Dimensions Of Intimacy Research Articles

Collecting traces of the outside world: an alternative collective memory of the lockdown

ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 lockdown, cultural heritage institutions responded promptly to this difficult time by launching a series of digital collections of traces of this historical moment. Due to the limitations of the lockdown, such collections have generally focused on the intimate dimension of the pandemic, representing represented the outside world (streets, shops, cultural venues, etc.) as a site of emptiness. This paper examines the ‘Windows in lockdown’ initiative, which aimed to collect photographs of the messages displayed in physical locations during the lockdown period. The collection was carried out through an action research approach based on a participatory platform and social media. A collection of 1,224 photos taken in France between March and May 2020 was built. This paper analyses this collection through a social semiotics approach. The analysis highlights the role played by the outside world as a generator of an alternative collective memory during COVID-19.

‘Horrible Enough to Stir a Man's Soul’: Enslaved Men, Emotions, and Heterosexual Intimacy in the Antebellum U.S. South

ABSTRACT This article analyses enslaved men's emotive responses to slavery's sexual economy in the antebellum U.S. South. It joins the growing historical literature on everyday forms of resistance and refusal, shedding light on the intimate dimensions of enslaved men's resistance. Using the framework of ‘emotional regimes’, this article shows that enslaved men strategically dissembled within, evaded, and defied slavery's culture of paternalism and strict emotional regime. It argues that enslaved men desired, sought, and valued strong intimate and affective relationships as an everyday life-affirming practice. While slavery's sexual economy routinely undermined enslaved romantic unions and emotional bonding, enslaved men typically showed their strength through vulnerability, emotional resilience, and emotional caretaking in intimate relationships.

The intimate life of criminalization. Affective governance in contentious migrant solidarity

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes the affective and intimate dimensions of the criminalization of solidarity towards migrants. The core argument is that the criminalization of solidarity is a form of governance that acts through affectivity. It is mainly a way of containing migration by trying to govern the emotions of citizens, fostering feelings of hostility and fear while discouraging feelings of solidarity and empathy. The data that will be discussed comes from broader ethnographic research, investigating the affective transformations in solidarity networks supporting migrants. Data collection took place between 2020 and 2021 in Turin and Florence, Italy. It will be shown how, in the everyday life of supporters, the most pervasive forms of criminalization do not come from political discourse, but rather from the people to whom they are most attached (friends, partners, siblings, parents, etc.). This is the intimacy of criminalization. The situated, vernacular, and more socio-psychologically painful form of criminalization.

A phenomenological ecology of personalisation as a dimension of intimacy in the public interior

Cet article assemble la phénoménologie et l’écologie pour présenter des paradigmes épistémologiques perceptifs et interrelationnels dans l’étude des mécanismes par lesquels la personnalisation peut contribuer à la capacité des visiteurs à développer des connexions émotionnelles positives et même profondément ressenties avec l’environnement de l’intérieur public. Cette conception de l’expérience environnementale est appelée intimité, présentée ici comme la dimension émotionnelle de la personnalisation. Elle est explorée à travers l’étude des conditions environnementales dans l’intérieur public afin de corréler les expériences individuelles et collectives. Ainsi, tout en soutenant le fondement phénoménologique de la perception, qui réunit le corps, l’esprit et le monde à travers des expériences incarnées, cet article préconise également une perspective écologique pour rendre compte du caractère interrelationnel des expériences vécues.

