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Burden transport is a ubiquitous primate behavior. Modern humans, however, take this primate tendency and extend it to a behavioral repertoire that influences many of our daily activities and almost certainly helped shape our physical and behavioral form. I examine the transportation of food in the context of central place foraging, from the perspective of maximizing energy acquisition. A detailed model of the energetic cost of burden transport is presented and its sensitivity to the variables of body mass, burden mass, terrain, incline and velocity discussed.

Purpose – In this chapter, we intend to discuss and analyse possibilities and policies for sustainable cities and mobility by linking these issues to ordinary consumption or shopping practices. We argue that sustainability discourses directed towards urban dwellers or citizens tend to express totalizing and exclusionary tendencies that obscure the situated dimensions of mobility practices generated through consumption.

Design/methodology – Through an ethnographically informed exploration of everyday consumption practices we discuss discrepancies between examples of sustainability policies and campaigns on the one hand and mundane consumption practices on the other.

Findings – The chapter concludes that there are some major discrepancies between official sustainability discourses and mundane consumption practices and introduces the concept of the ‘consumover citizen’ as a productive way of discussing sustainability.

Originality/value – Introducing the concept of ‘consumover citizen’ is a novel way of conceptualizing sustainability in terms of who and what moves in the city regarding mobility generated by consumption practices.

Economists and sociologists have proposed arguments for why there can exist wage penalties for work involving helping and caring for others, penalties borne disproportionately by women. Evidence on wage penalties is neither abundant nor compelling. We examine wage differentials associated with caring jobs using multiple years of Current Population Survey (CPS) earnings files matched to O*NET job descriptors that provide continuous measures of “assisting & caring” and “concern” for others across all occupations. This approach differs from prior studies that assume occupations either do or do not require a high level of caring. Cross-section and longitudinal analyses are used to examine wage differences associated with the level of caring, conditioned on worker, location, and job attributes. Wage level estimates suggest substantive caring penalties, particularly among men. Longitudinal estimates based on wage changes among job switchers indicate smaller wage penalties, our preferred estimate being a 2% wage penalty resulting from a one standard deviation increase in our caring index. We find little difference in caring wage gaps across the earnings distribution. Measuring mean levels of caring across the U.S. labor market over nearly thirty years, we find a steady upward trend, but overall changes are small and there is no evidence of convergence between women and men.

Pedestrian injuries and deaths should be viewed as a critical public health issue. The purpose of this chapter is to show how incorporating safety from traffic into broader efforts to increase walking and physical activity has the potential to have a significant health impact. In this chapter we provide an overview of pedestrian safety considerations having to do with population health and the built environment. The chapter is organised around a conceptual framework that highlights the multiple pathways through which safe walking environments can contribute to improved population health. We review the existing literature on pedestrian safety and public health. Pedestrian safety will remain a vexing challenge for public health and transportation professionals in the coming decades. But addressing this problem on multiple fronts and across multiple sectors is necessary to reduce injuries and fatalities and to unleash the full potential of walking to improve population health through increased physical activity. This chapter uniquely contributes a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between the walking environment and public health.

“My introduction into Higher Education was not my plan, but clearly it was ‘The plan’” (Russell, 2016). This simple statement is loaded, bearing in mind the things that I have experienced, what I now know, and what I continue to learn on a journey still in progress. When I reflect on my journey thus far, I am often amazed considering what I thought that I was preparing for, as compared to where I have landed professionally. It is not that my vision was small; perhaps, it was limited based on my exposure at the time. However, it remains that I am a licensed psychologist who is a first-generation graduate and a black woman on the tenure track, and while I have enjoyed successes along the way, the road has not been without obstacles. I have encountered potholes, blind spots, and rerouting. Although I cannot say that my lessons to date have me coasting on “cruise control,” I can confidently say that mentors and their mentoring have made the difference in the quality of my ride. There are key moments, relationships, and experiences that I am privileged to share so that they may light the pathway for others traveling similar roads.

In this chapter, I will share about my personal journey, highlighting key moments, personal experiences, and relationships encountered at different points along the way. Hindsight provides so many lessons. When recounting my story, I tend to contextualize my experience as a “First.” A First is an individual who was once a first-generation college student, who successfully matriculated through their undergraduate degree programs, and now find themselves navigating life in their respective personal and professional spaces (Russell, 2018). For some, this may be inconsequential; however, for me, it is salient to my faculty identity because it is relevant to many things that I did not know coming into the role. To that end, I will start by referencing what I have considered to be missed opportunities or misuse of resources at the graduate level while being focused on the “here and now” and nonacademic professional pursuits. I will share how outreach to mentors at a significant point in my career contributed to my uncharted entry into higher education, and how I came to realize the currency embedded within mentoring relationships. This narrative will include discussion of “mentoring moments” or what I call the “mentors in my mind,” “the council” (key players and relationships), “jumping in the deep end” (being open to something new, being “in search of” looking to fill the gaps in knowledge through formal mentorship opportunities), and “practicing what I preach” – building the network and using my resources to further my career and to develop students.

Walking and cycling have a long history in work itself and people travelling to and from work. Who walks and cycles, how they perform those journeys, the precise role that journey plays in the course of the working day and how it is valued are informed by social constructions of gender. Gendering of mobility has a long history and, in many countries, women continue to face challenges when they walk and they continue to be discouraged in more or less explicit ways from cycling. This exploratory chapter draws together literature on occupations, paid and unpaid, that involve walking and cycling as an integral part of collecting and delivering people and things. A wide variety of services are discussed in the literature but the research on the mode of travel for individual services – like food delivery, waste picking, rural health work, ‘mobility of care’ – is limited and there is little attention to gender. Further, any comparative studies tend to be between cities with similar economic status or cultural heritage. This chapter includes research from high, medium and low income countries not to universalise experiences but to identify common themes, and suggest avenues for further research. We argue the inequitable distribution of transport resources, the gendering of bicycling related skills and the masculinisation of public space are pervasive. However, they are also being challenged by women supporting each other, partners supporting wives and communities making opportunities available to all members.

Business schools need to prepare students for effective, ethical decision-making. When faced with stressful life events that negatively affect wellbeing, making decisions can become more challenging. As future managers, students will need to learn how to make decisions when they are at the same time faced with stress and cognitive overload. In such situations, the brain looks for mental shortcuts in making choices to make things faster and easier, which leads to less optimal decision-making. Research shows that mindfulness meditation can effectively decrease stress and anxiety. Mindfulness meditation increases metacognition and, in the process, reduces the effects of biases, ethical blind spots, and psychological traps. Therefore, introducing students to these techniques has significant pedagogical potential for business education as students learn mindfulness meditation and show a need to include such practices in the curriculum. This chapter sheds light on two mindfulness technique cases with business school students in Lebanon and Switzerland. In these cases, the authors explore the impact of mindfulness practices on students by applying the emotional intelligence mood metre and mindfulness meditation. The authors also apply the ‘response time testing’ (RTT) methodology in the Swiss case to measure students’ attitudes. As a result, the authors provide simple confirmations from their classrooms that engaging in mindfulness activities and meditation is a simple and productive exercise that is essential for student wellbeing, learning, and decision-making. Therefore, the authors’ purpose is to encourage and give mindfulness practices a viable place in business education.