Are you sitting comfortably? The political economy of the body

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between the mass production of furniture in modern industrial societies and lower back pain (LBP). The latter has proven to be a major cost to health services and private industry throughout the industrialised world and now represents a global health issue as recent WHO reports on obesity and LBP reveal. Thus far there have been few co-ordinated attempts to deal with the causes of the problem through public policy. Drawing upon a range of sources in anthropology, health studies, politics and economics, the paper argues that this a modern social problem rooted in the contingent conjuncture of natural and social causal mechanisms. The key question it raises is: what are the appropriate mechanisms for addressing this problem? This paper develops an analysis rooted in libertarian social theory and argues that both the state and the capitalist market are flawed mechanisms for resolving this problem. There remains a fundamental dilemma for libertarians, however. Whilst the state and the market may well be flawed mechanisms, they are the dominant ones shaping global political economy. To what extent can libertarians work within these structures and remain committed to libertarian goals

New media practices in India: bridging past and future, markets and development

This article provides a review of the academic and popular literature on new media practices in India, focusing on the country’s youth's use of mobile phones and the Internet, as well as new media prosumption. One particular feature of the Indian case is the confluence of commercial exploitation of new media technologies and their application for development purposes in initiatives that aim to bring these technologies to marginalized segments of the Indian population. Technology usage in turn is shaped by the socioeconomic location of the user, especially in regards to gender and caste. The potential of new media technologies to subvert such social stratifications and associated norms has inspired much public debate, which is often carried out on the Internet, giving rise to an online public sphere. In all of the writings reviewed here, the tension surrounding new media technologies as a meeting place of the old and the new in India is paramount

Global Competition, Institutions, And The Diffusion Of Organizational Practices: The International Spread Of Iso 9000 Quality Certificates

We use panel data on ISO 9000 quality certification in 85 countries between 1993 and 1998 to better understand, the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice. Following neoinstitutional theory, we focus on the coercive, normative, and mimetic effects that result from the exposure of firms in a given country to a powerful source of critical resources, a common pool of relevant technical knowledge, and the experiences of firms located in other countries. We use social network theory to develop a systematic conceptual understanding of how firms located in different countries influence each other's rates of adoption as a result of cohesive and equivalent network relationships. Regression results provide support for our predictions that states and foreign multinationals are the key actors responsible for coercive isomorphism, cohesive trade relationships between countries generate coercive and normative effects, and role-equivalent trade relationships result in learning-based and competitive imitation.Business Administratio

Participatory Transformations

Learning, in its many forms, from the classroom to independent study, is being transformed by new practices emerging around Internet use. Conversation, participation and community have become watchwords for the processes of learning promised by the Internet and accomplished via technologies such as bulletin boards, wikis, blogs, social software and repositories, devices such as laptops, cell phones and digital cameras, and infrastructures of internet connection, telephone, wireless and broadband. This chapter discusses the impact of emergent, participatory trends on education. In learning and teaching participatory trends harbinge a radical transformation in who learns from whom, where, under what circumstances, and for what and whose purpose. They bring changes in where we find information, who we learn from, how learning progresses, and how we contribute to our learning and the learning of others. These trends indicate a transformation to "ubiquitous learning" ??? a continuous anytime, anywhere, anyone contribution and retrieval of learning materials and advice on and through the Internet and its technologies, niches and social spaces.not peer reviewe

Launching the Grand Challenges for Ocean Conservation

The ten most pressing Grand Challenges in Oceans Conservation were identified at the Oceans Big Think and described in a detailed working document:A Blue Revolution for Oceans: Reengineering Aquaculture for SustainabilityEnding and Recovering from Marine DebrisTransparency and Traceability from Sea to Shore:  Ending OverfishingProtecting Critical Ocean Habitats: New Tools for Marine ProtectionEngineering Ecological Resilience in Near Shore and Coastal AreasReducing the Ecological Footprint of Fishing through Smarter GearArresting the Alien Invasion: Combating Invasive SpeciesCombatting the Effects of Ocean AcidificationEnding Marine Wildlife TraffickingReviving Dead Zones: Combating Ocean Deoxygenation and Nutrient Runof

Agricultural productivity in past societies: toward an empirically informed model for testing cultural evolutionary hypotheses

