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The purpose of this paper is to explore the tendencies of liquid consumption in Muslim communities and analyse its impact on Muslims’ consumption practices from the holistic perspective. Liquid consumption refers to a transient and less-materialised mode of consumption that requires both minimal attachment to possessions and hybrid ownership.

This is a conceptual paper that is based on the distinction between Islam as a holistic perspective and Islamic practice as it is applied in different contexts and situations. The Continual Drift Adjustment (CDA) framework of Muslim consumers’ behaviour is developed to be deployed as an analysis framework.

The CDA framework maintains that some problematic cases of Muslim consumption behaviours indicate the drift towards disbalance. Depending on their nature, liquid consumption practices can have different impacts on the drift. Liquid consumption practices underscored by instrumental dissemblance, intellectual insecurity and spiritual scepticism intensify the drift, whereas the incorporation of spiritual sincerity, faithful submission and existential gratefulness into practices and behaviour helps to attenuate the drift.

This research contributes to the theory of liquid consumption by incorporating the religious perspective. Liquid consumption in Islam is a complex area of research, specifically considering the ambivalent meanings of liquidity in Islamic thought.

Marketers of liquid consumption solutions must be aware of these offerings’ double-edged impact on the well-being of Muslim communities. Muslim consumers should be guided towards spiritual sincerity, faithful submission and existential gratefulness in the best way possible, although it must be noted that the customary techniques of marketing would lean towards stimulating the disbalance.

This research is unique because it deals with a topic that has not been researched in the Islamic marketing discipline to this date.

Agency development is inherently a process of institutional evolution. The purpose of this part 2 (of a 3 part) paper is to explore development in the political context, producing a cultural model of political development as institutional evolution, explaining how political groups may come to power culturally. This requires a detailed examination of culture and cultural change, and a study of strategic political frames that define political groups seeking support for political power from agents in a political sphere. During cultural instabilities or social crises, frames may become cynical and embrace liquid persuasion and hence populism.

A cultural model for political development is created involving three variables (emotional climate, cultural order and compliance). This enables cultural comparison of different political groups. Strategic political frames are examined to understand how those vying for agency power may attract support from agents in the activity system. Liquid frames are also explored to understand the cynical nature of populism and its contribution to institutional devolution.

A political development theory result that identifies the conditions under which formal political groups can promote frames that may attract support from agents from who they require support to gain agency power status. A model is produced for political development. It explains populism as a thin ideology with a collectivist orientation that uses liquid framing, and it introduces its individualist counterpart, political synergism.

The implication of this research is that it will allow empirical methods to be used that potentially enable political outcomes in complex political environments to be anticipated, given additional appropriate measurement criteria.

Linking agency and institutional theory to explain the process of development is new, as is its application to the political development process in a political landscape. As part of this linkage, it has been shown how Bauman’s concept of liquidity relates to Sorokin’s ideas of socio-cultural change.

Agency is inherently an institution and involves dynamic socio-cultural processes that facilitate development. This paper is written in three parts. The purpose in Part 1 was to represent agency theory as an institutional theory, and consideration was made of the relationship between development, growth and globalisation. In Part 2, the purpose was to explore development with respect to the political context, explaining in terms of culture under what conditions political groups may come to power. Using political frames intended to define their nature and realities, they seek to attract agents in their political sphere to gain administrative power. In this Part 3, the purpose of this paper is to model, using cybernetic agency theory, the nature of development and reduction to instrumentality.

Development theory is a multidisciplinary field in which research and theories are clustered together and set within an adaptive institutional activity system framework. An adaptive activity system has a plural membership of agents represented by agency. In Parts 1 and 2 of this paper, agency was shown to have an institutional basis. Activity system development was also explained as a process of institutional evolution, and its potential was shown to provide power acquisition in a political landscape by competitive political frames which vie for support in a place of potentially susceptible agents. Here in Part 3, agency theory will be used to model the dynamic relationships between political frames and the agents that they wish to attract by projecting both cognitive and emotional structures, this enabling the anticipation of behaviour.

These relate to the three parts of the paper taken together. Agency is an evolutionary institutional system that can represent socio-political development. A model for political development has been created that identifies the conditions under which formal political groups are able to promote frames of policy to attract support from autonomous agents that constitute the membership of the activity system, and hence gain agency status. On the way to this, it connects Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity to Sorokin’s theory of socio-cultural dynamics and cultural stability. One result is the notion of liquid development, an unstable condition of development in adaptive activity systems. Agency theory can usefully explain detailed changes in agency, the relationships between agency agents, and interactions between agencies, this embracing institutional processes.

