Actors In Life Research Articles

Prosocial Giving to Various Targets: A Longitudinal Examination in Poland in the First Post-COVID-19 Year

AbstractRecently, Europe, including Poland, witnessed several events that encouraged prosocial behaviors toward various actors in social life, including people and organizations. However, are the tendencies to support others changing over the post-COVID-19 yearly period and does that change depend on the target of donations? Based on social support mobilization and deterioration theory and construal level theory, in the current study, we aimed to test the change in the willingness to give money (operationalized as fictitious coins) or time to various targets in need over time. Poles from the general population (N = 566) participated in a 2-wave longitudinal study (first wave conducted in May 2022; second in late April/May 2023). Results showed a drop in the general prosocial giving tendencies of both coins and money over time, which confirms the social support mobilization and deterioration theory. In particular, the willingness to give coins to a Ukrainian refugee and time to Ukrainian and Middle Eastern refugees, as well as a local organization operating for pro-environmental issues and a global organization operating for a better quality of life in the world decreased. Most coins and time were intended to be given to family, a friend, a neighbor, and a Ukrainian refugee, confirming the role of psychological proximity in helping intentions. We provide interpretations of the discovered patterns in the light of previous data. Our analysis may be useful in predicting prosocial giving tendencies, especially for researchers of prosociality, charity organizations, and policymakers.

The Involvement of the Pechenegs in the Ethnopolitical Processes of the Southern Russian Steppes

Examining the involvement of the Pechenegs in the ethnopolitical processes of the Southern Russian steppes is crucial for understanding the formation of the ethnic and political map of Eastern Europe during the 10th and 11th centuries. The impact of the Pechenegs on the political situation in this region remains significant for historians and ethnologists. The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of the Pechenegs in the ethnopolitical processes of the Southern Russian steppes from the mid-10th century to the mid-11th century. The research focuses on the Pechenegs' contributions to ethnopolitical changes and their interactions with other peoples and states in the region. The study utilizes the works of prominent historians such as N. M. Karamzin, P. A. Golubovsky, S. M. Solov'ev and G. Manuku-Adameshteanu, as well as research by Turkish and Hungarian scholars. The analysis is based on primary sources, including chronicles and archaeological data, as well as secondary historical materials. The study addresses the origin of the name "Pecheneg" and their early homeland. Historians like Tatishchev, Karamzin, and Solovyov present different views on the origins and initial territories of the Pechenegs. Tatishchev associates the Pechenegs with the Sarmatians, while Karamzin and Solovyov identify them as Turkic peoples. The research examines the Pechenegs' influence on ethnopolitical processes in the Southern Russian steppes, including their conflicts with the Bulgars, Hungarians, Khazars, and the Rus state. Golubovsky and Manuku-Adameshteanu highlight the Pechenegs' significant impact on the Hungarians and other regional peoples. The article also explores the Pechenegs' settlement in modern Hungary and their roles as both vassals of the Kievan state and independent political actors in the region's political life. The article concludes that the Pechenegs played a significant role in the ethnopolitical processes of the Southern Russian steppes during the 10th and 11th centuries. Despite losing their political power by the mid-11th century, they had a considerable impact. Further research is needed to fully understand their role in the history of Eastern Europe.

Peer-to-peer sharing in public health interventions: strategies when people share health-related personal information on social media

ABSTRACT Purpose As sharing on social media has become an integrated part of everyday life, health and public health actors have started to show interest in the potential of people’s peer-to-peer sharing of health-related personal information (HRI) for health interventions. In this article we focus on how people make sense of sharing HRI on social media. Methods Twenty-two people between the ages 40 and 60 who had taken part in a regional health intervention were interviewed. Using theories about social media sharing, we explore their understandings and negotiations about whether, how much, and how to share HRI and discuss the results in relation to peer-to-peer sharing as a strategy in interventions. Results We identified three aspects that were perceived as particularly risky: loss of control, effects on identity, and affecting others negatively, along with strategies that were used to manage risks in practice: avoiding sharing, allocating, and embedding HRI. Conclusions By allocating and embedding HRI, people can unlock motivating affordances for health work. However, strategies to manage risks can also be counterproductive. For actors to provide equality in health promotion, initiatives that include social media sharing need to be mindful of the sometimes counterproductive effects this may have on people’s engagement.

