Entre la dinámica del reconocimiento y la civilización de la pobreza: un diálogo entre Raúl Fornet Betancourt e Ignacio Ellacuría

This chapter presents the research questions, approaches, and arguments of the book, asking how our everyday lives with media have changed after the smartphone. I introduce the topic of media use in everyday life as an empirical, methodological, and theoretical research interest, and argue for its continued centrality to our digital society today, accentuated by datafication. I discuss how the analytical concepts of media repertories and public connection can inform research into media use in everyday life, and what it means that our societies and user practices are becoming more digital. The main argument of the book is that digital media transform our navigation across the domains of everyday life by blurring boundaries, intensifying dilemmas, and affecting our sense of connection to communities and people around us. The chapter concludes by presenting the structure of the rest of the book, where these arguments will be substantiated in analysis of media use an ordinary day, media use in life phase transitions, and media use when ordinary life is disrupted. Citation Ytre-Arne, B. (2023), "Introduction: Media Use and Everyday Life in Digital Societies", Media Use in Digital Everyday Life, Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80262-383-320231001 Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited Copyright © 2023 Brita Ytre-Arne License Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this book (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode. Can you remember your first smartphone, and did it change your life? I bought my first smartphone in the early summer of 2011, right before the birth of my first child. I can safely say that life was never the same again. Although the new phone was hardly the most significant change that happened, it became part of how I reconfigured everyday life. My coincidental timing of these events might be a personal particularity, but the early 2010s, only a little more than a decade ago, was a period in which smartphones became part of everyday life for lots of people. This happened in Norway where I live, and in other countries in the Global North, soon followed by broader proliferation worldwide (Avle et al., 2020). In 2021, it was estimated that more than 90 per cent of people had smartphone access in a growing number of countries around the globe (Deloitte, 2021). ‘Smartphones changed everything’, wrote the Wall Street Journal in 2020: ‘smartphones upended every element of society during the last decade, from dating to dinner parties, travel to politics. This is just the beginning’ (Kitchen, 9.9.2020). But while all of this was happening, people lived their lives, using smartphones along with other media old and new, interwoven with what was going on in their lives, and in the world around them. This book explores the role of media in our everyday lives in digital societies, after the proliferation of smartphones and in conditions of ubiquitous connectivity. I analyze everyday media use across platforms, content types and modes of communication, taking the perspective of how we live our lives with media – how we manage plans and practicalities, keep in touch with friends and family, seek information and entertainment, work and learn, take part in shared experiences, and connect to our social lifeworlds. We might do all of this in the space of one single day, and we might experience such a day as ‘ordinary’ – just normal everyday life. But media technologies are also part of our less ordinary days, important to how we manage life-changing transitions and special events in our personal lives, and to how we relate to local communities, political processes or global events. We use media to connect to each other, and to society – throughout an ordinary day, across the life course, and in times of disruption. The smartphone is emblematic of how our everyday lives with media are changing in a digital and hyper-connected society, and as such it is essential to the topic of this book. A central question I discuss is what it means that most of us now have a smartphone to reach for, from where we are and what we are doing, to manage multiple aspects of our daily lives: A mobile, flexible device we rely on to communicate, find information, entertain and assist us, often used in combination with other media, but also a device that enables tracking and surveillance of our movements and engagements, informing feedback loops based on our personal data. How has digital media use in everyday life changed after the smartphone? To answer these questions, I draw on classic scholarship on media and communication technologies in everyday life (Baym, 2015; Silverstone, 1994), and on recent analysis of digital ambivalence and disconnection (Syvertsen, 2020). With a user perspective, I situate smartphones and other kinds of digital platforms as part of broader media repertoires (Hasebrink & Hepp, 2017), with an interest in the totality and internal relationships of any kind of media that people use and find meaningful in their everyday lives. I further understand everyday media use as central to public connection (Couldry et al., 2010), to how we orient ourselves to a world beyond our private concerns. The book provides an updated perspective on media in everyday life after digital media has become increasingly embedded and ingrained in society. A purpose for the book is to fill a gap between classic (but old) discussions on everyday media use, and recent (but sometimes narrowly focused) studies of new technologies. Our understandings of everyday media use are still shaped by theories developed before the internet, before digital and social and mobile media. This book highlights rather than discards these understandings, but moves forward in tackling dilemmas of technological transformations, and by considering recent crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. I untangle how media becomes meaningful to us in the everyday, connecting us to each other and to communities and publics. The book offers empirical, methodological and theoretical insight on media use in digital everyday life. Why Everyday Life? ‘Everyday life’ is one of those concepts that everyone understands, but which is still difficult to define. The term is not internal jargon belonging to a particular research field, but instead recognizable across a range of contexts – we might even describe it as an ‘everyday’ term. One of the early ideas behind this book was to answer the questions: ‘But what do you mean by everyday life?’ and further ‘Why do you [meaning media use researchers] go on about everyday life?’