Counterspaces of Resistance: Peter Carey’s Bliss

The article discusses how Peter Carey’s 1980 novel Bliss constructs and exam- ines various counterspaces both in and beyond the text. First, it shows how the plot jux- taposes the consumerist middle-class suburban model of life with an alternative lifestyle, presenting the attractions and limitations of both, yet preferring rather the latter. Secondly, at the level of literary convention, the text activates the strategies of comic social realism only to juxtapose them with elements of fantasy, fairy tale and myth, thus undermining the representational powers of the former and hinting at other possibilities of representation. Finally, the film adaptation of the novel shows how even rebellious or critical texts may become ‘domesticated’ or absorbed by the dominating logic of cultural production, thus once again demonstrating the ambivalent position of works of art in general, and this nov- el in particular. The article argues that the ambivalence engrained in the text is an intrinsic feature, not only of Australian culture or heterotopias but of most cultural products and practices inevitably entangled in the double logic of conforming and resistance.

Influence of Alternative Lifestyles on Antibiotic Use during Pregnancy, Lactation and in Children

Alternative lifestyles are likely to be associated with distinct usage of specific medicinal products. Our goal was to find out whether the intake of antibiotics during pregnancy and by children differs according to whether the mothers have alternative or conventional lifestyles. Therefore, we investigated the use of antibiotics by pregnant women and by children up to 11 years of age participating in the KOALA Birth Cohort Study. This cohort comprises two recruitment groups of mother–infant pairs, one with alternative lifestyles (selected via organic food shops, anthroposophic clinicians and midwives, anthroposophic under-five clinics, Rudolf Steiner schools and relevant magazines, n = 491) the other with conventional lifestyles (no selection based on lifestyle, n = 2343). Mothers in the alternative lifestyle group more frequently adhered to specific living rules and identified themselves with anthroposophy more than mothers in the conventional lifestyle group. The results revealed significant differences in antibiotic use during pregnancy and in children from 3 months to 10 years of age between the two groups. The rate of antibiotic use in children was consistently lower in the alternative lifestyle group than in the conventional lifestyle group. Antibiotic use in pregnancy was higher in low educated women, and maternal antibiotic use during lactation was higher after an instrumented delivery in hospital. Antibiotic use in the infant was higher when they had older sibs or were born in hospital, and lower in those who had been longer breastfed. After adjustment for these factors, the differences in antibiotic use between the alternative and conventional groups remained. The results suggest that an alternative lifestyle is associated with cautious antibiotic use during pregnancy, lactation and in children.

Sustainable Urban Implants

"Sustainable Urban Implants" (SUIs) are sustainable urban cores based on principles of sustainable urban planning and sustainable architectural design practices that are melded together to achieve a most desirable sustainable living environment. As a combined force of urban planning, architecture and community interaction, this type of sustainable development is capable of changing fossil fuel-based city structures. It provides an alternative lifestyle that is enjoyable, economical, diverse and natural and that can enliven communities and strengthen social interaction. Planting SUIs on brownfields of Toronto suburbs, near public transportation nodes, is the strategy that has been identified as being effective and one that has been used in this thesis. As a result of this, private car-based commuting will decrease and public transportation will improve. An improvement of the lifestyle of suburbs will also be observed as current residents of the areas surrounding SUIs will also benefit from the newly provided urban spaces and work places that create employment opportunities.

Sustainable Urban Implants

"Sustainable Urban Implants" (SUIs) are sustainable urban cores based on principles of sustainable urban planning and sustainable architectural design practices that are melded together to achieve a most desirable sustainable living environment. As a combined force of urban planning, architecture and community interaction, this type of sustainable development is capable of changing fossil fuel-based city structures. It provides an alternative lifestyle that is enjoyable, economical, diverse and natural and that can enliven communities and strengthen social interaction. Planting SUIs on brownfields of Toronto suburbs, near public transportation nodes, is the strategy that has been identified as being effective and one that has been used in this thesis. As a result of this, private car-based commuting will decrease and public transportation will improve. An improvement of the lifestyle of suburbs will also be observed as current residents of the areas surrounding SUIs will also benefit from the newly provided urban spaces and work places that create employment opportunities.

