Everyday Social Worlds Research Articles

The Methodological Quality and Intervention Fidelity of Randomised Controlled Trials Evaluating Social Skills Group Programs in Autistic Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

A systematic review and meta-analysis were utilised to explore the methodological quality, program fidelity, and efficacy of social skills group programs (SSGPs) aiming to support autistic adolescents in navigating their everyday social worlds. The study evaluated the methodological quality and theoretical fidelity of studies, with a random effect meta-analysis conducted to summarise the overall efficacy of SSGP and its effect on social communication and interaction, behavioural/emotional challenges, adaptive functioning, and autism characteristics. Although findings from the 18 identified studies indicated an adjusted medium overall effect with these programs successfully supporting autistic adolescents’ socialisation needs (g = 0. 60, p < 0.001), most studies demonstrated medium to low program fidelity despite their good methodological quality. Given the significant heterogeneity of SSGPs and variations in the design and measurement frameworks of efficacy studies, understanding the generalisability of the findings of this research is unclear.

Naviguer la Ville-Archipel : Expériences quotidiennes et imaginaires sociopolitiques des inondations urbaines à Carthagène des Indes, Colombie

It is difficult to imagine the city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, the “Pearl of the Caribbean”, without water, as sandy beaches, lush mangrove forests, swampy landscapes and a maze of canals both surround the emblematic historic city centre and shape the expanding neighbourhoods in the so-called urban periphery. Water and the city are so closely intertwined that we introduce Cartagena as an Archipelago City to explore how urban residents navigate the city during seasonal urban rain and flooding. As climate change and rising sea level have become a pressing environmental challenge for coastal cities worldwide, we nuance mainstream discourses on governing and planning environmental futures by applying an actor-centred approach. We use navigation as an analytical lens, to provide insights into the way urbanites experience, anticipate and improvise around urban floods and imagine their city. Drawing on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in two distinct neighbourhoods, we dialectically explore how urban flooding slows down, disrupts and also speeds up Cartagena’s everyday life while its residents navigate their way through the Archipelago City. By arguing that these everyday experiences and imaginaries reflect the historical and social legacies of profound inequalities in the city, we are offering a window into the complex constituents of everyday social worlds that prevail in many Latin American coastal cities.

How Audiences Engage With Drama: Identification, Attribution and Moral Approval.

Fictional storytelling has played an important role in human cultural life since earliest times, and we are willing to invest significant quantities of time, mental effort and money in it. Nonetheless, the psychological mechanisms that make this possible, and how they relate to the mechanisms that underpin real-world social relationships, remain understudied. We explore three factors: identification (the capacity to identify with a character), moral approval and causal attribution with respect to a character’s behaviour in live performances of two plays from the European literary canon. There were significant correlations between the extent to which subjects identified with a character and their moral approval of that character’s behaviour that was independent of the way the play was directed. However, the subjects’ psychological explanations for a character’s behaviour (attribution) were independent of whether or not they identified with, or morally approved of, the character. These data extend previous findings by showing that moral approval plays an important role in facilitating identification even in live drama. Despite being transported by an unfolding drama, audiences do not necessarily become biased in their psychological understanding of why characters behaved as they did. The psychology of drama offers significant insights into the psychological processes that underpin our everyday social world.

Requesting an account for the unaccountable: The primordial nature of [NP+wa?]-format turns used by young Japanese children

This study examines, from a conversation-analytic perspective, the use of [NP+wa?] format turns ([NP+wa?] turns) by young Japanese children aged 23–33 months, who have started using the so-called topic marker wa. Most of their [NP+wa?] turns are used in one of the following environments: 1) the NP in an [NP+wa?] turn refers to a person or object absent from the scene, 2) the NP refers to an object of noticing that is present at the scene, and 3) [NP+wa?] turns are used repeatedly. I will show that each of these situations provides co-participants with guidance to determine how the NP referent is relevant to the here-and-now and what kind of response is expected. I will then claim that [NP+wa?] turns provide these children with a convenient and powerful tool to engage with the everyday social world around them; that is, to explore how the life-world is organized and ordered. Furthermore, I will propose that wa can be seen as marking the speaker's claim that the recipient should be able to detect the preceding NP referent's relevance to the here-and-now. I claim that this is what is fundamentally involved in the “topic-marking” function that is conventionally associated with the particle wa.

