The tactile dimension: a method for physicalizing touch behaviors

Traces of touch provide valuable insight into how we interact with the physical world. Measuring touch behavior, however, is expensive and imprecise. Utilizing a fluorescent UV tracer powder, we developed a low-cost analog method to capture persistent, high-contrast touch records on arbitrary objects. We describe our process for selecting a tracer, methods for capturing, enhancing, and aggregating traces, and approaches to examining qualitative aspects of the user experience. Three user studies demonstrate key features of this method. First, we show that it provides clear and durable traces on objects representative of scientific visualization, physicalization, and product design. Second, we demonstrate how this method could be used to study touch perception, by measuring how task and narrative framing elicit different touch behaviors on the same object. Third, we demonstrate how this method can be used to evaluate data physicalizations by observing how participants touch two different physicalizations of COVID-19 time-series data. © 2023 ACM.

The Rule of Law and Fundamental Rights in the Coronavirus Pandemic in Germany

The coronavirus pandemic has been a great challenge for most constitutional states in many aspects. This will be illustrated in this contribution taking Germany as an example, with the focus lying mainly on the rule of law principle and fundamental rights, examined in light of the case law developed so far. Notably during the first lockdown, a lot of fundamental rights in Germany were massively curtailed. This is why this unprecedented situation was sometimes qualified as a "state of emergency” or a "corona-dictatorship”, given that the breadth, depth and duration of the encroachments on fundamental rights were, and in some cases still are, exceptionally great. Nevertheless, the following contribution demonstrates that such an approach is misplaced. The German Basic Law ("Grundgesetz”) does not provide for a state of emergency or any other exceptional provisions regarding the interventions in fundamental rights in times of crisis. The traditional model of the separation of powers has proven to be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs for even far-reaching encroachments on fundamental rights on the one hand, and to adequately control and react to these encroachments in accordance with the rule of law on the other. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Asynchronous Encounters: Artistic Practice and Mediated Intimacy in the Space-Time of Lockdown

This essay engages with pandemic-era artistic practice, asking how digital technologies are being taken up out of desires and attempts to be intimate with, proximate to, 'contemporary' with one another. Drawing on theories of pandemic temporality and on media analysis approaches that highlight the digital's materiality, affectivity, and self-reflexivity, we think with three first-person, visual-digital works composed, circulated, and archived during the COVID-19 pandemic: Ella Comberg's research creation photo-essay on Google Street View, titled 'Eye of the Storm,' Bo Burnham's Netflix streaming special Inside, and Richard Fung's short documentary film '[ ... ],' shot on iPad. We suggest that these visual-digital pieces open onto the promises and limitations of mediated intimacies - with others, with ourselves, and with the space-time of lockdown. Their commitments to texture and tension draw out the 'impurity' (Shotwell 2016) of our digital lifeworlds, while also attuning us to possibilities for 'waiting with' (Baraitser and Salisbury 2020) one another amidst what Nadine Chan (2020) calls the 'distal temporalities' of late capitalism. To deliberately dwell in stuck or looped time and linger over the touch of distant, distal others - or what we call asynchronous encounters - is not to indulge or excuse the ways in which contemporary media platforms capitalise on affective and creative labour or surveil digital lifeworlds. Instead, we posit that the textures, glitches, and flickering bonds of mediated intimacy may offer new, multiple, reflexive and recursive pathways 'toward inhabited futures that are not so distal' (Chan 2020: 13.6).

Closer to and further away – emergency-remote teacher education, orientations and student-bodies

This paper contributes knowledge on the effects of materiality and space on teaching and equal access to teacher education. Through an intersectional analysis, with a specific focus on orientations, bodies and materiality, we show how student-bodies orientate closer to or further from various parts of teacher education as an effect of the materiality of emergency-remote vs. on-campus education. We elaborate on three different student-body orientating processes that take place during teacher education. These are all related to the emergency-remote education implemented as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We call these processes ‘remote education as relief ', ‘the embodiedness of raising the hand on Zoom' and ‘energy-draining pre-recorded lectures'. We show how the materiality of emergency-remote education orientates the participants situated within the bodily horizons of intersectional positions of being deaf, female, racialized as non-white and not having Swedish as a first language, both closer to and further away from various parts of their teacher education. The analysis is based on both individual and group interviews with twelve teacher students. The paper contributes insights to emergency-remote education, remote education and on-campus educating. © 2022 Emilia Åkesson, Edyta Just & Katarina Eriksson Barajas.