. These are good questions. Let us start with the latter: Why everyday life? More precisely, why would someone interested in media use find it important to refer to everyday life for contextualization? In media and communication studies, interest in everyday life has a long history. The idea of everyday life has been central to approaches and research interests in cultural studies (Gray, 2002; Morley, 1992), media phenomenology (Pink & Leder Mackley, 2013; Scannell, 1995) or media ethnography (Hermes, 1995; Radway, 1984). The term has been particularly central to theories of domestication (Haddon, 2016; Silverstone et al., 2021) focused on processes of gradually integrating media technologies in the home. Roger Silverstone wrote a classic volume on Television and everyday life (Silverstone, 1994), arguing that in order to move past debates on television as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and actually understand what it is, we have to consider television as embedded in tensions and dynamics of everyday life. Shaun Moores (2000) applied everyday life as a framework for understanding the historical development of broadcast media, and Maria Bakardjieva (2005) analyzed the domestication of computers and internet technologies in everyday life. Elizabeth Bird (2003) wrote The Audience in Everyday Life to argue for the relevance of ethnographic methods to understand our media-saturated reality, while Tim Markham (2017) wrote an introductory textbook titled Media and Everyday Life to present topics and thinkers in media studies through their relevance to daily life. All of the above are books on media with ‘everyday life’ in the title. Moreover, the term keeps popping up in journal articles on a variety of topics regarding media use: A comparative study of why people read print newspapers in the digital age refer to how different media are integrated into everyday life (Boczkowski et al., 2021), while a study of people who prefer online media at home find that digital alternatives are perceived to be better integrated into domestic everyday life (Müller, 2020). In analysis of how and why we follow news, the idea of the everyday provides a way of situating ordinary users at the centre of attention, by discussing everyday news use (Groot Kormelink & Costera Meijer, 2019) or everyday public connection (Swart et al., 2017). In debates about datafication and emergent technologies, the notion of the everyday is used to highlight human and social experiences with for instance self-tracking (Lomborg & Frandsen, 2016), smart homes (Hine, 2020) or algorithmic media (Willson, 2017). What do these different contributions have in common? They refer to everyday life to signal a position, because referencing ‘everyday life’ holds some empirical, methodological or theoretical implications. The term can be invoked to answer the ‘so what’-question: A compelling reason for why we need to study media at all is its relevance to everyday life (Silverstone, 1999). Today we can adapt this argument to why we need to study the smartphone – it is part of everyday life. Through such statements, we frame the smartphone as a technology and research topic that is recognizable and relevant to experiences and dilemmas each of us encounter. The smartphone has transformed society, but it has done so through our everyday interactions. Similarly: Why does it matter if people read international news or look at cat videos online, watch Netflix or Linear TV, listen to music on Spotify or prefer vinyl records? If you are interested in media business models or media policies, and find the choices users make a bit puzzling, you might need to look into motivations and contexts in everyday life to gain a deeper understanding of what goes on. Attention to everyday contexts can both complicate and enhance insights gained from other types of tracking and measurements of media use (Groot Kormelink & Costera Meijer, 2020). To understand new technologies, or connect critiques of these phenomena to people’s experiences, everyday life is an essential framework: It is easier to grasp the idea of ‘the Internet of Things’ (Bunz & Meikle, 2018) as having to do with whether your refrigerator needs internet connection, than through concepts such as machine learning or smart sensors. Sometimes the position signalled by referring to everyday life is explicitly normative. A key example is the debate on everyday experiences with datafication, or ‘the quantification of human life through digital information, very often for economic value’ (Mejias & Couldry, 2019). The idea of so-called ‘big data’ as more precise or valuable has been met with critical questions (Boyd & Crawford, 2012), and with concern for how audience engagement can be harvested and utilized for opaque purposes (Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020). In criticizing these developments, the notion of ‘everyday life’ is central to put the human experience of living in datafied conditions front and centre (Kennedy & Hill, 2018), or to focus on the people rather than systems (Livingstone, 2019). This interest further corresponds to feminist (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020) and postcolonial critiques (Milan & Treré, 2019) of datafication and power. We can also signal analytical and methodological interests by referring to everyday life: The term is used to prioritize context over generalizability, and ordinary user perspectives and experiences over media professionals and institutions. This could imply attention to small acts of engagement in social media (Picone et al., 2019), and inclusion of seemingly mundane practices of media use (Hermes, 1995; Sandvik et al., 2016). An everyday life perspective is a backdrop for cross-media research (Lomborg & Mortensen, 2017; Schrøder, 2011) rather than pre-selecting which media to study based on the researchers’ preconceived notions of what matters. Qualitative researchers and ethnographers also draw on ‘everyday life’ as a term that points towards preferred methods: Talking to people about a day in the life (del Rio Carral, 2014), ‘capturing life as it is narrated’ (Kaun, 2010) with diary methods, and exploring experiences and reflections in informants’ own words. Some quantitative studies of media use also use the term (Hovden & Rosenlund, 2021) and research on everyday media repertoires can combine qualitative and quantitative approaches (Hasebrink & Hepp, 2017). I am also someone who often explain and position my key research interests through the notion of everyday life. A long-running interest in everyday life has informed my preference for qualitative and user-focused methods, in the studies I draw on in this book and in other projects. I have used the term ‘everyday life’ in the title of publications (Moe & Ytre-Arne, 2021; Ytre-Arne, 2012), and also explored how media use changes with biographical disruption to everyday routines (Ytre-Arne, 2019) or discussed audience agency in everyday encounters with digital and datafied media (Ytre-Arne & Das, 2020; Ytre-Arne & Moe, 2021a). For me, the everyday signals a perspective on why and how to study media use: it is important because it is part of daily life, it is interesting because everyday life is diverse and meaningful, and it is impossible to be done with because it changes constantly. I do not think there is any necessary contradiction between an everyday perspective versus a societal or political perspective on media use – instead, everyday life is where political dimensions of media are experienced, interpreted, and acted upon. This point runs as an undercurrent through the analyses of this book and is highlighted in the concluding chapter. What is Everyday Life? We have established that media are part of everyday life, and that research on media use is interested in everyday life. That is not to say that definitions everyday life abound in the literature referenced above, or in the field at large. Even classic contributions observe that commenting on the topic of everyday life might seem simplistic (e.g. Silverstone, 1994, p. 19). There is considerable variation in how precisely or extensively the concept is explained: Some works develop distinct philosophical understandings (e.g. Bakardijeva in Sandvik et al., 2016), or ground the term in substantial discussion of different theoretical positions (e.g. Cavalcante et al., 2017). Some authors define the term and how it connects to methodological and analytical frameworks in their studies). Others explain adjacent concepts to the everyday, such as the study mentioned above of why people still read print newspapers (Boczkowski et al., 2021), which draws on theories of ritualization, sociality and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, everyday life is theorized in disciplines from human geography (Holloway & Hubbard, 2001) to psychology (Schraube & Højholt, 2016). Some central philosophical contributions are Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life (1947), which formulates a Marxist-inspired argument about the importance of this sphere of human conduct in the face of capitalism and technological change, and Michel De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) which emphasizes the concept of potentially subversive tactics in people’s navigation through daily life. Another key work is The Structures of the Lifeworld (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973) which formulates Alfred Schutz’ theory of the lifeworld in which everyday life is enacted, including spatial, temporal and social dimensions, and how we move through ‘zones of operation’ where people and places beyond our immediate surroundings are yet within ‘restorable reach’ to us, through the familiarity or routines in the everyday which we take for granted (1973). This understanding has been particularly important to phenomenological and sociological studies of media and technologies in everyday life. Such philosophical works on everyday life are briefly to referenced in studies of everyday media use, a understanding that is more or less For (1984) to discuss the role of media in daily on and a growing as as philosophical interest in everyday life as a research that media are not used in from one or from personal an example of the of media use in dynamics at that media are an part of the way the everyday is p. and points that have been up in discussions of media (Hasebrink & Hepp, and of media use as mundane but yet meaningful in everyday (Hermes, 1995; Sandvik et al., 2016). In study of early internet use at Bakardjieva provides a theoretical discussion of how and Lefebvre’s theories relate to communication technologies, the idea of a critical phenomenology to understand users as as Roger work on everyday life also Schutz’ understanding of the and further of the in a discussion of whether this lifeworld is different in conditions of (Silverstone, Silverstone debates about order and in a world of societal and new communication with an that television is we have seemingly to take for as a technology and social and as part of our everyday lives. these Silverstone emphasizes the of routines and familiarity in in the of the world at and a sense of these are the of social order and everyday life. the and for as as through the and our lives take and within those and and we to go about our or for the most the and the that to our and (Silverstone, 1994, p. In this everyday and a sense of a concept to describe of and in people’s experience of the world and sense of central to how people position in the world and to life is also a key concept in more recent theory of digital communication as when we through digital media, and in have our continued in the world 2021). discussion how of or through digital media can to the of the these theories of everyday life, some key dimensions Everyday life has to do with the of space and people and through which we make and relate to the and our position in it I draw on these dimensions to further situate media use in everyday