Studies Scholars Research Articles

What is Known About the Numbers, Experiences and Outcomes of Young People Transitioning from Out-of-home Care in Indonesia?

Young people transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC), commonly known as care leavers, are widely recognised internationally as a vulnerable group often subject to disadvantage. Yet, most studies of their pathways and outcomes to date have been completed in affluent Global North countries, and there have been relatively few reports on their experiences in Global South locations where different political, legislative, cultural and religious contexts exist. The particular attention of this article is on the Republic of Indonesia. Previous literature regarding children and young people in OOHC in Indonesia highlighted the poor quality of care within OOHC institutions and their adverse experiences of institutionalisation. In recent years, the Government of Indonesia has encouraged deinstitutionalisation by preventing family separation, promoting family-based alternative care and only utilising residential care as a last resort for child care. Nevertheless, little scholarly attention and studies have been given to researching young people leaving OOHC, who are likely to have poor life outcomes. Utilising existing grey government and non-government literature and reports, this policy briefing critically examines what is known about the numbers, experiences and outcomes of young people transitioning from OOHC in Indonesia.

Alternative organization without vertical hierarchies of spatial scale?

Vertical hierarchies of spatial scale—where society in general, and organizations in particular, are differentiated into levels of spatial size—have often been criticized by those encouraging alternatives to capitalist organizing. These vertical scalings are said to promote authoritarianism, a monolithic capitalist economic system, uneven concentrations of social and organizational power and wealth, and ecologically destructive organizational growth. Consequently, so the argument goes, alternative organizing must scale horizontally whereby smaller organizations autonomously associate together into loose networks or federations. The aim of this contribution is to problematize such critiques of vertical hierarchies of scaling for alternative organization. To do so, I combine Management and Organization Studies (MOS) scholarship on scaling alternative organization with two theorizations of the politics of scale in human geography—namely those derived from Neo-Marxist Political Economy and Actor-Network Theories. My argument is that all those looking to understand and encourage the scaling of alternatives to capitalist organizing should engage with and not simply reject vertical scalar hierarchies.

A Criminological–Military Enterprise

Abstract This article builds upon, and extends, critiques of British criminology’s enterprising collaboration with state-based institutions. Through an investigation of the discipline’s discreet contribution to the UK military ‘knowledge economy’ (Catignani and Basham 2021), criminological research is revealed as having the capacity to insulate the British military from critique and depoliticize military violence. Informed by criminological and critical military studies scholarship, the ‘criminological–military enterprise’ is introduced into academic discourse. This term offers a critical analysis of the discipline’s contemporary ‘blended’ (Shields 2024) research with the British military estate, provides ‘enriched reflexive’ (Danielsson 2022) problems for critical scholars to contemplate, and calls for a (re)politicization of military issues within criminological research.

Navigating ethical and legal challenges in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study: Lessons learned from the ethics, law, policy working group

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. The HBCD study has faced several ethical and legal challenges due to its goal of enrolling pregnant people (including those with substance use disorder) and their newborns. Challenges not fully anticipated at the outset emerged from the rapidly changing legal landscape around reproductive rights in the United States. By embedding scholars in bioethics and law within research teams and engaging them in conversation with each other and other study personnel, we were able to address many challenges proactively and respond promptly to unanticipated challenges. In this paper, we highlight several important ethical and legal challenges that arose from the first phase of funding through the beginning of participant enrollment. We explain the methods used to address these challenges, the ethical and legal tradeoffs that arose, and the resolution of challenges through the design of the study. Based on this experience, we provide recommendations for research teams, sponsors, and reviewers to address legal risks and promote the ethical conduct of studies with pregnant people and caregivers. We highlight the importance of collaboration with bioethics and legal scholars in studies involving complex and evolving legal risks, as well as the necessity of designing robust approaches to informed consent and maintaining participant trust while navigating ethical challenges in research.

