Social suffering and the psychological impact of structural violence and economic oppression in an ongoing conflict setting: The Gaza Strip

Structural violence and economic oppression (e.g. control over resources, politically engineered poverty and unemployment) are common features of warfare, yet there is a lack of research exploring the impact this has on civilian wellbeing in conflict‐affected areas. This study, embedded within a human rights and community liberation psychology framework, aims to address this need by studying young Palestinian university graduates living under military blockade and occupation in the Gaza Strip. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted. Thematic analysis indicated that economic and political domains adversely affected multiple aspects of civilian life and wellbeing. The findings revealed the deleterious effects of structural violence and economic oppression which created: human insecurity; poor psychological wellbeing and quality of life; existential, psychological and social suffering; humiliation; injuries to dignity; multiple losses; and led to life being experienced as ‘on hold’. Local expressions and idioms to express distress were identified. The findings contributed to unique insights regarding how continual, systemic, and structural oppression can be potentially more psychologically detrimental than specific incidents of conflict and violence. The implications and the relevance of the findings to mental health and disaster relief are considered. Interventions providing human security and economic security should be prioritised

Sect and House in Syria: History, Architecture, and Bayt Amongst the Druze in Jaramana

This paper explores the connections between the architecture and materiality of houses and the social idiom of bayt (house, family). The ethnographic exploration is located in the Druze village of Jaramana, on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. It traces the histories, genealogies, and politics of two families, bayt Abud-Haddad and bayt Ouward, through their houses. By exploring the two families and the architecture of their houses, this paper provides a detailed ethnographic account of historical change in modern Syria, internal diversity, and stratification within the intimate social fabric of the Druze neighbourhood at a time of war, and contributes a relational approach to the anthropological understanding of houses

GazeForm: Dynamic Gaze-adaptive Touch Surface for Eyes-free Interaction in Airliner Cockpits

An increasing number of domains, including aeronautics, are adopting touchscreens. However, several drawbacks limit their operational use, in particular, eyes-free interaction is almost impossible making it difficult to perform other tasks simultaneously. We introduce GazeForm, an adaptive touch interface with shape-changing capacity that offers an adapted interaction modality according to gaze direction. When the user’s eyes are focused on interaction, the surface is flat and the system acts as a touchscreen. When eyes are directed towards another area, physical knobs emerge from the surface. Compared to a touch only mode, experimental results showed that GazeForm generated a lower subjective mental workload and a higher efficiency of execution (20% faster). Furthermore, GazeForm required less visual attention and participants were able to concentrate more on a secondary monitoring task. Complementary interviews with pilots led us to explore timings and levels of control for using gaze to adapt modality

Refugee artists and memories of displacement: a visual semiotics analysis

This paper considers the ways in which refugee artists represent the experience of displacement, their cultural traditions and the longing for home through paintings and how, by doing so, they become the visual interpreters of the current refugee crisis. The starting point of this article is that little attention has been paid towards the visual narratives of artworks produced by refugee artists and shared on social media. Through the visual semiotics analysis of 150 images of paintings (exhibited on the Facebook page Syria.Art) and through a number of individual interviews with the artists themselves, the article identifies three emerging visual narratives. These are concerned primarily with reminiscences about people, places and cultural practices lost (or in danger of being lost) because of the forced journey and because of the displacement. Within this context, these visual discourses become part of an open repository, which mediates, re-organises and preserves memories, both personal and collective as a form of emotional survival and resilience. It is argued that these visual narratives and representations nurture empathy for the human condition of the refugees and universalise the migrant experience

Participatory transport planning the experience of eight european metropolitan regions

This chapter presents experience with participatory transport planning in eight European metropolitan regions: Ljubljana, Oslo, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Budapest, Rome, Porto and Barcelona. These metropolitan regions answered the questionnaire on strengths, weaknesses and needs and an in-depth questionnaire on participatory transport planning. The results were presented at a workshop, where representatives from these eight metropolitan regions shared their experience in two workshop sessions, one dealing with the key stakeholders in participatory transport planning and the other dealing with ways to get them involved. The findings show that stakeholder involvement differs between the local and regional levels. Participants engagement is greater at the local level, where measures are more concrete and less abstract. The participatory planning process takes longer than the traditional planning processes, but it can ease the implementation of the project/measure to the extent that it justifies the additional resources and time. It is of crucial importance to include all the relevant stakeholders, to provide an experienced facilitator and, above all, to include the results in the final plans and policies. Although there are differences in the participatory planning culture between the countries and regions involved, the use of participatory methods in transport planning is becoming increasingly important. Document type: Part of book or chapter of boo