Bernt Aarset, Suzanna Beckmann, Enrique Bigne, Malcolm Beveridge, Trond Bjorndal, Jane Bunting, Pierre McDonagh, Catherine Mariojouls, James Muir, Andrea Prothero, Lucia Reisch, Andrew Smith, Ragnar Tveteras and James Young
This paper explores consumer understanding and perception of organic food, with specific reference to the relatively new concept of organic farmed salmon. Key themes associated…
Abstract
This paper explores consumer understanding and perception of organic food, with specific reference to the relatively new concept of organic farmed salmon. Key themes associated with the term “organic” and its meaning, as determined by consumers, are explored and the role of labelling and regulatory authorities considered. Focus groups in five countries (UK, Germany, Spain, Norway and France) consisting of 196 participants showed that most consumers are confused about the meaning of the term organic and are largely unaware of the organic certification and labelling process. Many consumers were unsure, even sceptical about the concept of organic farmed salmon and display a large amount of distrust in the regulatory process. The implications for the concept of organic food and salmon production and directions for further research are discussed.
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The chapter examines and challenges the assumed necessity of a linkage between remembered series of exchanges, amicable social relations, and prestige found in the work of Marcel…
Abstract
Purpose
The chapter examines and challenges the assumed necessity of a linkage between remembered series of exchanges, amicable social relations, and prestige found in the work of Marcel Mauss and many subsequent theorists of reciprocity and gift exchange.
Methodology
The chapter uses the nearly 500 year history of the giving and taking of the Koh-i-noor Diamond by rulers of South and Central Asia, commencing with Babur, the first Mughal emperor, and ending with Queen Victoria, which includes some gift giving and much taking by force, to explore what happens when only two of the three elements Mauss assumed central to understanding gift exchange are present.
Findings
Based on a review of the historical material, the chapter demonstrates that though historical narratives or memories of exchanges were central to enhancing the prestige of the parties to the exchange and the diamond itself, that process could and did occur in the absence of any on-going amicable social relations, including in situations in which exchange or transfer of the diamond were coerced and nothing was given in return to the dispossessed former owner of the gem.
Originality/value
By suggesting an alternative configuration of the factors necessary for the association of exchange and prestige, the chapter provides the opportunity to reconsider assumptions common in the literature on gift exchange and further enhance our understanding of this central element of social theory.
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Nahid Masoudi and Donique Bowie
While the commons problem and the issues related to the negative externalities of harvesting have been studied extensively, there remains a need to bridge these two streams of…
Abstract
Purpose
While the commons problem and the issues related to the negative externalities of harvesting have been studied extensively, there remains a need to bridge these two streams of studies to comprehensively investigate the implications of the strategic interactions among resource harvesters in the presence of such negative externalities. This paper aims to fill this gap.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors study a common-pool harvest problem when the extractive activities leave behind negative externalities which affect the resource growth rate and reduce the stock beyond the extracted levels. Markov perfect noncooperative and optimal solutions are presented under different scenarios regarding considerations of negative externalities into harvest decisions.
Findings
Results of the study suggest that, in the presence of such externalities, all parties must scale down their extraction in accordance with their externalities. The resource can be preserved by implementation of such harvest rule. However, failure to incorporate the externalities exacerbates the commons problem and can even lead to exhaustion of the biomass even if countries manage to cooperate and coordinate their harvest. Suggesting that if such externalities are large enough – which empirical literature suggests they are – then recognition and consideration of these externalities in the harvest decisions is as crucial as cooperation.
Originality/value
This paper provides a framework that is capable of incorporating the negative externalities of harvest activities into a bioeconomic game theoretic model and thereby providing a more real-world representation of the state of the common-pool resource management. While, the authors extend a well-known simple model, the model of this research study has the capacity to explain the widespread incidences of resource collapses. Therefore, the important policy implication is that agents should rigorously work together to understand the extent of the negative externalities of their harvests on the resources.
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The cardinal point to note here is that the development (and unfortunately the likely potential) of area policy is intimately related to the actual character of British social…
Abstract
The cardinal point to note here is that the development (and unfortunately the likely potential) of area policy is intimately related to the actual character of British social policy. Whilst area policy has been strongly influenced by Pigou's welfare economics, by the rise of scientific management in the delivery of social services (cf Jaques 1976; Whittington and Bellamy 1979), by the accompanying development of operational analyses and by the creation of social economics (see Pigou 1938; Sandford 1977), social policy continues to be enmeshed with the flavours of Benthamite utilitatianism and Social Darwinism (see, above all, the Beveridge Report 1942; Booth 1889; Rowntree 1922, 1946; Webb 1926). Consequently, for their entire history area policies have been coloured by the principles of a national minimum for the many and giving poorer areas a hand up, rather than a hand out. The preceived need to save money (C.S.E. State Apparatus and Expenditure Group 1979; Klein 1974) and the (supposed) ennobling effects of self help have been the twin marching orders for area policy for decades. Private industry is inadvertently called upon to plug the resulting gaps in public provision. The conjunction of a reluctant state and a meandering private sector has fashioned the decaying urban areas of today. Whilst a large degree of party politics and commitment has characterised the general debate over the removal of poverty (Holman 1973; MacGregor 1981), this has for the most part bypassed the ‘marginal’ poorer areas (cf Green forthcoming). Their inhabitants are not usually numerically significant enough to sway general, party policies (cf Boulding 1967) and the problems of most notably the inner cities has been underplayed.
