754 research outputs found

    Non-Market Food Practices Do Things Markets Cannot: Why Vermonters Produce and Distribute Food That\u27s Not For Sale

    Get PDF
    Researchers tend to portray food self-provisioning in high-income societies as a coping mechanism for the poor or a hobby for the well-off. They describe food charity as a regrettable band-aid. Vegetable gardens and neighborly sharing are considered remnants of precapitalist tradition. These are non-market food practices: producing food that is not for sale and distributing food in ways other than selling it. Recent scholarship challenges those standard understandings by showing (i) that non-market food practices remain prevalent in high-income countries, (ii) that people in diverse social groups engage in these practices, and (iii) that they articulate diverse reasons for doing so. In this dissertation, I investigate the persistent pervasiveness of non-market food practices in Vermont. To go beyond explanations that rely on individual motivation, I examine the roles these practices play in society. First, I investigate the prevalence of non-market food practices. Several surveys with large, representative samples reveal that more than half of Vermont households grow, hunt, fish, or gather some of their own food. Respondents estimate that they acquire 14% of the food they consume through non-market means, on average. For reference, commercial local food makes up about the same portion of total consumption. Then, drawing on the words of 94 non-market food practitioners I interviewed, I demonstrate that these practices serve functions that markets cannot. Interviewees attested that non-market distribution is special because it feeds the hungry, strengthens relationships, builds resilience, puts edible-but-unsellable food to use, and aligns with a desired future in which food is not for sale. Hunters, fishers, foragers, scavengers, and homesteaders said that these activities contribute to their long-run food security as a skills-based safety net. Self-provisioning allows them to eat from the landscape despite disruptions to their ability to access market food such as job loss, supply chain problems, or a global pandemic. Additional evidence from vegetable growers suggests that non-market settings liberate production from financial discipline, making space for work that is meaningful, playful, educational, and therapeutic. Non-market food practices mend holes in the social fabric torn by the commodification of everyday life. Finally, I synthesize scholarly critiques of markets as institutions for organizing the production and distribution of food. Markets send food toward money rather than hunger. Producing for market compels farmers to prioritize financial viability over other values such as stewardship. Historically, people rarely if ever sell each other food until external authorities coerce them to do so through taxation, indebtedness, cutting off access to the means of subsistence, or extinguishing non-market institutions. Today, more humans than ever suffer from chronic undernourishment even as the scale of commercial agriculture pushes environmental pressures past critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. This research substantiates that alternatives to markets exist and have the potential to address their shortcomings

    Digital Innovations for a Circular Plastic Economy in Africa

    Get PDF
    Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century that requires innovative and varied solutions. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder perspectives exploring challenges and opportunities for utilising digital innovations to manage and accelerate the transition to a circular plastic economy (CPE). This book is organised into three sections bringing together discussion of environmental conditions, operational dimensions and country case studies of digital transformation towards the circular plastic economy. It explores the environment for digitisation in the circular economy, bringing together perspectives from practitioners in academia, innovation, policy, civil society and government agencies. The book also highlights specific country case studies in relation to the development and implementation of different innovative ideas to drive the circular plastic economy across the three sub-Saharan African regions. Finally, the book interrogates the policy dimensions and practitioner perspectives towards a digitally enabled circular plastic economy. Written for a wide range of readers across academia, policy and practice, including researchers, students, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), digital entrepreneurs, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies, policymakers and public officials, this book offers unique insights into complex, multilayered issues relating to the production and management of plastic waste and highlights how digital innovations can drive the transition to the circular plastic economy in Africa. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

    Under construction: infrastructure and modern fiction

    Full text link
    In this dissertation, I argue that infrastructural development, with its technological promises but widening geographic disparities and social and environmental consequences, informs both the narrative content and aesthetic forms of modernist and contemporary Anglophone fiction. Despite its prevalent material forms—roads, rails, pipes, and wires—infrastructure poses particular formal and narrative problems, often receding into the background as mere setting. To address how literary fiction theorizes the experience of infrastructure requires reading “infrastructurally”: that is, paying attention to the seemingly mundane interactions between characters and their built environments. The writers central to this project—James Joyce, William Faulkner, Karen Tei Yamashita, and Mohsin Hamid—take up the representational challenges posed by infrastructure by bringing transit networks, sanitation systems, and electrical grids and the histories of their development and use into the foreground. These writers call attention to the political dimensions of built environments, revealing the ways infrastructures produce, reinforce, and perpetuate racial and socioeconomic fault lines. They also attempt to formalize the material relations of power inscribed by and within infrastructure; the novel itself becomes an imaginary counterpart to the technologies of infrastructure, a form that shapes and constrains what types of social action and affiliation are possible

