People

• The new context of their lives means the clothes they wore for the city no longer work for their new lives.
• This is also true in the climate crisis.
• Australia’s carbon footprint from the consumption and use of fashion is the world’s biggest, a dubious distinction in a materialistic world.
• Read more:
  New home, new clothes: the old ones no longer fit once you move to the country

Lessons from wartime

• To conserve precious resources, shorter skirts, minimal detailing and a focus on utility became the norm.
• People adapted their personal aesthetics and appearance because the situation was grave and they wanted to “do their bit” to help with the war effort.
• This wartime response reflected the priorities and values of society as a whole as well as most people in that society.

Read more:
Following a t-shirt from cotton field to landfill shows the true cost of fast fashion

So what can we do today?

• That makes Australians the second highest textiles consumers in the world after the USA , and is 60% more than we bought even 15 years ago.
• If we buy ten to 12 new items a year, we can replace our entire wardrobe in about seven years.
• Read more:
  Secondhand clothing sales are booming – and may help solve the sustainability crisis in the fashion industry

Choosing clothes to fit our values

• In the case of clothing, we should evaluate our choices in relation to the values we hold.
• Clothes need to reflect a person’s situation as well as their identity to “work” well.
• We may start to look different, but that change signifies our values in action.

Rachael Wallis received funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program for this research.

• Only weeks after the team’s headline-making tour, Australia’s then opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, led a delegation to Beijing promising to open diplomatic relations “when elected”.
• One was table tennis, one was basketball and one was volleyball.
• One was table tennis, one was basketball and one was volleyball.

‘A crowd of 8,000 people’

• A revolutionary who became one of China’s most revered statesmen, he advocated peaceful co-existence with the West and other nations.
• The American team embarked on their tour first – setting the stage for then-President Richard Nixon’s famous visit to Beijing in 1972.
• Paul Pinkewich had just turned 20 at the time of the visit, teammate Steve Knapp was only 18.
• Our first match in Canton, now Guangzhou, I think it was a crowd of 8,000 people,” he recalls.
• “Do you wear this hair because of your disagreement with society or because it is a style?” Knapp replied, “It is the fashion.”

• “Can you believe, one table in the middle of the Capital Stadium [in Beijing] with 18,000 spectators, and that was just an amazing experience.
• But they always let the woman win.” That woman was Anne Middleton, the other player on the 1971 tour, who has since passed away.
• After the trip we were labelled as communists […] but we were interested in friendship first, competition second.”

Why sport diplomacy matters

• Beijing has continued to use sport as a diplomatic tool, including becoming the first city in the world to host both a summer and winter Olympic Games (Beijing in 2008 and 2022).
• French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894, believing Olympics were a global event.
• A new term has also emerged in recent years – almost always applied by researchers in democratic nations – to describe undemocratic nations’ forays into global sport: sportswashing.
• “Amity between people holds the key to sound relations between countries.” At the heart of such amity, sport continues to play a significant role.

Tracey Holmes was one of the fifty Australians interviewed in the 'Fifty People, Fifty Stories' book due to her experiences of previously living and working in China.

• Bed bugs have recently exploded into the limelight amid widespread reports of a major outbreak in Paris.
• The more people share photos of bed bug bites on social media, the more concerned we feel.
• Indeed, data that confirms or denies the location and date of any bed bug cases is notoriously hard to find.

A seasonal spike

• The same seasonal pattern and year-on-year increase was seen in the US city of Philadelphia between 2009 and 2011, and in two Chinese cities in 2012/13.
• In New York between 2010 and 2020, the seasonal pattern was the same but the numbers did not increase.
• Studies from the US and Australia both found the same seasonal pattern in internet searches for bed bugs, although the pattern in Australia was the opposite to the northern hemisphere.

What we know about bed bugs

• It was much later in 1758 that the natural historian Carl Linnaeus added “lectularius” to their name, meaning bed or couch.
• Bed bugs have a complex gut microbiota, which helps them extract all the nutrients they need from our blood.
• My team put bed bugs in corrugated filter paper in the centre of a room, with clean and dirty clothes evenly spaced around them.
• The bed bugs all left the filter paper, and made a beeline for the dirty clothes nearly every time.

How to stop their spread

• If we could understand more about bed bug dispersal and spatial distribution, we would stand a better chance of stopping their spread.
• According to the same report that confirmed the 2010 outbreak, bed bug numbers in New York are declining.
• The city also passed a policy where, from 2010, landlords were required to report bed bug infestations to prospective tenants.

William Hentley is affiliated with the University of Sheffield. He receives funding from the University of Sheffield.

• When employees hold political identities and perspectives that do not align with their co-workers, they perceive greater incivility from them, which can result in greater stress and burnout.
• Amid all this, bystander intervention has emerged as a key strategy for handling interpersonal conflicts.

The bystander’s dilemma

• Bystanders often experience moral anger toward those who they perceive as perpetrators and empathy for those they perceive as targets.
• These emotions, in turn, drive bystanders to support targets and penalize perpetrators.
• And this fear is not without merit; research has found that perpetrators often retaliate when individuals voice concerns about mistreatment.

• Even when bystanders do intervene, their actions can be ineffective, and, in some cases, counterproductive.
• Threatening messages are likely to be met with resistance from the perpetrator, who is then inclined towards self-protective action.

The perpetrator’s perspective

• This is especially the case when emotions are running high, making it difficult for individuals to consider alternative viewpoints.
• In such instances, perpetrators are likely to condemn intervening bystanders and may even react to them punitively.
• Talking to people in a safe setting and listening to different viewpoints can help perpetrators consider other perspectives.

• Powerful perpetrators tend to be less concerned about the social implications of their actions and are more likely to become defensive.
• In contrast, those with less power tend to be more dependent on others and, as a result, are more attuned to the expectations of their peers.
• It can be hard to convince such individuals to change their mind, unless the bystander has the power to impose change.

Strategies for effective intervention

Our research offers several practical recommendations for effective bystander intervention in the workplace:
Carefully consider the best time to intervene. Unless there is a clear risk to the target (and a safe way to meaningfully intervene), it is best to wait until emotions have cooled.
Intervene in ways that allow the other person to maintain their sense of being a good person and colleague. Focus on addressing their behaviour, not their personal attributes, values or beliefs.
Recognize that powerful bystanders and those trusted by the other person are more effective in eliciting constructive responses than those with relatively less power.

• As workplace tensions mirror global and social turmoil, the ability to step in, intervene and shape outcomes becomes ever more valuable, especially for vulnerable populations.
• The essence of bystander intervention is not just about stopping a negative act, but also about fostering an environment where respect, growth and collaboration thrive.

Sandy Hershcovis receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Brianna Barker Caza, Ivana Vranjes, and Zhanna Lyubykh do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.