Going against the grain? Appraising the aesthetic labour of male beauty influencers on Instagram

Despite the proliferation of scholarly studies on social media in recent years, not many have focused on male social media influencers in the beauty industry, which is often viewed as a feminine preserve with the vast majority of ‘beauty influencers’ being female. This study focuses on the discursive practices of two male beauty influencers to examine how their visual self-portrayal contributes to their popularity and influence. A total of 752 photographs collected from their Instagram accounts were examined using a visual appraisal framework adapted from Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory described in The Language of Evaluation, focusing on normality, capacity and authenticity. The authors’ findings show that both influencers, who are openly gay, portray themselves as gender norm transgressors whose performance of capacity and authenticity as social media celebrities is a highly contested and conflictual aspect of their identity construction as beauty influencers. These findings not only shed light on the visual discursive processes and practices through which beauty influencers perform their aesthetic labour to enhance their popularity and influence but they also contribute to our understanding of how they perpetuate mediatized and marketized stereotypes of beauty and being as part of the broader sociocultural phenomenon of the celebrification of social media influencers in contemporary society.

“We Got Tired”

In this commentary, I raise the issue of how well we can distinguish between religious systems and those presided over by messianic “quasi-divine” leaders. This problematizes the degree to which all such systems can be described as ecologically functional when they can also be directed by the idiosyncratic whims of unstable charismatic individuals. Aside from such issues, I also raise the issue of how we can be sure that the “religious system” is reliably adaptive, if we may not have an accurate tally of such systems in the first place, particularly given the fact that religious studies scholars are incapable of providing a distinction between a “cult” that may contain but a few individuals and quickly “fail” due to its esoteric demands, and millennia-old traditions commanding millions of adherents and enforcing prosocial norms. I also raise two issues that have long bedevilled functionalist approaches but that do not make much of an appearance in Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics (Purzycki & Sosis 2022): the boundary problem and the Pangloss problem. Despite these reservations, I applaud the book both for its rigour and for providing a sorely needed template for analyzing religious systems within the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion (CESR). I close by tentatively suggesting that religion’s ubiquity lies not with its adaptiveness per se, but with its capacity to accelerate cultural evolution by causing societies to lock in values that may either be adaptive or maladaptive, making sacralization ubiquitous even when its outcomes can be destructive.

The Politics of Expertise in Genomics Policy and Law

Genomics and biotechnology have generated controversy for decades, about the moral limits of tinkering with and commodifying life, the boundary between nature and technology, the respectful treatment of research participants, and the proper evaluation of emerging technologies. Socio-legal and science and technology studies scholars have demonstrated how the resolution of these questions has serious implications for both science and the law, including the appropriate conduct and direction of scientific research and the construction of legal categories and rights. This article demonstrates that these conflicts also have profound impacts on the politics of science and technology, and particularly approaches to relevant knowledge and expertise. Humanities, social scientific, legal, and lay knowledge asserted themselves through the establishment of human genetics research and battles over the ownership of biological materials and data. However, US political culture—which favors technical and market knowledge—constrained their authority. Cross-national comparison highlights this finding, as other jurisdictions have been more inclusive in their approaches to science and technology governance.

When “symbolic” policy is anything but: Policy design and feedbacks from California's human right to water law

AbstractDespite the reality that advocates frequently expend significant resources to pass symbolic policies, this policy design has often been neglected by policy studies scholarship. We combine policy design and policy feedback theory to examine this oft overlooked policy design in practice using the case of California's human right to water law (Assembly Bill 685, or AB 685). Through semi‐structured interviews, archival research, and document analysis, we reveal how grassroots advocates deliberately and effectively pursued AB 685 to build power across the water justice movement and catalyze narrative change about drinking water access, while also building state responsiveness on the topic. These interpretive policy feedback effects then accelerated the policy's resource effects through formal policy changes in funding allocations, administrative structures, and regulatory systems. Collectively, feedbacks from AB 685 have transformed the sociopolitics of drinking water access. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, the policy's ambiguity proved key to building the broad coalition necessary to accomplish these changes, and it facilitated work across policy venues and governance scales through time, which is critical to enacting transformational change. Based on these findings, we argue that symbolic policies merit attention as a potentially advantageous policy design for social movements seeking social change and transformation.

