Extension Of Self Research Articles

Queering Fashion’s Pathologies in Killing Eve 1

The rise of fashion as a star attraction in recent television serials points to the complex critical languages of fashion in fleshing out character and in shifting generic expectations. It also discloses the relation between fashion as commodity and fashion as an extension of self in a way that signals the queer potential of fashion on several fronts. Here I examine how fashion in Killing Eve (Waller-Bridge, 2018–2022) drives a form of queer attachment that speaks to the complicated terrain of a post-queer, post postfeminist critical moment. Throughout the series fashion is as a vehicle for the protagonist’s mercurial moods, from fun and playful to terrifying and anarchic, whilst also driving the audience’s visual pleasure and scopophiliac thrill. But the series is less interested in moral opprobrium of the protagonist’s excesses, either killing or shopping, than revealing “desire’s unruly attentiveness” (Berlant 2002, 72) through Eve's impossibly queer obsession with Villanelle: “I think about what you’re wearing and what you’re doing… I just want to know everything” (Thomas 2018). In queering our fantasmatic relation to fashion, from pleasure and ambivalence to novelty and disgust, Killing Eve dwells on the treacherous flux of our desires, alongside the underlying queerness of the commodity.

The (in)visibility of deafness: Identity, stigma, quality of lifeand the potential role of totally implantable cochlear implants.

The disclosure of deafness is complex, given the historic and on-going stigma associated with being deaf. The aim of this study was to explore how identity, stigma, and quality of life may be impacted when using cochlear implants (CIs) and totally implantable cochlear implants (TICIs). The physical difference between these two assistive listening devices is significant, given many CI users opt to hide their sound processor behind hair or headwear, in contrast to TICIs (an emerging technology) whereby all components are implanted internally and thus invisible. This qualitative study involved semistructured interviews and demographic questionnaires with 12 adult participants with more than 1 year of experience using their CI. Participants were recruited Australia-wide through community organisations that support deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically, with the themes generated through an inductive process, with consensus generated through group working with three members from the research team. Four major themes were identified: (1) CI challenges; (2) The importance of social and support networks; (3) Identity and disclosure and (4) Concerns about TICIs. The underlying finding was centred around the construction of deaf identity. Participant attitudes were generally categorised as 'Loud and proud', with the recognition that displaying the CI was an extension of self, something to be proud of, and a means to normalise deafness; or 'Out of sight and out of mind', which sought to minimise the visibility of deafness. While both identities differed in how deafness is disclosed, they are fundamentally related to the same ideas of self-agency and empowerment. TICIs present a novel opportunity-the ability for CI users to control the visibility of their deafness and thus control disclosure. This study explored the impact of stigma and categorised two core identities that CI users construct. Future directions include investigating potential CI candidates, to explore if TICIs may be a facilitator to CI uptake. The semistructured interview guide was developed in consultation with adults with CIs. Feedback led to adjustments and improvement to the interview guide. In addition, F. R. has a lived experience with hearing loss, and C. Y. L. is an executive committee member for a nonprofit charity organisation that supports families that are D/deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Gen Z buying patterns: comparing the influence of professional advising and social media engagement

PurposeThis paper aims to assess retail shopping avenues for young consumers based on the type of guidance and assistance they pursue (social media vs professional service provider) in purchasing situations judged to be important. Young consumers consider themselves pet parents and pets represent an extension of self. Thus, pet-related products, by their importance, represent an excellent area of analysis for this inquiry.Design/methodology/approachData collection was completed in a way that is contextually relevant and gives the results ecological validity with the assistance of a major supplier of pet food. A total of 470 Gen Z owners of small companion animals were obtained. The partial least squares structural equation modeling testing method is considered appropriate for the model analysis due to the structure and homogeneity of the sample and due to the precision of the method.FindingsResults indicate that, in accordance with social media engagement (SME) theory, high SME elevated social commerce purchase intentions while professional advice seekers reported increased brick-and-mortar shopping. Thus, context-dependent, young consumers may purchase from brick-and-mortar sites.Originality/valueThis paper draws on SME and Advice Response Theory and proposes an original model explaining channel selection preferences for young consumers based on the type of advice sought for important purchasing decisions. The model represents a steppingstone to investigate the mechanism that translates information search sources into buying through different channels.

