlton 2000; Werner 1997) maxim of disability advocates. To paraphrase Lamas, we have collaborated to come up with different solutions by putting things into new perspectives. In turn, “person-centred” practices based on rapport, warmth, and respect (Arigho 206–07) provide confidence to a diverse community of people by legitimising their right to participate in the museum space. Incentivising Communities Museums can also nurture social or community development by providing incentives to “the community to take action to improve its quality of life” (Lamas 52). It typically falls to (enthusiastic) public education and community outreach teams to engage underserved communities through targeted programs. This approach continues the trend of curators as advocates for the collection, and educators as advocates for the public (Kaitavouri xi). If the exhibition briefs normally written by curators (Belcher 83) reinforced the importance of access, then exhibition designers would be compelled to offer fit-for-purpose solutions. Better still, if curators (and other exhibition team members) regularly met with community based organisations (perhaps in the form of a disability reference group), then museums would be better positioned to accommodate a wider spectrum of community members. The National Standards for Australian Museums and Galleries already encourages museums to collaborate with disability organisations (40). Such initiatives offer a way forward for improving a community’s sense of itself and its quality of life. The World Health Organization defines health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. While I am not using quality of life indicators for my doctoral study, the value of facilitating social and cultural opportunities for my target audience is evident in participant statements. At the conclusion of one sensory based workshop, Mara, a female participant who experiences low vision in one eye and blindness in the other, stated:I think it was interesting in that we could talk together about what we were experiencing and that really is the social aspect of it. I mean if I was left to go to a whole lot of museums on my own, I probably wouldn’t. You know, I like going with kids or a friend visiting from interstate—that sort of thing. And so this group, in a way, replicates that experience in that you’ve got someone else to talk about your impressions with—much better than going on your own or doing this alone.Mara’s statement was in response to one of two workshops I held with the support of the Learning Services team at the National Museum of Australia in May 2015. Selected objects from the museum’s accessioned collection and handling collection were explored, as well as replicas in the form of 3D printed objects. For example, participants gazed upon and handled a tuckerbox, smelt and tasted macadamia nuts in wattle seed syrup, and listened to a genesis story about the more-ish nut recorded by the Butchulla people—the traditional owners of Fraser Island. We sat around a table while I, as the workshop mediator, sought to facilitate free-flowing discussions about their experiences and, in turn, mused on the capacity of objects to spark social connection and opportunities for cultural access. While the workshop provided the opportunity for reciprocal exchanges amongst participants as well as between participants and me, what was highly valued by most participants was the direct contact with members of the museum’s Learning Services team. I observed that participants welcomed the opportunity to talk with real museum workers. Their experience of museum practitioners, to date, had been largely confined to the welcome desk of respective institutions or through special events or tours where they were talked at. The opportunity to communicate directly with the museum allowed some participants to share their thoughts and feelings about the services that museums provide. I suggest that curators open themselves up to such exchanges on a more frequent basis—it may result in reciprocal benefits for all stakeholders. Fortifying IdentityA third way museums can contribute to social or community development is by:fortify[ing] the bonds between the members of the community and reaffirm their identities making them feel more secure about who they are; and give them a chance to tell their own version of their history to “outsiders” which empowers them. (Lamas 52)Identity informs us and others of who we are and where we belong in the world (Silverman 54). However, the process of identity marking and making can be fraught: “some communities are ours by choice … [and] … some are ours because of the ways that others see us” (Watson 4). Communities are formed by identifying who is in and who is out (Francois Dubet qtd. in Bessant and Watts 260). In other words, the construction of collective identity is reinforced through means of social inclusion and social exclusion. The participants of my study, as members or clients of the Royal Society for the Blind | Canberra Blind Society, clearly value participating in events with empathetic peers. People with vision impairment are not a homogenous group, however. Reinforcing the cultural influences on the formation of identity, Fiona Candlin asserts that “to state the obvious but often ignored fact, blind people … [come] … from all social classes, all cultural, racial, religious and educational backgrounds” (101). Irrespective of whether blindness or low vision arises congenitally, adventitiously, or through unexpected illness, injury, or trauma, the end result is an assortment of individuals with differing perceptual characteristics who construct meaning in often divergent ways (De Coster and Loots 326–34). They also hold differing world views. Therefore, “participation [at the museum] is not an end in itself. It is a means for creating a better world” (Assunção dos Santos 9). According to the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, a better world is: a society for all, in which every individual has an active role to play. Such a society is based on fundamental values of equity, equality, social justice, and human rights and freedoms, as well as on the principles of tolerance and embracing diversity. (Triggs)Publicly funded museums can play a fundamental role in the cultural lives of societies. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences) in Sydney partnered with Vision Australia to host an exhibition in 2010 titled Living in a Sensory World: it offered “visitors an understanding of the world of the blindness and low vision community and celebrates their achievements” (Powerhouse Museum). With similar intent, my doctoral research seeks to validate the world of my participants by inviting museums to appreciate their aspirations as a distinct but diverse community of people. ConclusionIn conclusion, the challenge for museum curators and other museum practitioners is balancing what Richard Sennett (qtd. in Bessant and Watts 265) identifies as opportunities for enhancing social cohesion and a sense of belonging while mitigating parochialism and community divisiveness. Therefore, curators, as the primary focus of this article, are indeed challenged when asked to contribute to serving the public through social development—a public which is anything but homogenous. Mindful of cultural and social differences in an ever-changing world, museums are called to respect the cultural and natural heritage of the communities they serve and collaborate with (ICOM 10). It is a position I wholeheartedly support. This is not to say that museums or indeed curators are capable of solving the ills of society. However, inviting people who are frequently excluded from social and cultural events to multisensory encounters with museum collections acknowledges their cultural rights. I suggest that this would be a seismic shift from the current experiences of adults with blindness or low vision at most museums.ReferencesAlexander, Edward, and Mary Alexander. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. 2nd ed. 