There is increasing recognition that sustainable diets need to be ‘culturally appropriate’. In relation to food consumption, however, it is often unclear what cultural appropriateness–or related terms, such as cultural or social acceptability–actually means. Often these terms go undefined, and where definitions are present, they vary widely. Based on a systematic literature review this paper explores how cultural appropriateness of food consumption is conceptualised across different research literatures, identifying six main themes in how cultural appropriateness is understood and (...) applied. The paper then critically analyses these themes in relation to sustainable food system transformation. We explore how the themes conceptualise change, finding that cultural appropriateness is viewed in two main ways: either as a relatively static obstacle to be overcome, or as a dynamic and negotiated process. Both perspectives, we argue, entail different scientific, practical and political effects. Each perspective offers particular affordances for understanding and governing sustainable food system transition, although between perspectives there is likely to be a trade-off between theoretical sophistication and practical operationalizability. Based on this analysis we argue that researchers, policymakers and practitioners should be explicit about their commitment to a particular understanding of cultural appropriateness, as this will have implications for scientific and societal applications of their work. This is particularly the case, we suggest, in relation to the transdisciplinary collaborations necessary to effectively address the ‘wicked problem’ of food system sustainability. We conclude by offering a tentative general definition of cultural appropriateness as it relates to food consumption. (shrink)

Despite projected devastating impacts on human communities, the US still lacks comprehensive national policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This vacuum has provided the space for a surge of promising sustainability and climate action planning efforts at the state and local level. Meanwhile, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (2015) Out of Reach Report, ‘there is no state in the US where a minimum wage worker working full time can afford a one-bedroom apartment at the fair (...) market rent’. We are calling for a reimagining of local climate action planning that encourages policies and programs designed to reduce GHG emissions from the built environment while explicitly and comprehensively addressing the affordability component. With equitable local climate action planning, we can address both environmental and social justice issues. (shrink)

South Africa is a country that is still in the transitioning process of providing an equal, equitable and just society for its previously disadvantaged people. The country faces several socio-economic developmental challenges, ranging from inadequate housing, high crime rates, violence against women and children, ineffectual health facilities, a slowing economy and high youth unemployment, which invariably affect the business community. If South Africa is to achieve sustainable economic transformation, the business community along with other stakeholders must participate in (...) ensuring social justice and socio-economic development for its previously disadvantaged people. This article contributed to the discourse on the assertion that social justice and socio-economic development are central for sustainable development in any society. The article called for the assistance and participation of other stakeholders, particularly the business community, to help build a just, healthy and robust environment, which translates into a strong community and portends a sustainable environment for businesses. Contribution: This article assessed the effectiveness of legislating social justice and corporate social responsibility. The article adopted the European Union’s Better Regulation evaluation methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the country’s social justice and corporate social responsibility legislation and the influence of the legislations on the socio-economic developmental challenges affecting the country. (shrink)

The author takes up a provocative question poised by Charles Taylor about the relationship between our commitments to a good such as neighbor love and the possibilities of achieving and sustaining social justice. Taylor's concern is not only that we make such a commitment but that we make it in such a way that we avoid its ability to lead us towards injustice rather than justice. After articulating conceptions of love, justice, and injustice, the author turns to Charles Dickens's (...) treatment of love and injustice in Bleak House, to explore more fully how love can lead to injustice, and also its potential role in promoting justice. Dickens's view, profoundly shaped by his own sense of Christian virtues, helps us see the inner workings of love, justice, and injustice, so that we can appreciate their interconnectedness anew and understand better the urgency of Taylor's question for our time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The approaches currently dominating sustainable urban planning are based on a paradigm which assumes that economic growth can be decoupled from economic degradation through smarter technological solutions and institutional reform within existing social structures. However, decoupling can only be partial. Environmental sustainability, therefore, requires that, sooner or later, growth in consumption and production must cease. Policies for combining environmental and social sustainability would be sharply at odds with key mechanisms inherent in the capitalist economy. Urban sustainability (...) thus requires profound changes. On the ontological plane, planning theory must move away from anti-realist constructivism and hermeneuticism, towards realism. On the empirical plane, it is necessary to move away from disciplinary tunnel vision towards a critical realist version of interdisciplinarity, within key research fields such as housing research and transportation research. On the political plane, urban sustainability must move from growth to degrowth, from inequality to equality, and from capitalism to eco-socialism. (shrink)

