Embodied viewing and Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: a multi-disciplinary experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a cross-disciplinary project based on an experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture (Sainsbury’s Centre for Visual Arts), which aimed to study viewers’ movements around an iconic sculpture: Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The experiment studies how viewers respond to this three-dimensional artwork not only by looking at it but also through their own bodily reactions to it, such as by unconsciously mimicking a represented attitude or gesture. We compared two groups of viewers: classically trained dancers and non-dancers. Our hypothesis was that the skills and embodied experiences of the dancers would alter the ways in which they engage bodily with the work compared to the non-dancers. Our underlying research question was: how are vision and the body interlinked in esthetic and kinesthetic experience? This paper does not give results, which are forthcoming. It focuses on methodology and provides a commentary on the design and development of the interdisciplinary collaboration behind the project. It explores an interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges the humanities and experimental sciences and asks how being confronted with unfamiliar methodologies forces researchers in a given field to critically self-examine the limits and presuppositions of their practices.     

Currents in a Stream: College Student Identities and Ethnic Identities and Their Relationship with Self‐Esteem,Efficacy, and Grade Point Average in an Urban University*

Objectives. We investigate how college student identities and ethnic identities vary among black, white, and Asian students and among immigrant, second‐, and third‐generation students at a large public urban university (in counterpoint to recent studies at highly selective schools). In addition, we explore how those identities are related to college students' sense of self‐esteem and efficacy and their academic performance. Methods. We use survey data from a sample (N=652) of students attending a large diverse public urban university to create new indexes for several dimensions of college identity and ethnic identity and use existing self‐esteem and efficacy indexes to compare black, white, and Asian students, as well as immigrant, second‐generation, and third‐generation students. Results. Among several significant identity differences, we find: (1) whites are lower than blacks on college identity indexes, and immigrant students are higher than subsequent‐generation students on college student identity measures; (2) whites are lower than blacks and Asians on ethnic identity measures; only the ethnic activities index declines linearly from immigrant to second‐ to third‐generation students; (3) blacks have higher self‐esteem and efficacy than whites or Asians; whites have higher GPAs than blacks or Asians, while immigrant students have higher GPAs than third‐generation students; and (4) at least one college student identity dimension and one ethnic identity dimension is related to self‐esteem, efficacy, and GPA. Conclusions. How young adults conceive of themselves as college students and the way they formulate their own racial‐ethnic identities is related to their self‐esteem, efficacy, and academic performance. Moreover, the pattern that these relationships take is somewhat different at a large diverse public urban university than at highly selective universities.     

Reputation and influence in charitable giving: an experiment

Previous experimental and observational work suggests that people act more generously when they are observed and observe others in social settings. However, the explanation for this is unclear. An individual may want to send a signal of her generosity to improve her own reputation. Alternately (or additionally) she may value the public good or charity itself and, believing that contribution levels are strategic complements, give more to influence others to give more. We perform the first series of laboratory experiments that can separately estimate the impact of these two social effects, and test whether realized influence is consistent with the desire to influence, and whether either of these are consistent with anticipated influence. Our experimental subjects were given the opportunity to contribute from their endowment to Bread for the World, a development NGO. Depending on treatment, “leader” subjects’ donations were reported to other subjects either anonymously or with their identities, and these were reported either before these “follower” subjects made their donation decisions. We find that “leaders” are influential only when their identities are revealed along with their donations, and female leaders are more influential than males. Identified leaders’ predictions suggest that are aware of their influence. They respond to this by giving more than either the control group or the unidentified leaders. We find mixed evidence for “reputation-seeking.”     

The ‘good mother’ struggles: Obstacles to the attainment of motherhood ideals among adult women formerly placed in residential care

We analysed narratives of motherhood produced by 13 women who were involved with the welfare system or the justice system during adolescence. The original contribution of our study was its focus on mothers who were turning age 30, so they were not in that period of generalized instability that characterizes the transition from care and into adulthood. This qualitative study was part of a larger study on French‐Canadian adolescents with a history of residential care. Semi‐directed interviews were conducted with 13 women, more than 15 years after their admission to residential care. Our data highlights that motherhood can contribute to the vulnerability of women who were involved with the welfare or the justice system as adolescents. Our results suggest that in order to shed a perceived deviant label and to compensate for the adverse events they experienced, they pursue internalized ideals of “good motherhood” that translate into restrictions and strain. Furthermore, they tend to refrain from allowing people into their lives and asking for help for fear of being judged. Yet, as their children are getting older and exhibiting problem behaviors of their own, the questioning of their parental practices and skills only becomes more intense.     