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Introduction The term ‘resilience’ is on everyone’s lips - from politicians to community service providers to the seemingly endless supply of self-help gurus. The concept is undergoing a renaissance of sorts in contemporary Western society; but why resilience now? One possible explanation is that individuals and their communities are experiencing increased and intensified levels of adversity and hardship, necessitating the accumulation and deployment of ‘more resilience’. Whilst a strong argument could made that this is in fact the case, it would seem that the capacity to survive and thrive has been a feature of human survival and growth long before we had a name for it. Rather than an inherent characteristic, trait or set of behaviours of particularly ‘resilient’ individuals or groups, resilience has come to be viewed more as a common and everyday capacity, expressed and expressible by all people. Having researched the concept for some time now, we believe that we are only marginally closer to understanding this captivating but ultimately elusive concept. What we are fairly certain of is that resilience is more than basic survival but less than an invulnerability to adversity, resting somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Given the increasing prevalence of populations affected by war and other disasters, we are certain however that efforts to better understand the accumulative dynamics of resilience, are now, more than ever, a vital area of public and academic concern. In our contemporary world, the concept of resilience is coming to represent a vital conceptual tool for responding to the complex challenges emerging from broad scale movements in climate change, rural and urban migration patterns, pollution, economic integration and other consequences of globalisation. In this article, the phenomenon of human resilience is defined as the cumulative build-up of both particular kinds of knowledge, skills and capabilities as well as positive affects such as hope, which sediment over time as transpersonal capacities for self-preservation and ongoing growth (Wilson). Although the accumulation of positive affect is crucial to the formation of resilience, the ability to re-imagine and utilise negative affects, events and environmental limitations, as productive cultural resources, is a reciprocal and under-researched aspect of the phenomenon. In short, we argue that resilience is the protective shield, which capacitates individuals and communities to at least deal with, and at best, overcome potential challenges, while also facilitating the realisation of hoped-for objects and outcomes. Closely tied to the formation of resilience is the lived experience of hope and hoping practices, with an important feature of resilience related to the future-oriented dimensions of hope (Parse). Yet it is important to note that the accumulation of hope, as with resilience, is not headed towards some state of invulnerability to adversity; as presumed to exist in the foundational period of psychological research on the construct (Garmezy; Werner and Smith; Werner). In contrast, we argue that the positive affective experience of hopefulness provides individuals and communities with a means of enduring the present, while the future-oriented dimensions of hope offer them an instrument for imagining a better future to come (Wilson). Given the complex, elusive and non-uniform nature of resilience, it is important to consider the continued relevance of the resilience concept. For example, is resilience too narrow a term to describe and explain the multiple capacities, strategies and resources required to survive and thrive in today’s world? Furthermore, why do some individuals and communities mobilise and respond to a crisis; and why do some collapse? In a related discussion, Ungar (Constructionist) posed the question, “Why keep the term resilience?” Terms like resilience, even strengths, empowerment and health, are a counterpoint to notions of disease and disorder that have made us look at people as glasses half empty rather than half full. Resilience reminds us that children survive and thrive in a myriad of ways, and that understanding the etiology of health is as, or more, important than studying the etiology of disease. (Ungar, Constructionist 91) This productive orientation towards health, creativity and meaning-making demonstrates the continued conceptual and existential relevance of resilience, and why it will remain a critical subject of inquiry now and into the future. Early Psychological Studies of Resilience Definitions of resilience vary considerably across disciplines and time, and according to the theoretical context or group under investigation (Harvey and Delfabro). During the 1970s and early 1980s, the developmental literature on resilience focused primarily on the “personal qualities” of “resilient children” exposed to adverse life circumstances (Garmezy Vulnerability; Masten; Rutter; Werner). From this narrow and largely individualistic viewpoint, resilience was defined as an innate “self-righting mechanism” (Werner and Smith 202). Writing from within the psychological tradition, Masten argued that the early research on resilience (Garmezy Vulnerability; Werner and Smith) regularly implied that resilient children were special or remarkable by virtue of their invulnerability to adversity. As research into resilience progressed, researchers began to acknowledge the ordinariness or everydayness of resilience-related phenomena. Furthermore, that “resilience may often derive from factors external to the child” (Luthar; Cicchetti and Becker 544). Besides the personal attributes of children, researchers within the psychological sciences also began to explore the effects of family dynamics and impacts of the broader social environment in the development of resilience. Rather than identifying which child, family or environmental factors were resilient or resilience producing, they turned their attention to how these underlying protective mechanisms facilitated positive resilience outcomes. As research evolved, resilience as an absolute or unchanging attribute made way for more relational and dynamic conceptualisations. As Luthar et al noted, “it became clear that positive adaptation despite exposure to adversity involves a developmental progression, such that new vulnerabilities and/or strengths often emerge with changing life circumstances” (543-44). Accordingly, resilience came to be viewed as a dynamic process, involving positive adaptations within contexts of adversity (Luthar et al. 543). Although closer to the operational definition of resilience argued for here, there remain a number of definitional concerns and theoretical limitations of the psychological approach; in particular, the limitation of positive adaptation to the context of significant adversity. In doing so, this definition fails to account for the subjective experience and culturally located understandings of ‘health’, ‘adversity’ and ‘adaptation’ so crucial to the formation of resilience. Our major criticism of the psychodynamic approach to resilience relates to the construction of a false dichotomy between “resilient” and “non-resilient” individuals. This dichotomy is perpetuated by psychological approaches that view resilience as a distinct construct, specific to “resilient” individuals. In combating this assumption, Ungar maintained that this bifurcation could be replaced by an understanding of mental health “as residing in all individuals even when significant impairment is present” (Thicker 352). We tend to agree. In terms of economic resilience, we must also be alert to similar false binaries that place the first and low-income world into simple, apposite positions of coping or not-coping, ‘having’ or ‘not-having’ resilience. There is evidence to indicate, for example, that emerging economies fared somewhat better than high-income nations during the global financial crisis (GFC). According to Frankel and Saravelos, several low-income nations attained better rates of gross domestic product GDP, though the impacts on the respective populations were found to be equally hard (Lane and Milesi-Ferretti). While the reasons for this are broad and complex, a study by Kose and Prasad found that a broad set of policy tools had been developed that allowed for greater flexibility in responding to the crisis. Positive Affect Despite Adversity An emphasis on deficit, suffering and pathology among marginalised populations such as refugees and young people has detracted from culturally located strengths. As Te Riele explained, marginalised young people residing in conditions of adversity are often identified within “at-risk” discourses. These social support frameworks have tended to highlight pathologies and antisocial behaviours rather than cultural competencies. This attitude towards marginalised “at risk” young people has been perpetuated by psychotherapeutic discourse that has tended to focus on the relief of suffering and treatment of individual pathologies (Davidson and Shahar). By focusing on pain avoidance and temporary relief, we may be missing opportunities to better understand the productive role of ‘negative’ affects and bodily sensations in alerting us to underlying conditions, in need of attention or change. A similar deficit approach is undertaken through education – particularly civics – where young people are treated as ‘citizens in waiting’ (Collin). From this perspective, citizenship is something that young people are expected to ‘grow into’, and until that point, are seen as lacking any political agency or ability to respond to adversity (Holdsworth). Although