Regular access to green space has been shown to provide several health benefits for children. However, children today spend less time outdoors. Thus, it has become important to understand what drives and limits children’s activities in nature. Based on a Finnish online survey of 1463 parents of children aged 2–7 conducted in 2019, the current study examined parents’ perceived barriers to visiting nature with their children. It also examined how parental mental well-being is related to families’ frequency of nature visits, and whether this association is mediated by different categories of parents’ perceived barriers. Eleven out of 12 barriers were largely perceived by parents as reasons that did not prevent them from visiting nature with their children. Next, factor analysis indicated a three-factor solution to the barriers. The results of a multiple mediation analysis showed that better parental mental well-being was associated with more frequent adult-child nature visits, and this relationship was partially mediated by a “lack of competence and logistics” and a “lack of time and interest”, but not by “insecurity and fear”. The results indicated that parents with poor mental well-being were more likely to perceive barriers to visiting nature, which in turn appeared to be related to a higher likelihood of having children who visited nature less frequently. Regular access to natural environments and interacting with nature have been shown to provide a great number of health benefits for children ,2. For eIn the last few decades, there has been a growing interest in the vital links between parental mental well-being , parentIf parents perceive a high degree of barriers to taking their child out in nature, children’s opportunities to be physically active might be restricted . In a NoIn sum, children today spend less time outdoors interacting with nature ,9. As spThe first aim of this study was to examine parents’ perceived barriers to visiting nature with their child. The second aim was to examine the association between parental mental well-being and the frequency of families’ nature visits, and whether this association was mediated by different categories of parents’ perceived barriers. In the hypothesized mediation model, presented in In 2019, 1480 parents from different parts of Finland responded to an online cross-sectional survey and took part in the “Naturkraft” (Naturepower) project. Only parents with children meeting the age criteria of 2–7 years were included in this study, N = 1463 . The main goal of the project was to gain new insights into the nature activities of families and the related parental and sociodemographic factors. The term “parental” referred to one of the child’s responsible adults, regardless of whether they had a genetic connection to the child. The survey was distributed through multiple channels consisting of networks of collaborative associations, organizations and day care centers, as well as Facebook groups targeted at local residents, parents and single parents. The survey was open from 29 April to 16 June 2019 in both Finnish and Swedish. The raw data of the study included a questionnaire consisting of a set of questions, of which only a few were included in this study. The University of Helsinki’s ethical review board in humanities and social and behavioral sciences granted ethical approval for this research (Statement 21/2019). Participation in the study was voluntary and participants provided their informed consent.In the questionnaire, nature was defined as “natural outdoor and green areas such as forests, beaches, streams, fields and parks, but not own courtyards or built playgrounds”. Frequency of adult-child nature visits was assessed by asking parents the following question: “During the previous month, how often was at least one adult in the family out in nature with the child?” . This question was partially adapted from previous research ,30.Parental mental well-being was assessed using the Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS)  which coParents’ perceived barriers were assessed by asking “Do the following reasons prevent you from visiting nature with your child?” followed by 12 items, which are presented in Sociodemographic variables included the children’s age (years), children’s gender , household type , and parents’ perceived economic situation and the educational attainment of the parent who answered the questionnaire. The parents’ perceived economic situation was assessed by asking “How do you assess your family’s financial situation?” on a 5-point Likert scale . Parental educational attainment was assessed on a 5-point scale ) and was recoded into three categories before the analyses .Statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0 . Before all the analyses, the “Don’t know/Cannot say” options (<1% of responses in each variable) were coded as missing. The Nmiss-function was used before coding variables into mean scores, when only the parents who had answered at least 70% of the instrument’s questions were included in the preliminary and main analyses. Descriptive statistics were derived from means (M), standard deviations (SD) and frequencies (%). For the parents’ perceived barriers, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted using the principal component method with varimax rotation to examine whether these items enfolded several dimensions. The items were included in the factors if their loading was at least 0.40. Spearman’s rank correlation test was used to examine any possible association between the study and background variables.Andrew Hayes Process Macro version 3.5 implemented in SPSS was used to test the hypothetical mediation model . One sinThe descriptive statistics for demographic variables and the frequency of adult-child nature visits are summarized in Of the 12 parents’ perceived barriers examined, 11 were largely perceived by parents as reasons that did not prevent them from visiting nature with their children . The mosFor further analysis, the items of parents’ perceived barriers were grouped by an exploratory factor analysis. The factor structure and factor loadings of these items are presented in p < 0.001). Of the background variables, child gender was not significantly associated with any study variables and was thus not controlled for in subsequent analyses.Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients are presented in p < 0.05), meaning that better parental mental well-being was related to a higher frequency of adult-child nature visits. Parental mental well-being was also negatively associated with parents’ perceived barriers in all three barrier categories (p < 0.001), meaning that worse parental mental well-being was related to parents perceiving these statements as barriers to visiting nature with their children. Two of the parents’ perceived barrier categories—“Lack of competence and logistics” and “Lack of time and interest”—were negatively related to frequency of adult-child nature visits (p < 0.001), indicating that perceiving these statements as barriers to visiting nature was associated with a lower frequency of adult-child nature visits. The “Insecurity and fear” barrier category was not significantly related to the frequency of adult-child nature visits (p > 0.05).As shown in the multiple mediation model in 2 = 0.19, F = 40.13, p < 0.001). Among the evaluated mediators, two of the parents’ perceived barriers categories—“Lack of competence and logistics” and “Lack of time and interest”—partially and significantly mediated the association between parental mental well-being and the frequency of adult-child nature visits . For the regression coefficient values of the background variables included in the mediation model, see The multiple mediation model was significant and explained 19% of the variance in the frequency of adult-child nature visits . On the other hand, the formulation of our question on nature visit frequency referred to at least one adult in the family, which could have been the mother, father or other adults in the family. Therefore, our results suggest that if one parent has poor mental well-being, their child is more likely to be taken out into nature less frequently by any adult in the family. In addition, the collected data did not clarify whether the recruited adults were biological parents, adoptive parents, or step-parents. The findings should be generalized with caution because the sample did not necessarily represent the population in general. Most parents in the sample had positive attitudes towards nature visits and self-selection bias may have occurred, leading parents who perceived nature activities as highly beneficial to be more willing to participate in this study. This could also be why to a large extent parents perceived the examined barriers as reasons that did not prevent them from visiting nature with their children. The high proportion of parents who appreciated nature activities in this sample could also be explained by a social desirability bias, causing respondents to answer in a manner that would be viewed favorably by others. It should also be noted that the mean score of the mental well-being measure (SWEMWBS) was somewhat lower in this study than in prior population-based samples in some Nordic countries .The measures in this study may also have limitations. The nature visit frequency measure did not investigate the type of activities carried out during nature visits , how engaged the child was, or for how long the activity lasted. Moreover, it did not explicitly clarify which adults of the family spent time in nature with the child. Finally, as the reliability of the parental barriers was not high, with values of Cronbach’s Alpha ranging from 0.55 to 0.62, the results should be interpreted with caution. Future research should continue to seek to understand the associations between parental mental well-being, perceived barriers and nature visit frequencies, and their implications for the health of both generations. For example, longitudinal research is needed, and researchers should collect data from multiple sources using multiple methods  and further explore the types and intensity of the activities carried out in nature. Moreover, follow-up work is needed to assess the extent to which the results from this study are applicable to other cultures and all family structures, including those with same-sex parents or non-biological parents.Despite these limitations, the present study has several important strengths, one of which is its large sample of participants (N = 1463) living in different parts of the country. Detailed information was collected on the parents’ barriers, and they were adjusted for a range of potential confounders of the associations between the study variables. The use of the SWEMWBS for measuring parental mental well-being was another strength, given that this scale has been widely used in population-based research ,36,37 anThis study was the first to examine whether parental mental well-being is related to the frequency of adult-child nature visits. Overall, most of the examined barriers were largely perceived by parents as reasons that did not prevent them from visiting nature with their children. Better parental mental well-being was associated with more frequent adult-child nature visits, and this relationship was partially mediated by “Lack of competence and logistics” and “Lack of time and interest”, but not by “Insecurity and fear”. As encouraging children to spend more time in nature could be a cost-effective way to increase their levels of physical activity and overall well-being, more work on deepening our understanding of the factors that may support or prevent their opportunities for nature activities is needed.In a sample of 1463 participants, the present study found that most of the examined barriers were largely perceived by parents as reasons that did not prevent them from visiting nature with their children. Moreover, better parental mental well-being was associated with more frequent adult-child nature visits, and this relationship was partially mediated by “Lack of competence and logistics” and “Lack of time and interest”, but not by “Insecurity and fear”. More work on deepening our understanding of the factors that may support or prevent children’s opportunities for nature activities is needed.


