An agent-based approach to assess drivers’ interaction with pre-trip information systems.

This article reports on the practical use of a multi-agent microsimulation framework to address the issue of assessing drivers’ responses to pretrip information systems. The population of drivers is represented as a community of autonomous agents, and travel demand results from the decision-making deliberation performed by each individual of the population as regards route and departure time. A simple simulation scenario was devised, where pretrip information was made available to users on an individual basis so that its effects at the aggregate level could be observed. The simulation results show that the overall performance of the system is very likely affected by exogenous information, and these results are ascribed to demand formation and network topology. The expressiveness offered by cognitive approaches based on predicate logics, such as the one used in this research, appears to be a promising approximation to fostering more complex behavior modelling, allowing us to represent many of the mental aspects involved in the deliberation process

Anthropology in conversation with an Islamic tradition : Emmanuel Levinas and the practice of critique

Funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland This research was funded by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. I would like to thank Arnar Arnason, Alison Brown, Tim Ingold, Jo Vergunst, and the anonymous JRAI readers for their critical feedback, which greatly improved the quality and coherence of this article.Peer reviewedPostprin

Heirloom rice in Ifugao: an ‘anti-commodity’ in the process of commodification

We analyse the marketing of ‘heirloom rices’ produced in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, the Philippines, as the commodification of a historical ‘anti-commodity’. We contend that, historically, rice was produced for social, cultural and spiritual purposes but not primarily for sale or trade. The Ifugaos were able to sustain terraced wet-rice cultivation within a system of ‘escape agriculture’ because they were protected from Spanish interference by the friction of terrain and distance. ‘Heirloom rice’ is a boundary concept that enables social entrepreneurs to commodify traditional landraces. We analyse the implications for local rice production and conservation efforts.Templeton Foundatio

On biocoloniality and 'respectability' in contemporary London.

This essay is framed by discussions on the civil unrest in British cities in 2011, the politics of austerity, the mass unemployment of the young, ‘the war on terror’ and ‘radicalisation’ and the vulnerability of the poor and ‘unrespectable’. It advances a concept of biocoloniality and explores ‘respectability’, class and transnational postcolonial urban cultures in contemporary London. The essay argues for a theorisation which can account for how a divided subject produces the effect of an undivided and self-governing ‘core self’ who ‘possesses’ distinguishing ‘biological’ ‘capacities’, ‘psychological’ attributes’ and cultural ‘characteristics’. It considers how this is accomplished through our daily practical activity such as our ‘imaginable’, ‘possible’ sexual desires, everyday practices of reflection, our bodily demeanour and bodily significations. This concept of biocoloniality is composed of two theoretical strands. In ‘on inscription and creolisation’ and in dialogue with a single respondent on ‘respectability’ and ‘beauty’, I entwine disparate theoretical threads from work on biopolitics and governmentality, racialisation, psychoanalysis and postcoloniality and performativity, sexualisation and intersectionality together. I forward a formulation of inscription that can reveal how we inscribe and sculpt our own and other bodies with different ‘capacities’ and ‘qualities’. I then tie strands of work on repetition together and advance a theorisation of reiteration. I consider how we struggle with, overcome and are defeated by ourselves as we reinscribe our own and other bodies. The essay thus considers how it is through in part our daily biocolonial practice that different bodies that are closer to and more distant from notions of the human, the un/respectable, un/desirable, ab/normal, ir/replaceable and expendable come into being and how this unsettles clear distinctions between coloniality and postcoloniality

Men's passage to fatherhood: an analysis of the contemporary relevance of transition theory

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of men's experiences of pregnancy, birth and early fatherhood. It does so using a framework of ritual transition theory and argues that despite its earlier structural-functionalist roots, transition theory remains a valuable framework, illuminating contemporary transitions across the life course. The paper discusses the historical development of transition or ritual theory and, drawing upon data generated during longitudinal ethnographic interviews with men undergoing the transition to fatherhood, analyses its relevance in understanding contemporary experiences of fatherhood