Social linking practices across physical distance: The material constitution of sociality

The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in physical distancing regulations, disrupting traditional practices of establishing and maintaining social relationships. We draw attention to digital nomadism as a mature case of navigating sociality in uncertainty to investigate how the linking value of materiality establishes social proximity without geographic contiguity through physical, virtual, and imagined practices. Using Miller's (1987) theory of materiality and triangulating data collected from in-depth interviews and netnography, this study details the material constitution of co-presence with others in physical distance. We propose that consumers oscillate between work—instrumental practices of signaling and curating—and play—emotional practices of belonging and indulging—to experience social linking across different spatial and temporal frameworks.

THE UNREASONABLENESS OF REASONABLE: RETHINKING THE REASONABLE INVESTOR STANDARD

-This Note explores the reasonable investor standard in light of recent developments in pandemic-era securities litigation. Scholars have long criticized the reasonable investor standard for determining materiality. Given the dramatic backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the limitations of the standard are becoming ever more evident. This Note provides a brief history of the development of the current standard and highlights some of its problems through two recent COVID-19 securities fraud cases. This Note argues that the reasonable investor standard is no longer sufficient to protect investors. Through examining tort law and First Amendment jurisprudence, this Note differentiates between the reasonable and average persons and recommends replacing the reasonable investor standard with the average investor standard.

Working from home: negotiations of domestic functionality and aesthetics

While 'the home' is omnipresent within studies of home-located work, the physical or material qualities of the home tend to be positioned as a stable setting within which occupants manage the social complications of home-work. By contrast, we discuss how domestic materialities play a dynamic role in home-work, and how these materialities are mediated by specificities of tenure, household type, dwelling size and other factors. Bringing literature on home-located work into conversation with studies of domestic materialities, the paper draws on interviews and focus groups involving 11 female entrepreneurs working from their homes in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through discussion of participants' negotiations with the functionality and aesthetics of their homes, the paper shows how domestic materialities actively shape, in enabling and restricting ways, the practice and experience of home-located work, while keeping sight of how such materialities are patterned by household characteristics and housing market conditions. The paper offers topical insights as people and employers grapple with the normalisation and relative (un)viability of home-located work post-Covid. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Journal of Housing Policy is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Facemasks, material and metaphors: An analysis of socio-material dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, not only did the Sars-Cov-2 virus become a global pandemic, but public life also changed in the wake of various infection control measures. Increased use of masks was one of the first clearly visible changes. With the masks came stories about masks. Who wore them, where people should wear them, and why? It quickly became clear, however, that stories about ‘the facemask' also have a metaphorical content, negotiating not only problems of the pandemic as a social crisis, but also other social issues amalgamated through the use of masks and the surrounding narratives. Thus, masks not only prevented infection, but also fed and materialised the public imaginary of the pandemic and its challenges. From this perspective, we explore three exemplary cases from Germany and Finland in 2020 in which the mask played different roles as a socio-material phenomenon, linking theoretical perspectives on materiality and metaphors. Additionally, the analysis presents illustrations done by a visual artist. These illustrations capture the key content of the analysis in the form of drawings. © The Author(s) 2023.

Untrammelled ways: Reflecting on the written text, nourishment and care in online teaching

As the COVID-19 pandemic gathered momentum in 2020, it became clear that online teaching spaces risked a distancing from the embodied knowledge so necessary to creative education. Teaching written texts to creative practitioners is a process that calls for alternative spatial and visual literacies, for ontological methods, for honouring experience and reflection - especially in a neo-liberal climate of higher education. In my teaching practice, as well as writing and painting practices, I like so many others have sought spaces for nourishment during this era. Through my teaching and a collaborative research group, one space in which I located this was via hope. This is a time to ask if we can use this moment in history to encourage thinking in an untrammelled manner and to move more freely in the unfamiliar, to transform the classroom;to seek materiality as a method of interpretation, even online;to encourage fearlessness, plurality and relationality;to use craft methods;and to enter a space of care and emotional openness. This contribution will consider creative allyship between staff and students, with the written text as a place of beginning. This is a deliberately open-ended, exploratory, personal and reflective piece of writing, gathered during teaching and research from 2020 to 2022. 'Ways of Writing' are explored both through the method of this article as well as its content. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

