Critical Theoretical Approaches Research Articles

Datification of the wisdom of the crowd: a comparative analysis of innovation strategies in four European crowdfunding platforms

Crowdfunding is a business model where diverse stakeholders operate in a context considered an example of innovation in value co-creation. Based on literature about service ecosystems and value co-creation this study adopts the platformization of society as critical theoretical approach and analytical framework to study the relations between human and technological agents within four crowdfunding ecosystems in Europe. Conceiving Crowdfunding Service Providers (CSPs) as specialized organizations, regulated to operate multi-sided markets and to serve roles as ecosystems’ coordinators, we aim to identify the innovation strategies adopted by CSPs platforms from Italy, France, Spain and Portugal to support their core functions related to governance mechanisms, business models and infrastructural components. To understand the motives for innovation implementation and to compare the competitive adaptation from an ecosystemic perspective, we triangulate qualitative data from multiple sources to explain how and why these strategic choices affect the dynamics of value co-creation. The multiple cases-study systematizes and discusses similarities and differences, particularly as concerns the capacity of CFPs to orchestrate their governance and ICT components to innovate and take advantage of algorithms and AI implementation, collecting more data and money from user interactions. Conclusions highlight the non-neutrality of CSPs, which act as data analysts and translators, adopting more preventive, proactive or reactive strategies of usage and redistribution of the value, created, acquired and aggregated through data. Each CSP can be characterized by its infrastructure and data management approach, metaphorically being more eco-centred or ego-centred.

From Policy to Practice: Interpreting Polish Strategic Culture Amidst the Russian Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

This research analyses the key components of the Polish strategic culture, mainly the national historical memory of previous relations with Russia, the role of NATO in Poland’s security and defence, the country’s objective to become a leading power in the Central and Eastern European, and the concept of strategic culture can become an additional explanatory determinant of Poland’s response to the Russian full-scale aggression against Ukraine. The case study considered Poland’s immediate firm and sweeping support of Ukraine in the first year of the Russian full-scale aggression.
 This article aims to understand essential determinants in modern Polish foreign and security policy and how they played out during the Russian war against Ukraine. The paper applies the strategic culture as an example of the critical theoretical approach to explain how historically-based context and specific national identical features influence decision-making in present times. The study used a systemic review of related literature, media coverage of the latest Russian war against Ukraine developments, and deductive analysis methods.
 The central assumption is that the concept of strategic culture becomes a crucial explanatory factor in understanding policy- and decision-making processes in the field of foreign and security policy. The main conclusions of the paper are that Poland’s response and reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a continuation of the long-lasting policy maintained by Poland regarding the elimination of military and hybrid threats posed by Russia, reduction of Russian influence in Europe, development of the Eastern European region and strengthening relations with its staunch ally – the US.

Can mandatory work in activation programmes be meaningful work?

Quantitative well-being studies have shown that welfare recipients performing work activities in activation programmes report relatively high levels of well-being. This article asks how these findings can be explained, given welfare recipients’ constrained autonomy. To answer this question a qualitative study was conducted in the Netherlands to explore the interaction between welfare recipients’ constrained autonomy and how they experience work in Mandatory Work Programmes. This article uses concepts from critical theoretical approaches to meaningful work and autonomy to analyze the data. The findings show how the restrained autonomy of programme impacted the participants’ work experiences in various, sometimes contradictory ways. It is concluded, among other things, that quantitative well-being research does not seem to fully capture people's experiences as having the status of a welfare recipient and, related to that, what it means for them when their autonomy is constrained in one or more dimensions. It is also recommended that future quantitative well-being studies clearly distinguish between types of activation programmes, particularly regarding their mandatory nature, their goals and their target groups.