Ownership as an extension of self: An alternative to a minimalist model.

Our commentary challenges Boyer's model by arguing that the extended-self is a more likely basis for ownership psychology. We outline how self-based principles of investment and control might structure thinking about ownership and related rights. We end by expanding the extended-self account to include welfare, as a way of understanding the contexts under which ownership is upheld or violated.

Mondrian in Action! Internet Art Build Using the VR Technology

Western aesthetic is built on empiricism that severs the unification of reality and metaphysics of ancient times. This restricts knowledge to the world of senses consequently shaping our modern way of operating in the world that tends to objectify and separates the world from the self. In doing so, the sense of ‘I’ enforces a viewer to externalize the world. However, with experiential technologies such as VR, this external, objectified world collapses as the viewer becomes immersed in a particular, virtual environment – overcoming the limitation of physicality by being engrossed in information as an extension of self. This paper argues such experience is reflective of an epistemology coming from Eastern cultures and philosophy. Specifically, by examining an early internet art build on VR technology called ‘Mondrian in Action!’ the article critiques the idea of High Art to resist secular fence of knowledge that marginalize other ways of experiencing the world.

Surrogate Tourists on Instagram: An(other) Kind of Mimetic Gaze

From influencers to established travel brands to casual consumers, there are a number of existing organisms in the online ecosystem of Instagram simultaneously producing and consuming content. At first glance, the nature of these relationships seems simple—sharing and engaging via a visual medium—but upon prolonged review, deeper questions about the interwoven complexity existing between these organisms and their content emerge. The authors illuminate several discernible patterns through a deep theoretical framing of the gaze, mimetic reproduction, and ownership followed by a conceptual modeling through a review of everyday Instagramic practices. What becomes apparent are a number of stages of development in this process. Firstly, the practice of photographic mimicry becomes a form of consumption in which the consumer "consumes places" vicariously across space and time, making image reproduction an embodied practice. Secondly, the Instagram feed of an individual consumer (or influencer) becomes a sort of living autobiography, curating and aggrandizing the glossiest images that form a projected extension of self that is not grounded necessarily in authenticity, but in reproduction. Finally, the proliferation of communication between consumer and consumer reproduces a surrogate type that creates a constantly evolving circular content loop where the flow of influence and information becomes muddled and originality becomes less distinguishable. This article critically explores how Instagram has collapsed traditional influence and consumer relationships, particularly in how tourist experience and imagery are shared, resulting in a complex online community that resembles a cultural colonial organism fed by communication feedback loops. The result of this article is the positioning of a surrogate tourist embodied within a collection of individual entities performing specialized tasks dependent on other individuals in the community in which the function and nature of the individual recedes in importance to the relationship existing between organisms.

‘I keep my brain on my iPhone’ – being and becoming an emergency physician in a technological age

ABSTRACT The use of mobile information and communication technologies within health and medical education contexts is widespread and generally viewed positively. Such technologies are primarily used for information seeking and are often undertaken informally. This qualitative, phenomenological study offers not only a deep and contextually sensitive discussion of how emergency physicians use mobile technologies in their day-to-day work, but also extends this discussion to the practice of ongoing professional learning in the workplace. We find that the most common uses for mobile technology include (re)checking medicine orders and/or diagnoses and for communicating with other physicians for advice, support, and on occasion, discussion. Moreover, physicians often perceive mobile technology as an extension of self and represent an externalisation of expertise. There is skepticism, however, about the use of these technologies particularly among more experienced and established Attending Physicians (or Consultants in other jurisdictions). In all, these findings provide new perspectives on and further directions for both research and practice in health and medical education contexts given that the use of mobile technology in the emergency department is ubiquitous and increasingly normalised, particularly within the clinical interaction with patients.

