Mukbang, #EatWithMe and eating disorders on TikTok: why online food consumption videos could fuel food fixations

You might have come across #EatWithMe videos on TikTok, which typically feature young women eating food while encouraging viewers to eat along with them. Many such content creators say they aim to help people with eating disorders overcome their fear of food.

But some videos tagged #EatWithMe also feature the hashtag “mukbang” (which are videos showing people eating an often vast amount of food).

So, what’s the connection between #EatWithMe videos and mukbang? And what are we to make of claims #EatWithMe videos could help people overcome a fear of eating?

#EatWithMe videos

The #EatWithMe videos on TikTok represent a relatively recent genre that emerged during the pandemic.

The creators of TikTok #EatWithMe videos usually claim to positively influence viewers’ relationship with food. They encourage viewers to eat along with them, as a way to overcome urges to avoid food. Many say they are themselves in recovery from an eating disorder.

As an expert in eating disorders I (Vivienne Lewis) can tell you these videos are very unlikely to assist people in their recovery. In fact, a fascination with eating and watching others eat can be a symptom of a restrictive eating disorder. Watching #eatwithme and mukbang content could even fuel the eating disorder.

Firstly, eating disorder recovery is about more than just eating. It is about a person’s perception of their body and themselves, their self esteem, how they deal with emotions and feelings of self worth.

The eating part of recovery from an eating disorder involves five stages called the RAVES model. This stands for regular eating, adequate eating, eating a variety of foods, eating socially and spontaneous eating.

It often takes a person many months, if not years, to achieve this. It requires encouragement and support from an accredited practising dietitian, an accredited psychologist and family and friends. It can not be achieved through simply watching videos of people eating. If that was the case, a person would recover simply from watching friends eat.

Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions that require specialist treatment and care. Turning to untrained influencers for advice or treatment strategies comes with serious risk.

Mukbang: ‘broadcast eating’

It’s noteworthy that many #EatWithMe videos include “#mukbang” among the accompanying hashtags. The videos that feature both hashtags tend not to centre on eating disorder recovery but rather on the spectacle of seeing a person heartily, and often noisily, eat a large meal.

However, the fact many videos feature both hashtags means it would be easy for people with eating disorders to come across mukbang videos.

Mukbang videos – a phenomenon I (Sijun Shen) have studied – feature people eating vast amounts of food, such as 10,000 calorie meals or almost 50 pieces of KFC in one sitting.

Mukbang originated in Korea in around 2008, and is a phonetic translation of the Korean words 먹방 (먹다 means eat and 방송 means broadcast) – it literally means broadcast eating. Mukbang videos, which have been described as “gastronomic voyeurism”, soon became an international trend.

As anthropologist and ethnographer Crystal Abidin has observed, the ability to consume a large quantity of food while looking slim has been a general theme or selling point for mukbang videos.

Many mukbang celebrities are physically slim. Their videos, while not always explicitly claiming to be therapeutic, often send the unspoken message one can find release by overeating, all while staying slim. Many parts of Asia have punishingly difficult beauty standards that elevate slimness as a physical ideal worth pursuing at any cost. For people starving themselves in pursuit of this goal, there may be something cathartic in watching another person eat freely and with gusto.

As I (Sijun Shen) found through my research of mubkang culture, certain mukbang and “eat-streaming” communities in some countries (such as China) have been formed by fans who are also active in online eating disorder communities. Less discussed are reports of mukbang influencers being hospitalised, fainting or losing teeth during live eat-streaming sessions.

Mukbang and #EatWithMe videos share some common visual themes. Both usually (but not always) use the image of a relatively slim girl eating food as a form of visual entertainment and release.

It is not hard to see how people with eating disorders may start by watching #EatWithMe videos centred around eating disorder recovery but end up watching mukbang videos.

Given the link between mukbang communities and online eating disorder communities, it seems unlikely exposure to these videos is helpful for a person recovering from an eating disorder.

Eating disorders are complex

Eating disorders are complex and require evidence-based treatment. This treatment can be expensive and hard to access, so it may be no surprise people are turning to TikTok for help.

But online influencers are generally not trained professionals.

While many content creators may mean well there is scant evidence watching TikTok #EatWithMe or mukbang videos can successfully treat eating disorders – and they may end up fuelling food fixation in people with eating disorders.

If this article has raised issues for you, consider contacting the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Sijun Shen, Lecturer, Media and Communications Studies, Monash University, Monash University and Vivienne Lewis, Assistant professor – Psychology, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Scientists need help to save nature. With a smartphone and these 8 tips, we can get our kids on the case

Citizen science is touted as a way for the general public to contribute to producing new knowledge. But citizen science volunteers don’t always represent a broad cross-section of society. Rather, they’re often white, male, middle-aged, educated and already interested in science.

This lack of representation has several problems. It can undermine the potential of citizen science to bridge the divide between lay people and experts. It also means fewer people benefit from the chance to advance their informal science education and gain valuable life skills.

It’s important that citizen science projects engage volunteers from across society, including young people. A new Australian initiative is doing just that.

The B&B BioBlitz aims to get school students gathering data about Australia’s natural environment. This year’s event shows how citizen science in school can help develop STEM skills and make gains in biodiversity research.

More hands on deck

It’s broadly acknowledged that Australia needs more hands on deck when it comes to scientific data collection. For example, only about 30% of Australia’s estimated 750,000 species have been formally named and documented. Rectifying this will require an enormous uptick in information gathering.

What’s more, Australia has one of the world’s worst extinction records. Citizen science is an important way to fill information gaps, identify species’ declines and their causes, inform conservation decisions and evaluate their effectiveness.

This year’s State of the Environment report recognised the need for more citizen science. It said the level of biodiversity research required “cannot be achieved by professionals and institutions alone”.

That’s where the B&B BioBlitz comes in.

What exactly is a BioBlitz?

The B&B BioBlitz is a national school citizen science program co-ordinated by PlantingSeeds Projects – a non-profit sustainability organisation founded by the lead author of this article. The inaugural event ran in National Biodiversity Month in September this year. Both authors of this article were project organisers and educators.

Sixty schools from across every Australian state and territory participated. Participants comprised students from infants to high school, and their teachers.