A Glance at the Efficiency of Marital Sexual Intimacy Interventions: The Different Outcomes on Couples and Women

Marital sexual intimacy (MSI), as one of the dimensions of intimacy, may decrease during the couple's life which could be a major concern for both families and psychologists. This study aimed to categorize and classify the research articles focused on the impact of interventional programs on MSI improvement. This systematic review and meta-analysis were performed on published articles reporting interventions on MSI, which focused on couples or women of reproductive age in PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, SID, and Magiran databases till March 2022. Mean differences (MDs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Further, the heterogeneity between studies and the quality of evidence was assessed using the I 2 statistic and the Cochrane risk of bias tool, respectively. This review collected 43 articles with 2,001 participants. Findings were classified into three categories: Education/Communication skills, Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), and Emotional therapy. The interventions for both couples (MD: 3.31, 95% CI = 2.62 to 4.00, I 2 = 95.3%, p = .0001) and women (MD: 3.58, 95% CI = 2.80 to 4.35, I 2 = 89.4%, p = .0001) had significant impact on improving sexual intimacy with more effect on women. The CBT had a more significant effect size on couples than women's MSI. All interventions have a large effect on both couples’ and women's MSI. However, because of the high heterogeneity of the findings and inadequacy of the studies in some subgroups, and the existence of uncertainty about MSI's true effect, further well-designed interventions are required to determine the long-term effects of MSI improvement programs.

Living with fragile infrastructure: The gendered labour of preventing, responding to and being impacted by sanitation failures

While infrastructure is often understood to operate ‘in the background’, scholars have increasingly attended to the labour that enables urban material flows. Drawing on empirical material collected through fieldwork and document analysis in Lilongwe, this paper explores how different residents of the city experience and respond to the regular failures of infrastructure. We examine sanitation in one middle- and two low-income areas, considering the contamination of drinking water and the collapse of latrines. Attending to the gendered, embodied, affective, and intimate dimensions of maintenance and repair labours, we develop three interrelated arguments. First, we frame incidents of failure not as individual accidents but as part of persistently fragile infrastructures. Second, we contribute to extending the gaze of infrastructural labours beyond manual work and ‘expert’ knowledge to consider a range of unpaid practices and their role in preventing, responding to, and being impacted by failure. Finally, we show that both the labour and impacts of infrastructural failure disproportionally fall on (low-income) women. Emphasising the ongoing, gendered struggles of keeping sanitation infrastructures functional helps us to see the limits of scholarship that centres clearly identifiable jobs associated with infrastructure’s construction, maintenance and repair. We conclude with reflections on the implications of these arguments for our understanding of the knowledges and labours that keep infrastructures working, and the conditions in which these are performed.

The Concept of De-Radicalization as a Source of Confusion

The theme of the relationship between religious freedom and security has, over the last twenty years, acquired such centrality that hitherto unknown or little-used concepts have entered the public and specialized debates. Prominent among these is regarding the most concrete and important long-term public intervention in the fight against extremism on a religious matrix, i.e., de-radicalization, often simplistically understood as the opposite, or reverse, of a radicalization process. The activity of de-radicalization, therefore, must first be defined in its theoretical sense to grasp its real meaning and objectives; then, it is necessary to identify its content in practice, trying to understand its founding themes and limits. The risk of such a public intervention is interfering with the deepest sphere of the individual, with his or her religiosity and intentions, overstepping the limits derived from the different types of secularism (as Italian laicità or French laïcité) that characterize the State, requiring it to consider individual conscience as impassable territory. On the other hand, ignoring the intimate dimension of the subject can lead to complete ineffectiveness of a de-radicalization activity, which thus risks being reduced to a mere illustration of content. This contribution, starting from these difficulties, intends to outline, from a juridical perspective and specifically from a law and religion perspective, a hypothesis for a public de-radicalization strategy, capable of achieving concrete results but simultaneously respectful of the constitutional principles in which it is necessarily embedded, focused on the concept of responsibility.

The self-work of planetary justice

ABSTRACT A necessary part of planetary justice is self-work, restoring or forming our being truthful, consistent, dependable, and accountable people. Planetary justice – so far typically associated with vast, geological scales of space and time – involves an intimate dimension, too. We can work on it wherever we are. Moreover, self-work and planetary justice intertwine historically and conceptually. The historical context for self-work involves the histories of violence that led to the breakthrough of the planetary as a category of thought about justice. Facing this, the essay notes areas for further reflection, study, and action.

