Conflict deeply affects human experiences, frequently testing individual resilience to its breaking point and leaving enduring psychological and societal wounds. The current conflict in Ukraine, initiated by Russia's invasion in 2022, illustrates this phenomenon by altering regional relationships and triggering a major humanitarian crisis marked by extensive displacement, loss of life, and emotional turmoil. This study explores the factors influencing hope and distress in Ukraine alongside six nearby European countries during the ongoing conflict. A cross-sectional survey collected data primarily via internet panel samples from the Czech Republic, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine in the second year since the war's initiation. The current study utilised validated instruments, collecting data on levels of hope, distress, individual resilience, community resilience, societal resilience, morale, sense of danger, perceived security threats, and demographic characteristics. Hope and distress levels differ across countries, with Ukraine exhibiting the highest levels of both (3.74 ± 1.02 and 2.89 ± 0.87, respectively). Overall, average scores of hope were higher than average distress levels. Across the regression models for the seven countries, hope showed strong associations with individual (between β = 0.089 and β = 0.327) and societal resilience (between β = 0.206 and β = 0.514), while morale (between β = -0.104 and β = -0.479) and individual resilience (between β = -0.077 and β = -0.335) displayed a protective relationship against distress (all β values were significant, p < 0.01). Monitoring hope and distress is crucial during the Russian-Ukrainian war and other adversities, as these factors give insight into the current and future psychological states of affected populations. The results offer valuable information that can guide the development of tailored strategies to enhance hope and buffer distress in war-impacted countries, as well as those experiencing its broader effects. Fostering individual and societal resilience, alongside enhancing morale, may strengthen hope and mitigate distress amid adversity. Developing targeted interventions that address each population's unique needs, as well as their sociocultural and geopolitical contexts can enhance efficacy.

This article provides a critique of Martha Nussbaum’s use of Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalysis in the field of political theory. In particular, it shows that Nussbaum omits specific elements in Winnicott’s thinking that may be described as “vitalist”. Nussbaum uses Winnicott’s ideas to justify a teleological view of human maturity which can hardly be harmonised with some of his seminal views of human subjectivity. The paper argues that, despite being true to Winnicott’s theory in many ways, Nussbuam commits a decisive interpretive shift which involves subordinating the Winnicottian “life force” under regulative norms of the liberal political order.

The article focuses on the communicative situation of the socio-political double bind that generates politics of impasse. This is located outside the performativity of both agonism and deliberation. The impasse is neither a state of conflict nor of an agreement. Rather, it represents a state of inertia, whereby the amplification of sociopolitical forces causes them to weaken. Two cases of artistic research focusing on the performativity of the double-bind are presented. The Strachy (Fears) project explored the theme of art as a space that openly criticises social power relations, while being simultaneously dominated by the same types of power. The second project, Propojme se včera (Let’s Connect Yesterday), explored social rigidity in the face of a growing global polycrisis, of which society itself is the main instigator. Through artistic research, we explored whether it is possible to reverse communication based on self-destructive implosion and transform it into self-transgressing communication, making the invisible aspects of these social phenomena visible. The aim was not to ‘shoot the problem’ or escape it through art. Instead, we sought a performative reframing of the impasse that would transform the double bind into an affirmative and agonistic participation in social reality, with the potential to bring about social change.

Introduction for the Winnicott special issue.

This paper explores the concept of resilience as much more than a personal capacity to overcome adversity. Using reflections from ontology, ethics and epistemology, this paper offers philosophical contextualisation of resilience thinking and the corresponding paradigm shift. It shows that individual resilience depends on a person’s ability to navigate their way to the resources they need for well-being while making multisystemic resources available in ways that are meaningful. Paradoxically, resilience is a consequence of how these multiple systems interact to support positive development and the feedback loops and trade-offs necessary to ensure that a single system’s success does not compromise the resilience of other systems. Five patterns of resilience are discussed, each a viable solution to coping with stress.

