State business: gender, sex and marriage in Tajikistan

This article examines the relation of the state to masculinity and sexuality by way of an exploration of the sexual problems of a young man and his wife in Tajikistan at the end of the Soviet era. It suggests that the regime’s inattention to this kind of issue was bound up with the importance to the state of projecting appropriate versions of masculinity. It further posits the idea that the continued refusal of the independent Tajik state to offer appropriate treatments for sexual dysfunction is consistent with the image of modernity President Rahmon wishes to present to the world. The article shows that as masculinity discursively occupies the superior gender position, with men expected to dominate, the state is itself impotent to respond when they are, in fact, unable to do so in sexual practice. However, the myth of male dominance persists to the point that it may prevent women from seeing beyond their subordination and finding mutually beneficial solutions in their familial and sexual relationships

Organisational participation and women - an attitude problem?

Employee participation is a dynamic and contested area of organisational behaviour, attracting continuing academic, practitioner and policy interest and debate. This chapter focuses on organisational participation and women

Responsible participation and housing: restoring democratic theory to the scene

Tensions between individual liberty and collective social justice characterise many advanced liberal societies. These tensions are reflected in the challenges posed for representative democracy both by participatory democratic practices and by the current emphasis on (so-called) responsible participation. Based on the example of ‘community’ housing associations in Scotland, this paper explores these tensions. It is argued that the critique of responsibility may have been over-stated – that, in particular, ‘community’ housing associations offer the basis for relatively more inclusive and effective processes of decision-making than council housing, which relies on the traditional processes and institutions of representative local government for its legitimacy

Citizen Science and Food: A Review

Citizen science and food is part of a new programme of work to explore how we can involve the communities we serve when building the evidence-base on which policy decisions are made. Citizen science is an approach that can provide high volumes of data with a wide geographic spread. It is relatively quick to deploy and allows access to evidence we would ordinarily have difficulty collating. This methodology has been endorsed by the European Commission for Research, Science and Innovation. There is no one size fits all definition, but citizen science projects involves engaging with communities and asking them to be part of the project, either through engaging them in data collection or through other ways of co-creation. For participants, citizen science offers learning opportunities, the satisfaction of contributing to scientific evidence and the potential to influence policy. It can also give us data which is high in volume, has wide geographical spread, is relatively quick to deploy and that we couldn’t access any other way. Projects using these methods often involve engaging with communities and asking them to be part of the project. This can be either through working with them in data collection, or through co-creation. This report demonstrates that the research community are already undertaking numerous pieces of research that align with FSA’s evidence needs. This includes examples from the UK and other global communities. Participants in such research have collected data on topics ranging from food preparation in the home to levels of chemical contaminant in foods. The findings of this report outline that citizen science could allow the FSA to target and facilitate more systematic engagement with UK and global research communities, to help address key research priorities of the FSA

Citizen science for the food system

The food system is hugely complex, encompassing many different actors, geographic areas and cultural contexts. Although the citizen science literature related to food and food systems is concentrated primarily on a few key areas of this complex system (i.e. on health and food production); citizen science has the potential to help address many grand challenges related to food and agriculture. In this chapter we make use of multiple desk-based reviews of the literature, and draw on our own experiences of citizen science projects. We provide examples of existing citizen science projects in the UK (as well as global initiatives) that can be adapted for use to help address food policy areas of research interest. We conclude that making use of citizen science approaches in food policy reseaarch can help the transition toward a more equitable and sustainable food and agriculture system

Assessing species’ habitat associations from occurrence records, standardised monitoring data and expert opinion: a test with British butterflies

Accurate knowledge of species’ habitat associations is important for conservation planning and policy. Assessing habitat associations is a vital precursor to selecting appropriate indicator species for prioritising sites for conservation or assessing trends in habitat quality. However, much existing knowledge is based on qualitative expert opinion or local scale studies, and may not remain accurate across different spatial scales or geographic locations. Data from biological recording schemes have the potential to provide objective measures of habitat association, with the ability to account for spatial variation. We used data on 50 British butterfly species as a test case to investigate the correspondence of data-derived measures of habitat association with expert opinion, from two different butterfly recording schemes. One scheme collected large quantities of occurrence data (c. 3 million records) and the other, lower quantities of standardised monitoring data (c. 1400 sites). We used general linear mixed effects models to derive scores of association with broad-leaf woodland for both datasets and compared them with scores canvassed from experts. Scores derived from occurrence and abundance data both showed strongly positive correlations with expert opinion. However, only for occurrence data did these fell within the range of correlations between experts. Data-derived scores showed regional spatial variation in the strength of butterfly associations with broad-leaf woodland, with a significant latitudinal trend in 26% of species. Sub-sampling of the data suggested a mean sample size of 5000 occurrence records per species to gain an accurate estimation of habitat association, although habitat specialists are likely to be readily detected using several hundred records. Occurrence data from recording schemes can thus provide easily obtained, objective, quantitative measures of habitat association