Mapping Intimate Geographies of Grief and Loss

Cartography has been pivotal in making visible the number of people who die in the context of migration. In this article, the author explores the potential of mapping to study and develop another dimension of the geography of death within exile: the more intimate dimensions of post-mortem geographies as experienced by those who survive a loved one. Inspired by Avril Maddrell’s call for developing new cartographic representations to share difficult emotions and memories associated with death, the author mobilized two alternative mapping practices—inductive visualization and sensibility mapping—to chart the emotional and intimate geographies embedded in the stories of two migrants who lost a close friend with whom they lived while in exile. The mapping process that led the author to represent these intimate post-mortem geographies brought me to reflect on the importance of developing alternative cartographic forms of expression that focus on the experiential and the emotional, rather than on the factual and the measurable. By steering this cartographic shift away from the fact of death as the end of a journey to death as a lingering event in the life of those who survive, the author proposes a cartography of grief and mourning that aims to contribute to individual and collective remembering.

Archiving Black Diasporas

Archiving Black Diasporas

Proximity and Retail Loyalty: Mediation of Time Convenience

The success of convenience stores is not only the proximity factor but also time, especially for postmodern individuals who are characterized by the need for speed and social interaction. Research linking proximity and time is still very limited, while the two variables are closely related to shopping activities. This study aims to examine the relationships between both material and immaterial proximity to retail loyalty; and the mediating role of time management and time saving (time convenience). This study used quantitative methods by means of PLS, where a total of 150 responses were collected from minimarket consumers in residential areas in Indonesia using a purposive sampling method. The results show that access, functional and social proximities affect time management, while time saving factors are only functional and relational proximities. Both time management and time saving have a positive relationship with loyalty. The mediation test found that time management mediates the effects of access, functional and social proximities on loyalty. Meanwhile, time saving mediates the effects of functional and relational proximities on loyalty. This finding mainly fills a gap in research that is still limited in linking the immaterial dimensions of intimacy and customer loyalty. This research enriches the concept of location for the service industry, especially retailers and provides practical implications in store operational management.

Comparing the Dimensions of Marital Intimacy, Commitment, and Satisfaction in Couples With and Without Pre-Marriage Counseling Experience

Aim: The purpose of this study was to compare the dimensions of intimacy, commitment, and marital satisfaction in couples with and without pre-marrital counseling. Methods: The present study is a causal-comparative study, and the statistical population includes two groups of married people in Tehran between 2018-2019, one of which had experienced premarital counseling while the other group did not have this experience. The sample consisted of two groups of married people using available and convenient sampling method which consisted of total of 60 couples. Three questionnaires of intimacy, commitment and marital satisfaction were applied. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics indices and the mixed variance analysis method using SPSS software. Results: Findings showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups regarding the dimensions of marital intimacy in the dimension of psychological intimacy. And comparing the dimensions of marital commitment in the two groups showed that there is a significant difference in the dimension of personal commitment. Comparison of the dimensions of marital satisfaction showed that the counseling group in the dimension of children and parenting was significantly higher than in the counseling group. Conclusion: Therefore, it seems that pre-marital counseling programs need training and interventions in order to promote intimacy, commitment, and marital satisfaction.

Canon Fodder and the Intimacy of Dialogues

Michael Burawoy’s 2021 essay, ‘Decolonizing Sociology: The Significance of W.E.B. Du Bois’, forges dialogues between the scholar denied and established theorists with the aim of reconstructing the sociological canon. My commentary situates the author’s essay and his own Du Boisian turn in a long career dedicated to reflexive science and recomposing theory. I reflect on the seemingly innocuous notion of a dialogue itself: its implications for sociological theory and practice, and how it supports decolonial efforts. Thinking with Toni Morrison, Hazel Carby, Lisa Lowe, and others, I offer a sketch of a decolonial methodology—what I call a Du Boisian shadowplay—that brings into view the intimate dimensions of imperialism. Ultimately, such a feminist methodology reconstructs dialogues that reflect on researcher standpoints and nested imperial histories; and in the face of today’s social crises, nurtures dialogues that are animated by an ethic of love.

