Everyday People Research Articles

(The Act of) God’s Not Dead: Reforming the Act of God Defense in the Face of Anthropogenic Climate Change

Natural phenomena like floods, droughts, and blizzards have a long history of causing damage. But these natural phenomena are now more frequent, intense, and therefore, foreseeable because of anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change. Owing in part to the greater foreseeability of natural phenomena like weather, scholars believe the act of God defense—which excepts actors from liability when an unforeseeable and irresistible natural phenomenon is the proximate cause of damage—may be dead. Other scholars go further and argue the act of God defense should be dead, as corporate defendants can use it to evade liability even when their acts causally contribute to climate change. Despite the strength of these scholars’ arguments, those highlighting and even advocating for the demise of the act of God defense overlook the possibility that eliminating the defense will unfairly expose everyday people to liability. This Comment thus addresses scholars’ valid concerns with the act of God defense in light of climate change, examines arguments for why the defense should be excised from the law, and then argues that keeping but modifying the defense is the best way to address criticisms without unjustly harming everyday people.

Everydayness of Peace and War

The article examines everydayness as an integrative sphere of society, which is dominant for a person since it is at the micro level that an individual forms his or her social reality. Dialectical relationships between the individual and the general can be traced in everydayness, a semantic content is formed, which makes it possible to understand what happens every day in the everyday life of a person. Therefore, everyday life acts as one of the mechanisms of formation of values, socialization and a source of formation of social capital at the micro-, meso-, and macro levels.
 On the basis of empirical data, it is shown that social capital accumulates in the everyday sphere, which is strong and can withstand external aggressive manifestations, such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ukrainian society can withstand full-scale military aggression due to solidarity ties, dense network communications, and social trust at the level of horizontal relationships. In this way, everyday life has a latent effect on the functioning of social institutions at the level of the city and the state which are the field of implementation of people's everyday routines.

Legal reality or legal mirage? Examining the relationship between police violence, legal consciousness, and the promise of civil legal justice

Race-and-class-subjugated communities continue to experience disproportionate police violence despite increased attention to this longstanding problem. This study examines how residents make sense of the legal issues that arise from these encounters and turn to civil law for assistance. I do so by unifying scholarship on police encounters, legal consciousness, and access to justice to consider the obstacles everyday people encounter when they consider filing a civil legal claim in the aftermath of police violence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with 24 residents and two attorneys specializing in police brutality, I find that all residents, but especially those who sought civil legal justice, experienced what this study calls a legal mirage—which occurs when a knowable legal process exists to pursue one’s rights, but a variety of barriers (e.g., structural, human, financial) make that process unreachable. Three obstacles reinforced this mirage: difficulties obtaining competent representation, unresponsiveness when securing evidence, and frustration navigating municipal indemnification. I conclude by outlining the practical implications of this research for advocates looking to increase access to civil legal services and reduce police violence. Without these interventions, civil legal justice may remain elusive and beyond the reach of everyday people.

The British Royals in Australia

The British Royals in Australia

Trust in autonomous vehicles: insights from a Swedish suburb

ABSTRACT This paper investigates elements of trust in autonomous vehicles (AVs). We contextualise autonomous vehicles as part of people's everyday settings to extend previous understandings of trust and explore trust in autonomous vehicles in concrete social contexts. We conducted online co-creation workshops with 22 participants, using design probes to explore trust and AVs in relation to people's everyday lives. Using a socio-technical perspective, we show how trust and acceptance depend not only on the underlying AV technology but also – if not more so – on human-to-human relationships and real-life social circumstances. We argue that when investigating issues of trust and automation, the scope of analysis needs to be broadened to include a more complex socio-technical set of (human and non-human) agents, to extend from momentary human-computer interactions to a wider timescale, and be situated in concrete spaces, social networks, and situations.

