Non-Anthropocentric Views to Pandemics to Come: Kinship and Topophilia

The covid-19 pandemic is a manifestation of the current ecological crisis, whose ultimate origin can be traced to human exceptionalism-based ontology. This text echoes the environmental humanities perspective to address two pertinent concepts, kinship and topophilia, to re-signify the interdependence of humanity with the web of life and the abiotic elements that sustain it. Likewise, mourning is proposed as an element that can bring us closer to this vital framework by reestablishing kinships and a rooted sense of belonging to a place. It is concluded that the most promising approach for preventing future pandemics requires the extension of kinship to the non-human. © 2023 Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. All rights reserved.

Limits of science-based approaches in global health: Sociocultural and moral lessons from Ebola and COVID-19

This chapter explores the significance of sociocultural and ethical limitations of non-science-based approaches toward effectively containing, managing, and ending global health emergencies. It refers to the 2013-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and the current COVID-19 global pandemic to underscore the limits of science-based approaches in tackling infectious disease outbreaks. Against this background, it points to the significance of measures rooted in the humanities that have been (or are being) used to demonstrate the values of social, cultural, and ethical approaches in addressing global health emergencies. This chapter shows that while science-based approaches are essential, they are not sufficient toward addressing the varied challenges of global health emergencies. The experiences of Ebola epidemics in Africa and the COVID-19 global pandemic have shown that science-based approaches need to be buttressed by sociocultural and ethical measures to be successful. It has become self-evident that global health emergencies can be addressed sooner if non-science-based approaches are incorporated into the core responses. The successful approaches toward addressing global health emergencies will be ones that adequately harmonized science-based approaches with sociocultural and ethical measures. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

The Human and Machine, 2022-23 OpenAI, ChatGPT, Quillbot, Grammarly, Google, Google Docs & humans*

With the release of generative text and image-based tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT in 2022, discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on design, design education, and research have moved from the periphery to the forefront. These powerful tools, often open-access beta versions, have transformed speculative dialogue into a present reality. Their sophisticated and intuitive user interfaces facilitate the speedy and proficient generation of text, and image-based content, enabling designers, educators, and learners to simultaneously discover the dangers and possibilities of generative AI technologies. To explore the unique powers of both generative AI and human cognition, the author uses autoethnography, AI writing assistants, and generative AI technology to develop a story of practice. The narrative is informed by, and ultimately supports the scholarly literature that emphasizes the need for humans to take responsibility for the equitable and ethical use of AI. This includes initiating and guiding AI systems, critically evaluating their responses, and reformulating, editing, and verifying outputs to address factual inaccuracies, misleading information, or offensive and biased content.

Introduction: Humanity and disease discourse

The introduction grounds the understanding of the relationship between humanity and pandemics. Starting from the legitimating of science during the Enlightenment, and tracing its consolidation through the evolution of scientism, the chapter outlines how science and scientific understanding of the world came to dominate human epistemological interaction with the universe. However, this positivistic understanding of the scientific image of the human becomes grossly inadequate within the context of a pandemic, like the COVID-19, that unravels the entire dimensions of humanity, from the physiological to the psychological and from sociological to the moral. This chapter outlines some of the critical issues that the pandemic raised, including racial inequalities, the fake news predicament, the relationship between science and non-science, the nature of scientific truth, and the relationship between science and politics-issues that all the chapters in the volume interrogate in interdisciplinary concert. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

Global health, humanity and the COVID-19 pandemic: Philosophical and sociological challenges and imperatives

This volume interrogates global health and especially the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role that science has played in mitigating the human experiences of pandemics and health over the centuries. Science, and the scientific method, has always been at the forefront of the human attempt at undermining the virulent consequences of sicknesses and diseases. However, the scientific image of humans in the world is founded on the presumption of possessing the complete understanding about humans and their physiological and psychological frameworks. This volume challenges this scientific assumption. Global health denotes the complex and cumulative health profile of humanity that involves not only the framework of scientific researches and practices that investigates and seeks to improve the health of all people on the globe, but also the range of humanistic issues - economic, cultural, social, ideological - that constitute the sources of inequities and threat to the achievement of a positive global health profile. This volume balances the argument that diseases and pandemics are human problems that demand both scientific and humanistic interventions. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

Productivity and creativity triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and new technologies

THE ESSENCE OF THE HUMANITIES One of the key components determining the entire field of the humanities consists of teaching critical thinking expressed orally and in writing. [...]whatever literary works or languages we work with, ultimately the purpose proves to be to lay the foundation for cultural competence, linguistic skills, research abilities, and writing skills for a constantly changing world. The exchange via online writing thus proved to be a highly innovative method of studying, demanding a high level of concentration and involvement from the professor and the students. Since we emphasize in the humanities in general and in German studies in particular writing skills, this method was successful. Teaching a literature course in German at an upper level via such a chat room proved to be challenging at first, but then it was highly productive because of the intensive writing activities by students and the instructor. Top Hat is also highly useful for taking attendance (once, twice, or three times per class), for quizzes, and for multiple-choice exams. Since questions can be posted so easily online-also during class meetings-students can also be encouraged to get involved in the teaching process themselves by formulating discussion questions for the entire class.