Children forever: The search for origins among Chilean adults who were adopted

There has been a global increase in the number of adults who were adopted 1 1 To make the text more readable, we use the term “adult adoptee” rather than our preferred term “people who were adopted.” We prefer the latter term because it does captures our understanding that adoption is a practice and a life experience and not necessarily a permanent fixture of the identities of people who were adopted.
searching for their origins. This trend has promoted the interest of social sciences researchers, as well as carry out the obligations of states to provide specialized services. In this article, we present some results from the first qualitative study that explores the experiences of some Chilean adults who were adopted and searched for their origins in Chile through the National Service of Minor's Search for Origins Program. The narratives of the participants show that, in spite of legislative changes, a series of barriers and contradictions continue to exist, which make it difficult to guarantee the right to know one's origins. The legal and technical frameworks and practices analysed show how difficult it is to dismantle the “clean break” principle. They also highlight the persistence of the image of adoptees as “minors” who need the “protection” of their parents or professionals. We discuss the different challenges to be considered by researchers, practitioners, and policy‐makers involved in adoption policies and practices.     

Multiracial Identity Integration: Perceptions of Conflict and Distance among Multiracial Individuals

This article examines how multiracial individuals negotiate their different and sometimes conflicting racial identities. Drawing from previous work on bicultural identity integration (see   Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005 ), we proposed a new construct, multiracial identity integration (MII), to measure individual differences in perceptions of compatibility between multiple racial identities. We found that MII is composed of two independent subscales: racial distance that describes whether different racial identities are perceived as disparate, and racial conflict that describes whether different racial identities are perceived as in conflict. We also found that recalling positive multiracial experiences increased MII, while recalling negative multiracial experiences decreased MII. These findings have implications for understanding the psychological well-being of multiracial individuals, and the development of social policy and programs catered to this population.     

Internet usage of local government employees: A study of the effect of individual preferences,group influences,and administrative factors

Using data from a survey, this study investigates how local government employees use the Internet to carry out their day-by-day work. Our survey reports that most employees use the Internet to download information, communicate, and perform routine tasks. Many of them use the Internet for personal purposes at work. We also test seven hypotheses to explore different variables that may explain the Internet use of government employees. The results show that individual acceptance of the Internet, perceived Internet importance to the work group's mission, and employer-provided training and technical support have a significant impact on their Internet usage at work. This note reports our preliminary findings from a large project to study the role and impacts of information technology in public organizations.     

Social psychology as a stable interpretative framework irrefutably committed to the scientific study of persons and society

Despite repeated opportunities to reconsider their natural science ambitions, social psychologists have not done so, and there are no obvious signs of this changing. Why? This paper pursues an answer to this question by defining the field after the fashion of Michael Polanyi's thought. According to Polanyi, interpretative frameworks develop from our primitive bodily encounters with the world and then are shaped by language into the vast conceptual systems of our culture. Concerning frameworks erected on our most fundamental beliefs (e.g., science), he says that we “live in [them] as in the garment of our own skin.” Frameworks such as this are not objects of critical evaluation but of commitment, and social psychology, as an outgrowth of positive philosophy, is an interpretative framework in this sense. Professionals' recent responses to the field's political makeup and replication failures demonstrate this. They aim primarily at preserving a natural science understanding of social psychology and point to the influence of belief-stabilizing mechanisms Polanyi finds operative in folk religious practices. These mechanisms appear at work also in psychology as a whole. They are implied, for instance, in the field's resistance to Sigmund Koch's authoritative judgement against its scientific self-conception in the latter half of the 20^th century. Noting this reveals the broader implications of this paper's definition of social psychology, but it also urges questions about truth and relativity that cannot be ignored. These questions are addressed briefly in the end where it is suggested that what psychology needs most of all is a change of heart, and that this will happen, if at all, not primarily through argument and evidence, but through persons who authentically believe in the veracity of a different framework.     

Training by feel: wearable fitness-trackers,endurance athletes,and the sensing of data

ABSTRACT

A wide range of wearable fitness-trackers are currently available that allow users to measure, monitor, visualize, and record numerous training metrics including moving pace, distance traveled, average heart rate, and calories burned. Using qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with amateur endurance athletes, this paper examines what individuals do with their wearable fitness-trackers and the data they produce. Drawing on the work of Deborah Lupton and Sarah Maslen, we take up the concepts of “data sensing” and the “more-than-human sensorium” to highlight the embodied and sensory dimensions of digital self-tracking. We argue that while much of the appeal of fitness-tracking technologies lies in their ability to generate objective readings of one’s performance, these devices do not supplant less quantifiable and more subjective ways of understanding one’s self. On the contrary, the participants in our study use the quantitative data generated by a fitness-tracker in conjunction with their own self-assessments to gain a more holistic sense of what they are experiencing during training or on race day. For many of our research participants, the fitness-tracker became a central part of their identity and daily routine. Most participants were reluctant to train without their fitness-trackers, even when not preparing for an event.     