As the development trend of the future housing field, green housing is an effective way to reduce pollution, save energy, and promote industrial upgrading. At the same time, the green house is of great significance to change the development mode of the construction industry and promote the sustainable development of the social economy. This study proposes a comprehensive research model to examine the influencing mechanism of residents’ intention to purchase green buildings. The proposed model is empirically (...) tested using data collected from 1,338 urban residents in China. Based on logit, probit, and ivprobit models, factors such as personal characteristics, housing price, and the number of real estate ownership are selected to conduct empirical analysis and mechanism analysis on willingness that affects consumers’ purchase of green houses. The results show that housing assets significantly affect the willingness of householders to pay for green houses. The more houses they own, the higher their willingness to pay for a green house will be. Similarly, if the housing prices are higher, householders are more willing to buy a green house. The amount of housing assets will affect the willingness of householders to pay for green housing through the way of individual happiness. In terms of the characteristics of the householder, if the householder is more educated, unmarried, his willingness to buy a green house will be stronger, and owning housing assets may affect the individual happiness due to the housing wealth effect brought by rising housing prices. People with more housing assets are more likely to have the happiness brought by higher wealth, which may affect the purchase intention of householders. (shrink)

According to the Economic Survey of India, 2012–2013, the real estate sector contributed 5.9 % of the India’s total Gross Domestic Product in the Financial Year 2011–2012, while remaining the second largest employment generator after agriculture in India. The urban population in India is projected to touch 600 million by 2030, from 377 million in 2011, thereby fuelling a housing shortage of around 26 million. However, the perception of Construction industry, like other sectors of the economy, is that of (...) creating “human habitat in a manner generally focussed on profitability without consideration of its long-term impacts.” Under such circumstances, Tata Housing Development Company Limited, a closely held Public Limited Company under 99.86 % subsidiary of Tata Sons, is the first Indian real estate company to have reported the triple bottom-line Global Reporting Initiative G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines in its Sustainability Report FY 2013–2014. THDCL aims to volunteer its resources to the extent it can reasonably afford, to sustain the environment and to improve the quality of life of the people of the area in which it operates. This Situational Case Study, targeted towards management students and practitioners, and social and developmental workers in the areas of Corporate Governance, Strategic Management, Business Environment, Business Policy and Community Welfare, aims to identify the community engagement model of THDCL; analyse it in terms of its implementation and impact; and initiate discussion about the role of strategic partnerships under Corporate Social Responsibility in an emerging economy. This work may be used for developmental related workshops/training programmes for students and working professionals of innovation, CSR, sustainability, social and developmental sectors and shared, among others, in various Chambers of Commerce and Academic forums on the same. It is, however, not intended to serve as an endorsement, source of data or illustration of effective or ineffective management. Certain names and information could have been disguised for confidentiality. (shrink)

Businesses and the social sciences are increasingly facing calls to further scholarship dedicated to understand sustainability. Furthermore, multinationals are also facing similar calls given their high profile and their role in environmental degradation. However, a literature review shows that there is very limited understanding of sustainability at a cross-national level. Given the above gaps, we contribute to the literature by examining how selected GLOBE [House et al., Culture, leadership and organizations: The GOBE study of 62 societies. Sage Publications, Thousand (...) Oaks, 2004 ] cultural dimensions are related to individuals’ propensity to support sustainability initiatives in 33 countries. We use data from the World Values Survey [World Values Study Group, World Values Surveys and European Value Surveys, 1999–2001. Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, 2004 ] and test our hypotheses using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). Results support all but one hypothesis. Specifically, uncertainty avoidance is not related to propensity to support sustainability initiatives. In contrast, performance orientation and assertiveness have the desired negative relationship with our dependent variable while collectivism, future orientation, and human orientation have the desired positive relationship. We discuss the conceptual and practical implications of this study. (shrink)

This paper examines the different mechanisms used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Nigeria seeking to make long-term social investments by meeting the critical challenge of improving water provision. Community enterprise – an increasingly common form of social enterprise, which pursues charitable objectives through business activities – may be the most effective mechanism for building local capacity in a sustainable and accountable way. Traditionally, social investments by MNCs have involved either donations to a charity, which then assumes (...) responsibility for delivering social outcomes, or direct management of social investment in-house. These approaches have been criticized, however, for their limited contribution to local capacity building, their focus on short-term outcomes, and the restricted role that they afford to communities. Partnering with community enterprise, provided there is sufficient local capacity to support it, is the most effective mode of governance through which MNCs can manage social investments in developing countries. (shrink)

This paper reviews the current status of the debate about concept of environmental sustainability, and mentions its related aspects of growth, limits, scale and substitutability. The paper suggests that ES is a clear concept and that it is universal and rigorous. While the many paths leading to ES in each country or sector will differ, the goal remains constant. ES is contrasted from social and economic sustainability, because the three types of sustainability follow different laws and require different means (...) by different disciplines to achieve each of them. ES is fundamental for survival of humanity; but ES without some measure of social sustainability will not be very attractive. The three now need to be integrated.This conceptualisation is far from an academic exercise. The monumental challenge of ensuring that possibly ten billion people are decently fed and housed within less than two human generations—without damaging the environment on which we all depend—means that the goal of environmental sustainability must be reached as soon as humanly possible. (shrink)

