Bruce Wallace, Lea Gozdzialski, Abdelhakim Qbaich, Azam Shafiul, Piotr Burek, Abby Hutchison, Taylor Teal, Rebecca Louw, Collin Kielty, Derek Robinson, Belaid Moa, Margaret-Anne Storey, Chris Gill and Dennis Hore
While there is increasing interest in implementing drug checking within overdose prevention, we must also consider how to scale-up these responses so that they have significant…
Abstract
Purpose
While there is increasing interest in implementing drug checking within overdose prevention, we must also consider how to scale-up these responses so that they have significant reach and impact for people navigating the unpredictable and increasingly complex drug supplies linked to overdose. The purpose of this paper is to present a distributed model of community drug checking that addresses multiple barriers to increasing the reach of drug checking as a response to the illicit drug overdose crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
A detailed description of the key components of a distributed model of community drug checking is provided. This includes an integrated software platform that links a multi-instrument, multi-site service design with online service options, a foundational database that provides storage and reporting functions and a community of practice to facilitate engagement and capacity building.
Findings
The distributed model diminishes the need for technicians at multiple sites while still providing point-of-care results with local harm reduction engagement and access to confirmatory testing online and in localized reporting. It also reduces the need for training in the technical components of drug checking (e.g. interpreting spectra) for harm reduction workers. Moreover, its real-time reporting capability keeps communities informed about the crisis. Sites are additionally supported by a community of practice.
Originality/value
This paper presents innovations in drug checking technologies and service design that attempt to overcome current financial and technical barriers towards scaling-up services to a more equitable and impactful level and effectively linking multiple urban and rural communities to report concentration levels for substances most linked to overdose.
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Sadaf Mollaei, Leia M. Minaker, Derek T. Robinson, Jennifer K. Lynes and Goretty M. Dias
The purpose of this research is to (1) identify factors affecting food choices of young adults in Canada based on environmental perceptions, personal and behavioral factors as…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to (1) identify factors affecting food choices of young adults in Canada based on environmental perceptions, personal and behavioral factors as determinants of eating behaviors; (2) segment Canadian young adults based on the importance of the identified factors in their food choices.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was administered to Canadians aged between 18 and 24 to collect data on socio-demographic factors and eating behaviors (N = 297). An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to identify the main factors affecting eating behaviors in young adults, followed by K-means clustering to categorize the respondents into consumer segments based on their propensity to agree with the factors.
Findings
Six factors were extracted: beliefs (ethical, environmental and personal); familiarity and convenience; joy and experience; food influencers and sociability; cultural identity; and body image. Using these factors, six consumer segments were identified, whereby members of each segment have more similar scores on each factor than members of other segments. The six consumer segments were: “conventional”; “concerned”; “indifferent”; “non-trend follower”; “tradition-follower”; and “eat what you love”.
Originality/value
Identifying major factors influencing eating behaviors and consumer segmentation provides insights on how eating behaviors might be shaped. Furthermore, the outcomes of this study are important for designing effective interventions for shaping eating behaviors particularly improving sustainable eating habits.
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Thomas Derek Robinson and Jessica Andrea Chelekis
This conceptual paper diagnoses the fundamental tensions between the social temporality of sustainability and the individual temporality of marketing in the Dominant Social…
Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual paper diagnoses the fundamental tensions between the social temporality of sustainability and the individual temporality of marketing in the Dominant Social Paradigm. We propose the notion of ‘existentialized sustainability’ as a possible way forward.
Methodology/approach
We take the Heideggerian perspective that death may bring individual and societal time into a common framework. From here, we compare anthropological and consumer culture research on funerary rites in non-modern societies with contemporary societies of the DSP.
Findings
Funerary rites reveal important insights into how individuals relate to their respective societies. Individuals are viewed as important contributors to the maintenance and regeneration of the group in non-modern societies. In contrast, funerary rites for individuals in the DSP are private, increasingly informal, and unconnected to sustaining society at large. This analysis reveals clear parallels between the goals of sustainability and the values of non-modern funerary rites.
Social implications
We propose the metaphor of a funerary rite for sustainability to promote consciousness towards societal futures. The idea is to improve ‘quality of death’ through sustainability – in other words, the ‘existentialization of sustainability’. This opens up a possible strategy for marketers to actively contribute to a societal shift towards a New Environmental Paradigm (NEP).