Most schools are located in urban areas, which makes them particularly valuable sites for scientific research. Many threatened plant and animal species live in urban areas, yet, only 5% of citizen science projects in Australia are urban-based.

The project involved students taking images of plant and animal species in their school grounds on devices such as tablets and smartphones provided by the school. Students also recorded information such as the time, date and location of the photo.

A designated teacher uploaded the photos and data to the B&B BioBlitz project on iNaturalist, one of the world’s most popular biodiversity citizen science platforms and apps. At the time of writing, iNaturalist contained more than 121 million observations uploaded by citizens from around the world.

Throughout September, students made more than 2,300 observations in school grounds, involving 635 plant, animal and fungi species. Students could log onto iNaturalist to see a project “leaderboard”, browse the observations submitted and learn about species’ taxonomy and distribution.

A study has demonstrated young people can contribute observations to iNaturalist that are “research grade” – and therefore more accessible and potentially useful to biodiversity research and monitoring. And the longer they participate for, the better their observations become.

Observations of species during this project contributed to more comprehensive datasets that scientists can now draw upon. Of note were images of an uncommon “Balsam Beast” katydid and the iconic Sturt’s desert pea.

Almost all observations uploaded to iNaturalist are also directly exported to the CSIRO’s Atlas of Living Australia.

The pros and cons

Verbal and online feedback by students reveals how citizen science can be a practical and positive experience.

One North Melbourne primary school student said the activity made her feel “like being more a part of a community”.

One student in Darwin said the activity was “the most fun he had ever had” and his teacher reported that while taking part, the student was “the most engaged he had seen”.

But the B&B BioBlitz was not without its challenges.

Many teachers, including science teachers, had limited knowledge of citizen science and often hadn’t heard of the term. This meant that teachers needed basic education on the topic prior to any school involvement in the BioBlitz.

Teachers are busy and face many pressing demands. However, if the benefits of citizen science are to be fully realised, there’s a need to broaden teacher awareness of the practice, and improve their skills in accessing databases such as iNaturalist.

8 tips for successful biodiversity citizen science

So how can young people be helped to take a good citizen science observation? The following eight tips offer a guide:

1. Capture as many angles and as much information as you can. While some groups such as birds can often be recognised from a single photograph, many other taxa require multiple features for a positive identification to be made

2. When observing plants, photograph as many features as possible. This includes flowers and leaves (from above and below), bark, fruit if present, a branch showing leaf arrangement, and a shot of the whole plant to give a sense of its growth habit

3. Photograph fungi from above, below (showing the gills or pores) and the side

4. Record the “substrate” you find a fungus on, such as soil or dead wood, and the type of soil a plant is growing in

5. Insect identification can often be helped by the number and position of veins in an insect’s wing. Try and capture this by getting shots from directly above

6. Noting the plant you find a beetle or bug on can aid identification and provide useful ecological data

7. If you find a spider in a web, photographs of both the upper and undersides can be helpful

8. If in doubt, just record as much information as you can. You never know who might find your data useful!

Judy Friedlander, Adjunct Fellow, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney and Thomas Mesaglio, PhD candidate, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Clothes women wanted to wear: a new exhibition explores how Carla Zampatti saw her designs as a tracker of feminism

The late Carla Zampatti is celebrated in a splendid retrospective Zampatti Powerhouse at the Powerhouse Museum. Planned well before the fashion designer’s untimely death last year, the unveiling of her legacy will be bittersweet to her many fans.

Zampatti is often referred to as “Carla” by friends and those who worked for her, rather than her brand name, Carla Zampatti. Here, the simple name “Zampatti” removes the emphasis from Zampatti as designer to a simpler assertion: businesswoman, mother, philanthropist-entrepreneur.

It is a move as deft and elegant as the rest of the exhibition choices.

In one of the best-looking fashion exhibition designs Australia has seen, creative director Tony Assness serves up a dynamic vision of clothes punctuated by a vibrant red (one of Zampatti’s favourite design choices) that encourages excitement and discovery. Clothes are arranged by themes – jumpsuit, jungle, graphic, blouson, power – rather than date.

Curator Roger Leong leverages his years of experience to do a relatively new thing for Australian museums: tell the stories of clothes through the stories of women who wore them.

A migrant story

Zampatti’s story is an Australian migrant story. Born Maria Zampatti in Italy in 1938 (not 1942, as is often believed), she did not meet her father, who had migrated to Fremantle, until she was 11.

In Australia, she was forced to change her name to Mary. It was claimed the other kids could not pronounce Maria. She did not finish school. When she moved to Sydney in her late 20s, she reinvented herself as Carla.

The fashion business started on a kitchen table in 1965 under the label ZamPAtti. By 1970, Carla had bought out her business partner husband, and was sole owner of Carla Zampatti Pty Ltd.

Zampatti flourished in fashion. She had a finger on the pulse, was in the right place at the right time, and knew a more glamorous role was possible for a fashion designer than the industry “rag trader”.

In the 1970s, the markets suggested that the ultra-expensive haute couture was about to disappear, to be replaced by informal ranges created by a new type of designer often called a “stylist”. It was the decade of flower power, retro dressing and ethnic borrowings.

Until the 1960s, fashion had been dominated by the rise of haute couture and the “dictator-designer” system – mainly men who determined hem lengths and silhouettes for women. But in 1973, the French body governing high fashion added a new layer of designers, créateurs (literally “creators” or designers), who produced only ready-to-wear.

In 1972 Zampatti opened her first Sydney boutique, inspired by informal shops she had seen in St Tropez. Zampatti offered women bright jumpsuits, art deco looks and peasant-inspired ease.

She aimed to provide women clothes they wanted to wear. She draped the cloth and colours on herself. Like many women designers historically, she was alert to how her clothes made women customers look and feel. Zampatti remained the fit model for the whole range and would not produce anything in which she did not look and feel well.

Zampatti saw her “clothes as a tracker of feminism”.

The 1980s cemented Zampatti’s rise to prominence. She became a household name, even designing a car for women. In this time, personal expression became more important than unified looks dictated by designers. Zampatti’s Australian designing coincided with a new development in Italy: the stylisti. Small, focused family businesses alert to the zeitgeist and understanding quality flourished. It was an approach that emphasised quality and glamour.