Discourses of the wandering Almajiri child as representation of the (post-) COVID generation

The African child is a curious phenomenon in a world of shrinking population and dramatic COVID-19 economic misfortune. Both of these global crises require a youthful generation of innovators and visionaries to promote new ways of regenerating the planet. Yet, as Africa represents the future in population acceleration and natural resources, the current demonization of the almajiri [pl. almajirai]-"Quranic child learner"-as a "super-spreader" in Nigeria symbolizes a disavowal of hope in the future of humanity as a whole. This negative portrayal has further highlighted the evident institutional failure to see children as victims of global inequality and to address the issue in ways that tackle the root causes of this migratory misadventure. The humanities have a role to play here, and in this essay, we will use both fictional and non-fictional narratives to trace the life chances of a class of youths who see their condition as faith, fate, and transitional. The permanence of their condition, we argue, is a relatively recent phenomenon brought about by the vicissitudes of displacement, alienation, and a culture of misplaced priorities. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.

From danger to destination: changes in the language of endemic disease during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the beginning of 2022, the word 'endemic' became a buzzword, especially in the UK and the USA, and a kernel for the formation of novel social representations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The word normally refers to a disease which is continuously present, whose incidence is relatively stable and is maintained at a baseline level in any given locality. Over time, 'endemic' migrated from scientific discourse into political discourse, where it was mainly used to argue that the pandemic was over and people now had to learn to 'live with' the virus. In this article, we examine the emerging meanings, images and social representations of the term 'endemic' in English language news between 1 March 2020 and 18 January 2022. We observe a change over time, from the representation of 'endemic' as something dangerous and to be avoided to something desirable and to be aspired to. This shift was facilitated by anchoring COVID-19, especially its variant Omicron, to 'just like the flu' and by objectifying it through metaphors depicting a path or journey to normality. However, the new language of hope and aspiration did not go entirely unchallenged. Our analysis suggests that two competing polemic social representations emerged: one of endemicity as hope and aspiration and the other focusing on misguided optimism. We discuss these findings in the context of emerging polarisations in beliefs about the pandemic, politics and disease management.

One hundred years after the death of the writer and novelist Giovanni Verga (1922) and his relationship with public health: a glimpse of the past in the era of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Background: In 1922 the famous Italian novelist Giovanni Verga died in Catania (Italy). In Verga's works there are many suggestions to the world of medicine, in particular the diseases described in the poor society of southern Italy of that time. One of the most common diseases described by Verga was cholera. Methods: The authors researched and reviewed Verga's works, detecting references to public health. These are topical issues in the current period of the COVID pandemic. In Verga's works the theme of hygiene, epidemiology, and infectious diseases occur. There are many hints related to medicine, especially as far as the typical diseases of poor society and the difficult social environments of the time are concerned. One of the most common diseases described by Verga was cholera but also malaria and tuberculosis occur. Results: It was estimated that 69,000 people died of cholera in Sicily, of whom 24,000 in Palermo. The public health situation in Italy was difficult. Verga denounces people's ignorance and the survival of past beliefs. Conclusion: Verga describes a culturally and economically humble society, in a region characterized by large class gaps. It draws a difficult picture of the public health situation in the second half of the 19th Century and people's daily lives. The authors believe that today it is important that the centenary of Verga's death be an opportunity to read his works, also from a medical historical point of view.

Does medical humanities matter? The challenge of COVID-19.

Medical humanities has tended first and foremost to be associated with the ways in which the arts and humanities help us to understand health. However, this is not the only or necessarily the primary aim of our field. What the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed above all is what the field of critical medical humanities has insisted on: the deep entanglement of social, cultural, historical life with the biomedical. The pandemic has been a time for reinstating the power of expertise of a particular kind, focusing on epidemiology, scientific modelling of potential outcomes and vaccine development. All of this delivered by science at speed.It has been challenging for medical humanities researchers to find purchase in these debates with insights from our more contemplative, 'slow research' approaches. However, as the height of the crisis passes, our field might now be coming into its own. The pandemic, as well as being productive of scientific expertise, also demonstrated clearly the meaning of culture: that it is not a static entity, but is produced and evolves through interaction and relationship. Taking a longer view, we can see the emergence of a certain 'COVID-19 culture' characterised by entanglements between expert knowledge, social media, the economy, educational progress, risk to health services and people in their socio-economic, political ethnic and religious/spiritual contexts. It is the role of medical humanities to pay attention to those interactions and to examine how they play out in the human experience and potential impact of the pandemic. However, to survive and grow in significance within the field of healthcare research, we need to engage not just to comment. There is a need for medical humanities scholars to assert our expertise in interdisciplinary research, fully engaged with experts by experience, and to work proactively with funders to demonstrate our value.

Solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from a nine-country interview study in Europe.

Calls for solidarity have been an ubiquitous feature in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we know little about how people have thought of and practised solidarity in their everyday lives since the beginning of the pandemic. What role does solidarity play in people's lives, how does it relate to COVID-19 public health measures and how has it changed in different phases of the pandemic? Situated within the medical humanities at the intersection of philosophy, bioethics, social sciences and policy studies, this article explores how the practice-based understanding of solidarity formulated by Prainsack and Buyx helps shed light on these questions. Drawing on 643 qualitative interviews carried out in two phases (April-May 2020 and October 2020) in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland and the UK), the data show that interpersonal acts of solidarity are important, but that they are not sustainable without consistent support at the institutional level. As the pandemic progressed, respondents expressed a longing for more institutionalised forms of solidarity. We argue that the medical humanities have much to gain from directing their attention to individual health issues, and to collective experiences of health or illness. The analysis of experiences through a collective lens such as solidarity offers unique insights to understandings of the individual and the collective. We propose three essential advances for research in the medical humanities that can help uncover collective experiences of disease and health crises: (1) an empirical and practice-oriented approach alongside more normative approaches; (2) the confidence to make recommendations for practice and policymaking and (3) the pursuit of cross-national and multidisciplinary research collaborations.

Medical Humanism in the Posthuman Era: A Critical Examination of its Past, Present, and Future.

This paper explores the historical and contemporary significance of medical humanism and its potential value in medical education. Medical humanities emerged as a response to the issues arising from science-driven modern medicine, most notably the marginalization of the individual in medical practice. Medical humanism has evolved to become a guiding ideology in shaping the theory and practice of medical humanities. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about significant changes in medical humanities, challenging the foundations of humanism beyond medical humanism. The rise of posthumanism raises fundamental questions about humanism itself. The climate crisis, driven by human greed and capitalism's exploitation of nature, has led to the emergence of viruses that transcend species boundaries. The overflow of severely ill patients has highlighted the classic medical ethics problem of "who should be saved first" in Korea, and medical humanism is facing a crisis. Various marginalized groups have also pointed out the biases inherent in medical humanism. With this rapidly changing environment in mind, this paper examines the past and present of medical humanism in order to identify the underlying ideology of medical humanism and its future potential in medical education. This paper assumes that there are two axes of humanism: human-centeredness and anthropocentrism. Medical humanism has historically developed along the axis of human-centeredness rather than anthropocentrism, emphasizing the academic inquiry into human nature and conditions, as well as the moral element of humanity. Furthermore, this paper discusses the challenges that medical humanism faces from post-human centeredness and post-anthropocentrism, as well as the recent discourse on posthumanism. Finally, the implications of this shift in medical humanism for the education of the history of medicine are briefly explored.

Framing of female medical personnel during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study of the Chinese official media.

This paper analyzes the media frames adopted by the official WeChat and Sina Weibo accounts of the People's Daily between January 1 and December 31, 2020, for reports about female medical personnel involved in pandemic prevention and control. Although the number of female medical personnel involved in pandemic prevention and control far exceeded that of their male counterparts, the extent of media reports on the former was far less than that of the latter. The human interest frame about female medical personnel was mainly applied, while the use of the action frame was less frequent, which highlighted the gender identity and family role of these women but weakened their professional identity. This was not conducive to praising the contributions of female medical personnel in fighting the pandemic. The media frames of reporting medical personnel in WeChat and Sina Weibo accounts of the People's Daily are not always the same. After Wuhan's lockdown ended on April 8, the proportion of the human interest frame of the report text of female medical personnel decreased, and the proportion of the action frame increased, while the proportion of the human interest frame of the report text of male medical personnel increased and the proportion of the action frame decreased. Previous studies mainly analyzed the use of the media frames of female news personalities, but few studies focused on whether women had the possibility of breaking away from the gender media frames. This study shows that some female medical personnel with exceptional professional competence are likely to transcend the gender media frames and receive similar coverage to that of male medical professionals, like Li Lanjuan and Chen Wei.

Mutant metaphors: Frankenstein in the era of COVID-19.

