Search results

This paper considers the role of nonhuman animals in the thought of Donna Haraway, going from her critique of the animal as model/mirror for the evolution of the human body politic to her proposal for a “compost” society. It demonstrates her changing positions in relation to the social role of animals and the deepening of her critique of intersectional relations that subordinate nonhuman animals and animalized people.

The paper intertwines a loosely historical approach and a thematic one, focusing on key issues of sociological theory, such as work, agency and kinship, and the way these relate to the animal question in Haraway's writings. Her texts are discussed both broadly and in-depth, and her positionality in terms of both feminism and antispeciesism is foregrounded.

The paper shows how the progressive abandonment of a posthuman approach in favor of a compostist one brings Haraway nearer to intersectional ecofeminism and to a fuller consideration of nonhuman agency at a material level, as well as to a deeper critique of instrumental relations of domination and issue that had been problematic in critiques of her earlier work.

The paper highlights the role of nonhumans in the evolution and constitution of societies and advocates a response-able multispecies politics.

This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the social role of animals in Haraway's thought and the deepening antispeciesism of her feminist approach that sheds a different light on her positionality in relation to ecofeminism.

This paper aims to examine the recommendation system of the video-sharing website YouTube to study how control of users is effected on online platforms.

This paper conceptualises algorithmic systems as protocols – technological and social infrastructures that both facilitate and govern interactions between autonomous actors (Galloway and Thacker, 2004, 2007). It adopts a netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2002) to study not only the formal, technological systems of the platform but also the systems as they were made sense of, understood and enacted upon by actors. It relies both on information as revealed by the organisation itself, as well as discussions between lay users in online forums and press coverage.

The results of this study indicate that the ways in which platforms selectively facilitate interactions between users constitute a form of control. While maintaining the appearance of an open and neutral marketplace, interactions on the platform are in fact highly structured. The system relies on the surveillance of user interactions to rapidly identify and propagate marketable contents, so as to maximise user “engagement” and ad revenue. The systems place few demands or restrictions on individual users, instead control is effected in a probabilistic fashion, over the population of users as a whole, so as to, in aggregate, accomplish organisational goal.

This paper contributes to the literature on accounting and control practices in online spaces, by extending the notion of control beyond overt rankings and evaluations, to the underlying technical and social infrastructures that facilitate and shape interactions.

This paper aims to focus on the re-presentation of the cultural phenomena hygge in Denmark and fika in Sweden in destination branding and address the inevitability of their essentialization through the branding process.

Three relevant semi-structured interviews with destination marketing organisation’s employees were conducted, as well as a content-based analysis of three social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). A total of 465 posts in total were analysed (140 Facebook posts, 109 Twitter posts, 216 Instagram posts).

This study demonstrates how, when communicated through social media, intangible cultural assets are transformed into tangible elements. It explains why the re-presentation and place branding processes necessarily simplify and essentialize the destination.

Destination branding scholars have traditionally criticised the flattening and essentialization of culture in destination branding and have called for a more nuanced approach to presenting a destination. This paper situates destination branding as a process that necessitates the manipulation of the presentation of the destination, which inevitably essentializes the place; this is intended. Critical destination branding researchers need to rethink their criticisms and acknowledge the inherent essentialization goal of destination branding.

The article introduces selected theoretical approaches to time and temporality relevant to the field of library and information science, and it briefly introduces the papers gathered in this special issue. A number of issues that could potentially be followed in future research are presented.

The authors review a selection of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of time that originate in or are of particular relevance to library and information science. Four main themes are identified: (1) information as object in temporal perspectives; (2) time and information as tools of power and control; (3) time in society; and (4) experiencing and practicing time.

The paper advocates a thorough engagement with how time and temporality shape notions of information more broadly. This includes, for example, paying attention to how various dimensions of the late-modern time regime of acceleration feed into the ways in which information is operationalised, how information work is commodified, and how hierarchies of information are established; paying attention to the changing temporal dynamics that networked information systems imply for our understanding of documents or of memory institutions; or how external events such as social and natural crises quickly alter modes, speed, and forms of data production and use, in areas as diverse as information practices, policy, management, representation, and organisation, amongst others.

By foregrounding temporal perspectives in library and information science, the authors advocate dialogue with important perspectives on time that come from other fields. Rather than just including such perspectives in library and information science, however, the authors find that the focus on information and documents that the library and information science field contributes has great potential to advance the understanding of how notions and experiences of time shape late-modern societies and individuals.

Fans are proactive consumers of pop culture products, who can be seen as prosumers. Fanvideo production is one of their most widespread practices in the participatory culture scenario. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze how ludic prosumption is featured on plays performed in Brazilian fanvideos based on successful pop culture franchises.

Research based on the interpretive content analysis of fanvideos of plays produced by Brazilian fans based on five emblematic pop culture franchises and published on YouTube.

Results have shown six play types in the analyzed fanvideos – i.e. child's play, performing powers, cosplay, play in social rites, teaching to play and “zuêra” –, which revealed a way of having fun in different situations through different practices based on ludic consumption experiences in different spheres of social life.

CCT-based studies focused on investigating plays as ludic consumption phenomenon, as well as fan culture, remain at early research stage. Thus, the main contribution of the present study lies on associating such concepts based on the concept of prosumption.

This paper aims to identify and prioritize the needs of coworking members. The authors focus on maintaining the existing members rather than attracting new ones.

The authors use two phases and multiple methods. The first phase focuses on a qualitative approach using observations and interviews to uncover and formulate the members’ needs. The second phase focuses on prioritizing the needs using a quantitative approach.

The authors discovered 19 member needs from the coworking spaces. Based on an online survey, the authors classified those needs into three main Kano model’s categories.