Schramm–Loewner evolution ( Schramm–Loewner evolution (SLE) is a random (non-self-crossing) path connecting two boundary points of a domain. To be more precise, it is a family of such random paths indexed by a parameter duced by  to descrThe typical way of constructing SLE is via the Loewner differential equation ..\documenp-variation) regularity of the trace . The following theorem will be proved as Corollary Stability of SLE trace was also recently studied in .  Hölder constants of As a consequence, we obtain also an improved version of [Let n. The result then follows by Koebe’s distortion theorem | [see  below]. To fix this, we need to adjust our choice of U, and Let w on a circle of radius y/2 around z, we have The first two inequalities  and 19)19) folloWe now redefine y any more. Thus, the condition \documenThenTo sum it up, we have the following.B, and Let  satisfy  with \do satisfy  with a sIn the following, we fix  satisfy  with iniOur goal is to estimatedsp.With  and PropFrom the definition of To proceed, we need to know more about the behaviour of the reverse SLE flow, which also incorporates the behaviour of udied in . Their tfined in .r, such thatThe following results have been originally stated for an equivalent probability measure Note also that although the results were originally stated for a reverse SLE flow starting at Recall that , 15 use \documenHence, by  and Propestimate  with (34On the other hand, if With this estimate for , the pro


ITS sequences to estimate what proportion of the 95,055 “uncultured fungus” sequences that represent truly unidentifiable fungal taxa – and what proportion of them that would have been straightforward to annotate to some more meaningful taxonomic level at the time of sequence deposition. Our results suggest that more than 70% of these sequences would have been trivial to identify to at least the order/family level at the time of sequence deposition, hinting that factors other than poor availability of relevant reference sequences explain the low-resolution names. We speculate that researchers’ perceived lack of time and lack of insight into the ramifications of this problem are the main explanations for the low-resolution names. We were surprised to find that more than a fifth of these sequences seem to have been deposited by mycologists rather than researchers unfamiliar with the consequences of poorly annotated fungal sequences in molecular repositories. The proportion of these needlessly poorly annotated sequences does not decline over time, suggesting that this problem must not be left unchecked.The international DNA sequence databases abound in fungal sequences not annotated beyond the kingdom level, typically bearing names such as “uncultured fungus”. These sequences beget low-resolution mycological results and invite further deposition of similarly poorly annotated entries. What do these sequences represent? This study uses a 767,918-sequence corpus of public full-length fungal  ITS) region, the formal fungal barcode  lack a full species name and 29%  of these are not annotated beyond the kingdom level  sample division and “fungal sp.” from the plants and fungal (PLN) division; Roughly 42%  of the 767,918 full-length Sanger-derived fungal INSDC sequences. Unfortunately, we regularly find that previously tidy and well-annotated species hypotheses have been watered down by tens to hundreds of sequences of the “uncultured fungus” kind  were the unjustified “uncultured fungus” sequences generated by mycologists (who perhaps should know better) or do they stem from other scientific disciplines?; and (iii) is the proportion of needlessly imprecise annotations going down over time? We pursed these questions considering all 767,918 more or less full-length, Sanger-derived fungal ITS sequences that were assigned to a UNITE species hypothesis as of November 2020. Our results suggest that “uncultured fungus” and “fungal sp.” are labels that are routinely attached to newly-generated sequences regardless of whether a more informative annotation would have been available or not. A surprisingly high proportion of these sequences stem from mycologists – researchers one would think would know that mycology does not stand to benefit from such actions.Many of the present authors are curators of specific taxonomic groups in the UNITE database. In that role, we revisit our favourite fungal groups and multiple sequence alignments after each incremental update with new d Figure . SpendinITS sequences (annotated as such) in the INSDC (November 2020) as mirrored in the UNITE species hypotheses release 8. For each such sequence, UNITE extracts and stores relevant metadata from the GenBank flat file format (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Sitemap/samplerecord.html). Sequence quality control is part of the species hypotheses generation and seeks to exclude clear cases of, for example, chimeras and low read quality sequences through tools, such as USEARCH , MycoBank  two-sequence SH containing Amanitamuscaria and Cantharelluscibarius will be assigned to the most resolved level where their classifications are compatible, in this case the class Agaricomycetes. In this way, each sequence and species hypothesis in UNITE are assigned to the most resolved position possible in the fungal tree of life given the available information. For this study, we targeted all 95,055 sequences originally released in INSDC without any more refined taxonomic annotation than the kingdom level , irrespective of whether UNITE – or a UNITE user – subsequently had been able to assign a more refined name to it.UNITE uses the NCBI Taxonomy classification  as the tMycoBank , TedersoINSDC initial release date for each sequence allowed us to build a map of what sequences were available in INSDC at any time. We wanted to capture what we feel are the two most common scenarios of INSDC sequence deposition, namely: (i) a user deposits sequences for immediate release and (ii) a user deposits sequences for release, pending acceptance of the underlying manuscript. Thus, for each sequence A that was only annotated at the kingdom level, we considered all sequences that were released at least seven days before A as being available for BLAST searches by the authors of A. This leaves room for the authors of A to have done a final double check of the taxonomic affiliation of their soon-to-be-released sequences, including A, prior to setting them free.The fact that UNITE stores the INSDC taxonomic annotation from kingdom to the species level. This allowed us to build a view of what the author of the kingdom-level sequence would have seen, had they done a BLAST search prior to the release of the kingdom-level sequence. For the “reasonable, but not top-scoring, matches” dataset, we, instead, considered the (≥ 80% similarity) compound cluster where each kingdom-level sequence was found. This allowed us to model the scenario where the kingdom-level sequence authors progressed further down in the BLAST hit list for taxonomic clues, plus the scenario where there were no close BLAST matches to begin with.We sought to recreate what such a BLAST search would have looked like to the authors of A with respect to closely matching (≥ 97% similarity) sequences , as well as sequences that produced reasonable (≥ 80% similarity), but not top-scoring, matches to A. This captures our experience of BLAST – most users, it seems to us, do not bother looking beyond the first ~20 BLAST matches for clues to the taxonomic affiliation of a query sequence. For this “closely matching sequences” dataset, we examined the 3.0% species hypothesis of each kingdom-level sequence for the presence of sequences at least 7 days older than the kingdom-level sequence. Any such sequences were examined for their INSDC submission). Similarly, some 7%  of the sequences with at least a phylum-level annotation (e.g. “Ascomycota sp.” and “Rhizoplaca sp.”) were found to lack an explicit country of collection, but to stem from a published or otherwise available study. These sequences offer some hope of restoration of the missing country of collection through recourse to the presumed underlying publication; sequences merely listed as “Direct submission” or “Unpublished” do not, in our experience  of the sequences annotated only at the kingdom level (e.g. “uncultured fungus”) were found to initially lack an explicit country of collection, yet stem from a published or otherwise available (e.g. a pre-print) study  of each sequence were mycologists or not. We made the admittedly crude assumptions that a mycologist is someone who publishes in a mycological journal; that only mycologists publish papers in mycological journals; and to only consider the 29 journals listed under “Mycology” in Web of Science .The year of deposition of each sequence was assessed to examine whether the proportion of kingdom-level Fungi) were false negatives  of the 95,055 sequences annotated only at the kingdom level  in these statistics, we found that 85,093 (90%) of the 95,055 sequences annotated only at the kingdom level were false negatives Figure . A name Initially, 2,049 (2.2%) of the publication-associated kingdom-level sequences were found to lack information on country of collection. The corresponding number was 7%  for the publication-associated sequences with at least a phylum-level annotation. We were able to restore the country of collection for 1,983 (96.8%) of these kingdom-level sequences and 1,812 (89.3%) of these phylum-level sequences. The newly-obtained countries of collection were deposited in UNITE for each sequence to facilitate further mycological enterprises by UNITE users. Figure