Lucian of Samosata’s Imaginative Divine and Human Landscapes

ABSTRACT This article presents Lucian’s theocentric works through the lens of fictional narratology and sociopragmatics and argues that he builds imaginary worlds that feature delinquent gods, regretful and spiteful corpses that contemplate life, and lands inhabited by lamp-shaped beings to explore humanity’s exploration of life and religious beliefs. More specifically, The Parliament of the Gods, Zeus Catechized, Zeus Rants, On Sacrifices, Dialogues of the Gods, Menippus, Icaromenippus, and the True Story are closely studied to argue that Lucian conceptualizes the quest into life’s unknowns by engineering imaginary worlds, estranging the normal, and questioning ground truths about life. Ultimately, he actualizes literary fiction to explain theology and philosophical inquiries and their implications for everyday people.

Labor of love: Re‐membering dismembered bodies in community research

AbstractEthnographic studies are practically invasive in nature in that they intrude into people's everyday experiences. It is therefore the duty of a researcher documenting experiences of women to pay attention to these forms of violence and undertake the labor of love that seeks to re‐member women's bodies and their stories in ways that restore their dignity and contribute to healing. African feminists have encouraged us to employ research methods that are able to engage stories of trauma and survival that are not triggering, invasive and limited. Intersectional feminism offers a qualitative analytical framework that aims at identifying the interlocked layered systems of oppression that affect the marginalized in society (Yuval‐Davis (2006). Similarly, in employing fragmented narrative as a methodology, there is a realization and acknowledgment of the superficiality of linear retelling as a mode of conveying psychological damage that exposes the relationship between silence, gesture and suffering in revisiting the site of trauma.

Konsep Hukum dalam Pelaksanaan Peralihan Hak Atas Tanah Karena Jual Beli

It cannot be denied that in everyday people's lives there is still a lot of buying and selling of land that is done underhand. A land sale and purchase agreement that is not made before an Acting Land Deed Maker (PPAT) can cause losses to the buyer, for example the act of land sale and purchase in the case of Decision No. 34/Pdt.G/2020/PN.Dmk. The aim of this research is to answer the problem regarding the legal strength of land sale and purchase agreements that were not made before the Acting Land Deed Maker (PPAT) and to analyze the legal considerations of the Demak District Court judge's decision regarding No. 34/Pdt.G/2020/PN.Dmk. The results of this research show that 1) The legal strength of private deeds in sales and purchase agreements for land with ownership certificates in decision no. 34/Pdt.G/2020/PN.Dmk is valid and has legal force. This is proven by the positive arguments of the lawsuit, evidence and facts confirmed by the parties. 2) Analysis of the decision in case No. 34/Pdt.G/2020/PN.Dmk, the panel of judges gave permission to the Plaintiff to appear before the PPAT to sign the Deed of Sale and Purchase of land rights, granting the plaintiff's claim in part with verstek using the balance theory. The judge also carefully reviewed the contents of article 125 HIR, especially points 3 and 5, by deciding to grant the plaintiff's petitum not only based on the plaintiff's absence. The judge has also paid attention to the specifics of land sales and purchases regulated in the Basic Agrarian Law (UUPA). The authority to make certain authentic deeds, the difference is the legal basis that regulates the two. PPAT is Law Number 5 of 1960, Government Regulation Number 24 of 1997, Government Regulation Number 37 of 1998 and Regulation of the Head of the National Land Agency Number 1 of 2006, while Notary is Law Number 30 of 2004. However, in the provisions of Article 15 Paragraph (1) letter f of Law Number 30 of 2004 further strengthens the authority of Notaries in making deeds regarding land which are not deeds made by PPAT, especially deeds of land sale and purchase agreements.

Everyday executive function issues from the perspectives of autistic adolescents and their parents: Theoretical and empirical implications.

Autism researchers have a long-time interest in a set of skills called executive function. These skills include planning, inhibition, and switching between one activity and another. There was a theory that these skills explained the social and thinking difficulties autistic people might have. After years of study into this, the evidence is confusing and contradictory. Autistic people tend to report struggling quite a lot with these skills. Yet, when researchers test these skills, they do not tend to find such big difficulties. In this study, we spoke to 12 autistic teenagers and seven of their mothers about this. We asked them what they thought about their own, or their child's, executive function skills. We wanted to know about things they were good at and things they struggled with. They told us that their skills were very changeable from one context to the next and from one time to the next. According to their reports, their skills depended on how motivated they were by doing the task. Another thing that influenced their skills were how anxious they felt at the time they needed to use the skill. Finally, they told us that sometimes they think differently about how best to perform a task. We discuss what these insights mean for autism researchers who study these skills. In future, research should ask people about their experiences alongside testing their abilities in different contexts. Combining these information sources will give us a better understanding of autistic people's everyday skills as well as how best to support them.

