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This content analysis of 62 local news stories from seven US locations published between March 1 and June 30, 2020, reveals how the migration of seasonal residents and short-term renters into leisure and nature-focused amenity-rich settings during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the social meaning of home for year-round and seasonal or part-time residents. Four themes emerge relating to (a) local economies; (b) health and safety; (c) local government; and (d) insiders and outsiders. These themes are connected to each other in the larger explanatory story of second home real estate morality projects, defined as dilemmas, deliberations, and conflicting considerations made by individual and group stakeholders in the evaluation of acquisition, use, meaning, and dispossession of properties meant for residential use beyond the primary residence. Findings reveal that moral considerations of deservedness and citizenship among local residents and short-term residents are framed as deep and incompatible concerns surrounding economic stability and public health. This COVID-19-induced moral framing of the interplay between economic, health, and social concerns is situated in a cultural-relational analysis of marketplaces, using Viviana Zelizer’s (2005) “connected lives” approach to understanding how everyday economic interactions among and within families and neighborhoods are imbued with social and cultural meaning even in a time of crisis.

This chapter addresses research results regarding the past and current messages disseminated about Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS) in Romania, as well as how new messages about CCUS are perceived by stakeholders. The research was conducted within the ACT ALIGN CCUS Project, funded by the European Commission to accelerate the demonstration and implementation of CCUS by addressing specific R&D gaps across the CCUS chain (act-ccs.eu/align). Media analysis and website analysis were conducted in Romania to identify the current and past core messages about CCUS used in society, while focus group research was conducted to test new core messages among citizens in Romania. The media analysis results show that media coverage and representations of CCUS for the time periods analysed were low in Romania, while the overall tone of the articles identified was relatively positive, as expressed by the division of arguments in favour of versus against CCUS. The CCUS topic is scarce on stakeholder websites in Romania. The results of the focus group study show that participants in the industrial area considered both environmental and economic benefits important, whereas participants in the non-industrial area considered environmental benefits more important. Most of the participants in the two focus groups expressed concerns about the safety of storage and transport, expressing the need to prevent further climate change. The CCUS messages testing shows the need for clarity, accessibility and appeal to citizens’ personal interests. This research was relevant for investigating the public debate on CCUS technologies in its early stages of development.

This chapter aims to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of an ultraconservative group’s crisis communication. It delves into the communication strategies and narratives of the Taliban as they interact with the international media, particularly in relation to the women residing in Afghanistan. A qualitative content analysis of the Taliban’s initial press conference, subsequent interviews and statements on the women in Afghanistan after the Kabul takeover in August 2021 was conducted to understand how the group constructed its narrative on women. The findings suggest that the Taliban adopt a coherent communication strategy. Overall, the group seems to construct a positive image of free women in Afghanistan under their governance by representing image repair strategies of denying disadvantages and positioning themselves as supportive of women’s rights, embedded in hero narratives. Through an analysis of the data employed in this research, it transpired that the Taliban lay a special emphasis on a promising future for their home country through the implementation of the principles of human rights, with a special focus on their commitment to women’s rights and the respect they accord to women. With regard to the imposition of restrictions on Afghan women, the group can be seen to adopt an image repair strategy, employed by evading responsibility, coupled with a narrative of blaming foreign forces.

The Prevent policy was singular and ‘simple’: to prevent individuals from getting drawn into terrorism, to identify and stop this process before it begins. In the context of the global war on terror and the shadow of terrorist attacks in the United States and England, this was an increasingly growing issue within the media and the broader public discourse. A central institution charged with enacting Prevent in the United Kingdom were education institutions (schools, colleges and universities), the rationale being that these places of learning house individuals during impressionable and vulnerable times and the Prevent policy can protect these individuals.

This chapter will provide an alternative critical discussion on Prevent by framing it as the securitisation of the UK education sector. As such, Prevent is a form of surveillance and a mechanism of power over educators and learners which carry counterproductive consequences for both. In doing so, this chapter will question how education professionals balance their professional identity and their new role in supporting and enacting the Prevent duty. Through developing a new multi-level ‘Critical Realist World Systems Model’, this chapter will provide a conceptual discussion of Prevent policy more broadly and how education professionals navigate the friction between their professional values and legal obligations. This chapter draws on a range of theoretical traditions to begin to question a well-established security policy within English and Welsh educational institutions providing a conceptual starting point to examine similar and future policies.

This paper draws on 26 in-depth interviews with people living with type 1 diabetes (T1D) to explore how experiences and interpretations of disability redirect and transform reproductive trajectories. I apply Almeling's conceptualization of reproduction as the “biological and social process of having or not having children” as a framework for understanding what occurs at multiple analytical layers (structural and cultural, interactional, self, and body) across the life course and influences how and whether people with disabilities feel having children is something they want or need or is within their reach. Findings reveal the lasting impact of viewing the film Steel Magnolias, pivotal interactions with healthcare providers, and interpretations of embodied T1D experiences as major sources of tension for participants as they reflect on their reproductive trajectories and outlooks. Considering especially the structural and cultural layer, this paper enriches our understanding of disability by demonstrating that both women and men with less noticeable or visible disability are subject to similar social imperatives of risk management and moral reproduction as those with more noticeable physical or sensory disabilities, although gender also matters for how participants experience these imperatives. Findings lend support for viewing reproduction as a lifelong process beyond the sequence from conception to birth, as some significant disability experiences that transform or redirect reproductive trajectories fall outside this timeframe.