Zampatti identified talent. She employed well-known couturier Beril Jents on the shop floor after she had fallen on hard times. She then employed Jents to improve the cut of her designs.

Zampatti continued to embrace the services of stylists and other designers including Romance was Born, whom she recognised could take her work to the next level.

The stories of clothes

Worn equally by politicians and their circles on the right and the left, Zampatti injected more than power dressing into women’s wardrobes. She inspired a sense that women wore the clothes, not the clothes them.

In this exhibition we are given many examples, from Linda Burney’s red pantsuit worn for her parliamentary portrait to a gown worn by Jennifer Morrison to the White House.

The exhibition viewer can turn from serried ranks of brilliantly styled mannequins and enter large “listening pods”, screening brilliantly edited videos in the manner of artist Bill Viola. The women, who include Dame Quentin Bryce and Ita Buttrose, discuss the creative mind of Zampatti or reflect on their own Zampatti wardrobe. They are amongst the best such “talking heads” I have seen in a museum.

Like many designers, Zampatti was not that interested in her own past. She did not keep substantial archives and records, which is a testament to the skills demonstrated by the museum in bringing us this show.

Zampatti never turned her back on her personal story, but she was a futurist, one who looked forward rather than backward.

Zampatti Powerhouse is Powerhouse Ultimo, Sydney, until June 11 2023.

Peter McNeil, Distinguished Professor of Design History, UTS, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Minimalist poet Antigone Kefala wins the Patrick White Award for her contribution to Australian literature

The news that Antigone Kefala has won the Patrick White Award is completely thrilling. She is a most deserving winner by all the terms of that prize.

White established the award with funds from his 1973 Nobel prize. It is awarded without application “to a writer who has been highly creative over a long period but has not necessarily received adequate recognition”.

This well describes Kefala, who has been writing extraordinary poetry and prose for over half a century and who, though immensely admired and respected, is far too little known and celebrated in Australia.

Kefala was born in Brăila, Romania, part of the Greek diaspora settled there since the mid-19th century. Her family became refugees, fleeing to Greece then to New Zealand, after World War II, when Romania was occupied by the Soviets. She arrived in Australia on her own in December 1959. Her account of sailing into Sydney must be one of the most joyous acclamations of arrival in Australian literature:

AUSTRALIA … AUSTRALIA … we entered Sydney Harbour a summer morning. The colours of the rock wall at the gap were warm apricot, the sun was coming down on the waters, the whole landscape shimmering, overflowing with light, with heat, with movement.

I was suddenly released from the greenness, from the rain, the wind, released, at least for the moment, from my inner problems. My past in Romania, in Greece came back as meaningful experience in a landscape that had similar resonances. Sydney seemed alive with people, activity and intellectual excitement.

Kefala’s jubilation comes from her recognition that she might be able to forge a way of living in this new place that resonates with the landscape and culture of her past. Sydney is both new and old, simultaneously evocative and original.

The passage shows the profound interconnection between the outer world and Kefala’s inner self, something that is characteristic of her writing. It also demonstrates her awareness of the necessity of community and a milieu. Inevitably perhaps, those initial hopes met with some disappointments, but her three volumes of memoir – Summer Visit (2003), Sydney Journals (2008) and Late Journals (2022) – provide a record of her daily constitution of this community, and of a creative life.

New, revived, original English

Kefala’s first language is Romanian, her second language is French, her third is Greek. Finally, there is English – her fourth language and the language of her literature. As she writes:

I feel you have to live in a language to be able to write in it and […] I couldn’t write in Romanian or Greek or French because they were languages that I had somehow passed through. English was the language I was actually living in – imperfectly.

But, as she continues:

My approach to English is not quite an English approach. The kind of imagery that I use, the kind of vocabulary that I use, the whole texture of my language is not an English texture.

The result is a new, revived, original English, as in this short example from her poem Nameless:

You are the resonance
in the fanatic colour
of the sky
intoxicating light
that fans over the sea
a heavy cloth of shimmering
white gems on the horizon

Excesses of a terror
that can never be appeased.

As her publisher Ivor Indyk has observed, Kefala’s voice is distinctive, characterised by a minimalism that is “evident in the short lines, which throw emphasis on syllables that are barely audible in English”.

This “accented English” is integral to the energy and intensity of her poetry. It revivifies English and its poetic capacities.

Some early readers of Kefala’s work struggled with these features, though she has always had her champions. The Patrick White Award recognises her brilliance. In their citation, the judges observed:

Kefala is a deliberately spare writer, practising an aesthetics of asceticism that is crucial to the power of her work across all forms. Her poetic minimalism belies the meticulous construction of echoes and patterns in her poetry, while the notable formal compression of both her prose and poetry distils intense experiences and perceptions.

Kefala has been contributing to Australian literature for 50 years, publishing many volumes of poetry, fiction and memoir. She has also been a strong supporter of community arts and has contributed to the promotion of a diverse Australian literature. In 2018, my colleague Brigitta Olubas and I held a conference on Kefala’s work, which led to the publication of Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities. In our introduction, we argued

Antigone Kefala is one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere; it would be difficult to overstate the significance of her life and work in the culture of this nation.

Official recognition of Kafala’s enormous significance is not premature, but it is warmly welcome.

Elizabeth McMahon, Professor of English literary studies, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Watching Casablanca on its 80th anniversary, we remain in awe of its simplicity – and profound depth

In November 1942, a romantic drama directed by a Hungarian immigrant and starring an ex-naval officer and an obscure Swedish actress was released. The film began shooting without a finished script.

Many at Warner Brothers Studios thought the film would quickly disappear into obscurity.

It would end up winning three Academy Awards (for best picture, director Michael Curtiz, and screenplay), starred the iconic pair Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman alongside a host of recognisable supporting players, featured a lush score and evocative set design, and contained endlessly quotable lines. Its reputation grows and grows.

Casablanca has become one of Hollywood’s most beloved films.

A film of vivid moments

Casablanca is a heady mix of romance, cynicism, thrills and danger. Based on an unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, the film mainly takes place in a night-club run by Bogart in the Moroccan city during the second world war.

