Journal articles on the topic 'Children Children and adults Christian education of children Christian education of adults Montessori method of education'

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1

Thieke, James. "The importance of participation for Christian children’s spiritual education." Theology in Scotland 26, no. 1 (July 30, 2019): 42–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.15664/tis.v26i1.1844.

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This essay addresses the negative influence that consumerism can have on children’s development and looks in particular at how it impacts their spiritual growth. Using evidence from psychology and educational studies, it makes the case that a ‘learning-by-doing’ approach is more effective than employing a system of exchange in spiritual education (whereby the adult is cast as producer and the child as consumer). This participative approach will not only establish the children in their faith, but also strengthen the faith of the adults and the whole church community in turn. (This paper was selected as the winning entry in the 2018 Fraser Essay Prize competition.)
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2

Heiphetz, Larisa, and Liane L. Young. "Children’s and Adults’ Affectionate Generosity Toward Members of Different Religious Groups." American Behavioral Scientist 63, no. 14 (June 4, 2019): 1910–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764219850870.

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This article examines children’s and adults’ willingness to give a nonmonetary resource—affection—to in-group versus out-group members. In a study of attitudes toward Christian, Jewish, and non-religious people, religious participants—children as well as adults—reported that the religious out-group member was more like them and more likeable than the non-religious character, despite the fact that both characters were members of an out-group. Non-religious participants did not distinguish between out-group characters in response to these questions. Although these patterns emerged among both children and adults, we also found that children reported more affection toward Christian characters than did adults. We discuss implications of the results for the study of generosity as well as for intergroup attitudes, religious cognition, and development.
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Fajarwati, Indah. "KONSEP MONTESSORI TENTANG PENDIDIKAN ANAK USIA DINI DALAM PERSPEKTIF PENDIDIKAN ISLAM." Jurnal Pendidikan Agama Islam 11, no. 1 (February 8, 2017): 37–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.14421/jpai.2014.111-03.

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Education is the business of adults to prepare children to be able to live independently and is able to perform the duties of his life as well as possible. The toddler years are a golden period for the growth and development of children. Development of each child must be observed, education and teaching needs to be ailored to the child’s development. Montessori is early childhood education leaders who opened the eyes of their sensitive period in children, Montessori asserted that education is self-education. Montessori then use the freedom and liveliness of the child with the best in the method, so that each child had the opportunity to evolve according to the nature and talent. In Islam, God entrusted the child is to be protected and educated with the best. Therefore, addressing the development and early childhood education, the need for an educational program that is designed in accordance with the child’s developmental level. This study aims to describe and analyze the Montessori concept of early childhood education in the perspective of Islamic education. Data collection through literature study is based on primary and secondary data. Data analysis using analytic descriptive with inductive thinking patterns. The results showed: 1) Montesssori shift from teacher-education center central (teachers as a source of learning) be child-central (protégé as a center of learning); 2) Sensitive Periods expressed early age is a sensitive period; 3) The freedom and independence according to the Montessori system is not real freedom, but freedom is limited; 4) Child’s Self-Construction stating that children construct their own development of his soul; 5) At the time of early childhood have a soul absorbent range of knowledge and experience in his life. Montessori concept in Islamic educational perspective, the emphasis is on the child’s intellectual is right. However, it should pay attention to other aspects such as emotional aspects and skills.
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4

Ingersoll, Heather. "Exploring Autonomy and Relatedness in Church as Predictors of Children’s Religiosity and Relationship with God." Christian Education Journal: Research on Educational Ministry 17, no. 1 (September 19, 2019): 52–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739891319876654.

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Concerns about the shifting religious landscape for young people in the United States provides the impetus to expand research investigating children’s experiences in Christian education. A significant number of children regularly attend Christian education in church and yet there is limited research investigating how those programs support children’s faith. Guided by self-determination theory, this research investigates whether instructional practices can support children’s religiosity and relationship with God. The present study specifically assessed whether children’s perceived relatedness with adults and peers in church, and children’s perceived autonomy in Sunday school, predicted children’s religiosity and relationship with God. Two hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to identify if the church variables were significant predictors of an identified relationship to God. Neither perceived relatedness in church nor perceived autonomy in Sunday school were significant predictors of identified religiosity. However, perceived relatedness in church did significantly predict relationship with God.
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Wal, Kristina Hodelin-ter. "‘The Worldly Advantage It Gives … ’ Missionary Education, Migration and Intergenerational Mobility in the Long Nineteenth Century, Ceylon and Malaya 1816–1916." Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics 31, no. 1 (May 10, 2018): 5–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0260107918770952.

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During the mid-nineteenth century, many Tamils in Ceylon sent their children to Protestant missionary schools while some adults went to work for missionaries to gain education and employment. Though the ties to the Vellalar caste were strong, the gains of colonial employment and education were more influential to those of the Vellalar caste intermingling with Christian missionaries. Interaction with British and American missionaries in the early to late nineteenth century ultimately led to the migration of this group to British Malaya. Circumstances in Ceylon, as well as the drive for resources such as education and employment, led to the push away from the old colony of Ceylon to the frontier colony of Malaya. This article will showcase the agency of the Ceylonese Tamils within British Ceylon and Malaya during the late colonial era. In order to understand the clout of Ceylonese Tamils in the frontier colony of Malaya, an examination of the agency they held onto in British Ceylon is essential for review. The transfer of educational and religious networks from one colony to the other is the core of comprehending the migratory experiences and intergenerational mobility over generations in colonial to post-colonial Malaya/Malaysia. JEL: N00, Z12, Z10
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Yatsiv, Oksana. "Identification of pedagogical conditions of formation of the world outlook of a child in the family." ScienceRise: Pedagogical Education, no. 4(43) (July 30, 2021): 42–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.15587/2519-4984.2021.238095.

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Based on the analysis of the peculiarities of formation and methodological aspects of the spiritual sphere of Ukrainians in Mykola Shlemkevych's legacy, the article reveals pedagogical conditions of building a child’s worldview in the family – embodiment of spiritual and moral ideals in everyday life, unity with these high ideals, practicing such powerful upbringing methods as prayer, confession, communion with God (through high moral ideas in works of art, literature), communion, participation in worship, revealing the spiritual content of folk traditions, freedom of choice, religious faith, work on oneself, etc. Here the emphasis is on children’s independent participation in their upbringing. In this regard, the importance of ways of self-education – self-knowledge, self-analysis, self-observation, self-esteem, etc. – is revealed. This means finding and identifying democratic ways to build the spiritual world of a child in the family, relating to the expansion of the spirituality of Ukrainians in the works by M. Shlemkevych. It is substantiated, that it is highly important to assimilate morality through the transition to an idealistic Christian system of values, which has always been supported by M. Shlemkevych. Therefore, it has been concluded, that a high level of improvement of the child’s morality in the family can be achieved through the discovery of the Christian worldview and the recognition of the priority of spiritual and moral values. This is first used in communication with children, creating a highly spiritual atmosphere that would stimulate such well-known ways of practicing moral virtues as humility, forgiveness, repentance, fasting, prayer, confession, and others. Therefore, this will be facilitated not only by the external organization of the child’s life in the family (for example, a good environment, participation in charities), but also by internal self-improvement (by self-restraint, restraint from negative thoughts, unworthy actions or bad intentions). The choice of the Christian strategy of education outlines both the general orientation of a child towards spiritual and moral values, and the stable position of adults in devotion to moral ideals, humanistic traditions
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7

Kaur, Navdeep. "AWARENESS OF RIGHT TO EDUCATION AMONG SECONDAY SCHOOL TEACHERS." JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH 6, no. 2 (December 27, 2014): 1004–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.24297/jssr.v6i2.3484.

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Education is a human right and essential for realization of all other human rights. It is a basic right which helps the individual to live with human dignity the right to education is a fundamental human rights. Every individual, irrespective of race, gender, nationality, ethnic or social origin, religion or political preference, age or disability, is entitled to a free elementary education. Hence the present study has attempted to find out awareness of right to education among secondary school teachers. The sample of 200 secondary school teachers was taken. A self made questionnaire comprising 34 multiple choice items was used by the investigator. It was found that both Government and Private secondary teachers have equal information regarding RTE, whereas Male school teachers are more aware of RTE than Female secondary school teachers Education is the foundation stone of national development. No nation can develops without education. The function of education is to accelerate the progress and development of nation. Education is the only means which brings about national integration. Educational achievement of a nation is also an indicator of national pride. During the pre-british Indian the indigenous secondary education was imparted in Pathshalas, Gurukuls, Gurudwaras and other religious organization. Education was banned for women and for scheduled classes and poor people. After sometimes Christian missionaries and East Indian Company established a few schools with the purpose of spreading Christianity in India. The first organized step to established planned primary schools of four years duration in India was established when Macaulay presented his famous minutes in 1835 with a view to popularize English education. In 1854 Woods Dispatch laid stress on imparting education atleast upto the primary level to the Indians. Later many commissions and committees were set up like India Education Commission 1882, Government resolution on education policy 1904, Gopal Krishan Gokhales Resolution 1911,Hartog committee 1929, Wardha Scheme 1938 and Sargent report 1944. All of them laid stress on free & compulsory primary education. After independence India adopted Article-45 directive principle of state policy laid down in Indian Constitution. The Article says, The state shall endeavour to provide within a period of ten years from the commencement of the constitution free & compulsory education for all children untill they complete the age 6 to 14 years. Kothari Commission (1964-66) recommended qualitative improvement for the purpose of science education, work experience, vocalization of education and development of social, moral and spiritual values, improvement in methods of teaching curriculum, teacher training etc. were recommended. National Policy on Education (1986) emphasized on two aspects. One on the universal enrollment and universal retention of children upto 14 years of age and another on the substantial improvement in teaching quality of education. In order to improve the education of school, Operation, Blackboard was introduced by National Policy on Education. The programme of action (1986) was laid down, the purpose of Operation Blackboard is to ensure provision of minimum essential facilities in secondary schools, material facilities as learning equipment, use of blackboard implies that there is an urgency in this programme. In India, the desire for compulsory education figured in the writing and speeches of our leader before independence. But for national development and national integration, creation of good citizens, preparation for life, development of character, development of individuality, adaptation to environment and making man civilized. India just implemented the Right to Education on 27rd August (Thursday), 2009 by 86th Constitutional amendent. It says, the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children the age of 6 to 14 years in such manner as the state may, by law, determine. Today education is considered an important public function and the state is seen as the chief provider of education through the allocation of substantial Budgetry resources and regulating the provision of education. The pre-eminent role of the state in fulfilling the Right To Education is enshrined in 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights. With regards to realizing the Right to Education the World Declaration on Education for All states that partnerships between government and non-government organizational, the private sector, local communities, religious groups, and families are necessary. The realization of Right to Education on a national level may be achieved through compulsory education or more specifically free and compulsory primary education as stated in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. So as India is first to made education compulsory and free for all. Formal Education is given to everybody without any discrimination of sex, caste, creed and colour. Education is the powerful tool. which accelerates the process of national growth and development. Moreover, economically and socially marginalized adults and children can left themselves out of miseries of darkness and participate fully as variable assets for their nation only with the help of education. Thus, education is a key towards a successful life. Keeping in view the importance of education, the secondary education in India has been made compulsory through 86th constitutional amendment. Moreover Right to Education has declared as fundamental right by this amendment under Article-emerge as a global leader in achieving the millennium development goal of ensuring that all children complete their secondary education by 2015 as set by UNESCO. The secondary stake holders for providing education are the parents and social authorities and both these entities have to be active: parents, by sending education is supported, thus, it is important that teacher should be aware of Right to Education. If teacher are well aware of Right to Education then only he/she can make the students to enjoy its benefits and motivate them to enroll in education. Moreover, if the teacher is fully awakened about the Right Education only then he/she will not dare to exploit the child.
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8

Munadi, Muhammad, and Watik Rahayu. "Inculcation Religiosity in Preschoolers Local content curriculum." JPUD - Jurnal Pendidikan Usia Dini 13, no. 2 (November 30, 2019): 201–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.21009/jpud.132.01.

