Materializing

The present article explores how cycles are brought into being through the practices and affordances involved in period-tracking with apps. Based on thirteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with period-tracking app users living in the Netherlands, it expands on literature discussing the relationship between embodiment, apps, and quantification. The contributions of this article are two-fold. Theoretically, it argues for the use of Karen Barad’s notion of apparatus to understand how bodies are (re)configured in relation to self-tracking technologies (1998). Empirically, it exposes how bodies emerge in localized period-tracking practices, within material-semiotic arrangements that both resist and reproduce cultural ideals about menstruating bodies. Period-tracking with apps, this study finds, brings the body’s interior processes into being in a “systematic” way, (re)configuring the cycle as either a series of phases or an interval with a certain (normative) duration. In all cases, periodtracking with apps becomes a means for users to access their internal body and to materialize the invisible processes of the cycle in ways that can be acted upon.

TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENTOF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOSCOW METRO IN THE PERIOD FROM 1935 TO 2000

For 200 years, the Metro has been carrying out most of the passenger traffic in large cities and metropolitan areas. The metro architecture embodies cultural ideals, historical milestones and the achievements of society in various fields. The metro is the transport frame of the city, participates in the formation of the urban ensemble. Sustainable development of the metro requires a comprehensive study of its architecture, analysis of domestic and foreign analogues: the prerequisites and chronology of metro development, identification of concepts, directions, principles and techniques of the architectural formation of metro objects. A systematic approach to architectural analysis and design of the metro, identifying the importance of the role of an architect allows to determine the prospects and vectors for the development of transport infrastructure, improve the quality and safety of passenger traffic, design energy-efficient, autonomous, economical, aesthetic and ergonomic metro stations. The high rates of modern metro design require the development of measures to preserve the unity of the metro lines and communication with the city space. Systematization and classification of trends in the development of metro architecture in the period from 1823 to 2000 will allow to determine the arsenal of architectural techniques, to develop urban planning approaches to the architectural solution of the stations

The Detrimental Dialogue Between Indian Women, Beauty Discourse, Patriarchy and Indian Feminism

This framework article analyses the established connection of body image and skin tone to the ideology of power and status and the need for Indian women to achieve those beauty standards to be celebrated in their field. Even though women have gained more power, they are still defined by and in the context of men in India. Men have subtly and constructively translated this power discourse over women that has been stretching across centuries through the channels of art, literature and the portrayal of the goddesses. This pressure to continually conform to beauty’s cultural ideals and sculpt oneself to those unattainable standards leads to body dissatisfaction. It affects the image the woman has of herself. The patriarchal structure that dominates the Indian women habitus has translated the ideology of this Western concept of beauty into a ‘common sense’ that has compelled women to impose a ‘self-hegemonic’ stance and the role of Indian feminism in fighting this emerging oppressive structure.

French Fathers in Work Organizations: Navigating Work-Life Balance Challenges

This chapter aims at contributing to a better understanding of the challenges and tensions that French working fathers experience at work in trying to achieve work-life balance. Drawing on a sample of 20 fathers, aged 27–51, working in different work organizations, in-depth interviews were conducted to investigate how these fathers navigate tensions between the simultaneous pressure for having a successful career and for embodying an involved fatherhood. The findings show that the fathers’ perceptions and expectations towards work-life balance are different from women, fathers often associating their needs for work-life balance with occasional and informal flexibility and not always viewing the organization as a source of solutions. Heterogeneously influenced by their cultural ideals of work and fatherhood, they expect now more proactivity, recognition and support on the part of their organization and supervisor to fully carry out their fatherhood. A typology of three profiles with different ways of combining fatherhood and work is derived: the ‘breadwinner’ father, the ‘caring father’ and the ‘want to have it all’ father. These categories are further developed highlighting the practices and strategies French fathers mobilize to solve their work-life equation.

INDICATORS OF EVANGELIZATION AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE OF SVD EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: INTEGRATION TO ITS HR PRACTICES

This concept of organizational culture had been the subject of numerous researches across all industries including schools; Catholic educational institutions are not exempted. The primary aim of this research is to evaluate the integration of evangelization as an organizational culture to the human resource practices of SVD educational institutions. One of the major drivers of organization success is culture and because of this, aligning strategies and decision-making with cultural ideals are indispensable. Due to these fluid characteristics of culture, organizations are induced to relentlessly reassess their values and norms in order to recalibrate their practices whenever a new organizational culture emerged due to the rapidly changing environment. In this manner, the organization can easily adapt, including its organizational culture and HR practices to reduce any unwanted effects to the operations of the organization. This study used descriptive research to analyze the data gathered from 405 respondents from 11 SVD educational institutions across the Philippines. The results show that evangelization as an organizational culture of SVD educational institutions is integrated into its HR practices namely: hiring, training & development, compensation & benefits, employee relations, performance appraisal, work-life balance, and health & safety.

