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The purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of subsistence exchange practices and their contribution to international marketing theory and practice. It draws on the notion of embeddedness to examine the hybrid exchange practices unfolding within subsistence communities, and between subsistence communities and (international) firms.

The paper reports two ethnographic studies conducted in low-income farming and slum communities in Uganda and Kenya, respectively. Both studies involved participant observation, interviews, field note-taking and visual methods.

The findings demonstrate that hybrid exchange systems prevail in subsistence contexts, supporting both market and non-market logics simultaneously. Actors remain deeply embedded in their social worlds during exchange, making it problematic to disentangle social relations from market exchanges.

The study suggests implications for international firms interested in forging business partnerships with subsistence actors. It calls for international marketers to surpass the traditional marketing roles and develop competences that enable firms to meaningfully embed in subsistence contexts. Further research could explore how international marketers could develop such competences.

The paper draws from diverse exchange literature to demonstrate how subsistence actors become actively involved in shaping hybrid exchanges that (potentially) incorporate international firms. The study calls for a broader understanding of international marketing, which accounts for the embedded marketing practices entailed in serving subsistence markets. It concludes that categorizing exchanges as either economic or social is problematic as both forms co-evolve to constitute multiple levels of intra-community, local marketplace and extensive hybrid exchanges.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the social bottom line in subsistence markets or base of the pyramid. This examination aims to suggest that social strategies for the second bottom line should be focused at the community level in measurement, assessment and impact.

A discussion of the double bottom line is presented. Social strategies are then discussed in terms of impact assessment at the community level and an impact assessment framework is developed reflective of the subsistence marketplace perspective. Implications are discussed in terms of poverty alleviation in subsistence markets and business

This examination suggests social strategies for the second bottom line should be focused at the community level in measurement, assessment and impact. Focusing social strategies at the community level reframes the role of firms and promotes a business in service of the community approach. Assessing impact at the community level creates a long‐term sustainable focus to business in subsistence markets. This perspective is a more holistic view that incorporates the social, economic and environmental ecology of the community from a multi‐generational perspective that requires entrepreneurs to commit their life's work to developing and servicing the community they live in. Using “And beyond Africa” as a case example of the community‐level social strategy the theory and practice are integrated and the conceptual ideas can be understood as a holistic reflection of the community. Further, examining how social strategies at the community level are understood in terms of the individual and humanity level creates greater awareness of the importance of a social strategy at the community‐level. Suggesting that a social strategy focused on the community level can make the largest impact on all three levels (individual, community and humanity). By considering more than customer impact, a social strategy can look at a business's impact on the community and better understand its impact on humanity. This conclusion changes the role of the entrepreneur and business to be in the service of the community.

This paper develops a community‐level social strategy view to the double‐bottom line in subsistence markets or base of the pyramid.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the study of sustainable rural livelihoods by developing a model to measure vulnerability of subsistence communities in dryland regions and identifying the major determinants that contribute to the livelihood vulnerability of these communities.

The author conducted a household survey across three subsistence communities in West Timor (n=627), from June to November 2013. Based on the guideline of the OECD (2008), the author developed a series of indicators and constructed a composite index to measure the vulnerability of dryland communities. The author adapted the livelihood vulnerability index (LVI) measure from Hahn et al. (2009) but refined it by using Shannon’s entropy method in deciding the weights of indicators and statistically tested the correlation between indicators using Kendall’s correlations.

Six major determinants were identified: education (EDU), children’s participation in agriculture (CPA), agricultural income (AI), subsistence food reserve (SUBSIST), social-cultural participation (SCP) and access to water, health clinic and market (ACC). LVI in all communities shows significant and strong relationships with SCP (0.594, p<0.01), AI (0.545, p<0.01) and CPA (0.434, p<0.01). This signifies that constraints to engage in social gatherings, market the harvest and obtain additional labour input are currently the major contributor to the vulnerability in these communities.

Shannon’s entropy is one of the methods for assisting in making decision (ranking) objectively. The results may need to be tested further using other methods.

Using objective weight provides additional information useful for identifying and prioritising areas (sub-components) which require attention and appropriate solutions to prevent households from further impoverishment and increased vulnerability.

