Belgium: Adoption of the Sharing Economy

The debate on the sharing economy in Belgium has been mainly focused on its economic, quantitative, and digital aspects. Given the fact that the adoption of the sharing economy has accelerated lately, this report wanted to contribute to further open up the debate on the adoption of this economy in relation to an aspect that is too little discussed, namely sustainability. Based on some smaller studies, this report identifies different drivers for concrete sustainable sharing economy initiatives to develop that situate themselves on the level of people’s daily life practices, social and cultural developments, and policy developments. Next to these drivers, there were issues detected that interact closely with the further development of this economy. The report ends with a suggestion for more systematic research of the drivers behind the initiation, adoption, and sustaining of sharing economy initiatives and their contributions to a more sustainable Belgian society

The most unkindest cuts: speaker selection and expressed government dissent during economic crisis

Economic crisis and the resulting need for austerity budgets have divided many governing parties and coalitions in Europe, despite strong party discipline in the legislative voting on these harsh budgets. We measure these divisions using automated text analysis methods to scale the positions that legislators express in budget debates, in an effort to avoid punishment by voters for supporting austerity measures, while still adhering to strict party discipline by voting along party lines. Our test case is Ireland, a country that has experienced both periods of rapid economic growth as well as one deep financial and economic crisis. Tracking dissent from 1987 to 2013, we show that austerity measures undermine government cohesion, as verbal opposition markedly increases in direct response to the economic pain felt in a legislator’s constituency. The economic vulnerability of a legislator’s constituency also directly explains position taking on austerity budgets among both government and opposition

Rethinking Museums for the Climate Emergency

Cultural and natural heritage are central to ‘Europe’ and ‘the European project’. They were bound up in the emergence of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where they were used to justify differences over which border conflicts were fought. Later, the idea of a ‘common European heritage’ provided a rationale for the development of the European Union. Now, the emergence of ‘new’ populist nationalisms shows how the imagined past continues to play a role in cultural and social governance, while a series of interlinked social and ecological crises are changing the ways that heritage operates. New discourses and ontologies are emerging to reconfigure heritage for the circumstances of the present and the uncertainties of the future. Taking the current role of heritage in Europe as its starting point, Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe presents a number of case studies that explore key themes in this transformation. Contributors draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives to consider, variously, the role of heritage and museums in the migration and climate ‘emergencies’; approaches to urban heritage conservation and practices of curating cities; digital and digitised heritage; the use of heritage as a therapeutic resource; and critical approaches to heritage and its management. Taken together, the chapters explore the multiple ontologies through which cultural and natural heritage have actively intervened in redrawing the futures of Europe and the world

Populism, Twitter, and COVID-19: narrative, fantasies, and desires

10.3390/socsci10080294During a global pandemic, the great impact of populist discourse on the construction of social reality is undeniable. This study analyzes the fantasmatic dimension of political discourse from Donald Trump's and Jair Bolsonaro's Twitter accounts between 1 March and 31 May. To do so, it applies a Clause-Based Semantic Text Analysis (CBSTA) methodology that categorizes speech in Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) triplets. The study findings show that in spite of the Coronavirus pandemic, the main beatific and horrific subjects remain the core populist signifiers: the people and the elite. While Bolsonaro's narrative was predominantly beatific, centered on the government, Trump's was mostly horrific, centered on the elite. Trump signified the pandemic as a subject and an enemy to be defeated, whereas Bolsonaro portrayed it as a circumstance. Finally, both leaders defined the people as working people, therefore their concerns about the pandemic were focused on the people's ability to work

Sharing economy : An opportunity for the poorest? An explanatory study

Sharing economy, an opportunity for the poorest ? An exploratory study | King Baudouin FoundationThis study explores the concept of sharing economy, the magnitude of the phenomenon, and the issues that arise from it. It addresses the issue of sharing economy as a subject of studies and reflections, potentially empowering people living in precarious situations. It will serve as a basis for dialogues with actors on the field in Belgium and Europe in order to identify tracks of work for the future.This book is also available in French and Dutch. See on the webiste of the King Baudouin Foundation

Resolving conceptual conflicts through voting

Scientific activities strongly depend on concepts and classifications to represent the world in an orderly and workable manner. This creates a trade-off. On the one hand, it is important to leave space for conceptual and classificatory criticism. On the other hand, agreement on which concepts and classifications to use, is often crucial for communication and the integration of research and ideas. In this paper, we show that this trade-off can sometimes be best resolved through conceptual governance, in which scientific institutions set a collective conceptual standard, and that voting can be a reasonable way to implement that governance. Voting is a means to simultaneously aggregate among conflicting values, preferences and priorities that often underpin conceptual or classificatory debates, all while signaling ongoing disagreement. We also discuss how the legitimacy of the voting process and its outcome can be ensured