Domestic Confinement Research Articles

The Case of the DOXA Four: A Year in the School of Political Prisoners

AbstractThis paper explores media strategies used by the four former editors of the Russian independent student‐run journal DOXA during their year of pre‐trial domestic confinement between April 2021 and April 2022. This high‐profile case ended only two months after the beginning of Russia’s full‐scale war in Ukraine and the intensification of repressions against the internal political opposition. It also concludes a decade‐long phase in the conflict between the Russian state and its increasingly politicized youth. By maintaining a public presence during their house arrest despite the official prohibition, the DOXA Four entered into a media competition with police: Both groups were trying to reach an audience of Russian youth and shape the public image of oppositional students. While the state strove to intimidate, infantilize, and isolate the young people, the DOXA editors promoted collectivist forms of feeling and imagination to encourage political mobilization. In doing so, they aimed to break with the prevailing culture of ironic aestheticization of state violence and to re‐articulate political aesthetics for its generation.

“No Way Out”: The Gothic Concept of Home in Shirley Jackson’s Horror Fiction

The “haunted house formula” is a central component in every Female Gothic narrative from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Typically, it revolves around a heroine trapped in a gloomy mansion, seeking to escape a male villain. This trope, which covertly explores feminine anxieties such as domestic confinement and familial oppression, recurs multiple times in Shirley Jackson’s “house trilogy” as well, namely The Sundial, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. However, as noted by many critics, while Female Gothic narratives usually conclude with the protagonist’s successful escape and her marriage to the male hero, in Jackson’s fiction, there is “no way out”. Her protagonists remain confined within the domestic space. This essay explores Jackson’s reappropriation of the haunted house trope as a symbol of the paranoia experienced by women in 1950s suburban America. The analysis begins by outlining the theme in traditional Female Gothic fiction, followed by an account of the sociohistorical context in which Jackson operated, without dismissing the significancy of her personal life experiences as well. Jackson’s “house trilogy” will then be examined, paying particular attention to the ways in which the haunted house formula is subverted to function not as an escape narrative, but as a metaphor for modern women’s inescapable confinement.

The experience of cinema-going for women in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s

ABSTRACT In the field of Japanese film studies, the relationship between women and cinema during the 1920s and 1930s has been mainly explored through the perspective of women’s representation in films, largely neglecting the experiences of actual, historical female audiences in cinemas. This article examines how Japanese female audiences received films in cinemas and the experiences these venues offered to women. By analysing contemporary film magazine and newspaper articles, which discuss female film audiences or are authored by women themselves, this study sheds light on the cinema-going experiences of women in Japan during this period. It particularly focuses on schoolgirls’ experiences of watching Western-imported films, drawing on their testimonies found in film magazines. For schoolgirls, cinema visits constituted an adventurous escape from domestic confines. Watching foreign-imported, particularly American, films provided them with an opportunity to observe and imagine lives divergent from their own. Moreover, the widespread film culture among schoolgirls enabled them to share their affinity for these films. The article concludes that cinema-going offered schoolgirls an opportunity to momentarily escape their constrained lives and collectively envisage a life beyond their immediate realities.

Homeworking, Care Work and Gender-Based Violence The Condition of Women and Mothers during Covid-19 Domestic Confinement

The Covid-19 pandemic, like any social event characterised by the loss of securities and balances, has caused a worsening of the living conditions of women who, suddenly, have experienced the expansion of many problems that already existed before the sanitary emergency, including: job insecurity, the increase in family tasks and loads, and the exacerbation of domestic violence. The contribution, taking into consideration some recent documents and studies published at an international and national level, attempts to analyse these issues and their consequences from a pedagogical and gender perspective, highlighting both the political strategies designed to contrast the forms of discrimination still suffered by women and the crucial role that pedagogy plays in the promotion of educational paths and practices aimed at implementing and consolidating gender equality.

