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Recent years have seen the development of new approaches to the study of gender and sexuality in childhood, with attention given to socio-historical, cultural and political contexts. This chapter aims to contribute towards a limited field of research on queer childhood and youth in Central Asia by considering how narratives of queer childhood in Kazakhstan are culturally produced. This chapter draws on the material from in-depth interviews of 11 queer people living in Kazakhstan, focussing on their narratives of childhood. The study exposes the effect of silence about non-heteronormative identities in Kazakhstan on queer children. Narratives of bullying and managing school violence are explored along with narratives of queer childhood within the families of origin. Lastly, the chapter foregrounds instances of agency and resilience, considering how queer children manage to steer themselves away from being an ‘impossible subject’ and contest dominant societal attitudes and discourses.

Cryptomarkets or darknet marketplaces host multiple ‘vendors’ selling a variety of illicit products. The most sold and sought products on such markets are illegal drugs. These markets use cryptocurrencies as a payment system and provide participants with anonymity through their location on the dark web, and in recent years they have seen continuous growth in revenue and exchange. Existing literature has provided various explanations for this growth, but in 2017 the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol concluded in their 2017 ‘Drugs and the Darknet’ report that current interpretations of trends are not sufficient. This chapter will provide an alternative explanation for this phenomenon by considering web-based drug selling and purchasing in terms of trends towards ‘Uberisation’ and ‘McDonaldisation’ and applying Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to the discussion of the dynamic cultures of consumption and different subcultures of the drug world.

This study aims to unveil the determinants of employer branding (EB) that attracts and retains the employees working in the Indian higher education sector using the factor-analytic approach.

The study is cross-sectional, and the data were collected from 141 employees working in the higher education sector. Exploratory factor analysis and independent t-test were deployed to analyze the data.

The results of independent samples t-test explicate that perception of male and female university employees pertaining to EB factors of employee attraction (EA) and employee retention (ER) is congruent. Further, the perception of employees in public and private universities on EB factor is similar for ER and non-similar for EA.

The present research is an effort to unveil the employee attraction and retention factors that play a vital role in showcasing an employer as a great place to work in the Indian higher education sector.

This chapter explores the concept of authenticity in the context of today’s highly competitive hospitality industry. Drawing on the multi-sited ethnographic case study of Ziferblat, the world’s first pay-per-minute cafe franchise, the author examines how the imperative of authenticity is addressed by small international enterprises falling in between the categories of chain and independent. By tracing how Ziferblat’s original concept, shaped by the personal and socioeconomic background of its founder, was subsequently transformed by the local teams and adapted to different cultural-geographical contexts, this chapter adds new empirical evidence to the dynamic and pluralistic notion of multiple authenticities.

This paper aims to highlight contrasts between the writing of young people in the UAE and Japan. For comparison, anthologies of 50-word short stories written in English, resulting from the Extremely Short Story Competition (ESSC) in each country are examined. These two ESSC anthologies were created under similar conditions in 2006. Analysis of the most frequently-appearing topics in each ESSC anthology provides insights into the daily life, general mindsets, behavior, preferences, values and culture of these two groups. These data help us to understand the everyday life and social context of young people in the UAE and Japan. Thematic analysis shows that youth in both countries are often preoccupied with seeking identity, and regard friends to be important. Both groups of young people also appear to appreciate the beauty of nature and feel affection towards living creatures. An identifying characteristic of Emirati youth is that they talk about death more often than do the Japanese writers; in addition, the ESSC anthologies indicate UAE society is remarkably family-oriented, with life being firmly connected to Islam and God. In contrast, Japanese youth show they are keen to engage in various hobbies and also like to express their romantic feelings and thankfulness for their environment. The ESSC was originally designed to develop students’ creative writing in English. This study explains that corpora generated by the ESSC may be used to illuminate the lives and societies of students living in disparate countries, with implications for planning and delivering locally appropriate education.

This paper aims to establish a fundamental and comprehensive understanding of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by identifying and structuring common characteristics within a taxonomy. NFTs are hyped and increasingly marketed as essential building blocks of the Metaverse. However, the dynamic evolution of the NFT space has posed challenges for those seeking to develop a deep and comprehensive understanding of NFTs, their features and their capabilities.

Utilizing common guidelines for the creation of taxonomies, the authors developed (over 3 iterations), a multi-layer taxonomy based on workshops and interviews with 11 academic and 15 industry experts. Through an evaluation of 25 NFTs, the authors demonstrate the usefulness of the taxonomy.

The taxonomy has 4 layers, 14 dimensions and 42 characteristics, which describe NFTs in terms of reference object, token properties, token distribution and realizable value.

The authors' framework is the first to systematically cover the emerging NFT phenomenon. This framework is concise yet extendible and presents many avenues for future research in a plethora of disciplines. The characteristics identified in the authors' taxonomy are useful for NFT- and Metaverse-related research in finance, marketing, law and information systems. Additionally, the taxonomy can serve as an information source for policymakers as they consider NFT regulation.

The purpose of the study is to compare features of career development and fandom in frequent festival attendance in the context of Finnish music festivals.

The study uses a mixed methods research approach and employs two theoretical frameworks: theories of career development and fandom.

In frequent festival attendance, both festival career development and festival fandom are most clearly present in motivation development and social dimensions.

Strategically, frequent festivalgoers should be considered as crucial stakeholders, who might mobilize the co-creation of a sense of community or festival brand.

