The Making of Homo Socialist: The Discursive Analysis of the Ideological Production of Class in China, 1949–1976

Based on a critique of the history project titled “Oral History of Peasants’ Ordinary Life in the Revolutionary Era of China,” this article provides an analysis of class ideology production from Land Reform Movement to the Cultural Revolution in China. Thirty years of socialist construction in China was based on the craft of making the Homo Socialist. The focus here is on how personal experiences were transformed into state-endorsed conduct via the discourse of class and class struggle. Over the course of the sociopolitical transformations leading to the Cultural Revolution, “class” changed from a socioeconomic designation to a political behavioral metaphor, and in the end a purely symbolic gesture; personal experiences were transformed from hallmarks of class privilege to virtual identification with imagined class struggle. And the peasants went from being “owners of bitterness” to “debtors of bitterness” on the way to becoming “sinners of the revolution”—who gradually submitted themselves to the regime in the name of revolution, liberation, and redemption. These transformations were realized through discursive practices connecting personally embodied experiences with the abstract Marxist theory of class and class struggle. Examining the shifting nature of class ideology production helps to explain how the Chinese Communist Party understood the effects of its governance and how people found class ideology meaningful to them, even when it reached the point of absurdity.

Accessibility Monitoring for People with Disabilities

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) is a law mandating that organizations in Ontario must comply to accessibility standards for people with disabilities. However, there is no tool to report accessibility complaints and track them. To that effect, mobile applications can be effective to make report and monitor accessibility issues as they arise in private as well as public spaces (e.g. building, sidewalks). An App would provide users with an opportunity beyond the mapping of compliance, it can provide data that addresses the gaps across legislation and embodied experiences. The objective of this paper is to share a novel method associated with the development accessibility monitoring Android App prototype called “ACCESS-ABILITY.” ACCESS-ABILITY is a first-of-its-kind app in the domain of disability informatics, it facilitates the formation of a collaborative virtual community that can be used by people with disabilities, advocacy groups, organizations and official bodies.

Navigating and resisting the compulsory military service in Iran: embodied experiences of non-heterosexual Iranian men

In the homosocial space of the all male military service, (hetero)masculinity and gender normativity are promoted and bravery and warrior mentality are highly valued. On this basis, policing gender and sexuality is a relevant issue, aiming to reward heteronormativity and hyper masculinity and marginalize non heterosexuality and gender nonconforming performances. In the Iranian context, since the Iran Iraq war (1980–1988), military service has produced a feature of militarized (hetero)masculinities through the cult of martyrdom. It enforces soldiers to stand up against the enemy, be willing to seek martyrdom and sacrifice themselves in order to protect the Islamic Iranian homeland. It is a symbol of entering adulthood and during that time young men are expected to embody the official ideology which revolves around heteronormativity and strict gender norms. In this context, the focus of this paper is the embodied experiences of those young conscripts who do not embody the (hetero)masculine ideal, because they are either non heterosexual or do not fit into the strict regime of gender. Drawing on ethnographic data, and policy documents, this paper shows how the idea of the (hetero)masculine ideal has been translated into practice through the dispositif of the sarbazi and how some young Iranian non heterosexual men try to resist conscription while others try to find ways to carve out a liminal heterotopic space during their military service.

Academia and Motherhood: A Narrative Inquiry of Ontario Academic Mothers’ Experiences in University Graduate Programs

This research provides a qualitative narrative inquiry into the experiences of academic mothers from a Southwestern Ontario university campus. Analysis of the semi-structured interviews and focus groups reveal six key themes regarding the nexus between motherhood and academia: (1) intersection of work and family; (2) embodied experiences of pregnancy; (3) mentoring and networking opportunities; (4) inconsistencies between institutional and program policies; (5) departmental support; and (6) an overall level of satisfaction in being a mother during graduate studies. These key findings are discussed and highlight some of the challenges associated with balancing motherhood, graduate studies, and family life. Issues related to maternal well-being, gender equity, diversity, and inclusion within academia are also discussed and shed light on the experiences of this increasing, yet largely overlooked demographic on Canadian university campuses.