Rick’s Café is where desperate refugees try to get hold of illegal exit visas to America. Complications – with Nazi officials and officious French bureaucrats – ensue.

One night, Rick’s old flame Ilsa (Bergman) turns up with her resistance leader husband in search of safe passage to the States. Cue the famous line:

Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.

It is full of vivid moments: Bogart and Bergman drinking champagne in Paris, Sydney Greenstreet in a fez, Peter Lorre trying to escape, Dooley Wilson sitting at the piano and singing THAT song.

Its production was fast-tracked to take advantage of the recent Allied invasion of North Africa. Casablanca was originally scheduled for an early 1943 release, but Warner Brothers capitalised on the resounding success of the US-led invasion, which in turn boosted box office receipts.

Casablanca would go into wide release on January 23 1943, to coincide with the Casablanca Conference, a strategic meeting between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A political allegory

Casablanca’s clearest theme is that neutrality – whether in war or in love – is difficult to maintain.

At the outset, Rick is staunchly apolitical: he is jaded, unmoved by the refugee crisis unfolding around him.

But we also learn Rick has been involved in political causes, supporting losing sides against the Fascists in Spain and Ethiopia. The film traces that ambivalence through Bogart’s masterful performance. His cynicism gradually softens once Ilsa turns up, and his animosity to the Nazi chief Strasser grows.

This political about-face comes to a head in one of the greatest scenes in Hollywood cinema: the singing of La Marseillaise at Rick’s Café in full defiance of the Nazi officers belting out a German anthem.

It is a deeply patriotic and uplifting scene, and reminds us of cinema’s power to engage us, move us and make us cheer.

It also turns the night-club into a microcosm for the war, with it multinational clientele and the competing strands of partisanship, neutrality, aggression and political commitment.

For an America wary of entering the European theatre, scenes like this reminded audiences of the need to fight injustice, intolerance and belligerence.

Remembering Ingrid Bergman

It is worth dwelling on Ingrid Bergman’s luminescent performance.

She plays the role of a woman who never displays where her romantic allegiances lie. Should she leave with Lazslo to America, or should she go back to Rick, and rekindle a love affair that ended abruptly in Paris?

The ambiguity in Bergman’s performance is due in large part to both a script that was constantly being rewritten and Curtiz’s indecision on how the film should end. But it is also a reminder of Bergman’s greatness.

The critic Roger Ebert once noted:

[Bergman] doesn’t simply gaze at [a man’s] eyes, as so many actresses do, their thoughts on the next line of dialogue. She peers into the eyes, searching for meaning and clues, and when she is in a close two-shot with an actor, watch the way her own eyes reflect the most minute changes in his expression.

Her scenes with Bogart exemplify this approach.

Many film historians argue Casablanca’s greatness is due to its “invisible” style: there are no flashy camera movements, or ostentatious cuts, or “look at me” acting.

French film critic André Bazin once famously attributed the success of Hollywood studio films to “the genius of the system”.

Films like Casablanca succeeded because they were made within a thriving ecosystem that placed storytelling, creative expertise, and cast and crew competence at the heart of its artistic practice.

And Casablanca’s script remains unbeatable. It’s worth remembering the lines of dialogue that have stayed with us ever since: “Here’s looking at you, kid”; “This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”; “We’ll always have Paris”; and “Round up the usual suspects”.

Casablanca’s afterlife

Casablanca’s legacy is long-lasting.

Today, it ranks third on the American Film Institute’s 100 best movies of the last 100 years, and it is one of the most referenced films of all time.

Scholars love the film for its Freudian intertexts, while others see the title casa blanca – “white house: in Spanish – as a symbol for American foreign policy.

The Italian novelist Umberto Eco wrote Casablanca was "not just one film. It is many films […] it is a phenomenon worthy of awe”.

Watched today, we remain in awe of its simplicity, but also of its profound depth.

Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Spending too much money? Tempted by sales? These ways to ‘hack’ your psychology can help

It’s late November, which means the holiday sales period has well and truly begun. If you haven’t already seen your spending go up, the possibility is looming.

And you probably have some concerns about spending your money wisely. Furthermore, shopping can be a harrowing experience, and our attitudes towards money are tied up in all kinds of feelings.

Based on psychology, here are three tips to improve the way you spend your hard-earned cash this holiday season.

Before the purchase – patience is your friend

One of the amazing features of the human mind is that we can mentally time travel: we can imagine what the future is going to feel like. Scientists call this “affective forecasting”.

Thinking about a future trip – imagining the warm sun, the sand between your toes, finding yourself smiling – is an example of such mental time travel.

However, it turns out we’re not very good at affective forecasting. We get wrong not only the emotions we will experience, but also their intensity and duration. Lottery winners are a classic example – contrary to expectations, many are not happy, or not happy for long.

More importantly, you can derive happiness from just anticipating future experiences. For example, one study measured the happiness of 974 people going on a trip compared with 556 people not going on a trip. As you might expect, the vacationers were relatively happier – but only before the trip.

So, how can we take advantage of our capacity to mentally time travel?

Tip #1: Pay now, consume later. These days, fuelled by the rise of “buy now, pay later” options, we get to consume what we want immediately. However, this instant gratification deprives us of a key source of happiness: anticipation. A better strategy is to commit to buy something and then wait a little before actually consuming it.

At the point of purchase – notice you’re paying

An inevitability of every purchase is spending money. This represents a cost, both in terms of the monetary value but also the opportunity to buy other things.

Costs are a form of loss, and we don’t like losing things. For that reason, it psychologically hurts to spend money. Scientists call this the “pain of paying”.

According to one theory of shopping, we decide to buy after making a mental calculation: is the anticipated pleasure of consuming higher than the anticipated pain of buying?

This calculus is even represented in the brain. For example, one study looking at people’s brains with fMRI while they purchased food found neural activity in areas linked to higher-order, affective pain processing, which correlated with how high the price was.

How did you pay for your last meal? Did you have to dig into your wallet or purse trying to extract the appropriate combination of notes and coins? Maybe you simply pulled out a plastic card and swiped it on the reader? Or perhaps you absentmindedly touched your smartphone to the machine.