Modernity, mobility, and acceleration: cycling as the blind spot in Swedish transport innovation

ABSTRACT As climate ambitions have increased, questions regarding the sustainability of transport systems have been placed on the transport innovation agenda. Yet the relationship between economic competitiveness and sustainability agendas in national innovation policy is an uneven one. We aim to unpack this relationship by analysing the position of cycling in Swedish innovation policy, focusing on the funding of projects within the field of sustainable mobility. We apply a critical theoretical approach and build on Hartmut Rosa’s critical work on modernity and acceleration, Sheller and Urry’s theories on mobilities – including contributions from followers to this field – and critical innovation studies. The result of our analysis for cycling is threefold. First, the conceptualisation of ‘progress’ does not help to place cycling high on the innovation agenda. Second, the bicycle and cycling have difficulties appearing as ‘new’, in contrast to the car and driving. Third, the unreflexivity regarding automation, digitisation, and sharing prevents taking account of negative effects on cycling and obstructs a fundamental questioning of automobility. In our conclusion, we propose a different view of progress, of which the current interpretation seems to be preventing innovation policy from having a stronger sustainability agenda. An alternative interpretation of progress logically also questions the role and primacy of technological novelties.

Somnath Mandir in a play of mirrors: heritage, history, and the search for identity of the new nation (1842–1951)

AbstractThe story of the Somnath temple, in the northwestern Saurashtra peninsula, has often been taken as an example of the contentious legacies of the penetration, settlement, and political establishment of Muslims in India. Its history testifies to the complex relationship between history, heritage, and the consolidation of collective memories of past events and processes.This article focuses on two key moments in the temple's recent history: the retrieval of the Somnath gates by Lord Ellenborough in 1842 and the reconstruction of the temple between 1947 and 1951. At these two moments—one during colonial times and the other at the creation of the independent state—Somnath became the battlefield for questioning how the state should be positioned with regard to religious places, histories, symbols, and practices.While the temple was apparently dealt with as a tangible place of heritage, both episodes show how the value endowed upon the temple had far more complex meanings. The analysis proposed in this article ends with the reconstruction of the temple. This shows the way in which architects of independent India addressed the country's history, directly or indirectly engaging with the construction of a heritage for the new state. Their efforts aimed to strengthen a shared memory of the past, which could in turn consolidate membership and a sense of belonging to the new nation. Advocates and promoters of the temple's reconstruction, among whom were Vallabhbhai Patel and K. M. Munshi, envisioned that the reconstruction would embody the long-awaited liberation of India from centuries of continuous domination by ‘foreign’ powers. In contrast, secular politicians, with Nehru at the helm, opposed the reconstruction, fearing that Somnath might become the symbol of a sectarian vision of the nation and, in the wake of partition, derail efforts to characterise independent India as an inclusive country. While the reconstruction did eventually take place, the entire episode invites us to question the relationship between the framing of Indian nationalism and the heritagisation of Indian history. Following a critical theoretical approach to Heritage studies, where heritage has less to do with the item that is preserved than with the value with which it is endowed, this article proposes to investigate the meanings that heritage preservation, conservation, and reconstruction acquired as part of the project of nation- and state-building.

Teaching Homelessness: How American Community College Faculty Approach Housing Insecurity as a Curricular Topic

Community college students are more likely than their peers in four-year colleges to experience homelessness or housing instability. At the same time, homelessness is a curricular topic, particularly in social science courses. Given the prevalence of homelessness and housing instability in the community college student population, likely worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent and ongoing economic crisis, this project sought to discover how community college faculty approach homelessness and housing instability as a curricular topic, including their theoretical and praxis perspectives, and the integration of students’ lived experience into their instruction. Fourteen faculty from a variety of disciplines participated in interviews, revealing that homelessness is most often used a way for students to explore foundational theories in sociology. Participants problematized their teaching around homelessness, particularly their service-learning activities, and described the importance of care and safety when discussing housing with students they recognized could have lived experience with homelessness. Future research should explore students’ experiences in classes where homelessness is a curricular topic, and how more critical theoretical approaches may be beneficial.

Global development and urban studies: tactics for thinking beyond the North–South binary

Recent calls to shift from an “international” to a “global” development paradigm have sought to challenge global North–South binaries. This has provoked lively debate, with criticisms focusing on two issues: the empirical question of North–South convergence since 1990, and the political-theoretical basis of the proposed paradigm. In response, this paper draws on innovations in postcolonial and comparative urban studies to propose three “tactics” for thinking globally about development: thinking from the South to understand the North; comparing across difference; and exploring transnational flows, circuits and relationships. These tactics demonstrate how it is possible to disrupt geographical binaries while also addressing the two major criticisms of the global development approach. First, they demonstrate that establishing convergence is not a prerequisite to thinking about development across the global North–South distinction. Second, they are informed by critical theoretical approaches that animate a deep commitment to transforming the structural causes of inequalities globally.

