Social Crisis Research Articles

Singing Justice for Women and Land

AbstractUsing an ecofeminist reading of Isaiah 5:1‐7, this article offers the Song of the Vineyard as a poem spoken from the perspective of the woman experiencing the social crisis in 8th‐century Judah. Using a powerful rhetoric to convey her message, the woman dared to speak out against the unjust circumstances that threatened the well‐being of her people and land. This paper also explores the role of the vineyard as an agent that raises its voice against injustice. Lastly, this paper creates a dialogue between an ancient voice and the voice of Asian women today. It shows the struggles of Asian women such as the Kendeng women farmers to achieve social justice and justice for the natural environment. This paper calls for churches and the Christian community to hear the voices of the land and women and to take significant actions to end the violence against women and the land.

The Effect of Forced Migration on Mental Health in Elderly Individuals: A Struggle in the Shadow of Disasters

Natural disasters are social crises that affect people together with their environment, which are unpredictable where and when they will occur worldwide. Natural disasters are a process that deeply affects people's lives, often necessitating relocation. Natural disasters affecting individuals from all age groups significantly affect elderly individuals, who are a vulnerable and fragile group due to physical limitations, chronic diseases and other age-related factors. Uncertainty and anxiety together with difficult experiences and change of location after the disaster is a traumatic process that especially affects elderly individuals. The fact that elderly individuals constitute the majority of the increasing population on a global scale and the increasing number of natural disasters today makes it a priority to address the mental health of elderly individuals and to carry out more studies on survival strategies. From this point of view, this review study aims to provide strategies for the protection, development and rehabilitation of the mental health of elderly individuals by focusing on the mental health problems and coping methods of elderly individuals who try to establish a new life by having to relocate due to natural disasters and natural disasters. Pre-disaster preparation and post-disaster intervention programs should be prepared specifically for elderly individuals and should be structured taking into account cultural/geographical differences.

Why Does China Implement the "Dual Reduction Policy" to Restrict Educational Industry? An Explanation Based on Marxist Political Economy

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed in "The Communist Manifesto" the viewpoint of the inevitable demise of capitalism, Marxist political economy serves as an explanation and justification of this viewpoint. Marxist political economy forms a complete logical system, which elucidates the developmental path of capitalist collapse through three stages: surplus value, free competition, and monopoly capitalism. The theory of surplus value explains the intrinsic essence of capitalist society, wherein capitalists profit by exploiting labor, while free market competition and monopoly capitalism are external manifestations of the operational laws of capitalist society. In recent years, the disorderly expansion of educational capital in China has shown clear monopolistic tendencies. At this juncture, China promptly implemented the "dual reduction policy" to restrict the expansion of educational capital, which is a practical application of Marxist political economy. From the perspective of Marxist political economy theory, China's restrictions on educational capital serve three purposes: firstly, to prevent capital from excessively depriving laborers of surplus value; secondly, to avoid cyclical economic crises brought about by unregulated capital competition; thirdly, to prevent monopolies and thereby avert both economic crises and the social crises brought about by monopolies.

PERCEPTIONS AND EXPERIENCES OF NURSING STUDENTS ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a worldwide health and social crisis, has also directly affected the education system. The aim of this study was to explore and understand the perceptions and experiences of nursing students’ about distance education during the pandemic. Method: A phenomenological qualitative study was conducted with undergraduate nursing students from a state university in Manisa, Turkey. This study used a purposive sampling method and collected data through semi-structured interviews. Online interviews were conducted with nursing students (n=16) in April 2021. Data was analyzed using the hermeneutic interpretative approach. Results: The ages of the participants were between 21-26. 74 codes gathered under three main themes emerged: advantages and gains were classified as "positive aspects"; disadvantages, needs, and losses were classified as "negative aspects"; occupation-related, learning-related, and personal aspects were classified as "emotions. Conclusion and Suggestions: The students mentioned that distance nursing education has both positive and negative aspects. The most mentioned issue is that although everything is more accessible on theoretical knowledge of nursing, the practice training is not suitable for the distance education system and is insufficient. It is a fact that distance nursing education cannot provide the desired or sufficient output because nursing practices cannot be carried out remotely.