A behavioral approach to sexual function: testing a moderation mediation model with expression of feelings, sexual self-disclosure and gender

Little is known about specific intimacy dimensions’ role in sexual function. In the current study, we aimed to gain more insight into how expression of feelings and sexual self-disclosure (a mediator) might potentially affect sexual functioning testing a theoretically based moderated mediation model, that uses gender as a moderator. A total of 661 participants, of which 211 were men (31,90%) and 450 were women (68,10%) aged 18-74 years involved in a monogamous committed relationship participated in the study. We used macro PROCESS 3.2 for IBM – SPSS to test simple mediation and moderated mediation models. The data revealed a significant overall effect of expression of feelings on sexual function, supporting that sexual self-disclosure mediates this relationship. We found that gender does not moderate either the relationship between expression of feelings and sexual self-disclosure nor the trajectory between sexual self-disclosure and sexual function. Our results highlight the importance of taking an interpersonal behavioral approach to sexual function, namely one that focuses on communication behaviors. However, these results need to be explored with clinical samples to understand their full potential for clinical interventions within a behavioral paradigm to partnered people’s sexual problems.

DESASSOSSEGO: PALAVRAS, TEMPOS E RELAÇÕES EM UM PERCURSO ETNOGRÁFICO

Abstract In dialogue with reflections by Veena Das, this article explores some dimensions present in an ethnographic journey centered on the relationship with family members of state violence victims. Words, times, and relations set up the axis around which two different research situations are elaborated. The first of them is thought of from the image of the shrapnel, a fragment that surprises and generates feelings of bewilderment towards what is unfolding. The second situation is built under the regime of conversation, allowing for reflection on different dimensions of intimacy and not-knowing that permeate a relationship of research and trust.

Conflicts over intimacy within mature, happy marriages reliance and reliability in intimate relationships: An interpretive phenomenological analysis

AbstractThis study employed interpretive phenomenological analysis to examine the lived experience of 10 middle‐aged, married couples in mature relationships who self‐identified as “happily married” as to how they manage marital conflict over closeness‐distance issues. The researcher was particularly interested in dyadic communication and meta‐communication that occurred before, during and after conflict. Open‐ended questions were used to prompt stories about times when an issue of closeness and distance created conflict in the relationship. The researcher recorded and transcribed the calls and conducted a close analysis of the stories told by the subjects. During the analysis phase, a number of themes emerged. The current article examines two salient themes: a) that a “turning point,” defined as significant crisis or event in life, contributes to the level of intimacy within the dyad; and b) this turning point led the couples to understand that they could rely solely on one another in a time of crisis, thereby increasing the level of intimacy within the relationship. Although the turning point stories were all unpleasant experiences, in every case they served to bring the couple closer together. Further research is needed, but the idea holds some promise as a factor of success/failure of marriages. The present article focuses on the evolution of mutual reliance as a relational value and perhaps as a dimension of intimacy.

Bodies as urban infrastructure: Gender, intimate infrastructures and slow infrastructural violence

Drawing from deep longitudinal and ethnographic work, this article interrogates a set of key relationships between bodies, gender and infrastructure in the context of understanding cities such as Bharatpur and Dhangadhi in Nepal as well as Delhi, India. This article seeks to make two contributions. First, utilizing feminist political geography approaches, we examine bodies as infrastructure, referring to how the social and material work of the body helps to build, develop and maintain cities through gendered infrastructures in the everyday. We show conceptualizing bodies as infrastructure reveals important and intimate dimensions of the everyday politics and social and material forms that enable critical resources to flow and integral networks be built in cities. Second, we demonstrate from our comparative case studies the ways that gendered “slow infrastructural violence” accrues through patterns of infrastructural invisibility. Particular bodies act as urban infrastructure in everyday and unremarkable ways, shaping the uneven social and political consequences of embodied infrastructural configurations. We specifically examine slow violence and informal financial infrastructure in Bharatpur and the provisioning of health in Dhangadhi followed by the exploration of slow violence and fragmented water in Delhi. This article thus raises a simultaneous call for theoretical engagement with the socio-materiality of infrastructure and the body, an increased regard for the multiplicity of urban infrastructures, and an interrogation of gender and infrastructural politics in cities where more people will be living in the future and where politics and infrastructure are being actively created.