It turns out your method of payment changes how much pain you feel. In one study, researchers asked some university employees if they would like to buy a mug at a discounted price. Half were only allowed to pay in cash, whereas the other half had to use a debit or credit card.

Those who paid in cash self-reported more pain of paying. So, how can you use this to your advantage?

Tip #2: Ramp up the pain. If you’re worried about overspending this holiday period, ramp up the pain of paying. You can do this by using cash or receiving a notification each time money leaves your account.

After the purchase – stop chasing rainbows

A fundamental feature of human beings is that we are adaptive – we easily get used to the new normal. This applies to our purchases, too. Scientists call it “hedonic adaptation”: over time, consumption of the same thing brings decreasing happiness.

Remember the day you got your smartphone? You may have felt joy as you caressed the smooth aluminium back and watched light glint off the unblemished glass. Now look at your phone. What happened to the joy?

It’s normal to experience hedonic adaptation. However, one problem is that we don’t anticipate it.

Remember affective forecasting? Since satisfaction is a function of expectations relative to performance, when we fail to adjust our expectations in light of the inevitable hedonic adaptation, we end up dissatisfied.

The second problem with hedonic adaptation is that the obvious solution appears to be buying something new. Maybe you need a new smartphone to replace your slightly scratched-up old one? If this is your thinking, you’ve just hopped onto the hedonic treadmill.

Now the only way to maintain your happiness is to spend more and more money to get better and better versions of everything. So, how can you get off this treadmill?

Tip #3: Buy experiences, not things. It turns out people end up happier when they buy experiences rather than things. For example, a study that tracked how older adults spent their money found that only one category of spending was related to happiness: leisure purchases, such as going on trips, seeing a movie at the cinema, and cheering at sporting events.

One reason for this is that we adapt to purchases of experiences more slowly than purchases of material things.

So, the next time you’re tossing up between buying tickets to a festival or getting the latest gadget, pick up your scratched-up smartphone and pre-purchase some festival tickets for you and your friends.

Adrian R. Camilleri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

18th- and 19th-century Americans of all races, classes and genders looked to the ancient Mediterranean for inspiration

The ancient world of the Mediterranean has long permeated American society, in everything from museum collections to home furnishings. The design of the nation’s public monuments, buildings and universities, as well as its legal system and form of government, show the enduring influence of Mediterranean antiquity on American culture.

Until the late 19th century, Americans encountered the ancient world almost exclusively through reproductions – in books, artwork and even popular plays. Very few could afford to travel abroad to encounter Mediterranean artifacts firsthand.

Yet despite barriers to access, many Americans forged personal connections with the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean – not only the Greeks and Romans, but also the Egyptians and Israelites. Perhaps the newness of American culture inspired this deep interest in the ancient past.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Mediterranean antiquity’s influence on America, even before it officially became a country, is how it cut across cultural lines of race, class and gender. Far from being the preserve of a privileged few, the art and literature of the ancients was often embraced by Americans of all stripes – including the enslaved Black poet Phillis Wheatley (circa 1753-1784) and Black and Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907). But the circumstances of these encounters and the way individual Americans thought about antiquity varied greatly.

I’m an art historian specializing in ancient Mediterranean art and culture. I am particularly fascinated by the way Americans, from the earliest days, made creative connections between past and present, despite being separated by thousands of miles and millennia of history.

In researching and selecting works of art for the exhibit “Antiquity and America,” on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, I was excited to show an exceptionally diverse range of American encounters with the ancient world, especially in portrait painting.

Marker of education

Take, for example, Samson Occom (1723-1792), a member of the Mohegan nation, Presbyterian minister and one of the first Native Americans to pen an autobiography in English.

His unfinished portrait, painted by Nathaniel Smibert (1735-1756) in the mid-18th century, alluded to Occom’s Indigenous identity in the coloring of his skin and the styling of his hair. Simultaneously, it also referenced his training in classical literature and oratory, acquired by studying with Eleazar Wheelock (1711-1779), a Connecticut Congregational minister.

Occom’s pose and draped cloak recall those found on ancient statues of Roman senators – a portrait convention familiar in early America from prints circulating at the time – and one that would later become quite popular in American society.

While his learning in Greek and Latin was undoubtedly a source of great pride for Occom – and a way for him to level the playing field with the European colonists – it was used by others to demonstrate the “civilizing” effect of European culture and education in the British Colonies.

In 1776, Eleazar Wheelock sent his former pupil Occom to Great Britain to raise money for a Native American school – funds that were ultimately repurposed for the founding of Dartmouth College. Occom would later charge Wheelock with using him as a “gazing stock” in Europe while planning all the while to use the funds for the benefit of white settlers.

Shaping public opinion

A portrait of Sengbe Pieh, also known as Cinqué, who led the 1839 Amistad slave ship revolt, is an example of Black Americans’ use of the classical world for political purposes.

Commissioned by Robert Purvis (1810-1898), a Black Philadelphian and prominent abolitionist, this striking portrait by John Sartain (1808-1897) was intended to shape the popular image of Pieh and his fellow Africans during their Supreme Court trial for mutiny and murder in 1840-1841.

Pieh’s African identity is made evident not only in the tone of his skin, but in the bamboo staff he holds and the landscape in background depicting his homeland. The white cloak draped over his shoulder would have called to mind the white robes worn by Roman senators and, by extension, the Roman virtues of honor and dignity.

Pieh and his fellow Africans were ultimately acquitted and returned to the Sierra Leone Colony in 1842.

Feminist icon

Caroline Sanders Truax (1870–1940), one of the first women admitted to the New York state bar, was so enamored by the ancient past she was portrayed as the Greek lyric poet Sappho by painter Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904).

This was a bold choice for a representation of an American woman in 1899. Sappho, whose writing is among the only surviving sources of female authorship from antiquity, was already an icon of the first-wave feminist movement, and the homoerotic themes of her poetry were well understood. Was the choice the artist’s – or the sitter’s? The most likely answer is it was by mutual agreement, perhaps inspired by Truax’s knowledge of classical language and literature – and her own interest in composing lyric poetry.

