Space For New Forms Research Articles

Making Sense of Being and Transforming: Introduction to the Psychology and the Other Special Issue

ABSTRACT Critique of instantiated discourses and practices seems to have ushered in an interregnum, a pause wherein a crisis of meaning ensues. This pause provides an opportunity, a space for new forms of reflection and novel formulations about what it is to be human. This special issue introduces a collection of papers representing a rich tapestry of feminist, decolonial, psychoanalytic, queer, and clinical insights which pave inroads into making sense of and transforming possibilities for being and practicing. The papers in this issue coalesce around three dimensions and commitments: (1) recentering marginalized epistemology, (2) reconfiguring ontological assumptions, and (3) providing possibilities for being and practice beyond the foreclosures of hegemony. In so doing, the authors provide scholarly and clinically sophisticated resources for navigating cultural territory where conventional and mainstream meanings and methods are in significant flux. Each of the pieces in this special issue was presented in the “Gender and Sexuality” track at the Psychology and the Other Conference (2023).

Data Showcases: the Data Journal in a Multimodal World


 As an experiment, the Research Data Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences (RDJ) has temporarily extended the usual format of the online journal with so-called ‘showcases’, separate web pages containing a quick introduction to a dataset, embedded multimedia, interactive components, and facilities to directly preview and explore the dataset described. The aim was to create a coherent hyper document with content communicated via different media (multimodality) and provide space for new forms of scientific publication such as executable papers (e.g. Jupyter notebooks). This paper discusses the objectives, technical implementations, and the need for innovation in data publishing considering the advanced possibilities of today's digital modes of communication. The data showcases experiment proved to be a useful starting point for an exploration of related developments within and outside the humanities and social sciences. It turns out that small-scale experiments are relatively easy to perform thanks to the easy availability of digital technology. However, real innovation in publishing affects organization and infrastructure and requires the joint effort of publishers, editors, data repositories, and authors. It implies a thorough update of the concept of publication and adaptation of the production process. This paper also pays attention to these obstacles to taking new paths.

New twist to twisted light

Despite more than a century of photonic advances, there still exist solutions to Maxwell's equations that remain elusive. Now, Qiwen Zhan and colleagues demonstrate the first toroidal vortex of light, introducing twists and folds in time and space for new forms of 4D structured light.

Between Geopolitics and Development: The Belt and Road Initiative and the Limits of Capital Accumulation in China

What drives China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? While some claim that the BRI is primarily about economic development, others see it as a grand strategy of a rising power with hegemonic aspirations. Is the BRI about development or geopolitics? This article adopts a political economy approach to bridge the developmental and geopolitical perspectives on the BRI. The primary argument is that the BRI signifies an attempt by the Chinese state to manage internal problems of capital accumulation by externalising development. In this sense, this is a typical crisis of capitalist development which generates a drive for geographic expansion and restructuring. The distinguishing feature of the BRI, apart from its sheer scale, is its emphasis on connectivity. Rather than simply exporting excess capital and capacity onto others, the BRI seeks to re-territorialise developmental spaces by connecting them via economic corridors consisting of hard and soft infrastructure networks. It is also contended here that in the process of constructing new infrastructures of capital, the BRI creates space for new forms of asymmetric interdependence between China and its partners. To the extent that such asymmetric relations generate costs of exiting China-centred networks, the initiative serves a geopolitical as well as a developmental function. Asymmetric interdependencies, whether they are by design or by-products of enhanced connectivity, thus facilitate China’s pursuit for a more prominent role in the international order.

From Deviance to Diversity: Discourses and Problematisations in Fifty Years of Sexuality Education in Denmark

ABSTRACT This article analyses the sexuality education curriculum in primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark. Taking inspiration from the ‘what is the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis, we explore how discourses of risk, health, quality of life, sexual diversity and critical pedagogy simultaneously permeate curriculum policy and contribute to the production of particular subjectivities among pupils and teachers. Over time, changing national curricula have moved towards greater centralisation with increased attention paid to learning outcomes rather than to wider educational ideals. An analysis of the current curriculum reveals three sidelined discourses: discourses on pleasure and erogeneity; discourses on LGBTQ+ issues; and discourses on ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. The Danish national curriculum on sexuality education produces two contrasting subject positions: on the one hand, the uninformed pupil in need of protection and, on the other hand, the empowered, responsible and agentic student. Postmodern and critical approaches to sexuality education risk eliminating room for certain subjectivities while opening up space for new forms of agentic norm critical subjectivity.