The implication of this research is that it will allow empirical methods to be used that potentially enables political outcomes in complex socio-political environments to be anticipated, given additional appropriate measurement criteria.

The synergy of agency and institutional theories to explain the process of development is new, as is its application to the political development process in a political landscape. As part of this synergistic process, it has been shown how Bauman’s concept of liquidity relates to Sorokin’s ideas of socio-cultural change.

Throughout April/May of 2009 a new type of virus surfaced in Mexico and the USA, denominated H1N1 or swine flu, that has been immediately disseminated worldwide. Even though the mortality of this virus has been slow, comparing with other antecedents, the mass‐media articulated a troublesome discourse that put the world in tenterhooks waiting for the evolution of the symptoms. Emulating the mythical archetype of what we knew as Spanish flu, which affected more than 50 million people during 1918 and 1920, journalism triggered panic in the four corners of the world. Under such a context, the purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between the coverage of mass‐media and press of swine flu in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and how the principle of resilience in this conjuncture works.

In order to understand this issue in an all‐encompassed manner, the author conducted ethnography in Buenos Aires during April to June of 2009 combining informal with formal interviews and analysis of contents extracted of press coverage. It is important to mention that the role of observer was hidden to capture vividly the social behaviour as long as a context of health emergency.

The findings of this research reveal that fear becomes an efficient instrument to keep the status quo in context of disasters. In addition, it is important to clarify that virtual disasters do not permit societies to learn of their tragedies and affects considerably their abilities for resilience.

Unfortunately, there is no abundant literature to support the outcomes of the present paper in respect to swine flu. Beyond ethical boundaries of journalism, the point of discussion, here, seems to be whether news should be edited or transmitted in rough during a moment of uncertainty. As a whole, the debate is circumscribed to non‐edited news which can result in uncontrollable society response, while edited news jeopardizes the freedom of the press.

This paper provides an original point of view that contrasts the thesis of Baudrillard in respect to the spectacle of disaster. The panic disseminated by media blurs the boundaries between culprit and innocence presenting to the poorest sectors as the main concerns of society. That way, the earlier imbalances that allowed the disasters are replicated once again. In contrast with Baudrillard, this paper considers that Swine flu really took place and was something other than a show. An event like this, elaborated and commercialized is of course, aimed at reinforcing the legitimacy of privileged groups.

It is clear that poverty can be a key factor to take into consideration at time of potentiating or mitigating the unexpected aftermaths of disasters. In some extent, the degree of vulnerability created by poverty leads scholars to preclude material conditions of life plays a pivotal role in disaster rebuilt. Nonetheless, the present paper aims to explore precisely the connection between the false conceptualization of poverty as pathways towards the conditions of disasters with the disaster in such.

This thesis is that the poverty is a humanitarian disaster often intellectualized as cause of disaster in order for real liable actors not assume their faults. The conceptual contributions of this paper pave the pathways for the advent of a new debate in disaster and recovery issues.

This paper questions the classical idea that poverty plays a positive role in the process of recovery after a disaster paving the pathways for the triggering of a hot debate in disaster management.

The originality of this work refers to the needs of reconsidering how late‐modernity replicates the conditions for what the disaster has been feasible. Not only this accommodates all our previous belief in how dealing with victims and survivors but explores the cynicism between suffering and mass consumption.

Building societies, as we illustrated in the Preface, occupy an important position in the British financial system. There are at present over four hundred societies although this industry is highly concentrated, with the ten largest societies (with well developed branch networks) in 1978 accounting for 66 per cent of the total assets.

Agency involves dynamic socio-cultural processes that facilitate development. This paper is written in three parts. In Part 1, there are two purposes, the first purpose is to intimately connect agency and institutional theory, and the second purpose is to explore the relationship between agency development and growth and globalisation. In Part 2, the purpose will be to explore development with respect to the political context by explaining in terms of culture under what conditions political groups may come to power. Using political frames intended to define their nature and realities, political groups seek to attract agents in their political sphere to gain administrative power. In Part 3, the purpose will be to model, using cybernetic agency theory, the nature of development and its reduction to instrumentality.

