A person among others? Older people’s understandings of their everyday life during the Covid-19 crisis

This article examines how older people make sense of their situation in calls to a helpline a few months into the Covid-19 pandemic. By drawing on the sociology of everyday life to analyse callers’ various understandings of the crisis, the article nuances current knowledge about older people’s situation. The thematic analysis shows that the callers make sense of the crisis linked to social relations on a personal, anonymous, and abstract level. The callers’ responses to challenges to their everyday routines – adjustment or critical evaluation – are connected to different approaches to trust: basic trust in a shared social reality with someone or regulating trust in a set of norms independent from that other. Whereas the calls demonstrate very few positive adjustments in personal relations, they show that anonymous and abstract relations serve as important resources for both maintaining and re-evaluating everyday life during a crisis. Although older people’s lack of secure personal relations during the pandemic points to vulnerability, their resourcefulness is apparent in their active engagement in important anonymous and abstract relations.

Recent demographic shifts in many parts of the world are presenting a challenge to society. An ageing population requires more care, even as there are fewer people of working age available to provide it. In order to make elderly care more efficient and to cope with staff shortages, various technological solutions have been proposed, including virtual assistants, telepresence robots, video games and – perhaps most unusual – robot animals.

Amerikanskan Helen Merrell Lynd är en pionjär inom det som i dag kallas emotionssociologi. Utifrån idétraditioner som interaktionistisk sociologi och socialpsykologi utforskar hon emotionernas betydelse för individens identitetsutveckling. Hon för fram en emotion som viktigare än alla andra, nämligen skammen, som genom socialisationsprocessen förankras i individen i enlighet med samhällets normer och värderingar om acceptabelt och oacceptabelt beteende. Skamkänslan tjänar därmed som moralisk kompass för individens livsföring, då den har en självreglerande funktion. För att undvika skamkänslor behöver individen uppträda enligt de krav som samhället ställer. Skamkänslor är svåra att bli kvitt, då de väckts som en följd av ett brott mot de normer och värderingar som individen internaliserat och gjort till en del av den egna identiteten. Individen är alltså föremålet för sin egen skam. För att bli av med skamkänslan måste individen förändras. På så sätt har skammen också en självutvecklande funktion i Merrell Lynds identitetsteori.

Social robots are discussed as a solution to new societal challenges connected to the ageing population and increasingly demanding care apparatus. Previous research about social robots in health care has been criticized for being either technophobic or technophilic: overly optimistic concerning the possibility of new technology, or pessimistic about the risk that robotization of care will entail a dehumanization of patients. Contributing with a social perspective to the research about the use of social robots in care settings, the article explores the interaction between care workers, residents, and robotic cats in dementia care facilities. The research design consists of a mixed-methods approach: Qualitative interviews with care workers and quantitative observations of residents’ response to the robot. The findings from the interviews and observations indicate a connection between the performative role of the care workers and the response of the residents when using the robotic cat. From the perspective of symbolic interactionism, the findings are discussed in relation to meaning-making practices of care workers and how they construct the interaction with the residents in new ways, using the social robot as either tools or substitutes for interpersonal contact.

Robotic animals are increasingly discussed as a solution to challenges connected to the aging population and limited resources in care. While previous research focuses on the robots’ effect on the patients’ well-being, there is a general lack of knowledge regarding the hands-on experience of caregivers’ use of robots. Therefore, the aim of the study is to explore the competences that caregivers draw upon when facilitating interaction between residents and robots. The study was conducted through ethnographic observations and interviews with caregivers at dementia care homes in Sweden. The notion of ‘competence’ is understood as knowledge about the ways of working and social norms that are valued within a community of practice, which members develop through engagement in the community. The findings show that caregivers’ use of robotic animals as caregiving tools rests on embodied, social, and ethical competences.

The purpose of the study is to explore how Swedish lower secondary school teachers manage blended learning environments, established through using a specific learningmanagement system (LMS) application. In the study, four teachers were followed during a four-month (n)ethnographic fieldwork. Based on analyses of data from video-recordings and observations in physical and virtual classrooms, the study examines teachers’ practices of integrating and segmenting the two classroom domains. In order to unpack the realms of these practices, the study employs affordance and boundary theories.Through the analysis of participants’ boundary practices and their use of communicative affordances in and across space and time, four teacher roles, enacted and emerging through teaching practices, are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of how participants’ engagement with virtual and physical learning environment compels teachers to reflect upon their preferred teacher role in the new multidimensional classrooms.