Becoming octopus: Indigenous ways of knowing and green leadership

On 30 June 2014 we (a small group of academic women) opened our first Green Leadership School, an experiment in decolonising the classroom, exploring indigenous environmental knowledge, and creating a space of healing and love. This paper documents the process of healing and rejuvenating the lives of activists, government officials, trade unionists, and university students. Similar to the concept of Deleuze and Guattari’s (2004) “becoming animal” and “becoming wolf”, we represented the school as “becoming octopus” – a creature with green blood (becoming green), the highest brain-to-body ratio of any invertebrate, many slithering arms to twist and escape oppression and slide away from toxic spaces, and three hearts for the three-hearted practices of love, bodily integration, and mind-spirit awareness. Therefore, the pedagogical experiment focused on transmutation – connecting with the environment through merging human with animal, ritual and magic, gardening, yoga, storytelling, music, and art alongside more conventional lectures such as understanding climate change through South African vernaculars, ‘land grabs’ in Africa, pollution in South Durban, and environmental communication. Damaged by apartheid and post-apartheid wounds and worldwide ruptures in the socius – the participants experienced psychic healing. This paper discusses the role of joyful pedagogies in decolonising education.

Study on the management of extracurricular activities and their contribution to improving training quality

For the development of an efficient management in the contemporary school, based on a modern value system and the valorization of the pupil’s personality, an important role in the educational system is played by extracurricular activities, which can contribute to the development of the student, strengthen the relationship between children and parents, but also mitigate the impact of undesirable phenomena, such as, for example, school dropout. In this article, the author exposes the analysis of the results of sociological research, which explores the ability of extracurricular activities to contribute to increasing the quality of training. It analyzes that compartment, which reveals extracurricular activity through the prism of the opinions of parents and tries to highlight the need to attract them as important actors in the school life of children.

Literature, Feminism, and Activism in Rojhelat and the Diaspora

Abstract In this conversation, Essmat Sophie (author of the novel and animation film Dancing Amid Fire, Rising Above Ruins), talks with Wendelmoet Hamelink (researcher on gender, migration, activism, and conflict at the University of Oslo), about her interest in literature, about the creation of her novel and film, and about feminist life in the Diaspora. We discuss the fragmented lives of people who left Iran and can never return, and the history of the city Sine/Sanandaj. The conversation shows the complexity of Kurdish Iranian women’s triple struggle to escape political oppression, state violence, male dominance, as well as enduring a life of exile and marginalization. Essmat remembers the literature gatherings she attended in Sine, where women writers made a deep impact on her life as a young woman. Arguably, activist lives can be found in unexpected places and through creative strategies developed by women on the margins.

Insidious Harassment: Criminalisation, Solidarity, and Migration in France and Morocco

AbstractAmidst well‐documented hostile migration policies, this article explores how logics of criminalisation seep into the lives of activists and citizens, providing assistance, relief, advocacy, and other forms of support to migrant people. As presences considered legal and legitimate, solidarity actors inhabit distinct subjectivities from those of people migrating informally, yet state authorities interpret their acts as problematic and subject them to intrusive modes of policing. Drawing on critical border studies and feminist geography, this article homes in on less spectacular modes of criminalisation that target them in the intimacy of their everyday lives, threatening their sense of security through opaque surveillance, attacks on their emotions, employment prospects and family life. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out among these groups in Morocco and northern France, we conceptualise this mode of criminalisation as insidious harassment, examining the entanglement of geopolitics, emotions, and the intimate at these migration pressure points. Without decentring migrants as the primary targets of violent bordering, it broadens our understanding of these regimes by drawing attention to the ways in which they viscerally target those who work to protect the rights of migrant people.