A Visual–Emotional Analysis of Perception in the Homes of Chronic Patients during Confinement by COVID-19 in Spain

One of the highest risk groups the highest during COVID-19 were chronic patients. In addition to being a population at risk, in the lockdown they had to combine the pandemic with their own disease. Through a qualitative study of visual–emotional analysis, the perception of patients and their social environment (immediate support network) about the domestic confinement in Spain was requested during the State of Alarm in the Spring of 2020. For this, 33 participants filled out an online questionnaire with narratives and images describing their experiences. They were asked to share their experiences about quarantine from several perspectives of the housing spaces: the workplace (or alternatively, if they did not work, the most used occupational space), the least pleasant spaces or aspects of the dwelling and the most pleasant or comfortable area. The results suggested the importance for participants of natural and adequate lighting in spaces and tidiness, with both being linked to well-valued spaces. Moreover, rest was the activity most undertaken, for those who did not telework. Likewise, the narratives provided by participants were mostly positive, despite their condition, maybe due to their own coping with the disease. Dwellings were the adaptive means to tackle the situation of physical isolation as a place of protection against an external threat. The living room and bedrooms were chosen as the most prominent places. The characteristics of the dwellings conditioned the experiences lived during the quarantine of chronic patients.

Hacer vida en pandemia. Una reflexión sobre fotografías de cosas, plantas, animales e hijos.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in March 2020 there was decreed a Preventive and Compulsory Social Isolation Phase (ASPO) in Argentina. Their wide acceptance reduced urban mobility. In a field study on experiences of time and space in quarantine in La Plata, we asked the interviewees to take photographs. These photos insistently showed certain activities and ways to carry them out. Based on them, we recover Ingold’s critique of the dominant Western conception of making and propose two interpretative hypotheses: 1) the dominant Western conception does not shape all the dimensions and ways of making things, 2) the ways of making that do not conform to scientific and industrial empiricism would have found a propitious field in that domestic confinement.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND LIFESTYLE CHANGES IN ITALY DURING THE COVID-19 LOCKDOWN: GENDER DIFFERENCES

Objective: Italy responded to the Covid-19 pandemic early by forcing the entire population into a 2-month domestic confinement. The aim of this study was to assess gender differences in the impact of lockdown on physical activity and lifestyle habits. Design and method: A cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted in April 2020 on a general population sample residing in Italy. Participants completed validated questionnaires. Gender differences were assessed using a multivariable adjusted logistic regression model using gender as independent and exposures as dependent variables. Metabolic equivalents-hour/week was used to evaluate physical activity. Results: A total of 2218 participants (761 men and 1457 women) agreed to participate in the study and completed the questionnaire. The survey found that women compared to men showed 1) a lower level of physical activity before the institution of lockdown, 2) a lower tendency to reduce physical activity levels during the lockdown, when gender differences in compliance with guideline recommendations for physical activity disappeared, 3) and a worsening of sleep and tool passage; men experienced an increase in alcohol consumption. Conclusions: Women, who previously had a lower level of physical activity than men, showed a lower tendency to reduce it during lockdown, revealing greater resilience than men. However, the worsening in sleep, in stool passage, and a trend to weight increase revealed signs of psychological suffering after a protracted lockdown period.

Last Night, Locked In

'Last night, locked in...' is a narrative film made during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Made as a response to, and reflection on, domestic confinement's impact on time, memory and identity, it employed an embedded filmmaking approach using only the equipment, props and actors available on location. As a response to the disorientation of temporal markers of memory and identity, the filmmaker investigated how narrative fiction could decontextualise confinement's estrangement of time to allow the author, protagonist and viewer a shared experience in discovering new meanings and understandings that could facilitate a re-ordering of memories and (re)stabilisation of personal identity.

Domestic confinement crisis and its un-intensifying effect on service quality expectations towards e-stores: the case of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico

ABSTRACT Certain factors may exert un-intensifying effects on service performance expectations. In the pandemic crisis era of domestic confinement, as consumer shopping at physical stores is restricted, e-stores have become a useful source of goods. It is proposed that such a confinement crisis, as an extreme situational factor, can have a mitigating effect on the expectation level of service performance of e-stores. Hence, it is hypothesised that consumers may become more forgiving with e-suppliers, reporting a higher perceived performance under a confinement crisis than under normal social conditions. Two sets of data were compared for assessment, employing the same questionnaire to evaluate consumer opinions of service performance, brand perceptions, satisfaction, trust and intentions of e-stores. One set of data was collected under normal conditions, prior to domestic confinement being imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. The second set of data was collected during a high point of contagion of the COVID-19 emergency in Mexico. Results suggest that there are significant differences in some variables related to perceived service performance, brand perceptions and behavioural intentions between the two sets of data. Apparently, consumers tend to perceive, in some respects, a higher level of performance of e-stores under confinement conditions than under normal social conditions. This work aims to shed light on how such extreme situational factors can affect consumer expectations and perceptions.

