Open political dialogue is regarded as foundational to democratic health and our social fabric. Here, we study political dialogue by examining with whom we prefer to talk about politics and why. In so doing, we develop and test hypotheses about what random encounters (e.g., meeting similar versus dissimilar others, meeting friends or colleagues) foster political dialogue, pose and test conjectures about what features of extended networks facilitate political debate, and present a new unique factorial survey experiment to answer our questions. We incorporated this factorial survey experiment within the NEtherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study 2022 (NELLS) and presented to a large sample of Dutch citizens – including Dutch ethnic majority members as well as minoritized Dutch with a Turkish or Moroccan heritage – a choice to engage in political talk or not. Hierarchical linear models reveal that relationship strength, rather than identity similarity (e.g., gender, ethnic), is the primary driver of opting for political dialogue. However, in encounters lacking prior relationship history, gender similarity increases the willingness to engage, and similar political views do relate to engaging in substantive debate modeled dichotomously. Ethnic diversity within extended networks fosters political discussion, while network size has a nonlinear association – medium-sized networks are more conducive to dialogue than very small or very large ones. These findings contribute to debates on political polarization by highlighting the relational conditions that encourage political exchange. • Political conversations are key to democratic health and our social fabric. • We hypothesize that dyadic similarity, tie strength, network size, and network diversity facilitate political conversation. • We study political conversations through a unique survey experiment. • Political conversations are more likely among strong ties, medium-sized extended networks, and with more ethnic diversity. • These findings have implications for our understanding of choice homophily, extended network structure, and polarization.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible work arrangements, including working from home and remote roles, have become a sustained feature of academic life. While these models offer ongoing benefits such as flexibility, accessibility, and accommodation of diverse personal circumstances, there remains limited discussion of how they are reshaping academic work culture and affecting campus-based colleagues. The shift away from shared physical workspaces has altered key dimensions of professional life, diminishing informal collegial interactions. Although existing literature has explored the pedagogical and logistical challenges associated with the rapid shift to online teaching, less attention has been paid to the longer-term impacts of sustained remote work on academic identity, institutional culture, and the everyday practices of academic citizenship. In this paper, we consider how flexible work arrangements are reshaping the social fabric of academic nursing and blurring the boundaries between home and work. We argue that while flexible work patterns are likely to remain embedded in academic structures, they can carry unintended consequences, that require careful consideration. Sustaining a vibrant and inclusive academic culture will require intentional strategies to foster connection, visibility, and equity among both remote and campus-based colleagues.

The global digital economy presents a formidable challenge to traditional institutions, demanding a paradigm shift that balances cultural preservation with economic innovation. This study investigates the construction of an ethical and sustainable Digital Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (DEE) for Indonesian Islamic boarding schools (pesantren), institutions central to the nation’s social and religious fabric. Grounded in a philosophical synthesis of Indonesia’s People’s Economy (Ekonomi Kerakyatan) principles and Islamic ethics, this research addresses the critical nexus of traditional values and modern digital transactional demands. Employing a qualitative multi-case study of five influential pesantren in East Java, the research identifies the core components and strategic pathways for this digital transition. The findings reveal that a successful ecosystem architecture rests on three pillars: Ethical-Spiritual Governance, leveraging the moral authority of leadership (Kyai) and community trust; Socio-Digital Collaboration, which translates immense social capital into structured digital networks; and Inclusive Capacity Building, which creates accessible pathways for digital literacy and entrepreneurship. This study critiques the conventional technology-centric ecosystem models, proposing a novel, values-driven framework that positions pesantren as architects of a more equitable and culturally resonant digital future. It contributes a philosophically robust model for digital entrepreneurship that prioritizes holistic community welfare (falah) over profit-centric metrics, offering a significant contribution to the discourse on ethical technology adoption in religious communities.

Our paper contributes to the broader coastal studies literature, proposing a methodology and methods that can enhance young people’s participation in research and policymaking. Framed by the emerging concept of child-friendly blue urbanism and founded on principles of attentiveness and context-responsiveness it sets out a novel approach that foregrounds young people’s contributions as co-researchers, and their lives as embodied and intimately connected to the social and physical fabric of the coast. Drawing on our original research with young people in a small, English coastal town, we explore how a unique focus on children’s emplaced lives offers creative opportunities that can enhance young people’s participation. Logistical and ethical challenges about how to safely navigate and safeguard children in a spatially remote, seasonally reliant seaside location were particularly salient. We discuss how the resulting walking tours, intergenerational postcard exchange, animation and booklet emerged through this process of co-creation and solution building with young people, enabling them to express their views and influence community dialogue. In setting out our distinctive attentive, context-responsive approach we critically explore the unique challenges and creative opportunities emerging from researching with young people in coastal contexts and their potential to realise the ambitions of child-friendly blue urbanism.