Kerbs and curbs, desire and damage: an affirmative account of children's play and being well during the COVID-19 pandemic

A dominant narrative around the impact of COVID-19 on children focuses on the risk of children being the pandemic's biggest victims. Without denying the severity of such damage, this article explores two examples of playing during the pandemic, alongside more affirmative Deleuzian accounts of desire, which can contribute to mitigating both the damage itself and what damage narratives perform. Using two fragments of data from research into children's play during the first COVID-19 UK lockdown, we show how, despite the tightest of restrictions, moments of playfulness emerged from encounters between children, other bodies and the materiality and affective atmospheres of the street to produce moments of being well. In both fragments children play with the kerbs on the street, deterritorialising the curbs of both striated street spaces and lockdown in ways that temporarily enact a playful politics of space and produce moments of being well. We read these fragments through contemporary Deleuzian accounts of desire as a productive force. In so doing, we contribute to debates in relational ontologies of children's geographies that address the micropolitics of children's spatial practices.

(Re)chronotopizing the pandemic Migrant domestic workers' calls for social change

In this article I apply the notions of chronotope and (re)chronotopization to the case of grassroots, migrant domestic worker (MDW) led activism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. I compare the chronotopes that are produced by the Hong Kong government with those produced by migrant-led organizations to understand how migrants are marginalized and how they resist this marginalization. More specifically, I show how the spatiotemporal configurations of "home,” "days off,” and "the time of COVID-19 in Hong Kong” are rechronotopized – that is, reimagined, remoralized and rematerialized – through the discourses and actions of these grassroots organizations. I use this data and analysis to reflect on how the notion of rechronotopization can account for the social processes involved in activism more broadly;and to draw attention to the dialectic relationship between differently scaled chronotopic materialities and morally loaded chronotopic imaginaries. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

COVID-19 and the Global Political Economy: Same as it Never Was?

This introductory article outlines how Global Political Economy and the nuanced perspectives of scholars from this interdiscipline navigate claims about the origins and consequences of, as well as responses to, the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging social scientific assessments have tended to understand the pandemic as either an entirely novel crisis (“everything has changed”) or one merely extending preexisting economic and political tensions (“nothing has changed”). Early analyses of political-economic aspects of the crisis assembled in this collection instead highlight both patterns of continuity and change—and the importance of situating changes within prepandemic continuities—that have emerged during the first year of the global pandemic. This introductory article brings together suggestions by and for Global Political Economy scholars, as well as social scientists more generally, for further researching key dynamics shaping the global political economy in the COVID-19 era as it keeps unfolding and evolving.

Social linking practices across physical distance: The material constitution of sociality

The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in physical distancing regulations, disrupting traditional practices of establishing and maintaining social relationships. We draw attention to digital nomadism as a mature case of navigating sociality in uncertainty to investigate how the linking value of materiality establishes social proximity without geographic contiguity through physical, virtual, and imagined practices. Using Miller's (1987) theory of materiality and triangulating data collected from in-depth interviews and netnography, this study details the material constitution of co-presence with others in physical distance. We propose that consumers oscillate between work-instrumental practices of signaling and curating-and play-emotional practices of belonging and indulging-to experience social linking across different spatial and temporal frameworks.

Digital agriculture killjoy: Happy objects and cruel quests for the good life

This article brings together phenomena not often connected in the rural studies cannon to show an underlying relationality connecting digital agriculture, conceptions of the good life and pursuits of happiness. Drawing from the scholarship of Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant, Agriculture 4.0 technologies are described as 'cruel' happiness pointers. These platforms are shown to direct actors towards happiness while potentially accelerating the very conditions that produced the problems they are promising to solve. Highlighting conceptions of the good life that are fluid, contested and multiple, which have connections to sayings and doings associated with these platforms, the analysis makes visible norms and values animating the so-called digital revolution. At the same time, the article interrogates what these changing affective politics means for the future of farming and farm-based identities, at least in Western countries. The data analysed, from individuals who had adopted smart farming applications in the US, were collected from focus groups and personal interviews, the latter conducted pre (2019) and post coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak (2020 and 2021).

