Search results

To explore the associations between noticing nature, nature connectedness, time in nature and human and nature’s well-being during the corona pandemic restrictions.

Natural England’s people and nature survey (PANS) data (n = 4,206) from the UK was used to assess a number of well-being outcomes (loneliness, life satisfaction, worthwhile life and happiness) and pro-nature behaviours as a function of longer-term physical time in nature and psychological connectedness to nature and shorter-term visits and noticing of nature.

Longer-term factors of nature connectedness and time in nature were both consistent significant predictors of well-being measures (apart from loneliness) and pro-nature conservation behaviours. Considered alone short-term visits and noticing were again consistent and significant predictors of three well-being measures, but recent visits to nature were not associated with pro-nature conservation behaviours. A combined regression highlighted the importance of a longer-term relationship with nature in all outcomes apart from loneliness but also revealed that even when considered in concert with longer-term factors, currently noticing nature had a role in feeling one’s life was worthwhile, pro-nature behaviours and loneliness.

The closeness of the human-nature relationship and noticing nature have rarely been examined in concert with nature visits. Further, the reciprocal benefits of pro-nature behaviours are often overlooked.

A human life seems to have infinite value, and morality appears to demand that no effort be spared to preserve or to maintain it. Yet health care costs could destroy the economy if all available knowledge was applied to every person on the globe. There is no guaranteed solution, but this paper argues that we must look closely at the concepts of life and the person and understand the distinctions between the person as he or she really is (the “ontological person” in philosophical terms), the social person (the person who appears in the lives of others), and the psychological person (ourselves as we appear in our inner lives). If we are clear we can make decisions about how to pay for health care and how to manage it which will tend to keep costs under control and still respond to the dignity and worth of individuals touched by infinity.

The authors track the well-being of individuals across five European countries during the course of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and relate their well-being to working from home. The authors also consider the role of pandemic-policy stringency in affecting well-being in Europe.

The authors have four waves of novel harmonised longitudinal data in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden, covering the period May–November 2020. Well-being is measured in five dimensions: life satisfaction, a worthwhile life, loneliness, depression and anxiety. A retrospective diary indicates whether the individual was working in each month since February 2020 and if so whether at home or not at home. Policy stringency is matched in per country at the daily level. The authors consider both cross-section and panel regressions and the mediating and moderating effects of control variables, including household variables and income.

Well-being among workers is lower for those who work from home, and those who are not working have the lowest well-being of all. The panel results are more mitigated, with switching into working at home yielding a small drop in anxiety. The panel and cross-section difference could reflect adaptation or the selection of certain types of individuals into working at home. Policy stringency is always negatively correlated with well-being. The authors find no mediation effects. The well-being penalty from working at home is larger for the older, the better-educated, those with young children and those with more crowded housing.

The harmonised cross-country panel data on individuals' experiences during COVID-19 are novel. The authors relate working from home and policy stringency to multiple well-being measures. The authors emphasise the effect of working from home on not only the level of well-being but also its distribution.

This paper aims to demonstrate early psychological concomitants of the Covid-19 pandemic in England on a sample of younger and older people.

A cross-sectional quantitative questionnaire (n = 1608) was conducted on the Prolific website. Participants completed the PERMA Scale (Flourishing), the four Office of National Statistics (ONS4) Well-being Questions, the Clinical Outcomes Measure in Routine Evaluation (CORE-10) and the short University of California Los Angeles Brief Loneliness Scale.

Data were gathered on March 18, 2020, near the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. This study looks at the effects of the developing pandemic on younger participants (18 to 25 years, n = 391) and older participants (60 to 80 years, n = 104). Flourishing levels for older participants were significantly higher (M = 107.96) than for younger participants (M = 97.80). Younger participants scored significantly higher on the ONS4 for anxiety and lower than the older participants for happiness, life satisfaction and having a worthwhile life. Levels of psychological distress (CORE-10) were also significantly lower for older participants (M = 9.06) than for younger participants (M = 14.61). Finally, younger participants scored significantly higher on the Brief UCLA Loneliness Scale (M = 6.05) than older participants (M = 4.64).

From these findings, the Covid-19 pandemic was having a significantly greater effect on younger people in England, less than one week before the UK went into “lockdown”. Scores for both the Younger and Older groups on all the study measures were worse than normative comparisons. The study had no specific measure of Covid-19 anxiety, but nor was one available at the time of the survey.

This study suggests that younger people (18 to 25) may be a more vulnerable group during the Covid-19 pandemic than many may have realized.

As a recent British Psychological Society report concluded, there is a lot of untapped wisdom amongst older groups in society.

This is one of the earliest studies to look at psychological distress before England went into “lockdown.”

Industry has a vital part to play in helping as many disabled people as possible to lead a worthwhile life, and in giving them the opportunity to earn their own living. Many companies recognise this. Discussions staff from the Food Drink and Tobacco Industry Training Board have had with those concerned with the training and employment of handicapped workers, however, suggest that their potential is still not being fully recognised or utilised. Possibly this is because companies while wanting to help simply do not know how to go about it, although those with twenty or more employees are in fact required under the Government's quota scheme to employ a certain percentage of disabled workers, provided of course that this is practicable.

