Imaginative Interventions Research Articles

Elucidating the influences of social determinants of health on perceived overall health among African American/Black and Hispanic ovarian cancer survivors using the NIH All of Us Research Program

ObjectivesTo evaluate the influences of social determinants of health (SDOH) on perceived health and well-being among African American (AA)/Black and Hispanic ovarian cancer survivors. MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted using overall health and SDOH survey data collected by the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program from May 2017 to September 2023. ResultsWhile 1250 enrolled participants with ovarian cancer met the inclusion criteria, 414 (33%) completed SDOH surveys: 29 (7%) AA/Black, 33 (8%) Hispanic, and 352 (85%) White. In the ordinal logistic regression models, for every unit increase in the SDOH neighborhood characteristics score, the odds of having a poor perception of general health decreased by 0.96 times. For every unit increase in the SDOH day-to-day discrimination score, the odds of having a poor perception of general health, general mental health, social satisfaction decreased by 0.95, 0.94 and 0.93 times respectively. For every unit increase in the SDOH food and housing security score, the odds of having a poor perception of general health decreased by 0.57 times. Compared to White ovarian cancer survivors, AA/Black and Hispanic ovarian cancer survivors were significantly more likely to have a poor perception of general health, general mental health, and social satisfaction even when adjusting for these SDOH. ConclusionsUnfavorable SDOH conditions negatively influence the overall perception of health. These findings signal an urgency for healthcare professionals and scientists to partner together with local communities in designing feasible and imaginative interventions to overcome cancer care disparities in an equitable manner.

Dialectical behavioral therapy for complex posttraumatic stress disorder (DBT-PTSD): an evidence-based disorder-specific treatment program

Dialectical behavioral therapy for complex posttraumatic stress disorders (DBT-PTSD) is amodular treatment program that was developed at the Central Institute for Mental Health at the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2005-2021. DBT-PTSD is designed to meet the needs of patients with complex PTSD related to sexual or physical trauma in childhood and adolescence. It is specifically designed for patients suffering from severe emotional dysregulation, persistent self-injury, chronic suicidal ideation, severe dissociative symptoms and amarkedly negative self-concept with a high level of guilt, shame, self-loathing and interpersonal problems. To address these different core symptoms, DBT-PTSD combines evidence-based therapeutic strategies: principles, rules, and skills of DBT, trauma-specific cognitive and exposure-based techniques, imaginative interventions and procedures for behavioral change. The treatment program is designed to be carried out in an outpatient (45weeks) or residential (12weeks) setting. The results from two randomized controlled trials showed large effect sizes across very different symptom domains and a significant superiority of DBT-PTSD over Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). Based on these results, DBT-PTSD is currently a promising evidence-based treatment program for all features of a complex PTSD after sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence.

Creative Diplomacy in Constantinople: Virginia Woolf and Kang Youwei

Abstract This article discusses two figures who visited Constantinople/Istanbul in roughly the same period, English writer Virginia Woolf (1906) and Qing China reformer Kang Youwei (1908). While Woolf and Kang arrived in Istanbul from different contexts, they were each deeply interested in Istanbul as the capital of an empire that called their own into provocative comparison. Both produced texts that were the result of critical reflections upon their encounters there, and each would also go on to advocate for profound societal reforms, with shared emphases on social equality, pacifism, and cosmopolitan critiques of the state. By reading Kang’s and Woolf’s Istanbul-inspired and other related texts alongside one another, this article presents these literary texts as forms of creative diplomacy that engage with historical, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of difference, and that highlight the possibilities of imaginative interventions into official diplomatic practices and narratives.

The effect of an educational program through imaginative intervention according to the (PETTLEP) model in the development of students' kinesthetic handball perception

The research aims to develop an educational programme for visual intervention in handball based on the PETTLEP model, as well as to assess the impact of the educational programme for visual intervention in handball based on the PETTLEP model on developing students' kinesthetic perception in handball. The second is in the College of Physical Education and Sports Sciences - Al-Qasim Green University for the academic year (2022-2023). The kinesthetic perception tests (perceiving the place, perceiving the distance) were used with a hand reel, and the visual intervention programme (PETTLEP) was used on the experimental sample, and the number of sessions was (10), by (2) sessions per week for two days (Sunday, Tuesday), the educational unit time was (90) minutes, and the statistical bag (SPSS) was used to process the results. The study concluded that the visual intervention educational programme (PETTLEP) was effective in developing awareness of place and distance with handball among second-stage students. The researchers make several recommendations, the most important of which is to use the visual intervention programme (PETTLEP) to diagnose weaknesses in sensory-motor perception abilities in handball.