The resulting member needs and their strategic priorities provide a useful basis for coworking providers to direct their improvement efforts towards achieving greater member satisfaction.

The study refers to a health-care organization engaged in adopting “home health care” as a new object of activity. This study aims to explore how the reconfiguration of the object influences the transformative perspective, affecting not just a service but a broader approach and meaning behind patient care. It also investigates the main contradictions at play and the levers to support inter-organizational learning while facing the new challenges and change processes.

The work is based on a qualitative and ethnographic methodology directed to examine cultural, practical and socio-material aspects. The activity theory is assumed as a powerful approach to understand collective learning and distributed agency processes.

The renewal of the new object of work is analyzed as a trigger for shifts in representations, cultural processes and collective support implemented by the organization. Three agentic trajectories – technical, dialogical and collaborative agency – were cultivated by the management to deliver home health care through joint exercises of coordination and control, dialogical spaces and collaborative process.

The data collection was disrupted by the pandemic. A follow-up study would be beneficial to inquire how the learning processes shifted or were influenced by the contextual changes.

This contribution provides a practical framework for health-care organizations aiming to navigate and explore the physiological tensions and contradictions emerging when the object of work is changed.

The paper develops the field of intra- and inter-organizational learning by presenting an intertwined and structural connection between these processes and the renewing of the object of work. It advises that processes of transformation must be handled with attention to the critical and collective dynamics that accompany sustainable and situated changes.

This paper aims to address the relevance and impact of the fourth industrial revolution through a theoretical and practical perspective. The authors present both the results of a literature review, highlighting the new competences required in innovative workplaces and a pivotal case, which explores challenges and skill models diffused in industry 4.0, describing the role of proper organizational learning processes in shaping new work cultures.

The paper aims to enhance the discussion around the 4.0 industrial revolution addressing both a theoretical framework, valorizing the existing scientific contributes and the situated knowledge, embedded in a concrete organizational context in which the fourth industrial revolution is experienced and practiced.

The findings acquired through the case study endorse what the scientific literature highlights about the impact, the new competences and the organizational learning paths. The conclusions address the agile approach to work as the more suitable way to place humans at the center of technological progress.

The paper explores a specific organizational context, related to a high-tech multinational company, whose results illustrate the empirical evidence sustaining transformations in the working, professional and organizational cultures necessary to face the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. The research was conducted with the managers of an international company and this a specific and limited target, even though relevant and interesting.

The paper connects the case with the general scenario, this study currently faces, to suggest hints and coordinates for crossing the unfolding situation and finding suitable matching between technological evolution and the development of new work and professional cultures and competences.

Due to the acceleration that the COVID-19 has impressed to the use of digital technologies and remote connexion, the paper highlights some ambivalences that the quick evolution of the new technologies entails in relation to work and social conditions.

The opportunity to match both a literature analysis and an in-depth situated case study enhances the possibility to achieve a more articulated and complex view of the viral changes generated in the current context by the digitalization process.

This paper investigates constraints to yield enhancing technology adoptions, highlighting credit using data pooled from the first three waves of the Ethiopian socio-economic surveys.

Direct elicitation methodology is used to identify household's non-price credit rationing status. The panel selection model specified to examine causal effects of credit constraint on adoption variables allows us to tackle self-selection into adoptions and potential endogeneity of credit constraint while controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in both the selection and main equations.

Results show that about 54% of sample households face credit rationing, predominantly demand-side risk rationing. There is a negative association between measures of credit constraint status and adoption variables. The effect is stronger when the demand-side credit rationing is accounted for and when within household variation in credit constraint status overtime is considered as opposed to across constrained and unconstrained households.

Expanding physical access to institutional credit alone may not necessarily spur increased uptake of credit and instant investment by farm households. For a majority of them to take advantage of available credit and improved technology, interventions should also aim at minimizing downside risks.

This paper incorporates the role of downside risk in influencing farmer's decisions to uptake credits and subsequently his/her adoption behaviors. The researcher approached the topic by state-of-the-art method which allows obtaining more reliable results and hence more specific contributions to research and practice.

This study aims to investigate the factors that affect the likelihood of formalizing informal sector activities in 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, using World Bank enterprise survey data collected between the periods 2009 and 2018. Notwithstanding the great contribution of the informal economy in Africa, developing countries may stand to gain more if they make inroads in formalizing the informal sector.

Since the dependent variable is binary taking the value of one if the firm is willing to formalize and zero otherwise, the study will employ a discrete choice probit model.

Results inter alia show that firms that are more likely to formalize are young, owned by individuals with high levels of education and, have registered before. Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with information about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood for them to register would be high.

The study uses cross sectional data and therefore cannot capture time variant factors affecting the probability to register and also cannot correct effectively for endogeneity.

Governments should therefore target firms that are young and provide them with as much information as possible about the benefits of registration, and if these firms are owned by experienced and educated individuals, the likelihood to convince them to register would be high. They should also reduce the cost of registration so as to improve net benefits in line with the rational exit view.

Formalizing informal activities will help improve the performance of these firms, reduce vulnerable employment as well as crime, poverty and inequality. Providing decent operating and working conditions to informal players will reduce social and political unrest.

The African continent is home to many informal firms accounting for roughly 55% of economic activity with 90% of workers eking out a living in a sector that does not respect worker rights, provide decent working conditions and where changes in growth have done little to reduce its size. Regulatory reforms have also been implemented resulting in the number of start-up registration procedures falling from 11 in 2003 to seven in 2019. The uniqueness of Sub Saharan Africa in terms of entrepreneurial culture, political, institutional and economic conditions as well as lack of consensus in the extant empirical literature make this study pertinent.