THE TWO-FACED WORLD OF THEATRE: THEATRICAL BACKSTAGE IN A.N. OSTROVSKY’S PLAYS AND IN “THE MEMORIESˮ OF A.Y. PANAEVA

The article deals with the selected plays of A.N. Ostrovsky which are about the life of actors (“The Forestˮ, 1872; “The talents and fansˮ, 1882) and “The Memoriesˮ of A.Y. Panaeva. The author of the article reveals the reasons why writers turned to the topic of the theater, the specifics of the image of the actor’s personality and his life, focusing on the ambivalence of the actor’s image in the public mind, as well as on the ethical components of the personality actor’s, described by Ostrovsky and Panaeva. Further, the author of the article compares the fictional images of the actors in Ostrovsky’s plays with real personalities, whose life and creative path was described in Panaeva’s “Memoirsˮ, revealing similarities. The article tells us about the reasons for the actors’ poor conditions, their dependence on theatrical officials, on the tastes of an indiscriminate public, that is accustomed to the translated repertoire and wants to see only entertainment in the theater, but not a way to enrich themselves spiritually. A.N. Ostrovsky, author of the fiction, and A.Y. Panaeva, the author of the documentary prose, form images of actors with similar character traits (nobility, faith in their work, respect for their own craft, tragic perception of reality) and falling into the same life circumstances, which indicates Ostrovsky’s desire to get away from the conventions and theatrical traditions that had existed before and create a new realistic theater.

Local Practices vs National Models of Integration? The Management of Ethno-religious Diversity in an Urban Context

This article examines the ways in which ethnic and cultural diversity is concretely managed in the city of Marseille, a metropolitan area located in France, a country that academic literature defines as assimilationist. Based on a series of 26 semi-structured interviews and on the analysis of municipal archives, it reveals that ethnic, cultural and religious organizations are essential actors in local political life in Marseille. On one hand, in order to manage their culturally heterogeneous city, municipal officials rely on alliances with community leaders to maintain legitimacy among the local population. On the other hand, community leaders demand symbolic gestures of cultural recognition from the mayor in exchange for their political support. This paper, inspired by conceptual tools developed by Pierre Bourdieu, builds an innovative theoretical framework for analysis of the ‘social field of multiculturalism.’ In the process, it sheds light on strategies of negotiation and competition among different local actors in the daily management of diversity.

Politics of rhythm and crisis in the slow death of higher education: implications for academic work and student support

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role that conflicting rhythms of academic life and crisis have on the ability of academics to meet their commitments, such as providing support to students. Drawing from our experience in UK higher education, we argue that contemporary academic life can be seen as a constant process of being taken over by different crises. These crises tend to follow a rhythm of brief periods as emergencies subsequently operationalised into forms of ongoing, unresolved crisis. In turn, these crisis rhythms intersect with contrasting rhythms of different actors in university life, specifically that of academics, the institution itself, and students. Drawing from Lefebvre’s vocabulary of rhythmanalysis, we argue that the arrhythmia between these different groups in the university is a key part in the failure of higher education to do more than proliferate crisis. Illustrated by our experiences in student-support focused roles during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, we explore how this particular crisis imposed itself as emergency but was then absorbed into the group of ongoing crises which impact on academic life. The paper concludes with suggestions of alternative approaches to university workload for staff and students alike, which might render university life more eurhythmic and equitable.

‘No, we're not going away’: Two trans activist lives in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1974–1987

AbstractUtilising interviews conducted with two transgender women, Chanel Hati and ‘CJ’, this article will explore trans activism from 1974 to 1987. Though both were members of politically active trans communities with shared priorities around community building and trans pride, the intersections of race and class meant these communities operated in vastly different ways. Hati and her fellow trans sex workers practiced a politics of difference, while CJ's community, largely white and middle class, prioritised inclusion. This article will explore the relationships between these communities, highlighting their practices of resistance, as well as the implications of intersectionality on the historicising of these trans pasts.