Performativity and the domestic space Practices of embodied dwelling through enactivism, participation, and auto-construction


 
 
 This paper examines the transformative potential of performativity in reimagining the concept of dwelling and of domestic spaces. Drawing from enactivist and embodied cognition perspectives, we delve into the dynamic relationship between individuals, their bodies, and the architectural environment. Emphasising the role of bodily engagement, sensorimotor experiences, and interoceptive awareness, we explore how individuals actively participate in and shape their architectural surroundings. Moving beyond individual interactions, we also highlight the social and collective dynamics influenced by the built environment, underscoring the impact of cultural conventions and societal norms.
 This paper investigates some contributions that advocate for a reappropriation of institutionalised domestic spaces through imaginative interventions that challenge conventional norms and envision future-oriented dwelling practices. Within the context of institutionalised domestic spaces, we investigate the role of the fantastical and the monstrous as disordered qualities that challenge traditional boundaries and offer opportunities for transformation. Through case studies, we examine projects that blur the lines between public and private realms, enabling participatory practices and urban influences to reshape functional space utilisation.
 In conclusion, this paper underscores the importance of a dialogue between embodied performativity and the concept of dwelling. It proposes a re-evaluation of our relationship with space that is not just functional but enactive, and it champions the transformative potential of the arts in conceiving our future homes. With a renewed focus on sustainability, participation, and the interplay between the human body and space, we can begin to imagine a future of dwelling that is as dynamic, inclusive, and vibrant as the lives we wish to live within these spaces.
 
 

A ‘Chennai’ in Every City of the World: The Lethal Mix of the Water Crisis, Climate Change, and Governance Indifference

The prevailing water crisis and problem of climate change demand a review of the developmental activities conducted by State of Tamil Nadu. While ascertaining a system to address the crisis can be daunting, integrated approaches, such as those that use technology, are fundamental to identifying and evaluating options for sustainable solutions. This paper explores the water–climate nexus through the case study of Chennai, the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Climate change has influenced the behaviour and patterns of floods, brought about incessant rain and led to a shift in the monsoons. In addition, changes to the climate have resulted in a shortage of drinking water in Chennai. There is a concomitant problem of a large and increasing population. These elements warrant a discourse on law, humans and technology. In Chennai, the indifference and denial of political leaders have resulted in failure, and unsustainable measures to address the water crisis have been implemented. The intervention of the Supreme Court of India relating to a mechanism to deal with a water-sharing arrangement between the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the last few decades has been unsuccessful. None of the proposed solutions were based on incorporating technology, which is a major oversight. The resultant consequences of water use and the complex mix of social factors surrounding the vulnerable population are addressed in this paper. The effect of the water crisis on women and the agricultural workforce is illustrated to argue for greater and more imaginative governmental intervention. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for a holistic approach to climate change and the ongoing water crisis that invites better interventions, particularly in terms of technology, to address the crisis and avoid a situation in which groundwater will be critically degraded by 2030.

