At the age of a failing economic system and undeniable evidence of the effects humankind has had over the planet, it is necessary to look for alternatives to the way we live locally. This article explores the use of designing narratives and metanarratives to co-create imaginaries serving as the needed alternatives. This research starts by considering the historical factors to understand how industrialisation and the loss of traditional practices created a culture of disconnection from Nature in the Girona area, but also looks at why people start now reconnecting with it. The analysis is the foundation for speculative design practices to co-create a new local narrative of connection and regeneration. The project adopted the Integrative Worldviews Framework and used paradoxes to create possible future worldviews based on historical factors and literature. Citizens participated in conversational future-visioning workshops to develop and evaluate their local imagery of the previously created worldviews. This conversation-based exercise evidenced the potential of paradoxes in destructive futures to create imaginaries of regeneration. These imaginaries merge and form future stories. From the future narratives, the practice created cultural artefacts embodying a new culture of connection based on storytelling, traditional jobs, and a mythological understanding of Nature. Finally, as observed at the end of the project, these artefacts allow citizens to adopt them as their culture and expand their current worldview.
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It is by no means uncommon that academic scholars, journalists and even poets use the epi-thet ‘age of’ to signal how a certain feature is particularly characteristic of the times in which we live. In this chapter, we argue that it makes sense to address our current epoch as an ‘age of emotions’. Broadly speaking this entails that emotions, in many shapes and forms, have been widely recognized as decisive factors in social, cultural, economic and political realms in ways that were not the case before. For example, emotions are proven to play a key role in otherwise rational aspects of life such as political orientation and elections, as Arlie R. Hochschild so forcefully has demonstrated in her account of how people’s deep emotions are decisive when constructing their political identity and casting their vote (Hochschild 2016). In a more specific sense, emotions have historically been singled out as particularly informative about the psychic constitution of the times in which we live. W. H. Auden in 1947 famously declared that this epoch was an ‘age of anxiety’ (Auden 1948). Written in the aftermath of World War II, this pessimistic statement is not surprising: Anxiety was a normal human response to extraordinary circumstances. Recently, journalist of The Guardian, Oli-ver Burkeman, has pondered whether we currently live in an ‘age of rage’, in which people are – simply put – angrier than before, and in which social media is supporting and encourag-ing the ventilation of people’s rage and fury in a hitherto unseen manner. In relation to this chapter, the statement made by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield, based on an in-creasing prevalence of the phenomenon in question, that contemporary society should be understood as an ‘age of depression’, is noteworthy (Horwitz and Wakefield 2005). This characteristic begs the questions of how depression has become such an influential and prev-alent disorder in our times and how – even if – we should understand the phenomenon as an indicatory emotion of our epoch? Both as a sign of our times and as an emotion, depression is a particularly interesting phenomenon to study. This is not least due to its long and prolific history. As literary scholar Clark Lawlor has stated, it seems as if depression has been around forever and that depres-sion has been ‘fashionable throughout its history’ (Lawlor 2012:2). For centuries, Lawlor explains, depression has been a socio-cultural weighty condition that a significant amount of people has been emotionally affected by. Similarly, however, he also implies that the under-standing of depression – as a fashionable type of suffering – has changed proportionate to various socio-historical transformations. That is, depression is by no means a static descrip-tion of a specific type of human suffering. Depression changes and ‘relates’ to the societal circumstances it is situated in. If we focus on contemporary late modern society, two things hold true. First of all, there seems to be no doubt about the fact that the dominating under-standing of depression, by and large, is equivalent with the medically informed definition of Major Depression Disorder found in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). In here, depression is perceived as a biomedical disease that people suffer from. Secondly, we are witnessing a societal proliferation of the diagnosis of depression unseen in history. WHO has expressed that a veritable depression alarm is ringing loudly worldwide, and that more than 264 million people of all ages now suffer from depression (www.who.int). The combination of these facts is interesting. It informs us about a situation in which a biomedical understanding of depression has inserted itself in the societal discourse about what depression is, and that this understanding has internalized itself in the lives of many people. How are we to fathom this? In this chapter, we shall address this by following four main steps. First, we shall explore how depression has come to be understood as a biomedical disorder that is treated as a specific diagnosable disease, and then show how this understand-ing has been criticized. Second, we elucidate how – and against the backdrop of what – con-temporary depression can be understood as an emotion. Third, we will attempt to nuance the understanding of depression as emotion by arguing that when one zooms in on the phenome-non – that is on the experience of depression – one comes to understand depression as ele-mentary disconnection. Fourth, and based on this deepened understanding, we shall show how the alleged ‘depression epidemic’ can be sensibly linked to a certain subject-position in contemporary culture. Lastly, we will discuss some important implications of this nuanced understanding of depression. This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in "Emotions in Culture and Everyday Life Conceptual, Theoretical and Empirical Explorations". on 27.05.2024, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Emotions-in-Culture-and-Everyday-Life-Conceptual-Theoretical-and-Empirical-Explorations/Jacobsen/p/book/9781032077314?srsltid=AfmBOop3BqR29YtXXk7FrP4zXPX2BNdx5XizlZGoNZo4fDYC9HJ9OwQE
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Have you ever seen a place transformed beyond recognition? Maybe a local lake dried up, or a treasured tree blew down, leaving an empty space where there was once a landmark. Places change. Landscapes transform because of human intervention and events like extreme weather. Not every change needs to be a loss. But some changes are devastating. Why do we grieve for some losses, and not others? Why does it upset us when a stately local tree is cut down near, but not affect us when an area the size of Cyprus is deforested every year in the Amazon?