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Millennial era life is a big challenge, humans need a strong footing to face all the problems. Religion is God's guidance that becomes the handle of life and it is important to instill religious beliefs early on. The purpose of this study was to find the cultivation of religiosity in preschool children in Kindergarten Aisyiyah Branch and Kindergarten Santa Maria in Kartasura Regency. This study uses qualitative methods with data collection tools, namely interviews, direct observation, and document analysis. Data validated using triangulation of methods and sources. The results showed that the religiosity of planting in the TK Aisyiyah Kartasura branch had more burdens than in the Santa Maria Kindergarten. While its nature is more balanced between vertical ritual content and horizontal content in TK Aisyiyah Kartasura branches compared to TK Santa Maria. The cultivation of moral education is carried out through a step-by-step process starting with teaching to say and answer greetings (Islam), saying good morning and evening to non-Muslims and inviting children to always pray in every activity. Vertical ritual planting in TK Aisyiyah Kartasura branch has more burden through the practice of prayer, memorizing prayers and memorizing short letters from the Qur'an all in Arabic compared to TK Santa Maria only emphasizes the memorization of prayer in Indonesian. Keywords: Inculcation religiosity, Pre-schoolers, Local content curriculum References: Adams, K., Bull, R., & Maynes, M. L. (2016). Early childhood spirituality in education: Towards an understanding of the distinctive features of young children’s spirituality. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 24(5), 760–774. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2014.996425 Arce, E.-M. (2000). Curriculum for Young Children: An Introduction. (New York: Delmar Thomson Learning. Banerjee, K., & Bloom, P. (2015). “Everything Happens for a Reason”: Children’s Beliefs About Purpose in Life Events. Child Development, 86(2), 503–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12312 Benson, P. L., Scales, P. C., Syvertsen, A. K., & Roehlkepartain, E. C. (2012). Is youth spiritual development a universal developmental process? An international exploration. Journal of Positive Psychology, 7(6), 453–470. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2012.732102 Bridges, L. J., & Moore, K. a. (2002). Religion and Spirituality in Childhood and Adolescence. Child Trends, 1–59. Retrieved from http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2002/01/Child_Trends-2002_01_01_FR_ReligionSpiritAdol.pdf Davies, T. (2019). Religious education and social literacy: the ‘white elephant’ of Australian public education. British Journal of Religious Education, 41(2), 124–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2017.1324758 Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Depdikbud. (2007). Pedoman Teknis Penyelenggaraan Pos PAUD:(Direktorat PAUD, 2006) Direktorat PAUD Grand Design Program Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini Non- formal tahun 2007-20015. Indonesia. Eva L., E. (2013). Introduction to Early Childhood Education. Belmont: Wadsworth. Fisher, J. (2013). Assessing spiritual well-being: Relating with God explains greatest variance in spiritual well-being among Australian youth. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 18(4), 306–317. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364436X.2013.844106 Granqvist, P., & Nkara, F. (2017). Nature meets nurture in religious and spiritual development. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 35(1), 142–155. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12170 Heiphetz, L., Lane, J. D., Waytz, A., & Young, L. L. (2016). How Children and Adults Represent God’s Mind. Cognitive Science, 40(1), 121–144. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12232 Henderson, A. K. (2016). The Long Arm of Religion: Childhood Adversity, Religion, and Self-perception Among Black Americans. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 55(2), 324–348. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12262 Holloway, S. D. (1999). The Role of Religious Beliefs in Early Childhood Education: Christian and Buddhist Preschools in Japan. ERCP Early Chilhood Research and Practice, 1(2). Retrieved from http://ecrp.illinois.edu/v1n2/holloway.html Kienstra, N., van Dijk-Groeneboer, M., & Boelens, O. (2018). Religious-Thinking-Through Using Bibliodrama: An Empirical Study of Student Learning in Classroom Teaching. Religious Education, 113(2), 203–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2017.1403788 King, U. (2013). The spiritual potential of childhood: Awakening to the fullness of life. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 18(1), 4–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364436X.2013.776266 Rissanen, I., Kuusisto, E., Hanhimäki, E., & Tirri, K. (2018). The implications of teachers’ implicit theories for moral education: A case study from Finland. Journal of Moral Education, 47(1), 63–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2017.1374244 Scott, K. (2014). Inviting young adults to come out religiously, institutionally and traditionally. Religious Education, 109(4), 471–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2014.924790 Suyadi, Destiyanti, A. Z., & Sulaikha, N. A. (2019). Perkembangan Nilai Agama-Moral Tidak Tercapai pada Anak Development of Religious-Moral Values Not Reached in Basic Age Children : A Case Study in Class SD Muhammadiyah. 6(1), 1–12.
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Henke, A., O. Henke, and F. Serventi. "Cancer Awareness Among Adults in the Kilimanjaro Region." Journal of Global Oncology 4, Supplement 2 (October 1, 2018): 195s. http://dx.doi.org/10.1200/jgo.18.78502.

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Background: Approximately 14 million new cases were diagnosed with cancer internationally and 8 million of these new cases were diagnosed in low-resource regions according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). For Tanzania, it is estimated that the cancer incidence will double in the year 2030, from 37,000 new cases in 2015 to more than 61,000 cases. In Tanzania is a high prevalence of Burkitt´s lymphoma in children, cervical and breast cancer in women, and prostate and esophagus/stomach cancer in men. Many types of cancer could be prevented by modifying lifestyle choices (e.g., reduce of alcohol consumption and HPV-vaccinations etc). In Tanzania very few studies were published about cancer awareness. A Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC) based-registry shows that the majority of patients come in the late stages of cancer to the hospital. In 2017 came in total 760 patient and 85% of them showed up in stage III and IV. Reasons why patients come so late is a lack of knowledge about the cancer symptoms and risk factors and the people in the Kilimanjaro Region are not aware of the new Cancer Care Centre at KCMC which opened in December 2016. Aim: A cross-section study want to gain a deep understanding of the cancer knowledge in the community for future focus programs. This survey want to identify the knowledge of cancer, awareness of cancer risk factors and treatment options among adults in the Kilimanjaro Region. Methods: In collaboration with Berlin Charité in 2017 started a cross-section study about prevention and awareness among adults in the Kilimanjaro Region. In total over 5000 people will be interviewed in all 7 districts in the Kilimanjaro Region from October 2017 until April 2019. The study use will a valid questionnaire with 46 items about cancer awareness, cancer knowledge, risk factors and treatment options. First preliminary results: Since October 2017 over 2000 people were interviewed in Siha, Moshi Urban and Moshi Rural district. First preliminary results give already a overview about the demographic characteristics in the Kilimanjaro Region and the knowledge about cancer and the awareness about cancer risk factors in the community. 52% of the community members consider cancer as a problem in the community. 12% of this people have currently somebody with cancer in the household. Most known cancer types are cervical cancer and breast cancer. 14% of the people have never heard about cancer. Only (35.0%) knew ≥1 risk of cancer. Majority were not even able to justify their specific aspects in related to cancer. Results: About 2 cancer risk factors: 28% of the community members drink 2 times per week and more alcohol, only 3% smoke cigarettes currently and 31% eat more than 3 times a week red meat. Conclusion: Overall about cancer in the community is very poor. Especially in the rural areas is a strong need for more education and awareness.
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Agonglovi, Messan Kodjo,. "PUBERTY RITES FOR GIRLS AND BOYS IN SELECTED AFRICAN NOVELS." Addaiyan Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 4 (April 26, 2020): 13–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.36099/ajahss.2.4.2.

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Puberty rites are indispensable in African social and organizational life. They serve as channels through which African children are exposed and taught how to cope/behave to be considered as dignified sons and daughters of their parents and societies. But the influences of Western education, modernization, and Christian missionary counter-teachings in Africa have put an obstacle to such traditional practices which serve as suckle of good mores among African children. Today, the African children are left without benchmarks and this has led them to social vices observed in African societies. Since writers, among others, serve as custodians of events in societies according to time and space, girls’ and boys’ puberty rites have been reproduced in the fictional writings of African writers like Ngugi’s The River Between (1965), Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) and Nyantakyi’s Ancestral Sacrifice (1998). This article has examined how the above African writers have reproduced the puberty rites for girls and boys in their novels through the concept of rites of passage. As findings, the African writers have proved via their major characters that puberty rites for boys and girls are more or less one of the strong African traditions where the young adults are taught socio-cultural expectations of their society and how to meet up with future challenges ahead. Indeed, the girls’ and boys’ puberty rites are built on formal teaching in initiation ceremonies and on informal teaching through watching and imitating. So, the puberty rites for boys and girls start from informal teachings at home and before being societal formal teaching. On the one hand, right from home, parents associate the boys and girls who have reached the puberty stage around them to teach them things that are socially accepted in their community. Parents spend and make their boys and girls their friends. In this period, boys are encouraged to sit with their fathers and girls with their mothers to learn from them. On the other hand, it is societal when the boys and girls take part in the puberty ceremonies established for boys and girls in their community. But the conflicts of religious ideology between the whites and Africans have served as a bottleneck to the order of things in the novels. In short, the African writers have painted a vivid picture of these rites in their works so that it could not easily disappear because of globalization which is seducing most Africans to copy and paste the foreign ways of doing things. Remarkably, it seems the writers attempt to say to contemporary Africans to examine all things but retain what is good by allowing some of their radical main characters to die and by permitting the temperate ones to live to juxtapose good things in the Christian ways and both in African traditional ways.
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Sakala, Sandra Chilensi. "Girl Child Sexual Abuse in Lusaka Urban." Journal of Law and Social Sciences 1, no. 1 (March 31, 2012): 33–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.53974/unza.jlss.1.1.366.