Understanding Customer Readiness for Digital Gamification

ABSTRACT Digital gamification has been studied extensively in different contexts across information systems and digital marketing. Interestingly, scholarly studies in information systems/marketing regarding the benefits of digital gamification are mixed, with several research works reporting negative outcomes. Our study attempts to resolve these contradictions and explain why digital gamification failed in certain instances—the target customers were not ready. The present study, done in the USA covering 446 usable responses, adds to the extant literature in many ways. First, we throw light on gamified engagement programs and the mediating role of customer readiness and consequent outcomes. Our results reveal that simplicity and information quality are other important dimensions of gamified engagement programs, in addition to intrinsic and extrinsic game dynamics, for achieving adequate customer readiness. Additionally, customer participation makes the greatest contribution to company engagement, followed by program loyalty and program satisfaction. We conclude with the study’s implications on different fronts.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and research activities in obstetrics and gynecology: a national two-stage, stratified, cluster sampling survey in China

BackgroundFew studies quantified the influence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on medical teaching and scientific research activities in China. This is the first national study to investigate such topics from the viewpoint of physicians practicing obstetrics and gynecology in China.MethodsThis is a national questionnaire survey with online interviews for respondents. This two-stage, stratified, cluster sampling method was applied based on city categories (categories 1 to 3 correspond to < 10,000, 10,000 to 30,000, and > 30,000 beds, respectively), hospital levels (primary, secondary, and tertiary), and hospital types (general and specialized) in China among physicians practicing obstetrics and gynecology. Physicians documented notable alterations in both overall and specialized teaching and research engagements. Comparative analyses were conducted across diverse municipal and hospital attributes.ResultsData were collected from a representative sample of 11,806 physicians from 779 hospitals across 157 cities and 31 provinces. Notably, except for online seminars, a minimum reduction of 20% in both overall and specialized teaching and research activities was observed among physicians. Up to 61.7% (95% confidence interval 59.3–64.0) of physicians reported either a complete termination or a > 50% decline in resident training. Compared with category 1 cities and primary hospitals, category 3 cities and tertiary hospitals experienced greater reductions in items of resident or graduate education, visiting scholar, clinical trials, and laboratory studies (adjusted p values < 0.05), coupled with notable increases in online seminar participation (adjusted p values of 0.002 and < 0.001, respectively).ConclusionsAmidst the COVID-19 pandemic in China, activities requiring direct, face-to-face communication were more affected in resource-rich cities and general hospitals compared to resource-limited areas and specialized hospitals. Residency training experienced the most significant decline. Conversely, participation in online seminars increased, providing additional opportunities for continuing medical education.

The oil spillover: prospecting for oil in innovation studies and the history of technology

ABSTRACT Innovation studies scholars use the concept of ‘spillovers’ to explain how ideas and people move among firms and industries and how regions form industrial clusters. Historians of technology use different vocabularies, but are interested in similar exchanges. This special issue explores spillovers specifically from (and to) oil firms. Oil touches all of social life, including non-oil technologies, but historians of technology and innovation studies scholars have not grasped its ubiquity. Within history of technology, oil history is a circumscribed subfield that has drawn little attention to non-oil technological activity performed or supported by oil actors, while historians of non-oil and non-energy technologies do not sufficiently acknowledge that the technologies that they write about are shaped by their energetic context. Within innovation studies, meanwhile, oil is also a relatively minor topic, despite substantial R&D within that industry alone. Yet oil was crucial for many canonical technologies of interest to both history of technology and innovation studies, including nuclear power, computing, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and scientific instrumentation. Technological activity within an oil economy/society bears that fuel’s mark. More generally, tracing oil and other energetic spillovers shows that different modes of energy production afford different modes of technological activity.

In Search of a Sinful Pun: A Granular Analysis of Q 2:58–59

Abstract This paper offers a new reading of Q 2:58–59 by way of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s Tafsīr and its use of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish or possibly Christian traditions. While the scholarly study of the Qurʾān in its late antique context has often been ambivalent toward medieval Arabic tafsīr, this paper uses the testimony of the tafsīr corpus on a single mysterious passage to reconstruct a plausible meaning in its original Qurʾānic milieu and shed light on the exegetical intimacies of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the first Hijri centuries. Q 2:58–59 contain a puzzling pericope about God punishing the Israelites because they substituted one word, which God had commanded them to say, with another. The word God commanded them to say, ḥiṭṭa, does not represent any Arabic word that makes good sense in context. The word they substituted is never specified. Later Arabic exegetes were thus puzzled by the passage and proposed many different solutions. The paper closely analyzes Muqātil ibn Sulaymān’s reading of the relevant passage in light of biblical intertexts and Jewish or Christian traditions, yielding an interpretation of this passage with reference to a perfidious pun on the words for “sin” and “grain” that works in Aramaic or possibly Hebrew, but not in Arabic.