Achieving transformational change through the consilience of behavioral science and radical alternatives

The integration of behavioral science into conservation science and climate science has enabled the development of both novel research questions and practical interventions. However, most behavioral interventions aim to change private, individual behaviors, rather than transform the political economic systems that drive current biodiversity, climate, and social crises. In this paper, we argue that closer collaboration between behavioral scientists working on biodiversity and climate issues, on the one hand, and advocates for radical alternatives to current political economic systems, on the other, could advance such needed systemic transformation. While the work of both groups is subject to some critique, we suggest that closer collaboration could enable the strengths of each to address the others’ weaknesses. This complementarity is particularly true when behavioral interventions are co-designed with advocates and targeted towards powerful individuals whose behavior could affect systems-level transformation. We use the fossil fuel divestment movement as an illustrative example of one way in which this collaboration could be mutually beneficial, and then outline potential political, practical, and ethical implications that may accompany such collaborations in the biodiversity conservation and climate change fields.

Volunteering intentions during social crises: The role of considering the welfare of others and consequences of own behavior

In the current paper, we investigate how people with experience with volunteering in their lifetime intend to engage in hypothetical crisis volunteering in the future. We took into account two types of hypothetical social crises: a pandemic and a refugee crisis. We suggest that individual differences in considering the welfare of others (social value orientation) and consideration of future/immediate consequences play a role in the volunteer responses to crises. We also control for the willingness to volunteer in the proximal (a month) and distal (3 years) future, gender, age, and length of volunteer experience. We conducted two survey-based online studies in October 2023. We recruited N = 287 people for Study 1 (Poland) and N = 231 for Study 2 (Italy). Our results suggested that people who declare they want to remain volunteers intend to engage during social crises, but not necessarily in a proactive way. Furthermore, consideration of future consequences can result in proactivity, which was especially visible in the Italian sample. Consideration of immediate consequences can have twofold correlates – one might be the engagement in volunteering in case of a sudden emergency or refraining from the voluntary activity. These results can be used by people leading volunteer activities to predict what to expect from their volunteers and plan the volunteer recruitment and retention processes during crises.

An Empirical Analysis of Race and Political Partisanship Effects on Workplace Mobility Patterns During Lockdown, Reopening, and Endemic COVID-19

The authors investigate how race and political partisanship affected variations in workplace and non-workplace mobility at three COVID-19 phases—lockdown (2020), reopening (2021), and endemic COVID (2022). They theorize that structural racism compelled relatively greater workplace mobility rates in Black communities during lockdown, and reduced Black workplace mobility during reopening and endemic COVID. By contrast, they posit elite-level anti-science skepticism and its amplification resulted in Trump-voting communities experiencing relatively higher workplace and non-workplace mobility rates than non-Trump-voting areas throughout the pandemic. Regressions primarily using county-level Google Mobility Reports data support the hypotheses, conditioning on state-level fixed effects and county-level urbanity, COVID job-type sorting, demographics, and socioeconomics. The county-level results are complemented by outcomes from novel individual-level COVID lockdown survey data, helping connect the proposed individual-level mechanisms to the county-level findings. The authors conclude that work mobility during COVID was racialized and politicized, offering empirical insights into how systematic disadvantages can lead to increased and unequal precarity during periods of acute economic or social crisis.

The Mechanism of Over-Equilibrium in China's Shadow Education Market and Its Social Crisis

In China, many problems seen in the compulsory education period are caused by the over-equilibrium of the shadow education market, i.e. people’s excess demands for and excess supply of shadow education. The over-equilibrium is the result of excess demand and excess supply in the shadow education market. The excess demand is attributed to unbalanced human capital ROI, strong signal functions of diplomas, vicious competition and ignorance of leisure. The disordered development of capital in the shadow education industry leads to excess supply. The excess demand and excess supply give rise to great scale of shadow education, harming the students, parents, teachers, schools and the society. The policy to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students undergoing compulsory education (the “Double Reduction Policy”) is effective in solving the over-equilibrium in the shadow education market from the perspectives of both demand and supply.

