Nature Of Everyday Life Research Articles

Conceptions of Everyday Life in Information Science

ABSTRACTThis panel examines conceptions of everyday life in Information Science. Several theories about everyday life and its information phenomena will be reviewed and analyzed for their origins, distinctions, and divergent claims. Four expert panelists who have published on these matters will encapsulate their ideas, and there will be a video interlude, as well. By design, the panel Agenda features short opening statements, leaving 40 minutes to discuss: How do existing notions of everyday life within Information Science bring information into focus in different ways? Are informational conceptions of everyday life adequate or wanting of critical re‐examination? In keeping with ASIS&T's multiperspective community, inputs will be sought from students, practitioners, first‐time conference attendees, and other groups, in turn. If, as Marcia J. Bates claims, we are “…always looking for the red thread of information in the social texture of people's lives” (1999, p. 1048) then we need to individually and collectively reflect on the nature of everyday life.

A Multidimensional Approach to Strengthening Connectedness with Nature in Everyday Life: Evaluating the Earthfulness Challenge

Connectedness with nature benefits not only human health and well-being, but also our engagement with and taking action for nature. Despite the importance of nature in everyday life, we are increasingly disconnected from nature. Consequently, the calls to reconnect with nature are increasingly loud, but how can we reconnect with nature in the midst of a busy (urban) life? In order to answer this question, we sought to contribute to understanding how people express their connectedness with nature in different contexts and how this can be strengthened through multiple pathways. To do so we used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate, with the use of leverage points, the experiences of people who participated in the Earthfulness program, a 21-day challenge with exercises to strengthen their connectedness with nature in everyday life. Earthfulness participants already felt a relatively strong connectedness with nature at the start of the challenge, and they sought ways to solidify, sustain, express, and enrich that connectedness. By participating in the challenge, people experienced a stronger connectedness with nature, expressed more dimensions of connectedness with nature, and indicated an increased willingness to act for nature. Participants identified gratitude, a reciprocal relationship with nature, and humility as drivers of their willingness to act for nature. We conclude that there are various pathways to strengthen connectedness and that leverage points represent a useful lens through which to study, understand, and implement this diversity.

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test: Age-, Gender- and Education-Related Normative Data for The Iranian Healthy Population

Purpose: Memory and learning have particular importance due to their ubiquitous nature in everyday life and the high prevalence of related complaints. The present study aimed to provide normative data for one of the most widely used tests of verbal memory and learning in Iran and to assess the effect of demographic variables of age, gender, and education on its various measures.
 Materials and Methods: The study was conducted as part of the Iranian Brain Imaging Database (IBID) project. The sample consisted of 300 normal individuals in the age range of 20 to 70 years, with an equal number of participants in each age decade (#60). The sample was classified by five decades, including 20-30-year-olds, 31-40-year-olds, 41-50-year-olds, 51-60-year-olds, and 61-70-year-olds. Each age decade was divided equally between the genders. The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), which was defined in terms of 10 scores on learning, recall, and recognition, was used to assess verbal learning and memory.
 Results: The correlation matrix among the variables shows that all three variables of age, gender, and education had a significant correlation with most RAVLT measures. Among the three demographic variables, age had the strongest correlation with most RAVLT scores. Three-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) showed that the effect of age and gender on memory and learning measures was significant. On the other hand, the effect of education on some measures was statistically significant. In addition, the mean and standard deviation of 10 RAVLT measures classified by gender and education years in the five age groups are provided.
 Conclusion: The findings show that while increasing age, verbal memory, and learning performance decline, women outperform men, and education affects some indicators of learning and memory. These findings emphasize the importance of using age-, gender- and education-related normative data in clinical, educational, and research settings.

Indigenous Māori Notions Of Consciousness, Soul, and Spirit

The Indigenous Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand have a knowledge system embedded with understandings related to consciousness, soul, and spirit. Although the effects of colonization are vast and ongoing, these knowledges have not been completely lost, and endure as an essential part of Māori comprehensions about the nature of everyday life and reality. We provide an overview of the socio-historical context of Māori, before briefly summarizing Māori cosmogony. We then discuss some of the more popularized ways the constructs of consciousness, soul, and spirit are interpreted from an Indigenous Māori perspective, while importantly highlighting that there are no single words in the Māori language that readily translate to these concepts, making the task of elucidating what the terms mean for Māori somewhat complex. Our articulations are intended as a brief overview, rather than an extensive extrapolation.