A Scoping Review of Theoretical Lenses and Methodological Approaches in Indigenous Women's Health and Well-Being Research in North America over the Past Two Decades.

Theoretical approaches influence research design, engagement, and outcomes. The relevance of critical theoretical and methodological approaches to Indigenous women's health and well-being research has increased in the last decade. It is difficult to assess the ways in which theoretical lenses can effectively interrupt and challenge systemic erasure, ongoing harms, and deficit-based (ill-health-centered) approaches to Indigenous women's health and well-being, a fact that is not broadly acknowledged. We conducted a scoping review to (a) map the type and frequency of critical theoretical lenses used by researchers focused on Indigenous women's health and well-being in North America over the past two decades and (b) identify which topics tend to use which theoretical lens. We have conducted a scoping review to examine peer-reviewed articles from eight electronic databases. In the articles selected over 2000-2021, we found an increase in the use of community-based participatory research, decolonial lenses, and feminist lenses. Over the last decade, there has been a decrease in quantitative social science approaches. While a range of critical theoretical and methodological approaches are increasingly being applied, the use of cultural resurgence and Indigenous feminism in health research is not widespread.

New Vistas on Responsible Learning Analytics

The focus of ethics in learning analytics (LA) frameworks and guidelines is predominantly on procedural elements of data management and accountability. Another, less represented focus is on the duty to act and LA as a moral practice. Data feminism as a critical theoretical approach to data science practices may offer LA research and practitioners a valuable lens through which to consider LA as a moral practice. This paper examines what data feminism can offer the LA community. It identifies critical questions for further developing and enabling a responsible stance in LA research and practice taking one particular case — algorithmic decision-making — as a point of departure.

Young and/but successful: business graduates performing themselves as valuable labouring subjects

ABSTRACT This article advances critical theoretical and methodological approaches to employability. From the perspectives of neoliberal governmentality and positioning analysis, we investigate graduate employability as a process of creating value for the self in the labour markets. The study analyses how young Finnish business graduates (n = 19) who work in business organisations perform themselves as valuable labouring subjects in their interviews. Based on our analysis, we develop an argument that being a young business professional is simultaneously presented as a problem and a virtue in terms of a valuable labouring subject. The analysis shows that graduates cultivate themselves as easily employable, mature job seekers and successful young employees equipped with personal social skills, enthusiasm and youthful energy and drive. They draw on the neoliberal discourse of employability to negotiate issues identified as problematic – their young age and lack of work experience – in terms of their value. Their performances of the self are thus purposeful responses to the contextual expectations and pressures they encounter while competing for jobs and striving to gain recognition as novice professionals in organisations. The study reveals that graduates’ whole subjectivity is at the core of the process of value creation in contemporary labour markets.

Critical Understanding of English Learners: Experience and Practice of Educators in a Professional Development Course

AbstractStudies over the years emphasize the need to foster critical cultural awareness among teachers in U.S. classrooms. Using a critical theoretical approach, we examined the critical cultural awareness of practicing teachers and educators' experiences with English Learners (ELs) and their preparedness to meet the needs of ELs through actionable plans from a professional development (PD) module. We argue that PD courses on critical theoretical perspectives on ELs are essential not just for EL professionals but for all educators who work with ELs in one way or the other. Sixty‐eight educators (teachers and school directors) in a midwestern community participated in the PD modular course, where they were exposed to various critical theories. The data include discussion responses and educators' critical theoretical reflections on ELs. In this article, we iterate the need to include critical theoretical EL education in teacher training preparation and professional development programs to support pre‐service teachers, in‐service teachers, and principals. The findings show that the impact of such critical awareness transforms teachers' and educators' perceptions about their respective roles in effectively educating ELs.