The Problem of Commedia dell’Arte

The inherent ephemerality of performance, doubly so in respect of the debated practice of improvisation within the genre, presents many issues in terms of examining Commedia's history, both in terms of how a performance unfolded before an audience, and the hypothecated abilities of its performers. I propose that a way of understanding the historical practice is through an individual actor's development of individual performance habits. Commedia was the first professional theatre in which each actor played the same character in many different plays. In doing so they acquired embodied performance mannerisms that were recycled from show to show. These may be termed performative habits. This article focuses on 'habit' as a positive process of accruing the skills required to perform the genre's specific characteristic: the reusable 'stock character' appearing in multiple shows, with that role being based on a combination of geographical, social, economic factors and culturally embodied skills. One of the conclusions I draw is that these 'habits' required time to acquire and were done so within the context of an evolving system or method of performance skills, publicity and business practices together with the social skills required to inhabit this putative system over a significant proportion of the actor's life. An individual's al improvisso performance, within a scenario, therefore, can be seen as a conscious deployment of acquired and highly specific performance habits.

Safety and Security Battles: Unpacking the Players and Arenas of the Safe Standing Movement in English Football (1989–2022)

This article advances recent debates on social movement (relational) fields, outcomes, and successes by suggesting that the analysis of such fields as a whole must be temporal. The relational interpersonal and intersubjective choices made by interdependent actors in social life take place in fields of interaction, but these interactions and their networks of social relations have a history. Hence, the social movement field is characterised by multiple temporal periods through which the actions of activists both shape and are shaped by the long-term socio-political environments in which they are embedded. To develop this analysis, we identify a football supporter-movement in England, ‘Safe Standing’, revealing the complex interplay of cultural and technological patterns of interaction across the compelling timeframes and orientations of a 30-year movement field. Adopting a theoretical framework which synthesises research on the strategic interactions of movement ‘players’ and ‘arenas’, and sport-focused security fields, we identify a series of compound and sub-players across the political, symbolic, mediatised, technological, and legislative arenas which constitute the security field of contention, in what is an under-researched lifeworld in sociology.

Human Rights and Freedoms: Ensuring a Balance of Public Interests

The article considers human rights and freedoms in the context of ensuring the balance of public interests. The nature of law, its goals, functions, and mechanisms for implementing and influencing the actors of public life have been topical issues of the theory and practice of regulating public relations and ensuring the stability of a state-organized society. Law is not a natural but rather a social phenomenon. It reflects socio-economic conditions of society and its spiritual culture. It is transformed into a legal reality through the worldview of social actors and its acceptance as a social value that realizes the goals of life. The stability and balance of social relations include the consolidated interests of society members, their culture, and the well-being of the people. Ensuring the balance of public interests requires observance of the principles of law. Administrative-legal relations arise in a special sphere of public life in connection with the implementation of executive and administrative activities by management bodies and officials. Under these conditions, the main features of administrative-legal relations that distinguish them from other public relations are the administrative powers of official administrative bodies and the imperative method which implies the inequality of participants in public relations.

The Concept of Tri Hita Karana in Kakawin Siwaratrikalpa as a Means to Interpret Life

Old Javanese literature, especially Kakawin Siwaratrikalpa, has an essential role among the Hindu community in Bali, not only because of its captivating story elements but also because it is essential for human life as it contains artistic values, religious values, moral teachings (ethics), manners, character education, philosophy, law, and morals. Tri Hita Karana is a concept of balancing the relationship between humans and God, humans and others, and humans and their natural environment to achieve prosperity and harmony in life in the world. Human life has undergone significant changes due to the changing times. The demands of modern life have brought human behavior to problems that need attention. The advancement of science and technology has caused a shift in social values, which has led humans to promiscuity, moral decline, the conflict between religious communities, lifestyle changes, environmental degradation, exploitation of natural resources, and even environmental destruction. This research is qualitative descriptive research by applying the concept of Tri Hita Karana. The source of the data is scientific, meaning that apart from observing texts, researchers are trying to observe and understand empirical phenomena directly in people's lives. The theory used is the theory of Human Relations. The results of the discussion prove that the three parts of the Tri Hita Karana concept are always related and cannot be separated. Humans, as the main actors in life, must continue to seek and strive for a safe, peaceful, and happy life.