Living in a Wittgensteinian World: Beyond Theory to a Poetics of Practices

As human beings, we share many historically developed, language-game interwoven, public forms of life. Due to the joint, dialogically responsive nature of all social life within such forms, we cannot as individuals just act as we please; our forms of life exert a normative influence on what we can say and do. They act as a backdrop against which all our claims to knowledge are judged as acceptable or not. As a result, it is not easy to articulate their inadequacies in a clear and forceful manner. However, within most of our forms of life, we have a first-person right to express how our individual circumstances seem to us. And by the use of special forms of poetic, gestural talk—talk that can originate new language-games—we can offer to make our own 'inner lives' public. In this paper, I want to claim that this is just what Wittgenstein is attempting to do in his later philosophy: by use of the self-same methods that anyone might use to express aspects of their own world picture, he is offering us his attempts to make the background 'landscape' of our lives more visible to us. These methods are explored below.     

You can go your own way! The long‐term effectiveness of a self‐employment programme for welfare recipients in Germany

In this study, we examined the long‐term effects of supporting welfare recipients by means of a subsidy to start their own business. We used administrative data and propensity score matching to estimate the impact of the subsidy on the probability of receiving welfare benefits and on unemployment status up to 72 months after programme start. We supplemented our estimation results with the results of a qualitative survey which provided insights into the diversity of entrepreneurial activities and the recipients' motivation for starting a business. Our results are encouraging. We found a stable positive effect on the outcomes of interest. We further found that foreign nationals and the long‐term unemployed benefit the most. We conclude that the subsidy allows some people to successfully start a business who would not have otherwise done so and who would have been less successful by choosing the alternative of continued job search.     

The Interdependence of Israeli and Palestinian National Identities: The Role of the Other in Existential Conflicts

The interactions between identity groups engaged in a protracted conflict lack the conditions postulated by Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) as necessary if contact is to reduce intergroup prejudice. The article examines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from this perspective. After summarizing the history of the conflict, it proposes that a long-term resolution of the conflict requires development of a transcendent identity for the two peoples that does not threaten the particularistic identity of each. The nature of the conflict, however, impedes the development of a transcendent identity by creating a state of negative interdependence between the two identities such that asserting one group's identity requires negating the identity of the other. The resulting threat to each group's identity is further exacerbated by the fact that each side perceives the other as a source of some of its own negative identity elements, especially a view of the self as victim and as victimizer. The article concludes with a discussion of ways of over-coming the negative interdependence of the two identities by drawing on some of the positive elements in the relationship, most notably the positive interdependence between the two groups that exists in reality. Problem-solving workshops represent one setting for equal-status interactions that provide the parties the opportunity to "negotiate" their identities and to find ways of accommodating the identity of the other in their own identity.     

“忧郁的孩子们”：课外补习会带来负向情绪吗？——基于中国教育追踪调查（CEPS）两期数据的因果推断

本文关注中国大陆中学生课外补习参与及其负向情绪生成的因果关系。本文基于中国教育追踪调查两期数据,借助工具变量等方法来化解内生性偏误,在量化层面上回答了课外补习参与“是否致郁”以及“使谁抑郁”等问题。本研究主要发现如下：其一,课外补习参与对中学生的情绪健康状况具有显著的“致郁效应”,但这种效应主要存在于家庭背景占劣势的较低阶层的子女当中,而家庭背景具有优势的较高阶层的子女对此类负向情绪有更强的抵御能力,表现出了“心理免疫”的现象;其二,本文从“情绪调节”的角度入手,对“致郁效应”的阶层异质性做出了进一步解释。研究结果有助于我们深入理解课外补习参与可能具有的健康不平等意涵。     

Social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed in the Nordic countries

Kallio J, Blomberg H, Kroll C. Social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed in the Nordic countries In recent decades, municipal social workers have become the implementers of new types of social policy measures aimed at activating the unemployed. These policies put a greater emphasis on the individual's own responsibility for being unemployed. Little is known, however, about how social workers view the unemployed – one factor that might influence how policies are in fact implemented. Therefore, our purpose was to analyse Nordic social workers' attitudes towards the unemployed and their determinants: Do social workers' attitudes correspond with a more individualistic view on unemployment? We utilised the data from surveys of professional social workers in four Nordic countries. Our analyses showed that individualistic attitudes towards the unemployed appeared to be rather rare among Nordic social workers. However, attitudinal differences were found between and within countries.     