Music-related fandom has been previously investigated in relation to artists and specific musical genres, but not so much in relation to music festivals in general. Career studies, on the other hand, concentrate heavily on sports events. There is a scarcity of research scrutinizing both career development and fandom in the festival context within the same study, and festival attendance as part of music tourism is an under-researched area.

By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the cultural performances of the historic environment take place. The goal is to move beyond a purely material expression and seek the expansion of the cultural dimension of the historic environment.

Conceptually, the historic environment is considered a valuable resource for heritage expression and exploration. The databases and records that house historic environment data are venerated and frequented entities for archeologists, but arguably less so for non-specialist users. In inventorying the historic environment, databases fulfill a major role in the planning process and asset management that is often considered to be more than just perfunctory. This paper approaches historic environment records (HERs) from an actor network perspective, particularizing the social foundation and relationships within the networks governing the historic environment and the environment's associated records.

The paper concludes that the performance of HERs from an actor-network perspective is a hegemonic process that is biased toward the supply and input to and from professional users. Furthermore, the paper provides a schematic for how many of the flaws in heritage transmission have come about.

The relevance here is largely belied by the fact that HERs as both public digital resources and as heritage networks were awaiting to be addressed in depth from a theoretical point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of two potentially important antecedents of female Generation Y consumers’ attitudes towards beauty products. In particular, the impact of the media and groups is analysed through their influence on subjective norms.

Structural equation modelling analysis of moment structures was used to propose and test a research model by means of data from a substantial size of female Generation Y consumers.

The study’s results confirm that female Generation Y consumers have a favourable attitude towards beauty products and that this attitude is influenced by their subjective norms. Furthermore, the findings suggest that group influence, which includes the opinions of friends, family and peers and media influence both predict female Generation Y consumers’ favourable attitude towards beauty products via their influence on this segment’s subjective norms.

These results emphasise the strategic importance of incorporating subjective norms, together with media and group influence into beauty product marketing communication campaigns targeting female Generation Y consumers. Given that this generation is known to be prevalent users of social media and often consult online peer product reviews, such strategies should also be extended beyond traditional media platforms to include social media, particularly social media influencers and online product review platforms, thereby tapping into subjective norms and group influence.

This study contributes to understanding female Generation Y consumers’ attitudes towards beauty products, especially the combined influence of subjective norms and media and group influence on such attitudes.

El propósito de este trabajo es examinar la influencia de dos antecedentes potencialmente importantes de las actitudes de las consumidoras de la Generación Y hacia los productos de belleza. En concreto, se estudia la influencia de los medios de comunicación y de los grupos a través de su influencia en las normas subjetivas.

Se empleó el análisis de modelos de ecuaciones estructurales de estructuras de momento para proponer y probar un modelo de investigación mediante datos de un tamaño considerable de consumidoras de la Generación Y.

Los resultados del estudio confirman que las consumidoras de la Generación Y tienen una actitud favorable hacia los productos de belleza y que esta actitud está influenciada por sus normas subjetivas. Además, los resultados sugieren que la influencia del grupo, que incluye las opiniones de amigos, familiares y compañeros, y la influencia de los medios de comunicación predicen la actitud favorable de las consumidoras de la Generación Y hacia los productos de belleza a través de su influencia en las normas subjetivas de este segmento.

Estos resultados enfatizan la importancia estratégica de incorporar las normas subjetivas, junto con la influencia de los medios de comunicación y del grupo, en las campañas de comunicación de la comercialización de productos de belleza dirigidas a las consumidoras de la Generación Y. Dado que se sabe que esta generación es la usuaria habitual de los medios sociales y suele consultar en línea las revisiones de los productos, esas estrategias también deberían ampliarse más allá de las plataformas de los medios de comunicación tradicionales para incluir los medios sociales, en particular las personas que ejercen influencia en los medios sociales, y las plataformas de revisión de productos en línea, aprovechando así las normas subjetivas y la influencia del grupo.

Este estudio contribuye a comprender las actitudes de las consumidoras de la Generación Y respecto de los productos de belleza, especialmente la influencia combinada de las normas subjetivas y la influencia de los medios de comunicación y los grupos en esas actitudes.

摘要

本文旨在研究两个重要的潜在因素，对Y世代女性消费者对美容产品态度的影响。具体来说，是通过媒体和群体对主观规范的影响来进行分析。

本研究采用结构方程模型分析力矩结构，结合相当规模的Y世代女性消费者的数据，提出并检验研究模型。

研究结果证实，Y世代女性消费者对美容产品持积极态度，而且这种态度受到她们主观规范的影响。此外，研究结果表明，群体影响（包括朋友、家人和同伴的意见）和媒体影响都能通过对Y世代女性消费者主观规范的影响来预测她们对美容产品的好感度。

本文的研究结果强调了将主观规范和媒体、群体影响纳入针对Y世代女性消费者的美容产品营销传播活动的战略重要性。由于Y世代是社交媒体的普遍用户，并且经常查看其他用户评价，因此这种策略应该超越传统媒体平台，将社交媒体，特别是社交媒体网络红人和在线产品评论平台纳入其中，利用他们对消费者主观规范和群体的影响力。

本研究有助于了解Y世代女性消费者对美容产品的态度，特别是主观规范和媒体、群体对这种态度的综合影响。