Escaping a migrant metropolis

This article narrates the politics of escape from borders and labour discipline in a post-Soviet migrant metropolis drawing on the art-activism project Nasreddin in Russia. It explores the relation between control and autonomy in urban migrations through a trans-aesthetics: a set of visual and verbal stories weaving together experiences and outcomes of the art project with academic debates on late capitalist urbanization. The encounter of artistic practices and migrants’ embodied, everyday struggles to inhabit the city, it is suggested, has potential for disrupting the disciplinary and exclusionary effects of capitalist transformations and migration enforcement. This is made visible through transient spaces of escape in which the everyday lives and social worlds of migrants, constrained by the precarization of labour and by the multiplication and diversification of bordering practices, are reclaimed through laughter, mobility and care. This point is illustrated by focusing on three such spaces and practices: trickster politics in the housing market, acts of disidentification and care work on the city ‘as a body.’ The article offers a methodologically innovative contribution to ongoing debates on aesthetic political economy, cities and borders and artistic and activist interventions in global cities.

From “Meaning” to Reality

This essay articulates a theory and practice of “reading toward reality” based on Polanyi’s conception of scientific discovery as proceeding from the apprehension of problems, guided by our tacit intimations of a new coherence that would resolve these problems, and a reality as the condition of such inquiry. I argue that, analogously, (good) literature poses problems of sense that refer us to our own tacit knowledge of the normative conditions of sense—conditions which underlie and sometimes contradict our conventional modes of sensemaking. Literature thus can educate us to those human realities which underlie our everyday social world and to the conditions by which we might more adequately judge and make sense of our experience.

Technology, Essence, and Everyday Living

This paper engages “A Triadic Conversation” in Conversations on a Country Path. The context of this engagement is Heidegger’s account of τέχνη and φύσις in Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) as they are put to work in the conversation of a guide, a scholar, and a scientist. The leading questions are whether Heidegger’s thoughts of Seyn, Wesen, and Machination are helpful to understand and engage the pressing challenges to Western societies? Are those challenges primarily the devastations wrought by a culture of technology and its accompanying mind-set that, according to Heidegger, inevitably lead to war and massive types of destruction among all worldly lives? And is “A Triadic Conversation” an indication of a dangerous alienation from the everyday social and political world in which it was conceived? Stillness and silence play significant roles in the discussion of his accounts of the Wesen of humans and of nature as it brings to bear the everyday events that defined the time during which Heidegger wrote “A Triadic Conversation.” The paper concludes with a reflection on the importance of the differences between Heidegger’s approach and ones that begin by confronting the confusing, uncertain, but specific events that are taking place in the thinkers’ world.

Right in Front of Us: Taking Everyday Life Seriously in the Study of Human Development

The need to pay attention to context has been a prominent theme in research on human development. Nevertheless, the empirical reality of the immediate context within which individuals develop has been largely ignored in research on human development. Therefore, my “one wish” is that the field begin to take seriously the processes that operate in the everyday social world. Doing so will help clarify three key principles: advance understanding: 1) diversity in developmental outcomes is largely socially organized; 2) “bi-directional” individual-context interactions are generally asymmetrical; 3) individuals are producers not only of themselves but also of the social world. While it shapes the development of individuals, the social world is also a human creation. These insights can assist developmental research in efforts to broaden its concern to focus on issues of social justice and the analysis of science itself as part of the social world, with cultural, political and ideological dimensions.

Dirty Money States: Illicit Economies and the State in Southeast Asia

ABSTRACTThis article develops the idea of “dirty money states” by defining and exploring the problem of illicit state financing in Southeast Asia. Most diagnoses of Southeast Asia's flourishing illicit economies focus on the prevalence of corruption and the “decay” of the state, but the authors of this essay develop a more nuanced explanation by exploring how states cultivate and sustain themselves through illicit extraction. Drawing from emerging literature on states and criminality, as well as fiscal sociology, they develop a novel theoretical framing for the six country case studies that comprise this thematic issue. Each study – on Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, East Timor, and the Philippines – examines empirically how illicit state financing works. Whether revenues derive from gold, timber, opium, aid agencies, or business interests, the authors identify consistent patterns in the nature and behavior of the state vis-à-vis illegally generated funds. These patterns encompass territorial dynamics and practices; the everyday social worlds of state actors and their entrepreneurial allies; and the paradoxical interplay between formal and informal realms. Ultimately the authors argue that illicit monies are fundamental to contemporary state building in the region, extending even to the delivery of public goods and services. These findings are potentially uncomfortable for scholars, governments and development practitioners, particularly because they challenge conventional ideas about how the strength and/or weakness of states might be understood in Southeast Asia. But they demand attention, since they are the product of an ambitious and unconventional research endeavor.