Social democracy, embeddedness and decommodification: On the conceptual innovations and intellectual affiliations of Karl Polanyi

Of the several debates that revolve around the work of the economic historian and political economist Karl Polanyi, one that continues to exercise minds concerns his analysis of, and political attitudes toward, post-war capitalism and the welfare state. Simplified a little, it is a debate with two sides. To borrow Iván Szelényi's terms, one side constructs a ‘hard’ Karl Polanyi, the other a ‘soft’ one. The former advocated a socialist mixed economy dominated by redistributive mechanisms. He was a radical socialist for whom the market should never be the dominant mechanism of economic coordination. His ‘soft’ alter ego insisted that the market system remain essentially intact but be complemented by redistributive mechanisms. The ‘double movement’ – the central thesis of his ‘Great Transformation’ – acts, in this reading, as a self-correcting mechanism that moderates the excesses of market fundamentalism; its author was positioned within the social-democratic mainstream for which the only realistic desirable goal is a regulated form of capitalism. In terms of textual evidence there is much to be said for both interpretations. In this article I suggest a different approach, one that focuses upon the meaning of Polanyi's concepts in relation to their socio-political and intellectual environment

Why Social Enterprises Are Asking to Be Multi-stakeholder and Deliberative: An Explanation around the Costs of Exclusion.

The study of multi-stakeholdership (and multi-stakeholder social enterprises in particular) is only at the start. Entrepreneurial choices which have emerged spontaneously, as well as the first legal frameworks approved in this direction, lack an adequate theoretical support. The debate itself is underdeveloped, as the existing understanding of organisations and their aims resist an inclusive, public interest view of enterprise. Our contribution aims at enriching the thin theoretical reflections on multi-stakeholdership, in a context where they are already established, i.e. that of social and personal services. The aim is to provide an economic justification on why the governance structure and decision-making praxis of the firm needs to account for multiple stakeholders. In particular with our analysis we want: a) to consider production and the role of firms in the context of the “public interest” which may or may not coincide with the non-profit objective; b) to ground the explanation of firm governance and processes upon the nature of production and the interconnections between demand and supply side; c) to explain that the costs associated with multi-stakeholder governance and deliberation in decision-making can increase internal efficiency and be “productive” since they lower internal costs and utilise resources that otherwise would go astray. The key insight of this work is that, differently from major interpretations, property costs should be compared with a more comprehensive range of costs, such as the social costs that emerge when the supply of social and personal services is insufficient or when the identification of aims and means is not shared amongst stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs derived from exclusion are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multistakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives

Citizen Science for Quantifying and Reducing Food Loss and Food Waste

Food loss and food waste are urgent global problems relating to environmental and social challenges including biodiversity loss, climate change, health, and malnutrition. Reduction targets have been set, including Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3, which aims to halve per capita food waste at retail and consumer levels globally by 2030, as well as reduce food losses along production and supply chains. Citizen science, the engagement of members of the public in data collection and other elements of the scientific process, can play a role in tackling the problem of food waste and food loss. In this paper, we scope opportunities for using citizen science to answer 26 priority research questions identified by experts in the field of food waste and food loss as being critical to achieving SDG12.3. We describe how citizen science can be used to quantify and understand causes of food loss and waste. Crucially, we demonstrate the value of citizen science in being not just a data gathering tool but also a method of bringing about change through influencing action, from individual behavior to policy making. Furthermore, we argue the need to bring together all actors in the food system in citizen science projects in order to build shared understanding that will ultimately lead to reduced loss and waste across the food system

Domestic knowledge, inequalities and differences

Research suggests that domestic knowledge is an expression of gender differences, which is constructed and deployed through unequal social relations, and is able to empower women if it gains collective spaces of expression. The article presents an analysis of parental involvement at school in Spain so as to underpin the former thesis and highlight its connection with the political theory about the "sexual contract"