A review of the literature on spirituality and religion in information research – 1990 to 2022

PurposeMore than eight in ten people worldwide identify with a religious group. In addition, people often engage with spiritual and religious content despite having no formal beliefs or affiliations. Spirituality remains a prominent feature of Western and Westernised information-based societies and cultures; however, people’s everyday interactions with spiritual and religious information have received disproportionate attention in information and library science research. Accordingly, this paper aims to understand how scholars have explored religion and spirituality in information research and identify current and emerging trends in the literature.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyses 115 peer-reviewed articles, 44 book chapters, 24 theses and 17 unrefereed papers published between 1990 and 2022 to present a narrative review of how scholars have explored spirituality and religion in information research. The reviewed literature is first organised into spirituality-related and religion-related articles and thereafter analysed in Internet studies, information behaviour studies and galleries, libraries, archives and museums-related research groups.FindingsOur analysis indicates scholars in Internet studies have researched both established and alternative religious interactions, and emerging research agendas seek to explore intersections between traditional religious authority and modern Internet-facilitated engagements. Information behaviour scholars have examined interactions in Christianity and Islam, focused primarily on Western contexts and conventional interactions, with emerging research aiming to explore diverse contextual and methodological combinations. Finally, GLAM researchers have investigated the practicality, suitability, and appropriateness of spirituality and religion-related service provisions; however, a clear research agenda is currently lacking in spirituality and religion information research more broadly.Originality/valueThis paper is the first review of the spirituality and religion-related information research spanning Internet studies, information behaviour studies and galleries, libraries, archives and museums research domains.

Humor and conflict in the Global South

This special issue focusses on humour studies scholarship from and about the Global South. It addresses a critical gap of underrepresentation, as identified in a previous ISHS conference and explored in subsequent panels. The issue brings together diverse contributions that examine urgent and emerging questions in Africa, Asia, and South America, highlighting howhumour interacts with socio-political dynamics, cultural tensions, and historical contexts in these regions. By shedding light on these perspectives, this collection seeks to broaden the discourse in humour studies and encourage deeper engagement with global voices and experiences.

Social Research Methods: For Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies, written by Joshua Iyadurai

Social Research Methods: For Students and Scholars of Theology and Religious Studies, written by Joshua Iyadurai

Animal-free safety assessment of chemicals: an innovation system perspective.

This perspective paper, which is the result of a collaborative effort between toxicologists and scholars in innovation and transition studies, presents a heuristic framework based on innovation system literature for understanding and appraising mission achievement to animal-free chemical safety assessment using New Approach Methodologies (NAMs). While scientific and technical challenges in this area are relatively well known, the recent establishment of missions and roadmaps to accelerate the acceptance and effective use of NAMs for chemical safety assessment raises new questions about how we can grasp the systemic nature of all changes needed in this transition. This includes recognising broader societal, institutional, and regulatory shifts necessary for NAM acceptance and uptake. Our paper discusses how the innovation system approach offers insights into key processes and associated activities that include as well as transcend the technical and scientific realm, and can help to accelerate acceptance and uptake of NAMs. Based on these insights, we present a comprehensive framework that, next to scientific and technological developments, recognises the need for coordinated efforts in areas like education, training, funding, policy-making, and public engagement to promote the acceptance and uptake of NAMs. Our framework can be used to perform structural and functional analyses of the innovation system of NAMs and animal-free safety assessment and as such provides handholds to track progress and organise collective efforts of actors to make sure we are moving in the right direction.

LRRK2; Communicative Role in the Treatment of Parkinson's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis Overlapping.