This study assesses distress in the lives of farming population in Ghana's northern interior. Whereas recent studies addressing mental health in Africa produce evidentially sound analyses of the correlated role of food and water insecurity, this study engages with how and why worries over educational costs feature so prominently in a measure of psychosocial well-being. While it is significant that education identifiably figures in escalating the experience with distress, my contention is that what is more important is putting that escalation into the context of why. I use Narotzky and Besnier's framework for understanding the economy as the interactions between crisis, value, and hope to situate a mixed methods study concerned with how distress is proximately shaped by the interactive socioeconomic features of daily life (paying school fees, buying food, cultivating maize, etc.) but ultimately shaped by structural features of the political economy that direct people's objectives amid chronic crisis. My proposition is that because education is where value resides, it is a primary vehicle by which people are acting in crisis in a hopeful manner. In this way, this study leverages the tools of economic anthropology within debates about how to best assess the ways in which health and illness are shaped by socioeconomic realms.

This chapter outlines research conducted by Karan Vickers-Hulse (KVH) as part of an educational professional doctorate; Marcus Witt (MW) was one of her supervisory team. Participants were from two initial teacher education (ITE) routes (School Direct and university-led) leading to a PGCE primary teacher qualification. The research was set within the context of continuously evolving policy on the training of teachers and the subsequent impact on developing a professional identity. The introduction of new ITE routes in England (DfE, 2015) aimed to offer a wider range of pathways into teaching, attract more applicants and mitigate the impact of teacher shortages. The research discussed in this chapter explored the experiences of trainees on these routes and the impact on their professional identity formation. This chapter begins with an overview of the literature in the field of professional identity formation, followed by a discussion of the chosen methodology and methods. This chapter concludes with several recommendations for teacher training providers as well as recommendations for future research that may be useful for doctoral students interested in the field of professional identity formation.

This chapter provides an illustration of doctoral case study research and insights to how practitioner research can capture the localised impact of policy shifts.

Rapid technological change in the transport sector is leading to a growing range of potential and actual ‘business models’ deployable for the movement of goods and people. Two key uncertainties arise from this proliferation: first, concerning which ones can be economically viable, and, second, whether they can be both simultaneously economically viable and contribute to the imperatives of more sustainable mobility. The present chapter reviews and appraises the emergence of these new business models, drawing on both literature review and empirical research with entrepreneurs involved in the new mobility sector. Specifically, the potential of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, n.d.) as a device to structure and frame the debate about what constitutes a valuable contribution to sustainable mobility is considered. A framework is developed which captures how mobility and transport have dependencies with the SDGs. From this analysis, key sustainability concepts are derived which have either a subsistence function (maintaining the basics of human life) or an enhancement function (enabling citizens to realise their potential whilst reducing impacts on the planet). Five different innovations involving mobility sector business entrepreneurship are then characterised using this framework to exemplify its ability to deconstruct and test claims that ‘smart mobility’ is also good for sustainability as well as good for business. It is concluded that the framework could contribute to a wider architecture of sustainability interrogation. It could promote discourse around a wide range of actors, posing questions and surfacing tensions and contingencies effectively, whilst providing a holistic, strategic assessment to inform more targeted, scientific evaluations of sustainability metrics.

Eco-entrepreneurship is a topical issue in academic and professional literature over the past decade. In Africa, it is a relatively new concept fast gaining momentum with wide applicability and acceptance given its benefits in promoting consumer adoption of sustainable lifestyles, resilient environment, economic empowerment, and a win–win balance in the ecology and economy nexus. Amidst the growing impact of climate change and environmental degradation, eco-entrepreneurship has become a necessity, with emerging opportunities being in urban waste management, recycling, and renewable energy technologies. Regardless of the benefits of eco-entrepreneurship, regulatory and governance structures inform the viability of any initiatives. This chapter presents how political ecology structures intersect and impact eco-entrepreneurship in Africa. Given that nations’ approaches can differ, this study provides a case study synthesis of two major African economies namely Nigeria and South Africa. The authors document the predominant political orientation and attitude toward eco-entrepreneurship. First, the authors argue that the political environment is indifferent to the potential of the eco-entrepreneurial framework, hence applying a one-size-fits-all approach. Second is that the attention to eco-entrepreneurship by policymakers is economically inclined, they focus mainly on economic growth opportunities; equally, that eco-entrepreneurship offers opportunities for the protection of social and environmental integrity cannot be ignored. Third, is the bandwagon effect associated with eco-entrepreneurship initiatives, where the need to align with international bodies and states drives a Eurocentric concern? The authors conclude that fostering enabling policy environment can help enhance the productivity of current eco-entrepreneurial initiatives as well as attract new ones needed to explore eco-entrepreneurship benefits.