INSDC set of kingdom-level sequences, for which a more resolved name would have been only a BLAST search away, were generated by mycologists (following our admittedly crude definition of a mycologist). When, instead, considering the fully identified sequences, 182,402 (27.1%) were deposited by mycologists. The proportion of false-negative INSDC depositions does not decline over time  of the full ITS sequences not annotated to any meaningful taxonomic level. We found that our initial, UNITE curation-based hunches were largely right: reasons other than lack of established taxonomy and available reference sequences lie behind the lack of resolved taxonomic annotations for the overwhelming majority of these sequences. A full 12% of the 767,918 sequences in our dataset were annotated only to kingdom level – and in at least 73% of these cases seemingly without clear justification. In fact, for 64% of these sequences, an annotation to at least the genus level seems to have been possible and only a BLAST search away at the time of sequence deposition/release. The tendency of researchers not to name fungal sequences beyond the kingdom level, even when this would have been perfectly possible, does not seem to go down over time  in well-supported clades in phylogenetic trees of, for example, Fusarium, Helotiales, and Lactarius in the associated publications. The present study argues that taxonomic annotations of the “uncultured fungus” kind should be reserved for cases where taxonomic annotation beyond the kingdom level was attempted, but came up short. Then users would know that each such sequence carries a non-trivial potential for taxonomic discovery – you could even argue that such sequences would be amongst the most interesting and exciting of all fungal sequences. Right now, however, the “uncultured fungus” label is used as a catch-all device whose routine use serves to mask the presence of truly unidentifiable fungi. Many researchers seem to shun unidentified sequences also in situations where these sequences clearly should have been considered  “typically” used the global similarity thresholds 90, 85, 80, and 75% identity for assigning operational taxonomic units to the genus, family, order, and class level, respectively. We take the caveat “typically” to refer to taxonomic expertise, because it makes little sense to insist that these threshold values will always hold true. They offer guidance, but in the face of uncertainty, we argue that it is preferable to annotate a sequence at the parental lineage, such as “uncultured Nectriaceae”, as opposed to a more tentative “uncultured Fusarium”.We would like to stress that annotating sequences is always a balance between under- and over-annotation. There is no shortage of incorrectly annotated fungal sequences in the public repositories  and we cITS sequences  do not specify when a sequence should be annotated at the species level; indeed, sequences were not annotated at the species level in that study. We agree with this move and we personally do not annotate newly-generated environmental sequences to the species level other than in very rare and particularly unequivocal cases. After all, there are many examples of clearly distinct species that have identical equences  and, in INSDC submissions of the “uncultured fungus” kind. Many aspects of the present study are clearly hard to algorithmise. For instance, in our mimicking of BLAST searches, we used default BLAST settings and a single version of BLAST. However, the BLAST output may have looked somewhat different to a user with non-default parameter values or another version of BLAST. It is, furthermore, difficult to model human behaviour when it comes to processing and interpreting BLAST hit lists. One can also think of cases where the sequence authors did, in fact, do BLAST searches, but were presented with contradictory information: “Ascomycota sp.” and “Basidiomycota sp.”. In our experience, it is often easy to single out and resolve many misannotated sequences, based on the annotations of the other relevant BLAST hits – a single Lactarius (Basidiomycota) annotation in a large group of Fusarium (Ascomycota), for instance – but we can certainly see why some users would feel uncomfortable doing this. The magnitude of this problem appears limited, as 0.5% of the SHs and 1.8% of the compound clusters contained annotation conflicts at the phylum level. Complications such as these, nevertheless, suggest that our estimate that more than 70% of the kingdom-level annotations are false negatives may be off by several percentage units. That said, many of our parameter settings – such as the permissive single-linkage clustering underlying the SH generation – were deliberately set to be very forgiving. We, therefore, argue that at least the order of magnitude of our estimate is reasonable. Our estimate is, furthermore, in line with our admittedly basidiomycete-centric experience of UNITE sequence curation.The present study should be viewed as a rough estimation of the reasons why we keep seeing The scoring of sequence authors as mycologists or non-mycologists, based on the journal of the underlying publication, is clearly a move that will prove to be wrong in many cases. We are well aware – and welcome – that also non-mycologists publish their findings in mycological journals. Conversely, mycologists often – and rightfully – seek to publish their findings beyond mycological journals. Finally, Web of Science is not an ideal arbiter of what is mycology and what is not, given that there are many mycological journals that do not yet have a formal impact factor. Thus, while we agree that these shortcomings haunt our estimate that 22.3% of the kingdom-level sequences were submitted by mycologists, it is not immediately clear whether our estimate is biased towards, or away from, mycologists. Our estimate is clearly so high that it would be counter-intuitive to argue that only non-mycologists are behind it.The study of fungi is being reshaped by the many novel and hitherto nameless fungal lineages unearthed by environmental sequencing efforts . However


Urban political ecology (UPE) focuses on unsettling traditionalunderstandings of ‘cities’ as ontological entities separate from‘nature’ and on how the production of settlements is metabolicallylinked with flows of capital and more-than-human ecological processes.The contribution of this paper is to recalibrate UPE to new urbanforms and processes of extended urbanization. This exploration goesagainst the reduction of what goes on outside of cities to processesthat emanate unidirectionally from cities. Acknowledging UPE’s richintellectual history and aiming to enrich rather than split the field,this paper identifies four emerging discourses that go beyond UPE’soriginal formulation. The film depicts the ultimate state ofcapitalism’s environmental ills, ironically combining ecological collapsewith renewable energy, free/slave labor and mass-produced synthetic food critical urban geographical research andprogressive urbanistic practice remained stubbornly focused on the urbancenter, even though it was expected that in the 21st century most of theworld’s urban populations would live in the urban periphery. This focus wasparticularly pronounced in prescriptive and normative assumptions underlyingpolicy and planning for urban sustainability , and physicallymetabolized/transformed in order to support the urbanization process’  or undesirable social elements (homelessness or refugees),the exclusion of the outside guarantees the familiarity of the inside. Beingfamiliar in one’s home is dependent on being alienated, disconnected fromsocial and natural processes that are supposed to take place outside thisprivileged core  the inside, the core, and the center asthe spaces that dictate the logic of the outside, the periphery, themargin.In this article, we shift the vantage point away from this privileged urban‘core’ or ‘inside’, in order to sketch an integrated research agenda for aUPE beyond the city, by exploring if – and to what extent – it is also (oreven mainly) the ‘margin’, the ‘outside’ and the ‘periphery’ that dictatesthe logic of the ‘core’, the ‘inside’. We argue that moving UPE beyond thecity means taking seriously the dynamics of sub-urban, ex-urban orperi-urban spaces as representing ‘a meeting or overlapping of dynamicsassociated with the urban and the rural, a distinct and emergent landscapein-between’ : 354. OuFollowing In her review of UPE literature, Concrete and Clay, and cu chapter . The ‘se chapter , 2018b,  chapter , gender  chapter , incorpo1Heynen’s chronological framing of UPE in two distinct waves may be useful fordidactic purposes. However, his suggestion that UPE progresses in a somewhatlinear manner with the latest scholarship being the ‘best’ and only‘critical’ UPE scholarship is unhelpful. Suggesting that UPE scholarship issplit into two camps (or waves) that somehow compete over which is the most‘critical’ is an unfounded proposition, whose purpose in terms of enrichingor moving the field forward is elusive. Therefore, in order to avoidinflicting unnecessary violence on sub-disciplinary histories, we proposeinstead to recognize the messiness of both earlier and recent UPEscholarship as a fruitful engagement amongst scholars, and to acknowledgethe history of UPE as a heterodox field right from its inception. To suggestthe contrary would mean editing out the complexities and critical engagementinherent in the field’s early debates and intellectual history see also.1Aiming to enrich rather than split the field, this paper identifies fouremerging discourses in contemporary UPE, often in generative