Analysis of the factors that determine cinema attendance

New forms of consumption, including online streaming, have interfered with film exhibition, promoting important changes. These services need to generate significant traffic and a look for a wide range of home subscribers to provide them with an extensive catalogue of movies. The domestic confinement in almost all countries caused by COVID-19 has led the internet to break historical traffic records. Cinemas are no longer the only place where a film can be shown. The novelty of films is the main factor that convinces viewers to pay for a cinema ticket. The exhibitor must pursue excellence and offer a truly superior experience at a reasonable price, because of the limited budget for leisure activities. This research uses structural equation modelling (SEM) to carry out an empirical analysis on the results of a questionnaire with a focus on the factors influencing the preference for watching films at a cinema.

Jogging during the Lockdown: Changes in the Regimes of Kinesthetic Morality and Urban Emotional Geography in NW Italy

Jogging is the most practiced physical activity in the west. This form of light running appears a solution to the health problems caused by the sedentary of contemporary dwelling and affirmed the role of the extensive use of urban space as a key to individual well-being and health. The COVID-19 pandemic and the imposition of lockdowns imposed a new form of kinesthetic morality based on domestic confinement; a morality that is in open contrast to that of jogging. The article explores this conflict and its consequences in terms of perception of the urban environment and the society among joggers. Based on case study research conducted in 2020 in Alessandria, NW Italy, this study delves into this abrupt change and explores how the urban spatiality changed for the joggers. In so doing, it asks what this event teaches us about the development of new, more effective, urban policies.

REMOTE WORK BETWEEN NARRATIVES OF INDIPENDENCE AND FRACTURED EXPERIENCES. A QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DURING THE PANDEMIC CRISIS.

This paper focuses on how remote workers experienced their job and everyday life during the Italian lockdown imposed by the national government to contain the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, this contribution focuses on the interdependence of work and everyday life, and the role of digital devices and online platforms during the home-confinement period, and it explores the consequences of social distancing measures on remote workers and on their working and personal conditions. The study draws from 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with remote workers, i.e., individuals which could work from home through digital technologies during the national lockdown. Results highlight that during the lockdown, some participants attempted to cope with the unprecedented triumph of technologically mediated work, others described remote work as liberating and attractive, as it avoids commuting and allow people to organize their activities autonomously, without constraints of space and time. However, their initial enthusiasm decreased after a few weeks of domestic confinement. The experience of remote workers that emerges is a “fractured” one, which appears as a characteristic feature of forced and continuous remote work. Indeed, the coronavirus crisis has accentuated the infrastructural role of digital platforms and intensified the ‘deep mediatization’ of social life and labour, thereby normalizing transmedia work and the ‘extension of already media saturated working conditions’.

Fantastic Beasts in The Great Indoors: Taxidermy, Animal Capital and the Domestic Interior in Britain, 1851–1921

This article explores taxidermy as an interesting example of human-animal relations through a study of its incorporation into the later nineteenth and early twentieth century domestic interior. Occupying a liminal space that speaks to life and to death, often posed within an operational aesthetic of wildness, yet firmly captured in domestic confines, taxidermy offers valuable insight into how the geography of home depicted the dynamics of empire, gender and consumption, as well as cogitating on the animal as a scientific and artistic presence. Usefully building on John Berger’s contention that urban industrialism encouraged both the disappearance and the multiplication of animals in human life, this study highlights the way in which a decorative paradox of dead wild things found a place in the British home in the form of naturalist mounts, hunting trophies and other consumer items. Approached as engineered artefacts of animal capital, the fantastic beasts of “the great indoors” exemplify the convoluted (and often contradictory) relations between humans and other species in the modern world.

Has Otitis Media Disappeared during COVID-19 Pandemic? A Fortuitus Effect of Domestic Confinement.

