scholarly journals Fulfilling the self through food in wellness blogs: Governing the healthy subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942110557
Author(s):  
Kaisa Tiusanen

In the world of wellness, food and eating are fundamentally important to one’s subjectivity: the self in this sphere is created and maintained through food consumption along a plant-based, ‘wholesome’ and healthy personal journey to well-being. This article focuses on the analysis of wellness food blogs run by women, aiming to map out the technologies of the self through which the ‘ideal wellness subject’ is created. The analysis examines technologies of subjectivity as they aspire towards (1) balance, (2) healing and (3) narrativization of the self. The article suggests that the subjectivities related to wellness culture draw from postfeminist and healthist ideologies and are based on a neoliberal discourse of individuality and self-control. The sociocultural indifference of wellness culture and its prerogative to police the self through culturally hegemonic pursuits based on (the right kind of) consumption makes the language of wellness a prominent neoliberal discourse.

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Wałczyk

Nikifor Krynicki (Epifaniusz Drowniak, 1895-1968) was one of the most popular non-academic Polish painters worldwide. To show the biblical inspiration in his creative output I chose two categories from various thematic aspects: self-portraits and landscapes with a church. There are plenty of Nikifor’s paintings showing him as a teacher, as a celebrating priest, as a bishop, or even as Christ. A pop­ular way to explain this idea of self-portraits is a psychological one: as a form of auto-therapy. This analysis is aims to show a deeper expla­nation for the biblical anthropology. Nikifor’s self-portraits as a priest celebrating the liturgy are a symbol of creative activity understood as a divine re-creation of the world. Such activity needs divine inspira­tion. Here are two paintings to recall: Potrójny autoportret (The triple self-portrait) and Autoportret w trzech postaciach (Self-portrait in three persons). The proper way to understand the self-identification with Christ needs a reference to biblical anthropology. To achieve our re­al-self we need to identify with Christ, whose death and resurrection bring about our whole humanity. The key impression we may have by showing Nikifor’s landscapes with a church is harmony. The painter used plenty of warm colors. Many of the critics are of the opinion that Nikifor created an imaginary, ideal world in his landscapes, the world he wanted to be there and not the real world. The thesis of this article is that Nikifor created not only the ideal world, but he also showed the source of the harmony – the divine order.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Bulley ◽  
Karolina Maria Lempert ◽  
Colin Conwell ◽  
Muireann Irish

Intertemporal decision-making has long been assumed to measure self-control, with prominent theories treating choices of smaller, sooner rewards as failed attempts to override immediate temptation. If this view is correct, people should be more confident in their intertemporal decisions when they “successfully” delay gratification than when they do not. In two pre- registered experiments with built-in replication, adult participants (n=117) made monetary intertemporal choices and rated their confidence in having made the right decisions. Contrary to assumptions of the self-control account, confidence was not higher when participants chose delayed rewards. Rather, participants were more confident in their decisions when possible rewards were further apart in time-discounted subjective value, closer to the present, and larger in magnitude. Demonstrating metacognitive insight, participants were more confident in decisions that better aligned with their independent valuation of possible rewards. Decisions made with less confidence were more prone to changes-of-mind and more susceptible to a patience-enhancing manipulation. Together, our results establish that confidence in intertemporal choice tracks uncertainty in estimating and comparing the value of possible rewards – just as it does in decisions unrelated to self-control. Our findings challenge self- control views and instead cast intertemporal choice as a form of value-based decision-making about future possibilities.


Author(s):  
Marianna Berinšterová ◽  
◽  
Miroslava Bozogáňová ◽  
Monika Magdová ◽  
Jana Kapová ◽  
...  

