Wider World Research Articles

The Weightless State

Executives at APIX, Senegal’s state investment-promotion agency, cast their office as the vanguard of a new kind of state formation, one remade through decades of austerity and resolutely focused on the nation’s future. They imagined PowerPoint as especially critical to this mission, as it had the potential to move the state beyond the confines of paper form and parochial bureaucratic routine and into the wider world. In this article, I explore the complex relationship between this state agency and this presentation software package. More specifically, I examine how preoccupations with weight shape state work and technological practice. By attending to everyday aspirations for weightlessness and resultant shifts in material forms, I argue, we might better understand the complex and consequential relationship between state and media in Senegal and elsewhere.

Examination of Planting Trees at Home in the Global World (A Case Study of Uganda)

Purpose: To examine the planting of trees at home globally, find the truth and add to the existing knowledge. The study employed two theories i.e. cultural theory to elucidate household perceptions of tree planting and found an appositive correlation between perceptions of tree planting (Hajjar and Kozar 2015), and Utility maximization theory to investigate household perceptions of tree planting (Vosser et al 2012) Methodology: The study used a documentary review of the available written data from books, journals, and articles from newspapers and an observational method of data, collection the researcher used the empirical evidence of observing the trees planted at his home, workplace, and surroundings to make the research practical and add on the available knowledge. Findings: After the study looking at the influences of planting trees in the home wide world and its impacts. The findings indicate that planting trees in homes is influenced by many people to beautify the compound, plants are planted for shade, food, and medication and hold soils from getting washed away, especially in the sloppy areas (An example is hilly places in Bushenyi district kyabugimbi sub-county kajunju village where there are various hills after leveling the compound you need to plant trees and grass to hold soils from being washed away by rainwater which was observed by the researcher physically). Conclusion: The study concluded that planting trees in homes indirectly reduces heat in these homes because of the winds that gain entry into the small openings of the houses we live in. And it was observed that trees give off oxygen that we need to breathe. Negatively planting trees around homes, roots affect the houses more especially because they cause cracks, trees hide mosquitoes which cause malaria and others bring snakes which are dangerous to human life. Recommendation: It was recommended that planting trees around our homes should be done by everyone to protect the environment and save more lives because of its various benefits, as shown above.

Negative Influence of the Internet on Psychological Polarization

Peoples lives have changed so much by the technologies created. As human fast forward towards the future, the use of these technologies gives people more convenience as well as more possibilities. The information age, with the establishment of signals and WIFIs, has turned the little computing device into a whole wide world. Relationships can be built, families can be connected, words can be communicated without the limit of space. However, in the meantime, while technology is changing the physical lives of human, how is it impacting peoples psychological life? This paper discusses the psychological change, focusing on polarization, with peoples increased usage of the internet and social media. A number of research studies of what causes the polarization of people online is gathered and analyzed, including the formation of echo chambers, group polarization, identity attack, anonymity, etc. Along with the research on the prior studies, a research survey is sent in order to collect information and data from people on the topic. The result of the survey gathered from participants shows that online experiences are indeed impacted negatively by polarization of internet users, and that people are consciously noticing their increasing irritability.

Three climate policies that the G7 must adopt - for itself and the wider world.

By taking the lead in innovative climate action, the seven richest economies can create a virtuous circle to help the world decarbonize faster. By taking the lead in innovative climate action, the seven richest economies can create a virtuous circle to help the world decarbonize faster.

Enhancing undergraduate students’ academic writing skills through self-assessment

Developing the knowledge and the skill to master academic writing in higher education constitutes a challenge for most undergraduate students. However, learning about this style of writing opens students’ doors to the wide world of academia. Thus, some undergraduate students were invited to become members of a Writing Feedback Center in which they worked with a tutor and a self-assessment sheet on different writing assignments following an eclectic approach to writing. In this work we analyzed students’ and tutors’ perceptions on self-assessment in relation to the development of their academic skill.

Impact of Climate Change on the Heating Demand of Buildings. A District Level Approach

In the 21st century, the importance of energy generation and carbon emissions in developing countries is indisputable. In the whole wide world, the building stock is responsible for the two fifths of the total world annual energy consumption. Considering the predictions regarding future climate due to climate change, a good understanding on the energy use due to future climate is required. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of future weather in the heating demand and carbon emissions for a group of buildings at district level, focusing on an area of London in the United Kingdom. The methodological approach involved the use of geospatial data for the case study area, processed with Python and Anaconda through Jupyter notebook, generation of an archetype dataset with energy performance data and TABULA typology and the use of python embedded in QGIS to calculate the heating demand in the reference weather data, 2050 and 2100 in accordance to RCP4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. A validated model was used for the district level heating demand calculation. On the one hand, the results suggest that a mitigation of carbon emissions under the RCP4.5 scenario will generate a small decrease on the heating demand at district level, so slightly similar levels of heating generation must continue to be provided using sustainable alternatives. On the other hand, following the RCP 8.5 scenario of carbon emission carrying on business as usual will create a significant reduction of heating demand due to the rise on temperature but with the consequent overheating in summer, which will shift the energy generation problem. The results suggest that adaptation of the energy generation must start shifting to cope with higher temperatures and a different requirement of delivered energy from heating to cooling due to the effect of climate change.