Background: To measure patient flow at our Pediatric Emergency Department (PED) during the Italian lockdown, with particular care in terms of otolaryngological (ENT)-related diagnoses. Methods: A retrospective evaluation of electronic charts of children admitted to our PED in the City Center of Milan (Italy) for any disease. The outcome was to compare distribution of diagnoses performed at our PED during 21 February–3 May 2019 (period 1) to 21 February–3 May 2020 (period 2). Results: A total of 4538 children were evaluated during period 1 compared to 1310 during period 2. A statistically significant overall effect on diagnosis between the study periods was attested (p-value < 0.001; pseudo R2 = 0.010), ENT-related diagnoses being more frequently documented in period 1 (80.4% vs. 19.5%; p-value < 0.001), as well as those related to middle ear infections (92.8% vs. 7.2%; p-value < 0.001). Non-complicated acute otitis media more frequently occurred in period 1 (92.0% vs. 8.0%; p-value < 0.001); no significant difference in the number of complicated middle ear infections occurred (95.8% vs. 4.2%). Conclusions: The exceptional circumstances of the Italian lockdown resulted in a significant decrease in patients’ attendance to our PED, especially when considering diagnoses related to any ENT disorder, middle ear disease, and non-complicated middle ear infection.

‘There was no freedom to leave’: Global South international students in Portugal during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students, focusing on Portuguese-speaking African and Brazilian students during the lockdown of spring 2020. Using evidence from interviews conducted with 27 students domiciled in Portugal, we illustrate some of the challenges faced by students when coping with the pandemic, including difficulties in meeting the cost of tertiary education and the centrality of working to sustain their stays abroad, alongside the emotional impact of prolonged domestic confinement and separation from families. We also consider the paradoxes of online teaching, which have made visible the digital gap between local and international Global South students in the context of their stays. In this sense, pre-existing inequalities are more at the centre of students’ concerns than new issues raised by COVID-19, a pandemic that served to reveal former injustice in the context of global capitalism. In our conclusion, we argue that there is a need for greater recognition of the vulnerabilities facing certain African and Brazilian students at Global North universities in the context of contemporary neo-liberalism, including their dependence upon precarious work. Policy responses include the need for a more serious involvement and responsibility by both home and host higher education institutions in the lives of their students abroad.

Distance education during COVID 19: an Italian survey on the university teachers\u2019 perspectives and their emotional conditions

BackgroundFollowing the COVID-19 pandemic, distance education (DE) replaced traditional “face-to-face” teaching and has become the main method of teaching. The aim of this study was to 1) evaluate the impact of DE by teachers in our department during the second semester of the 2019–20 academic year following the March–May 2020 Italian national lockdown and 2) evaluate the relationship between DE and the emotional well-being of teachers during the period of home confinement.MethodsNinety-seven university teachers (51.5% women; most represented age group 60–69 years range, 40.2%) responded to an anonymous online cross-sectional survey between July 15 – September 30, 2020, on the advantages and disadvantages of DE, developed by one online teacher focus group. The emotional conditions were assessed by a short version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). The internal consistency reliability survey and the 10-item BDI-II were measured by Cronbach’s alpha. A correlation analysis (r-Pearson) was conducted between the overall evaluation of the experience of DE and the variables included in the study.ResultsTeachers reported difficulties in technical aspects, and in psychological factors, as the discomfort of “speaking in the void” (64.7%). The absence of “face-to-face” eye contact with the students was complained by 81% of teachers.Significant impairments in sleep patterns and loss of energy were reported, with female teachers having greater difficulty concentrating than their male colleagues. A quarter of teachers showed depressive symptoms of varying severity.The most satisfied teachers were those most stimulated by DE (r = 0.752, p < 0.000), who showed a lower impact of depressive symptoms (r = − 0.289, p = 0.005). The teaching load in hours influenced the perception of disadvantages (r = 0.214, p = 0.035) and contributed to a lower appreciation of the challenges of DE.The more significant the manifestation of depressive symptoms during the lockdown was, the greater the subjective recovery of a good emotional condition once the domestic confinement was over (r = 0.344, p = 0.001), despite maintaining DE.ConclusionsOur study highlights the impact of technical, didactic, and psychological difficulties of DE, reported by our teachers. The appreciation of their new learning promoted by DE seemed related to better emotional well-being of university teachers accepting this “challenge” in their important role in the high-education system, influencing good learning and promoting students’ professional success.

