Hamster Wheel Research Articles

Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England

The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.

Transgender Youth Are Under Attack: The Work of Response

This is a terrifying time to be LGBTQ in America. In the first 2023 legislative session alone, Republican lawmakers introduced more than 100 new bills specifically targeting transgender youth. This is part of a coordinated, multi‐state attack on transgender Americans about which there is open and very public acknowledgement. If you look, you'll see medical and psychiatric governing boards, major human rights organizations, policymakers, researchers like myself, and parent activists scrambling to speak back in what has become an impossible rhetorical landscape. The single most powerful move conservative lawmakers have made is to place transgender Americans and our advocates on an endless hamster wheel of response to a seemingly never ending series of aggressions. Part of how homo‐ and cis‐sexism function is to set the contours of public debate. This is a reflection on being a sociologist in the midst of these ongoing cultural conversations.

Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England

The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.

Part-Time Mothering: A Poetic Autoethnography of a Precariously Employed Academic’s Mothering Experiences

While studies have explored the experiences of motherhood among female academics, the experiences of motherhood among precariously employed academics have not received adequate attention. This autoethnographic inquiry uses poetry to embody my experiences of mothering, in the context of my emotional journey and my subjectivities as a precariously employed academic in a premier higher educational institution in India. From a critical feminist standpoint, the poem explores the experiences through known metaphors including the leaky pipeline of academia, work–life imbalance in the ivory tower, and the sense of being on the hamster wheel. This work is a critical inquiry voicing the everyday realities of precariously employed academics mothering their children. It delves into how the nature of their work status influences their inner turmoil, decisions, and actions vis-à-vis motherhood. It also attempts to demonstrate and raise consciousness about how the private (motherhood) and the public (work) interact.

Nursing during the COVID-19 pandemic: A reflective thematic analysis of how the hamster wheel shifted personal and professional control.

The aim of this national study was to examine the experience of nurses 9-12 months after the onset of the pandemic. This article reports the reflective thematic analysis of the qualitative portion of a mixed methods study of the experiences of 1319 Canadian nurses between February to May 2021. Data gathering occurred through open-text box questions in an online survey. Three overarching themes were found: (1) the hamster wheel, (2) the shifting sense of control, and (3) the inability to leave the pandemic at work. This research presents a national perspective of nurses which contributes to the wider global narrative. The experience of redeployment, nurses as decision-makers, communication and leadership challenges were all factors impacting mental health and intraprofessional collaboration. The findings revealed the immense pressure, mental health concerns, and professional implications for nurses in all domains. No public or patient contributions.

Still on the hamster wheel? Now is the time to shape a new normal

The immediate crisis of the UK's Covid-19 pandemic may be over but many in the veterinary professions find themselves still working in crisis mode. Carolyne Crowe will be encouraging vets at BVA Live to take a step back and reassess what they want from their 'new normal'.

Динамика испытательного стенда типа «беличье колесо»

Ground tests of vehicles such as cars and tractors, including life tests and functional tests, are expensive and time-consuming. We propose to replace them with relatively inexpensive time-saving tests using a "hamster wheel" test bench. The vehicle inside a rotating ring remains at rest relative to the ground but in motion relative to the inner surface of the ring. This surface can be equipped with artificial obstacles to simulate actual road irregularities. We constructed differential equations of motion for the system and established the nature of the relative motion involving the outer ring and the test object, taking into account resonance phenomena and possible self-oscillations. We selected a disk simulating a vehicle wheel as our computational scheme. We studied the probability that self-oscillations appear in the system and determined their amplitude. We performed a qualitative assessment of possible dynamic effects. The paper proposes a system for arranging artificial obstacles on the inner surface of the wheel to simulate road bumps in terms of statistics.