life, how we use media for navigation across social Media Use in Everyday Life To understand media use – applied as an term for all kinds of relationships and with media and communication technologies – we need to situate media use as part of everyday life, in people’s lifeworlds. on the ideas above, of familiarity and and of spatial, social and dimensions, we can different and positions for media. I am particularly interested in how we use media to orient ourselves as we move through our everyday lives, as part of what I navigation across social What does this Everyday media use is because we do not it from – we rely on that we are regarding media use as as other aspects of everyday up in the and not you have done before – instead of the same of and the same on your smartphone. other and and media use practices are particularly essential to the of everyday life by Silverstone, Markham and are also a central concept in media and communication psychology and central to studies to grasp user over or across We everyday in and around – including media Everyday life multiple social domains – such as work and life – that are meaningful to us and that we with and that also important contexts for how we use media. There are research that of media use in different social for instance focused on life such as or experiences such as (e.g. Das, & 2020). between life such as a or a are so significant because the social domains of our everyday lives change with these events. These social domains are essential to the we find in life, the conduct of everyday life an We with social domains in – including media use and A interest I in this book is how we use media across and social for what I refer to as Everyday media use navigation across multiple social domains because an ordinary day can an of and in which we different social with different people. Everyday life can be and with to at or or but whether we have plans for or go with the some of and navigation is both and We conduct such navigation in – including media use and Digital technologies have become to this navigation – and but also and to We have established that media are part of daily and that such routines are essential to everyday life We can also discuss if and how the social domains of everyday life are or and how these processes (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Hepp, 2020). But my main interest in this book is how our navigation across the social domains of everyday life changes with digital media – how we use digital media to connect to different social orient ourselves to what goes on and across contexts. Media use is essential to the navigation of everyday life, and the role of media in this navigation holds for how we experience our lives as meaningful, for how we understand and situate ourselves in the How we conduct this navigation is changing with the and datafication of the media, particularly after the smartphone. Media Use in Everyday Life The theories of everyday life that are most central to media and communication studies from an of and the domestic sphere is the social that has the most dynamics and the of the home are central to analyses from discussion of who the to what when the people television also have and computers & 2016). we can as Silverstone could in classic that is a domestic It is at home. at home. at (Silverstone, 1994, p. and mobile and social media a of the established when living and for a question in internet studies of whether and how people would actually to make space for computers in their homes is more not just by and but also by and technologies. The home is still but our navigation with media and beyond the home has A broader point is that the proliferation of digital media has it more difficult to make about how to situate media in everyday life, while media might be more important than to how we across our daily lives. This also has for the analytical concepts and approaches we to study everyday media To analyze media in everyday life, it is to a particular or media and look for its and in everyday to into how the cultural role of television in people’s everyday lives. But to for the for variation in everyday media use, it is more relevant to start with people and how we live our lives, and how media matters. of the scholarship discussed in this chapter for the of less approaches to media studies – media might need to be in order to understand what it I will particularly draw on approaches to situate media use in everyday life through a user Media repertoires and public Media repertoires is a concept to the totality and meaningful between media a (Hasebrink & & Hepp, 2017). the essential insight that are a key of approaches is to focus less on experiences with The of or using and instead how these or different are to each other in the context of a everyday media media approaches which media users have a how prioritize between different and how people and the totality of their media Media research has from how to of repertoires towards growing interest in repertoires as and how are and change over & Schrøder, et al., 2021; et al., Ytre-Arne, 2019). connection is a concept that people’s to society, in a sense – how people connect to public life, or (Couldry et al., et al., 2017; Ytre-Arne & Moe, The of a public connection – as to a focus on whether people follow news or – is to more what people are interested and how follow those across but also beyond (Couldry et al., & Ytre-Arne, 2021). Media is important to public connection, but not the only means of societal and public connection can take and define public connection as ‘the shared of that to and in and political in everyday life’ (Swart et al., and that relevance and engagement are dimensions in how media becomes meaningful in everyday life. of these perspectives imply that there is answer to or why media in everyday life – it is and perspectives are up to analysis of the that have to everyday media In this book, I draw on media approaches to analyze everyday media use from the perspective of and on the public connection concept to discuss how people connect to society through everyday media A More Digital Everyday Life A different way of situating media in everyday life is to if one the other, and if which way