ABSTRACT In France, the categories of “Muslim” and “Islam” have become dominant ways to understand difference, often overshadowing the diversity of religious beliefs, life experiences, and engagements. Debates about laïcité (French secularism), which often portray Islamic identity as conflicting with French identity, highlight the need for a more systematic and contextualized exploration of the history and social recognition of Islamic affiliations. This article examines these issues through an ethnographic study of Boulogne-Billancourt, exploring how Islam is inscribed in the social and urban fabric of the city by analyzing narratives about the development of local places of worship. The significant transformation of this former industrial town on the edge of Paris offers a unique perspective on the intricate spatial relationships of Islam within the city and the ongoing pluralization of Muslim populations.

This text analyzes the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of Kyrgyzstan's key problems: political instability, economic vulnerability, migration, poverty, environmental challenges, and gender inequality. Drawing on post-Soviet heritage and data from 2020–2025, it highlights the impact of revolutions, external shocks (the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine), and climate change on the social fabric. The methodology combines a historical-comparative approach with an analysis of statistical data and reports from international organizations. Key conclusions suggest that institutional reforms, economic diversification, and regional cooperation are essential for sustainable development to overcome cycles of instability and inequality.

ABSTRACT War leaves physical imprints on cities. The effects of such destruction endure for decades after hostilities end, as both tangible and intangible harms reverberate across generations. Cities are centers of political, economic, and social life and cultural production; they embody memory, history, and meaning. Urban warfare is not new; it has been a military strategy for as long as cities have existed. Yet in contemporary conflict, cities are increasingly subjected to deliberate and systematic destruction, and their large and growing populations render such violence especially devastating. Urbicide refers to the deliberate destruction of urban spaces, encompassing not only the built environment but also the social, cultural, and relational fabric of urban life, as well as the emotional well-being and lives of its inhabitants. Despite its prevalence and scale, most recently witnessed in cities across Gaza, international law does not recognize urbicide as a distinct crime. While existing legal frameworks prohibit attacks on specific civilian objects, such as hospitals and civilian property, they do not protect the city as a collective entity nor adequately capture the cumulative and systemic nature of urban destruction. This article argues for the codification of urbicide as an international crime, drawing on international cultural heritage law and related concepts such as domicide and ecocide to propose a legal definition.

ABSTRACT Drawing on the personal documents of the author's great–grandparents, Annemarie (1884–1968) and Heinrich Brenzinger (1879–1960), this article makes the case for a history of the Holocaust that accounts for the complexity of everyday life in the Nazi dictatorship. It approaches the Brenzingers' family archive as an open-ended repository of meanings to investigate the social and political fabric of the Third Reich. Introducing cultural family history as a productive methodology for elucidating the subjective and relational dimensions of individual responses to the Nazi regime, the article argues that persecution and participation in the Third Reich were culturally contingent, socially inseparable dynamics.

Understanding the factors that influence support for wealth redistribution is essential to address growing economic divides around the world. We propose that perceptions of anomie—the belief that society's social and political fabric is crumbling—can influence support for redistribution in opposing ways. When people see society as deteriorating, they may seek drastic change, increasing support for redistribution. Conversely, viewing society as descending into anomie may also foster a belief that the government will mismanage redistributed wealth, thereby reducing support. Study 1 examined these relationships in a U.S. sample, confirming the presence of these two opposing pathways, and Study 2 then replicated the findings in the UK. Study 3 tested this model experimentally, introducing the ‘anomie paradigm’ to explore how perceptions of anomie cause shifts in psychology. Here, participants were exposed to a fictitious society characterized by high or low anomie. The high (relative to low) anomie condition increased support for redistribution through a desire for change but simultaneously decreased support via concerns over government misuse. These findings highlight how perceptions of societal breakdown can shape redistributive preferences through co‐occurring psychological processes with opposing implications for policy support.

ABSTRACT Migration is not merely an economic, geographical, or demographic phenomenon but is deeply entrenched in the social, cultural, and political fabric of societies. Return migration among women has emerged as an important yet under explored area of research in Pakistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). Guided by the three key research questions – what sociocultural expectations do women experience upon their return, how do they perceive their cultural and political reintegration, and what challenges and opportunities do they encounter during their reintegration? – this study adopts a feminist qualitative approach. We interviewed 17 women returnees using a semi-structured interview guide and purposive sampling. Findings revealed that return migration serves as both an opportunity and a challenge for women, catalyzing shifts in gender relations while remaining constrained by entrenched cultural and familial hierarchies. Returnee women disrupt traditional roles and develop strategies to negotiate patriarchal boundaries; however, their empowerment and agency is limited by socio-cultural constraints and institutional barriers. Despite these constraints, their gradual negotiation and collective action signal meaningful, albeit slow, progress toward greater political and social inclusion.

