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For decades, the Altiplano farmers of Bolivia had been marginalized by the remoteness of their home and exploitation by the private sector and injustices inflicted by the government. The notion that this impoverished region could sustain economic development might correctly have been described as hopeless. The Altiplano farmers’ inability to develop a sustainable source of income threatened their very cultural identity. The only manner in which the farmers’ culture might be sustained was through charitable donations from international NGOs. But it is exactly in this situation, when obstacles are stacked against success, where appreciative intelligence can provide an avenue to overcome despair. After years of working with NGOs, Javier Hurtado was able to identify a source of value that could provide hope and a path to sustainable development for the Altiplano farmers. This is the story of the impact that one individual's application of appreciative intelligence can have on a community. The Irupana story illustrates how our destinies are shaped by our ability to discover that which is best within ourselves and the communities in which we live. This is the story of Javier Hurtado and Martha Cordero, founders of Irupana Organic Foods located in the Bolivian Altiplano, as they discover the unique potential in the harsh Bolivian landscape and the impoverished peasant farmers that inhabit this setting. Through the framework of appreciative intelligence, the researchers observed the entrepreneurs reframe their circumstances around the positive potential that is within the Altiplano-farming community and its unique natural resources, and create a successful organic foods company.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The socializing of hate and its saturation on platforms as a resonant and emotional connection online reveal the networked nature of convergent platforms which pump hate as a mechanism of connection and fracture in society in the post-digital age. The violence of hate and negative sentiments online morph to appropriate a multitude of manifestations from cyberbullying and revenge porn to trolling and memes as subversive, denigrative humour. Social media, designed through an architecture for sharing and transaction, distributes hate as a popular sentiment, building connections with disparate communities through the articulation of hate for fellow humans and humanity at large. Trauma induced through hatred and bullying as an active aspect of social media platforms and interactivity distribute sentiments through its excess and disproportionality. This chapter interrogates the sentiment of hate and its workings on social media as a technology of trauma in distributing hate as a form of communion.

This chapter will examine ideological debates currently taking place in academics. Anthropologists – and all academic workers – are at a crossroads. They must determine what it means to “green the academy” in an era of permanent war, “green capitalism,” and the neoliberal university (Sullivan, 2010). As Victor Wallis makes clear, “no serious observer now denies the severity of the environmental crisis, but it is still not widely recognized as a capitalist crisis, that is, as a crisis arising from and perpetuated by the rule of capital, and hence incapable of resolution within the capitalist framework.”

Despite widespread demand for consultants and especially within the surveying profession, driving forces of service/pricing/quality are not fully understood and have received minimal research attention. The purpose of this paper is to review contemporary knowledge in this field, highlighting en route the dilemmas of the consultancy pricing paradox.

Methodology is of axiological, philosophical tradition – induction and inference, generalized concepts and theories. A critique of extant literature underpins a theoretical pricing problem framework, a future research agenda, and a model of the pricing paradox.

The study elucidates paradoxical aspects regarding value perceptions, objectives, strategies, cost recovery, competition and systematic processes. It conceptually models the dilemma of service pricing and suggests a research agenda based on process and value, nature of service, competence and branding.

The formalisation of the paradox and development of the conceptual model opens opportunities for a new research agenda in the future, which is highlighted as part of the study.

Advancement of theory will impact pricing paradigms.

The paper presents a novel conceptualisation of the subject.

In the 1960s those on the political left flattered themselves that the vast number of publications by socialists, anarchists, feminists, and other groups on that wing of the political spectrum were evidence of the rich intellectual life of the struggle to create a progressive America. Conversely, the lack of publishing by the right was evidence of a general lack of intelligence. But that was then, and this is most certainly now. The right in America has moved from margin to center over the last two decades, vindicating former Attorney General John Mitchell's boast that “the country is going so far to the right that you won't recognize it.”

The University of Houston Libraries are developing an expert system to assist library users in selecting appropriate indexes and abstracts to meet their information needs. This project, which is being conducted by the Intelligent Reference Systems Committee, is the first step in a broader plan to develop reference expert systems.