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Social enterprise plays a pivotal role in helping people and communities. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, there has been an upsurge of social enterprise within a local, national and global context. The purpose of this paper is to explore the debates and issues presented by social enterprise in a very complex globalized world.

In this paper, the authors apply two geographical case studies: China and India. The purpose for selecting both China and India is their increasing economic super power on the global stage. It is argued that the concept of social enterprise within the geographical context of China and India is significant to their individual economies.

The concept of social enterprise within the geographical context of China and India is significant to their individual economies and as explored within the notion of “think global, act local” the conceptual debates of place, space and time enables people to take positive action and enable the development of healthy communities.

This paper contributes to the discussion around the definition of the nature of social enterprise and gives concrete examples of the contextually specific nature of the term.

The purpose of this paper is to share the findings of a research evaluation into a Befriending and Re-ablement Service (BARS) which offers a host of positive outcomes such as reduced loneliness and keeping as well as possible for a growing segment of the world’s population. The recent increase in longevity is one of humanity’s great success stories. But ageing comes at a price, and decision takers worry about the stresses and strains of an ageing society.

Following a literature review, this paper presents the findings of an evaluation of an alternative innovative form of support for older people, namely BARS, that has been developed on Merseyside. Semi- and unstructured interviews were carried out with stakeholders including service users and carers. A cost-benefit analysis is also reported. Finally the theoretical and policy implications of this research are explored.

Befriending and re-ablement officers is both a socially and economically cost effective means of enhancing independent living among older people, reducing loneliness and isolation that can contribute to ill health. The research shows that funding for the BARS scheme should be sustained and expanded, despite or because of the current era of cutbacks in UK and international service provision.

The paper highlights the value, role and importance of both befriending and re-ablement in a time of acute public and voluntary sector funding pressures. The paper is of value to a range of stakeholder groups such as older people, local and central governments and health care commissioners.

This chapter explores the queasy relationship between food and sex on The Archers. For listeners, food provides an imaginative reference point; consumption of food hints towards characters embodiment and occupation of physical space. To the extent that these characters have boundaries, the way they approach and react to food reveals their rigidity or permeability, and the tones in which characters offer, provide, prepare, coax and force food upon one another tells us a lot about the sexual politics at play in Ambridge. In The Archers, women cook and men eat. Characters who rebel against this norm often subvert traditional masculinity in other ways.

Through close reading (and obsessive listening), this chapter analyses the ways in which food allows the relationships on The Archers to act as foils to one another. It also explores: food as metaphor; food used both to sustain and fortify the boundaries of the self and to besiege the ego boundaries of others; how characters are given weight in acoustic space; female emancipation; male helplessness; the hunger/satiety/aural claustrophobia of listeners.

Although the concept of social capital is rightly associated with Putnam (2000), arguably its roots lie further back in the nineteenth century, but were first articulated in a “contemporary sense” in 1916 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2001, p. 41). The authors begin their analysis by summarizing the main types of capital: economic, social, political, human, cultural and symbolic, before exploring the different types of social capital, including bonding, bridging and linking. These are then linked to a variety of related concepts, including: social enterprise, social networks, social value, community development, community resilience and sociability (Cook, Halsall, & Wankhade, 2015). It is argued that social capital is central to these, and is of increasing importance across the globe within the context of the threats and opportunities posed by globalization on the one hand (including the spread of COVID-19) and of potential deglobalization on the other, in part as a reaction to COVID-19 and pre-existing nationalist trends toward limitation of global interactions. The discussion is supported by examination of a range of case studies drawn from societies of contrasting types, including the UK, USA, China, Bangladesh and South Africa. The authors conclude their analysis via consideration of how social capital can be expanded further in order to help meet contemporary and future challenges from whichever direction it arises.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of volunteerism in three different case countries, namely, that of USA, UK and China while highlighting the role of the state, society and social capital.

The paper reviews the extant literature on the volunteering traditions in the chosen case study countries highlighting the idiosyncrasies while analysing implications for future research.

The paper highlights the role of the state, society and social capital in the chosen countries, each deriving its origins from the specific traditions in those countries.

This paper provides a conceptual review focusing on the key literature in the field. The authors have examined various academic texts and published materials.

This paper provided an update critically discussion on the concept of volunteerism in three different case countries.

This paper is highly relevant to academics and social policy makers. Moreover, this paper has been written from an international context.

The paper makes an original contribution by comparing and contrasting three important countries with different histories and traditions of volunteerism highlighting diversity of type and application.

This article argues for a biographical and geographical understanding of foods and food choice. It suggests that such an approach highlights one of the most compelling characteristics of food ‐ that being the way in which it connects the wide worlds of an increasingly internationalised food system into the intimate space of the home and the body. More specifically, and based on ongoing empirical research with 12 households in inner north London, the article explores one aspect of food biographies, through an interlinked consideration of what consumers know of the origins of foods and consumers’ reactions to systems of food provision. It concludes that a structural ambivalence can be identified, such that consumers have both a need to know and an impulse to forget the origins of the foods they eat.

The purpose of this paper is to make the reader think about the consequences of food scarcity and how science would deal with the situation portrayed through Dr Spock's Food Festival set in Tokyo 2050.

The paper takes the form of a trends analysis perspective.

The authors explain the circumstances (or drivers) of how food scarcity would lead to particular future state. The paper portrays eight driving forces from increased urbanisation to a knowledgeable society.

What if it did occur as molecular gastronomy and the desire for new experiences are core values of today's restaurant industry.

The aims of this paper are to summarise the rapid expansion in the proportion of the elderly across the globe and to highlight the main factors causing this. Specific areas of the globe will be focused on in more detail before the authors discuss some of the key challenges and consequences of global ageing for global society.

The paper is a literature review of major trends and implications of population ageing across the globe.

As a consequence of the global demographics of ageing, societies are being confronted with profound issues relating to illness and health care, access to housing and economic resources including pension provision. We have witnessed an unprecedented stretching of the human life span. This ageing of the global population is without parallel in human history. If these demographic trends continue to escalate, by 2050 the number of older people globally will exceed the number of young for the first time since formal records began, raising questions of the power of the nation state in the context of global ageing and of the changing nature of the global society that is emerging.

This is an original paper that aims at reviewing the major population trends across the Americas, Asia, Europe and Africa. The implications of demographic change are grounded in context of global changes that highlight social, economic and political implications of global ageing.

To analyse the relationship between China, patriachy, ageing, and social theory grounded in Judith Butler's notion of performativity.

This is a novel theoretical framework to examine instances of patriachal identities by using China as a case study.

Performativity, we suggest, offers productive insights into the processes of subjection and the nature of power relations that may be usefully incorporated into studies of the elderly in China.

This is a theoretical paper.

It raises questions to relationship of patriachy to understanding Chinese culture.

It is an original paper in that an application of Butler's conceptual tools have bot been applied elsewhere to examining China and ageing.