Investigating the “Embodied Spaces of Health” in Marathon Running: The Roles of Embodiment, Wearable Technology, and Affective Atmospheres

This paper examines how spaces of health are produced through embodied and affective practices in marathon running in China. While the social-cultural effects of distance running have gained increasing attention among public health scholars and policymakers, there has been little effort paid to the spatiality of running and its contributions to producing healthy spaces for the general public. This paper therefore fills the lacuna through a qualitative study that was conducted with 29 amateur marathon runners in China. Drawing on the Gioia Methodology in coding and analyzing qualitative data, we highlight the interactive effects of body, wearable technology, and affective atmospheres in producing what we call “embodied space of health.” We suggest that the embodied space of health is not simply the bodily experience per se but rather a relational space constituted through the co-production of body, non-human objects, and space/place. It is through these relational spaces that the effects of health and well-being (e.g., self-exploration and therapeutic feelings) emerge in marathon.

Cross-cultural effects of COVID-19 on higher education learning and teaching practice: A case study from Greece

COVID-19 has greatly impacted all aspects of our everyday lives. A global pandemic of this magnitude, even as we now emerge from strict measures such as lockdowns and await the potential for a ‘new tomorrow’ with the arrival of vaccines, will certainly have long-lasting consequences. We will have to adapt and learn to live in a different way. Accordingly, teaching and learning have also been greatly impacted. Changes to academic curricula have had tremendous cross-cultural effects on higher education students. This study will investigate, by way of focus groups comprised of students studying at Greek universities during the pandemic, the cross-cultural effects that this ‘global experience’ has had on higher education, and particularly on students in Greek universities. The data collection tools are interviews and observations gathered from focus groups.

Resilienz durch Muße? Ethnografische Befunde zu einer ambivalenten Relation

Resilience has recently become an expansive concept in political, economic and scientific fields. The normative and ideological dimensions underlying this concept and the resulting cultural effects have hardly been the subject of empirically grounded research in cultural studies so far, although resilience discourses have long been materialising in everyday and living environments. Using the example of courses that promise actors a life with more leisure, this article asks how ideas of resilience are communicated, made plausible and also critically negotiated in this specific field. To what extent is the increased attractiveness of the concept of leisure as a specific form of the qualification of temporal experience related to ideas of a resilient self? How are ideas of a fundamentally deficient self in need of optimisation expressed here and for which social problems are what kind of solutions being sought? The article assumes that both the concept of leisure and the concept of resilience co-create, on a discursive level, the problems, challenges and crises to which they respond.

Cross-Cultural Effects in Adoption Patterns of a Mobile Coaching Service for studies

This study applied an adoption model, inspired by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Multipurpose Information Appliances Adoption Model (MIAAM), to compare key variables explaining adoption patterns of a mobile coaching app that guides and encourages students via a technology-based platform. This article constitutes a pioneer effort to compare adoption behaviors across a developed country and an emerging country (France and Mexico) with differences in level of use of mobile apps. A multi-group structural equation modelling approach was used to test the causal structure of the conceptual model. Results confirmed significant differences and similarities across samples and identified critical factors. Perceived usefulness was found to be the most important driver with mediating effects. Organizations implementing coaching services with an improved perceived usefulness could boost their adoption rates.

Cross-Cultural Effects in Adoption Patterns of a Mobile Coaching Service for Studies

This study applied an adoption model, inspired by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Multipurpose Information Appliances Adoption Model (MIAAM), to compare key variables explaining adoption patterns of a mobile coaching app that guides and encourages students via a technology-based platform. This article constitutes a pioneer effort to compare adoption behaviors across a developed country and an emerging country (France and Mexico) with differences in level of use of mobile apps. A multi-group structural equation modelling approach was used to test the causal structure of the conceptual model. Results confirmed significant differences and similarities across samples and identified critical factors. Perceived usefulness was found to be the most important driver with mediating effects. Organizations implementing coaching services with an improved perceived usefulness could boost their adoption rates.

ИДЕНТИЧНОСТЬ И САМОПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЯ ЛИЧНОСТИ В ЦИФРОВЫХ МЕДИА. О КН.: ЛИСЕНКОВА А.А. ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ СОЦИОКУЛЬТУРНОЙ ИДЕНТИЧНОСТИ В ЦИФРОВОМ ПРОСТРАНСТВЕ: МОНОГРАФИЯ. ПЕРМЬ: ПЕРМСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ИНСТИТУТ КУЛЬТУРЫ, 2021. 286 с.