Soft-touch Materiality - notions of Value and Worth

The thinking-through-making process is having a resurgence in understanding as a legitimate way to critical research. The sudden impact of lock-down and COVID on the role of the 'maker' has left the maker-artist to question their practices and how to respond to such current themes. What is clearly evident is that everyone has a story to tell of lock-down;narratives of a time that may have changed us all. Any universal truths that we might have held, have been shaken and changed. The hope is by all of us sharing such experiences, we can come to a place of shared 'equality' and shared 'quality' of compassion. This paper will argue that those working with soft materials in general (embroidery in particular) continue to be polarized, whereby evaluation and 'value' of made outcomes are conditioned. Soft-touch should not be interpreted as 'light-touch', superficiality and ephemerally past time activities but instead a way to illustrate that engaging with soft materials processes are substantive means of communication. The COVID lock-down experience illustrates how such engagements are providing a rich informing of dialogues / practices and experiences. The role of 'making' in art and design is undergoing a resurgence of interest if not an imperative need to understand that such softtouch materialities can be powerful forces of proactive renewal, restorative, and regenerative. There `values' transcend the introspective individual to that of a democratizing societal well-being 'enacting change'. Sullivan notes making as 'emancipatory'...that can 'enact artistic, social, political, educational or cultural change'.

Enforcing Double Materiality in Global Sustainability Reporting for Developing Economies: Reflection on Ghana’s Oil Exploration and Mining Sectors

While the development of globally accepted sustainability reporting standards initiated by the IFRS Foundation has largely engaged stakeholders in developed economies, the stakes for developing economies could be compromised without an explicit consideration of their sustainability issues within this standard-setting framework. This paper examines the need to develop global sustainability reporting standards based on the principle of double materiality to warrant that both the target towards carbon net-zero by 2050 under the Paris Agreement and the subsequent promise to accelerate under COP26 are achieved with efficacy. Adopting a multiple-case study approach, this paper reveals the limitations of existing sustainability reporting in the absence of double materiality in a developing economy. Specifically, the analyses reveal limited climate-related disclosures among selected cases in Ghana. Available disclosures connote increasing GHG emissions over the period under consideration. This study also shows weak disclosure comparability across the companies following similar reporting standards. Overall, it argues that enforcement of double materiality to embrace sustainability issues impacting both developed and developing economies is necessary for an effective transformation towards a low-carbon global economy. It contributes to the existing body of knowledge by elucidating double materiality as a pertinent interdisciplinary concept and devising a holistic framework for the emerging global sustainability reporting system to underscore governance accountability for external costs to the environment. Global sustainability reporting standards with a myopic focus on conventional financial matters in the absence of double materiality remain a disclosure system with implausible impact on climate change.

2008's mistrust vs 2020's panic: can ESG hold your institutional investors?

Purpose The authors compare two market collapse incidents, focusing on their role as turning points for ESG considerations among investors that do not fall under the SRI class. The authors draw from the signaling theory to posit that ESG performance acts as a buffer to retain institutional shareholders under stress conditions. Design/methodology/approach The authors collect extensive data on institutional shareholdings and corporate performance during the pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis to examine the potential of ESG to act as a downward risk hedging mechanism. The authors test whether superior ESG scores function as insurance and resilience signals that lock investors in through times of high probability of divestments. Findings Findings indicate that ESG weighs in investment decisions during economic downturn and poor returns. The nature of this positive relationship is not static but dynamic contingent on overall risk materiality considerations. Research limitations/implications The authors update regulators, firms, investors and academics on ESG, risk and crisis management. The shifting materiality and the altering impact of ESG practices is our core implication, as well as limitation, in terms of metrics, temporal evolution and interaction with institutional factors, along with portfolio alpha and safe haven potential in ESG asset classes. Originality/value The authors extend current literature focusing on portfolio returns and firm valuations to highlight the role of ESG in shareholder retention during poor return periods. The authors further add to existing studies by examining the shifting materiality of ESG pillars during different crisis settings.

