An Invitation to Civic Dialogue

Those of us who have benefited from the climate of injustice need an invitation from others to join with them in changing our social climate to a climate of justice. The controversaries over national monuments opens the door to explore the question of who needs an invitation from whom and what white people need to learn in order to respond to the civilian invitation from others. The others include future generations, Syrian refugees, migrants at our Southern border, and personal invitations from People of Color. Personal invitations depend on our aptitude in engaging in dialogue, as is illustrated by an imaginary dialogue involving a white man and a black woman. Such dialogues can create the conditions for good conversations, and these conversation can move us toward a climate of justice—an ethical foundation for developing policies to protect our habitat for future generations.

Introduction: Three Kinds of Engagement

To change the course of the unsustainable trends of American Prosperity, we must change the social climate of injustice that allows it to continue. This change entails three operations: create an interpretive framework that covers the key components of our living systems, tell coherent stories that include past injustices and places to repair them, and create a civic space that enables us to create a climate of justice. The four components of the interpretive framework are the Earth, our humanity, the social, and the civic. The historical narratives are stories guided by the principle of coherence, which reveal opportunities to change the current course of history. Making such changes involves civilians entering civic spaces where they can invite citizens to care for justice and for future generations.

The Citizen’s Role in Creating a Climate of Justice

In the civic space, citizens with access to resources must learn how to respond to the civilians who need them in such a way that it changes the unjust social climate to a climate of justice. This Chapter explores three options of citizens responding to civilians: empathy, a commons approach, and the ethics of care. Jeremy Rifkin has argued that we have evolved to “the age of empathy,” but this approach ignores the difference between those who are privileged and those who are not. The commons approach invites all to become “commoners,” sharing and shaping a common future. This approach has attractions, but it ignores past injustices and the role of the rule of law in protecting civilians. The ethics of care does invite privileged citizens to listen to civilian claims to join them in repairing broken relationships and caring about justice.

Sense of Belonging and Social Climate in an Official Language Minority Post-Secondary Setting

Perceived sense of belonging and positive social climate on campus are crucial elements for post-secondary students, as they contribute to academic achievement, positive mental health, and help-seeking. Few studies have explored post-secondary students’ sense of belonging and perceptions of social climate in an official language minority campus, which attract Canadian-born francophones, anglophones who pursue higher education in their second language, and francophone international students. With declining student mental health and greater ethnolinguistic diversity of post-secondary students on Canadian campuses, this important study aims to explore francophone students’ perceived sense of belonging and social climate on campus. In total, 35 students from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds took part in focus groups or individual interviews. Domestic students with French as their first language more often reported positive social climate on campus and a sense of belonging, in contrast to international students and students with French as a second language. A common obstacle to connecting with others was language insecurity in one of the official languages, as both are currently used on campus. Universities hosting students of multiple linguistic diversities should provide courses and campus events to stimulate intercultural knowledge and dialogue.

“What do you think people feel?” Emotional climate during a pandemic: Adaptation and validation of a scale

Our study examined the psychometric properties and factor structure of an instrument to assess emotional climate during the COVID-19 pandemic using a sample of 601 Portuguese individuals. Two sub-samples were created, one to perform an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), composed of 300 participants, and the other to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), composed of 301 individuals. Two factors were found: positive and negative emotional climate. In the EFA, both factors established a negative and significant correlation. However, the CFA presented a better fit with two independent factors. Reliability analysis indicated acceptable values for both dimensions. There was also evidence of discriminant, convergent, and criterion validity. More negative emotions were perceived regarding the social climate. Results were discussed in the frame of different positive and negative psychosocial variables related to positive and negative emotional climates, as well as positive emotional climate as a resource for collective resilience.

Exercising under COVID-2x: Conceptualizing Future Green Spaces in Australia’s Neighborhoods

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a social and economic disruptor on a global scale, severely curtailing people’s ability to travel and engage in many recreation activities. Periodic lockdown and stay-at-home orders have exacerbated the situation. In this social climate, urban green spaces have attained a high significance for the maintenance of the physical and mental health of the population. Given the presence of similar coronaviruses in animal populations, it can be predicted that future epidemics and even pandemics will occur. Urban planning needs to incorporate the lessons learnt during COVID-19 in order to future-proof our communities. This paper reviews the role that urban green spaces played during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on these observations, the paper discusses a range of options for the provision of pandemic-sensitive spaces for physical exercise and mental recreation. Design concepts for long-term planning adjustments as well as for future ad-hoc solutions are provided. These include the provision of social distancing ‘pods’ embedded in design and landscaping of permanent parks, the design of ad-hoc, socially distanced ‘parklets’ on a quietened street and a rethink of the design of curb-to-boundary setbacks (nature strip) in residential streets.

Tragic Victims of Mania a Potu (“Madness from Drink”): A Study of Literary Nineteenth-Century Female Drunkards

Temperance literature, though widely popular in America and Britain between 1830–80, lost its allure in the decades that followed. In spite of its didactic and moralistic nature, the public eagerly consumed temperance novels, thus reciprocating contemporaneous writers’ efforts to promote social ideals and mend social ills. The main aim of this paper is to redress the critical neglect that the temperance prose written by women about women has endured by looking at three literary works—two novellas and one confessional novelette—written by mid-nineteenth-century American female writers. These works serve as a prism through which the authors present generally “tabooed” afflictions such as inebriation among high-class women and society’s role in perpetuating such behaviors. The essay examines the conflicting forces underlying such representations and offers an inquiry into the restrictive and hostile social climate in mid-nineteenth-century America and the lack of medical attention given to alcohol addicts as the possible causes that might have prompted women’s dangerous behaviors, including inebriation. This paper also demonstrates the cautious approach that nineteenth-century female writers had to take when dealing with prevalent social ills, such as bigotry, hypocrisy and disdain directed at female drunkards. It shows how these writers, often sneered at or belittled by critics and editors, had to maneuver very carefully between the contending forces of openly critiquing social mores, on the one hand, and not being censored, on the other.