Conference Review: Heroism and the Heroic in Applied and Social Theatre

In March 2014, the TaPRA Applied and Social Theatre Working Group held a research day at the Royal Central School Speech and Drama (RCSSD) exploring the significance and implications of the notion of heroism in socially engaged theatre practice. Heroism as a theme emerged from discussions at the end of the last annual TaPRA conference in Glasgow in 2013, which led the working group convenors (Sylvan Baker, Dave Calvert, Alison Jeffers & Katharine Low) into discussions on risk and bravery in applied and social theatre from which have emerged ideas about care and protection, both of participants and of practitioners. Another strong theme to emerge from our conversations on heroism was the notion of leadership; different models of leadership, and changing perceptions of self in leadership roles. Is heroism always epic or can we identify small acts of everyday heroism and is it at all helpful to think in these terms? Does thinking about heroism lead to a certain romanticisation of applied theatre

Ethical Concerns of Heroism Training

Heroism training programs originated in the mid-2000s with the goal to “Train everyday heroes” (Heroic Imagination Project, 2017). Most participants of these programs are students between the ages of 10 and 20. Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that these programs may create more courageous and prosocial people (Heiner, 2018; Kohen & Sólo, 2019), however there is very little discussion in the emerging academic field of heroism science about the potential ethical concerns of training minors to be heroes (Beggan, 2019; Franco & Zimbardo, 2016; Franco et al., 2017). With the growth of heroism science scholarship, it would be wise to examine and offer best practices for the ethical training of heroism with minors. Heroic action is inherently risky, and while training programs currently discuss mortality and risk assessment, minors have not developed the neural or cognitive capacity to assess risks as adults can. Furthermore, the content and goals of heroism training may go against schools’ and parents’ wishes. Heroism training programs also have the potential to make heroism seem glamorous, which could lead some participants to seek out, or create, situations requiring heroic action. The paper discusses these, and other, ethical concerns in training minors to be heroes. The paper concludes with a variety of best practice recommendations for heroism training programs working with minors including; obtaining parent consent for training, working to improve minors’ risk assessment abilities, domain specific training, and involving parents and other relevant stakeholders in the heroism training process

Historical psychology, utopian dreams and other fool’s errands

Copyright 2008 @ the author. Originally published open access by Birmingham University. Journal now published by Edinburgh University Press.No abstract availabl

The Dr Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture 2018: Occupational stories from a global city

The Dr Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture 2018, given on June 12th 2018 at the 42nd Annual Conference and Exhibition of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, held at the Belfast Waterfront, Belfast, UK. This lecture aims to set out the potential for the global occupational therapy profession to exchange knowledge for social transformation practice. It identifies the profession’s concern with narratives as a vehicle for a socially critical approach to occupation, which can be used to negotiate intervention and action. Drawing on examples from literature, history and service users, the paper suggests that narrative provides a means for relating the value of occupation beyond professional boundaries to capture popular imagination and demand for the profession. Examples are given of the critical discussion of the everyday impact of health inequity, and in addressing diversity both in the profession and engaging service users. My lecture concludes that occupational therapy is a global network with the population of a city, and thus represents a community that can be a vibrant voice for social transformation through occupation through a reciprocal exchange of narrative. This is a collective and dialogical process which can draw on the experiences of both southern and northern hemispheres

Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda’s Digital Magazine \u3cem\u3eInspire\u3c/em\u3e in the Self-Radicalization Process

Al Qaeda is today a fragmented organization, and its strategic communication efforts now focus largely on recruiting individuals in the West to carry out “individual jihad” in their home countries. One Al Qaeda–affiliated publication, Inspire, represents an unusual use of the digital magazine format and content for recruitment. This study examines the content and design of Inspire to determine how the magazine may advance the self-radicalization that it seeks to induce in its readers. This analysis finds that the magazine weaves together jihadist ideology, a narrow interpretation of Islam, and appropriations of Western popular culture to maximize the publication’s potential for motivating readers toward violence

Queerying activism through the lens of the sociology of everyday life

The approaching 30th anniversary of the introduction of the 1988 Local Government Act offers an opportunity to reflect on the nature of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) activism in Britain. The protests against its implementation involved some of the most iconic moments of queer activism. Important though they are, these singular, totemic moments give rise to, and are sustained by small, almost unobtrusive acts which form part of LGB people’s everyday lives. This article aims to contribute to a re-thinking of queer activism where iconic activism is placed in a synergetic relationship with the quieter practices in the quotidian lives of LGB people. The authors interrogate a series of examples, drawn from three studies, to expand ideas about how activism is constituted in everyday life. They discuss the findings in relation to three themes: the need to forge social bonds often forms a prompt to action; disrupting the binary dualism between making history and making a life; and the transformative potential of everyday actions/activism. The lens of the sociology of everyday life (1) encourages a wider constituency of others to engage in politics, and (2) problematises the place of iconic activism.Peer reviewe

‘Lower than a snake’s belly’ : discursive constructions of dignity and heroism in low-status garbage work.

In this paper, we consider how dignity is discursively constructed in the context of work dominated by physicality and dirt. Based on semi-structured interviews with garbage workers, our analysis considers how the deprivations they experience are cast through discourses intended to construct their individual and collective worth. We consider the manner in which dignity maybe denied to such workers through popular repudiations of individuality and status. We demonstrate how this positioning arises from contact with physical dirt, and associations with socially dirty work based on ascriptions of servility, abuse and ambivalence. We go on to consider how garbage workers respond to this positioning through discourses of ‘everyday heroism’. Heroism is evoked through three inter-related narratives that speaks to a particular type of masculinity. The first takes the form of a classic process of reframing and recalibration through which workers not only renegotiate their public position and status, but also point to the inherent value to be had in working with dirt as part of that which we identify as a process of ‘affirmation’. The second narrative arises from the imposition of favourable social and occupational comparisons that effectively elevate garbage collectors’ social position. The third discourse—and previously unobserved in respect of garbage work—centres on paternalistic practices of care. Combined, these discourses disrupt the generally held view that dirty work is antithetical to heroism and wounds dignity

Reading Between the Lines

Twenty-seven years: the time it took after Paul O’Connell’s return from Vietnam for him to fully reflect on his war experience. O’Connell, a Marine who at the age of eighteen served in the jungles of Vietnam from October 18th, 1968 to October 1st, 1969, was a purple-heart receiving grunt who faced some of the most horrid experiences of guerrilla warfare. His memoir, Between the Lines, is a collection of his letters written home from Vietnam, and reflections about his experiences and the “between the lines” of the correspondences. Throughout his memoir, the themes of heroism, cowardice, suspicion, pride, and integrity are portrayed while his transition home exemplifies emotional and physical change, a loss of innocence, identity, and betrayal by the homecoming society. The timely letters and later reflections have similarities and differences in regards to these motifs, which serve to demonstrate how O’Connell changed after he encountered the homecoming society, and how O’Connell’s soldier’s tale is representative of all veterans. [excerpt

Heroic Helping: The Effects of Priming Superhero Images on Prosociality

Two experiments examined how exposure to superhero images influences both prosociality and meaning in life. In Experiment 1 (N = 246) exposed individuals to scenes with superhero images or neutral images. Individuals primed with superhero images reported greater helping intentions relative to the control group, which, in turn, were associated with increased meaning in life (indirect effect only; no direct effect). In Experiment 2 (N = 123), individuals exposed to a superhero poster helped an experimenter in a tedious task more than those exposed to a bicycle poster, though no differences were found for meaning in life. These results suggest that subtle activation of superhero stimuli increases prosocial intentions and behavior