Supporting independence at home for people living with dementia: a qualitative ethnographic study of homecare

PurposeThe aim of this ethnographic study was to investigate how homecare workers support or inhibit independence in people living with dementia.MethodsWe undertook 100 h of participant observations with homecare workers (n = 16) supporting people living with dementia (n = 17); and 82 qualitative interviews with people living with dementia (n = 11), family carers (n = 22), homecare managers and support staff (n = 11), homecare workers (n = 19) and health and social care professionals (n = 19). We triangulated data and analysed findings thematically.ResultsWe developed three themes: (1) independence and the home environment, highlighting ongoing negotiations between familiarity, suitability and safety for care; (2) independence and identity, exploring how homecare workers’ understanding of their clients’ identity can enable active participation in tasks and meaningful choices; and (3) independence and empowerment, considering the important position of homecare workers to advocate for clients living with dementia while navigating authoritative power amongst proxy decision-makers.ConclusionWe consider that person-centred care should also be home-centred, respecting the client’s home as an extension of self. Homecare workers can use their understanding of clients’ identities, alongside skills in providing choice and developing relationships of interdependence to engage clients in everyday tasks. Homecare workers are well placed to advocate for their client’s voice within the care network, although their ability to do so is limited by their position within power structures.

Teaching Land as an Extension of Self: The Role of Ecopsychology in Disrupting Capitalist Narratives of Land and Resource Exploitation

Ecopsychology, which investigates the human-nature relationship, draws on marginalized ways of knowing such as Native American Shamanism, “whole earth thinking,” and the dynamic feminine (Gomez & Kanner, 1995). Impediments of literal classroom walls and systemic bias against unquantifiable course outcomes limits traditional pedagogy. Traditional pedagogical approaches to environmental curriculum reinforce perceived helplessness in the face of capitalist forces which identify land only as explotiable “other” (hooks, 2011). This paper describes a university English classroom's radical Ecopedagogy without spatial impedences and state policed “standards” that no longer enforce normative identity constructs. In this Ecopedagogy, students explore Biophilia, which awakens a powerful, dormant identity, expanding the self to include the entire biosphere.

Narratives selves in the digital world: An empirical investigation

AbstractThe digital era has led to the extension of self into virtual space, resulting in changes to consumption patterns. The existing academic landscape in this area focuses on Western perspectives, in the context of early‐stage digital interventions. However, the dynamic digital world demands a constant exploration to understand the corresponding influences on consumer behavior across varied cultural contexts. This research focuses on unraveling newer dimensions of the digital self from non‐Western perspectives. We adopt an interpretive lens to understand the evolving nature of self through a grounded theory approach. The study establishes the presence of multiple independent narrative selves, co‐created with people, and technology. Each narrative addresses different segments of personal audiences, enabling new modes of self‐expression to overcome the challenges of digital expressions. Additionally, we highlight the exclusion of the digital presence of family in the formation of the narrative self. From a theoretical perspective, we extend and contrast the existing conceptualizations on self, such as dialogical selves, self‐extension and expansion, and the unified core self. Further, the practical implications emphasize the need for narrative analytic approaches to understanding consumers and avenues for brands to decode narratives, develop strategies to gain consumer attention, and become part of consumers' narrative selves.

Whose (Extended) Mind Is It, Anyway?

Presentations of the extended mind thesis are often ambiguous between two versions of that thesis. According to the first, the extension of mind consists in the supervenience base of human individuals’ mental states extending beyond the skull and into artifacts in the outside world. According to a second interpretation, human individuals sometimes participate in broader cognitive systems that are themselves the subjects of extended mental states. This ambiguity, I suggest, contributes to several of the most serious criticisms of the extended mind thesis, for these criticisms only apply to the first interpretation of the thesis. In what follows, I argue that several significant objections to the extended mind thesis fail to undermine the latter interpretation of that thesis. Having defended the second interpretation, I argue that the extension of mind does not involve the extension of self. Consequently, the subject of extended mental states is not the same individual whose causal coupling with external artifacts gives rise to extended mentality.

