The Making of Meaning through Dyadic Haptic Affective Touch

Despite the importance of touch in human–human relations, research in affective tactile practices is in its infancy, lacking in-depth understanding needed to inform the design of remote digital touch communication. This article reports two qualitative studies that explore tactile affective communication in specific social contexts, and the bi-directional creation, sending and interpretation of digital touch messages using a purpose-built research tool, the Tactile Emoticon. The system comprises a pair of remotely connected mitts, which enable users in different locations to communicate through tactile messages, by orchestrating duration and level of three haptic sensations: vibration, pressure and temperature. Qualitative analysis shows the nuanced ways in which 68 participants configured these elements to make meaning from touch messages they sent and received. It points to the affect and emotion of touch, its sensoriality and ambiguity, the significance of context, social norms and expectations of touch participants. Findings suggest key design considerations for digital touch communication, where the emphasis shifts from generating ‘recognizable touches’ to tools that allow people to shape their touches and establish common understanding about their meaning.

Three Decades of Environmental Values: Some Personal Reflections

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises.

Russian Metropolitan Railway Stations as Historical Architectural Masterpieces

According to the author of the article, the appearance of the first railway stations immediately became the most striking image of the time. The history of the architecture of Russian railway stations begins at the same time when the first railway in Russia was built connecting St. Petersburg to Pavlovsk. Previously existing post stations and the so-called road imperial palaces served prototypes for railway stations.The railway station is, first, a story in which both the most interesting architectural and social plots collide. The railway station offers passengers the most vivid images of our time. The architects who designed the first railway stations had to solve problems that no one had ever encountered before: to cover train sheds by a roof, to design platforms, lighting, ventilation, acoustics... All this made the railway station the most technically enriched architectural genre of its time. And in this sense, the railway station architecture is a very interesting plot, in which everything changes very quickly and where all human relations are very aggravated. Therefore, the railway station is a condensed replica of society. Therefore, at the railway station, you can always very clearly see how society is organised. For example, at imperial railway stations, division of passengers per travel classes was obvious and inherent in the architectural program itself. The imperial pavilions, the imperial rooms also make part of the story... The railway station is, first, an image of modernity, mobility and a history of boundaries between the country and the city. This is especially interesting in the case of metropolitan railway stations.

Modern Technologies and Transformation of Social Work Profession and Education: Insights of Teachers of the Lithuanian and Japanese Higher Education Institutions

This article explores the attitudes of Japanese and Lithuanian social work program teachers towards the challenges posed by modern technologies that may transform social work profession and studies. Study data revealed that scientists from both countries admit that “taming” technologies and optimally “cooperating” with them is the main challenge of social work practice and studies. On the one hand, belief that technological development will provide more opportunities to fulfil the mission of social work was prevalent among the study participants, on the other hand, they had expressed concern that eventually the use of technology will change the essence of social work as a profession of human relations or will create modified forms of social exclusion. Additionally, a niche for the new role of the social worker was identified: to help the world “occupied” by technology remain “social”. Attitudes of research participants from both Lithuania and Japan can be linked to traditional concept of sociality and vision of social work as profession that belongs exclusively to area of human relations. B. Latour’s asocial sociality concept can be applied for broader look into this situation. This concept states that efforts to trace the contribution of actors of an inhuman nature to what belongs in the human world may be more successful when one ceases to view the world exclusively through human eyes and tries to reveal the inner perspectives of phenomena of a mixed nature.

Theories of Institutions

The human condition teems with institutions – intertemporal social arrangements that shape human relations in support of particular values – and the social scientific work developed over the last five decades aimed at understanding them is similarly vast and diverse. This book synthesizes scholarship from across the social sciences, with special focus on political science, sociology, economics, and organizational studies. Drawing out institutions' essentially social and temporal qualities and their varying relationships to efficiency and power, the authors identify more underlying similarity in understandings of institutional origins, maintenance, and change than emerges from overviews from within any given disciplinary tradition. Most importantly, Theories of Institutions identifies dozens of avenues for cross-fertilization, the pursuit of which can help keep this broad and inherently diverse field of study vibrant for future generations of scholars.

Human Relations And Working Environment Conditions In Building A Work Ethic With Motivation As Mediation At The Office Of The Agency For Personnel And Human Resources Development (BKPSDM) Sawahlunto City

This study aims to determine the influence of Human Relations and Work Environment Conditions in Building a Work Ethic with Motivation as Mediation at the Office of the Personnel and Human Resources Development Agency (BKPSDM) Sawahlunto City. The method used is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with Partial Least Square (PLS) 3.0. By distributing questionnaires as many as 39 respondents. The results of the data analysis concluded that there was a positive and significant influence on the human relation variable on the work ethic variable. There is a positive and insignificant influence on work environment variables on work ethic variables. There is a positive and insignificant influence of the human relation variable on the motivation variable. There is a significant positive effect of the human relation variable on work ethic variables. There is a positive influence which is not significant, the motivation variable has an effect on work ethic variables. There is a positive and insignificant influence given by the human relation variable on the work ethic variable which is mediated by motivation. There is a positive and insignificant influence given by the work environment variable on work ethic variables mediated by motivation.

From Bureaucratic Discipline to Self-Actualization: Using Marx and Foucault to Critique the Demand for Better Work Rather Than Less Work

This essay brings together Karl Marx’s alienation critique with Michel Foucault’s theoretical work on technologies of power to examine the demand for self-actualizing work. I argue that many of the themes in Marx’s writings appear frequently in the human relations management literature and are later incorporated by New Public Management. However, Foucault’s work is shown to complement and extend Marx’s initial alienation analysis, and then to highlight the reliance of human relations management on disciplinary technologies. Lost in the demand for better work is a more radical vision of harnessing machinery to bring about a post-work society.

Strategic Human Resource Management

Human resource management has become an integral part of management with the basic aim of maintaining better human relations at work place through the application and evaluation of organizational policies and programs so as to utilize human resources in an optimized and effective manner. In this context, this chapter focuses keenly on the various domains centering around human resource management. Initially a detailed theoretical background regarding this construct has been presented followed by highlighting the components and objectives of strategizing human resource management. Lastly, the models and perspectives pertaining to strategic human resource management have also been discussed considering their application and relevance in modern-day organizations.

An Integrated Approach (Social and Health) in the Elderly With Diabetes

The research in question arises from the need to elaborate a work of reflection capable of contributing to one of the intervention responses with the focus of attention, integrated care in various areas of society (social and health), sensitivity to the older people, between health and the social sector, based on assertive interpersonal communication, clear and positive, which function in a holistic view of the older person, as a game of balance. This chapter aims to offer and promote some clues about the importance of the social sector's communion with the health sector in an integrated and inclusive logic for citizens. The model, Assertividade Clareza e Positivity, being an increase in health literacy, was the motto for the methodology of the chapter, in a perspective of communication facilitating the field of human relations. The results point to a better understanding and analysis of a strategy, focused on the integrated approach in the elderly with diabetes.