Modeling e-loyalty of Polish young consumers: comparing the impact of selected online communication tools in 2016 and 2021

The dynamic changes on the market make it necessary to undertake marketing activities that are tailored to the expectations of customers. The wide availability of the Internet and the opportunities it creates, on the one hand, open up space for new forms of reaching customers, and on the other hand, expand the market of competitors to global companies. In order to ensure a stable position in the online space, companies should take actions that allow them to build e-loyalty determined by factors such as: trust, satisfaction, and commitment. For this, it is necessary to know the target group to which the actions are to be directed. The aim of the article is to identify the impact of selected online communication tools on the strength e-loyalty between a young consumer and the company and to verify the changes that have occurred in this area in the last 5 years. The article is divided into theoretical, methodological and empirical parts. The empirical part presents the results of research conducted among young people aged 15-24. The research was conducted in 2016 and in 2021 using the CATI and PAPI method, in the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. The sample size was in 2016 n = 502; in 2021 n = 472. The obtained results indicate a significant change in the impact of the tested online communication tools over 5 years. This differentiation is visible both in the definition of e-loyalty by young consumers, and in the strength and direction of the impact of the studied constructs. This achievement emphasizes the need to conduct systematic research among representatives of the young generation, whose preferences and expectations regarding the company’s online activities are changing dynamically.

Political Economy of Connectivity: China’s Belt and Road Initiative

There are ongoing academic and public debates on the nature of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While some observers hold that the BRI is primarily about economic development, others see it as a grand strategy of a great power with hegemonic aspirations. Is the BRI about development or geopolitics? This article adopts a political economy approach to bridge the developmental and geopolitical perspectives. The main argument is that the BRI signifies an attempt by the Chinese state to manage internal problems of capital accumulation by externalizing development on a trans-regional scale. The problems of capital accumulation under China’s export-oriented growth model indicates a particular form of spatial fix via the BRI, which goes beyond the exportation of excess industrial/financial capacity and seeks to transform external productive spaces through inter-regional connectivity. The process of constructing new nodes and infrastructures of capital creates space for new forms of asymmetric interdependencies, rendering it prohibitively costly for most BRI partners to exit China-centered networks. To the extent that such asymmetric dependencies can be leveraged for strategic purposes, the BRI serves a geopolitical as well as a developmental function.

Understanding Prosperity in East London: Local Meanings and “Sticky” Measures of the Good Life

AbstractThe UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been conceived as a global roadmap for peace, dignity, and prosperity on a healthy planet (UNDP 2016). The SDGs challenge the dominant notion of prosperity as material wealth measured by GDP and rising household incomes; instead prosperity is reframed as a shared condition to be weighed alongside ending poverty, tackling inequalities, and safeguarding the environment. Cities are identified as having a critical role in generating and equitably distributing prosperity on these terms. Reframing prosperity in this way opens up space for new forms of dialogue about what it means for people everywhere to prosper, asking how material wealth, other forms of value, equity, and fairness, and the needs of humans and nonhumans are differentially understood and acted on. Yet this article argues that prosperity is understudied and undertheorized by social scientists. A new research agenda, driven by empirical studies in diverse urban contexts, must form the basis for new theoretical insights and policy formation that will drive action on prosperity in the years to come. Presenting new empirical work from community‐led research in three east London neighborhoods, the article examines prosperity as a lived experience in comparison to policy goal, demonstrating how context‐specific meanings and practices challenge the orthodox models and metrics that currently dominate policymaking. The authors demonstrate how situated and engaged research with local residents and citizen scientists provides the basis for developing new prosperity metrics that reflect issues of specific value and concern to individuals and communities in east London.