Making an Impact: Cultural Studies, Media and Contemporary Work

Moral intelligence refers to an individual's ability to think, behave, and contribute ethically in everyday life with the hope of being able to produce productive actions that are not only beneficial to oneself but also beneficial to society. Based on this, the purpose of this study is to conduct an in-depth analysis of actual productive moral intelligence from a philosophical and moral psychology perspective. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach with a literature review method. Data collection was carried out by collecting and analyzing various relevant scientific sources, including journals, books, and academic articles. The results of this study indicate that: 1) actual and productive morals from a philosophical perspective are the ability to understand, internalize, and align oneself with Islamic ethical and moral principles, which involve the use of reason guided by revelation and control of the soul, 2) While actual and productive moral intelligence from a moral psychology perspective involves the ability to understand and internalize ethical principles, and apply them in real action.

“Now I can actually play soccer with the young people without fearing that my colleagues think I am escaping the paper work.”These were the words from a participant in a social pedagogy training course in England a few years ago. This understanding emerged through in-depth discussions and activities around key social pedagogical concepts, such as the ‘common third’, the ‘3Ps’, the ‘zone of proximal development’ and the ‘learning zone model’. In this article we will explore how a joint activity, for example, playing soccer, can be seen as a pedagogical activity and with what intentions it is undertaken to make it pedagogically purposeful.

Our key aim with this collection, a combination of original empirical contributions and interventions by experts from across social geography and sociology, is to consolidate and advance feminist, interdisciplinary approaches to the everyday geographies of family via contemporary, empirically grounded research and direct interdisciplinary exchanges. This themed section showcases cutting edge geographical work in relation to the everyday geographies of family life; highlights the diversity of work being done within feminist geography and; develops a feminist geography that is enriched through engagement with interdisciplinary intellectual exchanges. We describe the intervention section that follows this introductory piece, bringing together writing from across sociology and geography, where there has been a cross-pollination of ideas around everyday family life, but very little concerted effort to bring these into dialogue to date. In introducing each contributor and their substantive interests, we will draw out relevant theoretical links across papers that illustrate how both family and the everyday, as key concepts, are being unsettled and problematised. Contributors to the intervention section are notable scholars that have set and shaped key agendas and debates. In their shorter papers, they will reflect on their influence on developing debates about family and everyday life. Drawing links across this suite of themed and intervention papers, it will be argued that interdisciplinary work around the family is important for carving out and consolidating feminist, interdisciplinary discussions and for determining what might also be distinctive about feminist approaches to family geographies as debates progress.

Older adults' health information behavior in everyday life settings

This chapter provides an overview of the detailed discussion of the relationship of the two dominant fields under discussion in Part II of this book: the mobile complex in everyday life and the teaching and learning practices of schools. We argue that, in order to be able to assimilate the cultural practices around mobile device use in everyday life successfully into the teaching and learning practices of schools, we need to recognize mobile devices as cultural resources. This requires an understanding of (a) socio-cultural and technological structures, (b) learners’ agency and learning habitus and (c) the practices of media use in everyday life as well as the practices of learning in formal and informal contexts. We use Vygotzky’s model of child development within zones, which are responsive to a child’s personally relevant situation. This model allows us to position ourselves pedagogically in relationship to the mobile complex. Our intention is to redefine learning from the perspective of children’s everyday lives, as well as to recognize their specific ‘naive’ expertise, especially that around mobile devices in the context of media convergence. We argue that the assimilation of mobile and learning practices by the school should deliberately support participation by all learners and make use of the new, cultural ‘mobile’ resources. Additionally, this chapter outlines the key concepts underpinning our pedagogical discussion.

Personality is a term that is no stranger to being heard especially in the discipline of the world of education. Because in its own purpose education is seen as an effort in forming a better personality. The familiarity of the term "personality" is often seen as commonplace to be used in a variety of simple expressions in everyday life. Tujannya this research to find out the personality of the perspective of islamic philosophy of education and how it is formation in Islam as well as the concept of human and personal traits of Muslims. The research methods used in this research are qualitative methods, with descriptive analysis. Describes the personality perspective of the Islamic Philosophy of Education and how it was formation in Islam as well as the concept of human and personal qualities of Muslims. The results showed that the substance of personality consists of several criteria, namely the personality of an organic structure, personality is a trait or behavior displayed by humans, that there is a relationship between the two, actions and impulses from within, and behavior displayed in everyday life. Personality is the result of a process of life that a person lives. Because the process experienced by each person is different, the personality of each individual is different. There is no common personality between two individuals, even if a twin brother is from one egg. As for the personality of Muslims is not to look insulted to others, must not be bad and must not also lurk around the mistakes of others, love of unity, trust, not hasad (envy), not arrogant and arrogant, do not seek the disgrace of others, be fair and hate persecution, hate bribery, hate false testimony, strengthen the ropes of friendship, love of science, Good with neighbors, like to help and attach importance to others.

