This article tells the stories of three cyclists: Rob, Lucas and Cayden. For each, racing offers catharsis and emotional expression between riders deeply familiar with one another, riding together every day across years in Sydney, Australia. At Glenwood Cycle Club, the stories athletes tell of how to be a ‘hard’ racing man allows for the simultaneous denial of what is a core functioning of such sporting relationships, namely unspoken intimations of love and care. Cycling affords these riders an understanding where each can avoid speaking to the emotional difficulties that necessitate their being on road, where they share stories that gesture to personal difficulty, but rarely in detail. To explain such sporting practice, I rely on the ‘fold' as a methodological and theoretical framework to re-conceptualise dominant myths in both sport but also ‘masculinities’ studies. Rather, than ask ‘what kind of masculinity’ a person is, I ask what does a person do? What are the life-narratives men tell, interwoven with sporting movement, to fantastically augment their lives in advanced capitalist conditions specific to Sydney, Australia?
With the increasing prevalence of depression worldwide, there is a noticeable number of online depression communities (ODCs) flourishing in cyberspace. This phenomenon offers a discursive platform for observing and discerning people’s mental and affective struggles. Under the overarching framework of narrative analysis, we coded the most salient emotions expressed in 2000 pieces of comments by the top 20 core participants of ‘Zoufan’, an ODC space on China Weibo. We analyze how the members construct their emotive struggles and depressed self in self-talk (disengagement) and interactions (engagement) via linguistic deixis. Based on this communication mapping, this study offers a new notion of affective incapacity as an epistemological insight into depressive emotions. The observed phenomena of both inward-centered (self-talk) emotions and outward-centered (dialogue) emotions point to members’ reduced capacity to affect and to be affected, to intervene and to be intervened. This research is expected to educate both the public and social professionals in recognizing more nuanced emotional deliberation of self-reported depression and take early measures if need be.
Virtual environments of social VR platforms offer a unique space for social interaction. They can be seen as socio-technological assemblages that foster immersion, embodiment, and presence, which come together as a framework that allows VR users to make space meaningful – thus creating places. This research aimed to understand how using social VR mediates social practices and the spatial practices of being social, investigating the spatial dynamics and place-making processes within Social VR environments. We conducted participant observation and 15 virtual in-depth interviews in VRChat. Our thematic analysis reveals that mobility and escape mechanisms are critical affordances shaping social spatiality. Additionally, social presence and co-presence are pivotal in establishing a feeling of ‘being there’ and cultivating attachment to virtual locales. Users actively contribute to the emergence of place through their spatial understandings and normative social behaviors. These findings underscore the significance of social interaction in shaping the spatial experience within Social VR. Further research is warranted to explore diverse user experiences and platforms, advancing our understanding of Social VR as a medium for meaningful interaction and place-making.
Worldwide, there is an increased prevalence of dementia and consequently informal dementia carers. Given the everyday responsibilities of informal dementia caring, the mobility of the informal carer is inextricably connected to the mobility of the one they care for. The mobility changes associated with informal dementia caring may foster feelings of nostalgia for past mobility, which may play a role in perceptions of present mobility. Therefore, the aim of this article is to better understand how nostalgia shapes mobility perceptions of informal dementia carers. Using remote graphic elicitation and telephone interviews, this article offers three key findings. Firstly, both reflective and restorative nostalgia are felt by the participants concerning their perceived past mobility, with the type of relationship with the care recipient playing a role how their nostalgia is experienced. Secondly, carers reflected very positively on their past mobility compared to their present mobility, which they considered mundane and care-centric. Thirdly, participants felt uncertain about their future mobility due to their reflections on past mobility and the unpredictability of dementia and care. Thus, the underlying feelings and sensations associated with nostalgia are key to understanding how carers experience their everyday lives and how this contributes to their sense of wellbeing.