Newforms of half-integral weight: the minus space of Sk+1/2(Γ0(8M))

We compute generators and relations for a certain 2-adic Hecke algebra of level 8 associated with the double cover of SL2 and a 2-adic Hecke algebra of level 4 associated with PGL2. We show that these two Hecke algebras are isomorphic as expected from the Shimura correspondence. We use the 2-adic generators to define classical Hecke operators on the space of holomorphic modular forms of weight k + 1/2 and level 8M where M is odd and square-free. Using these operators and our previous results on half-integral weight forms of level 4M we define a subspace of the space of half-integral weight forms as a common -1 eigenspace of certain Hecke operators. Using the relations and a result of Ueda we show that this subspace, which we call the minus space, is isomorphic as a Hecke module under the Ueda correspondence to the space of new forms of weight 2k and level 4M. We observe that the forms in the minus space satisfy a Fourier coefficient condition that gives the complement of the plus space but does not define the minus space.

MLA Handbook

Reviewed by: MLA Handbook David P. Wiseman Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook. 8thed. New York: MLA, 2016. Pp. 146. ISBN 978-1-60329-262-7. As a scholar and editor, I read style manuals regularly, both to sharpen my editorial skills and to stay abreast of updates. As I read the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook, I confess my surprise to have learned, as the back cover clearly states, that: "More than just a new edition, this is a new MLA style." Though I anticipate some pushback against this major change, I consider the MLA's decision to transition to a less rigid style a necessary step in the right direction to be able to anticipate and meet new needs in a digital age. The MLA Handbookbegins with a foreword from Rosemary Feal and a preface from Kathleen Fitzpatrick, the latter being the primary author of the style guide (xiii). In her fore-word, Feal acknowledges that MLA style "has evolved in response to changing needs over the [End Page 162]years" (vii). The basic theories behind this recent publication are repeated throughout the text; it grants "more freedom" (vii) and "greater flexibility" (viii) to authors, while underscoring the continuing need for general principles of research and documentation. Fitzpatrick adds historical context to the MLA Handbookin her insightful preface, recognizing that with the "increasing mobility of texts" (x), there is even more need for "reliable data trail[s]" as well as increased "flexibility and openness" (xiii) to be able to cite any data source, whether currently existing or yet to be invented. By basing the handbook on "commonsense guidelines" (3) rather than prescriptive rules, the MLA has made a bold move, and a positive one in my opinion, toward a style that seeks to present the information that is most useful to readers, thus enabling more open communication in research and scholarly dialogue. The handbook is divided into two main parts: "Principles of MLA Style" (1–58) and "Details of MLA Style" (59–128). The first, as its title suggests, is dedicated to general principles of research and writing. I found this section to be clear and informative. Contrasting past MLA handbooks that served as "reference work[s], which users consulted at need," this edition is more of "a guide that [teaches] the principles underlying documentation" (xi). This principle-based approach, however, is not without structure. It simply opens the space for new forms of scholarship and media to be documented in a clear and consistent way regardless of the delivery format. The second part of the MLA Handbookprovides a more in-depth look at the specifics of the new style. This section details the "rules" of documentation, but repeatedly emphasizes that these guidelines should be adapted to the needs of authors and their readers. As there is not space to outline all of the structures and changes contained in the handbook, below is an abbreviated template of the new format for works cited entries with a specific example of a journal article following for reference. Citation template (see MLA Handbook129 for a useful practice template): Author. Title of source. Title of container, other contributors, version, number, publisher, publication date, location. (Additional "containers" [see definition below] or other clarifying information can be added to the citation as needed.) Article citation example ( MLA Handbook114): Baron, Naomi S. "Redefining Reading: The Impact of Digital Communication Media." PMLA, vol. 128, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 193–200. The above template presents an orderly list of items that could be included in a citation. The introduction of the handbook, however, offers the following statement as one of the guiding principles behind the new MLA style: "Remember that there is often more than one correct way to document a source" (4). As such, most citations will not require all of the categories outlined in the template. Furthermore, the same work may be documented in distinct ways depending on what information the author considers most valuable for potential readers. As I read through the MLA Handbook, I was confronted with new terminology. For example, the term containerin MLA style refers to the entity that publishes ("contains") the work...