Introduction Science and Technology vs. Holistic Wisdom There have been attempts to get rid of monism in the outlook on the world (die Weltanschauung) which includes human wisdom, in concert with decentralization and diversification in the power structure of politics and economy. It is certain that at least people in Western civilized nations have been enjoying a material life richer than before, thanks to the wisdom of “Cartesianism” and the subsequent experimental knowledge and technology. However, in the midst of a deadly impasse which is accompanied by the fear of nuclear warfare, environmental disruption, increase in entropy, racial prejudices, increasing disparity in wealth, alienation of human beings and so on, the Utopian idea that “technological innovations equal the progress of mankind” must now be thoroughly criticized. Science, which forms the very basis of technology is knowledge, not wisdom. So it is of vital importance to review such an idea thoroughly in the light of “holistic wisdom”, bearing in mind this aspect of modern civilization which was built on the basis of science and technology as tools. What is the most important with a tool is how to use it. The value of a tool is determined by how a man with established identity will use it.

Rights constitute a familiar feature of the liberal discourse of judging. This chapter seeks to recast this discourse away from the language of rights by considering two cases where liberals often invoke it: abortion and same-sex marriage. I argue that the presence of rights in American constitutional discourse exacerbates the counter-majoritarian nature of judicial review. We do better to recast the language of judging from an emphasis on protecting rights to an emphasis on making sure that the demos acts on publicly justifiable reasons. In doing so, I proffer a novel analysis of liberal theory's extant commitment to public reason, one that conceptualizes public reason as representing the scope of state power.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that gender research is crucial to understanding post‐socialist transformations and wider changes in social life. Focused on employment experiences and gender identities of two generations of Bulgarian women, it aims to highlight the complex intertwining of social structure and individual agency and to point out how processes of continuity and change constitute the post‐socialist transformation and individual life journeys.

Informed by feminist analyses of gender and citizenship, generation theory and qualitative interviews, the paper employs the notion of gender imaginaries in comparing continuity and change in gender policy and individual experiences.

The paper argues that significant changes occurred after 1989 in the ways official gender imaginaries were constructed through law, policy, and public discourses. In comparison to this, individual women's gender imaginaries entailed not only change but also sustained attachment to paid work, rejection of domesticity, and continued feelings of gender equality. This suggests that stable and often unquestioned notions of gender had a significant role for individual imaginaries. In addition to this, some of the most considerable changes were manifested in the notions of risk and uncertainty, which have become central aspects of the post‐socialist gender imaginary, particularly in relation to paid work.

The paper engages in a comparison of employment experiences of two generations of women thus directing its enquiry to the combination of individuals' agency in crafting one's life journey and the constraints of social structures and existing gender inequalities. Thus, transformations in individual lived lives of women are seen as interrelated with social change and historic location.

This article aims to explore construction, production and distribution of environmental information in social media. Specifically, the focus is on people's accounts in social media of their everyday life practices aimed at leading what are considered environmentally friendly lives. The article seeks to establish how through the reproduction of alignments of certain everyday and domestic practices with environmental destruction and protection situated information on the environment is constructed and made available.

This study is based on a qualitative, interpretative analysis of content, materiality and form of blogs and of their enmeshed social media applications, dedicated specifically to aspects of environmentally friendly everyday life. The blogs were selected from an interlinked set of 60 Swedish language environment blogs.

Formal, topical and social arrangements give priority to certain material conditions and practices that then underpin a set of dominant versions of a greener life, while others remain submerged. The routinised alignment of certain practices with the environment is indispensable for environmental information to work. However, breaking with routines and re‐arranging practices is what makes them possible in the first place. De‐routinisation and the culturally non‐habitual character make for the informational value of material practices and of practices of engagement.

The study contributes to the understanding of what makes environmental information meaningful in everyday life. This has potential implications for policy making and information campaigns in the area.

Environmental issues are an underrepresented area of research in LIS. This article contributes to the development of this research area in the field. Furthermore, uniting a practice approach with a theoretical interest in everyday life politics is a novel addition to studies of social engagement in online environments.

This paper aims to offer a profile of Stuart Baker‐Brown.

Stuart provides a short biography and is then interviewed by Jerome. Areas covered in the interview include his trek to Everest Base Camp, involvement with the Time to Change anti‐stigma campaign and his work on the Recovery Archive.

Stuart stresses the importance of giving hope to people with mental health problems. Individuals also need to believe that they can recover. He feels that the new Recovery Archive will help provide a more encouraging alternative perspective on living a life beyond the effects of mental illness.

Stuart is one of comparatively few people trying to present psychosis in a more positive perspective. He has made a significant contribution to helping change public perceptions towards mental illness through his media work.