Abstract There is increasing evidence suggesting that environmental and social criteria are impacting the market in complex ways. The corporate world has demonstrated a willingness to respond to public pressure for improved performance on non–economic issues by embracing Triple Bottom Line (TBL) principles. TBL reporting has been institutionalized as a way of thinking for corporate sustainability. However, institutions are constantly changing and improving, while TBL has been fairly conservative in its approach to change. The more balanced focus on the (...) economic, the environmental and the social has provided a framework for institutions and markets around the world who want to focus indicators towards a sustainable future. This paper presents a criticism of the TBL approach that adds to the limited information on the pervasiveness of this approach. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s13520-012-0019-3 Authors Kaushik Sridhar, Net Balance Management Group, 332, Kent Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia Grant Jones, Australian Catholic University, 8/20 Napier Street, NR House, North Sydney, NSW, Australia 2060 Journal Asian Journal of Business Ethics Online ISSN 2210-6731 Print ISSN 2210-6723. (shrink)

Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Temitope A. Ogunweide The study sought to assess the social context of solid waste disposal pattern of residents in Ibadan metropolis, in order to assess the Solid waste disposal patterns of people in Ibadan metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study identified solid waste disposal habits of residents, frequency of clearing the dumpsters, accessibility of waste dumpsters to people determines the waste disposal (...) pattern of people; and analyze the willingness of people in Ibadan to pay for improved service. Solid waste management has been part of human activities right from time. Efforts by Oyo State Government is seen in the collection of dirt that have been placed on the medians. Waste generation is an unavoidable product of man activities, however, sustainable management of such waste is a challenge faced in many countries today. Nigeria, a developing country in Africa, has been in a quandary of how to efficiently manage the municipal solid waste its population generates. Many states in the country lack adequate plans and infrastructure required for efficient and sustainable management of municipal solid waste. For Ibadan, the largest city in Nigeria, the problem is further compounded by its rather large and still increasing population. In this research, Ibadan metropolis is taken as a case study; the rate of solid waste handling in households as regards solid waste management from household collection to final disposal are focused upon. The study found out that 45.6% drop their refuse in the dumpsters as 18.8% burns their refuse, 17.7% of the respondents drops their waste on the median, 12% in the drainage while 6% opts to drop their waste in the streams. On the effectiveness of the Private operators collecting waste from the respondents, the study found out that 7.6% effective, 37.5% of the respondents says the operators waste collection is poor, 7% says it is abysmal while 43.5% said it is not applicable to them because they do not have storage containers in their houses and as a result did not subscribe to their service. Many countries, particularly the developed ones, have employed options in the waste management hierarchy for sustainable management of their municipal solid waste and the blend of options employed is usually highly dependent on local factors. Following the waste management hierarchy, possible options for sustainable municipal solid waste management in Ibadan are discussed. It is concluded that waste reduction, reuse, and recycling are potential management options for the state. Landfilling will remain an important option for final disposal but reliance on this method could be significantly reduced if management options are exploited to the maximum in a sustainable solid waste management structure in Ibadan metropolis. Key Words: Waste handling, Ibadan Metropolis, Landfill, Municipal Solid Waste Word Count: 435. (shrink)

The problem of race has typically been treated as a problem of individual or institutional prejudice. However, more attention needs to be paid to structural racism, which shows how racialized opportunity structures sustain racial injustice even when actors are not prejudiced. Because Catholic social thought treats social structures as mere aggregates of individual behavior, however, it is unable to explain how opportunity structures constrain human agency, how social positions condition the behaviors of people who occupy them, and (...) how harms may occur without intent. A critical realist approach to understanding social structure corrects the reductive tendencies of dominant perspectives on race, such as colorblindness and antiracism, and helps explain how nonracists can perpetuate racial injustice. An analysis of the case of residential segregation shows how the pursuit of individual goods in racialized opportunity structures like the housing market simultaneously hinders the common good. (shrink)

Efforts to recruit and retain farmers have traditionally supported the farm business through a focus on access to land, capital, and business skills. While these efforts are critical, a small body of work indicates that these may be insufficient because they rarely account for the social and economic needs of farm households and how the (in)ability to meet these needs interacts with the development and economic viability of the farm enterprise. Social and economic needs include, but are not (...) limited to access to health insurance and health care, childcare, adequate household and retirement income, affordable housing, and food security. This article introduces a symposium intended to shed light on these underappreciated needs and how they connect to the farm enterprise. We contend that a greater understanding of farm households’ lived realities meeting their social and economic needs could lead to a paradigm shift in how we understand and support farm families’ resilience. We set the stage for the eight articles in this symposium in two ways. First, we present the theoretical and empirical reasons why considering household-level needs is crucial when working towards supporting the agricultural sector. Second, we review the literature on farm households’ social and economic needs. We then thematically summarize the key insights from the eight articles. Despite variations in topics studied, research designs, and geographical contexts, we note a clear pattern in what the authors see as the implications of their findings. Namely, they reaffirm the need to challenge the traditional view that separates household needs from farm enterprise activities and outcomes. Their collective call for stronger social and agricultural programs and policies is noteworthy and may in part be connected to the structural underpinnings of the challenges meeting social and economic needs highlighted across the articles. (shrink)