a certain amount of internal discomfort is required to promote change, Davidson and Shahar noted that clinical psychotherapists still “for the most part, envision an eventual state of happiness – both for our patients and for ourselves, described as free of tension, pain, disease, and suffering” (229). In challenging this assumption, they asked, But if desiring-production is essential to what makes us human, would we not expect happiness or health to involve the active, creative process of producing? How can one produce anything while sitting, standing, or lying still? (229) A number of studies exploring the affective experiences of migrants have contested the embedded psychological assumption that happiness or well-being “stands apart” from experiences of suffering (Crocker and Major; Fozdar and Torezani; Ruggireo and Taylor; Tsenkova, Love, Singer and Ryff). A concern for Ahmed is how much the turn to happiness or happiness turn “depends on the very distinction between good and bad feelings that presume bad feelings are backward and conservative and good feelings are forward and progressive” (Happiness 135). Highlighting the productive potential of unhappy affects, Ahmed suggested that the airing of unhappy affects in their various forms provides people with “an alternative set of imaginings of what might count as a good or at least better life” (Happiness 135). An interesting feature of refugee narratives is the paradoxical relationship between negative migration experiences and the reporting of a positive life outlook. In a study involving former Yugoslavian, Middle Eastern and African refugees, Fozdar and Torezani investigated the “apparent paradox between high-levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia in the labour market and everyday life” (30), and the reporting of positive wellbeing. The interaction between negative experiences of discrimination and reports of wellbeing suggested a counter-intuitive propensity among refugees to adapt to and make sense of their migration experiences in unique, resourceful and life-affirming ways. In a study of unaccompanied Sudanese youth living in the United States, Goodman reported that, “none of the participants displayed a sense of victimhood at the time of the interviews” (1182). Although individual narratives did reflect a sense of victimisation and helplessness relating to the enormity of past trauma, the young participants viewed themselves primarily as survivors and agents of their own future. Goodman further stated that the tone of the refugee testimonials was not bitter: “Instead, feelings of brotherliness, kindness, and hope prevailed” (1183). Such response patterns among refugees and trauma survivors indicate a similar resilience-related capacity to positively interpret and derive meaning from negative migration experiences and associated emotions. It is important to point out that demonstrations of resilience appear loosely proportional to the amount or intensity of adverse life events experienced. However, resilience is not expressed or employed uniformly among individuals or communities. Some respond in a resilient manner, while others collapse. On this point, an argument could be made that collapse and breakdown is a built-in aspect of resilience, and necessary for renewal and ongoing growth. Cultures of Resilience In a cross continental study of communities living and relying on waterways for their daily subsistence, Arvanitakis is involved in a broader research project aiming to understand why some cultures collapse and why others survive in the face of adversity. The research aims to look beyond systems of resilience, and proposes the term ‘cultures of resilience’ to describe the situated strategies of these communities for coping with a variety of human-induced environmental challenges. More specifically, the concept of ‘cultures of resilience’ assists in explaining the specific ways individuals and communities are responding to the many stresses and struggles associated with living on the ‘front-line’ of major waterways that are being impacted by large-scale, human-environment development and disasters. Among these diverse locations are Botany Bay (Australia), Sankhla Lake (Thailand), rural Bangladesh, the Ganges (India), and Chesapeake Bay (USA). These communities face very different challenges in a range of distinctive contexts. Within these settings, we have identified communities that are prospering despite the emerging challenges while others are in the midst of collapse and dispersion. In recognising the specific contexts of each of these communities, the researchers are working to uncover a common set of narratives of resilience and hope. We are not looking for the ’magic ingredient’ of resilience, but what kinds of strategies these communities have employed and what can they learn from each other. One example that is being pursued is a community of Thai rice farmers who have reinstated ceremonies to celebrate successful harvests by sharing in an indigenous rice species in the hope of promoting a shared sense of community. These were communities on the cusp of collapse brought on by changing economic and environmental climates, but who have reversed this trend by employing a series of culturally located practices. The vulnerability of these communities can be traced back to the 1960s ‘green revolution’ when they where encouraged by local government authorities to move to ‘white rice’ species to meet export markets. In the process they were forced to abandoned their indigenous rice varieties and abandon traditional seed saving practices (Shiva, Sengupta). Since then, the rice monocultures have been found to be vulnerable to the changing climate as well as other environmental influences. The above ceremonies allowed the farmers to re-discover the indigenous rice species and plant them alongside the ‘white rice’ for export creating a more robust harvest. The indigenous species are kept for local consumption and trade, while the ‘white rice’ is exported, giving the farmers access to both the international markets and income and the local informal economies. In addition, the indigenous rice acts as a form of ‘insurance’ against the vagaries of international trade (Shiva). Informants stated that the authorities that once encouraged them to abandon indigenous rice species and practices are now working with the communities to re-instigate these. This has created a partnership between the local government-funded research centres, government institutions and the farmers. A third element that the informants discussed was the everyday practices that prepare a community to face these challenges and allow it recover in partnership with government, including formal and informal communication channels. These everyday practices create a culture of reciprocity where the challenges of the community are seen to be those of the individual. This is not meant to romanticise these communities. In close proximity, there are also communities engulfed in despair. Such communities are overwhelmed with the various challenges described above of changing rural/urban settlement patterns, pollution and climate change, and seem to have lacked the cultural and social capital to respond. By contrasting the communities that have demonstrated resilience and those that have not been overwhelmed, it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is no single 'magic' ingredient of resilience. What exist are various constituted factors that involve a combination of community agency, social capital, government assistance and structures of governance. The example of the rice farmers highlights three of these established practices: working across formal and informal economies; crossing localised and expert knowledge as well as the emergence of everyday practices that promote social capital. As such, while financial transactions occur that link even the smallest of communities to the global economy, there is also the everyday exchange of cultural practices, which is described elsewhere by Arvanitakis as 'the cultural commons': visions of hope, trust, shared intellect, and a sense of safety. Reflecting the refugee narratives citied above, these communities also report a positive life outlook, refusing to see themselves as victims. There is a propensity among members of these communities to adapt an outlook of hope and survival. Like the response patterns among refugees and trauma survivors, initial research is confirming a resilience-related capacity to interpret the various challenges that have been confronted, and see their survival as reason to hope. Future Visions, Hopeful Visions Hope is a crucial aspect of resilience, as it represents a present- and future-oriented mode of situated defence against adversity. The capacity to hope can increase one’s powers of action despite a complex range of adversities