and productivedialogue with each other and with the diverse strands of recent and earlierscholarship. The first emerging discourse is a critique of UPE’s allegedmethodological ‘city-ism’ and a call for UPE to ‘fulfill its Lefebvrianpromises and contribute to a planetary, ecological, political understandingof contemporary urbanization’ . ThesecThe planetary urbanization thesis (PU) has had a presence in theoreticaland conceptual debates within UPE right from the beginning: ‘to speaknow about UPE as central to urban studies in general may beinterpreted as responding to Lefebvre’s challenge to create an urbanscience for an urban world’ : 62.PerIn effect, the creation of UPE has, at least to some degree,reinforced the nature-society divide it was attempting todissolve by reinforcing its analog, the urban-ruraldivide. Only a few studies in the UPE tradition haveworked across this spatial divide – or as somesocial-ecological scientists might suggest, this gradient– by focusing outside the city proper.Yet, ‘most research [in UPE] while recognizing the globalized societalrelationships with nature that constitute urban life today, and thecomplex governance processes that regulate them, has looked atindividual or comparative case studies, not at the networked matrixitself on which urban-nature relations are made and unmade’ : 716. Insituated UPE at that,taking to heart the empirical, theoretical, and methodologicalinsights of feminist and Global South scholarship.Indeed, feminist geographers have offered strident critiques of theplanetary urbanization thesis . ForDerThe call for situated UPE scholarship mobilizes a Global Southperspective as a tool for conceptual and empirical reorientation,rather than simply as an afterthought. This direction enriches thefield with new research methods, theoretical framings and practicesfrom the Global South, thus provincializing north-centered UPE debates. Such scOne particularly fruitful focus has been infrastructure, including theproduction of networked infrastructures beyond the city  and theAlong with perspectives from the Global South, the call for a situatedUPE, in our view, should also include indigenous political ecologies,theories and practices of decolonization, as well as abolitionistpolitical ecologies , 2018a.2 Increased attention to cities in policy-making is alsoreflected in experiments with ‘translocal’ responses  ‘tosave the planet’ .2 Increaesponses , ‘climatesponses , ‘municiesponses , the chaesponses , and a pesponses :7. Theoesponses .need to buildresilience in the first place. And we would try to change thesefactors instead’ (p. 95). Her approach can inform issues of urbandesign, especially when analyzing the sustainability of ‘cities of thefuture’, since such analyses are often lacking a deeper probing of thepolitics and history of environmental challenges  the urban betweenacademic debate and policy/governance practice is also reflected inthe UPE literature. UPE literature that is more concerned withquestions of policy and governance is less (or not) concerned withproblematizing or further engaging with theorizations of urbanizationin relation to UPE and questions of environmental governance, and viceversa. Accordingly, in this paper we stress the importance for UPE toanchor itself both on problematizing (sub)urbanization processes andgovernance questions.A discussion about inside and outside, core and periphery, the urban andthe ex-urban cannot ignore the more-than-human elements involved inthe production of space. Expanding common UPE concerns ofcommodification, circulation, and metabolism to encompass animals,Related to extended urbanization is work on ‘the spread of “invadingspecies”‘, which 2 emissions, waste, concrete, electronics, etc. Forexample, ‘second only to water, concrete is the most consumedmaterial’ in the world .Nowadays the politics of air are becoming increasingly instrumental inoppressive policing of the body and making air an ‘integral part ofsovereign power’, as In the previous sections we discussed UPE in relation to changing/invadingmaterial flows across landscapes of extended urbanization. However, theconceptual/theoretical challenges identified above go hand in glove with theneed to expand UPE’s methodological and empirical scope. In this section, weaddress briefly these challenges and suggest a shift of empirical focus onthe changing relationships of suburban natures as a possible fruitfulexpansion and opening of the field.A key common characteristic of scholarship that moves UPE beyond the city inrecent years is a commitment not only to engaging with research beyond urbangeography and urban studies, but also a commitment to empirical work thatcuts across traditional understandings of the ‘urban’ and goes beyond afocus on the ‘core’. In a series of articles Scholars have also turned the analytical lens of UPE onto suburbanizationprocesses themselves .The subThis has changed in recent years, as political ecology research on the spatialperiphery often intersects or overlaps with inquiries on socialmarginalization. As suburbanization becomes the process and suburbanism becomes theway of life of much of the urban revolution, criteria likedensity, morphology, social composition, etc. must bereevaluated. The notion of suburbanization as dependent on onecentre has to be discarded as the form and life of the globalsuburb take shape through multiple centralizations anddecentralizations. :496We argue that in addition to expanding our understanding ofmarginality, shedding light on socio-environmental processes linked tosuburbanization and to new ‘spaces of extended urbanization’ can also gobeyond ‘traditional’ research and political discourses on sustainabilitythat focused on urban centers. Given that suburbanization has been ‘sold’with nature in mind  planetary urbanization.  in mind , a fresh in mind . Conside in mind .While tZwischenstadt may be the historico-geographic terrainon which new forms of ‘rurbanity’ might help sustain life on a planet of 10billion. This would mean the ‘merging of urban and rural, of cultural andnatural characteristics in this urbanization process’ (2017: 3), includingan increase in food production, heightened contradictions of industrialagriculture with more diverse forms of cultures in and around cities, andthe spread of ‘horizontal metropolises’ that will have to develop ‘theirwildnesses, their areas of adventure and recreation, in themselves, asfractal urban landscapes’  suggests to reconcile the planetary with theeveryday, similarly Keil proposes (forthcoming) to focus on ‘the quotidianrevolutions in the sub/urban political ecologies of everyday life’ throughwhich we can ‘reconcile seemingly opposing claims between situated UPE andthe call for a post-cityist UPE’. Here is where suburbanization  and suburbanism (suburban ways of life) come together asdistinct but inter-connected. ‘It is in the sprawl where sustainability,community and the urban have to be found. It is there where we locate andultimately transgress the frontiers of urban political ecology’ .This be‘What and who my communities are during one day and how they need to besustained changes continuously. In order to find my way through those mazesof relationships, I need to start where I am and not in an imaginary placethat is either reviled (like sprawl) or celebrated (like the compact city)’. ValdiviThere is no outside to the more-than-urban continuum  and ‘we


To the contrary, Shapiro’s book reasoned that physical, physiological, and historical constraints force mental traits to evolve in just a few, limited directions, which is seen as convergent evolution of the associated neural traits in different animal lineages. This is his mental constraint thesis (MCT). We examined the evolution of consciousness in animals and found that it arose independently in just three animal clades—vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopod mollusks—all of which share many consciousness-associated traits: elaborate sensory organs and brains, high capacity for memory, directed mobility, etc. These three constrained, convergently evolved routes to consciousness fit Shapiro’s original MCT. More recently, Polger and Shapiro’s book presented much the same thesis but changed its name from MCT to a “modest identity thesis.” Furthermore, they argued against almost all the classically offered instances of MR in animal evolution, especially against the evidence of neural plasticity and the differently expanded cerebrums of mammals and birds. In contrast, we argue that some of these classical examples of MR are indeed valid and that Shapiro’s original MCT correction of MRT is the better account of the evolution of consciousness in animal clades. And we still agree that constraints and convergence refute the standard, nearly unconstrained, MRT.The multiple realizability thesis (MRT) is an important philosophical and psychological concept. It says any mental state can be constructed by multiple realizability (MR), meaning in many distinct ways from different physical parts. The goal of our study is to find if the MRT applies to the mental state of consciousness among animals. Many things have been written about MRT but the ones most applicable to animal consciousness are by Shapiro in a 2004 book called The Mind Incarnate and by Polger and Shapiro in their 2016 work, The Multiple Realization Book. Standard, classical MRT has been around since 1967 and it says that a mental state can have  Our research program focuses on which animals have at least a minimal or primary form of consciousness; that is, have raw, nonreflective experiences of images constructed from sensing the world and also