Hecke algebras, new vectors and new forms on $$\Gamma _0(m)$$ Γ 0 ( m )

We characterize the space of new forms for \(\Gamma _0(m)\) as a common eigenspace of certain Hecke operators which depend on primes p dividing the level m. To do that we find generators and relations for a p-adic Hecke algebra of functions on \(K={{\mathrm{GL}}}_2({\mathbb {Z}}_p)\). We explicitly find the \(n+1\) irreducible representations of K which contain a vector of level n including the unique representation that contains the “new vector” of level n. After translating the p-adic Hecke operators that we obtain into classical Hecke operators we obtain the results about the new space mentioned above.

Graphic Heritage: Exploring Postcolonial Identities and Vietnamese Spaces in the Francophone Graphic Novel

ABSTRACTSimilarly to novels, graphic-literary forms of expression have mapped the evolution of historical, social, and cultural issues. One such case is the political and cultural relation between France and Vietnam, from the Indochinese colonization period to the Francophone Vietnamese Diaspora. It can be argued that the manner in which places are represented in Francophone graphic novels articulates Vietnamese colonial and post-colonial identities. Francophone graphic novels present how the issues of space and power are historically central to the ideology of colonialism. This article therefore analyzes two graphic novels, Maltaite and Lapière's Le Carrefour de Nâm-Pha (1987) and Truong and Leroi's Le Dragon de bambou (1991), and the promotion of imperialist power in the Francophone authors’ depiction of colonial regions like Vietnam. These areas are portrayed as physically and psychologically dangerous, threatening to consume the white colonizer. In contrast, this article looks at Clément Baloup's Quitter Saigon: Mémoires de Viet Kieu (2006) and suggests that his inventive graphic and textual practices create new spaces of belonging for transnational subjects. Baloup's emotionally provocative variations in traditional comic art style, which consist of a detailed focus on human bodies and landscapes, and sacrifice of visual realism, allow him to visually create what Homi Bhabha calls a “third space,” a space of new forms of cultural meaning and production that blurs the limitations of existing boundaries and calls into question established categorizations of culture and identity (34–35). The article thus establishes that, in this “third space,” both the author and readers are participating in the reassessment of a Western conception of Vietnam's heritage and in the reinscription of Vietnamese collective trauma into a transnational history.

South Africa and Japan: maintaining a difficult friendship

Japan's economic and political relationship with South Africa has been characterised historically by ambiguity. Throughout the twentieth century, economic ties were underpinned by mercantilist and strategic considerations. During apartheid, this placed Japan in an uneasy position as it sought to balance a relationship of expediency with wider foreign policy objectives in the rest of Africa and beyond. The demise of apartheid created the space for new forms of engagement centred on the pursuit of cognate goals. This has seen the intensification and deepening of economic ties in particular. Yet relations, especially at the political and diplomatic levels, have also been more complex than anticipated, and in recent years, the rise in Africa of other players from Asia and the Global South has had a bearing on South Africa–Japan ties. In this paper, it is argued that two related dynamics pivoting on policy elites’ changing conceptions (or self-view) of the nature of the state they are running and its place in the wider world order help explain the post-apartheid evolution of the South Africa–Japan relationship. First, there has been an apparent shift in South African foreign policy elites’ self-view, mediated by a changing systemic context. The development and manifestation over time of a stronger Global South self-conception in South African foreign policy, fashioned in juxtaposition to what have been considered in the past key Global North relationships, had direct consequences for South Africa–Japan ties. Second, meso- and micro-level dynamics – the role of the general operations in the diplomatic (i.e. bureaucratic) arena, and the personalities and shifting political preferences of individual executive leaders – had major impacts on how South Africa engaged with Japan in the past two decades.