Theorize for What? Reading Black Queer Film and Popular Culture

Theorize for What? Reading Black Queer Film and Popular Culture Jennifer DeClue (bio) Still and moving images of black queer sexuality abound in our contemporary moment and bountifully elicit black queer theories of embodiment, temporality, and desire.1 The condition of non-heteronormativity that coheres to national black belonging is a conduit for the imminent, pervasive, and insidious vulnerability to state violence that imperils all black people. The vector of blackness bends, shapes, and refracts violences that circulate through the brutality of gender production, the myriad traumas of sexuality, the virulence of class stratification, and the occlusion of black needs around ability and care. The cultural consumption of blackness makes inescapable the history of black valuation and commodification and makes unmistakable the ties between black worthiness, black pain, and black fascination. These conditions produce a queer blackness of being made evident in films and works of popular culture that conjure scenes of black resistance, black queer desire, and black love and tenderness.2 Black queer cultural production allows for luster, sensuality, and pleasure to not simply rest in our imaginations but be made material, felt and seen. The way that images of black corporeality are made delectable and voraciously consumed is beyond the control of the makers, but all is not lost, this is where black queer theory can issue a measure of redress. In the most capacious and insightful ways, black queer theory names and meticulously analyzes targeted, covert, and free floating anti-black heteronormative impositions that mean to limit our recourse, mistake our glamor for digestibility, and threaten our lives with impunity.3 As Cathy Cohen explicates in her foundational article, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?,” “queer” lives into its radical potential when it refers not simply to sexuality and gender, but describes a political commitment full of coalitional possibilities [End Page 43] and strategies that join together to dismantle mechanisms of systemic oppression and upend limiting conceptions of freedom.4 My understanding of the urgency of black queer theory is informed by the ways that it carries with it that unabashed defiance of dominant power that has given “queer” its radical charge. In considering the stakes of black queer theory and its relationship to black queer film and popular culture, attention to black trans theory and representation is essential. It must be stated, unequivocally, that the vulnerability of trans visibility is lethal. The murders of black trans women and men continue, with no end in sight. To theorize visual culture and black queerness is to theorize visibility and black transness and contend with the bind of representation that puts black trans and queer people’s lives in jeopardy. This analysis of black queer theory, film, and popular culture is meant to work in concert with black trans theory. The anthology Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, edited by Reina Gossett, (Tourmaline), Eric Stanley, and Johanna Burton, brilliantly and incisively theorizes the trap of trans visibility.5 C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity brings black trans history into contact with a black trans present through a theoretical treatment that produces a rigorous and imaginative intervention into black studies and trans studies.6 Both Trap Door and Black on Both Sides balance their examinations of the racialized gender terror of the past and the racialized gender terror of the present with a world-making impetus that shapes trans futures. The radical world-making possibilities that emerge in black trans and queer theory call to me, and I reel with a desire that lurches toward the future as I reach back toward a beckoning past. The fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, celebrated in the summer of 2019, is a stirring reminder of the indelible truth that trans women of color inaugurated our contemporary queer movement with their acts of resistance. The trans coalitional movement building work of S.T.A.R, founded by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson in 1970, imagined a future that included gender self-determination, the end of police violence, the end of exploitation by the medical industry, and food, shelter, and education for all; we...

想象干预减少进食渴求——基于信息的精细化侵入理论

想象干预减少进食渴求——基于信息的精细化侵入理论

Imagination for change: The Post-Fossil City Contest

The transition to a less carbon-dependent society is arguably one of the most pressing issues of our time. As carbon is deeply embedded in contemporary western culture, this transition requires a deep reconsideration of cultural values. Art and design can be helpful in opening up this debate and imagining alternative futures. However, not much is known about how such interventions work. In this exploratory paper, we analyse a futuring intervention in which we were closely involved as organisers and curators–the Post-Fossil City Contest. This international competition aimed at imagining a city beyond carbon received 250 entries and resulted in a public exhibition at the municipal building in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The ideas developed by the finalists of the Post-Fossil City Contest inspired us to develop the notion of ‘imaginative logics’: the set of principles underlying or constituting an imaginative intervention, by means of which an abstract phenomenon is made present to the audience. Linking our empirical observations to the speculative design and experiential futures literature, we distinguish between doable, juxtaposing, defamiliarizing, guerilla and procedural imaginative logics. This typology can be a starting point for further research into how and when to apply what kind of futuring intervention.

Antimicrobial resistance: A biopsychosocial problem requiring innovative interdisciplinary and imaginative interventions.

To date, antimicrobials have been understood through largely biomedical perspectives. There has been a tendency to focus upon the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals within individual bodies. However, the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance demands we reconsider how we think about antimicrobials and their effects. Rather than understanding them primarily within bodies, it is increasingly important to consider their effects between bodies, between species and across environments. We need to reduce the drivers of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) at a global level, focusing on the connections between prescribing in one country and resistance mechanisms in another. We need to engage with the ways antimicrobials within the food chain will impact upon human healthcare. Moreover, we need to realise what happens within the ward will impact upon the environment (through waste water). In the future, imaginative interventions will be required that must make the most of biomedicine but draw equally across a wider range of disciplines (e.g. engineering, ecologists) and include an ever-increasing set of professionals (e.g. nurses, veterinarians and farmers). Such collective action demands a shift to working in new interdisciplinary, inter-professional ways. Mutual respect and understanding is required to enable each perspective to be combined to yield synergistic effects.