Out of (the Assembly) Line: Mo(ve)ments of Uselessness Beyond the Human Scale

Since modernity the relationship between man and things has become precarious. At that time a far-reaching invention turned into a symbol and memorial of modern usage requirements and most efficient production processes: the assembly line. The movements to be performed within the strictly specified processes served only one purpose: the final product. As a consequence, work processes were divided up in the rhythm of the machines, sequences of actions were reduced, and alienation (Entfremdung) was promoted – pushing not only Charlie Chaplin’s tramp into the gear wheels of Modern Times (1936). Under these conditions the relationship between man and thing(s) was renegotiated: On the one hand the working class found itself objectified in a rushing hamster wheel, on the other hand the things in literature and arts regained obstinacy. During those times various authors started questioning the human scale as an omnipresent measure and value of life. Furthermore, things were equipped with biographies of their own, for example by the Russian futurist author Sergei Tret’iakov and his “Biography of the Object”, which featured the intrinsic value of the non-human, non-heroic towards traditional protagonists. Even today, artists succeed in their way to explore various assemblies of peoples and things, such as the artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss in their mixed media experiment The Way Things Go (1987). The article focuses on such resistant gestures of/towards things, that lack any obvious benefit and purposefulness, but, on the contrary, reveal their uselessness by literally falling ‘out of line’. Article received: December 12, 2021; Article accepted: February 1, 2022; Published online: April 15, 2022; Original scholarly article

Predictive analytics and the creation of the permanent present

ABSTRACT This article examines the work of predictive analytics in shaping the social worlds in which they thrive, and in particular the world of the first year of Great State University’s student success initiative. Specifically, this article investigates the following research paradox: predictive analytics, as driven by a logic premised on predicting the future, lock Great State University into a never-ending present. Through Brian Massumi’s concept of a logic of preemption, this paper explores how a quest for proper predictive analytics locked this student success initiative into a hamster wheel of a never-ending present, where the only space and time of action was here and now. It is argued that the function of predictive analytics in higher education is to produce space and time through dividuation and continuous algorithmic variation, freezing both past and future and restricting spacetimes of change to the present.

LONG‐TERM THINKING IN A SHORT‐TERM WORLD

AbstractThe author demonstrates how to apply long‐term thinking in business, professional development, and related areas; even while so many of today's pressures involve the short‐term. She includes examples from her own life and career, and also examples from other people, including pertinent quotes from branding consultant Martin Lindstrom, Silicon Valley innovation expert Jonathan Brill, consultant Ali Davies, Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon, and Getting Things Done productivity author David Allen. She cites relevant research from such sources as Management Research Group, the Strategic Thinking Institute, Silvia Bellezza of Columbia Business School, American Sociological Review, Economic Journal and others. This short‐term/long‐term balance is difficult, however. She writes that “almost no one likes the results of the short‐termism we see around us: the relentless frenzy, the endless hamster wheel, the aggressive pursuit of goals that quite possibly aren't the right ones. But it takes strength to go against the prevailing culture. That's both internal strength, because we have to face down uncomfortable questions about who we are and what we really want, and external strength, because we have to deal with bosses and colleagues and clients who are still used to measuring productivity through face time and volume.”

Living in a hamster wheel: Identity construction through hopes and terrors in Bong Joon-Ho’s 'Parasite'

Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite (2019) has successfully depicted universal issues regarding class identity and social mobility. It tells us a story about a lower-class family, the Kims who aspired and struggled in their journey of climbing the social ladder. This research aims to explore the process of identity construction of the Kims. Close textual analysis is employed as a tool for investigation and Althusser’s ideological interpellation is used to explain the process. The research also focuses on the socio-cultural factors that influence the Kims’ social mobility which contribute to the permanence of their class identity. The findings found out that many symbolic markers such as differences in property, neighborhood, education, diet and behavior distinguish the lower- and upper-class families. Thus, interpellation occurs when the family is lured into believing the ‘American dream’: by working hard enough and taking more risks, it is possible to climb up the social hierarchy. It constructs their identity as a lower-class with aspirations to move upward. This study also concludes that the persistence of social immobility is highly influenced by the level of education, perceptual discrimination, the impossibility of cross-class marriage and the economic inequality. Therefore, it proves that class identity can be unfavorable inheritance.