The portrait was a sensation in New York society when it arrived from the artist’s studio in Paris. It was featured in several portrait exhibitions and newspaper articles – and was hung with pride by Truax and her husband in their home.

For generations of Americans, the history and literature of Mediterranean antiquity was fertile ground for contemporary comparisons. It was universal enough to be brought into debates about the Constitution and founding principles of democracy, slavery and abolition, and women’s rights and suffrage. It was also of great individual significance for Americans of many different backgrounds – a past they were on intimate terms with, despite the millennia and miles separating the United States from the ancient Mediterranean.

Sean P. Burrus, Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, Bowdoin College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rosetta Stone: a new museum is reviving calls to return the artefact to Egypt

With the Arab spring of 2011, a downturn in tourism and the devastation of COVID, the odds have been stacked against the opening of Giza’s Grand Egyptian Museum, work on which began in 2005 and is due to complete 2023.

Nevertheless, it will house over 100,000 artefacts and become the largest archaeological museum complex in the world. It is sure to draw millions of visitors to see the most complete story yet of ancient Egypt, told by Egyptians.

Highlights will include the entirety of Tutankhamun’s treasure, displayed together for the first time. However, as dazzling as this will be, it is unlikely to completely distract from the ever-present repatriation debate.

In fact, the museum’s opening looks set to mark a turning point in the academic debate around returning its most obvious missing artefact – the Rosetta Stone – to Egypt.

The case against repatriation

The Rosetta Stone has been the subject of a lengthy repatriation campaign. Rediscovered in 1799 by the French military campaign in the Egyptian Delta, following Napoleon’s defeat by the British, the stone was shipped to England in 1802. It has been on display at the British Museum ever since.

The British Museum has maintained a steady resistance to the stone’s return to Egypt. Legislation, including the British Museum Act 1963 (which prevents the British Museum from disposing of its holdings), covers its legal right to the stone. But there is now increasing pressure to return it to Egypt as a gesture of goodwill, recognition of the stone as Egypt’s cultural property and a symbol of a country that is increasingly reclaiming its heritage.

Some academics maintain that the stone should stay in London. There, they argue, more visitors will see it, and it takes pride of place among artefacts representing the collective efforts of humanity. They also highlight that the British Museum has kept it safe for two centuries and without British and French efforts, the stone’s significance would remain unknown.

For many years, one of the main academic arguments questioned the suitability of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, Cairo, as a home for the Rosetta Stone.

The case for repatriation

The argument that the stone is safer from a conservation perspective in the British Museum no longer carries the same weight in light of the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which now houses many objects formerly in Tahrir Square.

Ironically, the infrastructure of the British Museum is also in need of upgrading and refurbishment. The next few years will see this work commence in a radical overhaul called, appropriately, the “Rosetta Project”.

The British Museum positions itself as a repository of world culture, and there is certainly a case to be made for a more inclusive cultural heritage network. It can be argued that the Rosetta Stone is also part of British and French history, due to the decipherment success by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion, but in the end, it may come down to perceptions.

To some Egyptians, the stone is a symbol of colonialism, and the British Museum’s retention of it signals that the western dominance of Egyptian archaeology is still present. The British Museum, understandably, does not wish to relinquish its star object, but the pressure may eventually make its position untenable.

As one of the world’s most high-profile museums, its decisions are in the spotlight and any change in its stance on the Rosetta Stone could lead to other institutions being approached about the repatriation of Egyptian collections.

This year, more than 2,500 archaeologists signed a petition to repatriate the stone and, in 2021, a YouGov poll on the wider issue of returning artefacts to their country of origin found 62% in favour.

Implications for worldwide heritage

The British Museum has stated that they have received no formal request for the return of the Rosetta Stone, but as the 1963 Act prevents its return, the most logical way forward is the establishment of a partnership with Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

George Osborne’s position as chair of the British Museum is that the strength of the collection is in the representation of common humanity, but that the museum is willing to enter into a dialogue to ensure a satisfactory outcome for all parties.

However, as ownership will still reside with the British Museum, advocates for the stone’s return may feel this does not go far enough. On the other hand, there is a concern about the potential for cultural regression if museums start to divide their collections, although the likelihood of having to empty stores is small.

The Rosetta Stone is a perfect example of the continuing biographies of objects. Its significance no longer rests only on its role in the decipherment of hieroglyphs, and 18th- to 19th-century relationships between Britain, France and Egypt. It has taken on new meaning, and its importance now is as a symbol of the decolonisation debate, and of Egypt itself.

Claire Gilmour, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How satellites, radar and drones are tracking meteorites and aiding Earth’s asteroid defence

On July 31 2013 a constellation of US defence satellites saw a streak of light over South Australia as a rock from outer space burned through Earth’s atmosphere on its way to crash into the ground below.

The impact created an explosion equivalent to about 220 tonnes of TNT. More than 1,500km away, in Tasmania, the bang was heard by detectors normally used to listen for extremely low-frequency sounds from illegal tests of nuclear weapons.

These were two excellent indications that there should be a patch of ground covered in meteorites somewhere north of Port Augusta. But how could we track them down?

My colleagues and I who work on the Desert Fireball Network (DFN), which tracks incoming asteroids and the resulting meteorites, had a couple of ideas: weather radar and drones.

Eyes in space

Finding meteorites is not an easy task. There is a network of high-quality ground-based sensors called the Global Fireball Observatory, but it only covers about 1% of the planet.

The US satellite data published by NASA covers a much larger area than ground-based detectors, but it only picks up the biggest fireballs. What’s more, they don’t always give an accurate idea of the meteor’s trajectory.

So, to have any chance to find a meteorite from these data, you need a little outside help.

Weather radars

In 2019, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology started making its weather radar data openly available to researchers and the public. I saw this as an opportunity to complete the puzzle.

I combed through the record of events from the Desert Fireball Network and NASA, and cross-matched them with nearby weather radars. Then I looked for unusual radar signatures that could indicate the presence of falling meteorites.

And bingo, the 2013 event was not too far from the Woomera radar station. The weather was clear, and the radar record showed some small reflections at about the right place and time.

Next, I had to use the weather data to figure out how the wind would have pushed the meteorites around on their way down to Earth.