Tango Dancing with María Lugones

This volume brings together philosophical perspectives on emotions, imagination and moral reasoning with contributions from neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, personality theory, developmental psychology, and abnormal psychology. The book explores what we can learn about the role of emotions and imagination in moral reasoning from psychopathic adults in the general community, from young children, and adolescents with callous unemotional traits, and from normal child development. It discusses the implications for philosophical moral psychology of recent experimental work on moral reasoning in the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. Conversely, it shows what cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have still to learn from philosophical perspectives on moral reasoning, moral reflection, and moral responsibility. Finally, it looks at whether experimental methods used for researching moral reasoning are consistent with the work in social psychology and with philosophical thought on adult moral reasoning in everyday life. The volume's wide-ranging perspectives reflect the varied audiences for the volume, from students of philosophy to psychologists working in cognition, social and personality psychology, developmental psychology, abnormal psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

Introduction The sensational appearance of kawaii fashion in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood—full of freedom, fun, and frills— has captivated hearts and imaginations worldwide. A key motivational concept for this group is “kawaii” which is commonly translated as “cute” and can also be used to describe things that are “beautiful”, “funny”, “pretty”, “wonderful”, “great”, “interesting”, and “kind” (Yamane 228; Yomota 73; Dale 320). Representations in media such as the styling of Harajuku street model and J-pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, directed by Sebastian Masuda, have helped bring this fashion to a wider audience. Of this vibrant community, decora fashion is perhaps best known with its image well documented in in street-fashion magazines such as Shoichi Aoki’s FRUiTS (1997–2017), Websites such as Tokyo Fashion (2000–present), and in magazines like KERA (1998–2017). In particular, decora fashion captures the “do-it-yourself” approach for which Harajuku is best known for (Yagi 17). In this essay we draw on New Materialism to explore the ways in which decora fashion practitioners form kawaii affective assemblages with the objects they collect and transform into fashion items. We were motivated to pursue this research to build on other qualitative studies that aimed to include the voices of practitioners in accounts of their lifestyles (e.g. Nguyen; Monden; Younker) and respond to claims that kawaii fashion is a form of infantile regression. We—an Australian sociologist and kawaii fashion practitioner, a Japanese decora fashion practitioner and Harajuku street model, and a Japanese former owner of a tearoom in Harajuku—have used an action-led participatory research method to pool our expertise. In this essay we draw on both a New Materialist analysis of our own fashion practices, a 10-year longitudinal study of Harajuku (2012–2022), as well as interviews with twelve decora fashion practitioners in 2020. What Is Decora Fashion? Decora is an abbreviation of “decoration”, which reflects the key aesthetic commitment of the group to adorn their bodies with layers of objects, accessories, and stickers. Decora fashion uses bright clothing from thrift stores, layers of handmade and store-bought accessories, and chunky platform shoes or sneakers. Practitioners enjoy crafting accessories from old toys, kandi and perler beads, weaving, braiding, crocheting novelty yarn and ribbon, and designing and printing their own textiles. In addition to this act of making, decora practitioners also incorporate purchases from specialty brands like 6%DOKI DOKI, Nile Perch, ACDC Rag, YOSUKE USA, and minacute. According to our interviewees, whom we consulted in 2020, excess is key; as Momo told us: “if it’s too plain, it’s not decora”. Decora uses clashing, vibrant, electric colours, and a wild variety of kawaii versions of monsters, characters, and food which appear as motifs on their clothing (Groom 193; Yagi 17). Clashing textures and items—such as a sweat jackets, gauzy tutus, and plastic toy tiaras—are also a key concept (Koga 81). Colour is extended to practitioners’ hair through colourful hair dyes, and the application of stickers, bandaids, and jewels across their cheeks and nose (Rose, Kurebayashi and Saionji). These principles are illustrated in fig. 1, a street snap from 2015 of our co-author, Kurebayashi. Working with the contrasting primary colours across her hair, clothes, and accessories, she incorporates both her own handmade garments and found accessories to form a balanced outfit. Her Lisa Frank cat purse, made from a psychedelic vibrant pink faux fur, acts as a salient point to draw in our eyes to a cacophony of colour throughout her ensemble. The purse is a prized item from her own collection that was a rare find on Mercari, an online Japanese auction Website, 15 years ago. Her sweater dress is handmade, with a textile print she designed herself. The stickers on the print feature smiley faces, rainbows, ducks, and candy—all cheap and cheerful offerings from a discount store. Through intense layering and repetition, Kurebayashi has created a collage that is reminiscent of the clips and bracelets that decorate her hair and wrists. This collage also represents the colour, fun, and whimsy that she immerses herself in everyday. Her platform