BALANCING FOOD VALUES: MAKING SUSTAINABLE CHOICES WITHIN COOKING PRACTICES

Within user-centred design and topics such as persuasive design, pleasurable products, and design for sustainable behaviour, there is a danger of over-determining, pacifying or reducing people’s diversity. Taking the case of sustainable food, we have looked into the social aspects of cooking at home, in specific related to the type of food that is purchased. This paper describes what it means for people to make more sustainable choices in food shopping and how that can be mediated while taking different ‘food values’ that household members have into account. In a design experiment, we developed a service for selecting daily dinner meals while supporting choices of sustainable food which reported on environmental impact, health and nutrition values, and purchase data. Through visualizations of alternative food choices, the experiment provided a space for households to negotiate food values, while opening up possibilities for changing cooking practices

Incorporating financial literacy into the secondary school accounting curriculum: a New Zealand perspective

This paper examines whether selected stakeholder groups believe accounting should continue to be taught as an elective subject in its current form at New Zealand secondary schools or whether incorporating a financial literacy component would increase the subject’s relevance to students. A mixed method approach combining qualitative and quantitative research methods was used. An electronically administered survey was used to obtain the responses of secondary school accounting teachers, while additional insight in the form of semi-structured interviews was obtained from other stakeholders. Although respondents generally agreed that students benefited from accounting as an elective subject at secondary school, all agreed that the development of financial literacy skills was important. Difficulties in introducing a new core subject into an already overcrowded curriculum were acknowledged. However, this difficulty could be overcome by making modifications to the subject “Accounting”. As the most widespread, existing “finance” related subject, Accounting would be the most appropriate vehicle through which to teach financial literacy

Planning for a future of asset-based welfare? New Labour, financialized economic agency and the housing market

This article focuses on core aspects of the political economy of New Labour and surveys the strategic priorities to which it is likely the planning process will have to adapt. As with other policy areas, the effects of enhanced Treasury micro-management of the Government's reform agenda has begun to impact upon the field of planning. The prime example in this respect is the Treasury's preference for replacing state provision of welfare-enhancing services with the move towards an individualized system of asset-based welfare. The article begins with an analysis of this shift, showing how it is dependent on creating financialized economic agents who think instinctively as active saver-investors in their quest to accumulate assets to fund future consumption of welfare. In contemporary Britain the housing market dominates the accumulation of assets amongst everyday saver-investors. The article concludes by analysing the possible tension that will be introduced into the planning process because of New Labour's twin goals: (1) to defend the current value of asset wealth even as the mortgage lending market has stalled and confidence in the stability of house prices has temporarily evaporated; and (2) to restrict exclusion from private ownership in the housing market so that broadening access can be used to propel a universal move towards an individualized system of asset-based welfare. The fallout from the world credit crunch, which began in autumn 2007 and remains ongoing at the time of writing in January 2009, looks likely to exacerbate what was always a tension-prone combination of objectives

Rebels Leading London: the mayoralties of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson compared

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link

“It’s made a huge difference” : recognition, rights and the personal significance of Civil Partnership

In this paper we map briefly some of the arguments around the meaning and significance of the introduction of Civil Partnership in England and Wales, and in this way show how contested these meanings are. We then turn to our empirical data to explore the extent to which these arguments and issues are part of the everyday decision making processes of same sex couples who have decided to register their partnerships or to undergo a commitment ceremony of some kind. In doing this, we were interested in how people make their own meanings (if they do) and whether they actually frame important decisions in their lives around the ideas that are part of the current political debates. We are interested in whether the public debates are featured in the accounts of our interviewees but our concern is also that these broader political debates appear to offer two alternatives to same sex couples. In one scenario same sex couples appear to be striking a blow for equality and are cultural heroes, in the other they appear as cultural dupes who are unintentionally falling into a government trap to de-radicalise their relationships and defuse the possibility of a queer alternative to heteronormativity. Our data give some insight into how same sex couples negotiate these alternatives and may, in fact, circumnavigate them

Urban management revolution: intelligent management systems for ubiquitous cities