Since its debut, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has, fittingly, assumed a life of its own. In today's cultural landscape, the mere mention of 'mutant' evokes the language of Othering, including Frankensteinian metaphors, such as those used to describe the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. When scientists referred to omicron as a Frankenstein variant, they demonstrated the inherent mutability of the myth-a myth that is crucial in biomedicine. In this article, the authors examine the shifting nature of Frankenstein metaphors and consider how they function in what Priscilla Wald refers to as outbreak narratives in the context of the USA's COVID-19 policies. The authors point to the ready instatement of travel bans as evidence of how such a potent myth is used to create and sell public policy. In response to such xenophobic policies, the authors apply Donna Haraway's concept of 'boundary breakdowns' in order to reimagine relationships with mutancy. They examine how moving past the idea of mutant is other in contemporary virus narratives may offer a way to reconfigure our relationships of self and other and move beyond the hegemonic and nativist policies of the present.

Correction: Assessing the significance of first place and online third places in supporting Malaysian seniors' well-being during the pandemic.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-01655-5.].

What Members Need in Work Situations: Two Samples of Essential Managerial Leadership Behaviors: JMI

Violent incidents, terrorist attacks, senseless shootings, health issues such as the Coronavirus, and natural disasters call attention to managerial leadership in crisis situations. Yukl and Van Fleet (1982) did the seminal work on this topic extended by Peterson and Van Fleet (2008) and Peterson et al. (2012). More recently, Geier (2016) reported findings based on firefighters while Htway and Casteel (2015) and Kapucu and Ustun (2018) studied public sector organizations. Since these studies all involved nonprofit organizations, an extension to for-profit organizations is warranted. There are differences between profit organizations and not-for-profit organizations (Collins, 2001;Collins, 2005). Because of the goals involved, there may be differences in the managerial leadership behaviors required by these types of organizations. Hannah and Parry (2013) specifically recommend expanding leadership research to many different extreme situations in an effort to understand different managerial leadership behaviors that adapt to varying crisis situations. Two samples reported here identify the critical managerial leadership behaviors desired by for-profit organizational participants in both stable and crisis situations. Finally, implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.

Introduction: Do we really want a return to normal?

Governments in many nations responded to these upheavals with public spending programmes on vaccines and medical equipment, and financial support for businesses and workers during lockdowns and public safety mandates. Taking a visual approach to borders, through the photographic self-representations of the study's participants, Biglin finds that legal status and a sense of belonging, being at home in one's space, do not correspond. BRETT NICHOLLS is Head of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago in New Zealand.

Digital topics on cultural heritage investigated: how can data-driven and data-guided methods support to identify current topics and trends in digital heritage?

In research and policies, the identification of trends as well as emerging topics and topics in decline is an important source of information for both academic and innovation management. Since at present policy analysis mostly employs qualitative research methods, the following article presents and assesses different approaches – trend analysis based on questionnaires, quantitative bibliometric surveys, the use of computer-linguistic approaches and machine learning and qualitative investigations. Against this backdrop, this article examines digital applications in cultural heritage and, in particular, built heritage via various investigative frameworks to identify topics of relevance and trendlines, mainly for European Union (EU)-based research and policies. Furthermore, this article exemplifies and assesses the specific opportunities and limitations of the different methodical approaches against the backdrop of data-driven vs. data-guided analytical frameworks. As its major findings, our study shows that both research and policies related to digital applications for cultural heritage are mainly driven by the availability of new technologies. Since policies focus on meta-topics such as digitisation, openness or automation, the research descriptors are more granular. In general, data-driven approaches are promising for identifying topics and trendlines and even predicting the development of near future trends. Conversely, qualitative approaches are able to answer "why” questions with regard to whether topics are emerging due to disruptive innovations or due to new terminologies or whether topics are becoming obsolete because they are common knowledge, as is the case for the term "internet”.

Learning to Contract under Uncertainty in Strategic Alliances: The Co-evolution of a Firm's Absorptive Capacity: JMI

Firms have often used strategic alliances as a strategy to cope with increased uncertainty. This paper argues that a firm needs to learn to leverage its absorptive capacity to exploit and explore the contracting knowledge in strategic alliances so as to enhance efficiency, scope, and flexibility. It conceptually examines how a firm's contractual absorptive capacity co-evolves with its knowledge environment under uncertainty as part of learning. By integrating transaction cost economics and absorptive capacity literatures, this paper offers a rich picture of the co-evolutionary processes underlying contractual absorptive capacity in strategic alliances under uncertainty. It also incorporates a more refined (and underexplored) conceptualization of asset specificity and uncertainty, two key constructs in transaction cost economics, into the coevolutionary framework of absorptive capacity in strategic alliances. It illustrates some of the concepts with examples from the hospitality industry, where the impact of uncertainty is clearly evident - particularly in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.