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1 – 10 of 25Iryna Pentina and Clinton Amos
This paper aims to investigate collective identity construction process and applicability of resistance dimensions to the Freegan phenomenon.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate collective identity construction process and applicability of resistance dimensions to the Freegan phenomenon.
Design/methodology/approach
Data triangulation approach combines netnography of the Freegan online discourses, and content analysis of mainstream consumer views of Freeganism.
Findings
Participation in shared practices facilitates Freegan collective identity construction through convergence of radical consumer resistance and market‐mediated anti‐consumption.
Research limitations/implications
Multi‐dimensional conceptualization of resistance is applicable to analyzing consumer movements.
Originality/value
Through data triangulation, this research offers an analysis of internally negotiated and externally ascribed Freegan group identities.
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This paper aims to examine the effect of circular economy’s ending of waste on marginal property practices.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effect of circular economy’s ending of waste on marginal property practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper utilises doctrinal and theoretical legal analysis, along with theoretical perspectives and qualitative empirical evidence drawn from non-legal academic disciplines.
Findings
The current legalistic conception of waste depends on control and value. The indeterminate status of waste as goods at the margins of consumption attracts attention from legal regimes. This process is evidenced by a commercialised treatment of goods at the margins of consumption, limiting the scope of radical marginal property practices such as freeganism (taking goods abandoned by others, to use such goods).
Social implications
The circular economy aims to end waste. Restriction, and ultimately elimination, of marginal property practices is necessary for circular economy. Freegans will be limited to acting in a “challenge” role, identifying breaches of commercial commodification processes. Control over the use (including disposal) of goods reduces the spaces available for marginal property practices, which in turn raises problematic normative implications for “normal” consumption practices involving waste.
Originality/value
This is the first examination of the impact of circular economy on freeganism. It is also the first sustained application of marginal property theory (van der Walt, 2009) in a legal analysis of circular economy and waste.
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Michelle Watson, Sue Booth, Stefania Velardo and John Coveney
Globally, around one-third of food produced is wasted and thrown into supermarket bins or dumpsters. As a result, these dumpsters have become opportunistic sources of food…
Abstract
Purpose
Globally, around one-third of food produced is wasted and thrown into supermarket bins or dumpsters. As a result, these dumpsters have become opportunistic sources of food through dumpster diving. The authors' scoping review aimed to document the people that are dumpster diving and why these people engage in this potentially illegal practice.
Design/methodology/approach
A database search spanning 12 years yielded 29 articles for review.
Findings
The authors' analysis uncovered two main themes for why people were dumpster diving: (1) motivations which included political activism against consumerism, materialism and capitalism, a fun and thrilling social activity and to alleviate food insecurity and (2) the benefits derived, such as gaining free food, saving money, sharing food with others and gaining attention from the public and media.
Originality/value
In conclusion, the review was unable to provide definitive information on “who” was dumpster diving; however, this limitation provides a unique opportunity for further research that focusses on the specific demographics of dumpster divers rather than the “why” people are diving.
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Kristina Heinonen and Gustav Medberg
Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences and behaviors can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities to design personalized and high-quality service. This paper aims to review how netnography as a method can help service researchers and practitioners to better use such data.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review and analysis were conducted on 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.
Findings
The systematic review reveals that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.
Research limitations/implications
This paper shows how netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.
Practical implications
Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.
Originality/value
Netnography has seen limited use in service research despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of the method and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore food access issues as tackled by an association that runs a week-end soup kitchen in a social welfare center in Bucharest, Romania. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore food access issues as tackled by an association that runs a week-end soup kitchen in a social welfare center in Bucharest, Romania. The research focuses on how the volunteers involved in this food charity activity perceive the beneficiaries of their generous act and their current life circumstances, as well as the extent to which a sense of responsibility informs the charitable cookers’ perspective on the donated food recipients.
Design/methodology/approach
The findings presented in this paper are based on volunteering work done within the association, more precisely on participant observation focusing on the purchase and cooking of ingredients. It also relies on extensive semi-structured interviews with one founding member, and with two other volunteers who regularly participate in the charitable cooking sessions.
Findings
Due to the specific way cooking and food distribution take place within the week-end soup kitchen, contact with beneficiaries is very limited and the volunteering activity is unlikely to fuel reflections on and actions against the underlying causes of inadequate food access.
Originality/value
There is a growing interest in studying food poverty in Romania, where private, non-denominational organizations focusing on food access are struggling to build a stable and equitable food (re)distribution system. This paper offers new insights into food aid organizational features that support and help advance both wider participation and long-term sustainability.