Polish society's initial responses to the arrival of forced migrants from Ukraine in early 2022

ABSTRACT It has been over a year after Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine at the end of February 2022, which caused massive internal displacement in Ukraine and forced outmigration to neighboring countries on an unprecedented scale. From the beginning of the war, Poland has been the main host country, providing temporary protection to more than 1.5 million persons. The initial support for forced migrants was based on spontaneous actions and grassroots social initiatives. This article analyses the Polish society’s engagement in humanitarian and reception assistance to people fleeing Ukraine in the first months of the crisis, including various societal actors, from informal initiatives and volunteering by everyday people of different nationalities to more formalized civil society organizations. The paper is based on the analysis of quantitative data, the subject literature and official documents, and extensive participant observation by the authors of the public engagement in Poland in 2022.

Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) for mood, anxiety, and adjustment disorders: a pilot study.

Global mental health issues, particularly anxiety and depression, significantly impact people's everyday activities. While psychotherapies are commonly used, there is a growing interest in problem-solving approaches within mental health. These approaches focus on enabling individuals to develop personalized strategies to address emotional and psychological challenges and enhance their engagement in meaningful activities, known as occupational performance. This paper examines the feasibility of the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) in assisting adults with mood, anxiety, or adjustment disorders. The study employed a mixed methods single-subject design with replication, using an inductive/deductive approach for qualitative analysis. Ethical approval was obtained, and participants were recruited from a Singaporean hospital's occupational therapy service. CO-OP sessions were conducted either in-person or via telehealth. The intervention involved setting goals collaboratively, followed by weekly sessions over 10 weeks. Various data sources, including demographics, field notes, recordings of sessions, assessments and interviews were collected. Data analysis involved comparing pre- and post-intervention scores, thematic analysis of interviews, and triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data for validity. The study results are organized according to five feasibility domains: acceptability, demand, implementation, practicality, and limited efficacy. A total of 10 participants, mostly female, were recruited, with two dropping out during the baseline phase. All remaining participants completed the intervention and 1 month follow-up data collection. CO-OP was perceived as acceptable and beneficial in enhancing occupational performance, satisfaction and managing mood and anxiety symptoms. Participants expressed increased confidence and self-efficacy but desired continued therapist support for strategy application and reinforcement. Participants generally embraced CO-OP, favoring its personalized nature over therapist-directed approaches, with high retention rates observed. Building a strong therapeutic relationship was essential. Also using complementary approaches like supportive counseling proved beneficial. CO-OP emerges as a viable intervention alongside existing therapy approaches, offering a promising avenue for addressing the complex needs of individuals with mental health conditions.

Perceptions and practices of healthcare providers in providing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis to trans adolescents and young adults and men who have sex with men.

This study aims to understand the perceptions and practices of healthcare providers regarding the offer of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to gay and trans adolescents and young adults. This qualitative research was developed as part of the PrEP1519 study, which was conducted from 2018 to 2021 to analyze the effectiveness of PrEP in adolescents and young adults. Data were collected from July 2020 to February 2021 at the municipality of São Paulo by combining participant observations and semi-structured interviews. The analytical process involved immersion in the empirical material and coding and categorizing it with the support of NVivo®. Interpretation followed the hermeneutic-dialectical principle and had the concept of Care in health practices as its horizon. The construction of trust-based relationships followed practices that acknowledge the uniqueness of youth and their demands and sought to strengthen their autonomy. Sensitive and supportive listening was pointed out as a welcoming practice that propelled care actions. Welcoming attitudes and support in facing stigma and violence (related or not to the use of PrEP) acknowledged the need to support adolescents and young adults to develop autonomy for prevention. The use of language close to young people's everyday life favored the construction of relationships of trust and positively influenced the development of autonomy and adherence to PrEP. The tension between technical and practical success occurred in the idealized search for adult-centric normativity as opposed to intersubjectivity. The perceptions and practices of healthcare providers are aligned with the concept of Care as they include actions beyond technical knowledge and recognize the contexts that increase the vulnerability of adolescents and young adults to HIV.

