Search results

Early childhood and early elementary are key times when children develop internal and external antifat attitudes; thus, it is necessary to better understand the available children’s literature around fatness.This paper aims to examine children's picture books with fat protagonists to better understand the current landscape of children's literature. Drawing on relevant literature around fat characters and the fat studies movement, this critical content analysis considers five children’s books featuring fat protagonists.

This study uses critical content analysis to analyze texts featuring fat protagonists, including two rounds of initial reading and analysis. Using lenses of critical literacy and critical multicultural analysis, the author looks for common themes, silences and absences in the texts, images and peritext.

This paper identifies themes of characters initially internalizing antifatness, then pushing back against antifat bias toward existing with joy and without stigma. Several of these texts even draw on the history of fat activism, highlighting societal critique and a potential activist component of children’s literature with fat protagonists.

The study has a small number of books, due to the limited number of texts that fit the study parameters.

The paper concludes with examples of scaffolding for teachers and parents to have conversations with young children about antifat bias while also acknowledging notable absences, particularly boy protagonists.

These themes illustrate the power of young children to push back against antifat bias and critique oppressive social structures.

There have been very few studies looking at antifatness in children’s picture books. With more books with fat protagonists coming out in the 2020s, this study offers an understanding of the themes present, while also emphasizing the need for an intersectional approach to literature with fat protagonists.

The purpose of this paper is to explore teacher candidates’ response to young adult literature (prose and comics) featuring fat identified protagonists. The paper considers the textual and embodied resources readers use and reject when imagining and interpreting a character’s body. This paper explores how readers’ meaning making was influenced when reading prose versus comics. This paper adds to a corpus of scholarship about the relationships between young adult literature, comics, bodies and reader response theory.

At the time of the study, participants were enrolled in a teacher education program at a Midwestern University, meeting monthly for a voluntary book club dedicated to reading and discussing young adult literature. To examine readers’ responses to comics and prose featuring fat-identified protagonists, the author used descriptive qualitative methodologies to conduct a thematic analysis of meeting transcripts, written participant reflections and researcher memos. Analysis was grounded in theories of reader response, critical fat studies and multimodality.

Analyses indicated many readers reject textual clues indicating a character’s body size and weight were different from their own. Readers read their bodies into the stories, regarding them as self-help narratives instead of radical counternarratives. Some readers were not able to read against their assumptions of thinness (and whiteness) until prompted by the researcher and other participants.

Although many reader response scholars have demonstrated readers’ tendencies toward personal identification in the face of racial and class differences, there is less research regarding classroom practices around the entanglement of physical bodies, body image and texts. Analyzing reader’s responses to the constructions of fat bodies in prose versus comics may help English Language Arts (ELA) educators and students identify and deconstruct ideologies of thin-thinking and fatphobia. This study, which demonstrates thin readers’ tendencies to overidentify with protagonists, suggests ELA classrooms might encourage readers to engage in critical literacies that support them in reading both with and against their identities.

This paper aims to investigate how narrative is constructed to create connections with fat readers, how books function to envision spaces of fat liberation for young readers and to highlight the incredible importance of providing bigger mirrors (Bishop, 1990) for fat representation in children’s literature.

This paper analyzes and reflects on two texts that contain counternarratives of fatness: The (Other) F Word: A celebration of the fat and fierce edited by Angie Manfredi (2019) and Big by Vashti Harrison (2023) to interrogate how these two narratives intentionally disrupt anti-fat bias.

Body size and fatness are identities that need to be included in diversity efforts within education. Books like The (Other) F Word: A celebration of the fat and fierce (Manfredi, 2019) and Big (Harrison, 2023) offer positive representations of fatness, disrupt biases around body size and provide spaces that allow fat students to find joy, hope, connection and, more than anything, imagine a way toward liberation.

This paper highlights the need to include more narratives of positive fat representation within children’s literature and calls for educators to interrogate their own anti-fat biases and practices.

There is a lack of research on fat representation specifically within children and young adult literature. This paper provides an analysis of two pieces of literature with fat representation that brings attention to the need for this type of future research.

The slow food movement has become increasingly widespread globally in recent years. This paper focuses on explaining how Turkish cuisine, which has a deep-rooted history, meshes with the slow food movement and how this movement affects consumer behavior.