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Kate Parizeau and Josh Lepawsky
– This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors investigate the entanglement of law and the built environment through an analysis of waste-related legal case studies in the Canadian context. They investigate a notable Supreme Court case and three examples of Canadian cities’ by-laws and municipal regulations (particularly regarding informal recycling practices). They mobilize what Valverde calls the work of jurisdiction in their analysis.
Findings
The authors argue that the regulation of waste and wasting behaviours is meant to discipline relationships between citizens and governments in the built environment (e.g. mitigating nuisance, facilitating service provision and public health, making individuals more visible and legible in the eyes of the law and controlling and capturing material flows). They find that jurisdiction is used as a flexible and malleable legal medium in the interactions between law and the built environment. Thus, the material treatment of waste may invoke notions of constraint, freedom, citizenship, governance and cognate concepts and practices as they are performed in and through built environments. Waste storage containers appear to operate as black holes in that they evacuate property rights from the spaces that waste regularly occupies.
Originality/value
There is scant scholarly attention paid to legal orderings of waste in built environments. This analysis reveals the particular ways that legal interventions serve to construct notions of the public good and the public sphere through orderings of waste (an inherently indeterminate object).
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The purpose of this paper is to describe information seeking and use (ISU) within the context of minimalist lifestyles and connect characteristics of living with less to theories…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe information seeking and use (ISU) within the context of minimalist lifestyles and connect characteristics of living with less to theories of information poverty and resilience.
Design/methodology/approach
Naturalistic methods of inquiry describe minimalist lifestyles in a remote, rural context through semi-structured interviews with 24 adults. Environmental scanning and visual methods extended data collection retrospectively and longitudinally to span almost 118 years of community history. Qualitative thematic coding and analysis proceeded inductively and reflexively.
Findings
Living minimally in this environment results in adaptive strategies that compensate for lack of resources in general, and information resources specifically. Positive psycho-social attitudes such as optimism, creativity, curiosity, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency continue to be important factors in developing resilience in information seeking practices.
Research limitations/implications
Information poverty is usually defined relatively, and often in relation to formal, macro-level environments. Focussing attention on informal, local level ISU reveals alternate varieties of knowledge, ways of knowing and characteristics that create information resilience in the face of sometimes profound deficits.
Practical implications
Highlights of positive aspects to ISU in this remote, rural context will be of interest to researchers and practitioners serving rural library systems.
Originality/value
This study provides an historical and contemporary glimpse into the ISU patterns of a previously unexamined population and context, those who live minimalist lifestyles in a remote and rural location.
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Mike Lee, Dominique Roux, Helene Cherrier and Bernard Cova
In debates about recycling and the circular economy, the role of existing organisations that already facilitate the circulation of materials through society can be neglected…
Abstract
In debates about recycling and the circular economy, the role of existing organisations that already facilitate the circulation of materials through society can be neglected. Indeed, the social enterprise sector may currently be more significant than the commercial waste management sector in facilitating the circular economy within Australia. Drawing on interviews with organisations involved in collecting and reprocessing used electronics and scrap metal in Australia, the authors detail some of the synergies and tensions between the social enterprises and commercial organisations that have emerged as recycling gains traction through government policy and various forms of product stewardship. The authors conclude with suggestions for policy and governance approaches most likely to facilitate productive and perhaps symbiotic relationships between the two sectors in the future.
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Deniz Tunçalp and Patrick L. Lê
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review online ethnography and its boundary challenges. The paper especially focusses on how researchers draw space boundaries, set…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to systematically review online ethnography and its boundary challenges. The paper especially focusses on how researchers draw space boundaries, set time boundaries and engage their online field.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors perform a systematic review of extant literature and identify 59 papers in 40 different journals as online ethnographies from various management disciplines. The authors perform both qualitative and quantitative analyses on papers in the sample.
Findings
The paper identifies how online ethnographers both define boundaries and engage their online field. The paper shows that some of the advantages of online ethnography actually prompt researchers to favor-specific research designs over others.
Research limitations/implications
The authors only focussed on articles adopting online ethnography in organization and management studies that are listed in Social Sciences Citation Index database. Online ethnographies in other research fields and indexes are not studied in this paper.
Practical implications
The paper makes suggestions on how to complement existing online ethnographies to reach a more comprehensive practice of online ethnography.
Social implications
The systematic review may help researchers to locate useful online ethnography examples across various management disciplines and may contribute to the maturation of online ethnography.
Originality/value
The paper synthesizes emerging trends in online ethnography and identifies how specific advantages actually prompt online ethnographers to limit themselves in their research designs.
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