Screen Stars as Style Icons: an Examination of Audrey Hepburn and Sarah Jessica Parker

Through the examination of two film stars from different eras, Audrey Hepburn and Sarah Jessica Parker, this major research project (MRP) will examine how style icons are created. In order to achieve iconic style status, one must have a distinct and instantly recognizable look that represents new cultural ideals and appeals to a wide group of people. Style icons must actively participate in the fashion industry, taking a place on a creative side of the process by collaborating with designers, advertising fashion brands, and advocating and promoting fashion trends; this helps to establish their authority. Consumers of fashion also play an important role in the process. Screen narratives help actresses to embody the myths that are as repetitive and consistent as their looks circulating in the media. Through fashion, style icons represent these myths and embed them in culture. In return, they are regarded as cultural heroes and style icons.

Screen Stars as Style Icons: an Examination of Audrey Hepburn and Sarah Jessica Parker

Through the examination of two film stars from different eras, Audrey Hepburn and Sarah Jessica Parker, this major research project (MRP) will examine how style icons are created. In order to achieve iconic style status, one must have a distinct and instantly recognizable look that represents new cultural ideals and appeals to a wide group of people. Style icons must actively participate in the fashion industry, taking a place on a creative side of the process by collaborating with designers, advertising fashion brands, and advocating and promoting fashion trends; this helps to establish their authority. Consumers of fashion also play an important role in the process. Screen narratives help actresses to embody the myths that are as repetitive and consistent as their looks circulating in the media. Through fashion, style icons represent these myths and embed them in culture. In return, they are regarded as cultural heroes and style icons.

Reconfiguring Intergenerational Reciprocity

This chapter traces the trajectories through which aging migrant populations navigate temporalities of migration as they reconstruct intergenerational intimacy. It argues that aging immigrants transform cultural ideals of aging and family in response to changes in their social worlds across life stages. It also offers the concept of reconfigured reciprocity to analyze the processes through which aging immigrants fashion cultural logics of intergenerational relations to sustain connections with their children and their children's families. The chapter focuses on older immigrants that embraced ethnic traditions regarding elder care and transformed reciprocal relationships with their immediate kin. It highlights the aging immigrants' assessment of family relations that is undoubtedly biased or selective and their understanding of receiving and transnational contexts that are stereotypical or oversimplified.

William Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater: The Romantic Notion of Education and its Relation to Culture

This research paper examines the relationship between Arnold, Pater and modernism through the mediation of Wordsworth's ideas on education. Arnold's ideas on education are inspired by Wordsworth, and Arnold remains the most influential critic and theorist of education in the 'Wordsworthian tradition'. It is important to acknowledge the centrality of Arnold's ideas since Wordsworth's influence on later writers was largely mediated through Arnold's writings. Arnold echoes the best of Wordsworth in his best prose work, Culture and Anarchy. Education is a great help to culture as he says emphatically that 'education is the road to culture'. He recommends 'the right educative influences…under the banner of cultural ideals'. Arnold's influence on Pater is well-known (even if he departs from him). Wordsworth is a common source of influence on both Pater and Arnold. It is argued that Pater's aestheticism is not simply its anti-bourgeois, anti-Christian quality but its links to the notion of education and development.

Spiritual Awakening of the Personality as key to Spiritual Security in the Context of Postmodernism

The article presents a new view on the problem of educating the spiritual security of the personality from the positions of axiological, culturological, civilizational, systemic, and anthropological approaches, on which the research methodology is based. The article describes the basic concepts of research: spirituality, culture, spiritual awakening, spiritual security, and presents the author’s definition of the concept of spiritual security of the personality. The article describes the cultural ideals of coziness in different countries of the world, which allowed us to highlight the features and prove the importance of leading a spiritual way of life, the essence of which is a person’s acquiring of a state of inner peace, coziness, security and which is accompanied by the achievement of pleasure from life. The principles of educating the spiritual security of the personality have been defined. They include the principle of spiritualization, the principle of cooperation, the principle of “live” dialogue based on spiritual and cultural values. The authors have identified the main threats to the spiritual security of the personality and described the ways to overcome them, among which special attention is paid to the importance of reviving the spiritual and cultural educational component, which will be the first step towards educating a positive personality with a human face, the humane, altruistic, creative personality focused on creation, not destruction.