Based on expert opinion analysis with academics knowledgeable about the food industry and gastronomy, this paper explores how the slow food movement in Turkiye is evolving and how consumers perceive it. Content analysis was applied to the data obtained from the personal interviews.

The authors find that the slow food movement creates a strong brand image for businesses that rely on emphasizing the responsibility to the ecological system while appealing to the five senses of consumers. It already shows great potential even in emerging markets where typical household discretionary income is modest.

Based on key theories regarding all sales activism cases, the authors have offered insights into the dynamics, motivations and techniques of the case. Ensuring the preservation of the slow food movement, framing and creating associations need to be examined.

Slow food is a movement that emerged against the standard, fast, tasty, but unhealthy products of the fast-food industry. It entails product variety, local flavors and preference for the single-flavor focus embedded in the fast-food movement. The movement started with considerations of gastronomy and later was institutionalized as a social movement phenomenon. Later, it expanded its base to activism, targeting various social issues.

This research aims to examine Generation Z's perspectives of sustainable consumption in food tourism experiences, considering the drivers on food tourists' behavioural intents and basing its analysis on the value-attitude-behaviour model of norm activation theory.

Using a qualitative design, 27 qualitative online surveys were conducted with Generation Z travellers who are also active on social media.

Results show that while they are aware of environmental knowledge and ethical food choices and think that sustainable food consumption improves individual and social wellbeing, the sustainability of food consumption is limited by factors such as time and budget. Also, results reveal that the eating habits of Generation Z people are more sustainable when they eat at home than when they travel. Theoretical and practical implications for food tourism management and marketing are described.

While food tourism has been largely investigated in recent years, little previous research has focused on the relationships between daily eating behaviours and sustainable consumption in food tourism experiences, especially from the perspective of Generation Z individuals and the influence of social media on individual and social food decisions.

This paper aims to assess the cumulative evidence on the determinants of sustainability assurance (SA) reports and the choice of assurance provider quality. It addresses the contradictory and inconsistent findings of past studies conducted over the past two decades.

The authors undertake a meta-regression analysis that enables systematic, comparative assessment of the variables associated with the choice of SA and the type of assurance provider. The authors undertake a chronological analysis with the aim of identifying systematic differences in the empirical evidence across distinct time periods.

The results indicate that there is very little evidence to support many of the expected associations between commonly studied predictor variables (namely, measures based on agency and corporate governance conceptions) and the choice of SA and the assurance provider type. As a result, research on this topic does not make as effective a contribution as might be expected. There is, however, a time period difference. The authors find results from studies using company data prior to 2010 are significantly different from those using post-2010 data. The results indicate the decision to publish SA to be significantly associated with companies in the oil industry and utilities, and larger organisations where agency costs tend to be higher. Obtaining assurance from a higher-quality provider is found to be associated with companies in environmentally sensitive industries and in stakeholder-oriented countries.

The study shows that as yet there is not sufficient evidence to support expected results. Users of the research should be aware of this, and researchers should know that more work is needed. The authors suggest researchers take greater care in the choice and comparability of variable measurement and expand the conceptual base when selecting predictor variables.

Companies need to be more transparent and accountable to critical stakeholders such as report users and regulators, and the latter should be more aware that the organisational practice of SA and choice of service provider have changed over time and are increasingly open to agency and other cultural biases.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to apply meta-regression techniques for understanding the body of literature on SA and provider choice.

This article poses the question on whether and how youth participation in environmental sustainability makes a difference within participatory budgets (PBs). This is a question worth asking because PBs have pursued, from the very beginning, goals of social sustainability through the inclusion of social groups that struggle to make their voices heard, as in the case of the youth. As young people show an increasing capacity to self-organise around environmental issues, a knowledge gap emerges as to the contribution that youth can give to environmental sustainability within PBs.

The 2021 edition of the Lisbon PB (2021PB) has been analysed through desk research – document analysis using the city council's website as the main source of information, and fieldwork – an organisation of one two-day workshop with 20 young students through a partnership between the local authority and the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon. Methods were applied to retrieve findings on youth participation in environmental sustainability in the 2021PB.