experience affects, meaning emotions, and moods . We havemultiple realizability (MR), as promoted by the multiple realizability thesis (MRT), which says that a mind and its mental states can be constructed in many distinct ways from different physical parts . This thesis says a given mental state can have only a few types of neural causes —far fewer than allowed by standard MRT, a “handful” rather than “hundreds or thousands” (p. 32). He illustrated MCT with helpful analogies. Mechanical devices for removing the cork from a wine bottle  are constrained to those that pull, suck, push, or twist out the cork, because not much else will work. A bit that drills through rocks for oil can only consist of diamond or hardened metal and it invariably uses a rotatory action. Without these constraints, the bit could not penetrate the rock fast enough or would wear out too soon. Only two types of bits fit the necessary conditions: the rolling cutter bit and the fixed cutter bit .Does the mental state of primary consciousness fit MRT or does it fit MCT? To answer this, we must provide some background. In our prior studies, we deduced that only three clades of animals are conscious ,b. This The fact that the MRT did not consider the constraints or the limitations that these constraints impose seems a major blind spot of that thesis. As This is not to deny that many differences exist among the nervous systems of vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopods, along with their similarities. Their brains look different and the analogous functional areas do not have the same relative locations in the brains . The simfunctions of these features. Thus, they will be informative about consciousness and its constraints.Because the shared features in all vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopods  feelings of consciousness. The existence of value  neurons and circuits is well documented in the brains of vertebrates , and valA conscious animal requires a good deal of memory in order to navigate through space using recalled landmarks and in order to learn extensively from past experiences. For these functions of consciousness, memory storage would have to exist in the form of mental representations about the features of this world relevant for a certain species or individual, organized in a more or less episodic way. Thus, we reason that all conscious animals must have relatively large brain regions for memory. This prediction proves true . VertebrSince 2004 Shapiro has developed more ideas on multiple realizability , and he modest identity theory,” meaning that instances of multiple realization are less common than many philosophers assume . This turned out to be a logical and direct extension of the authors’ previous ideas on MR. Close reading shows P and S did come to the same conclusion as A theme of identical ways” to reach their identity theory. That is, they concluded that similarly constrained, convergent solutions are effectively identical solutions. To the contrary, we view “very similar” solutions as nonidentical so we do not consider this—nor the original MCT idea—to be an identity theory. Rather, we see these solutions as highly constrained versions of the multiple realization thesis. Our disagreement, however, may be merely semantic hair-splitting because both we and P and S agree that our two interpretations fall on a spectrum and are close together on this spectrum. That is, there may be no practical difference between our “highly constrained MRT” and their “modest identity theory that allows some MR.”However, P and S went a step beyond the earlier MCT by calling their new version an identity theory, although one that still allows some mental kinds to be multiply realized (pp. 144–145). Their reason for calling it an identity theory seems to be as follows (p. 143). All brains are complex and more complexity imposes more constraints on the types of neuromechanisms that can perform a given mental function; thus, the complex psychological functions must be realized in “very similar ways” in differently evolved brains due to all the constraints. So far, we can follow their logic, but then P and S apparently equated “very similar ways” with “This means that we and P and S would be in agreement—except for one more thing. They devoted much of their book to arguing against almost every case that has ever been used to support MRT. By contrast, we judge that many of these cases validly support MRT .The anti-MR cases in question involve (1) neural plasticity, (2) ideas about compensatory differences in mental kinds, and (3) comparing the brains of birds and mammals. Before looking at these cases, however, we must point out that P and S developed valuable and rigorous criteria for judging whether a test case truly indicates MR—an undertaking that has always been difficult and confusing. Here in paraphrased form are their criteria, which they called their Official Recipe :The realized mental kind must be the same in the animals being compared.The realizers must be different.The differences between the realizers must make the kind the same in the two animals.The differences between the realizers cannot be trivial: They cannot be merely the differences one sees within a mental kind.Although this Official Recipe nicely formalizes the decision process and helps to refute some cases that were wrongly said to support MRT, it cannot always provide certainty. Judgment calls will still remain over whether the kinds are really the same in two individuals (in criterion 1), whether their realizers are really different (in criterion 2), which of the differences are trivial vs. relevant (in criterion 4), etc. The problem of kind-splitting still arises, in which one side says that a purported “kind” is really different subkinds  to be visual rather than auditory.” This would be MR because the ferrets had gained a same kind (vision) through a different route that involved the auditory cortex. However, as P and S point out, tests showed the ferrets’ vision was degraded, with a diminished discriminatory capacity. Therefore, the normal and rewired visual kinds were not the same, the example fails criterion (1) of the Official Recipe, and this is not MR. We agree with P and S’s refutation here. Our disagreements start with the next example.The argument that is most commonly and traditionally used to support MR is neural plasticity, such as when the functions of a damaged part of the cerebral cortex are taken up over time by other parts of the cortex . P and Snot indicate MR, because the ventral-digital area took on a new function  and therefore it violated their criterion (1) that says the functional kind must be the same in the two situations, before and after. However, we argue that the experiment does support MR, if we simply shift our perspective over to the dorsal sides of the digits. That is, the sensory processing of this dorsum remains the same functional/mental kind (it is still for touch perception), but now a different cortical-processing area has been added  to the original dorsal processing area. That yields two different realizer areas for the same mental kind, just as MR demands. Therefore, this example of neural plasticity  changes in the other properties to keep yielding the original phenomenon. To illustrate this argument, he used equations and formulas for scientific laws as an analogy. Electrical resistance (R) in a wire, for example, is given by R=l.ρ/A, where l is the wire’s length, ρ is the resistivity of the material that makes up the wire, and A is the wire’s cross-sectional area. Thus, the same resistance (kind “R”) results if the area (A) is made smaller and this is counterbalanced by a shorter length or else by replacing the wire with one made of a material with a lower ρ. Other examples are Newton’s second law of motion, F=m.a, where a given force can be attained by a change in mass that balances a change in acceleration, or vice-versa, and Ohm’s law for an electrical circuit, I=V/R, where a given current I can be maintained by a change in voltage V that counterbalances a change in resistance R. Aizawa’s MRCD both demonstrates that “there is more than one way to skin a cat” and offers an easily understood reason for this MR thesis.Kenneth P and S only briefly addressed the MRCD concept, in a short footnote on page 72 of their book. They argued against MRCD by referring to the R=l.