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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has been a forerunner of the airline industry since 1919. As the oldest operating airline to date, the company aims to become innovators of today. This paper proposes an addition to the KLM transformation projects: Moving Your World, The Digital Transformation, and The KLM Real Estate Vision. This addition is a concept for ‘The Winning Way of Working,’ which aims to create a holistic workplace design; one where KLM employees are able to experience flexible and customizable environments, disconnection between colleagues and locations is reduced, and health benefits of vegetation in work environments are promoted.
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This chapter explains in brief what is needed to achieve more sustainable manufacturing processes. It develops both aspects of sustainable, economic, and technical feasibility with most focus on the latter. Remanufacturing processes are described together with relevant factors that enhance their effectivity and efficiency. An overview is given of what kind of shopfloor innovations are required in the near future and some suggestions on how digital and other Industry 4.0 technologies could help to move toward circular manufacturing.
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Considering the challenges on sustainable agriculture in the district, different institutions join hands to overcome these issues and respond to the felt need of working more integrative both in the agricultural sector and environmental knowledge system. Adding a sense of urgency due to COVID-19 into problem analysis, these institutions accelerated the ambition to develop a Digital Farmer Field School (DFFS). This paper elaborates on the co-construction of principles for the design of a Digital Farmer Field School (DFFS) by the local stakeholders in Enrekang district. The local design team design of the DFFS Enrekang is composed of a transdisciplinary team from relevant government institutions and research institutions. The design principles of DFFS are built around inclusive design principles, concepts of interface usability based on different type of access to digital technology models, responsible innovation criteria and learning principles of farmer field school (FFS). The DFFS Enrekang design principles serve as guiding principles and shared value among the collaborating institutions to combine ambition, inspiration, and accountability in the DFFS management and development processes. This tablet based digital learning platform aims to provide an alternative for farmers to access information on sustainable agricultural and environmental practices.
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Survivors of father–daughter incest often suffer from complex trauma and sensory insensitivity, making it difficult to decipher the sensations in the body and experience body ownership, self-location and agency. This case study illustrates how sensory focused, Trauma-Centred Developmental Transformations can help restore or develop a bodily self, desensitize fear-based schemas, revise deeply buried beliefs and extend repertoire.
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The Erasmus+ funded project Socially Engaged Universities (SEU) is aiming to explore different models of community university partnerships (CUPs) and to share experience and expertise of how European Universities can work with and for their local communities through “Third Mission” activities in addition to their core teaching and research tasks. Within the framework of City Deal on Education Delft, the knowledge broker was appointed to develop the City Lab Delft (Tanthof). Reflections on the role of the knowledge broker in its first 18 months of functioning are presented here. Different parties involved in two projects (cases) were interviewed to assess the benefits and challenges that were experienced with the position of the knowledge broker. We spoke with strategic advisors of the municipality, professionals from the neighborhood, and different representatives of the knowledge institutions. These parties were recommended by the knowledge broker. The question we tried to answer was: “What are the benefits and challenges of working with a knowledge broker, according to the three involved parties?” Different partners of the knowledge broker were interviewed between June 2020 and April 2021. For more information about the project please visit: www.seuproject.eu.
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Electrification of transportation, communication, working and living continues worldwide. Televisions, telephones, servers are an important part of everyday life. These loads and most sustainable sources as well, have one thing in common: Direct Current. The Dutch research and educational programme ‘DC – road to its full potential’ studies the impact of feeding these appliances from a DC grid. An improvement in energy efficiency is expected, other benefits are unknown and practical considerations are needed to come to a proper comparison with an AC grid. This paper starts with a brief introduction of the programme and its first stages. These stages encompass firstly the commissioning, selection and implementation of a safe and user friendly testing facility, to compare performance of domestic appliances when powered with AC and DC. Secondly, the relationship between the DC-testing facility and existing modeling and simulation assignments is explained. Thirdly, first results are discussed in a broad sense. An improved energy efficiency of 3% to 5% is already demonstrated for domestic appliances. That opens up questions for the performance of a domestic DC system as a whole. The paper then ends with proposed minor changes in the programme and guidelines for future projects. These changes encompass further studying of domestic appliances for product-development purposes, leaving less means for new and costly high-power testing facilities. Possible gains are 1) material and component savings 2) simpler and cheaper exteriors 3) stable and safe in-house infrastructure 4) whilst combined with local sustainable generation. That is the road ahead. 10.1109/DUE.2014.6827758
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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the experiences of safety and security management students, enrolled in an undergraduate course in the Netherlands, and present quantitative data from an online survey that aimed to explore the factors that have contributed to students’ satisfaction with, and engagement in, online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main findings suggest an interesting paradox of technology, which is worth further exploration in future research. Firstly, students with self perceived higher technological skill levels tend to reject online education more often as they see substantial shortcomings of classes in the way they are administered as compared to the vast available opportunities for real innovation. Secondly, as opposed to democratising education and allowing for custom-made, individualistic education schedules that help less-privileged students, online education can also lead to the displacement of education by income-generating activities altogether. Lastly, as much as technology allowed universities during the COVID-19 pandemic to continue with education, the transition to the environment, which is defined by highly interactive and engaging potential, may in fact be a net contributor to the feelings of social isolation, digital educational inequality and tension around commercialisation in higher education.
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