Internet risks and expert views: a case study of the insider perspectives of youth workers in Hong Kong

This study collects and analyses the viewpoints of front-line youth workers regarding the notion of ‘Internet risks’. Previous studies have examined and discussed various dangers of the Internet. Parental, school, and governmental interventions are often called for by those concerned. The implicit assumption is that these are the people who possess the expertise to tackle the problems at hand. Through participation in three forums focusing on ‘Internet risks’, and in-depth interviews with 10 such ‘experts’ in Hong Kong, the study examines if this is a valid assumption. It finds that experts perceive Internet risks rather differently. In addition to the more conventional views about content, contact and conduct risks, our interviewees are aware that a new order is quickly emerging in the new media environment. Despite being considered as ‘experts’, they do not necessarily know how to tackle the so-called ‘youth-at-risk’. Rather, they are exploring how they would capitalize on the opportunities offered by the developments. The key findings highlight the need to critically review the notion of ‘Internet risks’. As with other risk frameworks, the ultimate aim is to develop intervention programmes. In this regard, risks are often treated as concrete problems that can be solved. Youth experts, however, find that the changing scope, speed and persistence of communication in today's information society present the biggest challenge in youth work. The existing framework of risks was unable to describe and account for such risks. In response, Internet risk has to be reconceptualized so that more updated, relevant and imaginative intervention can be introduced.

Victims and Victimizers in the Fiction of Katherine Mansfield and Jean Rhys

VIRGINIA WOOLF AND KATHERINE MANSFIELD WERE FRIENDS AND LITERARY RIVALS whose common artistic concerns have been the subject of more than one book-length study (Sellei; Smith). Although Jean Rhys's biography parallels far more closely than Woolf s does, their works have only occasionally been compared (see Wolfe; Howells; Mellown). Yet comparison of and Rhys's shared experiences, and of how those experiences affected their fiction, reveals hitherto unexamined aspect of their artistic development: how their representations of victimizers and victims reflect an ongoing struggle to reconcile an intense and personal sense of grievance with basic imperatives of modernist aesthetics. Their parallel struggles illuminate one of the cross pressures that plagued women writers of the modernist period.James McFarlane suggests that modernist writers aim to create a kind of meta-language in which things kept apart by conventional language are brought together within new universe of discourse which allows workaday contraries to have at one and the same time separate and shared identity (89). In treating issues of cruelty and exploitation, then, the modernist writer should ideally demonstrate that, despite their apparent opposition, an underlying sameness unites victim and victimizer. A writer who sides passionately with victims of injustice risks lapsing into the mode of Victorian moralizing that modernists sought to escape.It is not therefore surprising that many modernist writers present themselves as detached, impartial observers of volatile world. As Malcolm Bradbury puts it, the modernist writer becomes member of wandering, culturally inquisitive group, and even when dealing with his own homeland perceives from the distance of an expatriate perspective of aesthetic internationalism (101). In attempting to achieve such stance, modernist writers prefer implicit suggestion to explicit assertion. Their fictions are often structured around patterns of imagery and significant juxtapositions. According to Mansfield, the modernist writer doesn't tell her readers anything bang out (Letters 393).Critics argue that and Rhys's work does indeed illustrate these aspects of the modernist aesthetic. Mansfield's method, notes Clare Hanson, always one of extreme indirection and obliquity (301). Carine Mardorossian suggests that form and imaginative intervention were foremost on [Rhys's] mind, so much so that even her autobiography Smile, Please exemplifies the kind of highly structured and modernist piece of writing we associate with (134). Yet an examination of the ways in which Mansfield and Rhys represent victimization in their fiction suggests that neither found it easy to unite victim and victimizer conceptually or to describe them with suitably modernist detachment or indirection. The reasons for this are to be found in the authors' remarkably similar experiences of rejection, marginalization, discrimination, and suffering, which placed their passionate resentment at odds with the aesthetic they espoused. In case, passion won out; in Rhys's case, modernist aesthetics ultimately gained the victory.Let us consider the biographies of the two writers. They were born only two years apart: Mansfield in 1888 in New Zealand and Rhys in 1890 in Dominica. Both were sent to school in England and had disastrous early experiences of sexuality. Mansfield embarked at nineteen on love affair with young friend and soon found herself pregnant. Sent to Germany to have the baby in secret, she suffered miscarriage. Taking second lover, she contracted gonorrhea, which became chronic, crippling illness. It lowered her resistance, and this led to tuberculosis, which killed her at thirty-four. Mansfield wrote dozens of stories about illness and death. Rhys at eighteen was seduced by wealthy man whose kept mistress she became. When he broke off the relationship, her pregnancy was ended by what was then called an illegal operation (Smile 118). …