ρ/A example and saying, “In our view, however, these are not multiple realizers of resistance, they are all resisters in the same way.” In other words, they are similarly realized, with the reasoning apparently being that the same three compensating variables  vary along gradients, making them one continuum. P and S seem to be saying that MR requires qualitative, not merely quantitative, differences between its realizers.For us, this argument against MRCD breaks down when the variables have extremely low or high values, and it breaks down for practical reasons about physical design. Take the F=m.a example. When the particular force is to be achieved by a huge mass that accelerates and moves slowly, such as an earthmover that crawls along, many of the design concerns are about building a massive motor vehicle; but when that same F is to be achieved by rapidly accelerating a tiny object, such as firing a bullet, then the design concerns are much different, mostly about building a handgun. Thus, the mechanisms behind the realizers are qualitatively different and this is still multiple realization. As another example, take Ohm’s law where a particular current I is to be achieved by high voltage V and moderate resistance R. For this, the design can use a powerful lithium battery and an ordinary copper wire. But if the same current I is to be achieved another way—by moderate voltage and low resistance—the design uses an ordinary alkaline battery and a superconducting wire. Again, it is the same realized kind in both cases, they have qualitatively different realizers, and multiple realization (MRCD) is the correct description.Aizawa’s examples involved simple physical states and he had to assume that compensatory differences also characterize the complex brain states with which classical MR questions deal. This assumption is very difficult to test because of the almost universal lack of knowledge of “exactly what the realizers of psychological states are and how they work” , p. 79. m is the axonal membrane’s capacitance, d is the axon’s diameter, Rm is the membrane resistance, and Ri is the resistance of the axon’s cytoplasm. The squid giant axon increases the V by maximizing the axon’s diameter d (to 1–1.5mm). The fish axon, by contrast, has a coat of myelin that alters both Cm and Rm in a way that increases V with only a small increase in d (to 0.04–0.09mm). This is a multiple realization of the function “fast propagation” through a compensatory difference, with squid relying on axonal widening and fish relying more on myelination.where Cmust happen. Here is why , and in birds by functionally equivalent regions called the dorsal ventricular ridge (DVR) plus the cortex-like Wulst . Howeveris known, including the basic circuits and many of the differences and similarities . The causal realizers show differences (at many levels), meeting criterion (2). The differences between the bird and mammal circuitries could make the mental kinds the same, which would fit criterion (3). And these differences are probably not trivial but relevant to realizing the higher mental processes, which would fit criterion (4).limited type of realizability is the possibility of extensive realizability at the lower levels. That is, as one goes lower in the biological hierarchy (from organ to cells to biomolecules) and encounters more and smaller realizers that could contribute to an overall process, the alternate realizers may become more dissimilar and more numerous. Some examples support this possibility. First, if one goes down to the cell level, one finds a large dissimilarity involving animals called ctenophores. These comb jellies (or sea gooseberries) evolved their nerve cells independently of all the other animals with nervous systems, as revealed by ctenophores’ unique set of synaptic neurotransmitters  and we accept Our consideration of animal evolution reveals that the emergence of consciousness proceeded under many constraints and therefore involved strong evolutionary convergences between vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopods , as wellThe original contributions presented in the study are included in the article. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.JM analyzed the theories and wrote most of the manuscript. TF provided much of the information on consciousness and emergence. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.


MaddAddam trilogy, we show how she is continually becoming through affective, embodied encounters with human and nonhuman others. In the discussion, we consider the vulnerability that arises from openness to affect which engenders heightened response-ability to and with, rather than for, multiple others. This expanded concept of subjectivity enables a more relational understanding of equality that is urgently needed in order to respond affirmatively to posthuman futures.Posthuman affirmative ethics relies upon a fluid, nomadic conception of the ethical subject who develops affective, material and immaterial connections to multiple others. Our purpose in this paper is to consider what posthuman affirmative business ethics would look like, and to reflect on the shift in thinking and practice this would involve. The need for a revised understanding of human–animal relations in business ethics is amplified by crises such as climate change and pandemics that are related to ecologically destructive business practices such as factory farming. In this analysis, we use feminist speculative fiction as a resource for reimagination and posthuman ethical thinking. By focusing on three ethical movements experienced by a central character named Toby in Margaret Atwood’s  We live in a world dominated by crises on a global scale related to climate change, ecological degradation and destruction, and the threat of mass extinction of animals and their habitats.Yet business ethics research has been slow to engage with the ethics of human-animal relations, even though they are well-developed in other disciplines  relations” . This concept is not against equality but a different way of reacting to and acting within the fields of power that lead to inequality in the first place. Posthuman subjectivity emerges through multiple and coinciding relational encounters within this network of flows of structural power , and ecologies to form a trans-species community in a post-pandemic landscape. Toby is placed in situations where she must determine how to act in response to ecological and social changes to make her, and the community’s, future more sustainable and ensure their survival. This involves choices related to consumption, including whether to consume other living beings, some of which are genetically engineered.Atwood’s Ciobanu, . While tCiobanu, , p. 347.We begin the next section with an overview of the novels, followed by analysis of three selected ‘movements’ from Toby’s story. We define movements as dramatized events or moments in the narrative that involve engagement with ethical issues through interactions between human and nonhuman characters. We show how these movements enable imaginative thinking about human-animal relations.Oryx and Crake  atop multiple bodies that grow only breast or only drumstick” Canavan, , p.221. The theme of bodily consumption is reinforced by “the secret of SecretBurgers [which] was that no one knew what sort of animal protein was actually in them” although this is rumoured to involve “running the gutted carcasses” of disposed humans “through the SecretBurgers grinders”  is a propelling force for the Gardeners’ actions: “We have betrayed the trust of the Animals, and defiled our sacred task of stewardship”  is still reliant on the binary division of nature  from culture and society . Any advance in scientific knowledge or technology is a sign of humanity’s ongoing deterioration. As Adam One reminds his followers, “The Fall was ongoing, but its trajectory led ever downward” Atwood, , p. 224.While grateful for the Gardeners’ protection, Toby is ambivalent regarding their views, “She didn’t really believe in their creed, but she no longer disbelieved” (p. 116). Her experiences as a disposable body make her sensitive towards power hierarchies and inform her decisions, which are sometimes in opposition to the humanist logic of the male leaders of the God’s Gardeners. This comes to a head after the initial chaos of the pandemic, when Zeb, Toby’s partner and a leader of the Gardeners, decides the priority is to find and rescue Adam One and any others who might be with him. Toby disagrees and instead proposes to save Amanda, a former Gardener woman who has been taken captive by BlancoToby liked Pilar, who seemed kind, and had a serenity she envied; so she said yes. “Good,” said Pilar. “You can always tell the bees your troubles” … Pilar took her to visit the beehives, and introduced her to the bees by name. “They need to know you’re a friend,” she said. “They can smell you. Just move slowly,” she cautioned as the bees coated Toby’s bare arm like golden fur. “They’ll know you next time” … Atwood, , p. 199Pilar’s way of interacting with the bees acknowledges their ability to affect and be affected in turn. Instead of treating the bees purely as a resource for making honey, Pilar recognises their relationship as one of mutual reciprocity and interdependence; an activation of “two ‘becomings-with’” , through their mutual sense-making (smells and touch), and through their verbal (buzzing and humming) and non-verbal (collective flying) communication. For a moment, where the bees end and Toby begins is an open question. Toby is, ultimately, illiterate in the language of the bees, and her attempts to articulate in human language her inter-relations with the bees is, she realises, almost impossible:They touch her lips, gather her words, fly away with the message, disappear into the dark. Pass through the membrane that separates this world from the unseen world that lies just underneath it. …Now, Toby, she tells herself. Talking pigs, communicative dead people, and the Underworld in a Styrofoam beer cooler. You’re not on drugs, you’re not even sick. You really have no excuse. (p. 336)What matters is Toby’s recognition of her own interdependency with the bees as a relation with nonhuman others and the affects this generates, “on subjects and the world”  there can be no return to Edenic innocence. For Toby, overcoming the pain of past encounters begins with reimagining her relationship to the pigoons, thinking of them not as objects or food (‘spare-ribs’ and ‘bacon’), but as subjects who possess agency. This openness to animal-others foregrounds a middle-space between humans and nonhumans and creates possibilities for new relations and values to emerge through embodied interaction .Toby’s community, which now consists of several species, is cautiously burgeoning. There is an inter-species pregnancy (human-Craker), alternative forms of communication (telepathy) between Crakers and pigoons, humans agree not to eat pigoons, and there is a possibility Crakers will learn to read. What might emerge as part of this new milieu of diverse posthuman subjects and changing bodies is neither self-evident nor pre-given. Instead it is an ongoing experiment shaped by immanent interconnections and the creation of narratives that recognise difference. “‘I am writing the story,’ she [Toby] says. ‘The story of you, and me, and the Pigoons, and everyone.’” Atwood, , p. 456.with animal, insect, machine and earth others in what is ‘our’ shared territory . We begin this discussion by returning to the issues introduced at the start of the paper—related to contemporary crises in human-animal relations and the need for business ethics to address them. We then elaborate further on our three movements: equality towards in-disposability; individualism towards affect; and imagining new forms of becoming. Through this, we clarify how an expanded concept of subjectivity enabled by posthuman affirmative ethics enables revision of the notion of equality.We began this paper by posing the question: what would posthuman affirmative business ethics look like, and what changes in thinking and practice would this involve? An affirmative ethical perspective acknowledges the imbricated relations between humans and diverse others as a basis for (re)immersion in the flow of life  is enabled by the development of co-constituted mutual human and nonhuman subjectivities. Affect implies that bodies and emotions are open to each other. When we are open and vulnerable our boundaries are understood as permeable. Through this, we become more open to the suffering of multiple others. Vulnerability thereby engenders a heightened sense of responsiveness and response-ability to and with—rather than for—the other. It animates the potentia of affirmative ethical encounters. This movement means the ethical concept of equality becomes grounded in vulnerability  affects.Second, the movement from individual intentions and outcomes towards affect and potentialities (Third, regarding the movement to imagining new forms of becoming, Braidotti  puts thezoe-centred egalitarianism, enabled by introducing alternative figurations of the subject.As the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted, harms done to animals in biopolitical spaces including factory farming have reciprocally detrimental effects on humans as well as other animals. This generates mutually destructive and, we suggest following Braidotti, ultimately unsustainable relations with multiple others by diminishing the capacity of humans to act affirmatively. Our contribution has been to show how posthumanism provides an alternative philosophical perspective through which human-animal relations can be reimagined in business ethics. This requires a move away from human/anthropocentric ethical perspectives through Posthuman affirmative ethics rejects the notion that other human and nonhuman bodies are disposable and instead seeks to develop an expanded, affective subjectivity that is founded upon affective, material and immaterial connections to multiple others. This “collaborative and interconnected ‘we-are-in-this-together’ kind of subject” (Braidotti, zoe-centred egalitarianism can take root. By “elaborating [on] posthuman ethical scenarios, the genre confronts its readers with the fact that the Universal Man is already dead” (Gomel, Feminist speculative fiction provides imaginative resources that can be used to develop notions of subjectivity where ” Gomel, , p. 352.” Gomel, , p. 133.Shared affective states, such as vulnerability, are amplified by crises such as pandemics, climate change, ecological degradation, and the threat of extinction. A final example of a figuration is provided by Braidotti  who conc


Specifically, we consider how Pro-Anorexia (ProAna) websites—which provide support and solidarity, tips, motivational content, a sense of community, and understanding to individuals with AN—help drive and maintain AN practices. We use C. Thi Nguyen’s work on epistemic “echo chambers”, along with Maria Lugones’ work on “worlds” and “ease”, to explore the dynamics of these processes. Adopting this broader temporal and intersubjective perspective, we argue, not only helps to further illuminate the experiential character of AN but also has important clinical and therapeutic significance.Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterised by self-starvation. Accounts of AN typically frame the disorder in individualistic terms: e.g., genetic predisposition, perceptual disturbances of body size and shape, experiential bodily disturbances. Without disputing the role these factors may play in  Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterised by self-starvation. AN has received significant medical and academic attention and yet is still poorly understood. The incidence of AN is on the rise Galmiche , it is tindividualistic terms: e.g., how one is genetically or psychologically predisposed to having an eating disorder  websites—sites that provide interpersonal support and solidarity, tips, motivational content , a sense of community, and understanding to individuals with AN—support, shape, and maintain AN. In the media and the medical community, ProAna sites are typically treated as dangerous informational resources that provide “how-to” guides for AN. We argue that this picture is too reductive and static to do justice to the role that such sites play in the lives of those with AN. More specifically, this picture fails to: capture the complexity of such sites; give a satisfactory account of why members frequent these sites after they have obtained the information required; and, finally, explain why they may be so difficult for members to leave. In this paper, we provide a fine-grained and dynamic analysis of these ProAna sites. We argue that these online resources create just epistemic echo chambers. Individuals with AN gravitate towards ProAna sites and stay within these communities not just for epistemic reasons but also because these sites have a certain affective allure. They offer communities in which individuals with AN feel a sense of comfort, belonging, and identity. These social and affective dimensions make these communities attractive and “sticky” spaces. In Sect. intersubjective affective epistemic worlds and explore the therapeutic implications of our account.In Sect. AN is classified as an eating disorder by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It is characterised by self-starvation that leads to dramatic weight loss.Pro-recovery websites are communities that promote recovery from AN by providing content like recovery testimonials, tips, positive images and slogans, and other kinds of information that supports individuals as they try to move away from AN. In contrast, ProAna websites are seen as enabling AN. They offer a variety of resources for helping individuals develop and maintain practices of disordered eating such as self-starvation: tips, guides, journal entries, motivational content (such as “thinspiration”), and expressions of solidarity and support for individuals trying to maintain an AN way of life. ProAna resources were initially found on dedicated websites, message boards, blogs, and discussion forums. Such ProAna websites tend to be heavily moderated and often intentionally exclusive . However, the ProAna movement has now moved into social media spaces like Instagram and TikTok, where many users share ProAna content in a less hierarchical, more visual, and publicly accessible format . However, this is not the whole picture. Many ProAna websites also include support and encouragement for recovery, as well as provide a broader sense of solidarity, belonging, and understanding to individuals who often feel lonely and misunderstood , or strategies for hiding the disorder from parents, doctors, and friends ? In other words, what furnish information  but to reliably inoculate members against information that may challenge their anorectic lifestyle. Additionally, these online worlds do not simply scaffold a way of thinking about AN but give rise to a sense of belonging and provide emotional support; they provide a place where individuals with AN find “companionship in a safe, anonymous and largely sympathetic environment” . Crucially, this exclusion need not reflect ill intentions or questionable motives. It is, rather, an exclusion by omission. It results from ordinary processes of social selection and community formation. For instance, as a society, we are increasingly turning to Facebook to get our news. This results in our having inadequate news coverage. Why? Because we tend to be drawn to friends who are similar to us, who share our political or religious views . The more we rely on social networks to filter and present us with news, Nguyen argues, the more we “impose on ourselves a narrowed and self-reinforcing epistemic filter” that excludes views that run contrary to our own . We might even be unaware that our network is disconnected from other communities and information sources  is required. In epistemic bubbles other voices are often not heard; within echo chambers, other voices are excluded—and, crucially, actively discredited. In this way, echo chambers work the way they do by systematically closing off access to outside epistemic sources . Epistemic bubbles can be popped with relative ease: what is required is exposure to epistemic resources that fill in the informational or argumentative gaps of the bubble.ibid., p. 154); for the members of an echo chamber are already primed to expect and discount