Lietuvių diasporos dokumentinis paveldas: susigrąžinimo, pažinimo ir tyrimų problemos

During the three decades of independent Lithuania, a lot of important work was done in preserving and researching the documentary heritage of the Lithuanian diaspora. Various state institutions have expressed concern about the fate of the archival heritage of the diaspora, and the documentary heritage of the diaspora, its search, and the accumulation of information in state strategic documents, have been identified as significant barriers to the activities of state institutions for almost two decades. The work of identifying and recovering heritage important to Lithuania abroad is successfully underway, and collections of diaspora cultural heritage are returning to Lithuania from various parts of the world. During these decades, many important studies of the cultural history of the diaspora have been conducted, and a number of books and monographs have been published. Still, the history of the Lithuanian diaspora, its documentary heritage, remains a little-known and rather foreign thing to Lithuanian society. The article discusses the issues of the fate of the documentary heritage of the Lithuanian diaspora and analyzes the relevance, dispersion, preservation, accessibility, research, and dissemination of cultural heritage, which are faced by the institutions protecting the documentary heritage operating both in Lithuania and abroad. From the end of the 19th century to the present day, many cultural values were created through emigration. Only a small part of the documentary heritage of the Lithuanian diaspora has been preserved and known, part of which was inevitably destroyed by time, and the rest is kept in various institutions and private archives in Lithuania, Canada, the USA, Australia, Germany, and other countries. The heritage of the Lithuanian diaspora, which is disappearing rather rapidly in various countries, remains one of the most pressing problems to this day. As the number of representatives of the Lithuanian diaspora who created and preserved this heritage decreases, the questions of the fate of this archival heritage become more and more relevant. In Lithuania, there is still no unified information archiving system of the documentary heritage related to Lithuania located abroad: there is a lack of information on which and how many are the diaspora archives, and in which institutions they are stored. Archives that have returned to Lithuania are scattered among various cities and towns, museums, libraries, state archives, and scientific institutions, where their storage, management, and digitization work is strongly influenced by the availability of financial and human resources. Institutions protecting the historical heritage of the Lithuanian diaspora are increasingly faced with the problems of identifying and evaluating this heritage, because: a) the ranks of the actors of the cultural life of the diaspora who created, preserved and can recognize this documentary heritage are constantly thinning, and the young generation of diaspora is almost not interested in the legacy of their parents; b) in Lithuania, there is a decrease in the number of specialists working and researching the history of the diaspora. In order for the documentary heritage of the Lithuanian diaspora not to be condemned to oblivion, it is not enough just to take care of the preservation of these diaspora archives, their transportation to Lithuania, and their safe storage in archive storage facilities: it is necessary to research and get to know it so that this heritage becomes its own, important and necessary part of the historical legacy of the Lithuanian nation.

СОЦИАЛЬНОЕ ВРЕМЯ В УСЛОВИЯХ НЕСТАБИЛЬНОСТИ РОССИЙСКОГО ЗАКОНОДАТЕЛЬСТВА

The article considers some forms of the influence of the right on social time, its role for the regulation of the latter and examples of such impact. It is noted that even in private-legal branches, the legislator, when he considers it necessary, very clearly outlines the boundaries of the discretion of the actors of legal life in terms of the regulation of social time. A structural model of meaningful time in law and the corresponding levels of legal reality is given: the level of basic phenomena, the level of legal reality, the level of short-term instruments. It is concluded that modern domestic legislation cannot perform its function of ordering, periodization of social time to the proper extent, and, moreover, it in itself becomes the cause of discreteness, discontinuity of social time, reduces legal certainty, citizens' trust in the law and the horizons of their future planning, replenishes the ranks of traumatizing society. factors. It is indicated that in such a situation, legislation turns from one of the most effective tools for working with social time into an uncontrolled destructive element for it.

