Search results

This study advances a reconceptualization of data and information which overcomes normative understandings often contained in data policies at national and international levels. This study aims to propose a conceptual framework that moves beyond subject- and collective-centric normative understandings.

To do so, this study discusses the European Union (EU) and China’s approaches to data-driven technologies highlighting their similarities and differences when it comes to the vision underpinning how tech innovation is shaped.

Regardless of the different attention to the subject (the EU) and the collective (China), the normative understandings of technology by both actors remain trapped into a positivist approach that overlooks all that is not and cannot be turned into data, thus hindering the elaboration of a more holistic ecological thinking merging humans and technologies.

Revising the philosophical and political debate on data and data-driven technologies, a third way is elaborated, i.e. federated data as commons. This third way puts the subject as part by default of a collective at the centre of discussion. This framing can serve as the basis for elaborating sociotechnical alternatives when it comes to define and regulate the mash-up of humans and technology.

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and environmental dimensions of food at multiple scales. We argue that while the food systems approach strives to provide a comprehensive understanding of food production, consumption and environmental drivers, it is less well equipped to shed light on the role of actors, knowledge and power in transformation processes and on the divergent impacts and outcomes of these processes for different actors. We suggest that an approach that uses food systems as heuristics but complements it with attention to actors, knowledge and power improves our understanding of transformations such as those underway in the Mekong Region. The key transformations in the region include the emergence of regional food markets and vertically integrated supply chains that control increasing share of the market, increase in contract farming particularly in the peripheries of the region, replacement of crops cultivated for human consumption with corn grown for animal feed. These transformations are increasingly marginalising small-scale farmers, while at the same time, many other farmers increasingly pursue non-agricultural livelihoods. Food consumption is also changing, with integrated supply chains controlling substantial part of the mass market. Our analysis highlights that theoretical innovations grounded in political economy, agrarian change, development studies and rural livelihoods can help to increase theoretical depth of inquiries to accommodate the increasingly global dimensions of food. As a result, we map out a future research agenda to unpack the dynamic food system interactions and to unveil the social, economic and environmental impacts of these rapid transformations. We identify policy and managerial implications coupled with sustainable pathways for change.

The paper aims to present an integrated foresight framework and method to support decision-makers who are confronted with today’s complex and rapidly changing world. The method aims at reducing the degree of uncertainty by addressing the inertia or duration of unfolding trends and by placing individual trends in a broader context.

The paper presents a three-layered framework and method for assessing megatrends based on their inertia or duration. It suggests that if long-term trends and key future uncertainties are studied in conjunction at a meta-level and placed in a broader multi-layered framework of trends, it can result in new insights.

The application of the proposed foresight method helps to systematically place a wide range of unrelated trends and key uncertainties in the context of a broader framework of trends, thereby improving the ability to understand the inertia, direction and mutual interaction of these trends.

The elaboration of identified trends and key uncertainties is partly case-specific and subject to interpretation. It is aimed at illustrating the potential use of the framework.

The paper presents a new approach that may, by itself or in combination with existing foresight methods, offer new means for anticipating future developments.

The use of the proposed framework has potential to provide better insight in the complexity of today’s rapid-changing world and the major transitions taking place. It aims to result in sharper foresight by reducing epistemic uncertainty for decision-makers.

The paper demonstrates how megatrends, Kondratieff waves and century-long trends can be placed in an integrated framework and analysed in conjunction.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it highlights the emergence of Generation Z and the interface of its members with the tourism system. Second, by way of a theoretical model, the paper provides a more holistic approach to understanding Generation Z travel experiences in which the emphasis is shifted from the destination to the traveller. This is in keeping with the trend which lays more emphasis on people rather than landscape.

This is qualitative research founded on an interpretive (constructivist) paradigm. Selecting Generation Z as the subject locates this study under generational theory and assumes prima facie a socially constructed reality. The paper is based on research conducted in New Zealand aimed at understanding the travel experiences of inbound Generation Z travellers. Data were collected from 12 semi-structured interviews lasting about 30 min each and from 5 blogs. Nvivo 11 programme was used in analysing data and developing themes. Core categories and related themes were generated forming building blocks of a theoretical model.

Findings revealed interplay of multiple factors in Generation Z’s travel experiences at a destination. The factors are global in nature, destination centric and those which are immediate or proximate to the individual. To fully grasp the notion of experience requires the gestalt of the three as well as pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip factors.

The impact of significant events upon participants is assumed. A specific analysis of the events and the magnitude of their influence on the individual participants may be necessary.

Destination marketers tend to concentrate on psychological aspects to appeal to the traveller. The focus, in this case, is creating an attractive image in the mind of travellers to get them to come to the destination. This research suggests shifting the focus to understanding the evolving traveller.

Governments and tourism purveyors may require an ever-increasing budget to map out strategies to meet the continuously morphing needs of the future traveller. The constantly evolving global environment necessitates greater flexibility in institutional framework with less bureaucratic bottlenecks.

Generation Z is a relatively new entrant into the tourism market which makes this research relevant and timely. The paucity of academic literature on a generation which is contemporaneously in its “highly influenceable” period of life and entering adulthood in an increasingly changing world is further credence for this research. A more holistic theoretical model to understanding Generation Z travel experience is proposed.