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The study on girl child sexual abuse and whose findings are presented in this article was conducted in 2010 as an academic requirement for the purpose of completing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies at the University of Zambia. This article outlines issues of sexual abuse and the various reasons why under-age girls are more vulnerable to sexual abuse, cultural beliefs with regard to sexual abuse, gender and power relations and sexual abuse, and existing community programmes and knowledge levels, and institutional mechanisms of the sexual abuse case reporting in Lusaka urban. The article has drawn conclusions and recommendations for enhancing the protection of the children against child sexual abuse. By conducting a study that comprehensively assesses the types of programmes and perceived implementation gaps from Lusaka, this report poses specific policy and structural recommendations on how best to address the existing problem of increased vulnerability of under-age girls to sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse is a form of abuse in which a child is abused for the sexual gratification of an adult or older adolescent (CHIN, 2005: 53). Child sexual abuse is the actual or the likely sexual exploitation of a child and includes rape, incest and all forms of sexual activity (VSO, 2008: 2). In Zambia, anyone under the age of sixteen is classified as a child. Researchers cite various reasons why child sexual abuse is so common: Gender power relations (patriarchy views which place women and children in lower positions), poverty, a legacy of violent homes, power relations between children and adults, and cultural beliefs. The research was an exploratory study undertaken in Lusaka urban and endeavored to explore why the problem of sexual abuse was persistent and why under-age children were vulnerable to it. Using purposive and simple random sampling, a sample size of seventy was arrived at and both qualitative and quantitative approaches of research were employed. The data was then analysed manually and by Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). The institutions visited were: Ministry of Community Development and Social Welfare, Women and Law in Southern Africa Trust, The Child Protection Unit of the Zambia Police Service, Young Women Christian Association, Isubilo Orphanage and Drop-in Centre and Jesus Cares Ministries Orphanage. Additionally, community members from Chawama, Mtendere and Kabwata compounds were interviewed for more insight into the study. The study results showed that under-age girl-children were more vulnerable to sexual abuse because they were easy to coerce, threaten, lure and could be more trusting than much older girls. Further, the study revealed that gender-power relations, power relations between children and adults, cultural beliefs and community programmes on sexual abuse played a role in girl child sexual abuse. The overall study recommendations were coined from the outcomes and conclusions made in the study as follows: children needed more focused education to increase their knowledge about child sexual abuse; intensify funding injections into already functional community and school programmes, for example the School Liaison Programme under the Zambia Police Service; putting in place a holistic approach to sensitise community members centring on encroaching cultural norms and practices that perpetrate child sexual abuse; there was need to intensify and widen the coverage of programmes on child sexual abuse clearly stipulating and defining types of sexual abuse; the law and punishment for perpetrators; perceived gaps in the awareness programmes and institutional mechanism for sexual abuse case reporting was bureaucratically long, long court procedures and negative cultural doctrines also played a role and as such needed attention.
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Matiaki, Vasiliki. "Views of Parents and Guardians on Orthodox Christian Education in Greek Schools." Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science, June 20, 2020, 44–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.9734/jesbs/2020/v33i530224.

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In a period of intense theological ferment, where social and political changes have shaped a transitional period for the teaching of the RE in the Greek school, the present study, part of which is republished here with a focus on the levels of secularization of Greek parents, is part of my doctoral thesis, which is yet unpublished. It seeks to shed light on, the unknown, until recently, attitudes and positions of parents on Religious Education. The sample of the study consisted of parents and guardians of children of any age (N = 1032). According to the results of the selected analyzes presented here, Religious Education and the Orthodox Christian religion appear without losing its cultural and social value. We therefore conclude that secularization has not eroded the cohesive social fabric of modern Greek society, which continues to be a collective culture. Aims: The main aim of this article is to investigate the attitudes and perceptions of parents and guardians about the teaching of religious education of their children. In this article are presented specific variables from my doctoral dissertation related to secularization levels of the sample of the research. Study Design: The design of the research was based on the assumption that parents and guardians have a special interest in the Religious Education of their children, which is shaped by a variety of factors. Place and Duration of Study: The sample of the research were parents from various regions of Greece. The specific administrations were selected based on "convenience sample". The final application of the research was introduced by distributing printed questionnaires during the period 29/03/2017- 14/12/2017, where 453 questionnaires were completed. During the same period, the questionnaire was formed and sent in electronic form via Google forms, from where 578 completed questionnaires were collected. For this purpose, an e-mail was sent to the country's primary and secondary schools, requesting that it be forwarded to the parents and guardians of the pupils. Methodology: The sample consisted of 1032 parents and quardians of children in any age; about 85% of the subjects of the survey have children at school age (5-18 y); 15% of survey subjects stated that their children are either adults or children in pre-school. Νot any statistically significant difference was found between parents with children of different age.All parents/ guardians were selected in a statistically random way. Regarding the research methodology, the research instrument used was a structured questionnaire. Results: The analysis of the research variables showed that parents and quardians as to their interest and attitude to the Religious Education (hereinafter the RE): they consider important the right to decide on the RE (67%), have a personal interest in the RE (69%), are aware of the parental right to choose their children's RE (74%). and they claim that one's attitude to the RE may be influenced by their parents' attitude towards the Orthodox Christian faith (86%). As to the character of the RE: They do not reject the purely Orthodox lesson (51% positive and 14% neutral, that means 65% do not reject it). They are not negative in the teaching of other religions, but this is being done distinctly, in separate sections (65%).They agree that Orthodox pupils are treated unequally when they are not taught their faith compared to other religions’ pupils who are taught their faith (65%). As to the value of the RE: They are in favour of the view that the RE in the Greek school is beneficial (82%) and that it is beneficial because it teaches to the student the message of life of Orthodox Christianity (78%). and that it is important to bring together the student with the parish life of the Church (70%).They are positive supported by the statement that the teaching of Orthodox Christian tradition affects the formation of the child's personality (77%). Conclusion: Secularism has not eroded the cohesive social fabric of modern Greek society and still dominates a collective culture with fairly solid levels of religiousity. However, it is notable to see cultural variation, as a specific analysis has shown that residents from "Rural Area (up to 2,000 inhabitants)" seem less secular, closer to traditional cultural elements.
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Kolobanov, Alexey Vladimirovich. "Organization of choir singing in churches as a means of raising and developing children." Propósitos y Representaciones 9, SPE3 (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.20511/pyr2021.v9nspe3.1263.

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The article deals with the study of historical aspects of children's choir singing in church tradition. The author considers characteristic features and origins of children's church choir singing. The reasons for using children's choir singing in Christian churches are investigated. The author characterizes the features of the conditions for utilization of children's choir singing in Christian churches. The distinction between children's church choir singing in the Orthodox East and Catholic West is shown. Children's choirs in Catholic churches were formed mainly from among orphan boys from orphanages at temples or monasteries. In the Catholic society of that time, childhood was not yet considered as a special status. Social assistance to children was included in the general program of care for unprotected segments of the population. However, they were destined for a compulsory religious education. In Orthodoxy, choir singing, along with the ability to read and write, was considered a necessary factor in the education of the ruling class and literate clergy. Thus, a more meaningful and profound educational program for future adults was introduced. In conclusion, the author states that children's choir singing, while being closely associated with church traditions and practice, introduces children to anagogic, educational and spiritual processes of the church ceremony.
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14

"Bilingual education & bilingualism." Language Teaching 40, no. 2 (March 7, 2007): 168–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261444807264286.

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15

Lund, Curt. "For Modern Children." M/C Journal 24, no. 4 (August 12, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2807.