Involvement of gastrointestinal inflammation in Parkinson's disease (PD) pathogenesis and movement have progressively emerged. Inflammation is involved in the etiology of both PD and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Transformations in leucine-rich recurrent kinase 2 (LRRK2) are among the best hereditary supporters of IBD and PD. Elevated levels of LRRK2 have been reported in stimulated colonic tissue from IBD patients and peripheral invulnerable cells from irregular PD patients; thus, it is thought that LRRK2 directs inflammatory cycles. Since its revelation, LRRK2 has been seriously linked in neurons, albeit various lines of proof affirmed that LRRK2 is profoundly communicated in invulnerable cells. Subsequently, LRRK2 might sit at a junction by which stomach inflammation and higher LRRK2 levels in IBD might be a biomarker of expanded risk for inconsistent PD or potentially may address a manageable helpful objective in incendiary sicknesses that increment the risk of PD. Here, we discuss how PD and IBD share covering aggregates, especially regarding LRRK2 and present inhibitors, which could be a helpful objective in ongoing treatments. English data were obtained from Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Cochrane library studies published between 1990-December 2022. Inhibitors of the LRRK2 pathway can be considered as the novel treatment approaches for IBD and PD treatment. Common mediators and pathways are involved in the pathophysiology of IBD and PD, which are majorly correlated with inflammatory situations. Such diseases could be used for further clinical investigations.

Ritual, Media, and Alienation: Three Cases of Constructing the Image of a School Shooter in Russian Media in the Context of the Ritual of Chiral Initiation

Mass school shootings in Russia have become a symbol of deep social and cultural dysfunctions, reflecting a crisis of identity and youth alienation. The paper emphasizes the importance of exploring how the media constructs the image of a school shooter, influencing public perception and the perception of the perpetrators themselves. The media’s role in intensifying the alienation and marginalization of shooters through the ritualization and narrativization of acts of violence requires in-depth analysis. The aim of the study is to analyze the phenomenon of school shootings through the lens of the ritual of chiral initiation and to identify the sociocultural factors contributing to the construction of the shooter’s image. The analysis shows that media coverage of school shootings follows a ritualized script that reinforces the perception of the shooter as an alienated and dangerous individual, cementing his marginal status. The “Non-Return” stage in the chiral initiation ritual illustrates the shooter’s irreversible break from society and self-identity. The study underscores the need for a comprehensive analysis of the media and cultural factors shaping public opinion about school shooters. The target audience of this study includes scholars in sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology, as well as professionals involved in media studies and public safety.

How Did Early Modern Scholars Study Early Maps?

The two standard Anglophone historiographies of the history of cartography (Skelton 1972, Harley 1987) situated the field’s origins in the early modern era, or even in the later Middle Ages. Yet “history” and “cartography” are both products of the profound changes in the intellectual foundations and institutions of European knowledge practices in the decades to either side of 1800. By contrast, this essay explores how early modern scholars variously engaged with maps from the past in terms of contemporary knowledge practices. [Part 1] It first outlines the early modern meanings of “history” and “geography” and then reviews how early modern scholars engaged with early maps in three distinct ways. Classical scholars used the Peutinger map and Ptolemy’s Geography to identify locations of ancient places in order to improve their comprehension of Classical texts. [Part 2] Some geographers wrote histories of voyages and travels that related past routes to contemporary maps, and others wrote historical narratives of the compilation of encyclopedic texts and maps of regional and world knowledge. [Part 3] Antiquaries opportunistically described and at times reproduced a variety of maps, charts, and plans that came to their attention, but without active searches for early maps. Overall, I demonstrate that before 1775 there was neither a systematic approach taken to the study of maps from the past nor any hint of the core methodology that would be adopted by the first historiographical mode of map history as it developed after 1830.

Impact through engagement? A critical self-reflection on the engaged journalism exchange

Journalism studies scholars have increasingly focused on finding ways to improve the profession and practice they have dedicated their academic careers to better understanding. This critical self-reflection reviews the ways that we have attempted to make our own academic work impactful on journalistic practice. We discuss the challenges, opportunities, successes, and failures of our efforts to both increase the impact of our academic research among journalism professionals, as well as to build better connections with journalists and publics so that we can better inform our research questions and priorities. Our efforts have been difficult to maintain, and their impact has been all but impossible to assess. Our experiences suggest that journalists rarely have the time or resources to listen and act on assessments from academics, and academics rarely have the time, resources, incentives, or patience to find the best paths to sharing what they learn in ways that may lead to change in journalism practices'. In light of these circumstances, we argue that the questions and obstacles journalism scholars face when it comes to improving the impact of their work among media practitioners and community members eerily mirrors the questions and obstacles journalists face when it comes to improving the impact of their work among the public. We conclude by calling for more humility, honesty, and help when it comes to efforts to bridge the gap between journalism studies and practice.