This editorial introduces the special issue Living with Smart Technologies: The Changing Dynamics of Digitalized Domesticity, which examines how digital technologies are becoming embedded in everyday domestic life and how they reconfigure its socio-cultural dynamics. Developed in connection with the SMARTUP project, the issue approaches the smart home not primarily as a technological artefact but rather as a socio-cultural phenomenon through which everyday domestic life, meanings, and power relations are reshaped. Bringing together the perspectives of sociology and cultural studies, the editorial foregrounds the challenges related to smart domesticity, the plural meanings of “smartness,” and the ways smart technologies intersect with axes of difference. In introducing the contributions, the editorial departs from technocentric accounts; instead, it asks how domestic technologies reorganize routines, household coordination, labor, and power relations at home. It also calls for a critical assessment of smartification beyond mere functionality. Such an assessment would remain attentive to the failures and trade-offs of smartification and to its capacity to unsettle assumptions about both homes and technology.
Introduction:
Grounded in Interpersonal Acceptance–Rejection Theory (IPARTheory), this study examines the associations between perceived parental rejection, alexithymia, and mental health outcomes during early adolescence. Perceived rejection from caregivers has been consistently linked to emotional and behavioral maladjustment. Alexithymia, characterized by difficulties in identifying and describing emotions, may represent a key psychological process through which parental rejection affects adolescents’ mental health. The present study aims to investigate whether alexithymia mediates the relationship between perceived maternal and paternal rejection and internalizing and externalizing symptoms.
Methods:
Participants were Italian early adolescents aged 10–14 years (both males and females) recruited from middle schools in Northern Italy. Adolescents completed self-report questionnaires assessing perceived parental rejection, alexithymia, and psychological symptoms. Perceived maternal and paternal rejection were measured using the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ). Alexithymia was assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale–20 (TAS-20), while internalizing and externalizing symptoms were evaluated using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Mediation analyses were conducted to test the indirect effects of parental rejection on psychological symptoms through alexithymia.
Results:
Results showed that higher levels of both maternal and paternal rejection were significantly associated with increased internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Moreover, perceived parental rejection was positively associated with alexithymia. Mediation analyses indicated that alexithymia significantly mediated the relationships between parental rejection and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms.
Conclusion:
These findings highlight alexithymia as a relevant psychological mechanism linking perceived parental rejection to adolescent mental health problems, underscoring the importance of family-focused and emotion-focused preventive interventions during early adolescence.
The article aims to analyze the function of saturated wall colors as an autonomous narrative and affective tool in modern photographic exhibitions. The text postulates that contemporary museums, by moving away from the „white cube” paradigm, operate visual strategies akin to cinematic montage (in line with Mieke Bal’s concept of the „exhibition as film”), thereby elevating the colored scenography to the status of an integral curatorial strategy. The author identifies a research gap in existing studies of documentary photography exhibitions, which predominantly focus on the technical and iconographical analysis of the prints themselves, while overlooking the relationship between the object (in this case, the photograph) and the colored background as a medium of emotion. The empirical component consists of a case study of the Elliott Erwitt exhibition at the History Meeting House (DSH). The research utilizes a qualitative methodology based on autoethnographic participant observation (the research walk), user experience (UX) tracking of movment paths, and visual analysis within the framework of affect theory, and participant observation of the visitor’s path. The results indicate that the deliberate manipulation of exhibition surface colors not only organizes the overall exhibition narrative but also possesses the potential to effectively model the reception process, providing black-and-white and color photographs with additional interpretive frames (irony, melancholy, detachment).