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“...children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents...” — Stephen Kline, The Making of Children’s Culture We live in a world saturated by design and through design artefacts, one can glean unique insights into a culture's values and norms. In fact, some academics, such as British media and film theorist Ben Highmore, see the two areas so inextricably intertwined as to suggest a wholesale “re-branding of the cultural sciences as design studies” (14). Too often, however, everyday objects are marginalised or overlooked as objects of scholarly attention. The field of material culture studies seeks to change that by focussing on the quotidian object and its ability to reveal much about the time, place, and culture in which it was designed and used. This article takes on one such object, a mid-century children's toy tea set, whose humble journey from 1968 Sears catalogue to 2014 thrift shop—and subsequently this author’s basement—reveals complex rhetorical messages communicated both visually and verbally. As material culture studies theorist Jules Prown notes, the field’s foundation is laid upon the understanding “that objects made ... by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged” (1-2). In this case, the objects’ material and aesthetic characteristics can be shown to reflect some of the pervasive stereotypes and gender roles of the mid-century and trace some of the prevailing tastes of the American middle class of that era, or perhaps more accurately the type of design that came to represent good taste and a modern aesthetic for that audience. A wealth of research exists on the function of toys and play in learning about the world and even the role of toy selection in early sex-typing, socialisation, and personal identity of children (Teglasi). This particular research area isn’t the focus of this article; however, one aspect that is directly relevant and will be addressed is the notion of adult role-playing among children and the role of toys in communicating certain adult practices or values to the child—what sociologist David Oswell calls “the dedifferentiation of childhood and adulthood” (200). Neither is the focus of this article the practice nor indeed the ethicality of marketing to children. Relevant to this particular example I suggest, is as a product utilising messaging aimed not at children but at adults, appealing to certain parents’ interest in nurturing within their child a perceived era and class-appropriate sense of taste. This was fuelled in large part by the curatorial pursuits of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, coupled with an interest and investment in raising their children in a design-forward household and a desire for toys that reflected that priority; in essence, parents wishing to raise modern children. Following Prown’s model of material culture analysis, the tea set is examined in three stages, through description, deduction and speculation with each stage building on the previous one. Figure 1: Porcelain Toy Tea Set. Description The tea set consists of twenty-six pieces that allows service for six. Six cups, saucers, and plates; a tall carafe with spout, handle and lid; a smaller vessel with a spout and handle; a small round bowl with a lid; a larger oval bowl with a lid, and a coordinated oval platter. The cups are just under two inches tall and two inches in diameter. The largest piece, the platter is roughly six inches by four inches. The pieces are made of a ceramic material white in colour and glossy in texture and are very lightweight. The rim or edge of each piece is decorated with a motif of three straight lines in two different shades of blue and in different thicknesses, interspersed with a set of three black wiggly lines. Figure 2: Porcelain Toy Tea Set Box. The set is packaged for retail purposes and the original box appears to be fully intact. The packaging of an object carries artefactual evidence just as important as what it contains that falls into the category of a “‘para-artefact’ … paraphernalia that accompanies the product (labels, packaging, instructions etc.), all of which contribute to a product’s discourse” (Folkmann and Jensen 83). The graphics on the box are colourful, featuring similar shades of teal blue as found on the objects, with the addition of orange and a silver sticker featuring the logo of the American retailer Sears. The cover features an illustration of the objects on an orange tabletop. The most prominent text that confirms that the toy is a “Porcelain Toy Tea Set” is in an organic, almost psychedelic style that mimics both popular graphics of this era—especially album art and concert posters—as well as the organic curves of steam that emanate from the illustrated teapot’s spout. Additional messages appear on the box, in particular “Contemporary DESIGN” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. Along the edges of the box lid, a detail of the decorative motif is reproduced somewhat abstracted from what actually appears on the ceramic objects. Figure 3: Sears’s Christmas Wishbook Catalogue, page 574 (1968). Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears) is well-known for its over one-hundred-year history of producing printed merchandise catalogues. The catalogue is another important para-artefact to consider in analysing the objects. The tea set first appeared in the 1968 Sears Christmas Wishbook. There is no date or copyright on the box, so only its inclusion in the catalogue allows the set to be accurately dated. It also allows us to understand how the set was originally marketed. Deduction In the deduction phase, we focus on the sensory aesthetic and functional interactive qualities of the various components of the set. In terms of its function, it is critical that we situate the objects in their original use context, play. The light weight of the objects and thinness of the ceramic material lends the objects a delicate, if not fragile, feeling which indicates that this set is not for rough use. Toy historian Lorraine May Punchard differentiates between toy tea sets “meant to be used by little girls, having parties for their friends and practising the social graces of the times” and smaller sets or doll dishes “made for little girls to have parties with their dolls, or for their dolls to have parties among themselves” (7). Similar sets sold by Sears feature images of girls using the sets with both human playmates and dolls. The quantity allowing service for six invites multiple users to join the party. The packaging makes clear that these toy tea sets were intended for imaginary play only, rendering them non-functional through an all-capitals caution declaiming “IMPORTANT: Do not use near heat”. The walls and handles of the cups are so thin one can imagine that they would quickly become dangerous if filled with a hot liquid. Nevertheless, the lid of the oval bowl has a tan stain or watermark which suggests actual use. The box is broken up by pink cardboard partitions dividing it into segments sized for each item in the set. Interestingly even the small squares of unfinished corrugated cardboard used as cushioning between each stacked plate have survived. The evidence of careful re-packing indicates that great care was taken in keeping the objects safe. It may suggest that even though the set was used, the children or perhaps the parents, considered the set as something to care for and conserve for the future. Flaws in the glaze and applique of the design motif can be found on several pieces in the set and offer some insight as to the technique used in producing these items. Errors such as the design being perfectly evenly spaced but crooked in its alignment to the rim, or pieces of the design becoming detached or accidentally folded over and overlapping itself could only be the result of a print transfer technique popularised with decorative china of the Victorian era, a technique which lends itself to mass production and lower cost when compared to hand decoration. Speculation In the speculation stage, we can consider the external evidence and begin a more rigorous investigation of the messaging, iconography, and possible meanings of the material artefact. Aspects of the set allow a number of useful observations about the role of such an object in its own time and context. Sociologists observe the role of toys as embodiments of particular types of parental messages and values (Cross 292) and note how particularly in the twentieth century “children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents” (Kline 96). Throughout history children’s toys often reflected a miniaturised version of the adult world allowing children to role-play as imagined adult-selves. Kristina Ranalli explored parallels between the practice of drinking tea and the play-acting of the child’s tea party, particularly in the nineteenth century, as a gendered ritual of gentility; a method of socialisation and education, and an opportunity for exploratory and even transgressive play by “spontaneously creating mini-societies with rules of their own” (20). Such toys and objects were available through the Sears mail-order catalogue from the very beginning at the end of the nineteenth century (McGuire). Propelled by the post-war boom of suburban development and homeownership—that generation’s manifestation of the American Dream—concern with home décor and design was elevated among the American mainstream to a degree never before seen. There was a hunger for new, streamlined, efficient, modernist living. In his essay titled “Domesticating Modernity”, historian Jeffrey L. Meikle notes that many early modernist designers found that perhaps the most potent way to “‘domesticate’ modernism and make it more familiar was to miniaturise it; for example, to shrink the skyscraper and put it into the home as furniture or tableware” (143). Dr Timothy Blade, curator of the 1985 exhibition of girls’ toys at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Gallery—now the Goldstein Museum of Design—described in his introduction “a miniaturised world with little props which duplicate, however rudely, the larger world of adults” (5). Noting the power of such toys to reflect adult values of their time, Blade continues: “the microcosm of the child’s world, remarkably furnished by the miniaturised props of their parents’ world, holds many direct and implied messages about the society which brought it into being” (9). In large part, the mid-century Sears catalogues capture the spirit of an era when, as collector Thomas Holland observes, “little girls were still primarily being offered only the options of glamour, beauty and parenthood as the stuff of their fantasies” (175). Holland notes that “the Wishbooks of the fifties [and, I would add, the sixties] assumed most girls would follow in their mother’s footsteps to become full-time housewives and mommies” (1). Blade grouped toys into three categories: cooking, cleaning, and sewing. A tea set could arguably be considered part of the cooking category, but closer examination of the language used in marketing this object—“little hostesses”, et cetera—suggests an emphasis not on cooking but on serving or entertaining. This particular category was not prevalent in the era examined by Blade, but the cultural shifts of the mid-twentieth century, particularly the rapid popularisation of a suburban lifestyle, may have led to the use of entertaining as an additional distinct category of role play in the process of learning to become a “proper” homemaker. Sears and other retailers offered a wide variety of styles of toy tea sets during this era. Blade and numerous other sources observe that children’s toy furniture and appliances tended to reflect the style and aesthetic qualities of their contemporary parallels in the adult world, the better to associate the child’s objects to its adult equivalent. The toy tea set’s packaging trumpets messages intended to appeal to modernist values and identity including “Contemporary Design” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. The use of this coded marketing language, aimed particularly at parents, can be traced back several decades. In 1928 a group of American industrial and textile designers established the American Designers' Gallery in New York, in part to encourage American designers to innovate and adopt new styles such as those seen in the L’ Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925) in Paris, the exposition that sparked international interest in the Art Deco or Art Moderne aesthetic. One of the gallery founders, Ilonka Karasz, a Hungarian-American industrial and textile designer who had studied in Austria and was influenced by the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna, publicised her new style of nursery furnishings as “designed for the very modern American child” (Brown 80). Sears itself was no stranger to the appeal of such language. The term “contemporary design” was ubiquitous in catalogue copy of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, used to describe everything from draperies (1959) and bedspreads (1961) to spice racks (1964) and the Lady Kenmore portable dishwasher (1961). An emphasis on the role of design in one’s life and surroundings can be traced