Search results

The study aims to understand the meaning of event-based and place-based community practices, as well as the resulting social impacts.

An ethnomethodological approach was followed (participant observation and interviews were supplemented by secondary data), with the analysis being exploratory and interpretative.

The festival and the place reinforce the community’s social practices, which have impacts beyond the festival, benefiting individuals, the community and the place, becoming a means for valorisation and diffusion of the rural way of life, and placemaking.

In this study the authors focus on social practices in the context of an event and of a place (the village where the event occurs). The authors connect to theories of practice, which they apply in the analysis. The value of the study lies on the underlying mechanisms (how communities exercise social practices in the context of festivals, and what social impacts may lead to) rather than its context-dependent specific results.

National and regional authorities can play a role in providing local communities with adequate tools to overcome the challenges they encounter. This can be done by issuing appropriate (events) plans and policies while giving room for the locals to voice their opinions.

Community-based festivals are key social practices that can strategically impact placemaking, strengthening community bonding, forging connections with outsiders and promoting well-being practices that discourage rural depopulation.

There is a scarcity of research that deepens the understanding of the role of festivals in placemaking and their social impacts, particularly in the rural context. This study contributes to closing this gap by focussing on the social practices of a community-based festival in a village in the interior of Portugal.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

The Waorani are an Amazonian indigenous nationality with a population of 4,000. They inhabit three provinces of Ecuador: Pastaza, Napo and Orellana, and their ancestral lands contain a wealth of natural resources, which attracts the onslaught of the processes of extractivism. Significant social and economic asymmetries have also arisen in the decades since first contact. It is in this context that the Waorani Women's Association was created in 2005. Its main purpose is to end deforestation and illegal hunting of species in Waorani territory by promoting initiatives such as the cultivation of organic cocoa and handicrafts to improve the economy of families and to diminish the reliance on the preponderant economic system of use and abuse of non-renewable resources. This chapter analyzes how the spirituality of the Waorani nationality, manifested by the women who work in cocoa farms and chambira palm crafts, combine syncretism and ancestral knowledge in their daily work. It also analyzes the change of spiritual identity from the first contact with the Summer Language Institute missionaries, and subsequent evangelical, Catholic, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Latter-day Saints missions to their lands.

This study aims to advance current knowledge on resilient and sustainable short food supply chains, by identifying sustainability practices and resilience capabilities and how these interact.

Empirical data were collected from three cases via 16 semi-structured interviews. This methodological choice answers a call to develop more case studies to better understand perspectives on sustainable and resilient supply chains. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis.

Sustainability practices may positively enhance the resilience of short food supply chains, and vice versa. Specifically, social sustainability practices are perceived as enablers of resilience capabilities, and production practices can have a positive or negative impact on resilience capabilities.

This research addresses an important gap in the current short food supply chains literature, by looking at sustainability and resilience in an integrated way for the first time. The proposed working hypotheses and conceptual framework illustrate the complex relationship between social, economic and environmental sustainability and five resilience capabilities within short food supply chains.

The purpose of the study is to show that divergent perceptions among regulators, the regulated and the associated regulatory bodies across multiple jurisdictions regarding the nature and functionality of cryptocurrencies hamper the development of a more comprehensive and coherent regulatory framework in curbing crimes and other related risks associated with cryptocurrencies.

The study has used a descriptive doctrinal legal research method to investigate and understand the insights of existing laws and regulations in four selected jurisdictions concerning cryptocurrencies and how these laws could be further improved and developed to reduce crypto-related crimes. Furthermore, the study has also used a comparative research method to conceptualize the contours of the new legal discourse emerging from cryptocurrencies to adopt and implement a sound regulatory framework.

The study illustrated that divergent regulatory treatment among different jurisdictions might suffocate novel digital innovations such as cryptocurrency. These fragmented regulatory approaches by various jurisdictions question the sustainability of the present national legislation adopted to regulate cryptocurrencies. Looking into other jurisdictional developments in regulating cryptocurrencies, it is apparent that a concerted regulatory approach is needed to minimize the abuse of this innovation.