Uplifting India from severe energy poverty accounting for strong asymmetries: Do inclusive financial development, digitization and human capital help reduce the asymmetry?

Securing seamless access to power in emerging territories like India is a prerequisite for attaining steady-state economic development and enhancing societal upliftment. Therefore, policymakers and power stakeholders face the pressing need to identify new factors that can effectively alleviate energy poverty, particularly in the context of increasing financial globalization and digitization. While previous studies have examined the linear relationship between fuel poverty and its determinants, there is a lack of research focusing on the nonlinear association. The present work, therefore, explores the asymmetric consequences of financial development (FD), digitization, and human capital on fuel poverty in India while controlling for the consequences of economic growth (GDP), trade, and natural resource rent. To accomplish this, we adopt innovative methodologies, including Wavelet Quantile Correlation (WQC), Quantile-on-Quantile regression (QQR), and Quantile Causality (QC), leveraging data spanning from 1990Q1 to 2021Q4. The results from WQC and QQR approaches underscore that financial development, human capital, GDP, and digitization share a strong asymmetric association with energy poverty and that excessive financial development and digitization foster energy poverty issues in India. Human capital and trade do not help reduce energy poverty when energy poverty appears to be extreme. However, natural resources help reduce fuel poverty. Our findings corroborate that moderate financial development and digitization growth can help uplift India from this social crisis of fuel poverty. As such, Delhi should focus more on absorbing the negative spillovers induced by augmented financial development and digitization and control for other subsidiary elements that share close contact with financial development and digitization. Besides, Delhi must foster human capital development before the energy poverty issue peaks.

Primary Health Care and Tuberculosis Detection during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Crucial Actions for Intensifying Efforts.

Tuberculosis has been considered a global emergency since 1993, and controlling it has become even more challenging since 2020 due to the health and social crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tuberculosis case detection activities within primary health Care in the largest city in Brazil. This is a cross-sectional and analytical study on the provision of tuberculosis detection actions in primary healthcare units during the pandemic period. A descriptive analysis was performed for characterization, and Generalized Mixed Models were used for evaluating associations, with a Bonferroni post hoc test applied. The study sample comprised 80 health units in the municipality. There was a moderate alteration level in the provision of consultations for individuals with signs and symptoms of tuberculosis in 2020 (13.8%) and in 2021 (15.1%). Statistical significance (p < 0.05) was found between the pandemic period and detection actions, with a lower alteration level in 2022. Tuberculosis detection activities underwent changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly in 2020, which was associated with alterations in consultation and case notification provision.

Optimization of Character Education in The Independent Curriculum Through the Pancasila Student Profile Strengthening Project Approach

Education with Pancasila values, the Merdeka Curriculum aims to create students who are not only academically skilled but also have a solid moral foundation. The method used in this research is library research. This research describes understanding in descriptive research that is scientific and inductive. The need for a curriculum that is responsive to student needs and the global environment is becoming increasingly important. The existence of Pancasila values ​​in the face of the social crisis currently hitting Indonesian society, where the teaching and implementation of these values ​​has been proven to have a positive impact on student behavior. In developing character education, Pancasila values ​​have a central role as a moral and ethical foundation that is rooted in Indonesian culture and history.

“I Cannot Bring A Child Into This World”: Hearing And Writing I Poems With BirthStrike Testimonials

BirthStrike for Climate was a UK-based movement whose members “striked” against having children, to demonstrate the desperate need for political action on climate change. In this article, I engage with the Listening Guide (Gilligan &amp; Eddy, 2017) to hear, trace and construct “I poems” with BirthStrike members’ testimonial statements, which were published online between 2019-2020. My analysis focusses on how BirthStrike stories articulate the psychosocial impacts of climate change, particularly in relation to questions about having (and not having) children in times of environmental and social crises. I provide an iteration of how the Listening Guide can be applied to non-spoken texts. As I will show, even in the absence of research participants, the listening process for me was a relational encounter: the stories moved me, stirring up strong affective resonances which in turn informed my hearing and writing process. My analysis is therefore an effort to give access to the affective flow I felt in response to the stories, as a process of both listening and being called to respond from an intersubjective location.

