Search results

A widely accepted belief holds that social economics is logically inconsistent with the pragmatic philosophy. This view has been very clearly and forcibly expressed by Mark A. Lutz at the Third World Congress for Social Economics. Lutz has summarised his conclusions in the following quotation:

This paper aims to present an interpretive case study in education for sustainability (EfS) that applies VanWynsberghe and Herman’s (2015, 2016) adaptive education as pedagogy. Dewey’s theory of behaviour change is applied to educative experiences based on habit disruption and real-world learning, leading to creativity in the formation of new habits. The programme presented inverts dominant conceptions of knowledge to design innovative sustainability pedagogy. Instead knowledge resides alongside experience, cases, intuition, advice, experimentation and dialogue in the individual and collective effort to address daily sustainability challenges.

The paper reports on the outcomes of an interpretive case study (Merriam, 1998) of a higher education programme in sustainability pedagogy. It presents a series of reflections by instructors and participants in discussing the programme’s relationship with the core themes of habit, disruption, creative action and dialogue framed within the five features of adaptive education: stakeholders, real-world learning, off campus, transdisciplinarity and non-traditional rewards.

Through this examination, the authors found that adaptive education offered a pedagogy that simultaneously addressed the need for increased sustainability knowledge, whilst inverting its dominance. As a long-term project, the extent of the programme’s impact will be evident beyond the programme’s completion.

This interpretive case study is analysed through high-level conceptual and theoretical aspects of the pedagogy rather than the particularities of the case. By putting the centrality of knowledge into question, the authors are advocating for a more experimental role for higher education in its teaching and learning. These questions are broadly applicable.

There are research, learning and social benefits to this programme. Adaptive education builds capacity for future leaders and educators of sustainability.

The paper concludes with a discussion for further theorizing and research on adaptive education and EfS in higher education. This research will contribute to broader discussions of the evolving role of education in sustainability.

The purpose of this study is to profile market segments using travelers’ decision-making styles (DMS) as segmentation bases and to identify similarities and differences between traveler segments regarding a series of psychographic and attitudinal characteristics.

Data are gathered from a sample of 426 travelers in Dubai and Shanghai via self-reported surveys. Analyses included factor, k-means cluster, discriminant and MANOVA.

Study findings reveal significant differences among the rational, adaptive and daydreamer decision-makers’ segments in their behavioral and attitudinal characteristics with respect to tourism involvement and destination images.

Findings provide important practical implications for generating effective marketing and positioning strategies based on the identified attitudinal characteristics of the traveler segments for destination marketing organizations.

A stream of recent tourism studies shows a strong relationship between tourism involvement and destination images, yet very little research has tackled the issue of how these critical variables can be affected by individuals’ decision-making styles. This study explores and tests the relationships among DMS, tourism involvement and destination image using a factor-cluster approach.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. To clarify what is meant by “pragmatism” as a philosophy for social and environmental accountability (SEA) research, to survey its use within this research field and to explore how a further pursuit of pragmatism may extend this research field.

An extensive review of the SEA literature was conducted in order to determine what aspects of the philosophy of pragmatism have been used within the research. The authors organised the discussion of the literature around the pragmatist ideas of “truth” and “sensemaking”.

SEA research is a heterogeneous space in which various ideas are commonly attributed to the philosophical notion of pragmatism. However, there is a tension in the literature between seeing accounting as a medium for representing social and environmental organisational activities and a pragmatist view of accountings as a way of allowing managers and stakeholder to make sense of these same activities.

A clearer development of the ideas of pragmatism may be used to redirect the focus of SEA research in a number of useful ways. Seeing accounting as a medium of sensemaking between organisations and their stakeholders allows the authors to widen the exploration of accounting not only to the production of reports but also their interpretation by users. The ideas of pragmatism also allow the authors to explore the ways stakeholders might affect change within organisations and how accounting may support this process rather than capture or limit it.

This paper concludes by providing a set of methodological prescriptions for conducting future SEA research in a way that is inspired by pragmatism. It outlines an approach to research that focuses on users and their sensemaking and encourages an exploration of the possible ways accounting may create positive change in organisations.

Overall, this paper refines what it means to follow pragmatism within SEA research. It will promote a clearer understanding of how we, as a research community, may engage with practice in more positive ways in order to facilitate corporate social responsibility.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of a procedural deliberative alternative to an atomistic conception of individuals and an economic logic of markets or a priori universal lists, as ethical foundation for evaluating socio‐economic change.

To develop this argument, the paper combines a modified Kantian categorical imperative with deliberative ethics drawing on the writings of Habermas and Dewey. The journey through the European Enlightenment thought of Kant to the contemporary thought of Habermas and Bourdieu aims at mapping continuity and change in key themes in development ethics. These ideas are then given practical application in a case‐study of the people‐forestry interface in Nepal.

The paper shows how Kantian non‐deception links to Habermas' notion of communicative action and Dewey's notion of cooperative inquiry, and how Kantian non‐coercion links to the inclusion of subaltern voices. While the paper proposes that more open deliberative processes can potentially produce ethical gains, it also identifies an idealistic risk in this position. Bourdieu's thinking is utilised to reveal limitations on improving deliberative processes where there are powerful mechanisms reproducing inequalities.

