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This introductory chapter provides the context for this edited collection: Care and Coronavirus: Perspectives on Children, Youth and Families which aims to understand care in the context of COVID-19, the practices, experiences and potential futures of it for children, young people and families. In this chapter, the authors begin by exploring COVID-19 and its implications for children, young people and families. This includes a consideration of how particular discourses of childhood and youth often led to the marginalisation of children in care policy and practice during the lockdown periods. The authors then discuss interdisciplinary literature on care to identify directions in policy, practice and research, drawing attention to the political nature of care and the need for scholars of childhood, youth and family to engage with these critical and political approaches to care. The authors argue that developments in the field of Childhood Studies can be brought into productive dialogue with care to forge new ways of thinking through care and childhood. The final part of the chapter provides an overview of the ensuing chapters and concludes with the implications of this work for future research, policy and practice. The authors argue that COVID-19 heightened the attention paid to care and the ways in which care is vital for the maintenance of ourselves and the world around us, while also cautioning about the inequalities and the commodification of care that was revealed in these times. The authors end with a call for reflection on the failures and successes of caring during the pandemic and in its aftermath so we might plan a more caring, hopeful future.

This study aimed to determine the factors affecting consumers’ perceptions and intention to purchase home meal kit services (HMK), a convenient home-cooked meal option, considering the moderating effects of monetary restriction, through the lens of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

This cross-sectional study used an online, self-administered survey to collect data from 374 US adults. Results were tested for variable associations via multiple linear regression and moderation analyses.

HMK adoption intention was positively associated with attitude and subjective norms but negatively associated with perceived behavioural control. Consumers’ HMK attitude demonstrated a significant positive relationship with food safety concerns and perceived time constraints. Income and financial constraints were significant moderators of the associations between TPB determinants and HMK intention. The findings emphasised the possibility of using HMK as a foodservice option for time-challenged consumers with food safety concerns.

This study addressed the limited research on HMK, a competitive meal option that foodservice businesses could implement to boost revenue. The study establishes the contribution in understanding the motivators and barriers that potentially affect consumers’ HMK behaviour through the lens of TPB. The results expand the scope of the TPB application in food-related research, providing a deeper understanding of antecedents and other factors on consumers’ HMK behavioural attitudes. Understanding this information will enable practitioners to develop strategies that meet consumers’ concerns when embracing this service to promote HMK.

This chapter provides a historical overview of European colonialism, detailing how nations like Portugal, Spain, and the Netherlands began their colonial endeavors in the 15th and 16th centuries, driven by exploration and trade motivations. These nations established vast empires through maritime exploration, setting up trading posts and colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The chapter outlines these early powers’ distinct colonial practices and legacies, highlighting Portugal’s focus on Brazil, Spain’s exploitation in the Americas, and the Netherlands’ trading empire. The chapter also examines the later colonial efforts of France and Britain, which became prominent in the 17th and 18th centuries. These countries utilized different methods, including the encomienda system and casta hierarchy in Spanish colonies, and the civilizing mission and divide-and-rule tactics in British colonies. The chapter discusses how these practices were justified through ideologies of racial superiority and the civilizing mission, deeply embedding racism and social hierarchies into colonial rule. Additionally, the chapter addresses the colonial ventures of Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Belgium, and Germany. It covers Denmark’s settlements in the Caribbean and Greenland, Sweden’s short-lived colonies and involvement in the slave trade, Italy’s brutal regime in Africa, Belgium’s horrific exploitation of the Congo under King Leopold II, and Germany’s late but impactful colonial period marked by the Herero and Nama genocide.

This chapter reimagines Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus through posthumanist theory, using the method of diffractive analysis. It explores how both human and nonhuman things (con)figure habitus by decentering humans as the main point of reference. First, an introduction is given to Bourdieu's theoretical concept of the habitus and its relevance for higher education research. This is then diffracted through the posthumanist ideas of (con)figuration, becoming with and nonhuman entities such as matter, companion species and technology. Finally, the resulting posthumanist concept of habitus(con)figuration is characterized by an attention to the agency of nonhuman matter and the processuality of the emergence of habitus. Applying this concept to students' experiences of social class shifts the way these are approached theoretically in higher education research, placing greater emphasis on non-linear entanglements. The chapter concludes with a set of questions that can be applied to empirical work when considering working with the concept of habitus(con)figuration.

Entrepreneurial universities, through their intellectual capital (IC), can promote the development of a third mission, which involves collaborating with business and societal organizations to create value. Joint research projects are undertaken within entrepreneurial universities leveraging their IC. These generate value for both the academic community and the territory as they generate impact, in terms of regional IC. At the micro level, scientists in the principal investigator (PI) role are influential actors in generating impact and IC that is beneficial for all joint project stakeholders. The purpose of the paper is to address the existing gap in entrepreneurial university literature concerning the impact generation process.