Agricultural productivity, and its variation in space and time, plays a fundamental role in many theories of human social evolution. However, we often lack systematic information about the productivity of past agricultural systems on a scale large enough to test these theories properly. The effect of climate on crop yields has received a great deal of attention resulting in a range of empirical and process-based models, yet the focus has primarily been on current or future conditions. In this paper, we argue for a “bottom-up” approach that estimates potential productivity based on information about the agricultural practices and technologies used in past societies. Of key theoretical interest is using this information to estimate the carrying high quality historical and archaeological information about past societies in order to infer the temporal and geographic patterns of change in agricultural productivity and potential. We discuss information we need to collect about past agricultural techniques and practices, and introduce a new databank initiative that we have developed for collating the best available historical and archaeological evidence. A key benefit of our approach lies in making explicit the steps in the estimation of past productivities and carrying capacities, and in being able to assess the effects of different modelling assumptions. This is undoubtedly an ambitious task, yet promises to provide important insights into fundamental aspects of past societies, enabling us to test more rigorously key hypotheses about human socio-cultural evolution

The Issue of Globalization-An Overview

[From Summary] In the 1990s, globalization gained widespread usage as a term with many interpretations. Globalism is employed in this report to describe networks of interdependence functioning at multi-continental distances. Globalization is an increase in globalism and de-globalization a reduction. In providing an introductory view of these networks, with an emphasis on contemporary economic factors, a goal of this report is to illustrate how policy consequences, sometimes unintended, may be dispersed via globalized networks. As networks expand and become more intricate there is an opportunity for feedback along previously non-existent linkages

Online Misinformation: Challenges and Future Directions

Misinformation has become a common part of our digital media environments and it is compromising the ability of our societies to form informed opinions. It generates misperceptions, which have affected the decision making processes in many domains, including economy, health, environment, and elections, among others. Misinformation and its generation, propagation, impact, and management is being studied through a variety of lenses (computer science, social science, journalism, psychology, etc.) since it widely affects multiple aspects of society. In this paper we analyse the phenomenon of misinformation from a technological point of view.We study the current socio-technical advancements towards addressing the problem, identify some of the key limitations of current technologies, and propose some ideas to target such limitations. The goal of this position paper is to reflect on the current state of the art and to stimulate discussions on the future design and development of algorithms, methodologies, and applications

Innovation and design change strategies for learning technologies at Warwick : towards a ‘design capabilities’ heuristic for guiding practice and evaluating change.

This report gives a narrative account of an investigation into design and design capability in teaching and learning in a research-intensive university. It begins, in the Introduction, with definitions of key concepts: design, designing, successful design (achieving fit, stick, spread and growth), design change and design capability (although this last term is only really fleshed­out in Reading the Case Studies and the Conclusion). These words are common currency, but rarely used with precision. When clearly defined they provide a lens through which we can attain more clarity and granularity in analysing attempts at enhancing practice. In the second part, on the Origins of the Investigation and Earlier Experiments, we examine the limitations of a techno­centric approach to understanding, predicting and supporting the uptake of technology enhanced learning. It is argued that a design capability approach is needed, in which the ability of all people (including students) to discover, create, adopt, adapt designs that fit, stick, spread and grow is of prime value. In part 3, the design of the investigation is explained, with its focus upon discovering, creating and using design patterns as a key facilitating aspect of design capability. In part 4, this is put to the test, with an attempt at creatively reading the 23 mini case studies produced in interviews with academics. However, design patterns do not emerge easily from the cases, and we see that design and designing in this setting is more diverse and complex than expected. It is argued that a design patterns based approach will be useful, but much more work needs to be done before design patterns can become the lingua franca of teaching and learning design and development. This leads to a more sophisticated view of design capability, presented in the Conclusion. Drawing upon the experiences of the academics interviewed in the case studies, especially experienced and confident senior academics, it is conjectured that we need to increase the intensity with which academics encounter and reflect upon design challenges, designerly approaches, suboptimal and successful designs and design patterns. An integrated combination of Design Thinking and the Higher Education Academy Fellowship framework is recommended as a way of achieving this

Oblique strategies for ambient journalism

Alfred Hermida recently posited ‘ambient journalism’ as a new framework for para- and professional journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform. Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida define ‘ambient journalism’ and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that ‘ambient journalists’ might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide–the musician and producer who coined the term ‘ambient music’ over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft, skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida’s participatory media context I emphasise ‘institutional adaptiveness’: how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them