Foreign experience of investigating crimes committed by members of youth informal groups (associations)

The article deals with specific issues of foreign experience in investigating crimes committed by members of informal youth groups (associations). It is emphasized that the study of foreign experience in the investigation of crimes committed by members of youth informal groups (associations) will contribute to the development and improvement of recommendations for the investigation of the corresponding category of criminal offenses in Ukraine.&#x0D; The peculiarities of detection and investigation of crimes committed by members of youth informal groups (associations) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and the USA are analyzed.&#x0D; Most often, French youth can unite in informal groups in connection with a common place of residence (street, district, city), because of race, nationality, political views, social crises, etc. Difficulties in investigating the criminal activities of informal youth in France are associated with the active use of social networks for the preparation and concealment of committed offenses, the organization of gangs, an increase in their number, and a great public outcry.&#x0D; All youth informal groups (associations) in Germany can be divided into 3 types: 1) associations of young people who are migrants, refugees and spend their free time together, live on the same street, in the same district; 2) neo-Nazi youth associations; 3) unification of youth on the basis of political views and protest sentiments.&#x0D; The boom in youth crime in the Netherlands occurred in the early 1980s. But a balanced preventive work, starting in 1985, gave results. An active struggle is being waged against youth neo-Nazi groups (associations) on the Internet.&#x0D; There are 434 youth gangs in Canada with approximately 7,070 members. The greatest concentration of youth gangs in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.&#x0D; In the 50s. XX century. American youth, and students in particular, showed themselves for the first time as an active political force, able to defend their positions on an equal footing with political parties and «adult» public organizations. The youth of that time advocated civil liberties – freedom of speech, organizations, meetings, etc. But informal youth groups in the USA are not only a subcultural phenomenon, but also gangs that actively engage in criminal activities based on the promotion of ideas, views, and lifestyles.

Six-month psychopathological symptom trajectories following the COVID-19 outbreak: Contrasting mental health outcomes between nurses and the general population.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a social, economic and health crisis that had a major impact on the mental health of the global community, particularly nurses. The objective of the current study is to conduct a longitudinal evaluation of the trajectory of depressive, anxiety, trauma, and fear of COVID-19 symptoms, comparing self-reports of nurses and the general population over a six-month period. Self-report questionnaires were administered online to a sample of 180 nurses and 158 individuals from the general population for the baseline assessment (T1) and follow-up at 6 months (T2). Levels of symptoms reported by nurses were generally greater and tended to worsen over time, as opposed to the levels of symptoms reported by the general population that tended to improve. Levels of depressive, anxiety, and trauma symptoms were significantly different between nurses and the general population over time. Levels of fear of COVID-19 declined significantly from T1 to T2 in both groups. These results suggest that it is crucial to monitor the longer-term effects of COVID-19 and to develop resilience-promoting interventions tailored to the unique needs of this vulnerable group.

Utilising a multi-proxy to model comparison to constrain the season and regionally heterogeneous impacts of the Mt Samalas 1257 eruption