Winds of change, from the political perspective in Mexico, invite us to reformulate the methodological vision for the direction of public policy in the field of social development, directing their actions towards the construction of a methodological proposal that allows us to direct ourselves towards achieving higher levels of Well-being Social in our country, as a desirable objective of public policy and which is expected to be inclusive, participatory and democratic. -/- In this sense, it is important to (...) recognize that the current debate, in the academic and political sphere, questions what is being well? What is the life that is worth living? And that, additionally, the recognition of the satisfaction of life goals, at an individual and collective level, which invites us to reflect, if the current economic and social policy and strategy has produced results in what we envision as social welfare? Is a new approach necessary to solve the problem? What strategy should it be to consider the new methodological approach that seeks social welfare? And what components should be considered in the measurement of social welfare? This document is an invitation to review the concept of social welfare, as a proposal whose purpose is to correct the deficiencies or historical deficiencies suffered by the population, in the elemental enjoyment of social rights, a situation that causes social backwardness, marginalization, and that it is aimed at the impossibility of participating in the social decisions of the community and in collective decisions, such as: speaking, proposing, being heard and demanding compliance with fundamental human rights such as: health, food, housing, employment and security, among others. These deficiencies in the enjoyment of social and human rights are seen in the presence of social exclusion, and that together these social deficiencies explain the degree of multidimensional poverty suffered by the population in rural and urban areas. It is here that he invites us to reflect: what is the problem that social welfare seeks to solve? Multidimensional poverty, social exclusion, social backwardness or social inequality? And consequently, how to define the components to identify social welfare? -/- The document is made up of three sections: i) Social welfare: A retrospective look; ii) Social Welfare, an integrative view: The contribution of Sen, Naussbam, Rawls, Actis Di Pasquale and Keyes; and iii) Social Welfare: The recognition of limits in economic development -/- The first section presents a review of the proposals, which in the area of economic development have been presented since 1968 in the Human Condition Project, until the 2015 proposal of Sustainable Development Goals. -/- In the second section, the contributions of (Rawls, 1995), (Sen, 1982), (Nussbaum, 2011), (Keyes, 1998) , (Actis Di Pasquale, 2015) and (Actis Di Pasquale, 2017) are presented in order to present an integrative approach to the concept of social welfare. And finally, the third section presents the recognition of limits in development, as well as an invitation for action from a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective in the study of social welfare. -/- August 2020 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24147.20006/1 LicenseCC BY-SA 4.0 -/- . (shrink)

Social innovations are usually understood as new ideas, initiatives, or solutions that make it possible to meet the challenges of societies in fields such as social security, education, employment, culture, health, environment, housing, and economic development. On the one hand, many citizen science activities serve to achieve scientific as well as social and educational goals. Thus, these actions are opening an arena for introducing social innovations. On the other hand, some social innovations are further (...) developed, adapted, or altered after the involvement of scientist-supervised citizens in research and with the use of the citizen science tools and methods such as action research, crowdsourcing, and community-based participatory research. Such approaches are increasingly recognized as crucial for gathering data, addressing community needs, and creating engagement and cooperation between citizens and professional scientists. However, there are also various barriers to both citizen science and social innovation. For example, management, quality and protection of data, funding difficulties, non-recognition of citizens’ contributions, and limited inclusion of innovative research approaches in public policies. In this volume, we open theoretical as well as empirically-based discussion, including examples, practices, and case studies of at least three types of relations between citizen science and social innovation: domination of the citizen science features over social innovation aspects; domination of the social innovation features over the citizen science aspects; and the ways to achieve balance and integration between the social innovation and citizen science features. Each of these relationships highlights factors that influence the development of the main scales of sustainability of innovations in the practice. These innovations are contributing to a new paradigm of learning and sharing knowledge as well as interactions and socio-psychological development of participants. Also, there are factors that influence the development of platforms, ecosystems, and sustainability of innovations such as broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation; emerging healthcare and health promotion models; advancements in the development and governance of smart, green, inclusive and age-friendly cities and communities; new online learning centers; agri-food, cohousing or mobility platforms; and engagement of citizens into co-creation or co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental organizations as well as non-formal entities. (shrink)

Little has been published about the drivers, factors and challenges involved in the business practice of creating corporate sustainability performance within a company. This working paper describes research that employed an in-depth, grounded-theory case study approach to explore the issue within two EU-based utility companies. From the analysis of interviews, project meeting observations and a survey with in-house delivery experts, a key preliminary output of this research has been the creation of a Force-Factor Corporate Sustainability Performance Framework that categorises the (...) main driver and inhibitor elements a dynamic, explanatory model. This can serve as a useful platform for further academic and practitioner-based research, as well as describing key levers and obstacles to establishing a progressive performance in corporate sustainability. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt has been one of empathy’s most formidable and influential critics among contemporary political theorists. In this article, I suggest that her argument against empathy is no argument at all. The line she draws between empathy and imagination is arbitrary, and imagination cannot – in and by itself – sustain the work of representative thinking, which Arendt assigns to it. With this critique of Arendt, and the introduction of an alternative view of empathy put forth by Karl Jaspers, Arendt’s (...) mentor and friend, I hope to open the way for a reconsideration of the distrust with which empathy is met among many political theorists. (shrink)