"Given its significant negative consequences for university students, procrastination has been studied extensively and shown to be associated with conscientiousness as a personality trait. Involving 333 university students doing teacher training programmes (68.5% female; Mage=20.51 (SD=1.61); 83.48% undergraduates doing a bachelor’s degree), our study aimed to explore the association between procrastination among more/less conscientious students and selected self-concept variables (self-control, self-efficacy, etc.). Our questionnaire was based on the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (Gosling, Rentfrow, Swann, 2003), the Self-Control Scale (Finkenauer, Engels, Baumeister, 2005), the Self-efficacy Scale (Ko?š, Hefteyova, Schwarzer, Jerusalem, 1993), and the Procrastination Scale for Student Populations (Gabrhelík, 2008); our control variables were gender and well- being (Subjective Well-Being Scale, Chan-Hoong, Soon, 2011). The sample was divided into two groups – (1) less conscientious and (2) more conscientious) – using the method of visual binning in SPSS 20. A t-test for independent samples and linear regression were used for data analysis. The less conscientious students in our sample reported a higher level of procrastination (t=6.479; df=310; p?0.001; Cohen's d=0.681). A linear model was conducted for both groups (the dependent variable being the level of procrastination, the independent variables being gender and the levels of self-control, self-efficacy, and well-being). Both models were significant ((1) F=8.449; p?0.001; R2=32.6; (2) F= 7.277; p?0.001; R2=25.7). Among the less conscientious students, the levels of self-control (?=-0.546; t=-5.262; p?0.001) and self-efficacy (?=-0.238; t=-2.092; p?0.001) were negatively associated with procrastination. Among the more conscientious students, the level of self-control (?=0.404; t=-3.929; p?0.001) was negatively associated with procrastination and “being a man” (0–man; 1–woman) (?=-0.307; t=-3.219; p?0.05) was significantly associated with the level of procrastination. The results of our study show trait and personality differences in the level of procrastination, highlighting the importance of self-control and self-efficacy development among university students. Interactive programmes with an impact on students’ self-concept can be a significant contribution to students’ ability to cope with their study requirements effectively. It could be argued that the limits of this study include cross-sectional and self-reported data."


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
Mohammad-Javad Haj’jari ◽  
Noorbakhsh Hooti

Abstract An honest intellectual dutifully standing with truth against lies and treacheries of his society is a parrhesiastic figure in Foucault’s terminology. Foucault takes parrhesia as the fearless and frank speech regarding the truth of something or a situation before truthmongering and public deception and he takes the parrhesiastic as the spokesperson for truth. In this light, Dr. Stockmann in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People occupies a unique position within Ibsen’s political philosophy. Dutifully criticizing what the majority blindly take for granted from their liar leaders in the name of democracy, Dr. Stockmann fulfills the role of a parrhesiastic figure that stands against socio-political corruption. He enters a parrhesiastic game with both the majority and the officialdom to fulfill his democratic parrhesia as a truthful citizen before the duped community, while covertly preparing for his own philosophic parrhesia or self-care within the conformist community. However, his final failure lies in his confrontation with democracy itself, which wrongly gives the right of speaking even to the liars. This article thus aims at analyzing Ibsen’s play through a Foucauldian perspective regarding the concept of parrhesia and its relation to democracy. It is to reveal Ibsen’s satire on the fake ideology of democracy and highlight the necessity of humanity’s parrhesiastic self-care for the well-being of the self and the others.