Livelihood vulnerability of subsistence community in dry region is closely related to local survival skills and customs. Differences in the level of vulnerability across communities are due not only to geographical location and physical infrastructure, but also the leadership of local customary leaders and village government in looking for ways to improve the livelihoods of community members.

This paper is based on part of the results of a PhD thesis supported and approved by Griffith University. It has not been published before.

In August 2006, 85 academicians and practitioners from industry and the nonprofit sector came together on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago for a conference unlike others in recent management research history. This conference focused on the subsistence marketplace and its constituents – the billions of individuals and families living in substandard housing, with limited or no education; having limited or no access to sanitation, potable water, and health care; and earning minimal incomes. Subsistence consumers and entrepreneurs have been largely ignored by contemporary marketing and management research and practice, but are poised to become a driving force in 21st century economic and business development. It is expected that as many as 1 billion new consumers wielding discretionary income will enter global markets before 2020. In addition, even among those consumers who lack discretionary income, it is expected that they will be much more active in the marketplace in the near future, because of expanded access to products and information through the Internet and wireless technologies (Davis & Stephenson, 2006). Moreover, the combined purchasing power of these consumers, already in the trillions of dollars, is likely to grow at higher rates than that of consumers in industrialized economies. These factors come together to suggest that consumer markets will need to adjust radically to the needs and demands of these emerging markets over the next 2 to 3 decades, even though companies and scholars across the business disciplines know very little about subsistence consumers. It was this need for knowledge about subsistence marketplaces that inspired the conference and the research presented here.

Purpose – A study of the origins of socioeconomic complexity at the agropastoral site of Jachakala in the eastern altiplano of Oruro, Bolivia with pre-Tiwanaku and Tiwanaku-contemporary components (ca. AD 150–1100). It uses faunal remains to explore differential access to subsistence resources.

Methodology/approach – Synchronic and diachronic analyses of camelid faunal remains from the multicomponent highland Bolivian site of Jachakala are used to explore access to cuts of meat of variable meat utility value among three areas of the village community. The merits of interzonal analyses, rather than inter-household comparisons, are argued as well.

Findings – Differential access to cuts of camelid meat among residents of Jachakala indicate early and sustained wealth differences beyond those typical of a subsistence-oriented economy. This is significant in part because of the clear absence of political elites at the site who might have controlled or directed resource distributions.

Research limitations/implications – This study suggests the origins of socioeconomic complexity can be divorced from the development of a political elite, providing a comparative case study for archaeologists interested in similar issues elsewhere.

Originality/value – This approach to the origins of complexity focuses not on agricultural resources or control over the production or distribution of craft or exotic trade goods, but rather on animal remains. Using faunal remains as a proxy for wealth, not just protein or pastoralism, this case study contributes to discussions about incipient complexity.

Africa is a focus area for international climate change adaptation finance. Subsistence farmers are crucial for Africa's adaption. But it is unclear how those that qualify to receive adaptation finance actually perceive climate change, even though perceptions are reflected in adaptive behaviour. This paper aims to show how perceptions of climate‐related hazards drive adaptation and provide recommendations for the climate change finance community to support subsistence farmer adaptation.

A total of 227 households in rural Ghana and Botswana were surveyed and their answers statistically analysed.

The respondents' perception of climate‐related hazards is analogous to existing environmental degradation. In the complex environment in which farmers operate, high vulnerability and climate dependency do not necessarily result in autonomous adaptation. Experience, means and perceived successfulness are more important factors, but these hardly relate to individual adaptive measures.

Recommendations for adaptation finance institutions: build on existing development plans and policies on climate‐related environmental problems; adaptation is more than a collection of adaptive measures, so financing adaptation is more than financing adaptive measures; extremely vulnerable people do not necessarily adapt autonomously, indicating that ex post adaptation remains important too.

This study shows that highly vulnerable subsistence farmers do not automatically adapt and that adaptation is more than implementing adaptive measures. The outcomes are linked to the adaptation finance institutions.

Profit is often moralized by activists, but scant research has carefully examined what profit is for these activists or how they use it to create a more just world. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social movements use counter accounts of profit as tools of resistance.