Many older people need external support for their daily living. A large minority of older adults with low or modest pension incomes face financial strains from the high cost of illness, and many older people in urban areas live in social isolation. Indeed, population aging has become a policy topic of concern. The policy debate since the end of the twentieth century about the future of public pensions and health and long‐term care programs has increasingly framed the growing numbers (...) of older people in alarmist terms. Unfounded claims about the unaffordability and unsustainability of social policies supporting older people have become common currency, often disguised as concerns about intergenerational justice. Such claims and concerns hinder clear thinking about proper social and fiscal policies, housing, health care, and labor markets to safeguard the well‐being of older people in aging societies. (shrink)

Several researchers hold that the cohousing movement supports sustainability, but it remains economically restrictive. This condition challenges cohousing’s status as sustainable, considering that its financially exclusive nature fails to meaningfully address sustainability’s social dimension. Yet, it is doubtful that the cohousing movement set out to create this outcome. When we examine the historical conditions that pertain to multifamily housing, we discover a long-standing pattern of discrimination. For today’s cohousing communities, we see that they are dealing with the (...) residual effects of such prejudicial practices. Most of the unfair treatment comes from zoning and lending, but we also see that cohousing has internal challenges that complicate matters. Through employing an environmental justice framework, however, we can parse kinds of responsibility. If planners, financiers, and cohousing communities can remove these barriers, then cohousing can bolster efforts in urban sustainability. (shrink)

This article analyses the legacy of Marsha P. Johnson as a heroine through the notion of labour, emphasising how heroine narratives are both a product of labour as well as a form of labour. After offering a short account of Marsha P. Johnson’s role in the Stonewall riots and STAR, we explore the development of trans communities’ ability to create, sustain and disseminate heroine narratives, emphasising Tourmaline’s pivotal archival role in establishing Johnson’s legacy. Then, we elucidate the role of heroine (...) narratives in creating and sustaining a collective identity. We argue that community attachment to Marsha P. Johnson reclaims the place of trans communities in LGBTQ+ history but is often done in a manner that obscures the whiteness of mainstream trans advocacy. We suggest that the recent increase in interest towards the life-sustaining labour of STAR House reflects the evolution of trans collective identity in the post-visibility era. (shrink)

While pragmatism as a philosophy and intellectual movement has been gaining inroads in international ethics and international political theory scholarship, feminist pragmatism is not yet as widely regarded. This paper explores the intellectual contributions of feminist pragmatism to international political thought, particularly Jane Addams’s social ethics which is largely overlooked in the literature on women’s contributions to international normative theory. Here I add to efforts to reconsider Addams as a thinker that was concerned with the multiplicity and diversity, features (...) of social life that make a foundational premise of international normative thought. In the paper, I explore how feminism and pragmatism challenge ideas about normatively constitutive communities. The nexus of the two philosophies come clearly in Addams’s progressive communitarianism and her ideas on the significance of settlement to social ethics. In addition to Addams’s pacifist thought and international humanism, I argue that her practice in Hull House draws attention to the site as a normatively significant category. The paper casts Hull House as an international social space that sustained social connections, instrumental to social ethics. Hull House serves as an exemplar that can inform further thinking about the international community and more democratised global governance structures. (shrink)

Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species, but there is substantial variation in the extent of cooperation across societies. Understanding the sources of this variability may provide insights about the forces that sustain cooperation. We examined the ontogeny of prosocial behavior by studying 326 children 3–14 y of age and 120 adults from six societies (age distributions varied across societies). These six societies span a wide range of extant human variation in culture, geography, and subsistence strategies, including foragers, herders, horticulturalists, and (...) urban dwellers across the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. When delivering benefits to others was personally costly, rates of prosocial behavior dropped across all six societies as children approached middle childhood and then rates of prosociality diverged as children tracked toward the behavior of adults in their own societies. When prosocial acts did not require personal sacrifice, prosocial responses increased steadily as children matured with little variation in behavior across societies. Our results are consistent with theories emphasizing the importance of acquired cultural norms in shaping costly forms of cooperation and creating cross-cultural diversity. (shrink)