Law’s imposition of a heteronormative timeline in a rapidly ageing authoritarian state

This article discusses how China, an authoritarian state with a rapidly ageing population, uses its laws and regulations to impose a heteronormative timeline on its citizens to get married and give birth. I use the pressure felt by China’s ‘leftover’ women to get married according to a heteronormative timeline to discuss law’s role in shaping and reshaping our understanding of age, ageing, and time. These women’s experience reveals law’s seemingly invisible role in imposing and sustaining dominant timelines, especially in authoritarian states that actively use law and media to depict those who are different from the majority as deviants. This article explores and exposes law’s invisibility and hegemonic nature in everyday life, in an effort to explain how different laws work among themselves and with other normative orders to set a timeline that eliminates differences and imposes pressure on those who ‘fall behind’ to catch up with the mainstream. Using legal pluralism as an analytical tool, this article further examines how state laws depend on and work with other normative orders to sustain dominant timelines. It is my hope that this article could invite law and society scholars to rethink how state law violently eliminates diverse ways people organise their everyday lives by imposing dominant timelines on them.

Information overload and environmental degradation: Learning from H.A. Simon and W. Wenders

This paper discusses the relevance of information overload for explaining environmental degradation, insofar it can reduce individuals' awareness of the unsustainable side-effects of their choices. This “myopia” is reinforced by the increased distance from nature in everyday life brought about by the abundance of exosomatic energy. The departure point of the paper is to show that two outstanding intellectuals, engaged in very different fields, have set forth very similar reflections on the effects of information overload, namely the film director Wim Wenders and the social scientist, really a polymath, Herbert Simon, whose relevance to ecological economics has been recognised. The presentation of their ideas is then complemented by a presentation of the state of the art on information overload, which allows moving to our core argument about environmental degradation.

Pinpointing affective disturbances in psychosis: A comparison of temporal affect dynamics in individuals with psychotic disorders, individuals with attenuated psychotic symptoms, and clinical and healthy controls

Affective disturbances in psychosis are well-documented but our understanding of their phenotypic nature in everyday life remains limited. Filling this gap could advance mechanistic models of the affective pathway to psychosis and pave the ground for new research avenues. Therefore, this study focused on temporal affect dynamics in psychosis, i.e., the patterns with which affect fluctuates over time. We applied experience-sampling with nine assessments per day over one week in participants with psychotic disorders (PSY), participants with attenuated psychotic symptoms (AS), clinical controls with obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD) and healthy controls (HC; total N = 139) to assess whether in PSY and AS, dynamics in affective valence and arousal are characterized by higher instability (i.e., extreme and frequent moment-to-moment fluctuations of affect intensities), higher affective variability (i.e., larger range of affect intensities), or lower inertia (i.e., higher frequency of affective changes), compared to the clinical and healthy control samples. Mixed-model ANOVAs revealed higher instability in both PSY and OCD compared to HC, but no significant differences for variability and inertia. AS had an intermediate position and did not differ significantly from any other group. We found evidence for small to medium effect sizes for the influence of mean affect levels on the dynamic indicators. Our findings indicate that individuals with psychotic disorders have increased affective instability and that this could be a transdiagnostic phenomenon. Zooming in on the variability and inertia components did not confer additional benefits. Emotion-focused interventions for psychosis should focus on reducing frequent and extreme affective fluctuations.

Using a Nature-Based Virtual Reality Environment for Improving Mood States and Cognitive Engagement in Older Adults: A Mixed-Method Feasibility Study.

Background and ObjectivesExposure to nature and nature-based imagery has been shown to improve mood states and stave off cognitive decline in older adults. Even “micro-doses” of natural scenery can provide beneficial effects in situations where more extensive interactions with nature are not feasible. In the current study, we evaluated the use of virtual reality (VR) for delivering interactive nature-based content with the goal of prompting active engagement and improving mood states in older adults.Research Design and MethodsThe researchers developed a novel VR environment that combined 360-degree videos of natural areas and botanical gardens with interactive digital features that allowed users to engage with aspects of the environment. We recruited 50 older adults to try out this VR environment and measured changes in mood states and attitudes toward VR from before versus after the sessions. We controlled for variables such as age, education level, and exposure to nature in everyday life, and we looked for differences in responses to the VR among participants with cognitive impairments (CIs) versus without, and participants with physical disabilities versus without.ResultsThe findings indicated significant improvements in “good” mood and “calm” mood dimensions after exposure to the VR, as well as improvements in attitudes toward the technology. These positive outcomes were significantly greater for participants with physical disabilities compared to those without disabilities. No differences were found in the responses of participants with CIs versus those without. Exit interviews provided a variety of helpful suggestions about ways to improve the VR equipment design and content to meet the needs of an older adult population.Discussion and ImplicationsThe study demonstrates that VR can provide a cost-effective, noninvasive, and nonpharmaceutical approach for improving the lives of older adults in both clinical and recreational settings, particularly when real-world access to nature is limited.