Customizations, collections and corporations: Mass production and self-expression

Collecting and customizing highlight the interrelation of fan works and fan practices with corporate counterparts. Neither can be neatly isolated from the other. Corporations appropriate multiple aspects of material fan practices to encourage consumption, framing choice as customization and mass-produced merchandise as rare collectibles. Meanwhile, fans practice mini-mass-production, making multiple versions of fan works for sale or trade. Moving beyond an artificial value-laden binary opposition between fan customizations and collections or corporate versions, it would be more productive to focus on how both satisfy human urges for control and self-expression via one’s own creations and possessions. The personal investment of time and effort offers an expression and extension of self. Fans use toys, shoes, phone cases and other merchandise as raw materials for their creations. What varies is the amount of time, energy, skill or material resources individuals are able or willing to invest. Thus multiple supposedly distinct fan practices interconnect: customizers modifying or creating beloved fan objects; customers selecting from predetermined options to make their own variations on shoes, phone cases and other merchandise; shoppers seeking slight variations in seemingly identical items or collectors assembling work created by corporations or other customizers to display their own creations. Even if corporations monetize some forms of self-expression, collecting or customizing such items should be recognized as a form of fan activity instead of dismissed as mere consumerism.

Value and Abstraction in Thomas Hardy

AbstractThe production of abstract value—not limited to the transformation of labor under the exigencies of capitalism but extending to modes of signification undermined by abstract equivalence—plays an unprecedented yet overlooked role in the major novels of Thomas Hardy: unprecedented because the realist novel has been previously theorized in terms of an expressive self-production thwarted by social alienation or the usurpation of individual agency; overlooked because Hardy criticism has focused on work as a protected category of meaning creation and social continuity. Abstract value is, however, an empty quantification of labor’s duration and the enforcement of its equivalence; it is not an extension of self into world. Across his novelistic career Hardy revises the tragic weight given in his early fiction to binding material attachments, so the later novels are, by contrast, tragedies of abstract equivalence and separation. In the face of a regime of capitalist abstraction and its relentless downward mobility, Hardy upholds not the continuity or intimacy of work but the less certain affiliations of precarious and uprooted surplus populations.

Is the Prosthetic Homologue Necessary for Embodiment?

Embodiment is the process by which patients with limb loss come to accept their peripheral device as a natural extension of self. However, there is little guidance as to how exacting the prosthesis must be in order for embodiment to take place: is it necessary for the prosthetic hand to look just like the absent hand? Here, we describe a protocol for testing whether an individual would select a hand that looks like their own from among a selection of five hands, and whether the hand selection (regardless of homology) is consistent across multiple exposures to the same (but reordered) set of candidate hands. Pilot results using healthy volunteers reveals that hand selection is only modestly consistent, and that selection of the prosthetic homologue is atypical (61 of 192 total exposures). Our protocol can be executed in minutes, and makes use of readily available equipment and softwares. We present both a face-to-face and a virtual protocol, for maximum flexibility of implementation.

Offline personality and avatar customisation. Discrepancy profiles and avatar identification in a sample of MMORPG players

This study examined the relationship between offline personality and avatar customisation in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) players, and questioned whether the offline personality is always the starting point for the customisation of an avatar. The aims were: to analyse the discrepancy profiles which emerge when players are asked to rate their primary avatar, actual self and ideal self with respect to certain personality factors; to explore whether these profiles varied across personality factors and within players; and to analyse the relation between discrepancy profiles and the extent to which players identified with their avatars.A sample of 845 MMORPG players completed an online questionnaire consisting of a short version of the Big Five Personality Inventory and an avatar identification scale.Four discrepancy profiles (idealised, actualised, alter ego, negative hero) common to the personality factors extroversion, consciousness, agreeableness and emotional stability and stable within players emerged. They converged into four kind of offline personality-avatar relationship differently related with avatar identification that was higher when avatar was similar to self or an extension of self, and lower when avatar was other than self, or antithesis of self. The practical implication of these finding are discussed.