Mimesis and Justice: The Realism of Vidas Sêcas

The novel and film Vidas Sêcas (1938, 1963) are counted internationally as classics of Brazilian realism. In their different media and in their different artistic movements – the modernist regionalism of the one, the Cinema Novo of the other – the novelist Graciliano Ramos and the film-maker Nelson Pereira dos Santos have produced works that are readily categorised as realist. Does the realism common to them depend upon a suppression of the imaginative character inherent in them as works of art? Does their realism therefore figure in the control of the imaginary that the contemporary Brazilian literary critic Luiz Costa Lima proposes as a characteristic of the modern period? This article questions the definition of realism as the self-effacing documenting of an independently existing reality, and contends that the reception of realism has often neglected the latter's construction of truths and its practice of showing a world open to the imaginative interventions of justice.

Reinscribing the City: Art, Occupation and Citizen Journalism in Hong Kong

As neoliberal restructuring destroys historic precincts in Hong Kong, these spaces' social and living histories take on new meanings for the city's disenfranchised citizenry. In 2006 the impending demolition of Hong Kong's iconic Star Ferry Pier and Queen's Pier inspired a new form of spatial and cultural politics, which spawned unanticipated civic participation in the struggle to own the city. A lengthy cycle of oppositional actions interwove imaginative interventions, occupations, and investigative reportage, creating ‘temporary affective spaces’ around the piers. Contributors to the online citizen journalism site Hong Kong In-Media reframed sentimental mainstream media narratives by connecting urban development to political agency. The grassroots piers movement is significant because it seeded a new social movement in Hong Kong, one which shares resonances with Chinese protest culture and the global Occupy movement. Moreover, the organically constituted social formation of protesters perhaps materialises the philosophical concept of the ‘multitude’. Mientras que la reestructuración neoliberal destruye los precintos históricos en Hong Kong, estos espacios de historias vivas y sociales adquieren un nuevo significado para la ciudadanía privada de derechos. En 2006, la inminente demolición de los muelles icónicos de Hong Kong de Star Ferry Pier y Queen's Pier, inspiró una nueva forma de política espacial y cultural, que dio pie a una participación cívica no anticipada en la lucha de poseer la ciudad. Un largo ciclo de acciones opositoras entretejieron intervenciones y ocupaciones imaginarias y reportajes de investigación, creando ‘espacios afectivos temporales’ alrededor de los muelles. Los contribuyentes al periodismo ciudadano en línea Hong Kong In-Media reformaron las narrativas de los principales medios sentimentales, conectando el desarrollo urbano con la agencia política. El movimiento popular de los muelles es importante, porque sembró un nuevo movimiento social en Hong Kong, que comparte resonancias con la cultura de protesta china y con el movimiento global Occupy. Además, la formación social constituida orgánicamente por manifestantes, tal vez materialice el concepto filosófico de la ‘multitud’. 在香港，新自由主义的重组摧毁了具有历史意义的地区，对于城市的那些被剥夺了选举权的居民，这些空间的社会的和活的历史具有新的意义。2006年，香港的标志性的天星渡轮码头（Star Ferry Pier）和女皇码头（Queen's Pier）即将拆除，引起了一种新形式的空间和文化政治，此种政治产生了没有料到的公民保护他们的城市的斗争。漫长的反对行动让富于想象力的介入、占领、调查报告等结合在一起，围绕码头，创造出“临时性的有影响的空间”（temporary affective spaces）。在线杂志⟪香港在媒体上⟫（Hong Kong In-Media）的供稿人通过把城市开发商与政治代理人的联系起来而重新定位了伤感的主流媒体的叙事。草根的港口运动是十分有意义的，因为它在香港种下了新社会运动的种子，以中华抗议文化的方式，回应全球占领运动。而且，抗议者的生气勃勃的宪政社会的构成也许具体化了“大众”（multitude）的哲学概念。 신자유주의적 재구조화가 홍콩의 역사적 지구를 파괴하면서, 이러한 공간들의 사회적 그리고 살아있는 역사들이 도시의 박탈된 시민들에게 새로운 의미를 지닌다. 2006년 홍콩의 아이콘인 스타 페리 부두와 퀸스 부두의 해체가 새로운 공간정치와 문화정치를 불러 일으켰고, 시를 소유하기 위한 투장에서 기대하지 않은 시민 참여를 촉발시켰다. 오랜 반대 행동은 부두 주변에 ‘일시적인 감정적 공간들’을 만들어 내면서 창의적인 개입, 점거, 탐사 기사를 서로 엮었다. 온라인 시민 저널리즘 사이트인 Hong Kong In-Media에 기고를 한 사람들은 도시 개발과 정치 주체를 연결시켜 감상적인 주류 미디어 내러티브를 재조직했다. 풀뿌리 부두 운동은 홍콩에 새로운 사회운동의 씨를 뿌렸기 때문에 중요하다. 그리고 새로운 사회운동은 중국의 저항 문화와 지구적 차원의 오큐파이 운동과 뜻을 같이 하고 있다. 더우기, 유기적으로 구성된 시위자들의 사회적 구성은 아마도 ‘다중’의 철학적 개념을 현실화한다. Поскольку неолиберальное реструктурирование разрушает исторические окрестности Гонконга, социально - бытовые истории этих мест преобретают новый смысл для лишенного гражданских прав населения города. В 2006 году нависшее над культовым Звездным паромным причалом Гонконга и Пирсом Королевы разрушение, вдохновило новую форму пространственной и культурной политики, которая породила непредвиденное гражданское участие в борьбе за власть над городом. Длительным циклом оппозиционных действий переплетались творческие мероприятия, занятия, и следственные репортажи, создавая «временные аффективные пространства» вокруг причалов. Авторы сайта гражданской журналистики Гонконг-в-СМИ повторно создали мэйнстримные сентиментальные рассказы, соединяя городское развитие с политическими агентствами. Массовое движение в защиту пирсов является существенным, потому, что оно отбирало в Гонконге новые социальные движения, разделявшие резонансы с китайской культурой протеста и глобальным Occupy. Кроме того, органично образованная общественная формация протестующих, возможно, материализует философское понятие "множества".