Tradisi Mudas dalam Budaya Dayak di Meliau, Kalimantan Barat Dari Sudut Pandang Orang Luar

This article focuses on “Mudas Tradition of the Dayak Culture in Meliau District, Sanggau Regency, West Kalimantan.” The tradition of clearing land in Dayak culture in Meliau District is commonly called “Mudas”. Mudas culture is one of the customs carried out by the Dayak society before cultivating a new land. This Mudas ceremony is a form of their respect for nature. The methodology used in this research is a narrative method through experiences through the Mudas culture in Meliau, West Kalimantan and in principle is supported by library sources through books and journals. The first and the main purpose of this is to know the Mudas culture from the perspective of the author as an outsider and how other people interact in that culture. The author concludes that the Mudas Tradition in Dayak culture is not much different from its original culture, which prioritizes respect to Nature in every day life. Nature is everything for human life, especially for the Dayak people in Meliau, West Kalimantan.

Rhythmanalysis: Rethinking the politics of everyday negotiations in ordinary public spaces

The nature of everyday life in metropolitan public spaces is an unprecedented entanglement of activities, emerging from the presence of multiple actors competing for a limited space. Making sense of this complexity is a longstanding challenge in the social sciences: how can such a mesmerizing ‘urban ballet’ be explained in the absence of overall orchestration? I hypothesize thatthis urban rhythm – the temporal alternation of activities in the public spaces of a city – is not neutral, but reveals entrenched power relations which are renegotiated and reaffirmed on a daily basis. Building on the notion of rhythmanalysis, I develop a methodology combining a visual timeline called ‘urban tempo’ with in-depth interviews. I present a case study of a market in pericentral Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), where local actors negotiate access to more or less valuable time slots and spaces throughout the day. I show that such negotiations pertaining to time result in a very practical sense in the production of ordinary public spaces. The findings reveal four types of actors, classified according to their negotiating power. Broadly, the rhythmanalysis presented here reiterates our understanding of power as relational, highlighting the unequal conditions of negotiations in public spaces at a micro-level. By adding a temporal dimension to the politics of the everyday, it also opens up a promising research agenda, inviting comparisons of ‘time-sharing regimes’ across metropolitan contexts.

Understanding the lived experience of connection to nature

AbstractThere are multiple theoretical understandings of connection to nature. Often, scholars define a connection to nature as being the outcome of a process of awakening “biophilia.” They may also define it as the maturation or development of an “ecological self,” where one sees nature as part of oneself, or as an awareness of oneself as a member of a wider biotic community. Using evidence from longitudinal in‐depth interviewing and participant observation, this article examines these differing conceptualizations of connection to nature in lived experience. We find that feeling connected to nature is about feeling an affinity for, and that one belongs within, a wider web of nonhuman relationships. This sense of feeling connected to nature is unstable; it may be felt and then recede according to the circumstances in which people live and their competing priorities. The difficulty of sustaining consistent close relationships with nature in everyday life presents some challenges to the hope that enabling people to feel connected to nature will induce reliable pro‐environmental behavior. Relationships with nature fluctuate, and it is necessary to examine how a connection to nature can be nurtured at every stage of life.