experienced in everyday life and during particularly difficult times. The term “hope” is commonly employed in a tokenistic way, as a “nice” rhetorical device in the mind-body-spirit or self-help literature or as a strategic instrument in increasingly empty domestic and international political vocabularies. With a few notable exceptions (Anderson; Bloch; Godfrey; Hage; Marcel; Parse; Zournazi), the concept of hope has received only modest attention from within sociology and cultural studies. Significant increases in the prevalence of war and disaster-affected populations makes qualitative research into the lived experience of hope a vital subject of academic interest. Parse observed among health care professionals a growing attention to “the lived experience of hope”, a phenomenon which has significant consequences for health and the quality of one’s life (vvi). Hope is an integral aspect of resilience as it can act as a mechanism for coping and defense in relation to adversity. Interestingly, it is during times of hardship and adversity that the phenomenological experience of hope seems to “kick in” or “switch on”. With similarities to the “taken-for-grantedness” of resilience in everyday life, Anderson observed that hope and hoping are taken-for-granted aspects of the affective fabric of everyday life in contemporary Western culture. Although the lived experience of hope, namely, hopefulness, is commonly conceptualised as a “future-oriented” state of mind, the affectivity of hope, in the present moment of hoping, has important implications in terms of resilience formation. The phrase, the “lived deferral of hope” is an idea that Wilson has developed elsewhere which hopefully brings together and holds in creative tension the two dominant perspectives on hope as a lived experience in the present and a deferred, future-oriented practice of hoping and hopefulness. Zournazi defined hope as a “basic human condition that involves belief and trust in the world” (12). She argued that the meaning of hope is “located in the act of living, the ordinary elements of everyday life” and not in “some future or ideal sense” (18). Furthermore, she proposed a more “everyday” hope which “is not based on threat or deferral of gratification”, but is related to joy “as another kind of contentment – the affirmation of life as it emerges and in the transitions and movements of our everyday lives and relationships” (150). While qualitative studies focusing on the everyday experience of hope have reinvigorated academic research on the concept of hope, our concept of “the lived deferral of hope” brings together Zournazi’s “everyday hope” and the future-oriented dimensions of hope and hoping practices, so important to the formation of resilience. Along similar lines to Ahmed’s (Happy Objects) suggestion that happiness “involves a specific kind of intentionality” that is “end-orientated”, practices of hope are also intentional and “end-orientated” (33). If objects of hope are a means to happiness, as Ahmed wrote, “in directing ourselves towards this or that [hope] object we are aiming somewhere else: toward a happiness that is presumed to follow” (Happy Objects 34), in other words, to a hope that is “not yet present”. It is the capacity to imagine alternative possibilities in the future that can help individuals and communities endure adverse experiences in the present and inspire confidence in the ongoingness of their existence. Although well-intentioned, Zournazi’s concept of an “everyday hope” seemingly ignores the fact that in contexts of daily threat, loss and death there is often a distinct lack of affirmative or affirmable things. In these contexts, the deferral of joy and gratification, located in the future acquisition of objects, outcomes or ideals, can be the only means of getting through particularly difficult events or circumstances. One might argue that hope in hopeless situations can be disabling; however, we contend that hope is always enabling to some degree, as it can facilitate alternative imaginings and temporary affective relief in even in the most hopeless situations. Hope bears similarity to resilience in terms of its facilities for coping and endurance. Likewise the formation and maintenance of hope can help individuals and communities endure and cope with adverse events or circumstances. The symbolic dimension of hope capacitates individuals and communities to endure the present without the hoped-for outcomes and to live with the uncertainty of their attainment. In the lives of refugees, for example, the imaginative dimension of hope is directly related to resilience in that it provides them with the ability to respond to adversity in productive and life-affirming ways. For Oliver, hope “provides continuity between the past and the present…giving power to find meaning in the worst adversity” (in Parse 16). In terms of making sense of the migration and resettlement experiences of refugees and other migrants, Lynch proposed a useful definition of hope as “the fundamental knowledge and feeling that there is a way out of difficulty, that things can work out” (32). As it pertains to everyday mobility and life routes, Parse considered hope to be “essential to one’s becoming” (32). She maintained that hope is a lived experience and “a way of propelling self toward envisioned possibilities in everyday encounters with the world” (p. 12). Expanding on her definition of the lived experience of hope, Parse stated, “Hope is anticipating possibilities through envisioning the not-yet in harmoniously living the comfort-discomfort of everydayness while unfolding a different perspective of an expanding view” (15). From Nietzsche’s “classically dark version of hope” (in Hage 11), Parse’s “positive” definition of hope as a propulsion to envisaged possibilities would in all likelihood be defined as “the worst of all evils, for it protracts the torment of man”. Hage correctly pointed out that both the positive and negative perspectives perceive hope “as a force that keeps us going in life” (11). Parse’s more optimistic vision of hope as propulsion to envisaged possibilities links nicely to what Arvanitakis described as an ‘active hope’. According to him, the idea of ‘active hope’ is not only a vision that a better world is possible, but also a sense of agency that our actions can make this happen. Conclusion As we move further into the 21st century, humankind will be faced with a series of traumas, many of which are as yet unimagined. To meet these challenges, we, as a global collective, will need to develop specific capacities and resources for coping, endurance, innovation, and hope, all of which are involved the formation of resilience (Wilson 269). Although the accumulation of resilience at an individual level is important, our continued existence, survival, and prosperity lie in the strength and collective will of many. As Wittgenstein wrote, the strength of a thread “resides not in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres” (xcv). If resilience can be accumulated at the level of the individual, it follows that it can be accumulated as a form of capital at the local, national, and international levels in very real and meaningful ways. 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Introduction Darkness is often characterised as something that warrants heightened caution and scrutiny – signifying increased danger and risk. Within settler-colonial settings such as Australia, cautionary and negative connotations of darkness are projected upon Black people and their bodies, forming part of continuing colonial regimes of power (Moreton-Robinson). Negative stereotypes of “dark” continues to racialise all Indigenous peoples. In Australia, Indigenous peoples are both Indigenous and Black regardless of skin colour, and this plays out in a range of ways, some of which will be highlighted within this article. This article demonstrates that for Indigenous peoples, associations of fear and danger are built into the structural mechanisms that shape and maintain colonial understandings of Indigenous peoples and their bodies. It is this embodied form of darkness, and its negative connotations, and responses that we explore further. Figure 1: Megan Cope’s ‘I’m not afraid of the Dark’ t-shirt (Fredericks and Heemsbergen 2021) Responding to the anxieties and fears of settlers that often surround Indigenous peoples, Quandamooka artist and member of the art collective ProppaNow, Megan Cope, has produced a range of t-shirts, one of which declares “I’m not afraid of the Dark” (fig. 1). The wording ‘reflects White Australia’s fear of blackness’ (Dark + Dangerous). Exploring race relations through the theme of “darkness”, we begin by discussing how negative connotations of darkness are represented through everyday lexicons and how efforts to shift prejudicial and racist language are often