Helen Adam's Occult Reworkings

Within the San Francisco community in which Helen Adam wrote and performed her poetry, her reputation as good witch preceded her (Davidson 1989, 187); it was a reputation that stemmed not only from the supernatural tales she spun in her poems but from her seeming embodiment of occult forces. Her skills in tarot readings were widely acknowledged, but it was her darker tendencies that really arrested attention. Her ability to curse frightened one critic into retracting his negative review of her play San Francisco's Burning (Prevallet 2007, 49-50), and at performances of her work, dark shadows seem [ed] to gather menacingly'' (McNeil 1958) and mist was said to rise from the ground.Adam's poetry assumes the ability of active worlds (both material and transcendent) to intervene in the of human relations in ways that exceed rational understanding, offering a dialogic model of human interaction with the universe that anticipates more current debates on the efficacy of rationalism in dealing with ecological/social crises in our world. In Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason, feminist ecocritic Val Plumwood lays the responsibility for contemporary problems of environmental degradation squarely on the rationalist assumptions that have governed our relationships with the environment. She argues that Western culture's historical privileging of hegemonic forms of over material entities is itself a failure of reason because misunderstand their own enabling conditions - the body, ecology and non-human nature (2002, 17). To overcome the ethical limitations of our current system of thought, Plumwood suggests what she calls a materialist spirituality of place (218), where the spiritual is conceived of as a kind of organization. Investing the material with a reconceived sense of the spiritual is promising to Plumwood because it undermines our current perception of matter as chaotic and thus lacking in the qualities that determine whether we find an entity worthy of ethical treatment.Plumwood's materialist spirituality'' (223) takes extended form in Jane Bennett's concept of vital materiality (2010, 6). In Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Bennett wonders how our ethical engagement with the might alter if we thought of ourselves as also nonhuman and the physical around us as vital players in the world (4). Instead of anthropomorphizing the around us, Bennett advocates an awareness of what she calls Thing-Power: the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle (6). This ability differs significantly from human powers of action and animation in that things are ontologically independent from subjectivity (3). Nonetheless, Bennett, like Plumwood, challenges us to consider material as and self- organizing, rather than as passive or mechanical means under the direction of something nonmaterial, that is, an active soul or mind (10). For Bennett, considering the material as lively on its own terms and not as a function of humanity's imaginative intervention will allow us a greater awareness of our own status as common participants in, not masters of, the larger ecology in which we live. A poetics that presupposes the vital materiality of the can be found through Helen Adam's creative reworkings of the Western magical tradition.Part of the importance of Helen Adam's work within the San Francisco poetry community of the 1950s and early 1960s was its evocation of a darkly mystical universe that existed alongside the claustrophobic materialism of mainstream American culture. Critic Michael Davidson says of the group of poets and artists gathered around the Bay Area after World War II that they sought a 'sorcery' in poetry that might transport each to a higher self- awareness fostered by an insular community (1989, 59). Working mainly with the ballad form, and largely setting her poetry in worlds peopled by witches, fairies, and immanent god/desses, Helen Adam stands out as an adherent of a poetics that privileged the imagination and the connection between poet and audience. …