The Dual Legacy: Mahasweta Devi as a Reformer and Revolutionary

This article presents an in-depth exploration of Mahasweta Devi’s multifaceted persona— a celebrated author, social activist, and a prominent figure in the realm of socio-political reforms in India. She is known for her rich literary contributions. Her works primarily emphasized the plight and the struggles of the marginalized sections of the society, often acting as a bridge between them and the wider world. For Mahasweta Devi the creation of literature is a solemn and responsible vocation. She uses her art as a weapon to fight against the socio-economic injustice meted out to the marginalized in Indian society. Literature is intrinsic to her advocacy for social justice, establishing Devi as a thoughtful, committed reformer and revolutionary. Her writings are imbued with calls for change and revolution, exhibiting her profound abilities as a writer equipped with a reformist vision and revolutionary determination. Devi is not merely a writer, but a crusader with a mission— a social commitment to the upliftment of tribal communities. Her narratives hold significant social relevance, pushing the contours of contemporary Indian literature with their often radical and provocative themes. Yet, Devi’s influence transcends her literary contributions, reflecting her intense passion as a reformer and revolutionary. Her untiring activism targeted the systemic oppressions entrenched in the Indian society, particularly towards tribals and Dalits. She exposed the blatant violation of human rights, often confronting the authorities, embodying the spirit of a revolutionary. Drawing a trajectory of her influence, the article suggests that Devi’s radicalism, uncompromising in its advocacy for the dispossessed, established her as a reformer, pushing for change at both grassroots and policy levels. Her relentless pursuit for social justice and equality, while shedding light on how her literary works served as tools of resistance and activism. Drawing upon various examples from her seminal works like Draupadi, Rudali, and Mother of 1084, it unravels how her narratives portrayed the unvarnished reality of the oppressed, compelling her readers to confront uncomfortable truths. The article also examines her influence on various contemporary movements and how her ideologies continue to inspire activists and reformers today. It highlights the life and works of Mahasweta Devi, not only as a celebrated author, but also as a fearless reformer and revolutionary activist whose enduring legacy continues to inspire generations of activists and writers in their fight against social injustices.

A montage of small movements

In 2016, I was invited by musician/composer B6 to devise a participatory work for the recently opened art space Reformer art in Hunan Lu, Shanghai. I had been intrigued by a question posed by human geographer Nigel Thrift: What happens if we look on kindness as a technology rather than an emotion; a way of producing generosity in the body, a positive affective swirl? If we produce maps of spaces in new sensory registers like geographies of kindness, might these “geographies. then leak out into the wider world?”...1 An observation by Mark Twain on the dynamics of rivers, guided my approach to distinguish three motions while exploring kindness in the built environment: turbulences (random acts of kindness), ripples (the effect on us when watching and relating such acts), and finally currents (reassuring myself and my companions that acts of kindness are part of a human undercurrent). With generous technical support from the team, I was able to install a large, circular map that covered a 20-min walking radius of the neighborhood. A projection of wandering ripples programmed to light up the locations where my walking companions had identified an act of kindness slowly changed the focus and purpose of the map toward emphasizing ephemeral moments, moments that energize our affective landscape. As signs of ongoing processes, these moments were not part of determinant systems; instead, they were undeclared yet consequential actions. During Chinese New Year 2017, I revisited the locations that had hosted acts of kindness back in November 2016 and from these reflections – A reading with my feet – The following transcript for a meditative film essay on movement and how it agitates the air; on environments and the incipient; on kindness as technology and kindness as an emotion, emerged. See https://vimeo.com/215920711.

Official British Aid Policy, External Economic Relations, and Development, 1947-1974: Contingent Continuities from Empire to Post-Empire

ABSTRACT This essay analyses the shifting rationales of official British aid policy between the sterling crisis of the late 1940s and the oil crisis of 1973-74. In spite of changes during the transition from the colonial empire to independent states at the time, the period shows considerable continuities in Britain’s aid policy, conceptions of development, and approaches to external economic and financial relations. In the immediate post-war period, development aid was closely connected to colonial development policy and imperial economy-building. In the late 1950s, however, British aid policy separated from colonial development as the result of a crisis of both development finance and the imperial bond. During the 1960s, the Overseas Development Ministry formulated a dedicated aid policy geared towards development in independent post-colonies. Yet, aid was ultimately an integral part of Britain’s economic management in a wider world. In this setting, while the hierarchical organisation of aid for imperial development came to a close, official British aid policy still sought to align overseas aid to the requirements of Britain’s external economic and financial relations, especially during economic crises. The argument about the contextual formation of aid policy has relevance beyond the period under review.