Abstract. The Mt Samalas eruption, thought to have occurred in summer 1257, ranks as one of the most explosive sulfur-rich eruptions of the Common Era. Despite recent convergence, several dates have been proposed for the eruption ranging between 1256–1258, with, as of yet, no single combination of evidence that has been able to robustly distinguish between and exclude the other dates proposed for the Mt Samalas eruption. Widespread surface cooling and hydroclimate perturbations following the eruption have been invoked as contributing to a host of 13th century social and economic crises, although regional-scale variability in the post-eruption climate response remains uncertain. In this study we run ensemble simulations using the UK Earth System Model (UKESM1) with a range of eruption scenarios and initial conditions in order to compare our simulations with the most complete globally resolved multi-proxy database for the Mt Samalas eruption to date, incorporating tree rings, ice cores, and historical records. This allows more precise constraints to be placed on the year and season of the Mt Samalas eruption, as well as an investigation into the regionally heterogeneous post-eruption climate response. Using a multi-proxy to model comparison, we are able to robustly distinguish between July 1257 and January 1258 eruption scenarios, where the July 1257 ensemble simulation achieves considerably better agreement with spatially averaged and regionally resolved proxy surface temperature reconstructions. These reconstructions suggest the onset of significant cooling across Asia and Europe in 1258 and thus support the plausibility of previously inferred historical connections. Model-simulated temperature anomalies also point to severe surface cooling across the Southern Hemisphere with as of yet unexplored historical implications for impacted civilisations. Model simulations of polar sulfate deposition also reveal distinct differences in the timing of ice sheet deposition between the two simulated eruption dates, although comparison of the magnitude or asymmetric deposition of sulfate aerosol remains limited by large inter-model differences and complex intra-model dependencies. Overall, the multi-proxy to model comparison employed in this study has strong potential in constraining similar uncertainties in eruption source parameters for other historical eruptions for which sufficient coincident proxy records are available, although care is needed to avoid the pitfalls of model–multi-proxy comparison.

Spiritual Crisis in the midst of Social Chaos and Disorder: A Character Interpretation of The Master and Marguerite

Times evolve, and society is in a state of perpetual flux. The lives and spiritual landscapes of citizens amidst this vortex of change are of utmost interest. The narrative of The Master and Margarita is situated in an era of perpetual unrest and transformation within the Soviet Union, where citizens are embroiled in profound spiritual quandaries. Through two parallel strands of magical portrayal, the novel profoundly exposes the social crisis and unrest that Russia is grappling with. The rapid societal progress has also given rise to a sense of emptiness and bewilderment among citizens, who have forfeited their spiritual aspirations and are now enslaved by material possessions. This paper will delve into the portrayal of the key characters - the master, the poet Ivan, and the ordinary Moscow citizens. It will examine their life experiences, emotional shifts, and inner worlds, while unpacking the spiritual travail of cowardice, anxiety, internal distortion, and spiritual agony amidst the onslaught of pressure, value misalignment, and disorientation.

Spatiotemporal Evolution Features of the 2022 Compound Hot and Drought Event over the Yangtze River Basin

A rare compound hot and drought (CHD) event occurred in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB) in the summer of 2022, which brought serious social crisis and ecological disaster. The analysis of the causes, spatiotemporal characteristics and impacts of this event is of great significance and value for future drought warning and mitigation. We used the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)/GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) data, meteorological data, hydrological data and satellite remote sensing data to discuss the spatiotemporal evolution, formation mechanism and the influence of the CHD event. The results show that the drought severity caused by the CHD event was the most severe during 2003 and 2022. The CHD event lasted a total of five months (from July to November), and there were variations in the damage in different sub-basins. The Wu River Basin (WRB) is the region where the CHD event lasted the longest, at six months (from July to December), while it also lasted four or five months in all the other basins. Among them, the WRB, Dongting Lake Rivers Basin (DLRB) and Mainstream of the YRB (MSY) are the three most affected basins, whose hot and drought severity values are 7.750 and −8.520 (WRB), 7.105 and −9.915 (DLRB) and 6.232 and −9.143 (MSY), respectively. High temperature and low precipitation are the direct causes of the CHD event, and the underlying causes behind this event are the triple La Niña and negative Indian Ocean Dipole event. The two extreme climate events made the Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) unusually strong, and then the WPSH covered a more northerly and westerly region than in previous years and remained entrenched for a long period of time over the YRB and its adjacent regions. Moreover, this CHD event had a devastating impact on local agricultural production and seriously disrupted daily life and production. Our results have implications for the study of extreme disaster events.