Science denial and medical misinformation in pandemic times: A psycho-criminological analysis

This study integrates criminological social learning and psychological explanations of individual factors and mechanisms for science denial to offer an individual-level analysis of ‘alternative lifestyle’ subcultural groups in cyberspace in order to understand the assimilation, success and proliferation of potentially dangerous health-related misinformation. Through a rigorous passive online ethnography of two relevant self-identifying ‘alternative lifestyle’ Italian- and English-speaking online communities observed over the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed the unfolding of online narratives and behavioural intentions of criminological and psychological interest. We identified in our data both individual factors and mechanisms for science denial and clues to social learning, and we showed how they interrelate. Furthermore, by looking at the linguistic and visual resources used to shape how participants think through social learning mechanisms, we identified four main narrative frames: informative; oppositional; empathetic; and agency and spirituality. The findings of this study provide a more comprehensive understanding of the reasons for and mechanisms behind medical misinformation online and suggest ways to mitigate the related harms.

Who Am I?

This chapter focuses on how culture and the new media shape one's identity. While culture and one's family initially shape one's identity, the new media provide new ideas and lifestyles that influence one's identity. One's identity changes throughout one's lifespan, and the new media presents more information and alternative lifestyle choices for individuals. Identity itself is a complex concept and the self is viewed as the continuing, consistent narrative that one presents over one's lifetime and over different contexts. The new media enable people to develop online identities, and such identities may be authentic or inauthentic when compared to one's real life identity. The new media present different venues for developing and expressing one's self. The new media also enable individuals to maintain cultural and identity links with their home culture although they may have located elsewhere in the world.

Domestication or Encapsulation? Developing Coffee Culture Among Indonesia Middle-Class Income

This article is an anthropology study on how western-style coffee culture influences Indonesian coffee culture and eventually develops a new localized coffee culture. Immense development of such worldwide coffee franchise as Starbucks affects local community's coffee culture, particularly the middle class. This new wave is considered as an alternative lifestyle for those who are consumptive and seeking for leisure, dynamics, and identity. Broader than just the process of domestication or creolization, Indonesian new coffee culture has an element of “soft countering to” western coffee culture even though it still embraces some parts of the western styles. This phenomenon is referred to by the writer as the cultural encapsulation process or the process of substantial cultural resistance by drawing a line between the two coffee cultures with the intention of taking merely compatible elements.

«Ånden som holdt på å le seg i hjel»: En studie av humor i alternativt religiøse magasiner

This study addresses the link between alternative religiosity and humour. Alternative religiosity is characterized by an openness to the spiritual world, focusing on various forms of practice related to meditation, therapy and self-development. It has been described as a pick-and-mix religion were individuals pick and choose beliefs from different religions and religious orientations, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Western esoteric religiosity. This article looks at how humour is used as a tool in two alternative religious magazines. It describes the content of humour and in which contexts humour is found in these magazines. The aim of both magazines is to spread information about alternative religiosity, alternative lifestyles and different alternative treatment methods. Humour occurs in different contexts in the two magazines and changes over time. However, humour is a rather rare tool and has a subordinate function. It is often used to spread information about an alternative lifestyle. It also appears as part of alternative self-presentations and attempts to create positive communitive identity

Christian Homeschoolers

Framed by a visit to the Teach Them Diligently Christian Homeschooling Convention, the largest event of its kind, this chapter explores the large and growing phenomena of Christian homeschooling. Christian homeschooling differs from its secular, alternative lifestyle counterpart by a strong commitment to biblical teachings about family, science, and a concomitant conservative antipathy to so-called “government schooling.” At its oldest and simplest it embraces Anabaptist groups, who offer the most basic lessons to the rest of the community. Ken Hamm, and “young Earth creationists” (who argue for six actual days of creation and a maximum Earth age of 10,000 years are even more influential in the community, as are the Family Research Council, and groups urging women to have as many children as possible for biblical reasons. One of the interesting features of the movement is how many of today’s southern homeschooling parents were themselves the products of an earlier generation of the “Christian academies” devised in the 1960s and 1970s to avoid racial integration. Now that these same academies are mostly integrated, there is some evidence that the contemporary practice of educating one’s children at home (an activity differentially preferred by whites) has the effect of furthering educational segregation.