From crisis to the everyday: Shouldn't we all be writing economies?

This commentary explores the politics of writing about the economy in a culture, society, and discipline that tends to prioritize masculinist (and white) theories and definitions of economy over embodied experiences of people living their everyday lives. Inspired by Timothy Mitchell's problematization of the economy as an object of analysis, we press further on the seemingly singular unit of “the” economy and who is allowed to define it as such. We are animated by questions of who is considered an expert on the economy and how, or by whom, crises in the economy are recognized. Drawing from our own writing experiences during the pandemic and from social movements we research, we argue for alternate ways of thinking about experiences of and expertise on the economy. In reckoning with how social movements speak to power in a bid to transform economies, we consider the role of economic geography in the economy of writing and knowledge production surrounding “the economy” itself. We make the case for a more public economic geography grounded in the social and economic embeddedness of knowledge production, the material consequences of who gets to define what is economically “important,” and the potential for this expertise to be located anywhere.

To Stop and See: Contemplative Fieldwork as Thoughtful Observation

Contemplation, or the practice of sitting still to ‘stop and see’, can expand one’s embodied awareness. This expanded awareness resembles ethnographic sensibility, a disposition practiced by researchers to generate an understanding of the ‘field’. My fieldwork on contemplative activism involves a double thoughtful observation: once as contemplation, and once as ethnographic sensitivity. How do I make sense of data as I cannot distinguish between my own embodied experiences of contemplation and my methodological practices as a fieldworker? How do I engage with ‘data’ that escape words when contemplative activism takes place in silence? Rather than making the familiar strange -as much literature on fieldwork suggests- keeping the ‘strange’ strange might be similarly productive, especially when it concerns esoteric experiences fieldworkers (perhaps) have in the field. Instead of ethnographic sensibility being about seeing differently, ‘learning’ in the field can be about practicing to ‘stop and see’ different things.

Choose your own adventure: Vocal jazz improvisation, conceptual metaphor, and cognitive embodiment

Creativity in the form of musical improvisation has received growing attention from researchers informed by the literature on embodiment. To date, this research has focused on the embodied experiences of improvising instrumentalists rather than those of improvising singers. This article investigates the experience of embodiment during improvisation through a systematic analysis of the metaphorical language used by an artist-level jazz singer in her reflections on practice. Extensive interview data with the participant were analyzed to identify and reconstruct metaphorical expressions into conceptual metaphors. In this process, the metaphor of IMPROVISATION IS AN ADVENTURE was identified as the overarching conceptual structure that the participant used to make sense of her experiences of improvisation. This metaphor and its mappings illuminate the cognitively embodied dimension of vocal jazz improvisation. These findings will be of interest to jazz singers and vocal jazz educators who are encouraged to explore more fully the role of the body–mind’s interactions with its environment in order to establish expertise in improvisational ways of knowing. This research illuminates the multidimensional nature of an expert singer’s experiences of improvisation and is presented as a provocation for future research to include singers as participants when investigating musical improvisation and cognitive embodiment.

Pairing and sharing: The birth of the sense of us

The goal of this paper is to show that a particular view of emotion sharing and a specific hypothesis on infant social perception strengthen each other. The view of emotion sharing is called “the straightforward view.” The hypothesis on infant social perception is called “the pairing account.” The straightforward view suggests that participants in emotion sharing undergo one and the same overarching emotion. The pairing account posits that infants perceive others’ embodied experiences as belonging to someone other than the self through a process of assimilation to, and accommodation of, their own embodied experience. The connection between the two theories lies in the domain-general process of association by similarity, which functions both in the individuation of a unitary emotion and in the interpretation of the sensory stimulus. By elaborating on this connection, the straightforward view becomes more solid from the cognitive-developmental standpoint and the pairing account expands its explanatory power. Since the straightforward view requires minimal forms of self- and other-awareness, the paper provides a characterization of the developmental origin of the sense of us, i.e., the experience of self and other as co-subjects of a shared emotional state.