If I got the calculations right, I would have a treasure map showing the location of a rich haul of meteorites. If I got them wrong, I would end up sending my team to wander around in the desert for two weeks for nothing.

The search

I gave what I hoped was an accurate treasure map to my colleague Andy Tomkins from Monash University. In September this year, he happened to be driving past the site on his way back from an expedition in the Nullarbor.

Thankfully, Andy found the first meteorite within 10 minutes of looking. In the following two hours, his team found nine more.

The technique of finding meteorites with weather radars was pioneered by my colleague Marc Fries in the US. However, this is the first time it has been done outside the US NEXRAD radar network. (When it comes to monitoring airspace, the US has more powerful and more densely packed tech than anyone else.)

This first search confirmed there were lots of meteorites on the ground. But how were we going to find them all?

That’s where the drones come in. We used a method developed by my colleague Seamus Anderson to automatically detect meteorites from drone images.

In the end we collected 44 meteorites, weighing a bit over 4kg in total. Together they form what we call a “strewn field”.

Strewn fields tell us a lot about how an asteroid fragments in our atmosphere.

That’s quite important to know, because the energy of these things is comparable to that of nuclear weapons. For example, the 17-metre asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013 produced an explosion 30 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

So when the next big one is about to hit, it may be useful to predict how it will deposit its energy in our atmosphere.

With new telescopes and better technology, we are starting to see some asteroids before they hit Earth. We will see even more when projects such as the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) are up and running.

These systems might give us as much as a few days’ notice that an asteroid is heading for Earth. This would be too late to make any effort to deflect it – but plenty of time for preparation and damage control on the ground.

The value of open data

This find was only made possible by the free availability of crucial data – and the people who made it available.

The US satellites that detected the fireball are presumably there to detect missile and rocket launches. However, somebody (I don’t know who) must have figured out how to publish some of the satellite data without giving away too much about their capabilities, and then lobbied hard to get the data released.

Likewise, the find would not have happened without the work of Joshua Soderholm at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, who worked to make low-level weather radar data openly accessible for other uses. Soderholm went to the trouble to make the radar data readily available and easy to use, which goes well beyond the vague formulations you can read at the bottom of scientific papers like “data available upon reasonable request”.

There is no shortage of fireballs to track down. Right now, we’re on the hunt for a meteorite that was spotted in space last weekend before blazing through the sky over Ontario, Canada.

Hadrien Devillepoix, Researcher in Planetary Astronomy, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Banksy in Ukraine: how his defiant new works offer hope

Art, in all its forms, has always been a powerful means of representing, resisting and remembering war. And the Russo-Ukrainian War is no different, with artists responding powerfully to Russian aggression through an explosion of artwork drawing attention to, and reinforcing, the resilience of Ukrainian people and culture.

A stream of artwork has been posted on Instagram and Twitter. Some of the artworks represent grief and trauma, whereas others reflect “the fire of hope and defiance that comes with such tragedy.”

International artists have also joined in the effort. On November 11, graffiti artist Banksy posted a picture to his Instagram of a gymnast doing a handstand, painted on the side of a building devastated by shelling in Borodyanka, Ukraine.

A few days later, Banksy confirmed that he was responsible for six other artworks in Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine, one of which appeared to take aim at Russian president Vladimir Putin, depicting him being thrown by a child in a judo match. It is not much of a stretch to interpret the child as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.

Banksy’s other works are shown in a video posted to Instagram (above) accompanied by a soundtrack of women singing Ukrainian folk music. They show children playing on a seesaw made from part of a tank, a bombed out transport truck, a man taking a bath and a woman in a dressing gown donning a gas mask and holding a fire extinguisher.

Ukrainian messages of thanks and solidarity were posted to Banksy’s Instagram in response.

Russia’s war on culture

The destruction of culture and cultural heritage has been among the many alleged crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine. In July 2022, Unesco reported damage to over 164 cultural sites including religious sites, museums, historic buildings, buildings dedicated to cultural activities, monuments and libraries.

As with so many aspects of the war, this reverberates with the Yugoslav War, where the searing image of the destruction of the national library in Sarajevo and its two million books and artefacts in August 1992 was one of the most iconic of the war.

An early cultural casualty in Ukraine was the Babyn Yar memorial park in Kyiv, believed to have been directly targeted by Russian forces as part of an erasure of Ukrainian history and culture.

In response, Unesco committed to the protection of cultural property as a priority. That commitment was based on the conviction that: “Culture is an essential public good for society, and access to cultural life is a basic universal human right.”

While art alone cannot change the dynamics or the course of the war in Ukraine, it can play an important role in reinforcing and demonstrating the resilience of cultural life. Whether or not it can also play a role in building peace and fostering reconciliation depends on its protection.

Unesco responds to threats to Ukrainian culture

In September, Unesco announced a joint initiative with the Ukrainian NGO Museum of Contemporary Art “to encourage the continuation of artistic creation and access to cultural life in Ukraine”.

The fund will initially disburse a total of US$100,000 (£84,000) from the Unesco Heritage Emergency Fund to support seven projects, with ten more to follow. The projects were selected from an open call and include residencies and support for displaced Ukrainian artists in Dnipro and Kharkiv.

Unesco described their support of Ukrainian artists as “vital for preserving artistic expression as a basis for social cohesion, community resilience, and our common goal – fighting for freedom and democratic values”.

What role does art play in war?

All of this points to important questions about the role of art and the responsibility of artists in times of war, artistic representation of war and its horrors, art and the politics of resistance and the potential role of art in building peace and fostering reconciliation.

As historian Joanna Bourke observed in her book War and Art, art is intrinsically political, whether deliberately so or not. Artists make choices about how they represent war, often invoking “both the bitterness and the vulnerability of modern war”.

Banksy’s artwork in Ukraine draws our eye to the devastation wrought by the Russian invasion. By being painted on bombed out buildings, the images reflect how the experience of war disrupt the everyday, juxtaposing the mundane with the extraordinary – a woman in curlers and a dressing gown also wears a gas mask, children play on a tank trap seesaw.

Banksy’s intervention was warmly welcomed by Ukrainians, “hailed as a symbol of their country’s invincibility” as part of a wider Ukrainian effort to leverage art as a powerful site of resistance and demonstration of resilience.