met with defensiveness and resistance. We then consider how fears towards the dark translate into everyday practices, reinforced by media representations. The article considers how stereotype, conjecture, and prejudice is inflicted upon Indigenous people and reflects white settler fears and anxieties, rooting colonialism in everyday language, action, and norms. The Language of Fear Indigenous people and others with dark skin tones are often presented as having a proclivity towards threatening, aggressive, deceitful, and negative behaviours. This works to inform how Indigenous peoples are “known” and responded to by hegemonic (predominantly white) populations. Negative connotations of Indigenous people are a means of reinforcing and legitimising the falsity that European knowledge systems, norms, and social structures are superior whilst denying the contextual colonial circumstances that have led to white dominance. In Australia, such denial corresponds to the refusal to engage with the unceded sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples or acknowledge Indigenous resistance. Language is integral to the ways in which dominant populations come to “know” and present the so-called “Other”. Such language is reflected in digital media, which both produce and maintain white anxieties towards race and ethnicity. When part of mainstream vernacular, racialised language – and the value judgments associated with it – often remains in what Moreton-Robinson describes as “invisible regimes of power” (75). Everyday social structures, actions, and habits of thought veil oppressive and discriminatory attitudes that exist under the guise of “normality”. Colonisation and the dominance of Eurocentric ways of knowing, being, and doing has fixated itself on creating a normality that associates Indigeneity and darkness with negative and threatening connotations. In doing so, it reinforces power balances that presents an image of white superiority built on the invalidation of Indigeneity and Blackness. White fears and anxieties towards race made explicit through social and digital media are also manifest via subtle but equally pervasive everyday action (Carlson and Frazer; Matamoros-Fernández). Confronting and negotiating such fears becomes a daily reality for many Indigenous people. During the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, which extended to Australia and were linked to deaths in custody and police violence, African American poet Saul Williams reminded his followers of the power of language in constructing racialised fears (saulwilliams). In an Instagram post, Williams draws back the veil of an uncontested normality to ask that we take personal responsibility over the words we use. He writes: here’s a tip: Take the words DARK or BLACK in connection to bad, evil, ominous or scary events out of your vocabulary. We learn the stock market crashed on Black Monday, we read headlines that purport “Dark Days Ahead”. There’s “dark” or “black” humour which implies an undertone of evil, and then there are people like me who grow up with dark skin having to make sense of the English/American lexicon and its history of “fair complexions” – where “fair” can mean “light; blond.” OR “in accordance with rules or standards; legitimate.” We may not be fully responsible for the duplicitous evolution of language and subtle morphing of inherited beliefs into description yet we are in full command of the words we choose even as they reveal the questions we’ve left unasked. Like the work of Moreton-Robinson and other scholars, Williams implores his followers to take a reflexive position to consider the questions often left unasked. In doing so, he calls for the transcendence of anonymity and engagement with the realities of colonisation – no matter how ugly, confronting, and complicit one may be in its continuation. In the Australian context this means confronting how terms such as “dark”, “darkie”, or “darky” were historically used as derogatory and offensive slurs for Aboriginal peoples. Such language continues to be used today and can be found in the comment sections of social media, online news platforms, and other online forums (Carlson “Love and Hate”). Taking the move to execute personal accountability can be difficult. It can destabilise and reframe the ways in which we understand and interact with the world (Rose 22). For some, however, exposing racism and seemingly mundane aspects of society is taken as a personal attack which is often met with reactionary responses where one remains closed to new insights (Whittaker). This feeds into fears and anxieties pertaining to the perceived loss of power. These fears and anxieties continue to surface through conversations and calls for action on issues such as changing the date of Australia Day, the racialised reporting of news (McQuire), removing of plaques and statues known to be racist, and requests to change placenames and the names of products. For example, in 2020, Australian cheese producer Saputo Dairy Australia changed the name of it is popular brand “Coon” to “Cheer Tasty”. The decision followed a lengthy campaign led by Dr Stephen Hagan who called for the rebranding based on the Coon brand having racist connotations (ABC). The term has its racist origins in the United States and has long been used as a slur against people with dark skin, liking them to racoons and their tendency to steal and deceive. The term “Coon” is used in Australia by settlers as a racist term for referring to Aboriginal peoples. Claims that the name change is example of political correctness gone astray fail to acknowledge and empathise with the lived experience of being treated as if one is dirty, lazy, deceitful, or untrustworthy. Other brand names have also historically utilised racist wording along with imagery in their advertising (Conor). Pear’s soap for example is well-known for its historical use of racist words and imagery to legitimise white rule over Indigenous colonies, including in Australia (Jackson). Like most racial epithets, the power of language lies in how the words reflect and translate into actions that dehumanise others. The words we use matter. The everyday “ordinary” world, including online, is deeply politicised (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”) and comes to reflect attitudes and power imbalances that encourage white people to internalise the falsity that they are superior and should have control over Black people (Conor). Decisions to make social change, such as that made by Saputo Dairy Australia, can manifest into further white anxieties via their ability to force the confrontation of the circumstances that continue to contribute to one’s own prosperity. In other words, to unveil the realities of colonialism and ask the questions that are too often left in the dark. Lived Experiences of Darkness Colonial anxieties and fears are driven by the fact that Black populations in many areas of the world are often characterised as criminals, perpetrators, threats, or nuisances, but are rarely seen as victims. In Australia, the repeated lack of police response and receptivity to concerns of Indigenous peoples expressed during the Black Lives Matter campaign saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets to protest. Protestors at the same time called for the end of police brutality towards Indigenous peoples and for an end to Indigenous deaths in custody. The protests were backed by a heavy online presence that sought to mobilise people in hope of lifting the veil that shrouds issues relating to systemic racism. There have been over 450 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to die in custody since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991 (The Guardian). The tragedy of the Indigenous experience gains little attention internationally. The negative implications of being the object of white fear and anxiety are felt by Indigenous and other Black communities daily. The “safety signals” (Daniella Emanuel) adopted by white peoples in response to often irrational perceptions of threat signify how Indigenous and other Black peoples and communities are seen and valued by the hegemony. Memes played out in social media depicting “Karens” – a term that corresponds to caricaturised white women (but equally applicable to men) who exhibit behaviours of entitlement – have increasing been used in media to expose the prevalence of irrational racial fears (also see Wong). Police are commonly called on Indigenous people and other Black people for simply being within spaces such as shopping malls, street corners, parks, or other spaces in which they are considered not to belong (Mohdin). Digital media are also commonly envisioned as a space that is not natural or normal for Indigenous peoples, a notion that maintains narratives of so-called Indigenous primitivity (Carlson and