To support the sustainability of future cities, residents’ living spaces need to be built and used efficiently, while supporting residents’ communal wellbeing. Nordic superblock is a new planning, housing, and living concept in which residents of a neighborhood—a combination of city blocks—share yards, common spaces and utilities. Sharing living spaces is an essential element of this approach. In this study, our goal was to study the ways in which intelligent technology solutions—such as proactive, data-driven Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications—could support (...) and even motivate the use of common areas in superblocks. To this end, we conducted a two-phase qualitative study: in the first phase, potential superblock residents (N = 12) shared their perspectives of sharing of living spaces in general, and more specifically of how intelligent technologies could support sharing spaces. In the second phase, two workshops with experts (N = 7) were held to gather understanding of possibilities of intelligent technologies in meeting the residents’ expectations of space sharing. The results illustrate space sharing and communality as supportive factors for one another, enabled but also complicated by social interaction. Major possibilities for intelligent technologies to advance space sharing were seen in organizing the use of spaces and facilitating social interaction in the community. As an outcome, four roles incorporating several use purposes of intelligent technologies were found. The findings can inform the Human-Centered AI (HCAI) research and design improving sustainable living in future urban neighborhoods. (shrink)

This symposium explores the well-being of Latinx farmworkers living and laboring in the United States. Our primary aim is to take a deeper look at the lived experiences of farmworkers. In the introduction, we explore the various ways in which well-being is framed in diverse academic disciplines, and how the concept of well-being has been employed in previous research on Latinx farmworkers. We argue that ethnographic methods have potential to represent farmworker experiences in a more nuanced manner than many other (...) social science approaches. We advocate further research and action in terms of farmworker safety, health (including mental health and access to care), food security and food provisioning, rural isolation and access to housing, poverty and job security. Finally, we argue that farmworkers should be considered active and important actors in the context of global environmental change. Ultimately, the well-being of farmworkers is co-dependent on global environmental health and sustainability. (shrink)

Ethics in the anthropocene -- Atmospheric powers: climate change and moral incompetence -- Christian ethics and unprecedented problems -- Global ethics: moral pluralism and planetary problems -- Sustainability science and the ethics of wicked problems -- Toxic wombs and the ecology of justice -- Impoverishment and the economy of desire -- Intergenerational risk and the future of love -- Sustaining grace.

As a fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) term, the concept of “ignorance” ex-presses uncertainties in legal transactions and, in Islamic law, is accepted as a situation that negatively impacts the legitimacy of contracts. If the sale is deferred, clarification of the delivery time of the price to be paid for the goods sold, the number of installments, etc. during the contract is considered essential for the validity of the transactions in order not to damage the principle of mutual consent in purchase and (...) sale transactions and to avoid conflicts between the parties. However, not every uncertainty is considered an obstacle to the validity of the contract, and minor uncertainties that do not lead to disputes are tolerated. The fiqh sources of four Islamic sects contain many examples of these uncertainties. This study firstly examines the effect of ignorance on the validity of purchasing contracts in Islamic law using the issues in classical fiqh sources and then analyses the housing sales contract of TOKI’s (housing development administration of Turkey) “my first house social housing project” in this context from a fiqh perspective. In addition, the study addresses the related housing sales contract in terms of the juristic preference method by considering the aspect of meeting an important need of society and realizing the purpose of this project. Then, while evaluating the issue from a juris-prudential point of view, the study discusses that the absolute and strict interpretation of the rule of “ignorance renders the contract void,” which is adopted by ignoring the public interest, does not produce favorable results. (shrink)

The devastating COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying containment measures brought exceptional challenges to the health delivery system, and in particular, women’s sexual and reproductive healthcare (hereafter referred to as SRH). The re-routing of health resources and funding to mitigate the effects of the pandemic obstructed the provision of essential SRH services for women and girls. Coupled with the incessant socio-cultural and patriarchal norms and gender inequalities, the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated the pre-existing SRH disproportions already affecting women. By adopting a qualitative (...) approach and drawing on the experiences of women from three high density suburbs in Harare. Firstly, the study sought to explore the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on SRH for women and girls. Secondly, the research sought to determine key drivers that affect women’s SRH in the context of COVID-19. Participant responses indicated that the COVID-19 lockdown containment measures which confined spouses to the home setting for prolonged periods of time, which is in contrast to the norm, exposed women to SRH related challenges. Participants cited that (i) bruised male ego due to lack of employment as a result of downscaling of companies resulting from COVID-19 containment measures resulted in men asserting their masculinities through heightened sexual intercourse, (ii) restraint of movement resulted in limited time for men to visit their small houses and side-chicks or side dish (euphemisms for illicit sexual relations) therefore resulting in frequent and unprotected sex with their spouses, giving rise to unplanned pregnancies and increased exposure to STIs due to limited access to SRH services and, (iii) increased intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual abuse. Therefore, the research sought to explore the response of religious leaders and faith-based actors to providing psycho-social support and safe spaces as ways of addressing intersectional injustices giving rise to SRH challenges for women and girls.Contribution: The intersecting crises of the COVID-19 pandemic have extensively hindered progress towards the promotion of women’s SRH. Relating to sustainable development goal 3 (SDG3), the article acknowledges the trust and respect of religious leaders within communities as change agents who can encourage shifts in behaviour, beliefs and practices in ways that promote holistic SRH for women. (shrink)