Social Control of Everyday Life and Political Construction of (Montenegrin) Identity

Abstract The research problem is the influence of global crisis on identity and daily life of Montenegrin people. The subject is the political construction of (Montenegrin) identity, as a result of social control on everyday life, where identities are born. For the purpose of researching this relation, the starting point is the explanatory potential of J. Habermas’s contemporary socio-political theory about the colonization of the lifeworld by an expansionist logic of the political-economic constellation (system). Scientific goals are: 1) description of the colonization of the lifeworld and the construction of (Montenegrin) identity, as an indicator of social crisis (in Montenegro); 2) understanding the causal factors (causes, motives) of (Montenegrin) identity construction; 3) generic explanation of the political construction of (Montenegrin) identity, through strategies, policies, educational and media influences. Social goals refer to: 1) expansion of the fund of knowledge about contemporary (Montenegrin) society and its problematic aspects; 2) pragmatic explanations of the problem of social control of everyday life through the re-actualization of socio-political concepts; 3) indication of guidelines for possible changes for the better in the sphere of everyday life in the foreseeable future. The methodology concerns the main hypothesis that by constructing the identity of people in the post-industrial society, social control of everyday life is realized. Auxiliary hypotheses are: 1) Identity construction takes place through strategies, policies, educational and media influences as segments of social control aimed at managing social resources from the local to the global level. 2) With instruments of social control, a desirable system of values of individuals and social groups is established with the aim of preventing, delaying, compensating, and transforming their potential subversive action (undermining the system from within). The independent or causal variable is the social control of everyday life, while the dependent or consequential variable is the constructed identity. Making final findings will be facilitated by the synthesis, inductive and deductive methods of reasoning, as well as the method of comparison with a case study. The results refer to the achieved goals and the general conclusion that the system’s power logic reduces the sphere of free and open communication of individuals, thus their identity becomes a place of permanent crisis due to the threat of the meaning of everyday life within which identity is formulated. This crisis is the reason that identities will remain endangered until the question of alienation of life is raised, in accordance with the capitalist imperatives of unlimited economic growth and consumption, and instrumental-rational interaction. As a reaction to the system dominance, the forces of resistance are strengthening, in the form of new alternative grassroots social movements, such as Civil Movement United Reform Action (URA), in Montenegro, which is pro-European green political party of the left center and social-liberal ideological provenance.

Performing Everyday Things: Ecosomatic Threads of Butoh, Phenomenology, and Zen

&lt;p&gt;This essay engages descriptive, experiential methods of phenomenology, prompts from butoh, and insights of Zen Buddhism. Butoh is the dance and theatre form that arose from the ashes of Japan in the shadow of ecological and social crisis after the Second Word War. It is interpreted widely in current forms that extend well beyond the borders of Japan. The everyday is articulated in the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, particularly through concepts of “worlding,” how our works ripple out to create a world, as phenomenology and Zen both hold, each in their own way. I write about butoh through a prism of Zen and phenomenology because they share similar philosophical outlooks on performance, and they explain everyday things. In articulating performance of the everyday, this essay takes an ecosomatic turn inward toward matters of consciousness and perception. The writing stems from my participation in butoh as a student, performer, and scholar since 1985, my university teaching of dance and somatics, and my philosophical and lived investigations of phenomenology and Buddhism. Through phenomenology, the essay is descriptive, performative, and concerned with “lived experience,” including how features of experience appear and transform in consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;

Calling for (r)Evolution: the rise of the educational phoenix of audacious hope

ABSTRACT Existing educational and social inequalities within colonised nations have been amplified by multitudinous health, racial, climate, and social crises. It is a time to act collectively and boldly pivot towards equitable, socially-just futures. This perspective article contextualises schools within a social eco-system contending with the convergence of childhood adversity, pandemics, increasing climate, human-rights, political, and economic crisis around the globe. Profound uncertainty has shaken the expectations and systems that have been relied-on by those communities which they privilege. We call for educators to apply a transformative praxis with critical and cultural pedagogy to disrupt the educational status-quo that privileges Western-colonial epistemologies – knowledge and ways of knowing; the ‘whitewashing’ of schools and curriculums. Leveraging comprehensively applied trauma-informed principles within a social justice agenda is presented as a way of positioning schools to be way-finders and change-makers as they partner with communities. The time is now to (re)construct a fully rights-based school (r)evolution. Humility and courage will be required to lean into the hard questions and challenges; to revolutionise and humanise education. This paper presents schools as potential truth-hearing and historical truth-telling agents of urgent social change building communities of healing and audacious hope, led by communities.