Engaging Students and Teachers as Community Scientists in DNA Barcoding Initiatives.

Historically, contributions to scientific knowledge have been perceived as something that only professional scientists have the ability to affect. This has led to the belief that scientific pursuits are done not by everyday people but by individuals who have no connection to the communities that their discoveries might impact. DNA barcoding initiatives have the potential to bridge this gap. Community leaders, students, teachers, and other community members can come together with engaged scientists to solve relevant issues that affect them. Over the last 20years, DNA barcoding has been used successfully in a variety of educational contexts to incorporate original research into school curricula and informal outreach and education programs. DNA barcoding is especially suitable for educational settings because it is conceptually and technically straightforward, the workflow is adaptable to a variety of situations, and free and open-access online tools exist that allow participants to contribute high-quality data to international research efforts. DNA barcoding also offers a unique service-learning opportunity, where participants gain both knowledge and confidence in science. This is important because a growing body of evidence suggests that actively conducting research increases student and teacher engagement and retention of students in science. Here, we describe a framework and case studies in different educational settings that can be modeled and adapted to various educational contexts.

ARTIFICIAL LOVE: REVOLUTIONS IN HOW AI AND AR EMBODIED ROMANTIC CHATBOTS CAN MOVE THROUGH RELATIONSHIP STAGES

Depictions of romantic relationships between humans and computers/robots/AI systems are a common trope in science fiction. With recent advances in AI conversational chatbots and augmented reality avatars, applications such as Replika have started to enable everyday people to engage in romantic relationships with AI chatbots and talk to visual representations of their AI partners. While there has been a growing body of work exploring the motivations, practices, and benefits/risks of these conversational chatbots, the romantic side of things has been relatively underexplored. While much of the work has been about the why and the overall purpose of the romantic relationship, there has been less work that examines these from a relational stage perspective, and how these systems move in and across different relationship stages of development. This is especially important because communication scholars have long theorized that Romantic Relationships fall into a unique category of relationships, such that there are more discrete stages of coming together/apart, more risk/vulnerability in these relationships, and a wider range of interactions/negotiations over identity and interdependence. Through in-depth interviews with people who participate in an online forum ILoveMyReplika, this study aims to explore how people engage with the system romantically, how these systems craft messages that are indicative of different stages of relationships, and how people handle the movement and change across time with these systems. This piece will have important implications for our understanding of human machine relationships and human relationship stages generally, as well as implications for the design of social computing agents.

Special Issue on Autonomous Robotics Challenge

The Tsukuba Challenge and the Nakanoshima Robot Challenge are both technical challenges in which mobile robots run autonomously in real outdoor environments. They have been held almost every year since 2007 and 2018, respectively, and many robots have participated in these public experiments. The autonomous navigation of a mobile robot in the real world, that is, not on test tracks but in environments normally used by everyday people, poses a great many challenges. The robots have to deal with environments that change with the time of day, the weather, the season, etc., and they have to deal with unexpected stationary obstacles as well as moving ones, including people, bicycles, etc. These days, demonstration tests of delivery robots are being conducted in many places, but there are still many problems that need to be solved. In this special issue, we have gathered papers detailing the insights gained from running mobile robots in the two outdoor experiments, the Tsukuba Challenge and the Nakanoshima Robot Challenge. To run a robot with a high success rate in a real environment, it is very important to devise the robot configuration, the sensor data processing, and the behavior control based on the knowledge gained from many experiences. We hope that sharing the successes and failures in the papers in this special issue will lead to further technological improvements in the future.