Frazer). Media connotations of darkness as threatening are associated with, and strategically manipulated by, the images that accompany stories about Indigenous peoples and other Black peoples. Digital technologies play significant roles in producing and disseminating the images shown in the media. Moreover, they have a “role in mediating and amplifying old and new forms of abuse, hate, and discrimination” (Matamoros-Fernández and Farkas). Daniels demonstrates how social media sites can be spaces “where race and racism play out in interesting, sometimes disturbing, ways” (702), shaping ongoing colonial fears and anxieties over Black peoples. Prominent footballer Adam Goodes, for example, faced a string of attacks after he publicly condemned racism when he was called an “Ape” by a spectator during a game celebrating Indigenous contributions to the sport (Coram and Hallinan). This was followed by a barrage of personal attacks, criticisms, and booing that spread over the remaining years of his football career. When Goodes performed a traditional war dance as a form of celebration during a game in 2015, many turned to social media to express their outrage over his “confrontational” and “aggressive” behaviour (Robinson). Goodes’s affirmation of his Indigeneity was seen by many as a threat to their own positionality and white sensibility. Social media were therefore used as a mechanism to control settler narratives and maintain colonial power structures by framing the conversation through a white lens (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”). Indigenous peoples in other highly visible fields have faced similar backlash. In 1993, Elaine George was the first Aboriginal person to feature on the cover of Vogue magazine, a decision considered “risky” at the time (Singer). The editor of Vogue later revealed that the cover was criticised by some who believed George’s skin tone was made to appear lighter than it actually was and that it had been digitally altered. The failure to accept a lighter skin colour as “Aboriginal” exposes a neglect to accept ethnicity and Blackness in all its diversity (Carlson and Frazer “They Got Filters”; Carlson “Love and Hate”). Where Adam Goodes was criticised for his overt expression of Blackness, George was critisised for not being “black enough”. It was not until seventeen years later that another Aboriginal model, Samantha Harris, was featured on the cover of Vogue (Marks). While George inspired and pathed the way for those to come, Harris experienced similar discrimination within the industry and amongst the public (Carson and Ky). Singer Jessica Mauboy (in Hornery) also explains how her identity was managed by others. She recalls, I was pretty young when I first received recognition, and for years I felt as though I couldn't show my true identity. What I was saying in public was very dictated by other people who could not handle my sense of culture and identity. They felt they had to take it off my hands. Mauboy’s experience not only demonstrates how Blackness continues to be seen as something to “handle”, but also how power imbalances play out. Scholar Chelsea Watego offers numerous examples of how this occurs in different ways and arenas, for example through relationships between people and within workplaces. Bargallie’s scholarly work also provides an understanding of how Indigenous people experience racism within the Australian public service, and how it is maintained through the structures and systems of power. The media often represents communities with large Indigenous populations as being separatist and not contributing to wider society and problematic (McQuire). Violence, and the threat of violence, is often presented in media as being normalised. Recently there have been calls for an increased police presence in Alice Springs, NT, and other remotes communities due to ongoing threats of “tribal payback” and acts of “lawlessness” (Sky News Australia; Hildebrand). Goldberg uses the phrase “Super/Vision” to describe the ways that Black men and women in Black neighbourhoods are continuously and erroneously supervised and surveilled by police using apparatus such as helicopters and floodlights. Simone Browne demonstrates how contemporary surveillance practices are rooted in anti-black domination and are operationalised through a white gaze. Browne uses the term “racializing surveillance” to describe a ”technology of social control where surveillance practices, policies, and performances concern the production of norms pertaining to race and exercise a ‘power to define what is in or out of place’” (16). The outcome is often discriminatory treatment to those negatively racialised by such surveillance. Narratives that associate Indigenous peoples with darkness and danger fuel colonial fears and uphold the invisible regimes of power by instilling the perception that acts of surveillance and the restrictions imposed on Indigenous peoples’ autonomy are not only necessary but justified. Such myths fail to contextualise the historic colonial factors that drive segregation and enable a forgetting that negates personal accountability and complicity in maintaining colonial power imbalances (Riggs and Augoustinos). Inayatullah and Blaney (165) write that the “myth we construct calls attention to a darker, tragic side of our ethical engagement: the role of colonialism in constituting us as modern actors.” They call for personal accountability whereby one confronts the notion that we are both products and producers of a modernity rooted in a colonialism that maintains the misguided notion of white supremacy (Wolfe; Mignolo; Moreton-Robinson). When Indigenous and other Black peoples enter spaces that white populations don’t traditionally associate as being “natural” or “fitting” for them (whether residential, social, educational, a workplace, online, or otherwise), alienation, discrimination, and criminalisation often occurs (Bargallie; Mohdin; Linhares). Structural barriers are erected, prohibiting career or social advancement while making the space feel unwelcoming (Fredericks; Bargallie). In workplaces, Indigenous employees become the subject of hyper-surveillance through the supervision process (Bargallie), continuing to make them difficult work environments. This is despite businesses and organisations seeking to increase their Indigenous staff numbers, expressing their need to change, and implementing cultural competency training (Fredericks and Bargallie). As Barnwell correctly highlights, confronting white fears and anxieties must be the responsibility of white peoples. When feelings of shock or discomfort arise when in the company of Indigenous peoples, one must reflexively engage with the reasons behind this “fear of the dark” and consider that perhaps it is they who are self-segregating. Mohdin suggests that spaces highly populated by Black peoples are best thought of not as “black spaces” or “black communities”, but rather spaces where white peoples do not want to be. They stand as reminders of a failed colonial regime that sought to deny and dehumanise Indigenous peoples and cultures, as well as the continuation of Black resistance and sovereignty. Conclusion In working towards improving relationships between Black and white populations, the truths of colonisation, and its continuing pervasiveness in local and global settings must first be confronted. In this article we have discussed the association of darkness with instinctual fears and negative responses to the unknown. White populations need to reflexively engage and critique how they think, act, present, address racism, and respond to Indigenous peoples (Bargallie; Moreton-Robinson; Whittaker), cultivating a “decolonising consciousness” (Bradfield) to develop new habits of thinking and relating. To overcome fears of the dark, we must confront that which remains unknown, and the questions left unasked. This means exposing racism and power imbalances, developing meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples, addressing structural change, and implementing alternative ways of knowing and doing. Only then may we begin to embody Megan Cope’s message, “I’m not afraid of the Dark”. Acknowledgements We thank Dr Debbie Bargallie for her feedback on our article, which strengthened the work. References ABC News. 