shoes are by Buffalo London, another rare find for her collection. Her hair braids are handmade by Midoroya, an online artist, which she incorporates to create variety in the textures in her outfit from head to toe. Peeking beneath her sweater is a short colourful tutu that floats and bounces with each step. Together the items converge and sing, visually loud and popping against the urban landscape. Fig. 1: Kurebayashi’s street snap in an decora fashion outfit of her own styling and making, 2015. Given the street-level nature of decora fashion, stories of its origins draw on oral histories of practitioners, alongside writings from designers and stores that cater to this group (Ash). Its emergence was relatively organic in the early 1990s, with groups enjoying mixing and combining found objects and mis-matching clothing items. Initially, decorative styles documented in street photography used a dark colour palette with layers of handmade accessories, clips, and decorations, and a Visual-kei influence. Designers such as Sebastian Masuda, who entered the scene in 1995, also played a key role by introducing accessories and clothes inspired by vintage American toys, Showa era (1926-1989) packaging, and American West Club dance culture (Sekikawa and Kumagi 22–23). Pop idols such as Tomoe Shinohara and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu are also key figures that have contributed to the pop aesthetic of decora. While decora was already practiced prior to the release of Shinohara’s 1995 single Chaimu, her styling resonated with practitioners and motivated them to pursue a more “pop” aesthetic with an emphasis on bright colours, round shapes, and handmade colourful accessories. Shinohara herself encouraged fans to take on a rebelliously playful outlook and presentation of self (Nakao 15–16; Kondō). This history resonates with more recent pop idol Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s costuming and set design, which was directed by Sebastian Masuda. Kyary’s kawaii fashion preceded her career, as she regularly participated in the Harajuku scene and agreed to street snaps. While the costuming and set design for her music videos, such as Pon Pon Pon, resonate with the Harajuku aesthetic, her playful persona diverges. Her performance uses humour, absurdity, and imperfection to convey cuteness and provide entertainment (Iseri 158), but practitioners in Harajuku do not try to replicate this performance; Shinohara and Kyary’s stage persona promotes ‘immaturity’ and ‘imperfection’ as part of their youthful teenage rebellion (Iseri 159), while kawaii fashion practitioners prefer not to be seen in this light. When considering the toys, stickers, and accessories incorporated into decora fashion, and the performances of Shinohara and Kyary, it is understandable that some outsiders may interpret the fashion as a desire to return to childhood. Some studies of kawaii fashion more broadly have interpreted the wearing of clothing like this as a resistance to adulthood and infantile regression (e.g., Kinsella 221–222; Winge; Lunning). These studies suggest that practitioners desire to remain immature in order to “undermin[e] current ideologies of gender and power” (Hasegawa 140). In particular, Kinsella in her 1995 chapter “in Japan” asserts that fashion like this is an attempt to act “vulnerable in order to emphasize … immaturity and inability to carry out social responsibilities” (241), and suggests that this regression is “self-mutilation [which denies] the existence of a wealth of insights, feelings and humour that maturity brings with it” (235). This view has spread widely in writing about kawaii fashion, and Steele, Mears, Kawamura, and Narumi observe for instance that “prolonging childhood is compelling” as an attractive component of Harajuku culture (48). While we recognise that this literature uses the concept of “childishness” to acknowledge the rebellious nature of Harajuku fashion, our participants would like to discourage this interpretation of their practice. In particular, participants highlighted their commitment to studies, paying bills, caring for family members, and other markers they felt indicated maturity and responsibility. They also found this belief that they wanted to deny themselves adult “insights, feelings and humour” deeply offensive as it disregards their lived experience and practice. From a Sociological perspective, this infantilising interpretation is concerning as it reproduces Orientalist framings of Japanese women who enjoy kawaii culture as dependent and submissive, rather than savvy consumers (Bow 66–73; Kalnay 95). Furthermore, this commentary on youth cultures globally, which points to an infantilisation of adulthood (Hayward 230), has also been interrogated by scholars as an oversimplistic reading that doesn’t recognise the rich experiences of adults who engage in these spaces while meeting milestones and responsibilities (Woodman and Wyn; Hodkinson and Bennett; Bennett). Through our lived experience and work with the decora fashion community, we offer in this essay an alternative account of what kawaii means to these practitioners. We believe that agency, energy, and vibrancy is central to the practice of decora fashion. Rather than intending to be immature, practitioners are looking for vibrant ways to exist. A New Materialist lens offers a framework with which we can consider this experience. For example, our informant Momota, in rejecting the view that her fashion was about returning to childhood, explained that decora fashion was “rejuvenating” because it gave them “energy and power”. Elizabeth Groscz in her essay on freedom in New Materialism encourages us to consider new ways of living, not as a

