Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021)

Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021) is about the past and present of home-based work and homebased workers between 1800 and 2021 from a global perspective.; Readership: All interested in social and economic history, and especially in the past and present of home-based work and homebased workers

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Relationships between exporters from Pakistan and importers from the United Kingdom : a dyadic perspective

This research is in reply to requests made by academicians to conduct research on cross-border marketing channels in developing countries (cf Cunningham, 2001). With its grounding in interaction theory and relationship marketing theory, an interpretive approach is taken that looks into the relationships between importers from a developed country (UK) and exporters from a developing country (Pakistan) in a context which has not been studied before. Nine pairs of importerexporter dyads from across three industries (bed-linen, towels, leather apparel) were interviewed iteratively. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed hermeneutically to build categories and themes of data. The results showed that good relationships had built over the years of mutual exchange and the relationships were characterised by building of relational bonds that acted as governance structures. But the relational bonds were unique to the dyads. Exporters made process and product modification investments but importers investments were limited to time and effort in learning. Extensive learning was involved in the initial days of relationship start-up but a happy centre-point had been achieved. The IMP model was modified for the context of the research based on respondents‟ definitions of their perceptions of relational exchanges and their effects on the dyadic relationship. It was found that country perceptions played a very strong role in the entire interaction process. It mediated the adaptations and institutionalisation of relational bonds, carried with it a strong product quality perception, and governed the power/dependence, conflict/cooperation, closeness/distance continua. Another phenomenon of interest was observed. Steep price pressures from the retailers due to changing market structure and increasing competition for both importers and exporters had a very strong negative influence on dyadic relationships. Importers and exporters defined it as a transient phase due to China‟s artificially depressed prices, and the dyads perceived that these prices were not sustainable and would eventually rise. But in the meanwhile, it was observed that as importers moved their purchases to cheaper supply-sources, they showed high levels of relationship energy. Though interorganisational relationships may have been subdued, or even severed, interpersonal relationships were strong and strategically maintained to keep the crucial link that would allow importers to return once the unstable conditions of perceived unstable short time depressed prices had alleviated and Pakistan was once more considered an efficient source of supply. Exporters devised strategies to survive in the interim period while they waited for importers to return with renewed business. Opportunism was also observed on part of both importers and exporters since short-term gains became more attractive than long-term returns on relationship-investment. This state of heightened uncertainty and short-term perspective of the otherwise long-enduring relationships was termed a consequence of Perceived Dynamic Competitive Prices

Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021)

Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021) is about the past and present of home-based work and homebased workers between 1800 and 2021 from a global perspective.; Readership: All interested in social and economic history, and especially in the past and present of home-based work and homebased workers

Craft-oriented hybrid analogue/digital practices; their values and our future relations with technology

This paper focuses on a hybrid digital/analogue making project that sought to investigate the aesthetic opportunities that digital design and production technologies holds for the craftsperson. It is presented as a demonstration of how a disruptive craft-based approach to engaging with digital making tools can act as a stimulus to reconsider the relationship between hand and machine, and our wider relationship with technologies and how we assess their role and value. Through challenging some assumptions about what digital technologies are ‘good’ for, it proposes a digital craft ethos that aspires to: fidelity not accuracy, sensitive making not efficient manufacturing, affective not effective technologies, to augment existing practices not replace established ways of working, uniqueness not infinite replicability, and continual ‘hands-on’ interaction with tools not full automation. Taking this digital craft ethos beyond the boundaries of the sector, the paper will conclude with an argument that our relationship with making technologies needs to evolve. If we continue to only use an established industrially focused myopic lens to view and assess the value of all technologies, (i.e. their productive efficiency, their speed, and their ability to accurately achieve predetermined goals), then as automation and machine learning have an increasing impact on labour markets and work, questions arise such as; what is the future of making? and what can, and do we want, our roles to be

KEER2022

Avanttítol: KEER2022. DiversitiesDescripció del recurs: 25 juliol 202

Development of Ports in Saurashtra and Kutch Region: An Economic Analysis

Not availabl

Life Expansion: Toward an Artistic, Design-Based Theory of the Transhuman / Posthuman

The thesis’ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic, design-based approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining personal identity. To delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in the domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces with biology. The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential of emerging and speculative technologies as seeding the promulgation of human enhancement that approach life expansion. In doing so, the thesis constructs an inquiry into historical and current attempts to append human physiology and intervene with its mortality. By encountering emerging and speculative technologies for prolonging life and sustaining personal identity as possible media for artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement, a new axis is sought that identifies the transhuman and posthuman as conceptual paradigms for life expansion. The thesis asks: What are the required conditions that enable artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement that explicitly pursue extending human life? This question centers on the potential of the study’s proposed enhancement technologies in their relationship to life, death, and the human condition. Notably, the thesis investigates artistic approaches, as distinct from those of the natural sciences, and the borders that need to be mediated between them. The study navigates between the domains of life extension, art and design, technology, and philosophy in forming the framework for a theory of life expansion. The critical approach seeks to uncover invisible borders between these interconnecting forces by bringing to light issues of sustaining life and personal identity, ethical concerns, including morphological freedom and extinction risk. Such issues relate to the thesis’ interest in life expansion and the use emerging and speculative technologies. 4 The study takes on a triad approach in its investigation: qualitative interviews with experts of the emerging and speculative technologies; field studies encountering research centers of such technologies; and an artistic, autopoietic process that explores the heuristics of life expansion. This investigation forms an integrative view of the human use of technology and its melioristic aim. The outcome of the research is a theoretical framework for further research in artistic approaches to life expansion