Supernatural Realism

This essay argues that the relationship between realism and supernaturalism in realist novels is more complicated—and more symbiotic—than critics generally acknowledge. Taking Walter Scott's Waverley, George Eliot's Silas Marner, and Charlotte Brönte's Jane Eyre as representative nineteenth-century realist novels, I show that the supernatural is not subversive but in fact constitutive of their respective realist projects. Scott's use of the Bodach Glas ghost to signal the novel's commitment to both historical facts and imaginative interventions in the plot of history, Eliot's foregrounding of the referential/nonreferential duality of realism and the semantic slipperiness of language via a debate on the existence of ghosts, and Brönte's deployment of extrasensory perception to advance an open-ended conception of reality and blur the distinction between “normal” and “paranormal” suggest that the supernatural is integral to realism's formal properties, thematic concerns, and critical self-reflections. Indeed, novel criticism frequently addresses readers in the idiom of the supernatural and paranormal, a language that seems particularly conducive to understanding how realist novels do what they do.

The Two Faces of Saudi Arabia

The Saudi Arabian regime, aided by oil money and custodianship of Islam's holiest sites, has in recent years emerged as one of the most active and creative diplomatic players in the Middle East. Yet the regime's imaginative interventions in foreign affairs contrast starkly with its immobility in the face of deepening divisions at home. To minimise the perceived threat from Shi'ites in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, the most sensible course is not to pursue a tacit anti-Shia alliance with the United States and Israel, but rather to improve social and political conditions for Shi'ites at home. This would require confronting the Wahhabi clerical establishment head on, which could fatally undermine one of the pillars of al-Saud rule. The regime appears fated to opt for continued immobility, engaging in largely symbolic regional diplomacy in the hope that this will some how buy it credit at home.

What's in a Name? New Labour's Putative Keynesianism

Whatever its limitations, the academic literature has not been short in supplying adjectives to describe and characterize the political economy of New Labour. Yet until Ben Clift and Jim Tomlinson's provocative and imaginative intervention in the debate published in this journal, ‘Keynesian’ was not one of them. In a way it is odd that New Labour's political economy should not previously have been labelled Keynesian – it has, after all, been called almost everything else and, as Clift and Tomlinson show well, there is a certain intuitive appeal to this designation.In this brief response, however, I seek to demonstrate that the label ‘Keynesian’ is ultimately inappropriate, the resulting characterization misplaced. Despite their pretensions to normative neutrality, I suggest, Clift and Tomlinson's self-evident desire to label New Labour's political economy ‘Keynesian’ leads them to mischaracterize both the literature they critique and the putative object of that literature's and their own analytical attentions. I argue that whilst they do largely succeed in showing that New Labour has not ‘decisively repudiated’ Keynesianism, they do not show that it has actively embraced it. Indeed, even if one were to accept every aspect of their analysis, at best they show that the decision to cede operational independence to the Bank of England has bought consecutive New Labour governments since 1997 the fiscal policy discretion to respond – if, as and when the need arises (or is seen to arise) – to recessionary pressures in a Keynesian fashion. In short, they make a far stronger case for suggesting that New Labour's policies since 1997 are not incompatible with future Keynesianism than they do for suggesting that those policies are themselves Keynesian in intent or content.