The paper represents a theoretical contribution adopting a deductive approach.

This paper proposes a novel approach to support PIs in entrepreneurial universities in the process of managing innovative initiatives toward IC impact generation. First, we present the IC-based Research Impact Tool (ICRIT) to guide PIs acting as explorative entrepreneurs; then we propose an IC-based Research Impact Report (ICRIR) including some key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate impact and IC.

The theoretical approach proposed could be developed further. This could be furthered through more empirical studies using initially, for example, comparative cross-country case study research.

The paper sheds new light on the importance of the final impact generated by research initiatives, focusing on the crucial role played by PIs and promoting the adoption of an IC-based strategic approach, to maximize the final impact of projects, in terms of regional IC.

Transport is responsible for around a quarter of global emissions. It is 91% fossil fuel dependent for energy, with emissions remaining stubbornly high, increasing in the EU since 1990 and falling since then by just 15% in the UK. The UK’s National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), in producing its second assessment, a major strategic overview for the next 30 years, emphasises a near universal dependency on electricity and hydrogen to decarbonise transport emissions. Locally distributed energy solutions are not considered part of their approach and neither do they consider where the products proposed for mass adoption – electric vehicles (EVs) are to be manufactured. Embodied carbon emissions are not taken into account, with emissions analysis focused on zero tailpipe emissions. Green gases which can be used in combustion engines and hybrids, harnessing existing supply chains and maintenance service provision, are also not seen as part of the solution, even during transition. Manufacturers are concerned that legislation and policy approaches, such as the Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate, will lead to off-shoring of production. Zero Emissions Vehicles do not consider tyre emissions, which some research has shown to be many times higher than tailpipe emissions with devastating impacts on ecosystems. The chapter proposes the need for a greater holistic and circular approach to be taken to embodied carbon, mineral and resource utilisation together with biodiversity and planetary impacts.

Suspicions about space technologies can be regarded as instances of “space skepticism,” i.e. the broadly pessimistic view that human activities in space are untimely or liable to be counterproductive. Section 1 will explain that contemporary space skepticism is focused upon negative societal role rather than the physical possibility of the activities proposed. Such skepticism is a complex pool of familiar claims unevenly drawn upon rather than a single theory. Section 2 will suggest that contemporary space skepticism tends to integrate with a broader set of doubts and fears about technologies of the Anthropocene. Section 3 will draw out a tension within the skeptical complex between the idea that concern for space is irrelevant to our societal problems and the idea that it is likely to make such problems worse. Section 4 will briefly outline why the publicly dominant forms of space skepticism carry a growing capability for merger with political activism and why the publicly dominant skepticisms are not necessarily those with the greatest plausibility, but rather those with the strongest motivational force. Finally, Section 5 will set aside the issue of popular motivational force and focus instead upon the skepticisms with the greatest plausibility. It will briefly outline why the relevant fears and suspicions (about military tensions and geoengineering) are outweighed by other considerations. This response to plausible skepticisms will not aim to be comprehensive but indicative of the direction of travel for more detailed critique. It will provide a framing context for a large metaphor about space technologies allowing the Earth to breathe.

Research on artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential effects on the workplace is increasing. How AI and the futures of work are framed in traditional media has been examined in prior studies, but current research has not gone far enough in examining how AI is framed on social media. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining how people frame the futures of work and intelligent machines when they post on social media.

We investigate public interpretations, assumptions and expectations, referring to framing expressed in social media conversations. We also coded the emotions and attitudes expressed in the text data. A corpus consisting of 998 unique Reddit post titles and their corresponding 16,611 comments was analyzed using computer-aided textual analysis comprising a BERTopic model and two BERT text classification models, one for emotion and the other for sentiment analysis, supported by human judgment.

Different interpretations, assumptions and expectations were found in the conversations. Three subframes were analyzed in detail under the overarching frame of the New World of Work: (1) general impacts of intelligent machines on society, (2) undertaking of tasks (augmentation and substitution) and (3) loss of jobs. The general attitude observed in conversations was slightly positive, and the most common emotion category was curiosity.

Findings from this research can uncover public needs and expectations regarding the future of work with intelligent machines. The findings may also help shape research directions about futures of work. Furthermore, firms, organizations or industries may employ framing methods to analyze customers’ or workers’ responses or even influence the responses. Another contribution of this work is the application of framing theory to interpreting how people conceptualize the future of work with intelligent machines.