David Forbes and Pornpit Wongthongtham
There is an increasing interest in using information and communication technologies to support health services. But the adoption and development of even basic ICT communications…
Abstract
Purpose
There is an increasing interest in using information and communication technologies to support health services. But the adoption and development of even basic ICT communications services in many health services is limited, leaving enormous gaps in the broad understanding of its role in health care delivery. The purpose of this paper is to address a specific (intercultural) area of healthcare communications consumer disadvantage; and it examines the potential for ICT exploitation through the lens of a conceptual framework. The opportunity to pursue a new solutions pathway has been amplified in recent times through the development of computer-based ontologies and the resultant knowledge from ontologist activity and consequential research publishing.
Design/methodology/approach
A specific intercultural area of patient disadvantage arises from variations in meaning and understanding of patient and clinician words, phrases and non-verbal expression. Collection and localization of data concepts, their attributes and individual instances were gathered from an Aboriginal trainee nurse focus group and from a qualitative gap analysis (QGA) of 130 criteria-selected sources of literature. These concepts, their relationships and semantic interpretations populate the computer ontology. The ontology mapping involves two domains, namely, Aboriginal English (AE) and Type II diabetes care guidelines. This is preparatory to development of the Patient Practitioner Assistive Communications (PPAC) system for Aboriginal rural and remote patient primary care.
Findings
The combined QGA and focus group output reported has served to illustrate the call for three important drivers of change. First, there is no evidence to contradict the hypothesis that patient-practitioner interview encounters for many Australian Aboriginal patients and wellbeing outcomes are unsatisfactory at best. Second, there is a potent need for cultural competence knowledge and practice uptake on the part of health care providers; and third, the key contributory component to determine success or failures within healthcare for ethnic minorities is communication. Communication, however, can only be of value in health care if in practice it supports shared cognition; and mutual cognition is rarely achievable when biopsychosocial and other cultural worldview differences go unchallenged.
Research limitations/implications
There has been no direct engagement with remote Aboriginal communities in this work to date. The authors have initially been able to rely upon a cohort of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people with relevant cultural expertise and extended family relationships. Among these advisers are health care practitioners, academics, trainers, Aboriginal education researchers and workshop attendees. It must therefore be acknowledged that as is the case with the QGA, the majority of the concept data is from third parties. The authors have also discovered that urban influences and cultural sensitivities tend to reduce the extent of, and opportunity to, witness AE usage, thereby limiting the ability to capture more examples of code-switching. Although the PPAC system concept is qualitatively well developed, pending future work planned for rural and remote community engagement the authors presently regard the work as mostly allied to a hypothesis on ontology-driven communications. The concept data population of the AE home talk/health talk ontology has not yet reached a quantitative critical mass to justify application design model engineering and real-world testing.
Originality/value
Computer ontologies avail us of the opportunity to use assistive communications technology applications as a dynamic support system to elevate the pragmatic experience of health care consultations for both patients and practitioners. The human-machine interactive development and use of such applications is required just to keep pace with increasing demand for healthcare and the growing health knowledge transfer environment. In an age when the worldwide web, communications devices and social media avail us of opportunities to confront the barriers described the authors have begun the first construction of a merged schema for two domains that already have a seemingly intractable negative connection. Through the ontology discipline of building syntactically and semantically robust and accessible concepts; explicit conceptual relationships; and annotative context-oriented guidance; the authors are working towards addressing health literacy and wellbeing outcome deficiencies of benefit to the broader communities of disadvantage patients.
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During the years between the two wars a witty and provocative series of little books was issued bearing such titles as Cain, or the future of Crime, Gallio, or the tyranny of…
Abstract
During the years between the two wars a witty and provocative series of little books was issued bearing such titles as Cain, or the future of Crime, Gallio, or the tyranny of science, and similar phrases likely to excite the curiosity of the prospective reader. Indeed, this present contribution might be adorned with some such title as ‘Ariadne Panepistemon, or the future of guides to the literature of science’, a class of reference books of which there would seem to be some need at the present, and which may repay examination.
Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover…
Abstract
Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.
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Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General…
Abstract
Can we broaden the boundaries of the history of economic thought to include positionalities articulated by grassroots movements? Following Keynes’s famous remark from General Theory that ‘practical men […] are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,’ we might be wont to dismiss such a push from below. While it is sometimes true that grassroots movements channel preexisting economic thought, I wish to argue that grassroots economic thought can also precede developments subsequently elaborated by economists. This paper considers such a case: by women at the intersection of the women’s liberation movement and the claimants’ unions movement in 1970s Britain. Oral historical and archival work on these working-class women and on achievements such as their succeeding to establish unconditional basic income as an official demand of the British Women’s Liberation Movement forms the springboard for my reconstruction of the grassroots feminist economic thought underpinning the women’s basic income demand. I hope to demonstrate, firstly, how this was a prefiguration of ideas later developed by feminist economists and philosophers; secondly, how unique it was for its time and a consequence of the intersectionality of class, gender, race, and dis/ability. Thirdly, I should like to suggest that bringing into the fold this particular grassroots feminist economic thought on basic income would widen the mainstream understanding and historiography of the idea of basic income. Lastly, I hope to make the point that, within the history of economic thought, grassroots economic thought ought to be heeded far more than it currently is.
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While some libraries have done their best over the years to inform the public as to what they are doing and can do as regards helping readers, others seem to move along without…
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While some libraries have done their best over the years to inform the public as to what they are doing and can do as regards helping readers, others seem to move along without making any special effort to publicise their facilities. In the old days modesty was a virtue, but now it is its own reward. Government departments, which used to shun the limelight, now employ public relations officers in large numbers, and professional bodies and big business houses constantly seek publicity. Times have changed, and the battle is to the strong; and it is unfortunately generally felt that the institution or service that does not speak for itself has little to speak about. It may frankly be said that if a service is in a position to enlarge its sphere of influence and esteem it should do so to the utmost of its endeavour. But it will be granted that if its publicity is not justified by performance, there will likely be an unhappy reaction.