Getting Serious About People Over Profit: Addressing Burnout by Establishing Meaning and Connection

Interventions to promote healthy sleep may reduce physician burnout susceptibility.5 An extensive study of physicians reported sleep-related impairment in 40% of attending physicians and 51% of house staff physicians.6 There was large correlation between sleeprelated impairment and interpersonal disengagement, work exhaustion, and overall burnout.6 After adjustment for other variables, high sleep impairment levels increased the odds of self-reporting a clinically significant medical error by 96%.6 Besides medical errors, sleep-related impairment and occupational distress have also been associated with unsolicited patient complaints. Activities that enhance social supports (e.g., peer support programs and Balint groups) and add meaning to work (e.g., professional development time, mentorship, time to develop connections with patients, etc.) are likely to provide some benefit, as they support physicians' capacity to maintain perspective, sense of purpose, and enhance sense of control over their situation.9,10 One study showed such a group normalized struggles, reduced isolation, and provided new strategies for navigating challenging interactions.11 In another study, self-facilitated physician small-group meetings improved burnout, symptoms of depression, and job satisfaction.12 Although rates of burnout among physicians have grown, physicians are resilient when compared to other occupational groups. A recent review found the rate of burnout among nurses working in hospitals ranged widely from 5% to 50%, based on specialty differences and geographical regions.14 More specifically, the review indicated the overall prevalence of emotional exhaustion was 34.1%, of depersonalization 12.6%, and of lack of personal accomplishment 15.2%.15 This same review took COVID-19 into account and noted nurse burnout risk factors as younger age, decreased social support, low family and colleague readiness to cope with COVID-19 outbreak, increased perceived threat of COVID-19, longer working time in quarantine areas, working in a high-risk environment, working in hospitals with inadequate and insufficient material and human resources, increased workload, and lower level of specialized training regarding COVID-19.15 Burnout has many consequences in nurses. Emotional exhaustion is negatively associated with the quality and safety of care, patient satisfaction, nurses' organizational commitment, and productivity.14 Nurse burnout has been a significant factor in predicting medication-associated errors.16 Protective factors in nurses include belief in readiness to cope with COVID-19 outbreaks, willingness to participate in frontline work, prior training and experience in COVID-19 patients' management, safe practices, and increased social support.15 Empathy and nursing organizational climate have been found to be protective against burnout, suggesting this could be targeted in managerial interventions.17 Nursing surveys of three types of work engagement (i.e., vigor, dedication, and absorption) and resiliency suggested some protection from burnout.18 Mindfulness-based interventions could potentially have a protective effect for burnout in nurses.19 (See Table 2 for an overview of how burnout impacts feelings about careers in nurses and physicians.) COVID-19 PANDEMIC AS ACCELERANT TO THE BURN Healthcare workers were already hurting before 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How the 5G Enabled the COVID-19 Pandemic Prevention and Control: Materiality, Affordance, and (De-)Spatialization.

5G, the most disruptive innovation, had played a significant role in the COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control. However, as a novel technology and context, we have little knowledge about how 5G enabled pandemic prevention and control. This study collected 212 cases and conducted qualitative research to explore how the 5G worked in prevention and control. Based on the concepts of materiality and affordance, we grounded two affordances of spatialization and de-spatialization from the data. Spatialization provides non-contact ways to complete the tasks which are supposed to be completed in contact, and de-spatialization provides remote operations to complete the tasks which are supposed to be completed on-site. Spatialization and de-spatialization enabled the diagnosis and treatment of the infectors to relieve the unbalance of medical staff, cutting the infectious route to contain the viral spread, and logistic supply to support the prevention and control. Our study offers theoretical contributions to digital pandemic prevention and control, and the literature on 5G also offers practical implications.

The Biopolitics of Public Health Trust: Embodied Risk and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Review Essay of the following RHM Books: Lawrence, Heidi Yoston. (2020). Vaccine rhetorics. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press. pp. 172. Hardcover $99.95. Pender, Kelly. (2018). Being at genetic risk: Toward a rhetoric of care. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 184. Hardcover $69.95. Rowland, Allison L. (2020). Zoetropes and the politics of humanhood. Columbus: OH: The Ohio State University Press. pp. 190. Hardcover $99.95.