    To the Last Drop: Affective Economies of Extraction and Sentimentality

    Get PDF
    The romance of extraction underlies and partly defines Western modernity and our cultural imaginaries. Combining affect studies and environmental humanities, this volume analyzes societies' devotion to extraction and fossil resources. This devotion is shaped by a nostalgic view on settler colonialism as well as by contemporary "affective economies" (Sara Ahmed). The contributors examine the links between forms of extractivism and gendered discourses of sentimentality and the ways in which cultural narratives and practices deploy the sentimental mode (in plots of attachment, sacrifice, and suffering) to promote or challenge extractivism

    Adapting omnichannel strategies to answer post-pandemic consumers' evolved in-store shopping expectations

    Get PDF
    Technology-infused omnichannel strategies have solidified their role in the turbulent environment of retailing. The advantages of such retailing approaches have been recognised during the interminable rise of e-commerce in the past decades, but the physical resurgence of consumers after the global pandemic evolved omnichannel expectations to new standards. Now, consumers desire a blend of online convenience in physical stores, driving retailers to adapt their technological capabilities to ensure seamless in-store shopping experiences. Because omnichanneling has become a necessity, retailers need to possess the understanding of providing valuable customer journeys. To offer insights and perspectives around the novel shift in physical retailing, this thesis was conducted as a two-case study, examining two retail giants that have emerged from opposite sides, the physical-first Target and online-dominant Amazon. To gain recent knowledge from the two companies, mainly qualitative secondary data was collected from diverse online sources, which were scrutinised employing content analysis and thematic synthesis. The longitudinal time horizon allowed for a progressive viewpoint to be constructed regarding the evolving dynamics between online and offline channels, and the role of technological implementations. The results of this thesis firstly sum up the expectations of consumers that have evolved pre- and post-pandemic, mainly the pursuit of convenience, continuity, and hedonistic aspects. Furthermore, this thesis explores various innovative technological features and how they can be integrated into physical stores to support seamless omnichannel expectations. In line with the results, the thesis suggests that most widely adapted technologies within case companies are scattered between the many phases of the shopping journey, either designed to complement the shopping experience by enhancing the favoured attributes, make the in-store interactions and steps more autonomous, or automate back-end operations. These technologies can be joined as a part of cohesive omnichannel experiences to contribute to borderless channel integration, all-inclusive offerings, and personalisation. The findings demonstrate that both case companies have explicit connections with theoretical frameworks. Along with the findings and synthesis, this thesis reinforces the discourse of post- pandemic omnichannel experiences and supplies real-life examples of diverse strategic uses of in-store technologies.Teknologiapohjaiset omnikanavastrategiat ovat vakiinnuttaneet asemansa vähittäiskaupan epävakaassa ympäristössä. Tällaisten vähittäismyyntitapojen edut ovat tiedostettu viime vuosikymmeninä verkkokaupankäynnin jatkuvan nousun aikana, mutta kuluttajien fyysinen palaaminen maailmanlaajuisen pandemian jälkeen nosti omnikanavaodotukset uusiin standardeihin. Nykyään kuluttajat mielivät yhdistelmiä verkkokaupan etuja fyysisissä myymälöissä, mikä ajaa vähittäismyyjiä mukauttamaan teknologisia valmiuksiaan varmistaakseen saumattoman ostoskokemuksen myymälässä. Koska omnikanavointi on muodostunut välttämättömyydeksi, vähittäismyyjien on ymmärrettävä, miten tarjota arvokkaita asiakasmatkoja. Tarjotakseen näkemyksiä ja perspektiivejä fyysisen vähittäiskaupan tuoreesta muutoksesta, tämä pro gradu -tutkielma toteutettiin tapaustutkimuksena tarkastellen kahta vastakkaiset lähtökohdat omaavaa vähittäiskaupan jättiläistä, kivijalkalähtöistä Targetia ja verkkovaltaista Amazonia. Molemmista yrityksistä hankittiin ajantasaista tietoa, pääasiassa laadullista sekundääridataa monipuolisista verkkolähteistä, jotka tarkasteltiin sisällönanalyysin ja teemasynteesin avulla. Pitkittäistutkimuksen aikajänne mahdollisti progressiivisen näkökulman muodostamisen verkkokanavien ja fyysisten kanavien välillä muuttuvista dynamiikoista ja toteutettujen teknologioiden roolista. Tämän tutkielman tulokset tiivistävät kuluttajien odotukset, jotka ovat kehittyneet ennen ja jälkeen pandemian, pääasiassa mukavuuden, jatkuvuuden ja hedonististen näkökohtien osalta. Lisäksi tutkielma tutustuu erilaisiin innovatiivisiin teknologiaominaisuuksiin ja siihen, miten niitä voidaan integroida fyysisiin myymälöihin edesauttamaan saumattomia omnikanavaodotuksia. Tulosten mukaisesti tutkielma ehdottaa, että tapaustutkimusyritysten laajimmin omaksutut teknologiat ovat hajallaan monissa ostosmatkan vaiheissa, joko suunniteltu täydentämään ostoskokemusta korostamalla haluttuja piirteitä, itsenäistämään myymälässä tapahtuvat vuorovaikutukset ja ostovaiheet tai automatisoimaan taustaprosesseja. Nämä teknologiat voidaan yhdistää osaksi yhtenäisiä omnikanavakokemuksia edistämään saumattomia kanavaintegraatioita, kaiken kattavaa tarjontaa ja personointia. Tutkimuksen löydökset osoittavat, että molemmilla tapaustutkimusyrityksillä on selviä yhteyksiä teoreettisiin viitekehyksiin. Löydösten ja synteesin ohella tämä tutkielma vahvistaa pandemian jälkeistä omnikanavakokemuksia koskevaa keskustelua ja tarjoaa todellisia esimerkkejä erilaisten myymäläteknologioiden strategisista käyttötavoista