“An Excellent Adventure . . . ”

Abstract Where do our most cherished teaching principles derive? How do we deploy them in ways that motivate students and nurture their critical engagement with the wider world? Drawing on insights gleaned from the film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, this reflection explores how the development of two key strategies—engaging students through blended academic and pop-culture approaches and guiding their recognition and critical response to discursive power structures—transformed the author's pedagogical approach into one that is more student-centric and practically focused. Developed in the context of political science courses, but applicable especially to English and its instruction, these strategies decenter the instructor to promote more authentic engagement between students and the content they encounter, as well as with each other and the instructor. The strategies themselves, however, derive from a recognition that even the most light-hearted fare (such as Bill and Ted) may offer thoughtful insight into the craft of teaching: first, by recognizing that joy, passion, and creativity matter when structuring engaging learning experiences; and second, by clarifying how our attunement and response to subtle exercises of power—in the case of the film, pedagogical norms around acceptable academic projects—are instrumental in navigating a complex world.

The Rise of Sportswashing

The staggering global popularity of soccer makes it a prime target for regimes that worry about the negative press they get for their undemocratic practices. The Gulf monarchies have led the way in getting into the wide world of sports as a means of cleaning their image.

Reading Late-Imperial Chinese Merchant Handbooks in Global and Micro-History

Abstract In late imperial China, handbooks were key tools for merchants who negotiated the challenges of the land and water routes along which they traveled with their goods. Such handbooks provided invaluable information. The knowledge contained within such itineraries pertained to the minutiae of individual places, but it helped create and maintain the global connectedness of the late imperial empire. Porcelain and tea, produced in the inland provinces of southeast China, could be delivered safely to the port of Canton, and from there to consumers all over the world because these merchants had created, preserved, and transmitted this knowledge. The micro-global lens, thus, is a key tool for understanding such merchant handbooks: it makes it possible to see how micro-level knowledge sustained the agency of the merchants who shaped the global trading world surrounding Canton. Reading late-imperial merchant handbooks from Huizhou makes visible the connections between Huizhou and the wider world.

Human and Person When Life Is Fragile: New Relationships and Inherent Ambivalences in the Care of Dying Patients

In this paper, we focus on how medical staff care for people who are dying and on the increasing use of diverse technologies to ease the experience of dying. Because it is accepted patients cannot recover, the primary value to preserve life underpinning much of biomedical practice is contrasted by a commitment to make people’s last period of life as fulfilling and meaningful as possible. Drawing on illustrative cases from an ethnography of palliative care in central London, we discuss how these different priorities construct the patient in different ways. We present two different repertoires of practice, the first of which cares for human life, while the second adopts an idea of personhood to support and maintain patients’ social ties with the wider world. The two concepts inscribe different boundaries of the patient and can help guide what might be the best thing for staff, patients, and others to do. Our examples show that while these two repertoires can emerge in tension in end-of-life care, they are never fully opposites. We argue for a reaffirmation of the concept of the person to accompany contemporary posthuman and more-than-human debates in order to think about “more-than” beyond a focus on the material.

“I don’t really see any kind of change” – multi-perspective analysis of a circle of support and accountability for young people who have previously demonstrated harmful sexual behaviour

ABSTRACT It is estimated that young people commit between 20% and 60% of sexual offences against children. While social isolation is a recognised risk factor for harmful sexual behaviour in young people, strong childhood attachments, developing social skills and belonging to peer groups are key protective factors. Community Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) is a community-based intervention that was originally developed for adults with sexual convictions and has now been adopted with young people who display harmful sexual behaviour. CoSA directly addresses issues of social isolation by providing individuals (known as Core Members) with a circle of social support made up of volunteers, professionals and a coordinator. There is now an established evidence base for CoSA with adults; the current study aims to explore the experience of a young person’s CoSA. Interviews were conducted with a Core Member, their guardian (grandmother), CoSA volunteer and the CoSA Coordinator. Multi-perspective interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the data, and three superordinate themes were established: (i) Contested self-change, (ii) Negotiating relational boundaries and (iii) Toward “normalcy”. PRACTICE IMPACT STATEMENT This research highlights the difficulties and complexities in working with this client group and sustaining the intervention’s positives. It highlights that sustaining treatment gains without increasing the social capital and context in the individual’s wider world can be challenging and can limit full participation within the intervention. The research demonstrates the importance of helping the Core Member experience safe, boundaried and meaningful relationships.