All that is solid melts into air: the servicescape in digital service space

PurposeThe emergence of new social media is shifting the market place for business towards virtual market space. In the light of the emerging digital space for new forms of marketing, the traditional servicescape concept is critically examined. This paper aims to show why servicescape concepts and attitudes need to be adapted for digital media.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors explain how the traditional servicescape concept adds meaning to a service provider’s value-proposition by modifying customer expectations and customer experience. Second, recognising that the environment for service is no longer bound to a physical place, the authors discuss the implications of the epistemic shift involved.FindingsThe authors’ examination shows that digital service space challenges traditional concepts about what constitutes a customer experience and derived value. The authors conceptually “zoom out” into a virtual service eco-system and show with exemplar examples why the servicescape in digital space is more socially embedded and necessarily more fluid in its time-space design. In the more advanced sites, interactions between various artificial bodies (avatars) are co-created by controlling off-line participant-actors; yet, these participant-actors remain strangers to each other at an off-line level. This is entirely a new and radical development of old times.Research limitations/implicationsThe research findings are based on scholarly research of the relevant literature, from practitioner reports, and evidence emerging from the examination of many digital web-sites. It has not been the authors’ intention to objectively represent current servicescape functionalities but more to indicate the major directions of change with exemplar examples. The future cannot be predicted, but their interpretive conclusions suggest major challenges in service marketing and management logic ahead. New forms of digital servicescape are still being created as technology and service imagination enables, so further research interest in virtual atmospherics can be expected.Practical implicationsSocial media platforms are enabling organisations to learn more about their customers and also to engage them more. In these changing times, bricks and mortar stores would be well advised to review their servicescape presence to allow and encourage engagement with the more involved consumers. And, by integrating their digital space into their physical place, bricks and mortar stores might take on more relationship oriented process-like characteristics, both in the digital space and in their physical places, with developments on one platform leading to possible service innovations on the other.Social implicationsThe digital era is changing consumer behaviour. Service managers need to take into account that many customers are already equally as engaged with digital-space social networks as they once were with bricks and mortar stores. The more time consumers as participant-actors spend in social networks, the decision on what and where to buy is decided by interactions with friends and other influencers.Originality/valueNew forms of digital servicescape are being created as technology and service imagination enables. Further scholarly research interest in virtual atmospherics can be expected, impacting on the authors’ sense of place, and self-identity.

Murderous returns: armed violence, suicide and exhumation in the Emberá Katío economy of death (Chocó and Antioquia, Colombia)

Since the early 1990s, armed actors have invaded territories in the Chocó and Antioquia departments of Colombia, inhabited by Afro-Colombians and Indians whose collective rights in these territories had recently been legally recognised. Based on long-term fieldwork among the Emberá Katío, this article examines social, cosmological and ritual alterations and re-organisation around violent death. Following a national policy of post-conflict reparations, public exhumations and identifications of human remains reveal new local modes of understanding and administration. In particular, suicide, hitherto completely unknown to the Emberá, broke out in a multitude of cases, mostly among the youth. Local discourse attributes this phenomenon to the number of stray corpses resulting from the violence, who are transformed into murderous spirits which shamans can no longer control. The analysis focusses on the unprecedented articulation of a renewed eschatology, the intricate effects of an internal political reorganisation and the simultaneous inroad into their space of new forms of armed insurrectional violence. Thus the article will shed light on the emergence of a new transitional moral economy of death among the Emberá.

The Co-Construction of Energy Provision and Everyday Practice: Integrating Heat Pumps in Social Housing in England

Challenges of energy security, low carbon transitions, and electricity network constraints have led to a shift to new, efficient technologies for household energy services. Studies of such technological innovations usually focus on consumer information and changes in behaviour to realise their full potential. We suggest that regarding such technologies in existing energy provision systems opens up questions concerning how and why such interventions are delivered. We argue that we must understand the ways by which energy systems are co-constituted through the habits and expectations of households, their technologies and appliances, alongside arrangements associated with large-scale socio-technical infrastructures. Drawing on research with air-source-to-water heat pumps (ASWHP), installed as part of a large trans-disciplinary, utility-led research and demonstration project in the north of England, we investigate how energy services provision and everyday practice shapes new technologies uptake, and how such technologies mediate and reconfigure relations between users, providers and infrastructure networks. While the installation of ASWHP has led to role differentiation through which energy services are provided, the space for new forms of co-provision to emerge is limited by existing commitments to delivering energy services. Simultaneously, new forms of interdependency emerge between users, providers and intermediaries through sites of installation, instruction, repair and feedback. We find that although new technologies do lead to the rearrangement of practices, this is often disrupted by obduracy in the conventions and habits around domestic heating and hot water practices that have been established in relation to existing systems of provision. Rather being simply a matter of increasing levels of knowledge in order to ensure that such technologies are adopted effi ciently and effectively, our paper demonstrates how systemic arrangements of energy provision and everyday practice are co-implicated in socio-technical innovation by changing the nature of energy supply and use.