After a visit to his native Texas in 1985 during a period of economic recession caused by an oil glut, Robert Rauschenberg began transforming abandoned petrol station signs and scrap metal into sculptural assemblages. Titled Gluts, this series engaged with the oil industry’s paradoxes and global capitalism’s impact on the US South. Between 1986 and 1987 Rauschenberg extended the project to Naples, creating the Neapolitan Gluts from locally sourced waste. These works interrogated the city’s urban decay and social fabric, diverging from their US counterparts through their engagement with domestic objects and everyday life. Initially deployed as the stage design for the Trisha Brown Dance Company’s show Lateral Pass at Teatro San Carlo, the Neapolitan Gluts were later reconfigured for an exhibition at Galleria Lucio Amelio. This article examines Rauschenberg’s practice of appropriation, focusing on the materiality of metal waste in contemporary sculpture. It explores how sculptural reuse negotiates memory, social rituals and urban space across transnational contexts, reflecting geopolitical differences and cultural specificities.

ABSTRACT This article examines urban regeneration in Istanbul’s Bomonti district, focusing on the social and spatial transformations shaped by gentrification from the 1940s to the present. Using a mixed-methods approach, including on-site observations, resident surveys, and interviews with local representatives, this longitudinal study spans 13 years, with fieldwork conducted in 2012 and again in 2025, tracing changes in the urban landscape, economic structure, and redevelopment patterns over time. The study introduces an analytical framework to understand how globalization has reshaped urban space through economic shifts that stimulated housing investments and new residential typologies, including informal settlements, residences, and gated communities. Land regulation policies and earthquake-resistant construction requirements further influenced regeneration processes. Findings indicate that as upper-income groups initiated profit-driven projects in this former industrial zone, class distinctions evolved into spatial segregation, reshaping the district’s social fabric. By critically analyzing these dynamics, the investigation contributes to urban planning, urban sociology, and geography by highlighting the socio-spatial consequences of urban regeneration in rapidly transforming cities.

This paper examines how Xu Lizhi's poetry turns time into a central site of social violence. The paper does not simply view Xu as a tragic individual case but suggests that his poems are a sign of more general temporal crisis of the new generation of migrant workers in reform-era China. Taking close reading and the idea of time poverty, work-discipline and time-space compression, the analysis reveals that the factory schedules, assembly-line rhythms and the repetitive migration of labor restructures life into pieces, which no longer sustain rest, growth, and meaningful future. Day and night in the poems of Xu are deprived of their natural order, sleep is imposed in the position of work, and youth is not the time of growth but of untimely fatigue. The paper goes on to suggest that this broken temporality creates an identity crisis, where migrant workers are lured into the city as a source of labor force and excluded as a part of the social fabric. Xu Lizhi's poetry is therefore read as a testimony to the failure of time itself, that is, a condition in which time no longer enables life to unfold but instead becomes a medium of exhaustion, suspension, and rupture.

South Africa is home to a rich tapestry of cultural and linguistic diversity, with 11 official spoken languages and South African Sign Language recognised as the twelfth. While this plurality reflects the nation’s vibrant social fabric, it poses challenges for equitable healthcare delivery and pharmacy practice. The predominance of English as the primary language used on medication labels, patient information leaflets and in healthcare communication can create language barriers. This can limit patient understanding and potentially compromise safe and effective medicine use for non-English-speaking populations. This study examines the development and implementation of a generative Artificial Intelligence translation workflow. Developed with OpenAI’s ChatGPT Builder and configured by the research team, the translation application has the potential to translate medicine instructions at pharmacy dispensaries into four major South African languages. Two scoring rounds evaluated the accuracy of translated medicine information. In round one, Section two of a South African Health Products Regulatory Authority-approved Patient Information Leaflet was translated into Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, and siSwati using a customised General-purpose Technology. Linguists assessed outputs with a structured scoring tool measuring accuracy, fluency, and cultural appropriateness. After model refinement, round two repeated evaluation on a comparable selection from a new Section two South African Health Products Regulatory Authority-approved Patient Information Leaflet to reduce bias from prior feedback. Across two evaluation rounds, translation accuracy improved for siSwati and isiZulu, with substantial reductions in critical error rates (siSwati: RR = 0.57; 95% CI 0.38–0.86; isiZulu: RR = 0.58; 95% CI 0.43–0.79). These findings indicate a 40–45% improvement in translation precision following model refinement. In contrast, isiXhosa demonstrated a marked deterioration (RR = 10.34; 95% CI 7.34–14.57), while Afrikaans remained unchanged due to an absence of critical errors. Overall, the iterative retrieval-augmented and human-in-the-loop design improved translation quality for selected languages but revealed language-specific disparities in model performance. A human‑in‑the‑loop, retrieval‑augmented approach can strengthen General-purpose Technology‑based medicine translations. Future work will build human‑verified datasets to improve accuracy and reliability across South African languages.