A successful urban management support system requires an integrated approach. This integration includes bringing together economic, socio-cultural and urban development with a well orchestrated transparent and open decision making mechanism. The paper emphasises the importance of integrated urban management to better tackle the climate change, and to achieve sustainable urban development and sound urban growth management. This paper introduces recent approaches on urban management systems, such as intelligent urban management systems, that are suitable for ubiquitous cities. The paper discusses the essential role of online collaborative decision making in urban and infrastructure planning, development and management, and advocates transparent, fully democratic and participatory mechanisms for an effective urban management system that is particularly suitable for ubiquitous cities. This paper also sheds light on some of the unclear processes of urban management of ubiquitous cities and online collaborative decision making, and reveals the key benefits of integrated and participatory mechanisms in successfully constructing sustainable ubiquitous cities

Code, space and everyday life

In this paper we examine the role of code (software) in the spatial formation of collective life. Taking the view that human life and coded technology are folded into one another, we theorise space as ontogenesis. Space, we posit, is constantly being bought into being through a process of transduction – the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices - as an incomplete solution to a relational problem. The relational problem we examine is the ongoing encounter between individuals and environment where the solution, to a greater or lesser extent, is code. Code, we posit, is diversely embedded in collectives as coded objects, coded infrastructure, coded processes and coded assemblages. These objects, infrastructure, processes and assemblages possess technicity, that is, unfolding or evolutive power to make things happen; the ability to mediate, supplement, augment, monitor, regulate, operate, facilitate, produce collective life. We contend that when the technicity of code is operationalised it transduces one of three forms of hybrid spatial formations: code/space, coded space and backgrounded coded space. These formations are contingent, relational, extensible and scaleless, often stretched out across networks of greater or shorter length. We demonstrate the coded transduction of space through three vignettes – each a day in the life of three people living in London, UK, tracing the technical mediation of their interactions, transactions and mobilities. We then discuss how code becomes the relational solution to five different classes of problems – domestic living, travelling, working, communicating, and consuming

The provision of financial education in Malta

It is becoming evident that preparation for life requires more than developing the ability to read and write, manipulate figures, and become technologically savvy. The provision of holistic education also entails developing other forms of literacies, amongst which is the ability to empower individuals to manage personal finances and understand corporate and public financial decisions and outcomes. In the absence of such a preparation, students emerge out of compulsory schooling vulnerable to scams and untrained to manage personal wealth and plan ahead. Given that little local research has so far been undertaken to investigate this area, this paper is an attempt to stimulate discussion on financial education in Malta. It takes a close look at the local educational system and investigates access and content in this area provided by compulsory schooling. This paper employs content analysis of local and international official documentation to bring to the fore the urgent need for local research on the requisites to enhance the provisions of financial literacy. Further research into the levels of school leavers’ financial literacy and the quality of financial education is deemed crucial by this study to shed further light on the subject. This study emphasizes the lack of research in this important area, notwithstanding the fact that financial education is of direct interest to policy-makers, educators, and the business community.peer-reviewe

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed

Healthy ageing and home: The perspectives of very old people in five European countries

This paper reports on in-depth research, using a grounded theory approach, to examine the ways in which very old people perceive healthy ageing in the context of living alone at home within urban settings in five European countries. This qualitative study was part of a cross-national project entitled ENABLE-AGE which examined the relationship between home and healthy ageing. Interviews explored the notion of healthy ageing, the meaning and importance of home, conceptualisations of independence and autonomy and links between healthy ageing and home. Data analysis identified five ways in which older people constructed healthy ageing: home and keeping active; managing lifestyles, health and illness; balancing social life; and balancing material and financial circumstances. Older people reflected on their everyday lives at home in terms of being engaged in purposeful, meaningful action and evaluated healthy ageing in relation to the symbolic and practical affordances of the home, contextualised within constructions of their national context. The research suggests that older people perceive healthy ageing as an active achievement, created through individual, personal effort and supported through social ties despite the health, financial and social decline associated with growing older. The physicality and spatiality of home provided the context for establishing and evaluating the notion of healthy ageing, whilst the experienced relationship between home, life history and identity created a meaningful space within which healthy ageing was negotiated