The extent to which art might be able to contribute to peace and reconciliation is a question for later on. It seems quite far removed from the grief, anger and defiance evident in much of the artwork created to date.

For now, as the response to Banksy’s artworks demonstrates, art in Ukraine serves as a site of expression, of solidarity and a symbol of resistance. As the Ukrainian government expressed, such works are not only “about blood, death, and destruction … but also – about love, support, and hope”.

Rachel Kerr, Professor of War and Society, King's College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The concept of class is often avoided in public debate, but it’s essential for understanding inequality

In Australian news, opinion and popular culture, the figures of the hipster and the bogan are everywhere. These figures are proxies for cultural, commercial and moral aspects of class, signalling differences in fashion, accents and tastes. Perhaps one of the most recognisable examples is the popular television series, Upper Middle Bogan.

So potent and provocative are these figures in Australian popular culture, that in our experience of talking about class in the media earlier this year, following the release of our book Class in Australia, interviewers most often wanted to talk about hipsters and bogans.

These figures are important for understanding class in Australia, including how moralised classed judgements about “good” versus “trashy” culture are made. But to talk about class in Australia involves talking about material inequality, work conditions, and the social, economic and political relations that produce wealth and poverty.

In a settler colony like Australia, it also involves addressing how class relations have been built on the foundations of colonialism and the exclusion and exploitation of Indigenous people, as Eualeyai/Kamilaroi academic, lawyer, filmmaker and advocate Larissa Behrendt noted in her contribution to our book.

The ongoing crisis of COVID-19 has highlighted the need to acknowledge the drastically different experiences of the global pandemic, depending on the kind of work you do. Front-line “essential” workers, often precariously employed, many of whom are in working-class jobs, have fundamentally different experiences of risk and exposure than white-collar workers able to work from home.

COVID-19 has also exposed the complex and fragile global flows of migrant agricultural workers, whose labour Australians rely upon to put food on the table, and whose lives were put in limbo.

The rhetoric of class

Class has a unique place in Australian public life. At times it looms large, acting as an organising frame to declare interests and political sentiments. In Australia, the concept of “class” has a cultural history with deep connections to unionism and the struggle for workers’ rights, including, for instance, the campaign for the eight-hour day.

Yet often class is obscured. It is markedly absent from contemporary public and political debates on poverty, inequality, disadvantage and wealth. These other terms appear to roll off the political tongue with ease. They lend themselves to policy discourse and political rhetoric where structural inequalities are broken down into a series of “risk factors” attributed to individuals.

When the concept of class is mentioned, it is often presented in an inverted top-down manner. Some of Australia’s most privileged and powerful people routinely use anti-“elite” rhetoric. The notion of elitism is used to stereotype and denigrate so-called inner-city latte sippers. Their education and “progressive” political values are cited as evidence that they fail to grasp the needs and beliefs of “ordinary” people, exemplified by the “quiet” Aussie “battler”.

The symbols of class are invoked when our highly paid politicians cosplay as working class, dressing in high-vis and helmets, wearing army fatigues, or getting on tractors when visiting farms. These performances are attempts to connect the political class with the everyday worker, while at the same time glossing over social and employment inequalities.

Whenever arguments about income or economic redistribution arise, we hear immediate invocations of a “class war”. For instance, arguing in favour of lowering the minimum wage in 2012, Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart implored Australians to

get through the class warfare smokescreen […] if you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourself – spend less time drinking, or smoking and socialising, and more time working.

It seems that in Australia, as elsewhere, as US-based billionaire investor Warren Buffett quipped:

There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.

What is class in Australia?

The term “class” – as distinct from related concepts like socio-economic status, inequality or disadvantage – remains useful because it refers to the cultural, social, economic and employment relations that have produced widening inequality. It means acknowledging that some must sell their labour for wages, while others generate wealth from the capital produced from that labour.

At the same time, any genuine understanding of class in Australia requires qualifications. Class also refers to deep cultural and social practices which shape our identities, our communities and ways of being.

Class is a term that is hotly contested. Many have revisited the term, considering it in relation to, for instance, Indigenous experiences, gender and women’s work, and questions of race and racism. Not all distinctive experiences of difference, disadvantage and inequality – gender, race, Indigeneity, sexuality, ability, age for instance – represent equivalences that can be subsumed into class.

For instance, in our book, Rose Butler, Christina Ho and Eve Vincent discuss how ethnicity complicates straightforward understandings of class when it comes to education. Their research shows that many white parents denigrate Asian-Australian parents who invest in tutoring for their children, believing that it is “unfair” and does not allow kids to be kids.

Behrendt, too, reflects on how Indigenous people have been left out of debates about class, as the concept itself was imported from Europe and, in many colonial settler histories, Indigenous people were not even treated as people. These examples and others in the book highlight the need for continual reflection on how different contours of inequality interact with class.

Class is often omitted from public debate because it reveals the systemic nature of inequality and poverty. It does not fit with the political narrative that society is meritocratic. The realities of class-based inequity call into question the idea that if you work hard and make the right choices, you can rise to the top.

The problem is that when wealth, inequality and success are understood to be the result of individual choices, the social relationships and structures that create such inequalities are hidden from view. This kind of thinking gives rise to individualised responses to inequality, or a presumption that inequality might be the result of personal characteristics or “failings”.

It is this kind of thinking that enables Bernard Salt to declare that young people might be able to buy a house if they just didn’t eat avocado toast, or former prime minister Scott Morrison to suggest that if you want to earn more all you need to do is work harder. Such comments demonstrate the significant and increasing discrepancy between political rhetoric and the reality of inequalities.

A richly informed understanding of class can play a powerful role in grasping how unequal social and economic experiences are articulated through relations of property, labour, capital and value in capitalist societies.

To put it plainly, class allows us to understand inequalities not as personal failings, but as experiences that are produced through social and economic relations. Using the term class makes inequality a public issue anchored in material structures and socio-cultural institutions. This makes class a necessary concept for understanding how Australian society functions, how the powerful maintain their interests, and how social and cultural institutions work to reproduce inequalities.

Jessica Gerrard, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne and Steven Threadgold, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.