Sea Water Fish in a Freshwater Pond: An Institutional Approach to Understanding Cooperative Scarcity in the United States

There is remarkable cooperative organization scarcity in the United States. Particularly in the credit union and worker cooperative sectors, this scarcity is not satisfactorily explained by neo-classical economic models that assume competitive conditions and profit-maximizing organizations. This paper supplements the conventional economic understandings of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity with an institutional analysis. Mechanisms of coercive, mimetic, and normative institutional isomorphism developed in DiMaggio and Powell’s theory of organizational isomorphism are applied to provide greater understanding of credit union and worker cooperative scarcity in the US. It appears that these forces of isomorphism work in conjunction with one another, as well as with competitive forces of isomorphism, to cyclically reproduce the scarcity of credit unions and worker cooperatives which prevails in the US

Excavations in Gozo 1987-94

This article recounts the start of the excavations of the Xaghra Circle in Gozo. This site is also commonly known as the Brochtorff circle. Previously unexcavated, this site consists of a variety of tomb chambers with human remains. Additionally other matierial finds such as beads, pottery and stone figures. The latter include nine cult figures, carved from stone and a small stone carving of a two seated figure on a bed.peer-reviewe

Tourists’ emotions as a resource for customer value creation, cocreation, and destruction: a customer-grounded understanding

Research on customer value creation in a tourism setting has tended to prioritize the firm’s over the customer’s perspective. However, new understandings of customer value through the lens of customer-dominant logic emphasize the need to consider value as emerging within the broader context of a customer’s lifeworld, which transcends customer–firm interactions and includes interactions with others. Tourism experiences are experiential and meaning-laden at the individual and collective levels. As a resource for value creation, emotions play an important but underexplored role during value-in-use and influence the tourist’s consumption experience. We provide a customer-grounded understanding of value creation as emerging and evolving over time by examining how emotions are experienced and contribute to the holistic consumption experience both intra- and intersubjectively. By demonstrating how emotions, as a customer operant resource, contribute to the process of value creation as well as value destruction, we extend our knowledge of experiential consumption practices

Gardening time: Monuments and landscape from Sardinia, Scotland and Central Europe in the very long Iron Age

Gardening may seem worlds away from Nuraghi and brochs, but tending a garden is a long process involving patience, accretion and memory. Scholars argue that memories are also cultured, developed and regained. The monuments in Scotland and Sardinia are testament to the importance of memory and its role in maintaining social relations. This collection of twenty-one papers addresses the theme of memory anchored to the enduring presence of monuments, mainly from Scotland and Sardinia, but also from Central Europe and the Balkans.This book, and the conference upon which it was based, were funded by The ACE Foundation, The Fondazione Banco di Sardegna and the McDonald Institute. We are grateful to the British School at Rome and Magdalene College, Cambridge for their support

Making a difference for children and families: an appreciative inquiry of health visitor values and why they start and stay in post

The study aimed to develop an understanding of health visitor recruitment and retention by examining what existing staff and new recruits wanted from their job, their professional aspirations and what would encourage them to start and stay in employment. Following a period of steady decline in numbers, the health visitor workforce in England has recently been invested in and expanded to deliver universal child public health. To capitalise on this large investment, managers need an understanding of factors influencing workforce retention and continuing recruitment of health visitors. The study was designed using an interpretive approach and involved students (n = 17) and qualified health visitors (n = 22) from the north and south of England. Appreciative inquiry (AI) exercises were used as methods of data collection during 2012. During AI exercises students and health visitors wrote about ‘a practice experience you have felt excited and motivated by and briefly describe the factors that contributed to this’. Participants were invited to discuss their written accounts of practice with a peer during an audio-recorded sharing session. Participants gave consent for written accounts and transcribed recordings to be used as study data, which was examined using framework analysis. In exploring personal meanings of health visiting, participants spoke about the common aspiration to make a difference to children and families. To achieve this, they expected their job to allow them to: connect with families; work with others; use their knowledge, skills and experience; use professional autonomy. The study offers new insights into health visitors’ aspirations, showing consistency with conceptual explanations of optimal professional practice. Psychological contract theory illustrates connections between professional aspirations and work commitment. Managers can use these findings as part of workforce recruitment and retention strategies and for building on the health visitor commitment to making a difference to children and families

Unconventional luxury: The reappropriation of time and substance

This study addresses the transformational role time and substance play in an unconventional luxury experience. Adopting a giving, as opposed to having, perspective of unconventional luxury, in-depth interviews were carried out with tourists in a luxury Ecocamp in Kenya. We demonstrate how the reappropriation of time is central to the transformational effects of unconventional luxury experiences. Time and substance are interlinked whereby an emphasis on substance promotes a reconsideration of time and vice versa. Time is reappropriated through a process of appreciation, learning and (re)discovery resulting in inner (self), outward (self in relation to others) and onward (non-related distant others) transformations. We present the bidirectional relationship of giving experiences and a blending of inner and outward transformations resulting in an unintended ‘matcher’ experience. We reposition unconventional luxury as grounded in ethicality and its associated positive impacts on one's wellbeing, reflecting higher levels of personal meaning and relevance in the consumption experience