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According to The Betoota Advocate (Parker), a CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) paper has recently established that “it takes roughly seven minutes on average for a vegan to tell you that they’re vegan” (qtd. in Harrington et al. 135). For such a statement to have currency as a joke means that it is grounded in a shared experience of being vegan on the one hand, and of encountering vegans on the other. Why should vegans feel such a need to justify themselves? I recognise the observation as being true of me, and this article is one way to explore this perspective: writing to find out what I currently only intuit. As Richardson notes (516), writing is “a way of ‘knowing’—a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable” (qtd. in Wall 151).Autoethnography, the qualitative research methodology used for this article, is etymologically derived from Greek to indicate a process for exploring the self (autos) and the cultural (“ethno” from ethnos—nation, tribe, people, class) using a shared, understood, approach (“graphy” from graphia, writing). It relies upon critical engagement with and synthesising of the personal. In Wall’s words, this methodological analysis of human experience “says that what I know matters” (148). The autoethnographic investigation (Riggins; Sparkes) reported here interrogates the experience of “being judged” as a vegan: firstly, by myself; secondly, by other vegans; and ultimately by the wider society. As Ellis notes, autoethnography is “research, writing, story and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social and political. Autoethnographic forms feature concrete action, emotion, embodiment, self-consciousness, and introspection” (xix).Introspection is important because researchers’ stories of their observations are interwoven with self-reflexive critique and analysis: “illustrative materials are meant to give a sense of what the observed world is really like, while the researcher’s interpretations are meant to represent a more detached conceptualization of that reality” (Strauss and Corbin 22). Leaving aside Gans’s view that this form of enquiry represents the “climax of the preoccupation with self […] an autobiography written by sociologists” (542), an autoethnography generally has the added advantage of protecting against Glendon and Stanton’s concern that interpretive studies “are often of too short a duration to be able to provide sufficiently large samples of behaviour” (209). In my case, I have twelve years of experience of identifying as a vegan to draw upon.My experience is that being vegan is a contested activity with a significant range of variation that partly reflects the different initial motivations for adopting this increasingly mainstream identity. Greenebaum notes that “ethical vegans differentiate between those who ‘eat’ vegan (health vegans) and those who ‘live’ vegan (ethical vegans)”, going on to suggest that these differences create “hierarchies and boundaries between vegans” (131). As Greenebaum acknowledges, there is sometimes a need to balance competing priorities: “an environmental vegan […] may purchase leather products over polyvinyl chloride (PVC), thinking that leather is a better choice for the environment” (130). Harrington et al. similarly critique vegan motivations as encompassing “a selfless pursuit for those who cared for other beings (animals)” to “a concern about impacts that affect all humans (environment), and an interest mostly in the self (individual health …)” (144). Wright identifies a fourth group of vegans: those searching for a means of dietary inclusivity (2). I have known Orthodox Jewish households that have adopted veganism because it is compatible with keeping Kosher, while many strict Hindus are vegan and some observant Muslims may also follow suit, to avoid meat that is not Halal certified.The Challenge of the EverydayAlthough my initial vegan promptings were firmly at the selfish end of an altruism spectrum, my experience is that motivation is not static. Being a vegan for any reason increasingly primes awareness of more altruistic motivations “at the intersection of a diversity of concerns [… promoting] a spread and expansion of meaning to view food choices holistically” (Harrington et al. 144). Even so, everyday life offers a range of temptations and challenges that require constant juggling and, sometimes, a string of justifications: to oneself, and to others. I identify as a bit of a bad vegan, and not simply because I embrace the possibility that “honey is a gray area” (Greenebaum, quoting her participant Jason, 139). I’m also flexible around wine, for example, and don’t ask too many questions about whether the wine I drink is refined using milk, or egg-shells or even (yuk!) fish bladders. The point is, there are an infinite number of acid tests as to what constitutes “a real vegan”, encouraging inter-vegan judgmentality. Some slight definitional slippage aligns with Singer and Mason’s argument, however, that vegans should avoid worrying about “trivial infractions of the ethical guidelines […] Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is. Giving people the impression that it is virtually impossible to be vegan doesn’t help animals at all” (Singer and Mason 258–9).If I were to accept a definition of non-vegan, possibly because I have a leather handbag among other infractions, that would feel inauthentic. The term “vegan” helpfully labels my approach to food and drink. Others also find it useful as a shorthand for dietary preferences (except for the small but significant minority who muddle veganism with being gluten free). From the point of view of dietary prohibitions I’m a particularly strict vegan, apart from honey. I know people who make exceptions for line-caught fish, or the eggs from garden-roaming happy chooks, but I don’t. I increasingly understand the perspectives of those who have a more radical conception of veganism than I do, however: whose vision and understanding is that “behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the meat takes. The ‘absent referent’ is that which separates the meat eater from the animal and the animal from the end product [… keeping] something from being seen as having been someone” (Adams 14). The concept of the global suffering of animals inherent in the figures: “31.1 billion each year, 85.2 million each day, 3.5 million each hour, 59,170 each minute” (Adams dedication) is appalling; as well as being an under-representation of the current situation since the globe has had almost two further decades of population growth and rising “living standards”.Whatever the motivations, it’s easy to imagine that the different branches of veganism have more in common than divides them. Being a vegan of any kind helps someone identify with other variations upon the theme. For example, even though my views on animal rights did not motivate my choice to become vegan, once I stopped seeing other sentient creatures as a handy food source I began to construct them differently. I gradually realised that, as a species, we were committing the most extraordinary atrocities on a global scale in treating animals as disposable commodities without rights or feelings. The large-scale production of what we like to term “meat and poultry” is almost unadulterated animal suffering, whereas the by-catch (“waste products”) of commercial fishing represents an extraordinary disregard of the rights to life of other creatures and, as Cole and Morgan note, “The number of aquatic animals slaughtered is not recorded, their individual deaths being subsumed by aggregate weight statistics” (135). Even if we did accept that humans have the right to consume some animals some of the time, should the netting of a given weight of edible fish really entail the death of many, many time more weight of living creatures that will be “wasted”: the so-called by-catch? Such wanton destruction has increasingly visible impacts upon complex food chains, and the ecosystems that sustain us all.The Vegan Threat to the Status QuoExamining the evidence for the broader community being biased against vegetarians and vegans, MacInnis and Hodson identify that these groups are “clear targets of relatively more negative attitudes” (727) towards them than other minority groups. Indeed, “only drug addicts were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians and vegans” (726). While “vegans were evaluated more negatively than vegetarians” (732), there was a hierarchy in negative evaluations according to the underlying motivation for someone adopting veganism or vegetarianism. People motivated by personal health received the least negative evaluations from the general population followed by those who were motivated by the environment. The greatest opprobrium was reserved for vegans who were motivated by animal rights (732). MacInnis and Hodson reason that this antipathy is because “vegetarians and vegans represent strong threats to the status quo, given that prevailing cultural norms favour meat-eating” (722). Also implied here is that fact that eating meat is itself a cultural norm associated with masculinity (Rothgerber).Adams’s work links the unthinking, normative exploitation of animals to the unthinking, normative exploitation of women, a situation so aligned that it is often expressed through the use of a common metaphor: “‘meat’ becomes a term to