any disagreement they come across.Nguyen argues that despite a tendency to conflate them, these two phenomena ought to be kept separate. In part, this is because these phenomena demand different “modes of repair” Nguyen , p. 143.ibid, p. 157). This involves the members of the echo chamber discarding their background beliefs and adopting a new, open, and trusting attitude to testimony coming from sources outside of the echo chamber. As Nguyen notes, this may strike us as both a highly challenging task and something that the member must want or is at least open to. A successful reboot is more likely to take place where the member is not escaping an echo chamber on their own, but instead where an outsider helps the process by gaining the trust of the member and helping motivate a readjustment or reassessment of their epistemic certainty. Nguyen suggests, then, that such a reboot is more likely to be effective when it is a distributed social process.Nguyen suggests that one way to escape an echo chamber involves what he calls a “social epistemic reboot”  this core set of beliefs is encapsulated as a list of commandments labelled the Thin Commandments. These commandments set out the values of the Ana community, emphasising, in particular, the value of exercising control and self-discipline, of being thin, of losing weight . They are also sometimes supplemented with the Ana Creed, the Ana Psalm, Ana Laws, and prayers or letters to Ana, where “Ana” is portrayed as a protector figure helping her followers live their lives in control —currently the most common form of psychosocial therapy for individuals with AN—is designed to address cognitive, behavioural, and affective dimensions of disordered eating .Second, Nguyen’s analysis suggests that, in order for the epistemic “rebooting” to be successful, the therapist must be aware that the individual is likely to initially mistrust attempts to make them question their epistemic commitments. Consequently, establishing Nguyen’s account of echo chambers helps us build up a more nuanced picture of the epistemic role that ProAna communities play for individuals with AN. However, there is an important feature of these communities that the echo chamber framework does not adequately capture: namely, the affective sense of support, belonging, and comfort that these communities bring to their members. Research on the content found on ProAna sites indicates that “emotional support messages were the most frequent form of social support exchanged in pro-ana blogs”  the members; nor are social or affective motivations considered as factors that might encourage someone to stay within such echo chambers. Yet, one does not usually find oneself on a ProAna site by accident ; they are communities that are specifically sought out. Such sites, in bringing people together who might not otherwise be able to connect easily, open up a shared space for “isolated and marginalized individuals” . As set out below, Lugones suggests various factors that engender a sense of ease in a given world, such as shared language, norm agreement, shared history and human connection with others. When we lack “familiarity, fluency, and comfort in a given world”  informational sites, versus recognising the important role that these sites can play for those with AN in terms of providing a sense of solidarity, belonging, identity, etc. Second, it helps us understand what we might call the affective “stickiness” of these ProAna sites. Individuals do not just experience epistemic confidence and validity by frequenting these sites. They also experience an important sense of belonging and ease in these worlds—an ease that often stands in stark contrast to how they might feel in their offline worlds.By attending to these social and affective dimensions of ProAna communities, we argue that it is helpful to think of these ProAna sites not just as providing an epistemic community but also an affectively complex, norm-governed world. The motivation for doing so is two-fold. First, it captures the epistemically reboot their beliefs and practices surrounding themselves and AN . Rather, we are encouraging them to leave a world that they feel at home in, a world they feel they belong to. Moreover, we are asking them to leave this world of ease in favor of a world that they might experience intense dis-ease in. Feeling at ease in a ProAna world, then, can add an additional component to an individual's reluctance to leave an echo chamber, beyond the epistemic factors Nguyen considers. Individuals, in short, might like being part of the world which we want them to leave. Moreover, they might like the self they develop within that world. For instance, an individual with AN might be respected and listened to by other members of a ProAna community; they may be treated with an unaccustomed dignity, as an autonomous and self-determining agent. And this experience, in turn, may stand in stark contrast to the experience of being treated as ill, being infantilised and medicalised in the offline world.When considering how an individual might be encouraged to stop using ProAna sites, it is important to recognise that we are not only encouraging them to relational needs , which place faulty beliefs at the heart of disordered eating practices, do not accurately represent the experiential reports of how many individuals live with, and actively sustain, AN as a ct Kuhle , p. 120.ct Kuhle , p. 357—ct Kuhle . Intervect Kuhle , p. 120.new worlds that meet these needs and furnish opportunities for developing a similar sense of ease and belonging.Second, a worlds-based perspective reminds us that, in coaxing individuals to move away from ProAna sites as part of their recovery process, we are asking individuals to do more than change some of their core beliefs. We are asking them to leave a community they feel a sense of ease and belonging in—a world that meets different aspects of their relational needs. Recovery strategies must therefore involve helping the individual develop and sustain ties to belongs; that one is participating in a legitimate way of life; a sense of identity and purpose; and, an ethos of solidarity and support in the face of critiques from those who don’t understand or approve of these communities. All of these things are part of the general ease individuals feel within these worlds. As such, clinicians ought to familiarise themselves with these communities in order to recognise how they meet individuals’ relational needs and develop ways to emulate some of these world-building strategies within their therapeutic work (Firkins et al. This observation is crucial because, as Stinson  notes, iworlds. These are worlds that are shared with others, worlds that support and sustain epistemic and affective dimensions of AN undertaken as a lived practice. Challenging the cognitivist and individualistic assumptions informing some therapeutic interventions like CBT, we have highlighted the need to consider the key role that others should play in guiding therapeutic intervention and recovery.AN is typically treated as an individual disorder, often seen as rooted in an individual's faulty beliefs and/or misperception or misjudgment of their body. In this paper, we have challenged this individualistic perspective. We have sought to shed light on some important ways that other people can support and sustain disordered eating practices in AN. With the rise of the Internet, individuals with AN have unique opportunities not only to become aware of others with AN but also to form online communities with them. These communities, we have argued, do not simply furnish members with AN-related information. They form ProAna is a disorder of faulty thinking or beliefs alone. Elsewhere, we have stressed that AN is a bodily disorder and that understanding how an individual experiences their body is necessary for understanding AN (Krueger and Osler While we have explored how interpersonal communities can help uphold and sustain particular values, beliefs, and practices associated with AN, both epistemically and affectively, we want to stress that our account should not be read as suggesting that AN pistemic rebooting but an affective re-worlding as well. By connecting Nguyen’s and Lugones’ work, therefore, we hope to point the way towards a multidimensional account of echo chambers. Continuing this line of research would involve dedicating more attention to the role of ease, comfort, belonging, loyalty, friendship, and community in establishing and cementing our membership in our social epistemic worlds.Finally, we want to end by emphasising that although we have suggested using Lugones’ work on worlds and ease to complement and enrich Nguyen’s work on echo chambers in the context of ProAna communities, we think that this enrichment extends to the discussion and conception of echo chambers more broadly. While Nguyen provides an insightful and sensitive analysis of echo chambers as social epistemic structures, the affective dimensions of these structures go underexposed. Where Nguyen focuses on how echo chambers work to exclude others through epistemic inoculation against dissenting beliefs, we have drawn from Lugones’ work to underscore the way a sense of inclusion, belonging, and ease can work to attract and embed members within echo chambers and further shore up barriers between members and other worlds. As we have highlighted, echo chambers may be both affectively alluring, in terms of offering someone a community and a sense of belonging, and affectively sticky, for those who find themselves at ease in these worlds. This suggests that leaving an echo chamber might not only involve an e