Digital Storytelling: A Narrative Method for Positive Identity Development in Minority Youth

This article explores the use of digital storytelling as a group narrative method for positive identity development in the case of African American youth residing in economically disadvantaged, urban areas. Factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and/or violence exposure may heighten normal youth challenges and affect identity development. Narrative tools that help minority adolescents produce agentic, coherent, affective, and adaptive self-concepts contribute to a proactive identity system and, therefore, an enhanced capacity for them to intervene in their own lives. The purpose of the afterschool digital storytelling group was for youth to gain opportunities in media production and in personal story construction. As a result, youth gained a valuable narrative medium for constructing their stories, and thus their identities, into ones of possibility, promise, and potential. Implications for helping professionals include how to use digital storytelling with youth to gain insight and understanding into a personally difficult life event.     

It Is Called a Mother Tongue for a Reason: A Qualitative Study of Therapists' Perspectives on Bilingual Psychotherapy—Treatment Implications

This article is a qualitative study that explored therapists' understanding of the role of language in psychotherapy with bilingual clients. Among the findings were that it is typical for bilingual clients to switch back and forth between primary and secondary languages in psychotherapy, as their narratives are often expressed incompletely in a second language. Bilingual clients tend to return to their mother tongues when expressing strong affects, in their dreams, or when dealing with death or trauma. They may also use their first language as a defense against painful material. Interviewees concurred that bilingual clients express different values or even identities in different languages. Finally, language was reported to be a factor that influenced the therapeutic alliance, as, encoded in language, were issues of trust, idealization, and hostility toward the psychotherapist.     

Seeking salvation: moral economies and management at the Morozov mills, 1885–1905*

Moscow’s most famous textile dynasty, the Old Believer Morozovs, pioneered not only new technology, but also ways of managing their peasant-workers. This article focuses on the distinctive approaches of the two rival families who owned neighbouring factories: the Savva Morozov Company and the Vikula Morozov Company. In these factories the Morozov families desired to create a ‘moral community’ using the spiritual discipline of the Old Believer faith to bond workers and management to productive goals. But their peasant-workers also brought to the factories their own ‘moral economy’ assumptions about the duties and obligations of worker and master. The article visits three sites where the developing management practices of these two competing factories are expressed: clan rivalry and mentalities; labour–management conflict; and the battle between bureaucracy and factory over contested taxes. The identities of the rival families – one pious and private, the other publicly political – symbolize their different approaches. Nevertheless, it is their conflicts with labour and the tsarist bureaucracy which most vividly illustrate the significant role of moral economies in management practice. Moral economies and the Old Believer experience of the Morozovs provide keys to understanding the ‘special worlds’ of their factories and the relationships between management, labour and bureaucracy.Our salvation is in work.     

Undisciplining Social Science: Wittgenstein and the Art of Creating Situated Practices of Social Inquiry

There are now countless social scientific disciplines—listed either as the science of … X … or as an ‐ology of one kind or another—each with their own internal controversies as to what are their “proper objects of their study.” This profusion of separate sciences has emerged, and is still emerging, tainted by the classical Cartesian‐Newtonian assumption of a mechanistic world. We still seem to assume that we can begin our inquiries simply by reflecting on the world around us, and by allowing our conceptualizations to guide our actions in our inquiries. Beginning our inquiries in this retrospective manner, however, means that our concepts and conceptualizations are both after‐the‐fact and beside the point, for ‘something else’ altogether is guiding us in the performance of our situation‐sensitive actions than merely our conceptualizations. We need before‐the‐fact, hermeneutically‐structured inquiries that can ‘set out’ inner ‘landscapes of possibilities’, to think‐with and to provide guidance, as we try in our more scientifically organized efforts to achieve socially desired outcomes in particular socially shared situations. Conducting such preliminary inquiries is thus an art, requiring not only judgment, but also imagination and poetic forms of expression aimed at creating such shared, inner landscapes among all concerned.     

Social Contexts and Coping Strategies of Foreign Wives in Korea: Using a Conceptual Framework of Social Identity Theory

This study aimed to address the social contexts of Korean society in which diverse social interactions of foreign wives take place and to identify coping strategies to construct positive social identities. Social identities are often reconstructed as a result of dynamic interactions with various situations. Using the conceptual framework of social identity theory, this study attempted to uncover the social contexts that shape foreign wives' social identities. This study, using the qualitative approach, selected nine Filipino and Vietnamese participants who were married to Korean men. The data were collected by in‐depth interviews, a focus group with three Vietnamese participants, field notes, participant observation, and photo documents. In the section on study findings, this study addressed Korean social contexts, in which Korean government has been providing a variety of multicultural policies and services for helping foreign wives successfully adapt to Korea. This study also found various forms of stereotypes and discrimination against foreign wives and presented their discrimination experiences. Diverse ways to cope with such negative experiences are presented in the last section. Given the findings, the researcher suggests that policies and programs should promote foreign wives' integration in Korean society.