The article describes a research that aimed at deepening the understanding the personal experience organization. Individual experience is viewed from the standpoint of O. Laktionov's model, and it`s personal component is considered in detail. One of the parts of this component is the life-sense orientations, and the article analyzes the transformations of this phenomenon that took place from 2010 to 2017. The personal component of individual experience contains three aspects: the oneself interpretation, the others interpretation, and the world interpretation. The aspect of oneself interpreting as value contains self-esteem, self-regulation, and the self-concept; the aspect of others interpreting as compatible with the subject of experience - the self-concept and values; aspect of the world interpretation - the values ​​and life-sense orientations. The emphasis on the life-sense orientations within this article was made in view of the desire to find the most universal transformations of personal experience. In the course of the empirical study, a comparative analysis of the subjects studied by the life-sense orientations (the test of life-orientation of D. Leontiev) in 2010 and 2017 using the U-Mann-Whitney test. To maximize the consideration of factors that could potentially affect the characteristics of the personal experience organization, the analysis was conducted separately on a sample of students-psychologists and students-philologists. The total number of persons who participated in the study was 121 students of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (Kharkiv) and Donbass State Pedagogical University (Slovyansk). Socio-political change was recognized as one of the key determinants of the transformations under study. It was found that across the whole sample, compared to 2010, the level of expressiveness of meaningful life indicators, such as goal orientation, locus of control "I", locus of control of life, and overall meaningfulness of life, significantly decreased; at the same time, the level of result orientation was significantly increased. Psychological students are characterized by a significant decrease in goal orientation, locus of self control, locus of life control, and overall meaningfulness of life; as well as an increase in result orientation. Philological students are characterized by a significant decrease in the locus of control of life and the overall meaning of life.


2015 ◽  
pp. 52-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Henrique Rodrigues Torres

he project of life is linked to freedom, as a right of each person to choose their own destiny. (...) The project of life fully encompasses the ideal of the American Declaration (of the Rights and Duties of Man) of 1948, which proclaims the spiritual development as the supreme end and the highest expression of human existence. Colombia's Constitutional Court, at guaranteeing the fundamental right to live and die with dignity, in the liberating expression of human rights, did not forget the mythical image of Charon ferrying the dead in his boat to Hades . In Colombia, the struggle against death, stubborn and limitless, contrary to the expression of the patients' will, cannot anymore be accepted as a duty or as a right of the doctors, who now must resign themselves to the conscious and independent decision of their patients, understanding the dimension of existence and of human dignity against the limits of medicine and science, to lead them, just with the necessary palliative care, in crossing the River Styx, to the "world of the dead ". Denying euthanasia, in terms of the decision of the Constitutional Court, constitutes a flagrant violation of the patients' "life project", who have, in the established circumstances, the right to legitimate anticipation of death.


Author(s):  
Jan Peter Bergen ◽  
Peter-Paul Verbeek

AbstractThe theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actually support the process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design.


Author(s):  
Carol Graham

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book considers the extent to which the American Dream—and the right to the pursuit of happiness—is equally available to all citizens today. Building on the author's research on well-being and on mobility and opportunity in countries around the world, the book explore the linkages between the distribution of income, attitudes about inequality and future mobility, and well-being in the United States, and also provides some comparisons with other countries and regions. This scholarship is distinct from existing work on inequality in its focus on the well-being–beliefs channel and its implications for individual choices about the future.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 171-188
Author(s):  
Vincent Shen

Guo Xiang’s ontological individualism represents a case of philosophical construction based on his interpretation of the Zhuangzi. His concept of the self-transformation of the individual who is selfborn, with self-nature and without dependence on others supports the idea of individual autonomy. Nevertheless, each individual’s act for self-interest still benefits other individuals in a non-teleological mutual accommodation. The path from duhua (self-transformation) of each individual on the level of existence, to the xiangyin (mutual accommodation) among individuals on the level of action consequence, to the ideal of xuanming (ultimate concordance), is the path on which the world is to proceed.


Author(s):  
Henrik Hogh-Olesen

Chapter 4 looks at how key stimuli and brain programming affect our own species’ aesthetics and determine which shapes, colors, and landscapes humans are attracted to and consider beautiful. Like other animals, people are predisposed to respond to certain key stimuli, which have been associated with an expectation of functionality, fitness, and increased well-being. In other words, the perception of beauty represents a strong internal indicator, which it pays to be guided by in order to gain various benefits. In this investigation, the chapter enters the micro-processes of artistic creation. It looks at the aesthetic effects that make up an artwork and at the understanding of why something captivates and fascinates people. The right embellishment can transform a trivial everyday object into an overwhelming power object—a kind of fetish that means the world to us and costs a fortune. How does something like this happen?


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