The hamster wheel: a case study on embodied narrative identity and overcoming severe obesity

Based in narrative phenomenology, this article describes an example of how lived time, self and bodily engagement with the social world intertwine, and how our sense of self develops. We explore this through the life story of a woman who lost weight through surgery in the 1970 s and has fought against her own body, food and eating ever since. Our narrative analysis of interviews, reflective notes and email correspondence disentangled two storylines illuminating paradoxes within this long-term weight loss process. Thea’s Medical Weight Narrative: From Severely Obese Child to Healthy Adult is her story in context of medicine and obesity treatment and expresses success and control. Thea’s Story: The Narrative of Fighting Weight is the experiential story, including concrete examples and quotes, highlighting bodily struggles and the inescapable ambiguity of being and having one’s body. The two storylines coexist and illuminate paradoxes within the weight loss surgery narrative, connected to meaningful life events and experiences, eating practices and relationships with important others. Surgery was experienced as lifesaving, yet the surgical transformation did not suffice, because it did not influence appetite or, desire for food in the long run. In the medical narrative of transforming the body by repair, a problematic relationship with food did not fit into the plot.

The Animal Inside

In societies around the world people seek scientific confirmation of widespread preconceptions about men and aggression, and we find ourselves riding a perpetual motion hamster wheel of misinformation and cant. Not infrequently, certain populations of men—poor men, African men, Mexican men, Wall Street men, rural men, urban men—are tagged as especially prone to violence, because they are purportedly less able and less intent on controlling their supposed primordial male urges to act out hostilities. Using examples including mass murders in the United States, World War I in Europe, the gender binary at the Vatican, and male suicidality around the world, we examine popular beliefs about men and violence in a range of cross-cultural contexts that are couched in terms of nature and animality (and sometimes hormones, Y chromosomes, and evolution) to analyze more closely the components of gender-based violence and to question the everyday language used to describe presumed inherent qualities of maleness shared by humans and other animals.

Liquid metal motor.

SummaryLiquid metal has demonstrated an enormous potential for developing soft functional devices and machines. However, current liquid metal enabled machines suffer from several issues, such as the requirement of a liquid environment, generation of weak actuating forces, and insufficient maneuverability. To overcome these restrictions, here, a motor is developed based on the electrical actuation of liquid metal droplets without the need for conventional electromagnets. The approach is distinguished by (1) the encapsulation of electrolyte and multiple liquid metal droplets within an enclosed system, and (2) the creation of stable and continuous torque outside a liquid environment. In addition, a liquid metal electrical brush is introduced to operate the motor with low friction and low wear. The unique driving mechanism endows the motor with several advantages, including low friction, no sparking, low noise, versatile working environment, and being built from soft materials that could offer new opportunities for developing soft robotics.

Plankton in a hamster wheel.

Plankton regularly travel vast distances up and down in the ocean. A water-filled hamster wheel with glass windows now enables detailed microscopic lab observations of individual aquatic microorganisms during their vertical migrations.

Academia: A choice between people and buildings or a trick in a hamster wheel?

Academia: A choice between people and buildings or a trick in a hamster wheel?

Constitutional Recognition: retiring from the hamster wheel

The process of realising constitutional recognition for Australia’s Indigenous population can be characterised as a cycle: the government commissions a group of experts to give recommendations, that group presents their recommendations, the government either rejects or fails to act on said recommendations and so, the government commissions a new group of experts and the cycle starts again. Each time the government will commission a similar group of experts, with a similar aim, bestowing upon the group a unique title in an attempt to mask the hamster-wheel that is the constitutional recognition debate.

The Hamster Wheel of Academic Life

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted hi...

Napoleon in the Hamster Wheel: in the Labyrinth of Gendered Career Trajectories

Learning outcomes To analyze and personally relate to an individual having faced a quarter-life crisis; to define how environmental factors influence the person’s career priorities; to analyze the causes of career-family conflicts; to comprehend another gender’s position and concerns; and to originate ideas for prospective career development. Case overview/synopsis The case study presents a career management dilemma of a PhD candidate, senior lecturer at the Almaty Management University, Kazakhstan and a married mother of two small children. Having faced a kind of quarter-life crisis and the pressures of a traditional society with gendered career trajectories, the protagonist (33) is challenging her initial plan of an academic career that sees gradual promotion and progress and has to make a difficult decision about her professional and personal identity amidst the realities of a newly emerging and transitional economy. Complexity academic level Master’s level Supplementary materials Teaching notes, company’s organizational charts, protagonist’s curriculum vitae, PowerPoint slides with the protagonist and her classmates’ pictures. Subject code CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