From feminism to FemInc.ism: On the uneasy relationship between feminism, entrepreneurship and the Nordic welfare state

Feminism in the Nordic countries was primarily formulated in terms of ‘state feminism’. The women’s movement cooperated with feminist government officials and politicians, resulting in societies that can be considered to be the most gender-equal societies in the world. Historically, the state provided for a large publicly-financed welfare sector which made it possible for many women to combine work and family through the state’s implementation of family-friendly policies, while simultaneously providing employment opportunities for many women. However, since the financial crisis of the 1990s, there has been a political change influenced by neo-liberal thought, in which politicians have handed over the welfare state’s responsibilities to the market, and, instead, the politicians have encouraged entrepreneurship, not least among women. Further to this development, there has been a change in emphasis from entrepreneurship (understood as starting and running a business) to entrepreneurialism which, in addition to a belief in the efficacy of market forces, also contains a social dimension where individuals are supposed to be flexible and exercise choice. In this article, we ask whether this entails a change in the feminist project in the Nordic countries, and if so, what the likely consequences are for this project, both in practice and in research. In order to answer this question, we reviewed existing Nordic research on women’s entrepreneurship and examined how this body of work conceptualizes entrepreneurship, gender, the state, and equality. We also considered whether any trends could be identified. We relate our findings to recent changes in government policy and conclude that the current discourse on entrepreneurship challenges, and possibly weakens, state feminism, but we also conclude that this discourse may also provide space for new forms of feminist action, in market terms. We coin the term FemInc.ism to denote feminist action through enterprise and we discuss a number of important challenges that research on this phenomenon is faced with.

The spaces of new forms for harmonic weak Maalss forms and their level raising properties modulo $$\ell $$ ℓ

Bringmann et al. (Math. Ann., 355(3):1085–1121, 2013) and Guerzhoy (Proc. Am. Math. Soc., 136:3051–3059, 2008) studied the multiplicity two Hecke theory for weakly holomorphic modular forms on the full modular group. In this note, we consider a generalization of these results to congruence subgroups \(\Gamma _1(N)\) with a new form theory. Using this, we define new forms for harmonic weak Maass forms and study a level raising property modulo \(\ell \) for them.

After the withdrawal of ‘informed choice’: the meanings and social effects of mothers' choice for HIV prevention in Senegal

To prevent HIV transmission through breastfeeding, African health services in 1998 implemented the World Health Organization's approach of ‘informed choice’ when recommending infant feeding options to HIV-positive mothers. In 2010, ‘informed choice’ was withdrawn in favour of antiretroviral prophylaxis with breastfeeding. A 2010–11 ethnographic study conducted in Senegal among HIV-positive mothers revealed three broad responses to the withdrawal of choice and formula provision: ‘resistance’ from association members claiming the health system was responsible for providing formula to ensure efficient prevention; ‘compliance’ among mothers adopting ‘protected breastfeeding’ without complaints; and ‘self-reliance’ among women trying to obtain formula through other means without mentioning choice. These three responses shed light on the meanings attributed to choice and on the social impact of formula provision during the ‘informed choice era.’ The analysis shows that the top-down introduction of ‘informed choice’ as an ethical and management imperative was appropriated and re-signified locally, making space for new forms of sociality within medical and associative social spaces. These social forms could not easily be maintained after the withdrawal of formula provision; women who continue to exert choice do so silently. By focusing on the upheaval of social care arrangements after the introduction of prophylaxis by pharmaceuticals, this paper sheds light on the understudied local consequences of changes in public health policies and the social framing of ‘choice’ in low-income countries' health systems.

Mothers with attitude — How the Mumsnet parenting forum offers space for new forms of femininity to emerge online

This paper investigates the motivations and online behaviour of the users of Mumsnet, a UK online parenting community. The Mumsnet discussion forum is characterised by its difference to other mothering websites in its language use, its celebration of confrontational, opinionated and well-informed debate, its tolerance of aggression and swearing and its focus on entertainment rather than support. Many of these attributes have previously been seen as male online behaviour, but it is argued that new forms of femininities are emerging and a clear-cut binary divide between male and female online behaviour can no longer be applied.