back to efforts by MoMA. The museum’s interest in modern design hearkens back almost to the institution’s inception, particularly in relation to industrial design and the aestheticisation of everyday objects (Marshall). Through exhibitions and in partnership with mass-market magazines, department stores and manufacturer showrooms, MoMA curators evangelised the importance of “good design” a term that can be found in use as early as 1942. What Is Good Design? followed the pattern of prior exhibitions such as What Is Modern Painting? and situated modern design at the centre of exhibitions that toured the United States in the first half of the nineteen-fifties. To MoMA and its partners, “good design” signified the narrow identification of proper taste in furniture, home decor and accessories; effectively, the establishment of a design canon. The viewpoints enshrined in these exhibitions and partnerships were highly influential on the nation’s perception of taste for decades to come, as the trickle-down effect reached a much broader segment of consumers than those that directly experienced the museum or its exhibitions (Lawrence.) This was evident not only at high-end shops such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Even mass-market retailers sought out well-known figures of modernist design to contribute to their offerings. Sears, for example, commissioned noted modernist designer and ceramicist Russel Wright to produce a variety of serving ware and decor items exclusively for the company. Notably for this study, he was also commissioned to create a toy tea set for children. The 1957 Wishbook touts the set as “especially created to delight modern little misses”. Within its Good Design series, MoMA exhibitions celebrated numerous prominent Nordic designers who were exploring simplified forms and new material technologies. In the 1968 Wishbook, the retailer describes the Porcelain Toy Tea Set as “Danish-inspired china for young moderns”. The reference to Danish design is certainly compatible with the modernist appeal; after the explosion in popularity of Danish furniture design, the term “Danish Modern” was commonly used in the nineteen-fifties and sixties as shorthand for pan-Scandinavian or Nordic design, or more broadly for any modern furniture design regardless of origin that exhibited similar characteristics. In subsequent decades the notion of a monolithic Scandinavian-Nordic design aesthetic or movement has been debunked as primarily an economically motivated marketing ploy (Olivarez et al.; Fallan). In the United States, the term “Danish Modern” became so commonly misused that the Danish Society for Arts and Crafts called upon the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to legally restrict the use of the labels “Danish” and “Danish Modern” to companies genuinely originating in Denmark. Coincidentally the FTC ruled on this in 1968, noting “that ‘Danish Modern’ carries certain meanings, and... that consumers might prefer goods that are identified with a foreign culture” (Hansen 451). In the case of the Porcelain Toy Tea Set examined here, Sears was not claiming that the design was “Danish” but rather “Danish-inspired”. One must wonder, was this another coded marketing ploy to communicate a sense of “Good Design” to potential customers? An examination of the formal qualities of the set’s components, particularly the simplified geometric forms and the handle style of the cups, confirms that it is unlike a traditional—say, Victorian-style—tea set. Punchard observes that during this era some American tea sets were actually being modelled on coffee services rather than traditional tea services (148). A visual comparison of other sets sold by Sears in the same year reveals a variety of cup and pot shapes—with some similar to the set in question—while others exhibit more traditional teapot and cup shapes. Coffee culture was historically prominent in Nordic cultures so there is at least a passing reference to that aspect of Nordic—if not specifically Danish—influence in the design. But what of the decorative motif? Simple curved lines were certainly prominent in Danish furniture and architecture of this era, and occasionally found in combination with straight lines, but no connection back to any specific Danish motif could be found even after consultation with experts in the field from the Museum of Danish America and the Vesterheim National Norwegian-American Museum (personal correspondence). However, knowing that the average American consumer of this era—even the design-savvy among them—consumed Scandinavian design without distinguishing between the various nations, a possible explanation could be contained in the promotion of Finnish textiles at the time. In the decade prior to the manufacture of the tea set a major design tendency began to emerge in the United States, triggered by the geometric design motifs of the Finnish textile and apparel company Marimekko. Marimekko products were introduced to the American market in 1959 via the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based retailer Design Research (DR) and quickly exploded in popularity particularly after would-be First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in national media wearing Marimekko dresses during the 1960 presidential campaign and on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. (Thompson and Lange). The company’s styling soon came to epitomise a new youth aesthetic of the early nineteen sixties in the United States, a softer and more casual predecessor to the London “mod” influence. During this time multiple patterns were released that brought a sense of whimsy and a more human touch to classic mechanical patterns and stripes. The patterns Piccolo (1953), Helmipitsi (1959), and Varvunraita (1959), all designed by Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi offered varying motifs of parallel straight lines. Maija Isola's Silkkikuikka (1961) pattern—said to be inspired by the plumage of the Great Crested Grebe—combined parallel serpentine lines with straight and angled lines, available in a variety of colours. These and other geometrically inspired patterns quickly inundated apparel and decor markets. DR built a vastly expanded Cambridge flagship store and opened new locations in New York in 1961 and 1964, and in San Francisco in 1965 fuelled in no small part by the fact that they remained the exclusive outlet for Marimekko in the United States. It is clear that Marimekko’s approach to pattern influenced designers and manufacturers across industries. Design historian Lesley Jackson demonstrates that Marimekko designs influenced or were emulated by numerous other companies across Scandinavia and beyond (72-78). The company’s influence grew to such an extent that some described it as a “conquest of the international market” (Hedqvist and Tarschys 150). Subsequent design-forward retailers such as IKEA and Crate and Barrel continue to look to Marimekko even today for modern design inspiration. In 2016 the mass-market retailer Target formed a design partnership with Marimekko to offer an expansive limited-edition line in their stores, numbering over two hundred items. So, despite the “Danish” misnomer, it is quite conceivable that designers working for or commissioned by Sears in 1968 may have taken their aesthetic cues from Marimekko’s booming work, demonstrating a clear understanding of the contemporary high design aesthetic of the time and coding the marketing rhetoric accordingly even if incorrectly. Conclusion The Sears catalogue plays a unique role in capturing cross-sections of American culture not only as a sales tool but also in Holland’s words as “a beautifully illustrated diary of America, it’s [sic] people and the way we thought about things” (1). Applying a rhetorical and material culture analysis to the catalogue and the objects within it provides a unique glimpse into the roles these objects played in mediating relationships, transmitting values and embodying social practices, tastes and beliefs of mid-century American consumers. Adult consumers familiar with the characteristics of the culture of “Good Design” potentially could have made a connection between the simplified geometric forms of the components of the toy tea set and say the work of modernist tableware designers such as Kaj Franck, or between the set’s graphic pattern and the modernist motifs of Marimekko and its imitators. But for a much broader segment of the population with a less direct understanding of modernist aesthetics, those connections may not have been immediately apparent. The rhetorical messaging behind the objects’ packaging and marketing used class and taste signifiers such as modern, contemporary and “Danish” to reinforce this connection to effect an emotional and aspirational appeal. These messages were coded to position the set as an effective transmitter of modernist values and to target parents with the ambition to create “appropriately modern” environments for their children. References Ancestry.com. “Historic Catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1896–1993.” <http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1670>. Baker Furniture Inc. “Design Legacy: Our Story.” n.d. <http://www.bakerfurniture.com/design-story/ legacy-of-quality/design-legacy/>. Blade, Timothy Trent. “Introduction.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances: June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Brown, Ashley. “Ilonka Karasz: Rediscovering a Modernist Pioneer.” Studies in the Decorative Arts 8.1 (2000-1): 69–91. Cross, Gary. “Gendered Futures/Gendered Fantasies: Toys as Representatives of Changing Childhood.” American Journal of Semiotics 12.1 (1995): 289–310. Dolansky, Fanny. “Playing with Gender: Girls, Dolls, and Adult Ideals in the Roman World.” Classical Antiquity 31.2 (2012): 256–92. Fallan, Kjetil. Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories. Berg, 2012. Folkmann, Mads Nygaard, and Hans-Christian Jensen. “Subjectivity in Self-Historicization: Design and Mediation of a ‘New Danish Modern’ Living Room Set.” Design and Culture 7.1 (2015): 65–84. Hansen, Per H. “Networks, Narratives, and New Markets: The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern Furniture Design, 1930–1970.” The Business History Review 80.3 (2006): 449–83. Hedqvist, Hedvig, and Rebecka Tarschys. “Thoughts on the International Reception of Marimekko.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 149–71. Highmore, Ben. The Design Culture Reader. Routledge, 2008. Holland, Thomas W. Girls’ Toys of the Fifties and Sixties: Memorable Catalog Pages from the Legendary Sears Christmas Wishbooks, 1950-1969. Windmill, 1997. Hucal, Sarah. "Scandi Crush Saga: How Scandinavian Design Took over the World." Curbed, 23 Mar. 2016. <http://www.curbed.com/2016/3/23/11286010/scandinavian-design-arne-jacobsen-alvar-aalto-muuto-artek>. Jackson, Lesley. “Textile Patterns in an International Context: Precursors, Contemporaries, and Successors.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 44–83. Kline, Stephen. “The Making of Children’s Culture.” The Children’s Culture Reader. Ed. Henry Jenkins. New York: NYU P, 1998. 95–109. Lawrence, Sidney. “Declaration of Function: Documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Crusade, 1933-1950.” Design Issues 2.1 (1985): 65–77. Marshall, Jennifer Jane. Machine Art 1934. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. McGuire, Sheila. “Playing House: Sex-Roles and the Child’s World.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances : June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Meikel, Jeffrey L. “Domesticating Modernity: Ambivalence and Appropriation, 1920–1940.” Designing Modernity; the Arts of Reform and Persuasion. Ed. Wendy Kaplan. Thames & Hudson, 1995. 143–68. O’Brien, Marion, and Aletha C. Huston. “Development of Sex-Typed Play Behavior in Toddlers.” Developmental Psychology, 21.5 (1985): 866–71. Olivarez, Jennifer Komar, Jukka Savolainen, and Juulia Kauste. Finland: Designed Environments. Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Nordic Heritage Museum, 2014. Oswell, David. The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights. Cambridge UP, 2013. Prown, Jules David. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio 17.1 (1982): 1–19. Punchard, Lorraine May. Child’s Play: Play Dishes, Kitchen Items, Furniture, Accessories. Punchard, 1982. Ranalli, Kristina. An Act Apart: Tea-Drinking, Play and Ritual. Master's thesis. U Delaware, 2013. Sears Corporate Archives. “What Is a Sears Modern Home?” n.d. <http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm>. "Target Announces New Design Partnership with Marimekko: It’s Finnish, Target Style." Target, 2 Mar. 2016. <http://corporate.target.com/article/2016/03/marimekko-for-target>. Teglasi, Hedwig. “Children’s Choices of and Value Judgments about Sex-Typed Toys and Occupations.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 18.2 (1981): 184–95. Thompson, Jane, and Alexandra Lange. Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes. Chronicle, 2010.
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Cinque, Toija. "A Study in Anxiety of the Dark." M/C Journal 24, no. 2 (April 27, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2759.