Nollywood’s aporias part 1: Gatemen

Abstract Nigerian video films are distinct for the way in which they have apparently revolutionized – and then standardized – the portrayal of everyday social worlds. Many scripts routinely place ordinary men and women at the centre of the unfolding of everyday-world stories. However, the character of the gateman – as that of the okada rider and the market woman, among others – in ‘generic’ Nigerian movies is surprisingly underdeveloped. Gatemen in Nigerian video films are constantly not shown. Their recurring function is to open and close gates, allowed here and there to say a few words in response to the oga or madam’s questions. They seldom speak when not spoken to. This article draws attention to the aporetic structured absences in Nollywood films and Nollywood film criticism, specifically the parts played and not played by gate-men. It argues that the non-portrayal of the everyday worlds of gatemen – beyond opening and closing gates – suggests that Nollywood movies and Nollywood theorists are yet to fully evolve a ‘thinking’ and re-thinking of everyday social worlds in terms that specifically call into question hierarchy and what-is. The article uses the figure of the gateman to present semi-theoretical reflections by a non-Nigerian African, reflecting on the reading of gaps in the generic Nollywood film. Its purpose is less an exploration of Nigerian socio-politics as a polemical theoretical reflection on exigencies of method.

‘Young clean and safe?’ Young people's perceptions of risk from sexually transmitted infections in regional, rural and remote Australia

This paper examines young people's perceived vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and their efforts to create a sense of personal safety within an environment in which risks may be high and where STIs are highly stigmatised. The paper reports on findings from research involving both Indigenous and non-Indigenous 16- to 25-year-olds from remote, rural and regional Australia, including communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. The study used qualitative methods, including body mapping and scenario based interviewing, to explore how young people made decisions about potential sexual partners and how STIs were understood within the context of young people's everyday social worlds. The paper has important implications for the design and implementation of sexual-health education programmes by documenting the stigmatisation of young people with STIs and the protective mechanisms peer groups employ to create perceptions of personal safety.

What I am doing to stop rape: The personal/intellectual journey of a heterosexual male investigator on a sexual assault resistance education intervention

A heterosexual male reflects on his complex personal/intellectual journey as an investigator on a sexual assault resistance education intervention that trains women to resist sexual assault. Along the way, the author has confronted and worked through criticisms of the sexual assault resistance education program, his view of the everyday social world has changed radically and, perhaps most surprising, he has dealt with his own hurt feelings. Ultimately, his experiences have further strengthened his already strong commitment to stopping rape.

Incorporating salivary biomarkers into nursing research: an overview and review of best practices.

Analytes and biomarkers present in saliva may provide insight into individual differences in environmental chemical exposures, variation in reproductive hormones, therapeutic and illegal substance use, changes in stress-related physiology, and the immunologic footprints of infectious disease. The wealth of information provided by salivary analytes has the potential to enrich biobehavioral nursing research by enabling researchers to measure these individual differences in the clinic as well as in patients' and participants' everyday social worlds. In this article, the authors provide a roadmap for researchers new to this area who would like to learn more about integrating salivary biospecimens into the next generation of health research. In addition, the authors highlight best practices and strategies to avoid common pitfalls for researchers already engaged in this field.

Natural neighborhood networks — Important social networks in the lives of older adults aging in place

Neighborhoods are important places of aging and meaningful contexts of life for many older people. The overall aim of this study was to explore the public life of older people aging in place in order to understand neighborhoods as the material places where public life occurs, networks as the social places of public life, and to examine how these neighborhoods and networks influence the experience of aging and wellbeing. Adopting a friendly visiting methodology, data was collected over an 8-month period using participant observation, visual methods and an innovative interview technique called the “go along method”. Data were analyzed using grounded theory and a coding strategy that integrated textual, visual, and auditory data. Results provide insights into the micro-territorial functioning of neighborhoods and highlight third places and transitory zones as significant sites for older residents. Embedded within these places is a natural neighborhood network — a web of informal relationships and interactions that enhance well being and shape the everyday social world of older adults aging in place.

Abusive Interactions: Research in Locked Wards for People with Dementia

This paper reports on a study in which unique access to three locked psycho-geriatric wards of a hospital allowed ethnographic exploration into everyday social worlds of fourteen people with dementia. Findings indicate abusive practice in the wards and show that participants in receipt of such practice responded with self-defence and resistance, but ultimately were defeated. In a development of Sabat's (2001) Selfs 1–3 framework, I identify how abusive practice arose due to staffs' inability to recognise different aspects of patients' self. Recommendations for practice include integrating a developed Selfs 1–3 framework into staff training and evaluating its impact on practice.