Behavior Patterns, Energy Consumption and Comfort during COVID-19 Lockdown Related to Home Features, Socioeconomic Factors and Energy Poverty in Madrid

During spring 2020, the world was shocked at the imminent global spread of SARS-CoV-2, resorting to measures such as domestic confinement. This meant the reconfiguration of life in an unusual space; the home. However, not all households experienced it in the same way; many of them were vulnerable. A general increase in energy consumption and discomfort in many cases, led these families to suffer the ravages of confinement. This study analyzes the energy and comfort situation for the Madrid (Spain) population, according to the configuration of the homes, the characteristics of the dwellings, the vulnerability index by district, and energy poverty (measured with the 10% threshold of energy expenditure of home incomes). The results show a greater exposure, in confinement, of vulnerable and energy-poor households to scenarios of discomfort in the home, to which they could not respond, while energy consumption inevitably increased. Driven by need, energy-poor homes applied certain saving strategies, mainly resorting to thermal adaptation with clothing. This study shows the risk these households experienced in the face of an extreme situation, and invites reflection on preventive and containment measures that aim to avoid harming the disadvantaged in the future; harm that would also entail serious consequences on the health of their cohabitants.

Gender differences in the impact on physical activity and lifestyle in Italy during the lockdown, due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Background and aimsItaly responded to the Covid-19 pandemic early by forcing the entire population into a 2-month domestic confinement. The aim of this study was to assess gender differences in the impact of lockdown on physical activity and lifestyle habits. Methods and resultsA cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted in April 2020 on a general population sample residing in Italy. Participants completed validated questionnaires. Gender differences were assessed using a multivariable adjusted logistic regression model using gender as independent and exposures as dependent variables. Metabolic equivalents-hour/week was used to evaluate physical activity.A total of 2218 participants (761 men and 1457 women) agreed to participate in the study and completed the questionnaire. The survey found that women compared to men showed 1) a lower level of physical activity before the institution of lockdown, 2) a lower tendency to reduce physical activity levels during the lockdown, when gender differences in compliance with guideline recommendations for physical activity disappeared, 3) and a worsening of sleep and stool passage; men experienced an increase in alcohol consumption. ConclusionsWomen, who previously had a lower level of physical activity than men, showed a lower tendency to reduce it during lockdown, revealing greater resilience than men. However, the worsening in sleep, in stool passage, and a trend to weight increase revealed signs of psychological suffering after a protracted lockdown period.

Crystallization of the Islamic Feminist Fatema Mernissi in Maruf Al Rusafi's Poetry

Islamic feminism tackles Eastern women who are often viewed as shackled by social oppression, religious manacles, and domestic confinement in various literary works. They often suffer exclusion from the public life in an age afflicted by extremity and heretical exercises. The notion that women are shame and a likely reason of dishonor seems to appeal to some Muslim communities; a notion that was bitterly widespread in communities before Islam whereas baby girls were buried alive so that their fathers could dispense with their shame. The paper reveals a clear affinity between the theoretical views of the Moroccan feminist, Fatema Mernissi and some enthusiastic feminist poems of the Iraqi poet Marruf Al Rusafi. It highlights the woman's position and rights in Islamic communities and how a woman practices a life within these norms. Mernissi, on the one hand, is one of the precursors of Islamic feminists who published many books and articles trying to unveil and uplift at the same time the Muslim woman's status. Her publications got wide responses, sometimes abhorring and other times hailing. Marruf Al Rusafi, on the other hand, is an Iraqi nation bard whose ideas align with Fatema’s in fighting dogmatic ills and to arouse social conscience. For him, the absence of the woman's role in life causes absence of tolerance, mercy, and advancement.

El hogar: amigo o enemigo en tiempos de pandemia

La pandemia actual por Covid-19 ha puesto en evidencia la vulnerabilidad humana ante el confinamiento doméstico que ha deparado en afecciones físicas y psíquicas. La hipótesis es que el hogar ha sido convertido en un recinto donde ahogar los desafueros en un mundo contemporáneo donde la ciudad es el principal escenario del sobre-rendimiento y la autoexplotación del ser humano. La casa se ha convertido en un objeto de producción y consumo, un signo del desvanecimiento del hogar. La persona rendida al trabajo y a la positividad de la vida social la asume como receptáculo y cubículo para consumir y acaparar, no como un hogar. Hoy, cuando más necesitamos de la amabilidad hogareña, los síntomas psíquicos y emocionales muestran lo contrario. El hogar debe ser rescatado.