The Iraq War 20 years on: towards a new regional architecture

Abstract The consequences of the Iraq War of 2003 continue to reverberate throughout the Middle East and wider world in multiple, if still underacknowledged, ways. Though subsequent regional developments have taken centre stage—notably those surrounding the Arab Uprisings and the subsequent civil wars and interventions in Libya, Syria and Yemen—the effects of the Iraq War remain powerfully present. A watershed event, it has generated major and irreversible changes at the international and regional level. It has empowered certain states and actors, and weakened others— notably Iraq itself—but its impact on both the regional and wider global security landscape cannot be underestimated. Arguing that the events surrounding the Iraq War and its outcome constituted a ‘critical juncture’, or major inflexion point in regional order, this article examines three interdependent features of the changing regional architecture. The first relates to the region's international alignments; the second to its balance of power; and the third to the changing institutional environment, which challenges and redefines the very boundaries of the Middle East.

Effects of participation in an online intercultural exchange on drivers of L2 learning motivation

While computer-mediated communication and online exchanges between students in second language (L2) pedagogy and research has long been established, recent technological advances have seen a growth in the number of projects undertaken and consequently studies published. This study utilized a mixed-methods approach to measure the effects on specific aspects of motivation for students learning English following a 10-week, multicultural virtual exchange project. Participants interacted both synchronously and asynchronously with other non-native English speakers from 10 different countries to make friends, share cultural interests, and practice English in a real-world, non-classroom setting. At the end of the project, participants were asked to complete a survey based on Dörnyei’s concept of the L2 motivational self system and Yashima’s theories on international posture about how their motivations for learning English had changed. The study suggests that extended interactions in a virtual exchange improve participants’ view of themselves as capable speakers, their motivation to become better speakers for their ideal future, and give them a broader perspective on their view of their place in the wider world. In contrast, motivations for learning English as a responsibility towards others were decreased.

Testing the Roles of Perceived Control, Optimism, and Gratitude in the Relationship between General/Personal Belief in a Just World and WellBeing/Depression

Belief in a Just World (BJW) can be categorised into domains of how people view the fairness of their immediate social worlds (Personal Belief in a Just World–PBJW) and the wider world (General Belief in a Just World–GBJW). We conducted two studies with 179 (Study 1) and 364 (Study 2) participants to examine differential relationships that PBJW and GBJW could have in directly predicting mental wellbeing and depression and indirectly via three mediators of perceived control, optimism, and gratitude. Path analyses examined how well data from each study fit 13 different models. Models 1 to 4 tested whether PBJW directly and indirectly via the three mediators predicted wellbeing (Model 1) and depression (Model 3) and if GBJW likewise directly and indirectly predicted wellbeing (Model 2) and depression (Model 4). These four models had the best supported statistical fit for either Study 1 or 2 relative to other models. In both studies when explaining the effect of PBJW on wellbeing and depression, perceived control was the strongest mediator, followed by optimism, and then gratitude. When examining the effect of GBJW on wellbeing and depression, only perceived control and optimism were significant mediators. These studies affirm the need to assess GBJW and PBJW as separate phenomena, rather than combining these constructs or omitting PBJW, as is sometimes done.

Introduction: The Returns of Fascism

Abstract“The Returns of Fascism” addresses the emergence of New Right political culture on a global scale, attending to the intersections in US, European, Russian, and Indian New Right movements and their relation to the history of fascisms and late capitalist thought forms, as well as their attack on humanist critique. This special issue argues that the topoi of crisis and catastrophe serve the globalization of the New Right's supremacist and majoritarian political culture as it transcends both the academy and the wider world.

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai‘i. By Candace Fujikane and C.M. Kaliko Baker

While many utopian plans have sought to incorporate or adopt Indigenous social and ecological frameworks, Fujikane pushes readers into the depths of what such visions mean in terms of actual relational and reciprocal actions. The book represents an ambitious fusion akin to combining the projects of Vine Deloria’s God Is Red, Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, and Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. The book follows the protocols of Hawaiian genealogy and responsibilities. The lineages are human and familial, but also non-human and intellectual. Every chapter and subsection begins with stories and bits of cosmology, which are juxtaposed with settler colonial assumptions that normalize environmental degradations. Mapping Abundance takes a firm stand on an Indigenous-centered “ecological” approach to how we learn from and live with the planet, with glancing critiques of how capitalism disrupts and distorts human responsibilities to one another and the wider world. Plants, animals, winds, rocks, and mountains are centered. Fujikane effectively explains how water—as fog drip, rain, clouds, streams, fishponds, aquifers, and ocean—is interwoven and integrated into every aspect of the human and non-human realities on the islands.

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500

The Afterlife of St Cuthbert: Place, Texts and Ascetic Tradition, 690–1500