The study has implications for regulators and policymakers to review the current regulatory framework for regulating cryptocurrencies to prevent regulatory arbitrage. The divergent legislative measures concerning cryptocurrency among different jurisdictions question the sustainability of these legislative initiatives, considering the evolving and borderless nature of cryptocurrency. Therefore, this paper will help regulators to consider the present legislative gaps in establishing a common global regulatory approach in the crypto sphere.

The study contributes to the existing body of literature by examining the regulatory frameworks of four jurisdictions, namely, the USA, Canada, China and the EU, related to cryptocurrencies, with a discussion on the development of cryptocurrencies-related laws among these four jurisdictions and their sustainability in curbing crimes in the Darknet.

In this critical decade and century of climate chaos, ecocide and interconnected crises, a public policy approach is needed based on the primacy of compassionate action and ecological regeneration. Ecological regeneration focuses on the health of the Earth's planetary systems of water, soil, air, minerals, microbes, plants, insects and animals. Compassionate action is concerned with relieving the suffering and enhancing the happiness of the entire human population, present and future. An integral process is needed that brings these two priority concerns into the creation of new individual mindsets and behaviours and collective cultures and policies. The innovative leadership methods needed to realize these changes include mindfulness taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, group facilitation as formulated by the Institute of Cultural Affairs in its Technology of Participation (ToP), social artistry as developed by Jean Houston and four-quadrant thinking, planning and acting as expounded by Ken Wilber in his Integral Quadrants.

In this chapter, we will first identify some of the dimensions of humanity's systemic suffering. Next, we will review how the principles and practices of engaged Buddhism and compassionate action might help relieve that suffering. Then, we will explore some of the visions, obstacles, strategies and actions of compassionate policies that can help relieve systemic suffering.

Today's sharing economy covers a variety of business models. This research aims to (1) identify dimensions along which sharing businesses may vary and (2) investigate how these dimensions influence consumer engagement while considering consumers' sustainability orientation.

This research relies upon a systematic literature review (n = 67 articles) to identify five sharing business dimensions: (1) ownership transfer, (2) professional involvement, (3) compensation, (4) digitalization and (5) community scope. A discrete choice conjoint experiment in the fashion industry is employed to investigate how these dimensions affect consumer engagement with sharing businesses (n = 383 participants).

The results suggest that ownership of tangible resources elicits more engagement than access to tangible resources for both consumers with a low sustainability orientation and consumers with a high sustainability orientation. Community scope also affects consumer engagement as reflected in more engagement towards sharing businesses with a local rather than a global scope. The presence of professional service providers, monetary compensation and a digital platform only induces engagement among consumers with a low sustainability orientation.

This research generates a better understanding of how sharing businesses can draw on business dimensions to engage consumers with different levels of sustainability orientation and, in turn, how sharing businesses can realize their economic and/or circular potential.

The purpose of this study is to discuss policy review in the interest of sustainable innovations in Malaysia’s public procurement. This study also offers the overall relationship between existing policies related to sustainable innovations in public procurement and the coherences towards the four dimensions of sustainable innovations.

This study outlines the current policies in Malaysia which are related to sustainable innovation initiatives and explores the cohesiveness that appears disconnected and understood separately. Policy content analysis is conducted on the current policies related to sustainable innovations in the context of Malaysia’s public procurement.

This study observed that the current policies related to sustainable innovations in public procurement are actually interconnected with each other through a hierarchical framework. This study also demonstrates that the 12th Malaysia Plan has comprehensively encompassed every aspect of the environment, social, economic and innovation to contribute to one primary goal – green economic growth.

The proposed policy framework is expected to be beneficial for the administrator executive among the civil servant to connect the independent policies and, at the same time, contribute to the overall goal of green economic growth. Through a broad policy structure too, this study helps the industry player to recognize their potential in any area related to sustainable innovation.

The policy framework illustrated is new to the literature, especially in Malaysia’s context. The compilation of current policy grounded by the 12th Malaysia Plan has not been presented in any publications.