The paper makes the case for greater attention being given to exploring deliberative processes as a prerequisite for ethical developmental actions.

The paper brings together authors who rarely feature in the development studies discourse and applies their ideas to a practical case study.

The purpose of this paper is to apply pragmatism – a philosophy of science on the interplay of human actions and meaning – as a perspective for studying service research and practice, emphasizing the need to deal with dynamics and diversity to cope with service marketplace disruptions. This work focuses on customers (individuals or groups of individuals) as key marketplace stakeholders.

Pragmatism provides a foundation for theorizing about change by connecting human actors’ cognitive belief structures and their actions through a continuous learning process. This paper outlines how the key principles of pragmatism can advance service research and practice.

Adopting the key principles of pragmatism in service management directs attention to service market dynamics. Understanding customers’ everyday lives as the interplay of experiencing, knowing and acting reveals insights about the role of service in dynamic markets for the benefit of service research and practice.

The paper is a viewpoint to stimulate researchers’ reflections on often hidden core assumptions about service. Pragmatism provides a perspective on actors’ practical rationality and problem solving in dynamic settings. Along with its emphasis on a holistic understanding of customers’ lives, this perspective provides direction for future service research and practice. Further, conceptual development and empirical substantiation are encouraged.

By focusing on marketplace changes, this paper addresses management concerns for commercial and non-commercial organizations. Pragmatism encourages critical reflections on what companies are doing and why (the connection between actions and beliefs), revealing underlying beliefs and institutionalized industry practices that require modifications.

Pragmatism is an approach to service research and practice, irrespective of aggregation level and sector. Therefore, it can help stimulate societal welfare.

Pragmatism advances service research by delineating a holistic perspective on customers’ lives and providing a perspective for exploring and understanding dynamics and diversity in service markets.

While liberals agree that the best society is one that supports the equal exercise of personal liberty, there is little agreement among them on what policies best achieve this end. Conflicts within liberalism over the place of socially derived goals vis-à-vis personal liberty and autonomy create tension and skew public discourse on policy alternatives. In this article, I characterize the debate among dominant strands of liberal ideology and consider the effort of Charles Taylor to resolve these tensions. Finding his resolution unsatisfying, I explore the alternative conception offered by American pragmatism. I argue that liberal theories fail because they fall prey to the problem of principles-they attempt to justify axiomatic thinking rather than perpetuate society and culture. Pragmatism provides a justification for liberal public discourse as the best mechanism for constructing, evaluating and revising policies that support cultural adaptation to social, economic and technological contingencies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore an approach to epistemology which allows a portion of library and information science (LIS) to coherently explain its social and intellectual contributions, and to overcome some of the problems of epistemology that LIS encounters.

Literature based conceptual analysis of the problems of epistemology in LIS and the productive approach of Deweyan Pragmatism.

LIS’ problems with epistemology come from a variety of sources: epistemology itself, the combining of librarianship with information science, and the search for a common grounding of the information professions, their tools and their institutions. No such theoretical foundation is possible, but Deweyan Pragmatism offers a sensible, practical explanation for the historical development and practices of librarianship.

Pragmatism has been deployed in portions of LIS, but the full implications and the “fit” of Dewey’s ideas for librarianship and its epistemology are productive explorations.

The purpose of this paper is to present pragmatism as a useful way for supervisors to help their research students become effective research writers.

I first provide a brief overview of pragmatism, paying special attention to key figures such as John Dewey and Richard Rorty. Second, I suggest ways in which pragmatist supervisors might help research students improve as research writers by focusing on a set of issues including developing an andragogical relationship, adopting a pragmatist approach to ethics and discussing writing styles.

Pragmatism is not offered as an approach which must necessarily be adopted by supervisors but, rather, as a useful set of resources for them to use as they try to help doctoral students develop as thesis/research writers.

Pragmatism is rarely, if ever, discussed as a potentially fruitful and valuable way of helping students develop as doctoral writers.

Marketplaces have been central to civilization, as they foster trade and social life. Marketplaces are built environment (BE) interventions which, when looked at through a historical lens, reflect inequalities and subsequent deployment by people of color (POC). While the resurgence of farmers’ markets is a positive stride towards food justice over the past three decades, studies show that the disparities of class inequality and geographic constraints are key limitations to access for vulnerable populations. The fundamental question of this paper is, how can farmers’ markets use data to strategize and plan in ways that better serve their communities and give them more control?

This paper brings together applied methods in marketplace research and spatial analytical processes geographic information systems (GISs) to inform the research questions through an intersectional model of analysis. Data analysis merges local data collected from the market organization using the Farm 2 Facts toolkit and publicly available data to conduct geospatial analysis of the markets and their surrounding context. Two case studies are explored in Cotati, CA, and Brownsville, TX.

Despite the similarities and nuances of the two case studies, the data show that both markets serve a narrow pool of customers extended a couple of miles from the market. (1) The markets are not serving communities with the most need. (2) Farmers’ markets need to increase affiliation with POC. (3) Farmers’ market locations can impact control over one's environment.

The research builds of Nussbaum's capabilities model and explores three capabilities that are in line with what markets (1) bodily health, (2) affiliation and perhaps most significantly (3) control over one's own environment. Farmers’ market location can impact control over one's environment.