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Introduction This article is a study in anxiety with regard to social online spaces (SOS) conceived of as dark. There are two possible ways to define ‘dark’ in this context. The first is that communication is dark because it either has limited distribution, is not open to all users (closed groups are a case example) or hidden. The second definition, linked as a result of the first, is the way that communication via these means is interpreted and understood. Dark social spaces disrupt the accepted top-down flow by the ‘gazing elite’ (data aggregators including social media), but anxious users might need to strain to notice what is out there, and this in turn destabilises one’s reception of the scene. In an environment where surveillance technologies are proliferating, this article examines contemporary, dark, interconnected, and interactive communications for the entangled affordances that might be brought to bear. A provocation is that resistance through counterveillance or “sousveillance” is one possibility. An alternative (or addition) is retreating to or building ‘dark’ spaces that are less surveilled and (perhaps counterintuitively) less fearful. This article considers critically the notion of dark social online spaces via four broad socio-technical concerns connected to the big social media services that have helped increase a tendency for fearful anxiety produced by surveillance and the perceived implications for personal privacy. It also shines light on the aspect of darkness where some users are spurred to actively seek alternative, dark social online spaces. Since the 1970s, public-key cryptosystems typically preserved security for websites, emails, and sensitive health, government, and military data, but this is now reduced (Williams). We have seen such systems exploited via cyberattacks and misappropriated data acquired by affiliations such as Facebook-Cambridge Analytica for targeted political advertising during the 2016 US elections. Via the notion of “parasitic strategies”, such events can be described as news/information hacks “whose attack vectors target a system’s weak points with the help of specific strategies” (von Nordheim and Kleinen-von Königslöw, 88). In accord with Wilson and Serisier’s arguments (178), emerging technologies facilitate rapid data sharing, collection, storage, and processing wherein subsequent “outcomes are unpredictable”. This would also include the effect of acquiescence. In regard to our digital devices, for some, being watched overtly—through cameras encased in toys, computers, and closed-circuit television (CCTV) to digital street ads that determine the resonance of human emotions in public places including bus stops, malls, and train stations—is becoming normalised (McStay, Emotional AI). It might appear that consumers immersed within this Internet of Things (IoT) are themselves comfortable interacting with devices that record sound and capture images for easy analysis and distribution across the communications networks. A counter-claim is that mainstream social media corporations have cultivated a sense of digital resignation “produced when people desire to control the information digital entities have about them but feel unable to do so” (Draper and Turow, 1824). Careful consumers’ trust in mainstream media is waning, with readers observing a strong presence of big media players in the industry and are carefully picking their publications and public intellectuals to follow (Mahmood, 6). A number now also avoid the mainstream internet in favour of alternate dark sites. This is done by users with “varying backgrounds, motivations and participation behaviours that may be idiosyncratic (as they are rooted in the respective person’s biography and circumstance)” (Quandt, 42). By way of connection with dark internet studies via Biddle et al. (1; see also Lasica), the “darknet” is a collection of networks and technologies used to share digital content … not a separate physical network but an application and protocol layer riding on existing networks. Examples of darknets are peer-to-peer file sharing, CD and DVD copying, and key or password sharing on email and newsgroups. As we note from the quote above, the “dark web” uses existing public and private networks that facilitate communication via the Internet. Gehl (1220; see also Gehl and McKelvey) has detailed that this includes “hidden sites that end in ‘.onion’ or ‘.i2p’ or other Top-Level Domain names only available through modified browsers or special software. Accessing I2P sites requires a special routing program ... . Accessing .onion sites requires Tor [The Onion Router]”. For some, this gives rise to social anxiety, read here as stemming from that which is not known, and an exaggerated sense of danger, which makes fight or flight seem the only options. This is often justified or exacerbated by the changing media and communication landscape and depicted in popular documentaries such as The Social Dilemma or The Great Hack, which affect public opinion on the unknown aspects of internet spaces and the uses of personal data. The question for this article remains whether the fear of the dark is justified. Consider that most often one will choose to make one’s intimate bedroom space dark in order to have a good night’s rest. We might pleasurably escape into a cinema’s darkness for the stories told therein, or walk along a beach at night enjoying unseen breezes. Most do not avoid these experiences, choosing to actively seek them out. Drawing this thread, then, is the case made here that agency can also be found in the dark by resisting socio-political structural harms. 1. Digital Futures and Anxiety of the Dark Fear of the darkI have a constant fear that something's always nearFear of the darkFear of the darkI have a phobia that someone's always there In the lyrics to the song “Fear of the Dark” (1992) by British heavy metal group Iron Maiden is a sense that that which is unknown and unseen causes fear and anxiety. Holding a fear of the dark is not unusual and varies in degree for adults as it does for children (Fellous and Arbib). Such anxiety connected to the dark does not always concern darkness itself. It can also be a concern for the possible or imagined dangers that are concealed by the darkness itself as a result of cognitive-emotional interactions (McDonald, 16). Extending this claim is this article’s non-binary assertion that while for some technology and what it can do is frequently misunderstood and shunned as a result, for others who embrace the possibilities and actively take it on it is learning by attentively partaking. Mistakes, solecism, and frustrations are part of the process. Such conceptual theorising falls along a continuum of thinking. Global interconnectivity of communications networks has certainly led to consequent concerns (Turkle Alone Together). Much focus for anxiety has been on the impact upon social and individual inner lives, levels of media concentration, and power over and commercialisation of the internet. Of specific note is that increasing commercial media influence—such as Facebook and its acquisition of WhatsApp, Oculus VR, Instagram, CRTL-labs (translating movements and neural impulses into digital signals), LiveRail (video advertising technology), Chainspace (Blockchain)—regularly changes the overall dynamics of the online environment (Turow and Kavanaugh). This provocation was born out recently when Facebook disrupted the delivery of news to Australian audiences via its service. Mainstream social online spaces (SOS) are platforms which provide more than the delivery of media alone and have been conceptualised predominantly in a binary light. On the one hand, they can be depicted as tools for the common good of society through notional widespread access and as places for civic participation and discussion, identity expression, education, and community formation (Turkle; Bruns; Cinque and Brown; Jenkins). This end of the continuum of thinking about SOS seems set hard against the view that SOS are operating as businesses with strategies that manipulate consumers to generate revenue through advertising, data, venture capital for advanced research and development, and company profit, on the other hand. In between the two polar ends of this continuum are the range of other possibilities, the shades of grey, that add contemporary nuance to understanding SOS in regard to what they facilitate, what the various implications might be, and for whom. By way of a brief summary, anxiety of the dark is steeped in the practices of privacy-invasive social media giants such as Facebook and its ancillary companies. Second are the advertising technology companies, surveillance contractors, and intelligence agencies that collect and monitor our actions and related data; as well as the increased ease of use and interoperability brought about by Web 2.0 that has seen a disconnection between technological infrastructure and social connection that acts to limit user permissions and online affordances. Third are concerns for the negative effects associated with depressed mental health and wellbeing caused by “psychologically damaging social networks”, through sleep loss, anxiety, poor body image, real world relationships, and the fear of missing out (FOMO; Royal Society for Public Health (UK) and the Young Health Movement). Here the harms are both individual and societal. Fourth is the intended acceleration toward post-quantum IoT (Fernández-Caramés), as quantum computing’s digital components are continually being miniaturised. This is coupled with advances in electrical battery capacity and interconnected telecommunications infrastructures. The result of such is that the ontogenetic capacity of the powerfully advanced network/s affords supralevel surveillance. What this means is that through devices and the services that they provide, individuals’ data is commodified (Neff and Nafus; Nissenbaum and Patterson). Personal data is enmeshed in ‘things’ requiring that the decisions that are both overt, subtle, and/or hidden (dark) are scrutinised for the various ways they shape social norms and create consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and the fabric of society (Gillespie). Data and personal information are retrievable from devices, sharable in SOS, and potentially exposed across networks. For these reasons, some have chosen to go dark by being “off the grid”, judiciously selecting their means of communications and their ‘friends’ carefully. 2. Is There Room for Privacy Any More When Everyone in SOS Is Watching? An interesting turn comes through counterarguments against overarching institutional surveillance that underscore the uses of technologies to watch the watchers. This involves a practice of counter-surveillance whereby technologies are tools of resistance to go ‘dark’ and are used by political activists in protest situations for both communication and avoiding surveillance. This is not new and has long existed in an increasingly dispersed media landscape (Cinque, Changing Media Landscapes). For example, counter-surveillance video footage has been accessed and made available via live-streaming channels, with commentary in SOS augmenting networking possibilities for niche interest groups or micropublics (Wilson and Serisier, 178). A further example is the Wordpress site Fitwatch, appealing for an end to what the site claims are issues associated with police surveillance (fitwatch.org.uk and endpolicesurveillance.wordpress.com). Users of these sites are called to post police officers’ identity numbers and photographs in an attempt to identify “cops” that might act to “misuse” UK Anti-terrorism legislation against activists during legitimate protests. Others that might be interested in doing their own “monitoring” are invited to reach out to identified personal email addresses or other private (dark) messaging software and application services such as Telegram (freeware and cross-platform). In their work on surveillance, Mann and Ferenbok (18) propose that there is an increase in “complex constructs between power and the practices of seeing, looking, and watching/sensing in a networked culture mediated by mobile/portable/wearable computing devices and technologies”. By way of critical definition, Mann and Ferenbok (25) clarify that “where the viewer is in a position of power over the subject, this is considered surveillance, but where the viewer is in a lower position of power, this is considered sousveillance”. It is the aspect of sousveillance that is empowering to those using dark SOS. One might consider that not all surveillance is “bad” nor institutionalised. It is neither overtly nor formally regulated—as yet. Like most technologies, many of the surveillant technologies are value-neutral until applied towards specific uses, according to Mann and Ferenbok (18). But this is part of the ‘grey area’ for understanding the impact of dark SOS in regard to which actors or what nations are developing tools for surveillance, where access and control lies, and with what effects into the future. 3. Big Brother Watches, So What Are the Alternatives: Whither the Gazing Elite in Dark SOS? By way of conceptual genealogy, consideration of contemporary perceptions of surveillance in a visually networked society (Cinque, Changing Media Landscapes) might be usefully explored through a revisitation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, applied here as a metaphor for contemporary surveillance. Arguably, this is a foundational theoretical model for integrated methods of social control (Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, 192-211), realised in the “panopticon” (prison) in 1787 by Jeremy Bentham (Bentham and Božovič, 29-95) during a period of social reformation aimed at the improvement of the individual. Like the power for social control over the incarcerated in a panopticon, police power, in order that it be effectively exercised, “had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible … like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception” (Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, 213–4). In grappling with the impact of SOS for the individual and the collective in post-digital times, we can trace out these early ruminations on the complex documentary organisation through state-controlled apparatuses (such as inspectors and paid observers including “secret agents”) via Foucault (Surveiller et Punir, 214; Subject and Power, 326-7) for comparison to commercial operators like Facebook. Today, artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition technology (FRT), and closed-circuit television (CCTV) for video surveillance are used for social control of appropriate behaviours. Exemplified by governments and the private sector is the use of combined technologies to maintain social order, from ensuring citizens cross the street only on green lights, to putting rubbish in the correct recycling bin or be publicly shamed, to making cashless payments in stores. The actions see advantages for individual and collective safety, sustainability, and convenience, but also register forms of behaviour and attitudes with predictive capacities. This gives rise to suspicions about a permanent account of individuals’ behaviour over time. Returning to Foucault (Surveiller et Punir, 135), the impact of this finds a dissociation of power from the individual, whereby they become unwittingly impelled into pre-existing social structures, leading to a ‘normalisation’ and acceptance of such systems. If we are talking about the dark, anxiety is key for a Ministry of SOS. Following Foucault again (Subject and Power, 326-7), there is the potential for a crawling, creeping governance that was once distinct but is itself increasingly hidden and growing. A blanket call for some form of ongoing scrutiny of such proliferating powers might be warranted, but with it comes regulation that, while offering certain rights and protections, is not without consequences. For their part, a number of SOS platforms had little to no moderation for explicit content prior to December 2018, and in terms of power, notwithstanding important anxiety connected to arguments that children and the vulnerable need protections from those that would seek to take advantage, this was a crucial aspect of community building and self-expression that resulted in this freedom of expression. In unearthing the extent that individuals are empowered arising from the capacity to post sexual self-images, Tiidenberg ("Bringing Sexy Back") considered that through dark SOS (read here as unregulated) some users could work in opposition to the mainstream consumer culture that provides select and limited representations of bodies and their sexualities. This links directly to Mondin’s exploration of the abundance of queer and feminist pornography on dark SOS as a “counterpolitics of visibility” (288). This work resulted in a reasoned claim that the technological structure of dark SOS created a highly political and affective social space that users valued. What also needs to be underscored is that many users also believed that such a space could not be replicated on other mainstream SOS because of the differences in architecture and social norms. Cho (47) worked with this theory to claim that dark SOS are modern-day examples in a history of queer individuals having to rely on “underground economies of expression and relation”. Discussions such as these complicate what dark SOS might now become in the face of ‘adult’ content moderation and emerging tracking technologies to close sites or locate individuals that transgress social norms. Further, broader questions are raised about how content moderation fits in with the public space conceptualisations of SOS more generally. Increasingly, “there is an app for that” where being able to identify the poster of an image or an author of an unknown text is seen as crucial. While there is presently no standard approach, models for combining instance-based and profile-based features such as SVM for determining authorship attribution are in development, with the result that potentially far less content will remain hidden in the future (Bacciu et al.). 4. There’s Nothing New under the Sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9) For some, “[the] high hopes regarding the positive impact of the Internet and digital participation in civic society have faded” (Schwarzenegger, 99). My participant observation over some years in various SOS, however, finds that critical concern has always existed. Views move along the spectrum of thinking from deep scepticisms (Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil) to wondrous techo-utopian promises (Negroponte, Being Digital). Indeed, concerns about the (then) new technologies of wireless broadcasting can be compared with today’s anxiety over the possible effects of the internet and SOS. Inglis (7) recalls, here, too, were fears that humanity was tampering with some dangerous force; might wireless wave be causing thunderstorms, droughts, floods? Sterility or strokes? Such anxieties soon evaporated; but a sense of mystery might stay longer with evangelists for broadcasting than with a laity who soon took wireless for granted and settled down to enjoy the products of a process they need not understand. As the analogy above makes clear, just as audiences came to use ‘the wireless’ and later the internet regularly, it is reasonable to argue that dark SOS will also gain widespread understanding and find greater acceptance. Dark social spaces are simply the recent development of internet connectivity and communication more broadly. The dark SOS afford choice to be connected beyond mainstream offerings, which some users avoid for their perceived manipulation of content and user both. As part of the wider array of dark web services, the resilience of dark social spaces is reinforced by the proliferation of users as opposed to decentralised replication. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) can be used for anonymity in parallel to TOR access, but they guarantee only anonymity to the client. A VPN cannot guarantee anonymity to the server or the internet service provider (ISP). While users may use pseudonyms rather than actual names as seen on Facebook and other SOS, users continue to take to the virtual spaces they inhabit their off-line, ‘real’ foibles, problems, and idiosyncrasies (Chenault). To varying degrees, however, people also take their best intentions to their interactions in the dark. The hyper-efficient tools now deployed can intensify this, which is the great advantage attracting some users. In balance, however, in regard to online information access and dissemination, critical examination of what is in the public’s interest, and whether content should be regulated or controlled versus allowing a free flow of information where users self-regulate their online behaviour, is fraught. O’Loughlin (604) was one of the first to claim that there will be voluntary loss through negative liberty or freedom from (freedom from unwanted information or influence) and an increase in positive liberty or freedom to (freedom to read or say anything); hence, freedom from surveillance and interference is a kind of negative liberty, consistent with both libertarianism and liberalism. Conclusion The early adopters of initial iterations of SOS were hopeful and liberal (utopian) in their beliefs about universality and ‘free’ spaces of open communication between like-minded others. This was a way of virtual networking using a visual motivation (led by images, text, and sounds) for consequent interaction with others (Cinque, Visual Networking). The structural transformation of the public sphere in a Habermasian sense—and now found in SOS and their darker, hidden or closed social spaces that might ensure a counterbalance to the power of those with influence—towards all having equal access to platforms for presenting their views, and doing so respectfully, is as ever problematised. Broadly, this is no more so, however, than for mainstream SOS or for communicating in the world. References Bacciu, Andrea, Massimo La Morgia, Alessandro Mei, Eugenio Nerio Nemmi, Valerio Neri, and Julinda Stefa. “Cross-Domain Authorship Attribution Combining Instance Based and Profile-Based Features.” CLEF (Working Notes). Lugano, Switzerland, 9-12 Sep. 2019. Bentham, Jeremy, and Miran Božovič. The Panopticon Writings. London: Verso Trade, 1995. Biddle, Peter, et al. “The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution.” Proceedings of the 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management. Vol. 6. Washington DC, 2002. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Chenault, Brittney G. “Developing Personal and Emotional Relationships via Computer-Mediated Communication.” CMC Magazine 5.5 (1998). 1 May 2020 <http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1998/may/chenault.html>. Cho, Alexander. “Queer Reverb: Tumblr, Affect, Time.” Networked Affect. Eds. K. Hillis, S. Paasonen, and M. Petit. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015: 43-58. Cinque, Toija. Changing Media Landscapes: Visual Networking. London: Oxford UP, 2015. ———. “Visual Networking: Australia's Media Landscape.” Global Media Journal: Australian Edition 6.1 (2012): 1-8. Cinque, Toija, and Adam Brown. “Educating Generation Next: Screen Media Use, Digital Competencies, and Tertiary Education.” Digital Culture & Education 7.1 (2015). Draper, Nora A., and Joseph Turow. “The Corporate Cultivation of Digital Resignation.” New Media & Society 21.8 (2019): 1824-1839. Fellous, Jean-Marc, and Michael A. Arbib, eds. Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Fernández-Caramés, Tiago M. “From Pre-Quantum to Post-Quantum IoT Security: A Survey on Quantum-Resistant Cryptosystems for the Internet of Things.” IEEE Internet of Things Journal 7.7 (2019): 6457-6480. Foucault, Michel. Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison [Discipline and Punish—The Birth of The Prison]. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1977. Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault: Power, the Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984. Vol. 3. Trans. R. Hurley and others. Ed. J.D. Faubion. London: Penguin, 2001. Gehl, Robert W. Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2018. Gehl, Robert, and Fenwick McKelvey. “Bugging Out: Darknets as Parasites of Large-Scale Media Objects.” Media, Culture & Society 41.2 (2019): 219-235. Gillespie, Tarleton. Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. London: Yale UP, 2018. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989. Inglis, Ken S. This Is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission 1932–1983. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1983. Iron Maiden. “Fear of the Dark.” London: EMI, 1992. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. Lasica, J. D. Darknet: Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2005. 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Lambert, Anthony, and Catherine Simpson. "Jindabyne’s Haunted Alpine Country: Producing (an) Australian Badland." M/C Journal 11, no. 5 (September 2, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.81.

