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This study contributes to the understanding of the health effects of pesticides exposure and of how pesticides have been and should be regulated.

This study presents literature reviews for the period 2000–2013 on (i) the health effects of pesticides and on (ii) preference valuation of health risks related to pesticides, as well as a discussion of the role of benefit-cost analysis applied to pesticide regulatory measures.

This study indicates that the health literature has focused on individuals with direct exposure to pesticides, i.e. farmers, while the literature on preference valuation has focused on those with indirect exposure, i.e. consumers. The discussion highlights the need to clarify the rationale for regulating pesticides, the role of risk perceptions in benefit-cost analysis, and the importance of inter-disciplinary research in this area.

This study relates findings of different disciplines (health, economics, public policy) regarding pesticides, and identifies gaps for future research.

This chapter will explore how different feminist theories and theorists have informed what counts as research, what is defined as a research issue, and methodological approaches to research in higher education. It will consider the theoretical and methodological tools feminist academics have mobilized in order to develop more powerful explanations of how gender and other forms of difference work in the relation to the positioning of the individual, higher education and the nation state within globalized economies. It pays particular regard to the feminist political project of social justice.

In Western liberal democracies over the last decade or so, community development, housing policy and neighbourhood renewal have been increasingly underscored by a philosophy of participatory decision-making (see Imre & Raco, 2003; Lo Piccolo & Thomas, 2003; Maginn, 2004). At one level, it appears that central and local governments have experienced a policy and democratic epiphany. This is reflected in a ‘new’ acknowledgment that ‘when citizens themselves are the key to the quality of neighbourhoods, a new avenue of policy intervention is opened up’ (Lelieveldt, 2004, p. 534; see also Crenson, 1983). In this context, participatory models of decision-making are seen as having the potential to ‘empower’ local residents who were previously the subject of ‘top-down’ or command and control forms of planning (Healey, 1999; Meredyth, Ewing, & Thomas, 2004; Barry, Osborne, & Rose, 1996; Rose, 1996; Dean, 2002). On another level, however, there is caution, suspicion even, about this paradigm shift. A perception exists that governments are essentially displacing, redistributing and/or retreating from their historical welfare responsibilities (Chaskin, 2003, 2001; Fraser, Lepofsky, Lick, & Williams, 2003; Pierre, 1999).

The governmental public health workforce provides essential public health services to communities from public health agencies operations at the local, state, and federal levels of government. The roles and duties of public health workers range from infectious disease tracking and control to healthy eating promotion to checking food service establishments for safety. Unfortunately, most of the time, the general public is unaware of, and unconcerned with, public health’s primary mission of disease prevention. This behind-the-scenes, service-oriented workforce has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by working long hours, extra days, and ever-changing job roles, all while becoming targets of political attacks and enduring substantially elevated psychological distress and burnout. Though this workforce is not well enumerated, existing studies indicate that public health workers face higher anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and burnout than other frontline healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic response. Several strategies have been suggested to address these vulnerabilities, including increasing the amount and stability of available funding, implementing organizational-level policies and programming to boost resilience, and providing individual-level social support, both instrumental and emotional, to protect against burnout and other psychological distresses.

This chapter seeks to investigate the role of student emotional intelligence (EI) in countering in-class cyberloafing behaviour by students, by exploring the mediating role of boredom proneness through a quantitative approach. A sample of 163 postgraduate university students in India was selected. The authors assessed the mediation model using PROCESS macro. The authors found that students who are more aware of their emotions are better equipped to handle internal and external distractions and work towards a desired goal or outcome and therefore are less likely to experience boredom. Results from this study revealed a significant direct and indirect negative relationship between students’ EI and cyberloafing behaviour. This chapter contributes to the body of literature by highlighting the positive effects of EI as an important antidote to student cyberloafing behaviour. On the practical front, the findings of this study can be used by academicians who are charged with the responsibility of understanding and enhancing student learning by diminishing cyberloafing behaviour among them. The proposed framework could provide a foundation for countering cyberloafing behaviour in educational settings.

This introductory chapter surveys institutional experimentation that has emerged internationally in response to the contraction of the traditional model of employment protection. Various initiatives are discussed according to the particular challenges they are designed to address: the emergence of non-standard employment contracts; increasing sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; intensification of exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; the growth of intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and the emergence of entities that subvert the employment relationship entirely. Whereas post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model as a ‘web of rules’, we argue that nascent institutional experimentation is indicative of an emergent ‘patchwork of rules’. The identification of such experimentation is instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.

Taken at face value, it may initially seem difficult to argue with the sentiments enshrined in the rhetoric that surrounds the TEF – raising the status of teaching in Higher Education (HE), rebalancing its relationship with research, incentivising institutions to focus on the quality of teaching and making them more accountable for ‘how well they ensure excellent outcomes for their students in terms of graduate-level employment or further study’ (OfS, 2018, p. 1). Clearly, these are laudable aspirations that will chime with anyone who believes in the importance of students experiencing an education that enriches and transforms them and their potential. Drawing on Fraser and Lamble's (2014/2015) use of queer theory in relation to pedagogy, however, this chapter aims to expose the TEF not just ‘as a landmark initiative that is designed to further embed a neoliberal audit and monitoring culture into Higher Education’ (Rudd, 2017, p. 59) but as a constraining exercise that restrains diversity and limits potential. Although queer theory is more usually linked with gender and sexuality studies, Fraser and Lamble show us that it can be used ‘in its broader political project of questioning norms, opening desires and creating possibilities’ (p. 64). In this way, the queer theoretical lens used here helps us to question, disrupt and contest the essentialising hegemonic logics behind the nature and purposes of the TEF and its effects in HE classrooms. Using the slantwise position of the homosexual (Foucault, 1996), this queer analysis of the TEF can thus be helpful as a politically generative exercise in opening up space for new possibilities.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the budgeting process in a local church from a social capital perspective. The social capital provides novel insights into the construction of budgets and its social aspects. A qualitative case study was adopted, with an interpretive methodology. Semi-structured interviews were used to interview 14 managers involved in the budgeting process at a local independent church. The interview data were supplemented by documentary evidence. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) framework of social capital was used to analyse the data. The main finding was that budgeting was found to be a social process – that can best be explained by social capital theory. There may be an element of self-selection, as the church agreed to participate in the study and chose to allow a researcher to examine social aspects of its budgeting process. The chapter contributes to both social capital theory and church literature. Social capital provides novel insights into the construction of budgets and its social aspects. In addition, contemporary budgeting practices are studied in a church in a denomination and country not previously studied.