Making It Abroad: Bernarda Ramírez (Naples) and Petronila Jibaja (Lisbon)

From earliest times, the life of actors or actresses was a sort of “escaparate” or showcase, always on display. Much like today’s gliteratti, they were both admired and looked down upon. If the acting profession was seen as morally reprehensible in general, the attitude toward women was no less critical. Given social norms that saw the female sex almost exclusively in terms of her body and the female actor in terms of her class, women ought to know their place and keep to it. That actresses were free to look, act, dress, and behave like their “betters” represented a threat to social and moral order, a threat as often condemned from the pulpit as confirmed in the news sources of the time. Nevertheless, then as now, a good scandal—one involving the highest levels of society and carried on abroad—could “make” one’s career. Two examples of “making it” abroad—a hundred years apart—are Bernarda Ramírez (1615?–1662) and Petronila Jibaja (1692–1763). Both were of humble origin, both were admired, favored, and kept by aristocrats abroad, and both returned to Spain with fame and fortune that they were able to maintain until their careers ended.

People with memory illnesses and their spouses as actors in the hybrid care model

Objective: The study analysed how its participants positioned themselves and other people as actors in daily life, and what matters they portrayed as meaningful in seeking and receiving support in daily life.Background: Family care has traditionally played an important role in elder care in Finland. Current policy goals will further increase the importance of family care, yet research on how people with memory illnesses and their spouses perceive care arrangements is scarce. Method: The study drew from theory of relational agency and positioning theory. The data came from semi-structured, in-depth interviews (10) of home-dwelling people diagnosed with a memory illness and their spouses. The interviewees’ age varied from 62 to 88. The analysis focused on the participants’ self-descriptions and descriptions of their experiences and actions in relation to informal and formal care arrangements. Results: The participants with a memory illness positioned themselves together with their spouses as a couple, as satisfied service recipients, as active and knowledgeable service users, or even as consumers who critically evaluated social and health care services. People with memory illnesses are capable of expressing their self-reflexive agentic self and adopting different positions to that of a person with dementia. Conclusion: There is need to better acknowledge agency of people with memory illnesses and to develop different data collection and analysis methods that enable them to convey their views.

Политический кризис в Буркина-Фасо: внутренние и внешние факторы дестабилизации

The article examines the causes of and prerequisites for the political crisis in Burkina Faso that became almost permanent during the years of its independent development. Burkina Faso is one of Africa’s poorest countries and has witnessed eight military coups, including two in 2022. By the end of the 2010s, it found itself at the epicenter of the Sahel crisis. Burkina Faso also changed its foreign policy orientation, abandoning the neocolonial dependence on France, and adopted a series of economic development plans. The authors analyze military, political and socio economic factors of the emergence of this political crisis against the backdrop of weakening state power, primarily in peripheral areas affected by armed conflict. The article also considers the problem of interference of external actors in the political life of Burkina Faso and the reaction of Economic Community of West African States to a series of military coups in the country. Special attention is paid to the role of tribal militias Koglweogo self defense groups and other similar organizations in the current conflict with Islamists in the northern regions of the country. It is noted that in areas under control of the rebels or, on the contrary, pro government non state actors (militias), the war economy is developing at a rapid pace, and the population is creating new local “self governance” structures that emerge as an alternative to the state power and are led by field commanders. It is concluded that the situation in the country resembles a vicious circle: successive governments are unable to implement development projects due to political instability, while weak economic development, in turn, causes political instability. At the same time, the ongoing strengthening of contacts between Burkina Faso and Russia generates hopes among residents of this West African country for finding a solution to the long term military and political crisis in foreseeable future.