The youth show a relative increase of participation in the 2021PB and emerge as a key target group in funded proposals. Convergence with student proposals suggest shared awareness on the role of youth in the pursuit of social sustainability. The success of health-related proposals confirms ownership of (young) citizens over the concept of environmental sustainability, which further relies on the various scopes of funded proposals at both city and neighbourhood levels. In the workshop, students did not stick to specific themes and struggled to connect present criticalities and future imaginaries.

Focus on one case study necessarily limits the generalisation of findings. Nevertheless, the 2021PB illuminates pathways of research on youth participation in environmental sustainability through participatory budgeting that are worth clearing in the future, such as the role of digital participation, dynamics induced by extreme events as the COVID-19 pandemic and PBs' capacity to intercept environmental activism.

Decision-makers and practitioners can take advantage of findings to acknowledge the potential of youth participation in PBs to reframe the take of environmental sustainability.

The article provides new inputs for future developments in the operationalisation of social and environmental sustainability through participatory budgeting.

This article examines original data retrieved from the 2021PB. Data analysis is backed by the literature review of key democratic challenges in social and environmental sustainability within participatory budgeting.

Poetic inquiry is an approach that promotes alternate perspectives about what research means and speaks to more diverse audiences than traditional forms of research. Across academia, there is increasing attention to decolonising research. This reflects a shift towards research methods that recognise, acknowledge and appreciate diverse ways of knowing, being and doing. The purpose of this paper is to explore the different ways in which poetic inquiry communicates parallax to further decolonise knowledge production and dissemination and centre First Nations’ ways of knowing, being and doing.

This manuscript presents two First Nations’ perspectives on a methodological approach that is decolonial and aligns with Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. In trying to frame this diversity through Indigenous standpoint theory (Foley, 2003), the authors present two First Nation’s women's autoethnographic perspectives through standpoint and poetics on the role of poetic inquiry and parallax in public pedagogy and decolonising research (Fredericks et al., 2019; Moreton-Robinson, 2000).

The key to understanding poetic inquiry is parallax, the shift in an object, perspective or thinking that comes with a change in the observer's position or perspective. Challenging dominant research paradigms is essential for the continued evolution of research methodologies and to challenge the legacy that researchers have left in colonised countries. The poetic is often invisible/unrecognised in the broader Indigenist research agenda; however, it is a powerful tool in decolonial research in the way it disrupts core assumptions about and within research and can effectively engage with those paradoxes that decolonising research tends to uncover.

Poetic inquiry is not readily accepted in academia; however, it is a medium that is well suited to communicating diverse ways of knowing and has a history of being embraced by First Nations peoples in Australia. Embracing poetic inquiry in qualitative research offers a unique approach to decolonising knowledge and making space for Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.

Poetic inquiry offers a unique approach to centring First Nations voices, perspectives and experiences to reduce hegemonic assumptions in qualitative research.

Writing about poetic inquiry and decolonisation from a First Nations’ perspective using poetry is a novel and nuanced approach to discussions around First Nations ways of knowing, being and doing.

In this article, we offer a contribution to the ongoing study of food by advancing a conceptual framework and interdisciplinary research agenda – what we term “food system resilience”. In recent years, the concept of resilience has been extensively used in a variety of fields, but not always consistently or holistically. Here we aim to theorise systematically resilience as an analytical concept as it applies to food systems research. To do this, we engage with and seek to extend current understandings of resilience across different disciplines. Accordingly, we begin by exploring the different ways in which the concept of resilience is understood and used in current academic and practitioner literatures – both as a general concept and as applied specifically to food systems research. We show that the social-ecological perspective, rooted in an appreciation of the complexity of systems, carries significant analytical potential. We first underline what we mean by the food system and relate our understanding of this term to those commonly found in the extant food studies literature. We then apply our conception to the specific case of the UK. Here we distinguish between four subsystems at which our “resilient food systems” can be applied. These are, namely, the agro-food system; the value chain; the retail-consumption nexus; and the governance and regulatory framework. On the basis of this conceptualisation we provide an interdisciplinary research agenda, using the case of the UK to illustrate the sorts of research questions and innovative methodologies that our food systems resilience approach is designed to promote.