Originality/value
The Heideggerian approach is a novel way to identify and reconcile the epistemic contradictions between sustainability and marketing. This diagnosis suggests a way in which marketing can address the wicked problem of global sustainability challenges, perhaps allowing a new spirituality in consumption.
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The background to the Liverpool Polytechnic study of indexer reactions to the PRECIS indexing system and the methodology of the study are described. Some of the findings are…
Abstract
The background to the Liverpool Polytechnic study of indexer reactions to the PRECIS indexing system and the methodology of the study are described. Some of the findings are discussed, special attention being given to points which some indexers regarded as advantages and others as disadvantages; the alleged labour‐intensiveness of PRECIS; the British Library and PRECIS; and the impact of PRECIS on the British library community. A thesaurus of terms used in the British Library PRECIS indexes is needed, and some consideration should be given to the possible simplification of PRECIS or modification to suit the needs of different users. Feedback from users of PRECIS indexes is required.
OUT of 21 centres set up by the Government in 1965 to help industry adopt automation and, later, the use of robots, 11 have already closed through lack of support. Another, that…
Abstract
OUT of 21 centres set up by the Government in 1965 to help industry adopt automation and, later, the use of robots, 11 have already closed through lack of support. Another, that in Birmingham, is very likely to cease its work very shortly. The cause, mainly, is lack of support from the industries they were formed to help
This paper argues that there is a need to theorize socially constituted temporal phenomena, such as the fragmentation and multiplication of futures in media representations of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper argues that there is a need to theorize socially constituted temporal phenomena, such as the fragmentation and multiplication of futures in media representations of technology, since this contextualizes consumption in important ways.
Methodology/approach
However, this argument requires a critique of agentic bias in phenomenological approaches to time. By drawing on Husserl, Heidegger and Ricœur, it is shown that phenomenological time is fundamentally intersubjective and contextualized in a tension between chronological and experienced time, rather than first and foremost created and felt by the individual consumer subject or experienced only as “flow.” This implies a switch from an egological to a sociological approach to time and consumption.
Findings
Thus, the multiplication of socially constituted narratives about the future, in late-modernity, disrupts instrumental modes of thinking about the consumer object, making it “unhandy” and “disturbing.” The meaning of the object therefore becomes “damaged.” However, this also allows the possibility for it to be known in wholly new ways.
Research implications
Since many definitions of consumption are future oriented, the fragmentation of the future speaks to how we form meanings about consumption. Thus, a socially constituted theory of consumer temporality impacts the experience of consumer objects.
Practical implications
This theorization of time and consumption suggests the possibility of comparative studies of temporality to understand the universe in which consumer choices can unfold.
Originality/value
This is the first attempt to apply the epistemological criteria from the context of context debate in regard to consumer temporality.
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Abstract
Details
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Government appointed and sponsored committees of every description—select, ad hoc, advisory, inquiry—such a prominent feature of the public scene since the last War, are…
Abstract
Government appointed and sponsored committees of every description—select, ad hoc, advisory, inquiry—such a prominent feature of the public scene since the last War, are understandable, even acceptable, reflect the urgency of the times in which we live. In the gathering gloom of more recent twilight years, they have flourished inordinately, especially in the socio‐political field, where most of their researches have been conducted. Usually embellished with the name of the figure‐head chairman, almost always expensively financed, they have one thing in common—an enormous output of words, telling us much of what we already know. So much of it seems dull, meaningless jargon, reflecting attitudes rather than sound, general principles.
In spite of the recession and its attendant threats to workforce size and union power, a well‐organised union can still influence management and company plans. Though management…
Abstract
In spite of the recession and its attendant threats to workforce size and union power, a well‐organised union can still influence management and company plans. Though management still have a range of policy options, the point of trade union resistance is to force management into accepting options more favourable to workforce interests. A case study outlining a type of factory‐based union organisation which has survived the recession through successfully contesting managerial decisions, draws the conclusion that the central element of such activity's success is that it must be moulded to a broader, less insular, more political view of trade union activity. The evidence supports the argument that steward organisations have largely maintained their position of the 1970s. Union membership and support remains a crucial issue in maintaining union power, and shop stewards must continue to re‐examine ways of involving and informing their members.