BackgroundGlobal conflicts and geopolitical tensions are causing mass displacement, making refugee integration a pressing issue. The aftermath of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine has resulted in over 5 million internally displaced Ukrainians and more than 8 million refugees settling across Europe. The success of their integration relies on the hospitality and attitudes of citizens of host nations. This study investigates factors influencing attitudes toward Ukrainian refugees in seven nearby countries, focusing on resilience, and both positive and negative coping mechanisms.MethodsA cross-sectional questionnaire study gathered data mostly through Internet panel samples from Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Romania. The instruments employed in this present study include: attitudes towards refugees, societal resilience, individual resilience, community resilience, hope, morale, feeling safe at home, well-being, sense of danger, distress symptoms, post-traumatic stress disorder, perceived threats, and government support.ResultsAttitudes toward Ukrainian refugees vary across nations, with Georgia and Estonia displaying the highest acceptance (3.92 and 3.29, respectfully), and Slovakia and the Czech Republic (2.63 and 2.5, respectfully) exhibiting lower levels of positivity. Societal resilience emerged as a key factor influencing positive attitudes towards refugees. Other predictors included hope, individual and community resilience, PTSD, education, gender, and perceived threats. Females and higher-educated individuals expressed more favorable attitudes.ConclusionsFostering societal resilience and positive coping strategies is essential for refugees' integration, with targeted interventions, educational programs, and awareness campaigns playing a significant role in building empathy and aiding their acceptance. Policies should encourage social inclusion and economic opportunities for refugees and host communities, addressing negative societal attitudes. These findings may inform crisis support and policies enhancing attitudes toward refugees in host communities.

In the context of the current polycrisis, Andreas Reckwitz suggests that instead of emphasizing progress, Western liberal democracies should cultivate resilience. The question is: which resilience? The prevailing theory of democratic resilience focuses on securing the “invariant core” of democratic institutions. This article shows why this approach is insufficient and discusses the advantages of the multisystemic approach. Democracy is here understood as a quality of the lived relational environment and a regime with social and ethical aspirations. Developing resilience in this context means nurturing the sources of democratic subjectivity and consistently opposing the inner and institutional violations in the society. As such resilience has nothing to do with invulnerability or protection against external threats. Instead it supports the resistance against the double binds caused inside democratic regimes by the neoliberal paradigm in the name of cultivating democratic agonism and transformation.

Facing global challenges like economic crises, political unrest, and public health issues, societies must be resilient. Societal Resilience is the collective capacity to endure and bounce back from such adversities. This study delves into its complexity and its ties to economic, social, healthcare, and political domains, offering insights for decision-makers and academics. A Societal Resilience questionnaire was distributed across eight nations (Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine) in late 2022 and early 2023, with the results compared to international data. Statistical methods revealed significant links between Societal Resilience and four global indicators: urban population and immigrant stock share (both positively correlated), and population growth (negative), as well as perceiving climate change as a major threat (negative). Excluding Ukraine, twelve significant connections emerged, including gender equality and corruption perception. The research underscores the importance of multifaceted, informed approaches to bolster Societal Resilience, providing a policy and practice framework to navigate a complex global landscape. Further studies should expand the country sample to examine more relationships, like those between financial factors and Societal Resilience.

Introduction to the monothematic block: Socio-Political Resilience vis-à-vis the Contemporary World Crises.

The present study examines, as research questions, which and to what extent psychological and demographic variables significantly predict individual, community, and societal resilience among a sample of Czech Republic adults ( N = 1,100) six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The research tools included the following scales: Societal, community, and individual resilience; hope, well-being; morale; distress symptoms; a sense of danger; and perceived threats. The results indicated the following: (a) Correlation analysis shows that resilience is significantly and positively correlated with supporting coping factors and significantly and negatively correlated with suppressing coping factors. (b) A comparison of supporting coping indicators (hope, well-being, and morale) and suppressing coping indicators (distress symptoms, sense of danger, and perceived threats) in the Czech Republic with those variables in Slovakia and Israel indicated that Israel reported higher resilience, higher supporting coping indicators, and lower suppressing coping factors. Three-path analysis among the Czech sample indicated that the best predictor of SR was the level of hope, the best predictor of CR was morale, and the best predictor of IR was the sense of danger. In an attempt to explain these findings in the discussion section, we refer to the background of Czech society and a possible connection to the findings.