Exploring young trans people's everyday experiences of ‘out‐of‐placeness’ and socio‐bodily dysphoria

AbstractThis paper examines how young trans people come to be positioned as, and subsequently feel, ‘out‐of‐place’ in certain everyday spaces, particularly in the socio‐political context of the contemporary UK. Through the stories of young trans people aged 14–25 collected via participatory research, I question what it feels like to be young and trans and to experience and embody such dislocating feelings as ‘out‐of‐placeness’ and socio‐bodily dysphoria, and what toll repeatedly experiencing such embodied emotions exacts on young trans people, their bodies, and life trajectories. To do so, the experience of misgendering and deadnaming, others' hostile gazes, and what I refer to as socio‐bodily dysphoria, are introduced as examples of common modes of cisnormativity and ‘out‐of‐placeness’ experienced by participants. I build on Sara Ahmed's work on the socio‐spatial positioning and experience of non‐conforming or disruptive bodies to examine how trans youth and marginalised folk more generally become ‘out‐of‐place’ and experience ‘out‐of‐placeness’ in everyday space‐times that are not affectively, socially, or materially structured to expect their bodily presence, facilitate their participation, or enable their active agency, particularly on gendered terms. Importantly, a central contribution of the article involves articulating a spatial conceptualisation of socio‐bodily dysphoria. In sum, I develop geographical analyses of young trans people's everyday encounters and crucially build geographical understandings of the emergence and fixity of socio‐bodily dysphoria and everyday marginality through the voices and stories of trans youth.

Emotion Granularity, Regulation, and Their Implications in Health: Broadening the Scope from a Cultural and Developmental Perspective

The ability to represent emotional experiences in a precise fashion with language, termed emotional granularity, is related to a number of beneficial outcomes. However, the emotion granularity construct and operationalization are rooted in the lens of so-called Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies that focus on emotions as a mental-state phenomena. Using evidence from multiple non-WEIRD societies, we illustrate that people's everyday vernacular often emphasizes bodily over, or in addition to, mental states. This suggests that granularity focused only on mental state language may limit our ability to operationalize this construct in a culturally valid manner. To overcome this limitation, we propose capturing “experiential” granularity and a concept model on how it may link to regulation and health.

The Use of Folklore in the Study of American Religion

In The Archive, we republish an article that, in hindsight, may have been ahead of its time with its prescience. Our pull for this issue is a 1982 piece by Richard E. Wentz where he discusses the idea that American folk traditions should be used as an introduction to lead students into the realm of American Religion. Wentz believes it is important for students to learn these folk tales in order to have essential knowledge about the religious lives of “everyday people,” knowledge which Wentz believes is not being taught in academia or in American religious institutions.

Analysis of Homo Economicus Behavior According to Islamic Views

In everyday life people tend to equate needs with wants. Sometimes people mention something as a need that must be met immediately, even though something is a wish that could have been postponed. A lifestyle that is oriented towards economic needs alone is not justified in Islam because this attitude is the same as placing economic activity as the goal of life. On the other hand, reducing the desire to maximize life activities in the economic sector is also not justified because it lowers the degree and prestige of Muslims among other people. For this reason, this research will try to unravel how the human concept is in Islamic economics. In solving the existing problems, researchers used descriptive qualitative research methods with secondary data sources. The results of this study state that fulfilling human needs in Islam does not only meet worldly needs such as eating, drinking, clothing, housing, and transportation vehicles, but humans must also meet spiritual needs or spiritual needs so that humans become human beings who have good morals, are useful, and beneficial to fellow human beings both in this world and in the hereafter.

Perceptual dimensions of fan sounds with different tonal characteristics

Fan noise is a common tonal noise source in people's everyday life. While tonal sounds at high frequencies often contribute to annoyance, the perception and evaluation of low-frequency tones is not fully understood. In the present study, the perceptual dimensions of 24 tonal prototype fan sounds were explored using a semantic differential consisting of 21 adjective scales that were rated by 40 participants. The synthesized sounds had the same sound pressure level of 55 dB(A) but differed in fundamental frequency and spectral envelope of the embedded tonal signatures Using a factor analysis, four perceptual dimensions were found that explain 59 % of the variance. Fan sounds with a fundamental frequency of 60 Hz were rated to be more "humming" (1st dimension) and more "pleasant" (2nd dimension) but less "buzzing" and less "beeping" (3rd dimension) in comparison to sounds with higher fundamental frequencies of 180 Hz and 300 Hz. An analysis of the relationships between the adjective scales and psychoacoustic metrics show that the "humming" ratings were highly correlated to a metric describing the relative contribution of low frequencies to the overall loudness. In contrast, psychoacoustic sharpness and tonality had smaller correlation coefficients with the "humming" ratings.