express women’s oppression, used equally by patriarchy and feminists, who say that women are ‘pieces of meat’” (2002, 59). Rothberger further interrogates the relationship between masculinity and meat by exploring gender in relation to strategies for “meat eating justification”, reflecting a 1992 United States study that showed, of all people reporting that they were vegetarian, 68% were women and 32% men (Smart, 1995). Rothberger’s argument is that:Following a vegetarian diet or deliberately reducing meat intake violates the spirit of Western hegemonic masculinity, with its socially prescribed norms of stoicism, practicality, seeking dominance, and being powerful, strong, tough, robust and invulnerable […] Such individuals have basically cast aside a relatively hidden male privilege—the freedom and ability to eat without criticism and scrutiny, something that studies have shown women lack. (371)Noting that “to raise concerns about the injustices of factory farming and to feel compelled by them would seem emotional, weak and sensitive—feminine characteristics” (366), Rothberger sets the scene for me to note two items of popular culture which achieved cut-through in my personal life. The evidence for this is, in terms of all the pro-vegan materials I encounter, these were two of a small number that I shared on social media. In line with Rothberger’s observations, both are oppositional to hegemonic masculinity:one represents a feminised, mother and child exchange that captures the moment when a child realises the “absent referent” of the dead animal in the octopus on his plate—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU03da2arE;while the other is a sentimentalised and sympathetic recording of cattle luxuriating in their first taste of pastureland after a long period of confinement—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huT5__BqY_U.Seeing cows behaving like pets does call attention to the artificial distinction between “companion animals” and other animals. As Cole and Stewart note, “the naming of other animals is useful for human beings, while it is dangerous, and frequently lethal, for other animals. This is because the words we use to name other animals are saturated with common sense knowledge claims about those animals that legitimate their habitual use for humans” (13). Thus a cat, in Western culture, has a very different life trajectory to a cow. Adams notes the contrary case where the companion animal is used as a referent for a threatened human:Child sexual abusers often use threats and/or violence against companion animals to achieve compliance from their victims. Batterers harm or kill a companion animal as a warning to their partner that she could be next; as a way of further separating her from meaningful relationships; to demonstrate his power and her powerlessness. (Adams 57)For children who are still at a stage where animals are creatures of fascination and potential friends, who may be growing up with Charlotte’s Web (White) or Peter Rabbit (Potter), the mental gymnastics of suspending identification with these fellow creatures are harder because empathy and imagination are more active and the ingrained habit of eating without thinking has not had so long to develop. Indeed, children often understand domestic animals as “members of the family”, as illustrated by an interview with Kani, a 10-year old participant in one of my research projects. “In the absence of her extended family overseas, Kani adds her pets to [the list of] those with whom she shares her family life: ‘And my mum and my uncle and then our cat Dobby. I named it [for Harry Potter’s house elf] ...and the goldfish. The goldfish are Twinkle, Glitter, Glow and Bobby’” (Green and Stevenson). Such perceptions may well filter through to children having a different understanding of animals-as-food, even though Cole and Stewart note that “children enter into an adult culture habituated to [the] banal conceptualization of other animals according to their (dis)utilities” (21).Evidence-Based VeganismThose M/C Journal readers who know me personally will understand that one reason why I embrace the “bad vegan” label, is that I’m no more obviously a pin-up for healthy veganism than I am for ethical or environmental veganism. In particular, my BMI (Body Mass Index) is significantly outside the “healthy” range. Even so, I attribute a dramatic change in my capacity for stamina-based activity to my embrace of veganism. A high-speed recap of the evidence would include: in 2009 I embarked on a week-long 500km Great Vic bike ride; in 2012 I successfully completed a Machu Picchu trek at high altitude; by 2013 I was ready for my first half marathon (reprised in 2014, and 2017); in 2014 I cycled from Surfers’ Paradise to Noosa—somewhat less successfully than in my 2009 venture, but even so; in 2016 I completed the Oxfam 50km in 24 hours (plus a half hour, if I’m honest); and in 2017 I completed the 227km Portuguese Camino; in 2018 I jogged an average of over 3km per day, every day, up until 20 September... Apart from indicating that I live an extremely fortunate life, these activities seem to me to demonstrate that becoming vegan in 2007 has conferred a huge health benefit. In particular, I cannot identify similar metamorphoses in the lives of my 50-to-60-something year-old empty-nester friends. My most notable physical feat pre-veganism was the irregular completion of Perth’s annual 12km City-to-Surf fun run.Although I’m a vegan for health reasons, I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide that this was now my future: I had to be coaxed and cajoled into looking at my food preferences very differently. This process entailed my enrolling in a night school-type evening course, the Coronary Health Improvement Program: 16 x 3 hour sessions over eight weeks. Its sibling course is now available online as the Complete Health Improvement Program. The first lesson of the eight weeks convincingly demonstrated that what is good for coronary health is also good for health in general, which I found persuasive and reassuring given the propensity to cancer evident in my family tree. In the generation above me, my parents each had three siblings so I have a sample of eight immediate family to draw upon. Six of these either have cancer at the moment, or have died from cancer, with the cancers concerned including breast (1), prostate (2), lung (1), pancreas (1) and brain (1). A seventh close relative passed away before her health service could deliver a diagnosis for her extraordinarily elevated eosinophil levels (100x normal rates of that particular kind of white blood cell: potentially a blood cancer, I think). The eighth relative in that generation is my “bad vegan” uncle who has been mainly plant-based in his dietary choices since 2004. At 73, he is still working three days per week as a dentist and planning a 240 km trek in Italy as his main 2019 holiday. That’s the kind of future I’m hoping for too, when I grow up.And yet, one can read volumes of health literature without stumbling upon Professor T. Colin Campbell’s early research findings via his work on rodents and rodent cells that: “nutrition [was] far more important in controlling cancer promotion than the dose of the initiating carcinogen” and that “nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumor development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumor development” (66, italics in original). Plant was already an eminent scientist at the point where she developed breast cancer, but she noted her amazement at learning “precisely how much has been discovered already [that] has not filtered through to the public” (18). The reason for the lack of visible research in this area is not so much its absence, but more likely its political sensitivity in an era of Big Food. As Harrington et al.’s respondent Samantha noted, “I think the meat lobby’s much bigger than the vegetable lobby” (147). These arguments are addressed in greater depth in Green et al.My initiating research question—Why do I feel the need to justify being vegan?—can clearly be answered in a wide variety of ways. Veganism disrupts the status quo: it questions both the appropriateness of humanity’s systematic torturing of other species for food, and the risks that those animal-based foods pose for the long-term health of human populations. It offends many vested interests from Big Food to accepted notions of animal welfare to the conventional teachings of the health industry. Identifying as a vegan represents an outcome of one or more of a wide range of motivations, some of which are more clearly self-serving (read “bad”); while others are more easily identified as altruistic (read “good”). After a decade or more of personal experimentation in this space, I’m proud to identify as a “bad vegan”. 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