Embracing an “African Ethos” to facilitate African immigrants participation in medical genetics and genomics research

BackgroundLimited published research exists on perceptions and potentials for black African immigrants' participation in medical genetics and genomics research. PurposeThis study explores the inclination and disinclination of African immigrants to be involved in genetics and genomics research. MethodsIn-depth qualitative interviews were employed in which a sample of black African immigrants 18 years and older (n = 34) were interviewed. DiscussionBarriers included contrary beliefs and customs about disease and the human body that differs from Western conceptions, and lack of genuine connection to the health care system. Facilitators included promotion of an “African ethos,” wherein Africans unite with one another in a communal extension of self and robust community involvement across the life span of genetic studies. ConclusionIt is important for researchers and genetic counselors to understand the sociocultural underpinnings of African immigrants about genetics and genomics research as an initial step to encouraging their participation.

Toys are me: Children’s extension of self to objects

Adults tend to believe that objects can function as extensions of people’s selves. This belief has been demonstrated in that changes to people’s sense of self affect their attachment to personally valuable objects, and vice-versa. Here we tested the development of this belief. In Study 1 we found that manipulating 5-year-olds’ self-worth via positive or negative feedback on performance, affected their willingness to part with personally valuable objects, but had no effect vis-à-vis non-valuable objects. In Study 2 we found that 9-, but not 5-year-olds were more willing to give a personally valuable object to someone morally repulsive after the object had been cleaned of all remnants of the child’s self, than before. Study 2b showed an analogous effect in 5-year-olds’ willingness to receive an object from someone morally repulsive. These findings intimate that the extension of self to objects via contagion may derive not only from cultural values such as consumerism, materialism, or individualism, but also from basic human needs.

A Mirror without a Tain: Personae, Avatars, and Selves in a Multi-User Virtual Environment

A Mirror without a Tain: Personae, Avatars, and Selves in a Multi-User Virtual Environment

Chinese Russia: Imperial Consciousness in Vladimir Sorokin’s Writing

China plays a crucial role in the contemporary fiction of Vladimir Sorokin. Sorokin’s fascination with the country parallels a heightened geo-political awareness of China in an increasingly globalized Russia. This paper argues that Sorokin’s work expresses an ambiguous view of China, with protagonists who see the country ambivalently: both as a metaphorical extension of self and an increasingly powerful “other.” This paper examines Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (1999), the short stories “Iu” and “The Concrete Ones” (2000), the novels Day of the Oprichnik (2006) and The Blizzard (2010), and Aleksandr Zel’dovich’s film The Target (2011), for which Sorokin penned the screenplay. On the one hand, China functions as an imaginary projection of the Russian imperial self, as evidenced by the abundance of Russo-Chinese linguistic and semantic fusions in Sorokin’s fictional worlds. On the other hand, Sorokin reveals a deeply entrenched sinophobia, as growing Chinese economic and demographic power threatens Russia’s imperial dominance in Eurasia.

Um Estudo Empírico sobre a Construção da Identidade Social do Consumidor de Toy Art

O fenômeno do mercado de produtos, aparentemente infantis, para adultos é algo recente e em constante crescimento. Utilizando-se do Toy Art como exemplo desse mercado, esta pesquisa tem como objetivo compreender como os consumidores de Toy Art utilizam o seu bem para constituir a sua identidade social, explorando esse relacionamento de consumo e os fatores que desencadeiam o processo de extensão. Este estudo é qualitativo e foi conduzido com entrevistas em profundidade com 14 consumidores de Toys, de ambos os sexos, com idades entre 19 e 38 anos, residentes em diversos estados brasileiros, durante os meses de julho e agosto de 2009. Os resultados demonstraram que os consumidores de Toy Art utilizam o seu bem para constituir sua identidade social e como forma de diferenciação e de expressão. A extensão desses consumidores se dá durante essa busca pelo incomum, por um bem que os distinga dos demais.