Tourists’ Emotions as a Resource for Customer Value Creation, Co-Creation and Destruction:A Customer-Grounded Understanding

Research on customer value creation in a tourism setting has tended to prioritize the firm’s over the customer’s perspective. However, new understandings of customer value through the lens of customer-dominant logic emphasize the need to consider value as emerging within the broader context of a customer’s lifeworld, which transcends customer–firm interactions and includes interactions with others. Tourism experiences are experiential and meaning-laden at the individual and collective levels. As a resource for value creation, emotions play an important but underexplored role during value-in-use and influence the tourist’s consumption experience. We provide a customer-grounded understanding of value creation as emerging and evolving over time by examining how emotions are experienced and contribute to the holistic consumption experience both intra- and intersubjectively. By demonstrating how emotions, as a customer operant resource, contribute to the process of value creation as well as value destruction, we extend our knowledge of experiential consumption practices

Radiocarbon Dated Trends and Central Mediterranean Prehistory

Abstract: This paper reviews the evidence for long term trends in anthropogenic activity and population dynamics across the Holocene in the central Mediterranean and the chronology of cultural events. The evidence for this has been constituted in a database of 4608 radiocarbon dates (of which 4515 were retained for analysis following initial screening) from 1195 archaeological sites in southern France, Italy and Malta, spanning the Mesolithic to Early Iron Age periods, c. 8000 to 500 BC. We provide an overview of the settlement record for central Mediterranean prehistory and add to this an assessment of the available archaeological radiocarbon evidence in order to review the traditional narratives on the prehistory of the region. This new chronology has enabled us to identify the most significant points in time where activity levels, population dynamics and cultural change have together caused strong temporal patterning in the archaeological record. Some of these episodes were localized to one region, whereas others were part of pan-regional trends and cultural trajectories that took many centuries to play out fully, revealing prehistoric societies subject to collapse, recovery, and continuing instability over the long-term. Using the radiocarbon evidence, we model growth rates in the various regions so that the tempo of change at certain points in space and time can be identified, compared, and discussed in the context of demographic change. Using other published databases of radiocarbon data, we have drawn comparisons across the central Mediterranean to wider prehistoric Europe, and northern Africa. Finally, we include a brief response to the synchronously published but independently developed paper (Palmisano et al. in J World Prehist 34(3), 2021). While there are differences in our respective approaches, we share the general conclusions that large-scale trends can been identified through meta-analyses of the archaeological record, and these offer new perspectives on how society functioned

Feeling Political

Historicizing both emotions and politics, this open access book argues that the historical work of emotion is most clearly understood in terms of the dynamics of institutionalization. This is shown in twelve case studies that focus on decisive moments in European and US history from 1800 until today. Each case study clarifies how emotions were central to people’s political engagement and its effects. The sources range from parliamentary buildings and social movements, to images and speeches of presidents, from fascist cemeteries to the International Criminal Court. Both the timeframe and the geographical focus have been chosen to highlight the increasingly participatory character of nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics, which is inconceivable without the work of emotions

Medium chain triglycerides with a C8:C10 ratio of 30:70 enhances cognitive performance and mitigates the cognitive decline associated with prolonged exercise in young and healthy adults

Introduction: Prolonged exercise has been linked to a decline in cognitive function due to a variety of factors, such as a drop in oxygen in the prefrontal cortex and an increase in stress hormones and neurotransmitters. Medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) may possibly offset this decline as they provide energy for the brain via both direct and indirect pathways, alongside promoting chronic physiological adaptations within the brain. Methods: Participants were divided into two groups; MCT (n = 9) and Placebo (n = 10). The MCT gels contained 6g of MCT with a C8:C10 ratio of 30:70, whereas the placebo gels contained carbohydrates of similar calorific value to the MCT gels. Participants visited the laboratory on three occasions (familiarisation/fitness test, pre-supplementation, post-supplementation), during which they performed a battery of cognitive tasks assessing domains such as processing speed, working memory, selective attention, decision making and coordination, before and after a prolonged bout of exercise (60 mins at 90% gas exchange threshold (GET). A 2-week supplementation period between visits 2 and 3 involved the ingestion of 2 gels per day. Results: Exercise resulted in detriments in most cognitive tasks pre-supplementation for both groups, and post-supplementation for the Placebo group (main effect ps .05). Furthermore, MCT supplementation enhanced before-exercise cognitive performance and in some measures, such as working memory, this was maintained after-exercise (interaction effect ps> .05). Conclusions: Chronic MCT supplementation enhanced before-exercise cognitive performance and offset the cognitive decline caused by a prolonged bout of exercise. In some cases, improvements in before-exercise cognitive performance were maintained after-exercise