Burnout, Fatigue, Exhaustion

The notion of burnout among medical specialists, while long-recognized, has become increasingly topical. Anesthesiologists are often quoted as a group at increased risk of this condition, and so this text would seem particularly timely and relevant to our specialty. Burnout, Fatigue, Exhaustion, the title of which reads like a list of ailments familiar to any busy anesthesiologist, delves deeply into the notion of burnout. It comprises a collection of essays that explore the history of exhaustion, fatigue, and burnout, as well as the significance of these pathological conditions in modern society. This book is designed to appeal to an audience spread across many disciplines including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, literature, and medicine. At 316 pages, it is a lengthy and detailed text, encompassing 14 chapters written by various authors. The book is also divided into 5 parts that provide welcome structure to the content: Cultural–Historical Perspectives, Exhaustion Syndromes, Exhaustion and Self Realisation, Exhaustion Discourses, and Exhaustion and the Social. The weight of information presented is such that I feel that this book is primarily aimed at the academic reader with an appetite for the minutia of the topic. However, its usefulness as a reference text for busy clinicians is apparent in several areas, such as the second part of the book, which is dedicated to “Exhaustion Syndromes: Concepts and Definitions.” Here, factual elements, such as definitions and classifications of fatigue syndromes, are nicely presented in table form. For example, this section provides useful information on differentiating chronic fatigue syndrome from depression. It also includes a detailed discussion on the phenomenon of “burnout,” including its diagnosis, referring to the “burnout triad” of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and a sense of ineffectiveness. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the condition to aid clinicians in recognizing it and also how to differentiate between burnout and depression. The book is attractively produced, with some headings posing a question and the subsequent text aiming to answer the question in detail. The index is complete and helpful. The inclusion of some illustrations or information presented in graphical form would be a welcome addition to break up what is otherwise quite dense text. Burnout is often considered a modern phenomenon, and it is the way in which the authors put the condition into a historical context that is a most intriguing aspect of this book. The academic discovery of burnout is explained. The authors highlight historical texts that refer to the notion of burnout. This fascinating portion of the book refers to such wide-ranging works as the writings of William Shakespeare and the Old Testament. In this way, the book follows the evolution of our understanding of burnout. The book is carefully researched and up to date, providing an extensive review of scientific publications addressing burnout. The authors have included findings from their own research, including those related to the behaviors and attitudes associated with burnout. This is relevant to clinicians given that it is so well described that we are often slow to recognize the signs of burnout in ourselves or others. With this in mind, clinicians may be particularly interested in the section entitled, “Self Realisation Through Work and Its Failure.” Here, the author provides personal accounts from those who admit to self-medicating with cognitive-enhancing medication such as “Adderall” and “Ritalin,” to increase their focus, attention, and productivity at work. The section “Rechargeable Man in a Hamster Wheel World,” discusses balancing exercises, and the notion of a pause button, to reduce burnout. They refer to the worker who derives self-esteem entirely from their job versus those who are able to withdraw mentally after work into the company of family and friends. This section, which is very pertinent to anesthetists, offers an in-depth review of the importance of having the much sought after work-life balance. Burnout, Fatigue, Exhaustion addresses how mankind has discovered and dealt with burnout throughout the ages. It is a detailed and dense book, and for this reason, cover-to-cover reading may be best suited to those with a special interest in the topic. At the same time, it certainly has value as a reference text for those with a more casual interest in the subject. Exhaustion is a significant and underrecognized health problem, one which anesthesiologists are at increased risk of experiencing, and this book provides comprehensive information on all aspects of its form and formation. Martina Melvin, MBBCh, BAO, MCAI, FCAIAbigail Walsh, MB(HONS), BMEDSCI, MRCP(UK), FCAI, FJFICMIDepartment of AnaesthesiaSt Vincents University HospitalDublin, Ireland