A multiple case study design, informed by framing theory, is used to trace the framing of profit from activists’ counter accounts to actions they precipitated. Specifically, the study examines counter accounts of profit from the UK abolition movement, Médecines Sans Frontières access to essential medicines campaign and Brigitte Bardot Foundation’s opposition to the Canadian seal hunt, and how their framings of profit influenced change.

Activists reframe profit to create visibilities and bridges to the suffering of distant others. Reframing the calculation and boundary of profit is a strategy to elicit moral outrage, hope and ultimately a more just world. Through these reframings, activists in three different social movements were able to change the possibilities of who and what can be profitable, and how.

The inherently incomplete nature of accounting frames give rise to accounting’s vulnerability to non-accountants to assert their views of a moral profit. Accounting therefore is both a means of control at a distance but also “emancipation at a distance.”

Scholars have asserted that accounting can be used for resistance, few studies have examined how. By examining how activists assert what profit is – and should be – the paper documents and theorizes profit as contested and highlights accounting’s emancipatory potential.

This study assesses tourism development dilemmas about the Big Tree Nature Reserve (BNTR) with its neighboring tourism entities in Musina Municipality, Limpopo, South Africa.

Data were obtained by interviews, questionnaires, focus group discussions and physical observation. Tacitly pertinent literature review propped and augmented the adopted approach.

The examination exposed many hurdles correlated with tourism efforts around the BNTR and its adjoining tourism entities. The gains of tourism were not drawn into by the local communities within and around the study area. The determinants adding to the poor state of tourism professions got portrayed by the conclusions of the study. Therefore, there was an inherent necessity for a turnaround efficient tourism management to promote tourism initiatives to bolster local communities in the region.

Musina Municipality constitutes a remote region in the north of Limpopo province, South Africa. Poor rural livelihoods are analogous to many rural districts within the continent. Despite all these, it substantially incorporates an essentially tourism-based area within the Vhembe district of Limpopo province.

Global warming is a huge challenge faced by the mankind in the twenty‐first century and beyond. The paradox of ecology lies in the pervasive attitude of lay people who overtly condemn pollution but do not alter their individual practices. Unfortunately, the scientific community has still not reached unanimous conclusions about the causes or impacts of global warming. To close this gap, the present paper aims to stimulate discussion in two main senses: the relationship between industry and global warming; and the role of tourism in the coming decades.

Based on reading and criticism of many works, this paper provides a conceptual framework for readers to understand social adjustment and adapting to climate change.

Many sources blame the tourism industry as being one of the major contributors to global warming and want the industry to take proactive moves to help address this. The present analysis exerts considerable criticism over the existent literature that presents tourism as a vehicle towards mitigation of the greenhouse effect. Based on the theory of commons, the paradox of Giddens and the consuming life, the main thesis of this paper is that modernity has created a symbolic bubble that confers a certain security to viewers but transforms them in consumed objects.

The originality of this research lies in the assumption that global warming or climate change generates a paradox. As a form of cultural entertainment, ecology and global warming form (jointly to apocalypse theories of bottom days) a new way of enhancing the consumption, where tourism unfortunately does not seem to be an exception. The theatricalization of danger contributes to the creation of an underlying state of emergency that is seen but not recognized. As Hurricane Katrina and other disasters show, people only take a stance when the economic order is endangered. Global warming as a phenomenon was considered seriously only when international leaders envisaged the potential economic losses of its effects, and not before. Following this, the tragedy of commons, as Graham puts it, explains the reasons why well‐being can, under certain conditions, be a double‐edge sword.

The impact of globalization on individual well-being through the interplay of self and standard forms of lifestyle aspirations, has generally received less attention than the merits of globalization at the macro-level. This chapter addresses this question by testing the hypothesis that poor rural-dwelling Botswana men suffer diminished well-being compared to their relatively well-off urban-dwelling counterparts as a result of unfulfilled lifestyle aspirations. The study combines ethnographic, psychological, and psychosomatic data to compare well-being among rural and urban adult Botswana men. Results indicate that failed urban migration associates with low cortisol and high depressive affect, and rural residence is also independently associated with high depressive affect. This psychosomatic syndrome may be similar to that observed in posttraumatic stress disorder, suggesting that the experience of failed urban migration is considerably more stressful than the demands of employed urban life in contemporary Botswana.