ABSTRACT *** The inherent indeterminacy of the subject ‘people’, combined with the normative scope of the subjectification of this collective entity in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, calls for the formulation of a question: which human collectivities have been recognised as being able to claim this subjectivity and the rights it gives rise to? This article aims to decipher the meaning and substance of this subjectivity, both in terms of the actors who have used it and the socio-historical moments in which it has been mobilised. A contextualised analysis of the relationship between the law and its surrounding social fabric reveals a duplication of the subject: initially focused on the peoples of colonial territories seeking independence, the concept has evolved to also safeguard non-State peoples’ rights, in particular indigenous peoples, with forms of identity and allegiance that are distinct from those of State peoples. The African Commission and Court have broadened the scope of such legal concept to recognise and protect the rights of marginalised groups within States, provided this does not undermine territorial integrity. In this way, the right to self-determination is no longer limited to a right to independence but operates as a right to autonomy.

Abstract This article stems from the EU project ‘Learning from the margins’ (LEMA), which examined the circumstances of young people experiencing social exclusion as well as carrying out inclusive socio-educational interventions to address the challenges they faced. The part of the study conducted in Spain focused on young migrants and sought to analyse the ecosystem resilience experienced by participants affiliated with a third-sector organization involved in the project. An Educational Research Squared (ER2) methodology was used which combined social work with an enquiry-based approach. ER2 is a socio-educational intervention for young people, structured around a multimodal approach that integrates environmental, critical, and inclusive dimensions. The enquiry-based approach included lifelines of the young migrants, a young migrants’ focus group, a SWOT analysis for socio-educational professionals, a professionals’ focus group, and analytical diaries of university students volunteering for the project. The results were structured into three categories: Dreams, Barriers, and Support. Despite facing numerous barriers, the young participants continued to seek opportunities to realize their migration aspirations, which became more attainable when suitable support systems were available. The creation of a social fabric and their interaction with people contributed to the development of a resilient ecosystem.

other terms) occupies a unique and historically significant, yet often ostracized, position within the social fabric. Despite their ancient presence and spiritual reverence in some contexts, they frequently face systemic discrimination, prejudice and violence. To examine how Indian literary works represent transgender individuals, this paper analyses the play Seven Steps Around the Fire and explains how the author, Mahesh Dattani, portrays their social, emotional, and psychological struggles. Additionally, the study examines the role of traditional institutions, particularly marriage and family, in shaping or hindering their lives, while investigating the societal prejudice, discrimination, and violence faced by the transgender community and contributes to the broader discourse on gender identity and human rights in India.

Assam, a border state of India, shares international boundaries with Bhutan and Bangladesh; where the rapidly changing nature of population composition is clearly visible. Immigration from Bangladesh has long been a major issue in this region, significantly altering its demographic, social and religious fabric. This paper focuses on the pre-independence and post-independence status of population change, flow and pattern. It relies on authorized secondary data as the base for drawing conclusions. Debatable conspiracies such as the Greater Bangladesh and annex Assam theories have also been highlighted in the study. Furthermore, the paper aims to present possible future scenarios for Assam?s population composition using the Population Projection Method.

Introduction: The aime of this research is to identify, describe and systematize the psychosocial needs of relatives of people who are victims of forced or private disappearance, from the perspective of seven women leaders of collectives located in four states of the Mexican Republic with high rates of violence (Estado de México, Guerrero, Jalisco and Veracruz). Methodology: A qualitative study was carried out with a crosssectional, exploratory and descriptive design, through in-depth interviews. Results: The study highlights theurgency of strengthening comprehensive and multidisciplinary approaches that address the psychosocial dimensions of victims’ needs. At the same time, it highlights the importance of guaranteeing the safety and protection of family members in the search processes, as well as dignified and respectful treatment by institutions. Finally, it highlights the relevance of community participation and empathy in the regeneration of the social fabric and the construction of peace. Conclusions: The findings of this study can contribute to the improvement of public policies and programs that are more effective and sensitive to the needs of thefamilies of missing persons in Mexico, contributing to their recovery and comprehensive well-being.

In my more than 30 years of clinical experience, I have seen that emotional reconstruction helps individuals achieve inner peace and social harmony, refine their professional calling, give up on unattainable goals, and perform their roles with passion and ethics. These procedures, developed in the wake of the pandemic, allow us to give up on "impossible missions" and focus on our own desires and abilities... For all these reasons, I have found in my clinical practice that PRE contributes to restoring the "social fabric," the fundamental basis of democracy, which gives it vital importance.