Motivated by the social and environmental challenges resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic, this research examines the influence of the “big five” personality traits; extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism on sustainable social responsibility with a mediating role of bricolage. We collected empirical evidence from 245 family‐owned SMEs. The results indicate that the personality traits do not directly influence sustainable social responsibility, although the traits (except extroversion) influence bricolage. Moreover, we found that open, conscious, and agreeable (...) personalities indirectly contribute to sustainable social responsibility, with bricolage as a mediator. Our findings encourage enterprises to focus on those personality traits during crises (especially COVID‐19) that empower people to effectively manage existing resources (e.g., bricolage) and protect their stakeholders. Family‐owned SMEs need to assign resource utilization tasks to family members having personalities of openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism because these kinds of people have high capacities for bricolage. (shrink)

Business sustainability aims to combine market logic with social welfare logic. In literature, it is commonly assumed that sustainability and the social welfare logic associated with it are characterized by a long-term orientation. However, this assumption is problematic because this principle may not apply in certain contexts. This qualitative study challenges this assumption and focuses on the mechanisms by which time affects the adoption of sustainability practices in the context of socially responsible investing (SRI) practices in Swiss banks (...) and insurance companies. The article provides insights into the mechanisms associated with different time horizons and investigates their effects on the adoption of SRI in financial intermediaries. It also shows how the dimension of time shapes interactions between the two institutional logics underlying SRI in business organizations through specific mechanisms. (shrink)

Purpose: This article aims to highlight key indicators of residents' quality of life in a specific contemporary building in Kruja, Albania. -/- Design/Method/Approach: A questionnaire with 30 questions was prepared for the inhabitance, and the Binary or Tobit probabilistic models were taken into consideration as part of the methodology, to conclude. The study will further analyze the implications of the inhabitants and their behavior in a specific contemporary building in the city of Kruja. It was examined the statistical significance of (...) each variable (questions) in the models elaborated with EViews 8 software. The stable models that are associated with the “Log-likelihood” statistics were statistically significant at a significance level of p < 5%, or with 95% confidence, based on the model tests. -/- Findings: The study concluded that the most statistically significant quality of life indicators part of the questionnaire is related to the typology of the apartments, methods of cooling during summer, present living conditions, apartment improvement, apartment orientation, and time spent in the living room. Furthermore, the study reveals that most of the quality-of-life indicators (part of the questionnaire) are not statistically important, so they will not be considered part of the models created in the article. The study reveals that increasing the living space and improving orientation is crucial to enhance the satisfaction of apartment inhabitants. When apartment sizes increase and orientation is improved, residents are more likely to opt for fans over air conditioners to reduce electricity costs and avoid installing additional cooling facilities during summer. They believe that better living conditions require larger apartments, additional water supply, increased electrical costs, and more time spent in the living room. The inhabitants also emphasize the importance of reducing moisture levels, decreasing window opening frequency, and increasing time spent with family. Interestingly, a one-degree improvement in summer cooling methods (e.g., switching from air blowers to air conditioning) corresponds to a one-degree improvement in winter heating methods (e.g., switching from gas to electricity), leading to a heightened need for clean electric heating. Overall, the study emphasizes the importance of meeting the physical and spatial needs of the residents to enhance their overall satisfaction and quality of life. Urban policies significantly impact housing affordability, quality, transport systems, environmental sustainability, and social equity, affecting overall living standards and economic growth. Cities must create well-designed policies that consider residents' needs and study findings to ensure sustainable development and citizen welfare. -/- Theoretical Implications: Gujarati’s (Basic Economics) theory was developed in the article. -/- Practical Implications: This study will serve as an indicator to analyze the further improvements that might occur in the specific building (not just in the city of Kruja), considering the main quality of life indicators. -/- Originality/Value: The article will serve as a base for further analysis of resident’s behavior and their social impact in the community in order to be aware of their needs for further developments in the construction field. -/- Research Limitations/Future Research: The findings depend profoundly on the type of building the residents are living in. The research stream that can be inspired by the research is strongly related to mathematical regression models, statistics, and probability. -/- Paper Type: Empirical . (shrink)

This article aims to examine the Lithuanian housing policy system, with a special emphasis on social housing issues. This study is based on 20 semi-structured interviews with the decision makers and recipients of social housing. The analysis reveals the issues related to access to social housing, management and administration issues, problems related to stigmatisation of social housing recipients, and their overall satisfaction with the provided support.The study shows that accessing social (...) housing and living in social housing is not an easy task. Social housing recipients have to wait in queues for a long time, experience stigmatisation and constant fear that they may lose their social housing due to a strict income monitoring. On the other hand, the municipality tries to provide friendly strategies to solve individual cases and looks for the best solutions possible to meet the needs of social housing recipients. The findings show that massive privatisation in Lithuania created a dualistic housing market favouring home ownership and marginalising social housing as a safety net for the most vulnerable people. At the same time, a massive home ownership society formed a safety net for many, with family ties playing a crucial role. Housing safety is offered as a part of social assistance programs for the most vulnerable parts of the population. (shrink)