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“People live here, they die here so they must leave traces.” (Read 140) “Whatever colonialism was and is, it has made this place unsettling and unsettled.” (Gibson, Badland 2) Introduction What does it mean for [a] country to be haunted? In much theoretical work in film and Cultural Studies since the 1990s, the Australian continent, more often than not, bears traces of long suppressed traumas which inevitably resurface to haunt the present (Gelder and Jacobs; Gibson; Read; Collins and Davis). Felicity Collins and Therese Davis illuminate the ways Australian cinema acts as a public sphere, or “vernacular modernity,” for rethinking settler/indigenous relations. Their term “backtracking” serves as a mode of “collective mourning” in numerous films of the last decade which render unspoken colonial violence meaningful in contemporary Australia, and account for the “aftershocks” of the Mabo decision that overturned the founding fiction of terra nullius (7). Ray Lawrence’s 2006 film Jindabyne is another after-Mabo film in this sense; its focus on conflict within settler/indigenous relations in a small local town in the alpine region explores a traumatised ecology and drowned country. More than this, in our paper’s investigation of country and its attendant politics, Jindabyne country is the space of excessive haunting and resurfacing - engaging in the hard work of what Gibson (Transformations) has termed “historical backfill”, imaginative speculations “that make manifest an urge to account for the disconnected fragments” of country. Based on an adaptation by Beatrix Christian of the Raymond Carver story, So Much Water, So Close to Home, Jindabyne centres on the ethical dilemma produced when a group of fishermen find the floating, murdered body of a beautiful indigenous woman on a weekend trip, but decide to stay on and continue fishing. In Jindabyne, “'country' […] is made to do much discursive work” (Gorman-Murray). In this paper, we use the word as a metonym for the nation, where macro-political issues are played out and fought over. But we also use ‘country’ to signal the ‘wilderness’ alpine areas that appear in Jindabyne, where country is “a notion encompassing nature and human obligation that white Australia has learned slowly from indigenous Australia” (Gibson, Badland 178). This meaning enables a slippage between ‘land’ and ‘country’. Our discussion of country draws heavily on concepts from Ross Gibson’s theorisation of badlands. Gibson claims that originally, ‘badland’ was a term used by Europeans in North America when they came across “a tract of country that would not succumb to colonial ambition” (Badland 14). Using Collins and Davis’s “vernacular modernity” as a starting point, a film such as Jindabyne invites us to work through the productive possibilities of postcolonial haunting; to move from backtracking (going over old ground) to imaginative backfill (where holes and gaps in the ground are refilled in unconventional and creative returns to the past). Jindabyne (as place and filmic space) signifies “the special place that the Australian Alps occupy for so many Australians”, and the film engages in the discursive work of promoting “shared understanding” and the possibility of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal being “in country” (Baird, Egloff and Lebehan 35). We argue specifically that Jindabyne is a product of “aftermath culture” (Gibson Transformations); a culture living within the ongoing effects of the past, where various levels of filmic haunting make manifest multiple levels of habitation, in turn the product of numerous historical and physical aftermaths. Colonial history, environmental change, expanding wire towers and overflowing dams all lend meaning in the film to personal dilemmas, communal conflict and horrific recent crimes. The discovery of a murdered indigenous woman in water high in the mountains lays bare the fragility of a relocated community founded in the drowning of the town of old Jindabyne which created Lake Jindabyne. Beatrix Christian (in Trbic 61), the film’s writer, explains “everybody in the story is haunted by something. […] There is this group of haunted people, and then you have the serial killer who emerges in his season to create havoc.” “What’s in this compulsion to know the negative space?” asks Gibson (Badland 14). It’s the desire to better know and more deeply understand where we live. And haunting gives us cause to investigate further. Drowned, Murderous Country Jindabyne rewrites “the iconic wilderness of Australia’s High Country” (McHugh online) and replaces it with “a vast, historical crime scene” (Gibson, Badland 2). Along with nearby Adaminaby, the township of Old Jindabyne was drowned and its inhabitants relocated to the new town in the 1960s as part of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. When Jindabyne was made in 2006 the scheme no longer represented an uncontested example of Western technological progress ‘taming’ the vast mountainous country. Early on in the film a teacher shows a short documentary about the town’s history in which Old Jindabyne locals lament the houses that will soon be sacrificed to the Snowy River’s torrents. These sentiments sit in opposition to Manning Clark’s grand vision of the scheme as “an inspiration to all who dream dreams about Australia” (McHugh online). With a 100,000-strong workforce, mostly migrated from war-ravaged Europe, the post-war Snowy project took 25 years and was completed in 1974. Such was this engineering feat that 121 workmen “died for the dream, of turning the rivers back through the mountains, to irrigate the dry inland” (McHugh online). Jindabyne re-presents this romantic narrative of progress as nothing less than an environmental crime. The high-tension wires scar the ‘pristine’ high country and the lake haunts every aspect of the characters’ interactions, hinting at the high country’s intractability that will “not succumb to colonial ambition” (Gibson, Badland 14). Describing his critical excavation of places haunted, out-of-balance or simply badlands, Gibson explains: Rummaging in Australia's aftermath cultures, I try to re-dress the disintegration in our story-systems, in our traditional knowledge caches, our landscapes and ecologies […] recuperate scenes and collections […] torn by landgrabbing, let's say, or by accidents, or exploitation that ignores rituals of preservation and restoration (Transformations). Tourism is now the predominant focus of Lake Jindabyne and the surrounding areas but in the film, as in history, the area does not “succumb to the temptations of pictorialism” (McFarlane 10), that is, it cannot be framed solely by the picture postcard qualities that resort towns often engender and promote. Jindabyne’s sense of menace signals the transformation of the landscape that has taken place – from ‘untouched’ to country town, and from drowned old town to the relocated, damned and electrified new one. Soon after the opening of the film, a moment of fishing offers a reminder that a town once existed beneath the waters of the eerily still Lake Jindabyne. Hooking a rusty old alarm clock out of the lake, Stuart explains to Tom, his suitably puzzled young son: underneath the water is the town where all the old men sit in rocking chairs and there’s houses and shops. […] There was a night […] I heard this noise — boing, boing, boing. And it was a bell coming from under the water. ‘Cause the old church is still down there and sometimes when the water’s really low, you can see the tip of the spire. Jindabyne’s lake thus functions as “a revelation of horrors past” (Gibson Badland 2). It’s not the first time this man-made lake is filmically positioned as a place where “violence begins to seem natural” (Gibson, Badland 13). Cate Shortland’s Somersault (2004) also uses Lake Jindabyne and its surrounds to create a bleak and menacing ambience that heightens young Heidi’s sense of alienation (Simpson, ‘Reconfiguring rusticity’). In Somersault, the male-dominated Jindabyne is far from welcoming for the emotionally vulnerable out-of-towner, who is threatened by her friend’s father beside the Lake, then menaced again by boys she meets at a local pub. These scenes undermine the alpine region’s touristic image, inundated in the summer with tourists coming to fish and water ski, and likewise, with snow skiers in the winter. Even away from the Lake, there is no fleeing its spectre. “The high-tension wires marching down the hillside from the hydro-station” hum to such an extent that in one scene, “reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)”, a member of the fishing party is spooked (Ryan 52). This violence wrought upon the landscape contextualises the murder of the young indigenous woman, Susan, by Greg, an electrician who after murdering Susan, seems to hover in the background of several scenes of the film. Close to the opening of Jindabyne, through binoculars from his rocky ridge, Greg spots Susan’s lone car coursing along the plain; he chases her in his vehicle, and forces her to stop. Before (we are lead to assume) he drags her from the vehicle and murders her, he rants madly through her window, “It all comes down from the power station, the electricity!” That the murder/murderer is connected with the hydro-electric project is emphasised by the location scout in the film’s pre-production: We had one location in the scene where Greg dumps the body in some water and Ray [Lawrence] had his heart set on filming that next to some huge pipelines on a dam near Talbingo but Snowy Hydro didn’t […] like that negative content […] in association with their facility and […] said ‘no’ they wouldn’t let us do it.” (Jindabyne DVD extras) “Tales of murder and itinerancy in wild country are as old as the story of Cain in the killing fields of Eden” (Badlands 14). In Jindabyne we never really get to meet Greg but he is a familiar figure in Australian film and culture. Like many before him, he is the lone Road Warrior, a ubiquitous white male presence roaming the de-populated country where the road constantly produces acts of (accidental and intentional) violence (Simpson, ‘Antipodean Automobility’). And after a litany of murders in recent films such as Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005) and Gone (Ringan Ledwidge, 2007) the “violence begins to seem natural” (Gibson Transformations 13) in the isolating landscape. The murderer in Jindabyne, unlike those who have migrated here as adults (the Irish Stuart and his American wife, Claire), is autochthonous in a landscape familiar with a trauma that cannot remain hidden or submerged. Contested High Country The unsinkability of Susan’s body, now an ‘indigenous murdered body’, holds further metaphorical value for resurfacing as a necessary component of aftermath culture. Such movement is not always intelligible within non-indigenous relations to country, though the men’s initial response to the body frames its drifting in terms of ascension: they question whether they have “broken her journey by tying her up”. The film reconfigures terra nullius as the ultimate badland, one that can never truly suppress continuing forms of physical, spiritual, historical and cultural engagement with country, and the alpine areas of Jindabyne and the Snowy River in particular. Lennon (14) points to “the legacy of biased recording and analysis” that “constitutes a threat to the cultural significance of Aboriginal heritage in alpine areas” (15). This significance is central to the film, prompting Lawrence to state that “mountains in any country have a spiritual quality about them […] in Aboriginal culture the highest point in the landscape is the most significant and this is the highest point of our country” (in Cordaiy 40). So