Dreaming as Cultural Work in Donald Duk and Dreaming in Cuban

I must trust my own recollections. I must also depend on the recollections of others. Thus memory weighs heavily in what I write, in how I begin and what I find to be significant [...] But memories and recollections won't give me total access to the unwritten interior life of these people. Only the act of the imagination can help me. --Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory (302) In recent studies of ethnic literature, much discussion has surrounded the subject of ghosts, whose spectral or literal presence in contemporary works of fiction is thought to evidence a renewed interest in historical detail. One might begin by citing Kathleen Brogan's influential text, Cultural Haunting: Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature (1998), in which she locates in ethnic narrative a process of mourning, so that haunting becomes a metaphor for the act of inventing and recovering one's cultural heritage. Brogan figures this trope as central to texts of ethnic origin, for haunted tales ... bear witness to some sense of breach with the past (164). Frequently underpinning discussions like that of Brogan is the suggestion that forgotten pasts (and the stories, moments, and peoples which accompany them) may be accessed through acts of the imagination, and that such interventions may help to reconstitute cultural histories which might be otherwise erased. Using the founding premise that the recuperation of such pasts is in part the objective of ethnic fiction, this analysis will proceed by identifying dreaming, as it appears in Frank Chin's Donald Duk (1991) and Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban (1992), as a motif that does cultural work similar to that of haunting. Specifically, since dreaming allows characters to relate both emotionally and corporeally to their cultural heritages, dreaming can be conceived of as a mode of historiography that reshapes what counts as history and knowledge. In this sense, dreaming has a manifold application: although it acts as a literary motif that advances the narrative of a fictional text, it also signifies a mode of history-making by which characters are invited to make imaginative interventions into their own cultural pasts. This investigation will commence with a discussion of Donald Duk, the twelve-year-old boy featured in Frank Chin's eponymous novel who, during the fifteen-day period of the Chinese New Year, begins dreaming that he is his great-great-grandfather, working alongside other Chinese laborers in 1869 on the Central Pacific Railroad. As Donald gets more interested in his dream, he develops an increasingly politicized awareness of the inaccuracies surrounding historical accounts of Chinese contributions to the railroad. Similarly, in Dreaming in Cuban, Pilar Puente is beckoned by her Cuban grandmother, through dreams and telepathy, to carry on the legacy of her family heritage. Pilar, too, is asked to become an arbiter of the who will negotiate its translation into the future. I would like to invite comparison between Donald and Pilar, in part because the texts in which they appear both suggest an appreciation of the fact that the construction of a modern day ethnic identity relies on the act of making imaginative connections with one's cultural heritage; additionally, each text reaffirms the idea that previous generations can help to mediate this process. I will argue, however, that the texts differ in some significant respects. Although Chin suggestively interrogates the relationship between dreaming and cultural identity, his text at times overestimates the ease with which knowledges gained from dreams might be called upon to advance revisionary histories. This move, I suggest, reduces the generative power of Donald's imaginative intervention into the project of creating a politics of memory. Conversely, Garcia's text demonstrates a more complicated awareness that the knowledge provided by dreams is, in fact, fragmentary and provisional. …

Redefining kin and family social relations: burial societies and emergency relief in Botswana

This paper discusses the provision of financial relief to members' households by women-centred local institutions known as burial societies (diswaeti) in the event of death. In burial societies, mortality occupies the centre stage, not as a final defeat of human effort but as an inspiration for individual and collective responsibility. The omnipresence of death and dying in Botswana (due to the AIDS pandemic, social victimization, road-related carnage and so on), does not necessarily precipitate despondency; instead it underwrites commitments by members of burial societies to new sensibilities and to imaginative interventions that regenerate, rather than wear out, kin relations. By providing emergency financial and non-financial support, burial societies find practical ways to minimize social tensions and reduce animosity between individuals, family and kin relations. In the burial society community therefore, the social process of providing emergency financial and non-financial relief is more than an instrumental task: it is a nuanced cultural process that redefines kin and family social relations. (Journal of Social Development in Africa: 2003 18 (1): 85-110)