Transformative family scholarship: Introduction to the special issue

AbstractThis introductory essay situates this special issue within the context of antiracism and social justice for family scholars. The editors underscore the political and social context that led the National Council on Family Relations' three flagship journals—Journal of Family Theory & Review (JFTR), Family Relations (FR), and Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) to collectively invite submissions for separate special issues on Transformative Family Scholarship: Theory, Practice, and Research at the Intersection of Families, Race, and Social Justice. This special issue focuses on scholarship using cutting‐edge theory, research, and practices to investigate racial injustice and confront white supremacy within the context of the family. The guest editors synthesize the dominant themes cross‐cutting the 13 articles, including parenting, racial stratification, health and economic well‐being, and racial identity. The guest editors explain how these articles contribute to a more robust analysis of structural racism within families. The introduction closes with an invitation to scholars doing scholarship using critical theoretical approaches to continue their efforts and consider the Journal of Marriage and Family as a potential publication outlet for their research.

Colonialism, Context and Critical Thinking: First Steps Toward Decolonizing the Dutch Legal Curriculum

In the summer of 2020, tens of thousands of people took to streets and squares around the Netherlands under the banner of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Many speakers called for Dutch institutions to ‘decolonize’ by reckoning with their own colonial history and racialized legacies. Addressing institutional racism at universities should be a multi-layered process. Recruitment and admission of students, curriculum design, hiring of academic staff, retention, promotion and teaching practices should all be considered. Those of us teaching at Dutch law schools, however, do not have to wait; by incorporating critical theoretical approaches and existing historical research on race and colonialism, Dutch law school teachers can begin to address structural racism and colonial legacies as soon as the next teaching term. This article gives concrete examples of where and how to begin.

Placing intersectional inequalities in health.

Research into geographical inequalities in health has focused almost exclusively on examining the effects of area-level deprivation and has been largely framed through a compositional-contextual lens, their inter-relationship and the influence of vertical macro-economic and political/policy drivers. However, in the broader health inequalities field, intersectionality has recently emerged as a critical theoretical and methodical approach which examines the concurrent and interacting influences on health of multiple axes of inequality (such as socio-economic status, gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality or gender-identity). Simultaneously, social geography has been explicitly using intersectionality to analyse how mutually constitutive forms of social oppression interact and interrelate with place. This paper exploits the analytical space opened up by this 'intersectional turn' by outlining the benefits for research into geographical inequalities in health that can be achieved by taking a more explicit approach to intersectional inequalities. It argues that: (1) geographical research into health inequalities should more explicitly and widely apply an intersectional lens; and relatedly that, in turn, (2) place needs to be considered as an aspect of intersectionality and integrated into the wider intersectional inequalities in health literature. The paper summarises the evolution of theories of place and health inequalities and outlines intersectional theory and the work to date that has been undertaken to integrate this perspective into our understanding of health inequalities. Drawing on the social geography literature into place and intersectionality, the paper explores how this perspective is being used to enhance our understanding of place effects more generally - and how place itself can be considered as an element of intersectional inequalities. Drawing these different bodies of work together, the paper concludes by considering the implications for theories of geographical inequalities in health.

Environmental health: the profession of recyclable material collector with a critical theoretical study approach

Resumo Sabendo que a Epistemologia é o estudo da ciência com implicações sobre as teorias do conhecimento, este artigo não pretende entrar em seu mérito puramente conceitual, mas conjeturar e apresentar os caminhos da ciência, a partir de uma abordagem crítica em torno da Saúde Ambiental, com suas repercussões na profissão de catador. Na tentativa de transcrever os caminhos da ciência com relação ao tema proposto, este estudo tem como objetivo relacionar a problemática dos resíduos sólidos urbanos com a profissão de catador de materiais recicláveis, focando na saúde ambiental e no uso da abordagem do estudo teórico crítico através de uma revisão da literatura. Entende-se que é necessário questionar os caminhos que levam a profissão de catador de materiais recicláveis a não ser protagonista das possíveis soluções do acúmulo dos resíduos sólidos urbanos, proporcionando o enfrentamento das questões econômicas, políticas e tecnológicas pouco eficazes.

When the Medium Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture by Jenna Supp-Montgomerie (review).

