Cultural Intolerance, in Practice: Social Variation in Food and Drink Avoidances in Italy, 2003-2016

Sociological literature on cultural practices seeking to understand the social differentiation of taste pays limited attention to what people avoid consuming, despite its potential as a strategic indicator of taste. Avoidance has special relevance for the understanding of eating and drinking practices which are often characterized by exclusion of items for health, hedonic, reputational, or spiritual reasons. Making use of rich data on twenty-three items commonly consumed by Italian adults, this paper investigates how avoidances-i.e. what people claim never to eat or drink-are clustered, socially patterned and have evolved over time. Methodologically, we propose the novel use and integration of two machine learning techniques-Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and Boosted Regression Trees (BRT)- to identify nine highly homogeneous avoidance clusters and examine the power of social variables in predicting the probability of individuals' belonging to various clusters and to further characterize them. We conclude by discussing possible rationales behind avoidance

Google Search and the creation of ignorance: The case of the climate crisis

The article examines the relationship between commercial search engines, using Google Search as an example, and various forms of ignorance related to climate change. It draws on concepts from the field of agnotology to explore how environmental ignorances, and specifically related to the climate crisis, are shaped at the intersection of the logics of Google Search, everyday life and civil society/politics. Ignorance refers to a multi-facetted understanding of the culturally contingent ways in which something may not be known. Two research questions are addressed: How are environmental ignorances, and in particular related to the climate crisis, shaped at the intersection of the logics of Google Search, everyday life and civil society/politics? In what ways can we conceptualise Google's role as configured into the creation of ignorances? The argument is made through four vignettes, each of which explores and illustrates how Google Search is configured into a different kind of socially produced ignorance: (1) Ignorance through information avoidance: climate anxiety; (2) Ignorance through selective choice: gaming search terms; (3) Ignorance by design: algorithmically embodied emissions; (4) Ignorance through query suggestions: directing people to data voids. The article shows that while Google Search and its underlying algorithmic and commercial logic pre-figure these ignorances, they are also co-created and co-maintained by content producers, users and other human and non-human actors, as Google Search has become integral of social practices and ideas about them. The conclusion draws attention to a new logic of ignorance that is emerging in conjunction with a new knowledge logic

The quest for "nature" in selfies: how platforms shape nature/society relationships

Social media and other platforms have become an essential part of outdoor activities as they influence how nature is experienced and engaged with, but also what good nature is seen as. In this article, we explore how social understandings of nature and digital technologies are mutually performed. Using the empirical case of nature selfies-an archetype of imagery on social media platforms-posted on Instagram, Facebook, and Tripadvisor, and a small participatory "breaching experiment" aimed at collecting "ugly nature selfies," we analyse and interrogate nature/society relationships displayed online within the platform contexts of attention economy and affordances. We conclude that nature selfies reinforce the desirability of consuming "beautiful" nature, while attention economy and platform affordances limit the possibilities for alternative nature/society relationships to be developed and promoted

When hope messages become the discursive norm: how repertoires of hope shape communicative capacity in conversations on the circular economy

Environmental communication research often conceptualises hope as an internal state of mind, suggesting that messages focused on hope can be used in strategic communication to foster environmental engagement. In this paper, we critique this individualising approach and instead explore hope discourse as an emergent social phenomenon, focusing on how it is constructed and managed in inspirational meetings about the circular economy. Using critical discursive psychology as a methodology, we identify three interpretative repertoires through which hope is constructed: stronger together, change for real, silver lining. We explore what is accomplished by their use, and discuss the social implications within the meetings and beyond. The repertoires facilitate a positive meeting experience and solidarity amongst participants. However, hope discourse also relies on abstraction which prohibits disagreement, critique, and talk about concrete actions

Performing the Circular economy: how an ambiguous discourse is managed and maintained through meetings

The circular economy (CE) is seen as a structural solution to society's sustainability problems. But with a large diversity of definitions, CE is also often portrayed as immature or in need of conceptual synthesis. Rather than treating the bemoaned ambiguity as a problem, in this article we analyse its implications on CE practice at the example of meetings aimed at popularising CE to businesspeople. To this end, we build on a grounded theory approach to analyse ethnographic and participant observations of CE meetings in Sweden from a performativity perspective. We identify four major communication norms that are enabled by ambiguity in the observed meetings, and simultaneously manage and maintain this ambiguity. The communication norms consist of implicit standards for how people ought to act, talk, respond, and reflect in the meetings. We contribute to CE scholarship by showing how ambiguity is not a sign of failure or immaturity, but an integral and productive part of CE discourse, as it enables diverse actors to congregate around shared aims. Our findings may help CE practitioners and scholars to make explicit the ambiguity of the CE concept in meetings, and ultimately to navigate in debates about what society and economy we want to live in

Global survey of precious plastic projects: a summary of findings

A report based on a survey of activities of precious plastics projects worldwide

From responsible to responsive innovation: a systemic and historically sensitive approach to innovation processes

Responsible innovation has emerged as a field of research dedicated to introduce sensitivity to societal values in innovation processes. However, much of the academic literature on RI deals with single technologies instead of technological systems and is future-orientated without explicitly using specialised knowledge of past developments. In this paper, we present a problem-focused approach to RI that aims to support researchers and stakeholders in developing potential solutions from a perspective of systemic awareness and historical sensitivity. We then describe the application of this approach in an 18 months long interdisciplinary research project on plastics. We show that the approach has generated new and unexpected research projects, formed new inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations, and has impacted some participants’ understanding of the systems in which their work is embedded. We conclude that with appropriate willingness to engage by individual researchers, our approach is able to, firstly, influence highly experienced researchers to engage more responsibly with their work, and secondly, to make research projects responsive by including societal concerns and their historical emergence from the start

Google Search and the creation of ignorance: The case of the climate crisis

The article examines the relationship between commercial search engines, using Google Search as an example, and various forms of ignorance related to climate change. It draws on concepts from the field of agnotology to explore how environmental ignorances, and specifically related to the climate crisis, are shaped at the intersection of the logics of Google Search, everyday life and civil society/politics. Ignorance refers to a multi-facetted understanding of the culturally contingent ways in which something may not be known. Two research questions are addressed: How are environmental ignorances, and in particular related to the climate crisis, shaped at the intersection of the logics of Google Search, everyday life and civil society/politics? In what ways can we conceptualise Google's role as configured into the creation of ignorances? The argument is made through four vignettes, each of which explores and illustrates how Google Search is configured into a different kind of socially produced ignorance: (1) Ignorance through information avoidance: climate anxiety; (2) Ignorance through selective choice: gaming search terms; (3) Ignorance by design: algorithmically embodied emissions; (4) Ignorance through query suggestions: directing people to data voids. The article shows that while Google Search and its underlying algorithmic and commercial logic pre-figure these ignorances, they are also co-created and co-maintained by content producers, users and other human and non-human actors, as Google Search has become integral of social practices and ideas about them. The conclusion draws attention to a new logic of ignorance that is emerging in conjunction with a new knowledge logic.