Рецензия посвящена монографии, в которой осмысливается социально-культурные эффекты развития цифровых технологий в современном обществе, в частности степень их влияния на процессы идентификации и социализации. Автор рецензии отмечает, что особое внимание в данном издании уделено формированию социокультурной идентичности российской молодежи в пространстве новых медиа (в том числе социальных сетей), стратегиям и практикам репрезентации, формам публичной нарративизации и визуализации повседневного опыта. Виртуальная цифровая среда представлена в виде комплексного феномена, пронизывающего все сферы жизни человека, формирующего новые требования к его компетенциям, знаниям, умениям и навыкам, создающего не только интерактивное пространство взаимодействия, но и порождающего риски и угрозы нового порядка. Рецензируемая монография адресована широкому кругу читателей, включая культурологов, философов, специалистов по социальной и культурной антропологии, преподавателей и студентов гуманитарных вузов, всех кому интересны современные культурные процессы и различные аспекты развития цифрового общества. The review is devoted to the monograph, which comprehends the socio-cultural effects of the development of digital technologies in modern society, in particular, the degree of their influence on the processes of identification and socialization. The author of the review notes that special attention in this publication is paid to the formation of the socio-cultural identity of Russian youth in the space of new media (including social networks), strategies and practices of representation, forms of public narrativization and visualization of everyday experience. The virtual digital environment is presented as a complex phenomenon that permeates all spheres of human life, forming new requirements for his competencies, knowledge, skills and abilities, creating not only an interactive interaction space, but also generating risks and threats of a new order. The reviewed monograph is addressed to a wide range of readers, including cultural scientists, philosophers, specialists in social and cultural anthropology, teachers and students of humanities universities, all who are interested in modern cultural processes and various aspects of the development of a digital society.

Integrasi Islam dan Sains

Lagging behind in the fields of science and technology is a problem that has emerged since the end of the Middle Ages (18th century AD), so that since then Muslims have been infected with "catching-up syndrome" which has caused negative responses and resistance from many groups. This is mainly due to theological concerns, cultural effects and ecological crises. At least the prominent resistance in the form of movements can be divided into three (1) restorationist movements, (2) Bucailis movements and (3) fundamentalist movements. The response to these efforts is counterproductive with efforts to catch up and at the same time with the spirit of Islam that upholds science. Therefore, a more basic study is needed on a proportional and harmonious integration integration framework. This can be done by incorporating Islamic values ​​that are principled without turning off the dynamic elements of science and technology, but can instead spur and direct them to the desired goal, the welfare of life. The integration of these values ​​touches three levels (1) the level of scientific mental development, which consists of: (a) encouragement to study nature, (2) positive appreciation and awarding of scientific activities and (c) presentation of scientific character. (2) The level of world view, namely establishing an Islamic world view of the universe such as (a) recognition of the existence of God as the creator and preserver of nature, (b) belief in non-physical reality and not just physical-empirical reality, (c) acknowledgment of the existence of the purpose of the universe and (d) recognition of the existence of a moral order for the universe. (3) Orientation level, which includes: (a) epistemic orientation, namely empirical truth that can lead to strengthening faith and closeness to God and (b) practical orientation in the form of technological application by affirming that the purpose of applying science is humanity and universal prosperity that related to the role of humans as Khalifah

DOES CULTURAL DIVERSITY MATTER FOR TEAM PERFORMANCE IN MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES? AN ANALYSIS OF CONFLICT, COMMUNICATION, SOCIAL INTEGRATION, CREATIVITY AND SATISFACTION

Team performance is key in each organisation. Hence, cultural effects in teams are a relevant matter of subject clarifying the ambiguous findings from previous research. With this background, we investigate how the macro-constructs of conflict, communication effectiveness, social integration, creativity and satisfaction interact with cultural diversity on team performance in an environment characterised by a largely homogeneous and ethnic workforce. We test our hypotheses on a sample of firms in Thailand. Our results indicate that creativity and satisfaction have a significant positive impact on team performance whereas cultural diversity has a significant positive impact on influencing conflict in a team-based environment. However, cultural diversity has no significant impact on communication effectiveness and social integration, and it has no significant impact on team performance. The key theoretical contributions from our study are that cultural diversity can contribute to conflict even in a team composition that is seemingly cohesive and homogeneous in nature. Further, our study establishes that creativity and satisfaction have a positive effect on team performance even in the context of a homogeneous and ethnically majority-based team. For the practitioners, the results of the study indicate that initial actions need to be taken by the leaders of multicultural teams as they create teams to avoid the initial pitfalls due to conflict.

The cultural effects of neo-paganism’s ritual creativity

In the last fifty years, different spiritual movements—that do not correspond to the church model and that—have emerged, due to their fluid and dynamic character, have propitiated an advance of global networks and have contributed to making specialized frontiers increasingly porous and permeable fields. A range of practices and beliefs related to Neo-paganism, New Age, and neo-Indianisms/neo-ethnicities have thus emerged. These three spiritual modalities are inscribed in differentiable ideologies that intertwine the spiritual, the therapeutic, the political and the identity. They concur in a search for bodily knowledge and techniques that recover the spiritual meaning of life as a way out of the materialism of the consumer culture in force in these times. However, they also have different emphases that distinguish them, although they are constantly intertwined and often share common elements and can even be practiced in the same ceremony.