Reviewed by: When the Medium Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture by Jenna Supp-Montgomerie Timothy H. B. Stoneman (bio) When the Medium Was the Mission: The Atlantic Telegraph and the Religious Origins of Network Culture By Jenna Supp-Montgomerie. New York: New York University Press, 2021. Pp. 312. The tale of the Atlantic telegraph (1858–66) has been told many times (Gordon, A Thread across the Ocean, 2002, Muller, Wiring the World, 2016). The reader need not worry, however, since the title of the current treatment is slightly misleading. The book only tangentially covers the history of the Atlantic telegraph and the electromagnetic telegraph. And it does not concern the missionary or religious usage of the transatlantic cable in any traditional sense. The author, a religious and communications studies scholar at the [End Page 300] University of Iowa, uses her study on the attempt to create the world's first undersea cable connection to pose a larger and arguably more important question. How did the Atlantic telegraph succeed so remarkably in the popular American imagination despite its marked early technical failures? And why did the telegraph experience become the template for how we think about all subsequent networked communication technologies, including the contemporary internet? To answer the question, Supp-Montgomerie forays into new ground by connecting the history of technology with the history of American religion and a range of critical theoretical approaches. For the author, the initial technical failure to lay the Atlantic telegraph was fundamental to its success. The unreliability of the underwater cable, which operated briefly for twenty-three days, prompted American popular imagination of a utopian global community united through communication technology. "Infrastructural religion" in the form of public Protestantism in the United States provided critical resources that proved essential for creating social imaginaries of communication through connection. The early failure of the 1858 Atlantic telegraph cable created a formative and durable template, and as a result, "we broadly define networks as systems of connection." The chapters of When the Medium Was the Mission cover an array of topics that follow the discursive components of the author's argument (rather than chronology). The book begins by recounting the story of the Ottoman telegraph, emphasizing the role of Baptist missionaries, from initial efforts in 1847 to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1919 (ch. 1). Then it considers nineteenth-century alternatives to the electromagnetic telegraph, including the optical, spiritual, grapevine, and teaching telegraphs (ch. 2). A case study of the Oneida Community (1848–81) in upstate New York follows as a stand-in for U.S. religious utopianism around the telegraph (ch. 3). More abstract is the following chapter, which applies structural and post-structural theories of communication to analyze the content of the 1858 cable (ch. 4). An epilogue suggests the continued influence of religious motifs, "protestant dreams for the telegraph," in imaginaries of the internet and social media technology today (p. 32). Readers of Technology and Culture will find this work a frustrating read at times. It draws heavily on media and cultural theory and resorts all too often to seemingly jargonistic language. The author's argument focuses exclusively on a narrow, unrepresentative time period (1858–66) in the history of the Atlantic telegraph characterized by endemic difficulty and prior to longer-term stabilization. Supp-Montgomerie brings no new major archival research to light and relatively little primary evidence, relying on discourse analysis and the forceful elaboration of her conceptual argument to make her central case. In the end, she fails to demonstrate exactly how or why "fractures and failures" are foundational to both nineteenth-century communication-based globalization and network logic more generally. [End Page 301] Nonetheless, When the Medium Was the Mission well warrants the effort to wade through its theory-driven waters. The book serves as a useful introduction to contemporary critical cultural scholarship on media and communication as well as major media scholars. The author shows an adept familiarity with several subfields in the history of technology, while her "infrastructural approach to network media" develops the intersection between media studies scholarship and STS/history of technology (p. 27). Supp-Montgomerie makes...

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOYMENT REGULATION

The article considers the problems of employment in the theoretical and methodological context. Under current conditions, the interpretation of the labor market's essence, methods, reasons, and characteristics are worked out and given. The central state levers of employment regulation are noted. The peculiarities of the theoretical and methodological approach to employment regulation are specified, where the leading place belongs to legal, organizational and managerial, economic, socially-oriented, analytical, negotiable, innovative, and popularizing. The role of the state in the process of regulating employment, which performs a distributive function (providing tax benefits to enterprises, taxation of the wage fund), macroeconomic, which consists in increasing labor supply and limiting the adverse defects of the economic system (inflation, unemployment, economic downturn), stimulating function, which allows to revive innovation and investment activity and affects the whole market situation (employment promotion, public investment, subsidies, grants, subventions, and subsidies). Special attention in the article is paid to synthesizing existing works of scientists and researchers on the generalization of the critical theoretical and methodological approaches to the essential understanding of employment. Further scientific interpretation was given to legal, organizational, and managerial methods, economic, socially-oriented, analytical, favorable, innovative, and polarization. A certain consonance of theoretical and methodological principles of employment with the peculiarities of regional development of socio-economic processes is proved. Therefore, when developing a strategy to increase employment in the region, one should consider the existing proportions between workers and employers, staff turnover, labor supply, placement of labor resources, etc. Measures are proposed that are designed not only to regulate employment processes in the theoretical sense but also to increase economic activity, solving the problem of accommodation and rational use, taking into account the specifics of a particularly territorial and regional grouping. Methods of regulation of direct and indirect action are offered. The conclusions of the conducted theoretical research are concretized. Keywords: employment, labor market, macroeconomic factors, state regulation, full employment.