    A Survey on Remote Operation of Road Vehicles

    Get PDF
    In recent years, the use of remote operation has been proposed as a bridge towards driverless mobility by providing human assistance remotely when an automated driving system finds a situation that is ambiguous and requires input from a remote operator. The remote operation of road vehicles has also been proposed as a way to enable drivers to operate vehicles from safer and more comfortable locations. While commercial solutions for remote operation exist, remaining challenges are being tackled by the research community, who is continuously testing and validating the feasibility of deploying remote operation of road vehicles on public roads. These tests range from the technological scope to social aspects such as acceptability and usability that affect human performance. This survey presents a compilation of works that approach the remote operation of road vehicles. We start by describing the basic architecture of remote operation systems and classify their modes of operation depending on the level of human intervention. We use this classification to organize and present recent and relevant work on the field from industry and academia. Finally, we identify the challenges in the deployment of remote operation systems in the technological, regulatory, and commercial scopes

    Usage of Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems and Multi-agent Technology in higher education

    Get PDF
    Today, smart manufacturing is differentiated from many other initiatives by its emphasis on human ingenuity. Human capabilities must be enhanced by intelligently designing a customized solution for a specific domain. For example, Industry 4.0 is based on collaborative robots that digitize and simplify manufacturing processes. In fact, Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are widely used in intelligent industries due to their productivity, flexibility, and versatility. They are widely considered as one of the most important tools for flexible logistics in workshops. They can move materials and products without a predefined route. Many commercially available AGVs provide a self-guided navigation system to find their way to target workstations. However, many developers and producers of industrial robots face several challenges in designing AGV systems, such as the difficulty of defining a decentralized system decision as well as the discontinuity and complexity of the design process. One of the relevant research areas related to our AGV solution is the establishment of the human-machine industrial relationship and the creation of safe operation side by side

    Green Cities Artificial Intelligence

    Get PDF
    119 pagesIn an era defined by rapid urbanization, the effective planning and management of cities have become paramount to ensure sustainable development, efficient resource allocation, and enhanced quality of life for residents. Traditional methods of urban planning and management are grappling with the complexities and challenges presented by modern cities. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI), a disruptive technology that holds immense potential to revolutionize the way cities are planned, designed, and operated. The primary aim of this report is to provide an in-depth exploration of the multifaceted role that Artificial Intelligence plays in modern city planning and management. Through a comprehensive analysis of key AI applications, case studies, challenges, and ethical considerations, the report aims to provide resources for urban planners, City staff, and elected officials responsible for community planning and development. These include a model City policy, draft informational public meeting format, AI software and applications, implementation actions, AI timeline, glossary, and research references. This report represents the cumulative efforts of many participants and is sponsored by the City of Salem and Sustainable City Year Program. The Green Cities AI project website is at: https://blogs.uoregon.edu/artificialintelligence/. As cities continue to evolve into complex ecosystems, the integration of Artificial Intelligence stands as a pivotal force in shaping their trajectories. Through this report, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of how AI is transforming the way cities are planned, operated, and experienced. By analyzing the tools, applications, and ethical considerations, we hope to equip policymakers, urban planners, and stakeholders with the insights needed to navigate the AI-driven urban landscape effectively and create cities that are not only smart but also sustainable, resilient, and regenerative.This year's SCYP partnership is possible in part due to support from U.S. Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, as well as former Congressman Peter DeFazio, who secured federal funding for SCYP through Congressionally Directed Spending. With additional funding from the city of Salem, the partnerships will allow UO students and faculty to study and make recommendations on city-identified projects and issues

    2023- The Twenty-seventh Annual Symposium of Student Scholars

    Get PDF
    The full program book from the Twenty-seventh Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 18-21, 2023. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/sssprograms/1027/thumbnail.jp
    corecore