The Boundary Work of Commercial Friendship

With the aim to reconsider lifestyle values in relation to economic rationality in small tourism and hospitality businesses, we focus on the “commercial home” as a site where boundaries between personal and commercial values are constantly performed in practice. Through an interactionist analysis of the narrative of a B&B and gallery owner, we illustrate the emergence of intimacy as a commercial value in the hospitality industry. We analyse the formation of values as a dynamic social process where a traditional market ethos is both rejected and reformulated. We argue that by focusing on the co-creation of value in interactions between producers and consumers, new possibilities to analyse service economy dynamics become visible

The tourism business operator as a moral gatekeeper : The relational work of recreational hunting in Sweden

The article analyses how hunting tourism businesses in Sweden navigate in the nexus between moral and economic value spheres. Through the analytical lens of ‘moral gatekeeper’, the business operators are depicted as acting from a position where they navigate in a contested space. The analysis demonstrates how the operators balance different norms and practices of recreational hunting, wildlife management, business ethics and customer expectations. The study is based on ethnographic interviews with business operators, observations of hunting arrangements, and document analysis of hunting media, with a focus on narratives and accounts of value. The findings show a complex moral economy where stewardship hunting and gift economics are both intertwined with and kept separate from market relations, which makes the hunting arrangements appear as a ‘peculiar’ form of commodity. The analysis demonstrates how moral arguments concerning wildlife management and human well-being are embedded in market relations and discourses on experiences, entailing seemingly opposite forms of commodification. One is related to calculable values, as in trophy hunting, and one is related to the embodied experience of nature. The study provides nuanced and contextual knowledge of the intertwinement of personal and market relationships in recreational hunting and the commodification of wildlife experiences

Commodification of recreational hunting in Sweden : hunting tourism experiences as ‘peculiar goods’

The paper is based on a study of hunting tourism enterprising in Sweden. The study examines how hunting tourism businesses in Sweden navigate in a complex social, economic and moral environment. The aim of the present paper is to identify how tensions between a market- oriented value sphere and a value sphere based on friendship- and community reciprocity are played out in hunting tourism entrepreneurship. In particular, the study focuses on the ambiguous character of the hunting experience product and the different narratives and discourses framing what is considered, by the actors themselves, to be a ‘good’ hunting tourism experience

Analytic Model for Cross-Layer Dependencies in VDSL2 access networks

Recent changes in user employment of Internet based services, new deployment technologies for mobile networks as well as an ongoing realisation of fixed and mobile converged networks e.g. the EU FP7 project COMBO, are significant examples of enablers for increasing demands on DSL links. Investigating cross-layer dependencies between all layers in the OSI reference model becomes increasingly important. In this paper we present an analytical model and experimental results for the relation between impulse noise on a VDSL2 link and the effect this have on the network layer packet loss. We show how the packet loss rate is dependent not only on the disturbance signal level and periodicity but also on the link utilisation

Jaktturism - ett delikat balansarbete i en komplex ekonomi

Recreational hunting in Sweden can be depicted as being embedded in two different but overlapping cultural and socio-economic contexts. One is the traditional stewardship-oriented form of hunting, in Swedish called ‘allmoge’ hunting. Another form is the commercial form of hunting, where hunting is packaged and offered to visitors, quite often with different types of services included. These two forms of organising hunting are based on different logics of exchange. The ‘allmoge’ hunting is in general terms organised by local communities of hunters or through ‘friendship hunting’, a reciprocal relationship encompassed by the local hunting team and invited guests. The other is market-oriented, with differing range of price depending on the segment. These two systems represent different value spheres that both intersect and collide, creating tensions and ambiguity, which serves as the context and backdrop of this study. The study is based on interviews with commercial hunting tourism operators, observations of hunting events, and documentary material. The article focuses on how these commercial actors navigate in this complex social and cultural economy. Through the theoretical concept “balancing work” narratives and accounts related to the following themes are being analysed: 1) Gift economic exchanges and how they intersect with market relations, 2) the tension between wildlife management and commerce, 3) the different and often seemingly contradictory meanings of “the good hunting experience”, and 4) the dramaturgy involved in the balancing work of the hunting event. The paper concludes with a synthesising analysis, theorizing around the hunting tourism product as a form of “peculiar goods”, that is, a type of product that comprises moral ambiguity and hence must be legitimised as a “product”. This points at a complex economy where economic arguments are always embedded in social and moral considerations, evoking an ongoing and dynamic balancing work