The study examined the resilience and coping of samples from Ukraine and five nearby countries during the war in Ukraine. The research focused on (1) the levels of community and societal resilience of the Ukrainian respondents compared with the populations of five nearby European countries and (2) commonalities and diversities concerning coping indicators (hope, well-being, perceived threats, distress symptoms, and sense of danger) across the examined countries. A cross-sectional study was conducted, based on data collection through Internet panel samples, representing the six countries' adult populations. Ukrainian respondents reported the highest levels of community and societal resilience, hope, and distress symptoms and the lowest level of well-being, compared to the population of the five nearby European countries. Hope was the best predictor of community and societal resilience in all countries. Positive coping variables, most notably hope, but also perceived well-being are instrumental in building resilience. While building resilience on a societal level is a complex, multifaceted task, various dimensions must be considered when planning actions to support these states. It is essential to monitor the levels of resilience, during and following the resolution of the crisis, both in Ukraine and in the neighboring countries.

The systematic rise of proto-totalitarian regimes, the acceleration of neoliberal cultural politics and the recent pandemic restrictions in European countries have intensified discussions in the cultural sector about the basic, yet fundamental question: Is art powerful enough to contribute to the cultivation of democracy or is it, rather, powerless? In order to tackle this problem, the author chooses, as a starting point, Walter Bryce Gallie's explanation of art and democracy as essentially contested concepts. This leads to the necessity of studying the particular role of artistic practices in the open contest over democracy. The chapter first discusses the instrumental role of artistic practices enabling and disabling the stimulation of democracy (propaganda, education and commodification) and continues with an analysis of the function of sovereign autonomous art in the social context. Finally, with reference to Johann Huizinga and Judith Butler, the author argues that the position of art is neither instrumental nor sovereign, but playful. As play, art has the potential to non-radically interrupt any normative system it is irreducibly embedded in, to enrich the contest over democracy with new meaning and to preserve it from atrophy. As such, artistic practices are fundamental to the evolution of democracy.

The chapter maps different approaches of play studies towards the question of democracy. It enumerates the reasons why researchers explore the role and importance of play in social behaviour, social cohesion, conflict management, cultural dialogue, or policymaking and democratic life. It shows that the context of current societal and political challenges urges the community of play researchers to revisit the relationship between play and politics, or the contribution of play to imagining and creating more viable alternatives for the lives of communities. The authors introduce the term democracy as well as play as polysemic and ambiguous. The chapter argues that since these notions disrupt security, clarity and certitude of academic discourse, they also activate vigilance, a knowledge of how to work with open concepts, an academic practice of democracy as openness. The chapter further identifies four domains where the intertwining of democracy and play seems in particular philosophically inspiring: The philosophy of play and democracy in relationship to normativity, playful activism and democracy embodied in urban spaces, art and its power to resist political and normative dominance, and paradoxes of play and democracy in education.

Donald Winnicott's conception of play is missing in the current discourse of care ethics even though Winnicott's concept of play includes underappreciated ethical dimensions that can support and complete the claims of care ethicists. First, beyond the often discussed respect for the Other, the willingness to take childism into consideration (John Wall), and the readiness for transformation, Winnicott sheds light on three other ethical dimensions of play: A) the capacity to exist in ambivalences, B) the capacity to understand one's deeds as always limited in time and space and C) the capacity to enjoy the precariousness inherent in the negotiation of the plastic boundaries of the Self. Second, Winnicott's description of human development through the ethically interpreted phenomenon of play fits into the framework of care ethics. However, proponents of care ethics tend to overlook the importance of play within this domain. As both Winnicott and care ethicists present play and care as a phenomenon which is related not only to childhood but also to the realm of culture, society and politics, we show why the playful human existence in caring relationships is an appropriate candidate in the quest for a new account of ethical subjectivity and agency. Being one of the "essentially contested concepts" (Gallie 1956: 169), play is not only an inexhaustible source of theoretical debates when it comes to its definition, but also a source of a number of intriguing questions. One of them concerns the ethical dimension of playing or the ethics of play. In this chapter, we aim to draw attention to this aspect of play with a special focus on the ethical implications of Donald Winnicott's concept of the transitional area of play.