The social world of the socially anhedonic: Exploring the daily ecology of asociality

The need to belong is fundamental to human motivation. The significance of needs for relatedness and intimacy can be highlighted by examining aberrations in these needs. Social anhedonia, a component of the schizophrenia spectrum, represents a lack of reward from social interaction. The present research examined the everyday social worlds of the socially anhedonic. A week-long experience-sampling study found that people high in social anhedonia were more likely to be alone. When alone, they were likely to prefer solitude and to be alone by choice, not because they felt excluded. When with other people, they were likely to be in bigger, less intimate groups and to feel asocial. Socially anhedonic people felt more positive affect and less negative affect when alone, indicating a genuine preference for solitude. Because social anhedonia is a liability for psychopathology, it is the exception to the need to belong that proves the rule.

Culture, nature and particulate matter – Hybrid reframings in air pollution scholarship

Air pollution is a thoroughly hybrid phenomenon. It is composed of inseparable physical, scientific, cultural, social, economic and political dimensions. It is both an object of environmental science and embedded in our everyday social and cultural worlds. Nevertheless, much air pollution scholarship focuses solely on the physical dimensions of air pollution which are expressed quantitatively and pays little or no regard to the identities, discourses, bodies and emotions which constitute and are constituted by air pollution as a physical reality. This article argues for a more reflexive and hybrid approach to air pollution research which bridges intellectually confining binaries. Drawing on the work of Bruno Latour and other actor–network theorists, it argues that if we can let go of a foundational nature, disrupt our humanism and take non-scientific knowledges seriously, we might develop a new respect for the atmospheric environment and begin the task of building a better common world.

Conceptualizing Spirit Possession: Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence

Abstract We report the findings of a programmatic series of studies designed to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of cross‐culturally recurrent forms of possession belief. Possession phenomena are frequently portrayed in the anthropological literature as incompatible with common cultural assumptions and biases guiding Western notions of “self” and “personhood” and as resisting generalization and explication in comparative theoretical analysis. Our findings concerning the cognitive capacities and constraints that facilitate the emergence and transmission of possession concepts support the position that certain fundamental aspects of these concepts' forms are explainable in terms of ordinary, panhuman cognitive function. Ethnographic and experimental data indicate that successful possession concepts (e.g., those that entail the effective displacement of the host's agency by the possessing spirit's agency) emerge and spread, in part, because they effectively exploit universal cognitive mechanisms that deal with our everyday social and physical worlds and that this contributes to their enhanced incidence, communicability, memorability, and inferential potential relative to less “cognitively optimal,” less widespread possession concepts. [spirit possession, cognitive science of culture, cultural transmission, Afro‐Brazilian religion, mind‐body dualism]

Re-thinking a black feminist standpoint

Black feminists in Britain and the USA have long argued that there exists a black feminist standpoint based on theoretical understanding of black women's everyday experiences. This article draws connections between black feminist standpoint theory and the widening availability of black women's writings within literature and popular culture to investigate the issue of what experiences get taken up and come to define the black female experience. Through doing so, questions are raised about the 'triumph of experience' and the underlying assumptions of authenticity and authority that are so central to academic accounts and popular narratives of the black female experience. In the analysis, tension and discontinuity emerge between academic definitions of experience and the way that black women define experience within their everyday social worlds. The essay draws on and uses empirical research within specific localized communities to critically explore these issues.

Is it a case of ‘We know when we're not wanted'? The parents’ perspective on parent‐teacher roles and relationships

Summary Whilst there is now clearly an expectation upon parents to become more involved in schools and to take a greater part in their children's education, there is still little attempt to address the constraints upon achieving such aims. These constraints have been shown to include social class factors, gender relations, ethnicity and power relationships. This paper will take the analysis of some of these constraints further and, in particular, will focus on the views of working‐class parents on their relationships with, and role in relation to, their children's secondary school. The paper will explore the reasons for the orientation by working‐class parents which would seem to differ markedly from that of middle‐class parents. It will be shown that working‐class parents are committed to their children achieving educational success, and that they perceive their own role as supportive in a variety of ways. However, their position in relation to schools is to view the school as separate from their everyday social and cultural world and that the parent‐teacher role comprises a division of labour. It will be argued that teachers tend to adopt the same strategies for promoting parental involvement irrespective of class, parental needs, individual circumstances, and so on. Hence, because they take no account of differences, and because their strategies are constructed essentially from a logocentric position, then they serve to reinforce the parents’ perception of teachers as the professional ‘who knows best’: as the powerful knower which thus reinforces working‐class parents’ fatalistic view of schooling and their role as passive. The paper draws on data from a three‐year research project into the parents’ relationship with their children's secondary school. The data set which formed the basis of the analysis presented here comprises interviews with 58 parents from one of the case‐study schools which will be known as Acre Lane, and 15 of the school's teachers.