In this part of the three-part paper, development theory is explained as a multidisciplinary field in which research and theories are clustered together and set within an adaptive institutional activity system framework. An adaptive activity system has a plural membership of agents represented by agency. Agency represents an activity system that will be argued to operate through its institutional metasystem. This enables activity system development to be explained as a process of institutional evolution. In Part 1, the problem will be addressed of how the relationship between agency and institution enables institutional change. To resolve this agency will be shown to be institutional in nature, and agency development as a process of institutional evolution. To distinguish between development and growth/globalisation, agency will be taken to have an internal and external context. Distinction will then be made between development as an internal attribute of agency and its consequences, which may include the external attributes of growth/globalisation. It will also be explained that development may have a less desirable condition when it becomes liquid.

The three-part paper develops a political development theory that identifies the conditions under which formal political groups are able to promote frames of policy to attract support from autonomous agents that constitute the membership of the activity system, and hence gain agency status. Furthermore, Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity is connected to Sorokin’s theory of socio-cultural dynamics and cultural stability. One result is the notion of liquid development, an unstable condition of development in adaptive activity systems.

The implication of this research is that, given additional appropriate measurement criteria, it will allow conceptual and empirical methods to be used that will potentially enable political outcomes in complex socio-political environments to be anticipated.

The implication of this research is that it will allow empirical methods to be used that potentially enables political outcomes in complex socio-political environments to be anticipated, given additional appropriate measurement criteria.

The synergy of agency and institutional theories to explain the process of development is new, as well as its application to the political development process in a political landscape. As part of this synergistic process, Bauman’s concept of liquidity is shown to relate to Sorokin’s ideas of socio-cultural change.

The enormity of the challenges and changes the world is facing demand that we reimagine the very notion of “government.” While sometimes useful, traditional sectoral divisions of labor (e.g. government, market, civil sphere) are an impediment to this reimagining. This essay argues that we need a dynamic, relational understanding of governing and different conceptualization of the relationship of the self to governing. This entails a revolution, initially, less in the formal political institutions than a transformation in the way in which we think about living together and labor to create a life in common.

Oil film thickness measurements made in the front main bearing of an operating 3.8 L, V‐6 engine were compared with rheological measurements made on a series of commercial and experimental oil blends. High‐temperature, high‐shear‐rate viscosity measurements correlated with the film thickness of all single‐grade and many multigrade oils. However, the film thickness provided by some multigrade oils were larger than could be accounted for by their high‐temperature, high‐shear‐rate viscosities alone. Although the pressure/viscosity coefficients of some of the oils were significantly different from those of the majority of oils tested, they were not oils which produced unusual film thicknesses. As a consequence, correcting oil viscosities for the esimated pressures acting within the bearing was unsuccessful in improving the correlations. The correlations were improved, however, by accounting for the elastic properties of the multigrade oils. Measurements of oil relaxation times at high temperatures and shear rates showed large differences in elastic properties among the test oils. A good correlation (R2 = 0.73) was obtained from a multiple linear regression of film thickness as a function of both high‐temperature, high‐shear‐rate viscosities and relaxation times.

The purpose of this article is to argue that consumers experience conflict not only when in identity transitions or social status transitions but also in-between these two, and that the relationship between these two is becoming increasingly important to address. First, this is done by identifying how status transitions (vertical movements) overlap but differ in some important respects from identity transitions (horizontal movements), and second, the consumption strategies used by people when these movements lead to an experience of conflict between one’s (new/old) identity role and (new/old) status position have been demonstrated.

In this multi-sited, qualitative data collection, the phenomenological and ethnographic interviews have been conducted with 35 urban middle-class consumers in their homes at three culturally and historically different sites (Sweden, Turkey and the USA).

The importance and kind of a consumption strategy to resolve the status–identity incongruence relates if it is mainly a vertically or horizontally determined transition. To consumers with a main focus on status change – characterised by hierarchical and competitive dimensions that identity role transitions are free from – the engagement in consumption becomes more important and intense.

Marketers have historically mainly been engaged in static categorisation and segmentation of consumer lifestyles. By instead emphasising consumers’ life transitions and their accompanying status–identity conflicts, marketers may consider the implications for market communication.

Given that liquid modernity (Bauman, 2001) and its loose social structures forces the middle-class to become increasingly socially mobile, matches and mismatches between identity and status positions ought to become more common and the resulting consumption strategies more sophisticated. This research offers a first, tentative framework for understanding these conflicts in relation to consumption.

Although lifestyle transitions have often been elaborated on in consumer research, the differences between social status transitions and identity transitions, and especially the conflict in-between these two, have not been paid its deserved attention. Based on multi-sited, qualitative data collection, concrete consumption strategies following the experience of status–identity incongruence have been identified. The results also contribute to a better understanding of the growing uncertainty and volatility of social status positions in contemporary middle-class consumer culture.