Bodies and self-disclosure in American female confessional poetry

Far from being a mere thematic device, the body plays a crucial role in poetry, especially for modern women poets. The inward turn to an intimate autobiographical dimension, which is commonly seen as characteristic of female writing, usually complies with the requests of feminist theorists, urging writers to reconquer their identity through the assertion of their bodies. However, inscribing the body in verse is often problematic, since it frequently emerges from a complicated interaction between positive self-redefinition, life writing, and the confession of trauma. This is especially true for authors writing under the influence of the American confessional trend, whose biographies were often scarred by mental illness and self-destructive inclinations. This paper assesses the role of the body in the representation of the self in a selection of texts by American women poets—namely Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Louise Glück—where the body and its disclosure act as vehicles for a heterogeneous redefinition of the female identity.

Refusal as affective and pedagogical practice in higher education decolonization: a modest proposal

ABSTRACT The questions driving this paper are: What sort of affective (dis)investment is needed in higher education to refuse the colonial university? How can educators and students in higher education invent ‘pedagogies of refusal’ that function affectively to challenge colonial futurity? What do pedagogies of refusal look like? This paper theorizes refusal as an affective practice that produces political effects and desires that challenge normative manifestations of power and control. It is argued that refusal may constitute a fruitful avenue toward decolonization of higher education, because it directs attention to the affective (dis)investments from/in desires that can be fulfilled by the university. To this end, the paper suggests that if the aim is to disrupt the seductive workings of colonial power in its most intimate dimensions, then it is crucial to invent pedagogies that engage with the affective (dis)investments of students and educators in colonial relations.

Human-animal relationships and interactions during the Covid-19 lockdown phase in the UK: Investigating links with mental health and loneliness.

The Covid-19 pandemic raises questions about the role that relationships and interactions between humans and animals play in the context of widespread social distancing and isolation measures. We aimed to investigate links between mental health and loneliness, companion animal ownership, the human-animal bond, and human-animal interactions; and to explore animal owners' perceptions related to the role of their animals during lockdown. A cross-sectional online survey of UK residents over 18 years of age was conducted between April and June 2020. The questionnaire included validated and bespoke items measuring demographics; exposures and outcomes related to mental health, wellbeing and loneliness; the human-animal bond and human-animal interactions. Of 5,926 participants, 5,323 (89.8%) had at least one companion animal. Most perceived their animals to be a source of considerable support, but concerns were reported related to various practical aspects of providing care during lockdown. Strength of the human-animal bond did not differ significantly between species. Poorer mental health pre-lockdown was associated with a stronger reported human-animal bond (b = -.014, 95% CI [-.023 - -.005], p = .002). Animal ownership compared with non-ownership was associated with smaller decreases in mental health (b = .267, 95% CI [.079 - .455], p = .005) and smaller increases in loneliness (b = -.302, 95% CI [-.461 - -.144], p = .001) since lockdown. The human-animal bond is a construct that may be linked to mental health vulnerability in animal owners. Strength of the human-animal bond in terms of emotional closeness or intimacy dimensions appears to be independent of animal species. Animal ownership seemed to mitigate some of the detrimental psychological effects of Covid-19 lockdown. Further targeted investigation of the role of human-animal relationships and interactions for human health, including testing of the social buffering hypothesis and the development of instruments suited for use across animal species, is required.