Hidden Attractions of Administration

This book argues that the expansion of administrative activities in today’s working life is driven not only by pressure from above, but also from below. The authors examine the inner dynamics of people-processing organizations—those formally working for clients, patients, or students—to uncover the hidden attractions of doing administrative work, despite all the complaints and laments about "too many meetings" or "too much paperwork." There is something appealing to those compelled to participate in today’s constantly multiplying and expanding administration that defies popular framings of it as merely pressure from above. Hidden Attractions of Administration shows in detail the emotional attractiveness, moral conflicts, and almost magical features that administrative tasks often entail in today’s organizations, supported by ethnographic studies consisting of over 200 qualitative interviews and participant observations from ten organizational settings and contexts across Sweden. The authors also question and complement explanations in administration-related research that have previously been taken for granted, arguing that it is a simplification to attribute all aspects of the change to New Public Management and instead taking into account what the classic sociologist Georg Simmel called anEigendynamik: a self-reinforcing tendency that, under certain circumstances, needs only a nudge in an administrative direction to get going. By applying ethnography to issues of bureaucratization and meeting cultures and by drawing on findings in emotional sociology and social anthropology, this volume contributes to both the sociology of work and the study of human service organizations and will appeal to scholars and students working across both areas

Service triads:a research agenda for buyer–supplier–customer triads in business services

Service triads, in which a buyer contracts with a supplier to deliver services directly to the buyer's customer, represent an emerging business model. This special issue is dedicated to this theme. To set the context, in this lead article, we first define service triads, both as a phenomenon and a research topic. We then provide a review of different strands of existing research and various theoretical frameworks that can inform our study of service triads. This culminates in an outline of a research agenda that can guide future study. As such, this paper not only introduces the articles in the special issue, but is also intended as a point of reference and motivation for further work on service triads, and on triads in general

Effects of Anacetrapib in Patients with Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease

BACKGROUND: Patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease remain at high risk for cardiovascular events despite effective statin-based treatment of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels. The inhibition of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) by anacetrapib reduces LDL cholesterol levels and increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. However, trials of other CETP inhibitors have shown neutral or adverse effects on cardiovascular outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 30,449 adults with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive atorvastatin therapy and who had a mean LDL cholesterol level of 61 mg per deciliter (1.58 mmol per liter), a mean non-HDL cholesterol level of 92 mg per deciliter (2.38 mmol per liter), and a mean HDL cholesterol level of 40 mg per deciliter (1.03 mmol per liter). The patients were assigned to receive either 100 mg of anacetrapib once daily (15,225 patients) or matching placebo (15,224 patients). The primary outcome was the first major coronary event, a composite of coronary death, myocardial infarction, or coronary revascularization. RESULTS: During the median follow-up period of 4.1 years, the primary outcome occurred in significantly fewer patients in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (1640 of 15,225 patients [10.8%] vs. 1803 of 15,224 patients [11.8%]; rate ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.85 to 0.97; P=0.004). The relative difference in risk was similar across multiple prespecified subgroups. At the trial midpoint, the mean level of HDL cholesterol was higher by 43 mg per deciliter (1.12 mmol per liter) in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (a relative difference of 104%), and the mean level of non-HDL cholesterol was lower by 17 mg per deciliter (0.44 mmol per liter), a relative difference of -18%. There were no significant between-group differences in the risk of death, cancer, or other serious adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive statin therapy, the use of anacetrapib resulted in a lower incidence of major coronary events than the use of placebo. (Funded by Merck and others; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN48678192 ; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01252953 ; and EudraCT number, 2010-023467-18 .)

The Use of Photo-elicitation in Tourism Research - Framing the Backpacker Experience

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the use of photo-elicitation as a method for data collection as well as a method for analysis. By using a study on backpacker tourism where the respondents’ own photographs were used in in-depth interviews as an example, the immersion of data collection and analysis is illustrated through the backpackers’ narratives and experiences of travel photography. The theoretical point of departure in the study on backpackers was the social construction of the travel experience as liminal, playful and extraordinary. Considering the phenomenon of backpacking tourism as a gradually institutionalized phenomenon, constructing the extraordinary – including authenticity as an important criterion – became, from the backpacker’s perspective, an act of balance between emphasizing individuality and simultaneously conforming to the ideals and norms of the backpacker culture. The contradictory conditions of the backpacker experience were highlighted through narratives on photography and the analysis was focussing on ambivalent experiences. Following Simmel’s dichotomy between individuality and social form, four analytical themes were developed: ‘‘Framing the unique’’, framing the local scene’’, ‘‘catching the moment’’ and ‘‘the deviants among backpackers’’. The first three indicates the photographic and experiental ideals of the backpackers, and the fourth underlines the norms of the backpacking culture through narratives on the deviants