Social Research about Online Crime: Global Range of Topics and a Systematic Analysis of Research in Lithuania

Social research about online crime is a multi-disciplinary field addressing a wide array of topics since its inception in the 1980s. Based on a broad review of state-of-the-art literature and gaps identified in review publications (Holt, Bossler 2014; Stratton, Powell, Cameron 2017; Maimon, Louderback 2019, and others), in this paper I outline 41 key topic in social research about online crime, classified into four broad categories: 1) research focusing on specific types of online crime, 2) research about perpetrators, victims, and law enforcement, 3) research about online crime discourses and public perceptions, 4) research putting the local and global specifics of online crime into perspective. Based on the topic map, I undertook a systematic review of literature on research about online crime published in Lithuania from the empirical social scientific perspective. The results show that very few such studies are carried out in Lithuania. From 2004 to 2020, 26 publications have been found in total. 10 of them were theoretical briefs, while 16 were based on empirical data. Out of the 41 key topic, 14 were covered in the publications, while 29 or roughly two thirds remained unaddressed. The dominant contributors were legal scholars writing about the social aspects of online crime across a variety of topics, and mostly focusing on specific crime types. The most developed topic was cyberbullying, with contributions by scholars mostly from the fields of psychology and education. To fill in these glaring gaps, it is vital to develop this field of research with an emphasis on both wider and deeper research agendas, complex, valid and reliable research data and critical theoretical approaches, inviting systematic contributions from criminology, sociology, communication and media studies, and political science.

‘For better or for worse, there is history, there is the book and then there's the movie’: Foregrounding and Marginalizing African American Women in the Film Hidden Figures (2016)

This paper critically examines the representation of gender and race in the biographical drama film Hidden Figures (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi. The film is based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s nonfiction book of the same title, which spotlights previously hidden figures in US history: the black female mathematicians who worked in the early US space program. The movie was released to critical acclaim and embraced by audiences as empowering African American girls. At the same time, the film was criticized for including a ‘white savior’ scene in which the black female protagonists are marginalized.
 After providing background information on Shetterly’s book and the film’s critical reception, this paper conducts a close formal analysis of a pivotal sequence in the film, which is compared to the events told in the nonfiction book. To shed light on the power structures that the film sequence projects, the results of this analysis are, subsequently, related to critical theoretical approaches to Hollywood cinema, as well as to Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies.’ In conclusion, we argue that Hollywood filmmakers’ expectations about the desires of ‘mainstream’ audiences work to perpetuate the repression of previously repressed herstory on the ‘silver screen.’

Nomadic Identities in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… and Anna Karenina

This paper examines through Rosi Braidotti’s theory of nomadism two of Marina Carr’s most outstanding female dramatic characters, Hester Swane and Anna Karenina. This critical theoretical approach argues that these nomadic female identities are structurally opposed to fixity. By averting the normative versions of themselves and by engaging in the dynamics of power relations they free themselves from the constraints of phallogocentrism in their different contexts. Hester Swane and Anna Karenina, despite their very different social backgrounds, share the commonality of being nomadic representations. The dramatic works By the Bog of Cats (2004) and the stage adaptation Anna Karenina (2016) display an array of female characters which conform to social norms. This paper argues that unlike these female characters, Anna and Hester are transgressive women; they are ruthless nomadic female fighters and cannot be considered victims of the social constraints that attempt to define them as sub-beings. The paper further concludes that although their deaths at the end of each play are inescapable, their voluntary suicide eludes them to a freer ontological existence.