PACIFISM, INFECTION, AND ‘SOMATIC CITIZENSHIP’ IN WARTIME BRITAIN, 1940–1943

AbstractThis article explores how marginalized groups navigated the everyday politics of citizenship in Britain during the Second World War through a case-study of the Sorby Research Institute in Sheffield, a site in which pacifists and conscientious objectors participated in medical experiments as an alternative to military service. Examining the experiences of volunteers who were infested with parasites in a study of infectious disease transmission, this article traces the emergence of ‘somatic citizenship’ at the SRI: a distinctive kind of wartime service that was rooted in the everyday sensations, routines, and practices of the body. Ultimately, this article argues that the somatic labours of medical research offered a way of partially reconciling the conflicting demands of pacifism and national duty, allowing volunteers to reposition themselves as heroic wartime citizens. However, this was not a straightforward path to social rehabilitation, with various political, moral, and hygienic anxieties disrupting the pursuit of community acceptance. While contributing to ongoing work on citizenship, subjectivity, and emotion in wartime Britain, these findings also demonstrate how unconventional sources – in this case, medicalized descriptions of the body – can be redeployed to illuminate the politically saturated nature of everyday life under the conditions of total war.

Labouring for Kashmir’sazadi: Ongoing violence and resistance in Maisuma, Srinagar

While much has been said about the historicity of the Kashmir conflict or about how individuals and communities have resisted occupation and demanded the right to self-determination, much less has been said about nature of everyday life under these conditions. This article offers a glimpse of life in the working-class neighbourhood of Maisuma, located in the central area of the city of Srinagar, and its engagement with the political movement for azadi (freedom). I argue that the predicament of ‘double interminability’ characterises life in Maisuma—the interminable violence by the state on the one hand and simultaneously the constant call of labouring for azadi by the movement on the other, since the terms of peace are unacceptable.

Ethics and Imitatio Christi in 1 John: A Jewish Perspective

This paper focuses on one of the ethical features of 1 John, namely ‘the imitation of Christ’. It argues that this ethical feature is related to the believers’ identity and vocation as the people of God. Just as in the OT Israel is obliged to reflect God’s nature in everyday life, the believers must take on Jesus’ character as their character and follow in his footsteps to surrender one’s own life for the benefits of others. The result of this paper indicates that the weight of the Jewish ethical thoughts in the formation of Johannine ethics is more important than often acknowledged.

Pengaruh media gambar dan video serta motivasi terhadap kemampuan menceritakan kisah Qarun sebagai implementasi menghindari sifat kikir dan serakah dalam kehidupan sehari-hari pada siswa kelas V mata pelajaran SKI di MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Kota Mojokerto

The purpose of this study are: 1) Describe the influence of media images and video media on the ability to tell the story of Qarun as implementation to avoid the miserly and greedy nature in the daily life of the students of class V subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto. 2) Describe the difference of motivation of students who are taught by the media of picture and video on the students of class V subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto City 3) Describe the interaction of image and video media as well as motivation to the ability to tell the story of Qarun as implementation avoid the miserliness and Greedy in everyday life on V grade students subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto City. This research is a survey type research with quantitative approach. The population as the object of research is the students of class V MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto City, This research is included in comparative explanation research. Comparative research is a study that is comparing two or more variables. Data collection technique using questionnaire, while the data analysis technique using multiple linear regression analysis, with hypothesis test using t test and F test. From the analysis result can be concluded as follows: 1) There is influence of image media and video media to the ability to tell Qarun's story as an implementation avoids the miserly and greedy nature of everyday life of V-class students of Islamic Culture History in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto, where the ability to tell the story of Qarun as an implementation avoids the miserliness and greediness in the daily life of students with media Video from higher than the image media with a score of 176.82> 149.85. 2) There is a difference of motivation of students who are taught by the media of picture and video on V class student of Islamic Culture History lesson in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman of Mojokerto City, where the result of learning Islamic Culture History of low motivated student with score 96.15 lower than the learning result History Islamic culture of highly motivated students with a score of 97.61.3) There is an interaction of 49.2% between the media images and video media as well as the motivation of the ability to tell the story of Qarun as implementation avoid the miserly and greedy nature in everyday life in grade V students subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto

Pengaruh media gambar dan video serta motivasi terhadap kemampuan menceritakan kisah Qarun sebagai implementasi menghindari sifat kikir dan serakah dalam kehidupan sehari-hari pada siswa kelas V mata pelajaran SKI di MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Kota Mojokerto