whilst the Jindabyne area is contested country, it is the surfacing, upward mobility and unsinkable quality of Aboriginal memory that Brewster argues “is unsettling the past in post-invasion Australia” (in Lambert, Balayi 7). As the agent of backfill, the indigenous body (Susan) unsettles Jindabyne country by offering both evidence of immediate violence and reigniting the memory of it, before the film can find even the smallest possibility of its characters being ‘in country’. Claire illustrates her understanding of this in a conversation with her young son, as she attempts to contact the dead girls’ family. “When a bad thing happens,” she says, “we all have to do a good thing, no matter how small, alright? Otherwise the bad things, they just pile up and up and up.” Her persistent yet clumsy enactment of the cross-cultural go-between illuminates the ways “the small town community move through the terms of recent debate: shame and denial, repressed grief and paternalism” (Ryan 53). It is the movement of backfill within the aftermath: The movement of a foreign non-Aboriginal woman into Aboriginal space intertextually re-animates the processes of ‘settlement’, resolution and environmental assimilation for its still ‘unsettled’ white protagonists. […] Claire attempts an apology to the woman’s family and the Aboriginal community – in an Australia before Kevin Rudd where official apologies for the travesties of Australian/colonial history had not been forthcoming […] her movement towards reconciliation here is reflective of the ‘moral failure’ of a disconnection from Aboriginal history. (Lambert, Diasporas) The shift from dead white girl in Carver’s story to young Aboriginal woman speaks of a political focus on the ‘significance’ of the alpine region at a given moment in time. The corpse functions “as the trigger for crisis and panic in an Australia after native title, the stolen generation and the war-on-terror” (Lambert, Diasporas). The process of reconnecting with country and history must confront its ghosts if the community is to move forward. Gibson (Transformations) argues that “if we continue to close our imaginations to the aberrations and insufficiencies in our historical records. […] It’s likely we won’t dwell in the joy till we get real about the darkness.” In the post-colonial, multicultural but still divided geographies and cultures of Jindabyne, “genocidal displacement” comes face to face with the “irreconciled relation” to land “that refuses to remain half-seen […] a measure of non-indigenous failure to move from being on the land to being in country” (Ryan 52), evidenced by water harvesting in the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and the more recent crises in water and land management. Aftermath Country Haunted by historical, cultural and environmental change, Jindabyne constitutes a post-traumatic screen space. In aftermath culture, bodies and landscapes offer the “traces” (Gibson, Transformations) of “the social consequences” of a “heritage of catastrophe” that people “suffer, witness, or even perpetrate” so that “the legacy of trauma is bequeathed” (Walker i). The youth of Jindabyne are charged with traumatic heritage. The young Susan’s body predictably bears the semiotic weight of colonial atrocity and non-indigenous environmental development. Evidence of witnesses, perpetrators and sufferers is still being revealed after the corpse is taken to the town morgue, where Claire (in a culturally improper viewing) is horrified by Susan’s marks from being secured in the water by Stuart and the other men. Other young characters are likewise haunted by a past that is environmental and tragically personal. Claire and Stuart’s young son, Tom (left by his mother for a period in early infancy and the witness of his parents strained marital relations), has an intense fear of drowning. This personal/historical fear is played with by his seven year old friend, Caylin-Calandria, who expresses her own grief from the death of her young mother environmentally - by escaping into the surrounding nature at night, by dabbling in the dark arts and sacrificing small animals. The two characters “have a lot to believe in and a lot of things to express – belief in zombies and ghosts, ritual death, drowning” (Cordaiy 42). As Boris Trbic (64) observes of the film’s characters, “communal and familial harmony is closely related to their intense perceptions of the natural world and their often distorted understanding of the ways their partners, friends and children cope with the grieving process.” Hence the legacy of trauma in Jindabyne is not limited to the young but pervades a community that must deal with unresolved ecologies no longer concealed by watery artifice. Backfilling works through unsettled aspects of country by moving, however unsteadily, toward healing and reconciliation. Within the aftermath of colonialism, 9/11 and the final years of the Howard era, Jindabyne uses race and place to foreground the “fallout” of an indigenous “condemnation to invisibility” and the “long years of neglect by the state” (Ryan 52). Claire’s unrelenting need to apologise to the indigenous family and Stuart’s final admission of impropriety are key gestures in the film’s “microcosm of reconciliation” (53), when “the notion of reconciliation, if it had occupied any substantial space in the public imagination, was largely gone” (Rundell 44). Likewise, the invisibility of Aboriginal significance has specificity in the Jindabyne area – indigeneity is absent from narratives recounting the Snowy Mountains Scheme which “recruited some 60,000 Europeans,” providing “a basis for Australia’s postwar multicultural society” (Lennon 15); both ‘schemes’ evidencing some of the “unrecognised implications” of colonialism for indigenous people (Curthoys 36). The fading of Aboriginal issues from public view and political discourse in the Howard era was serviced by the then governmental focus on “practical reconciliation” (Rundell 44), and post 9/11 by “the broad brushstrokes of western coalition and domestic political compliance” (Lambert, CMC 252), with its renewed focus on border control, and increased suspicion of non-Western, non-Anglo-European difference. Aftermath culture grapples with the country’s complicated multicultural and globalised self-understanding in and beyond Howard’s Australia and Jindabyne is one of a series of texts, along with “refugee plays” and Australian 9/11 novels, “that mobilised themselves against the Howard government” (Rundell 43-44). Although the film may well be seen as a “profoundly embarrassing” display of left-liberal “emotional politics” (44-45), it is precisely these politics that foreground aftermath: local neglect and invisibility, terror without and within, suspect American leadership and shaky Australian-American relations, the return of history through marked bodies and landscapes. Aftermath country is simultaneously local and global – both the disappearance and the ‘problem’ of Aboriginality post-Mabo and post-9/11 are backfilled by the traces and fragments of a hidden country that rises to the surface. Conclusion What can be made of this place now? What can we know about its piecemeal ecology, its choppy geomorphics and scarified townscapes? […] What can we make of the documents that have been generated in response to this country? (Gibson, Transformations). Amidst the apologies and potentialities of settler-indigenous recognition, the murdering electrician Gregory is left to roam the haunted alpine wilderness in Jindabyne. His allegorical presence in the landscape means there is work to be done before this badland can truly become something more. Gibson (Badland 178) suggests country gets “called bad […] partly because the law needs the outlaw for reassuring citizens that the unruly and the unknown can be named and contained even if they cannot be annihilated.” In Jindabyne the movement from backtracking to backfilling (as a speculative and fragmental approach to the bodies and landscapes of aftermath culture) undermines the institutional framing of country that still seeks to conceal shared historical, environmental and global trauma. The haunting of Jindabyne country undoes the ‘official’ production of outlaw/negative space and its discursively good double by realising the complexity of resurfacing – electricity is everywhere and the land is “uncanny” not in the least because “the town of Jindabyne itself is the living double of the drowned original” (Ryan 53). The imaginative backfill of Jindabyne reorients a confused, purgatorial Australia toward the “small light of home” (53) – the hope of one day being “in country,” and as Gibson (Badland 3) suggests, the “remembering,” that is “something good we can do in response to the bad in our lands.” References Baird, Warwick, Brian Egloff and Rachel Lenehan. “Sharing the mountains: joint management of Australia’s alpine region with Aboriginal people.” historic environment 17.2 (2003): 32-36. Collins, Felicity and Therese Davis. Australian Cinema after Mabo. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Cordaiy, Hunter. “Man, Woman and Death: Ray Lawrence on Jindabyne.” Metro 149 (2006): 38-42. Curthoys, Anne. “An Uneasy Conversation: The Multicultural and the Indigenous.” Race Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand. Ed. John Docker and Gerhard Fischer. Sydney, UNSW P, 2000. 21-36. Gelder, Ken and Jane M. Jacobs. Uncanny Australia: Sacredness an Identity in a Postcolonial Nation. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 1998. Gibson, Ross. Seven Versions of an Australian Badland. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2002. Gibson, Ross. “Places, Past, Disappearance.” Transformations 13 (2006). Aug. 11 2008 transformations.cqu.edu.au/journal/issue_13/article_01.shtml. Gorman-Murray, Andrew. “Country.” M/C Journal 11.5 (this issue). Kitson, Michael. “Carver Country: Adapting Raymond Carver in Australia.” Metro150 (2006): 54-60. Lambert, Anthony. “Movement within a Filmic terra nullius: Woman, Land and Identity in Australian Cinema.” Balayi, Culture, Law and Colonialism 1.2 (2001): 7-17. Lambert, Anthony. “White Aborigines: Women, Mimicry, Mobility and Space.” Diasporas of Australian Cinema. Eds. Catherine Simpson, Renata Murawska, and Anthony Lambert. UK: Intellectbooks, 2009. Forthcoming. Lambert, Anthony. “Mediating Crime, Mediating Culture.” Crime, Media, Culture 4.2 (2008): 237-255. Lennon, Jane. “The cultural significance of Australian alpine areas.” Historic environment 17.2 (2003): 14-17. McFarlane, Brian. “Locations and Relocations: Jindabyne & MacBeth.” Metro Magazine 150 (Spring 2006): 10-15. McHugh, Siobhan. The Snowy: The People Behind the Power. William Heinemann Australia, 1999. http://www.mchugh.org/books/snowy.html. Read, Peter. Haunted Earth. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Rundle, Guy. “Goodbye to all that: The end of Australian left-liberalism and the revival of a radical politics.” Arena Magazine 88 (2007): 40-46. Ryan, Matthew. “On the treatment of non-indigenous belonging.” Arena Magazine 84 (2006): 52-53. Simpson, Catherine. “Reconfiguring Rusticity: feminizing Australian Cinema’s country towns’. Studies in Australasian Cinemas 2.1 (2008): forthcoming. Simpson, Catherine. “Antipodean Automobility & Crash: Treachery, Trespass and Transformation of the Open Road.” Australian Humanities Review 39-40 (2006). http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-September-2006/simpson.html. Trbic, Boris. “Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne: So Much Pain, So Close to Home.” Screen Education 44 (2006): 58–64. Walker, Janet. Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust. Berkley, Los Angeles and London: U of California P, 2005.
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