While previous research studies have focused on either caregivers’ or residents’ perception and use of social robots, this article offers an empirical and theoretical examination of joint activities in triadic human–robot interaction. The symptomatology of dementia creates an asymmetrical relation wherein the impetus to employ a robot often originates from the caregiver. Drawing on field work and video recorded interactions in dementia care homes, the article investigates how caregivers draw on embodied resources to involve residents and robot animals in interaction. The analysis demonstrates how caregivers promote commitment and encounter resistance with residents. We draw on the theory of sociomaterial interactionism to study situated interaction between bodies in a meaning-generating process. By re-conceptualising the theoretical notions of manipulation and recruitment, the article offers an approach for studying orientations that distinguish between reciprocity of agential objects. We show that caregivers usually distinguish between interactions with people and machines by anticipating a specific response from the robots (manipulation), while they invite participation in a broader sense from residents (recruitment). Social friction arises, however, if caregivers act upon the residents as embodied objects in manipulative ways.

In the field of Human Resource Management (HRM), the interest in Robot Process Automation (RPA) technology is steadily gaining. By introducing RPA solutions in HRM work tasks such as recruitment, onboarding, performance management, payroll management, or administration, the idea is that resources can be freed up for HR professionals to focus on more advanced and strategically oriented work tasks. This chapter provides an updated overview of scientific articles about the usage of RPA within the field of HRM. Moreover, the contribution of this chapter also consists of an organizational contextualization in the form of RPA usage within public service organizations, which has not been addressed by previous reviews in the field.

Human Resources (HR) has emerged as a critical target for digital automation, aiming to reduce costs, improve quality, and expedite repetitive processes within organizations. Several literature reviews have explored this topic, yielding mixed results depending on factors related to the specific national and organizational context. They have highlighted issues such as lack of competence, safety and ethical dilemmas, and bias in decision-making processes. However, despite HR being predominantly female dominated, few studies have examined the gendered implications of digital automation in this field. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the gendered implications of digital automation in recruitment processes and work practices within HR. Drawing upon gender theory, we will conduct a critical literature review based on existing reviews to reevaluate current knowledge. The findings suggest that while digital automation can enhance administrative efficiency in recruitment processes, it does not significantly impact the gender balance of the workforce. However, the findings also indicate that digital automation will likely transform the occupational role into a more masculinized way of working. This transformation is characterized by social distancing, technological rationality, and reliance on self-service systems. In conclusion, digital automation is poised to reshape the HR occupation into what we term "screen-level HR," comprising a predominantly female workforce engaged in masculine coded work practices.

We are delighted to present this interview with world renowned sociologist Eva Illouz. She currently holds the position of Directrice d'Etudes at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and is the Rose Isaac Chair in Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the interlinkages between capitalism, emotions, gender, culture, love, sexuality, and freedom in the modern world.

This interview primarily centers around Illouz's latest book but also touches on the role of social media in propagating negative emotions, strategies for cultivating emotions such as fraternity and hope to sustain modern democracy, and the contemporary era marked by societal self-destruction and unprecedented catastrophes.

Robotic animals are designed to resemble real, living animals, but at the same time, dementia care guidelines and policies often emphasize the value of transparency in relation to robots-people should not be led to believe that robots have capacities that they in fact lack. However, it is not obvious how to separate truth from lies in everyday care practice. Based on participant observations and interviews with certified assistant nurses and nursing assistants in Swedish nursing homes for people with dementia, this article studies how robotic animals become "real" in care practice. The article takes a posthumanist approach to the co-constitution of aging, care, and technology-a perspective that recognizes that not only care staff and nursing home residents, but also robots and other material things, can take an active part in shaping care practice. The analysis results in four typical situations out of which robotic animals emerge as real, living animals: the cuddle, with its simple but dynamic embodied actions; the comfort, where the robot is used as a resource for distraction and emotional support; the conversation, by which robotic animals' agency is both established and challenged; and the adoption, through which narratives and props are used to establish the robot as a pet. Robots cannot lie, at least not by themselves; instead, robots' deceptive potential is enabled by a network of actors, which is why it is often difficult to draw a clear line between lying and care workers' empathic following.

Contributing to the knowledge about teachers’ educational use of social media, the aim of this article is to explore Swedish secondary school teachers’ understanding of their duties of care and responsibilities for what pupils do on social media. The article draws on data from a mixed method study, consisting of an interview study and a national survey. The findings from the survey show that some groups of teachers are more likely than others to express responsibility for pupils, especially teachers who use many different social media, those who use them in contact with pupils, teachers working at private schools, and female teachers. The subjective experiences from the interviews are supported by the findings from the survey – indicating a correlation between social media usage and level of perceived responsibility. The more the teachers use social media, and thereby get access to more personal information about the pupils, the greater the likelihood that the teachers will perceive that they have some responsibility for what the pupils do on social media. The meaning of the findings is discussed in relation to the theory of caring ethics.