The purpose of this study are: 1) Describe the influence of media images and video media on the ability to tell the story of Qarun as implementation to avoid the miserly and greedy nature in the daily life of the students of class V subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto. 2) Describe the difference of motivation of students who are taught by the media of picture and video on the students of class V subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto City 3) Describe the interaction of image and video media as well as motivation to the ability to tell the story of Qarun as implementation avoid the miserliness and Greedy in everyday life on V grade students subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto City. This research is a survey type research with quantitative approach. The population as the object of research is the students of class V MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto City, This research is included in comparative explanation research. Comparative research is a study that is comparing two or more variables. Data collection technique using questionnaire, while the data analysis technique using multiple linear regression analysis, with hypothesis test using t test and F test. From the analysis result can be concluded as follows: 1) There is influence of image media and video media to the ability to tell Qarun's story as an implementation avoids the miserly and greedy nature of everyday life of V-class students of Islamic Culture History in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto, where the ability to tell the story of Qarun as an implementation avoids the miserliness and greediness in the daily life of students with media Video from higher than the image media with a score of 176.82> 149.85. 2) There is a difference of motivation of students who are taught by the media of picture and video on V class student of Islamic Culture History lesson in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman of Mojokerto City, where the result of learning Islamic Culture History of low motivated student with score 96.15 lower than the learning result History Islamic culture of highly motivated students with a score of 97.61.3) There is an interaction of 49.2% between the media images and video media as well as the motivation of the ability to tell the story of Qarun as implementation avoid the miserly and greedy nature in everyday life in grade V students subjects History of Islamic Culture in MI Al Muhsinun Kauman Mojokerto

Practiced Linguistic-Cultural Ideologies and Educational Policies: A Case Study of a “Bilingual Sweden Finnish School”

ABSTRACTThis article explores linguistic-cultural ideologies and educational policies as they emerge and are negotiated in everyday life in a bilingual school setting located in the geopolitical spaces of Sweden. Taking sociocultural theory and discourse analysis as points of departure, we focus on empirical examples of classroom interaction and locally established formal policing. Linguistic-cultural ideologies and educational policies that frame life at the school are investigated by employing nexus analytical methods, focusing on social (inter)actions through which a number of locally and nationally relevant discourses circulate. Our findings indicate that refocusing ideology and policy research from the lens of a practiced perspective allows the situated and distributed nature of everyday life to inform issues related to bilingualism as well as their relations to wider societal discourses. Furthermore, our analysis highlights the crucial role of educators in (re)locating bilingual education in its societal contexts as well as making these connections visible in classrooms.

Transnation and Transgeneration in Zoya Pirzad’s We’ll Get Used to It (‘Âdat Mikonim)

In her novels, acclaimed Armenian Iranian novelist Zoya Pirzad engages her characters in transgenerational and transnational conflict in their interaction with each other. In her last novel, We’ll Get Used to It (‘Âdat Mikonim), a household of three women, consisting of a widowed grandmother, a divorcee mother and a daughter, is presented, and the absentee father, who lives in France, pulls the strings of the young daughter to gain control. The novel represents the conflict of three generations, two decades after the 1979 revolution. This article examines the ways this fictional representation of transgenerational and transnational conflict reflects and throws light on the nature of everyday life in contemporary Iran, thus contributing to anthropological knowledge and analysis of Iran and the complexities of its diverse communities.

The Relevance of Journalism

The media-saturated nature of everyday life is well acknowledged in current audience research, but the role of journalism for people living in this digitalised environment remains less clear. To provide a better understanding of the role of journalism and news in everyday life, this article states the case for combining two complementary analytical perspectives in cultural audience research that draw on the framework of practice theory. We need to focus on both interpersonal communication practices within social networks and on discursive practices and patterns of how people use the media. Empirically, this article draws on an extensive audience study conducted in Finland, whose findings provide a cause for moderate optimism regarding the sustaining relevance of journalism in people's everyday life in the digital era. Firstly, social networks—both offline and online—constitute a vital structure within which the output of journalism is rendered meaningful by users. Secondly, the discursive practices applied by the participants emphasise the importance of news as a central means of orientation to society and making sense of the political nature of the public world. However, much of this potential remains unknown to journalists because users' activities occur at a distance from journalism and political institutions, which poses a challenge to digital journalism.

Disney and the presentation of colonial America

This paper uses the concepts of Disneyfication and Disneyization to discuss the (re)presentation of history at Disney’s American Adventure, Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Colonial Williamsburg. It is argued that these historical properties to varying degrees have adopted Disney principles. While the discussion focuses upon the Disney‐like experiences of colonial America at these sites, the piece concludes with a comment on the Disneyesque nature of everyday life in contemporary consumer culture.