Fast discusses, from a phenomenological perspective, some thoughts on how we can understand the entrepreneur as being and how he or she is situated in his or her everyday life. The focus on Being means to understand the process of the entrepreneurs’ defining of and acting in his or her Lifeworld. What is involved in the being, and how the entrepreneur is situated, is seen in the experiences of the entrepreneur and his or her project. The author maintains that this is a discussion of consciousness and the dialectical process in thinking and acting in everyday life. Viewing dialectics of everyday life as important issues in the being, Fast concludes by suggesting employing contradictions as part of everyday life to understand the movement of entrepreneur project and eventually the entrepreneur himself or herself.

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’.

The 2015 Elementary History Curriculum is defined by ‘the restructuring of content surrounding the key concepts’, ‘topic-oriented integrated composition’, ‘topic-based composition centered around historical figures and cultural history’, and ‘the distributed arrangement of prehistoric age and contemporary history’. However, the researchers of history education went further to highlight the key concepts in which the academic structure and essence of the subject are not disclosed. They also identified the mechanical association lacking contextuality, the emphasis on national history and the reduction of life history, and the application of the expanding environmental approach to the history field, as issues associated with the 2015 Elementary History Curriculum. This study would examine the responses of students and teachers concerning the difficulties raised with regards to the 2015 Elementary History Curriculum by the department of history education. As a result of interviews conducted among teachers and students, most teachers acknowledged that the key concepts of the elementary history curriculum, only include concrete historical facts. They indicated that the amount of learning had increased excessively, and knowledgeoriented history classes were provided. The teachers agreed on the use of the integrated approach in social studies, in addition to the purpose and direction of local history education for third and fourth grade students. Even so, they encountered various obstacles in preparing an appropriate teaching method. There was found to be a considerable number of teachers who agreed that history education should promote national identity, as well as those concerned about the problems caused by instilling patriotism through history education. The third graders could easily understand the prehistoric age through stories; however, no meaningful learning took place concerning the evolution of tools without historical context. As the fourth graders had recently encountered Korean history from various paths, they found national history to be more interesting than local history. The fifth graders did not understand the actions of historical figures in the context. They had difficulties in learning about cultural properties, since the terms were unfamiliar, and they did not encounter them often in their everyday lives. The sixth graders had a strong tendency to think of history as a subject that needed to be memorized and did not understand the flow of Korean history accurately. This kind of perspective toward history can be attributed to the ill-considered revision of the curriculum. Lastly, this study has the following proposals for elementary school history education: First, it is necessary to change the current curriculum, which requires students to memorize knowledge to one that creates opportunities for historical inquiry. Secondly, elementary school history classes should be a venue for students to experience and learn about history in a vivid and captivating manner. Thirdly, it is necessary to pay more attention to life history. Empty history education, which does not represent the dynamic lives of people, is a significant obstacle to students’ acceptance of meaningful history.

Dealing with and taking risks are central issues of current societies which had been characterised by heightened debates and conflicts about risk (Beck, Giddens). Even though there is good knowledge available, policies and strategies to reduce people’s risk-taking are often less successful than expected. Experts are puzzled about common people not following good advice presuming people’s lack of understanding. While this might be true in many cases a growing body of research shows, rather than being merely ignorant or misinformed, people often have good knowledge when taking risks. A growing body of research provides knowledge about the complexities, dynamics and contradictions of people’s risk-taking. However, there have been little attempts to systematise this body of knowledge. This article contributes to such an enterprise. It suggests distinguishing between different motives for risk-taking, different levels of control and a number of ways how reflexivity about risk is rooted in the social realm. It also explores how risk-taking is part of developing and protecting a valued identity. The article concludes, across different domains there is good evidence for how structural and cultural forces combine and shape risk-taking while people take risks to develop a valued identity and to protect it. Advancing expert’s understanding of risk-taking and change people’s risk-taking require considering and approaching the larger social contexts and individual risk practices in everyday life.