A wide variety of forms of domination hasresulted in a highly heterogeneous health riskcategory, ``the vulnerable.'''' The study of healthinequities sheds light on forces thatgenerate, sustain, and alter vulnerabilities toillness, injury, suffering and death. Thispaper analyzes the case of a high-risk teenfrom a Boston ghetto that illuminatesintersections between ``race'''' and class in theconstruction of vulnerability in the US.Exploration of his ``wounds'''' helps specify howlarge-scale social and cultural forces becomeembodied as individual experience of disparatehealth risk. The case demonstrates that healthinequities (...) would not occur if resources –employment, income, wealth, education, housing,profiling in the legal system, and health care– were more justly managed in keeping withstandards outlined in the Universal Declarationof Human Rights. Professional responses to the``wounds of vulnerability'''' may reveal importantaspects of who we are and what our work asscholars, practitioners, and advocates mustbecome. (shrink)

Older single women in Australia are increasingly experiencing homelessness. Age and gender seem inherently related to single older women’s housing crises, but no attempt has been made to account for the causes of their homelessness through an intersectional lens. This article develops a complex and contingent causal explanation of the structures and mechanisms implicated in growing homelessness for this group. We demonstrate an original use of critical realist-informed intersectional analysis which is characterized by stratified social ontology and emergence. (...) We theoretically reframe existing literature to demonstrate how the intersectional causal powers of gender and age (‘gender*age’) discrimination and conventional life course experiences intersect to generate financial precarity for older women. Our causal model explains how economic insecurity, structural and individual contexts, and crisis events interact, challenging older women’s housing security and precipitating first-time homelessness later in life. (shrink)

Stakeholder maneuvers such as Internet media attacks or consumer boycotts can have devastating effects on companies. By contrary, vital relationships between companies and their stakeholders can be highly beneficial. A review of the existing stakeholder-management literature suggests to engage stakeholders in business activities in a positive manner. However, the types of successful engagement activities differ across industries. The purposes of this article are to develop an explanatory framework based on the literature findings, to introduce stakeholder-engagement literature to a segment of (...) the water sourcing industry, and to unfold industry’s stakeholder-engagement measures. Based on a content analysis of 11 cases, we investigate if and how companies in the natural mineral water bottling industry in Austria inform, communicate, and therefore engage with stakeholders. It became evident that fewer than three of eleven companies published information on sustainability or corporate social responsibility reports, open house days, workshops, or international community activities. Most companies maintained a website for their bottled natural mineral water or communicated quality consciousness. We conclude that most companies in the Austrian mineral water industry could increase their stakeholder-engagement activities to positively respond to challenging business environments. (shrink)

What value does genomics hold for industry? Ten years after the White House Press conference where the human genome sequence was first presented, we ask in which ways and to what extent the developments in genomics have been integrated into industry. This enables us to assess whether this integration has been as successful as expected, but also which unexpected developments in genomics advances have triggered additional benefits for industry. Genomics has contributed to the beginning of a global transition to a (...) bio-based economy, but there have been and there still are hurdles to be cleared. The hurdles are not merely of a technological nature, since the objectives are a complex between economic progress, environmental and global climate concerns, and energy security. Therefore, they are at the same time technological, societal and environmental in nature. These categorisations fall short of articulating the many issues that arise, such as economic development (for emerging economies), public opinion formation and scientific and technological progress. We argue that to make this transition happen, industrialists, policy makers and the wider public have to be prepared to be more actively involved in the debate, weighing the pros and cons and taking responsibility in creating the desired sustainable world.This paper will examine the advances of genomics in the industrial context, the role of these advances in current attempts to find sustainable solutions to a variety of problems, the enthusiasm with which they have been picked up, the implications for industrial innovation and the accompanying discussion about possible consequential social and ethical issues. It will also sketch out the nature of this ongoing establishment of a bio-based economy, the parties that are currently at the negotiation table, and whether the current situation has an impact on the way societal debates emerge. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) graded the mortgage security of urban US neighborhoods. In doing so, the HOLC engaged in the practice, imbued with racism and xenophobia, of “redlining” neighborhoods deemed “hazardous” for lenders. Redlining has caused persistent social, political and economic problems for communities of color. Linkages between redlining and contemporary food access remain unexamined, even though food access is essential to well-being. To investigate this, we used a census tract-level measure of low-income and (...) low grocery store food access from the US Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas, redlining data from Mapping Inequality Project, and demographic data from the American Community Survey. We employed generalized estimating equations with robust covariance estimates to analyze data pertaining to 10,459 census tracts in 202 US cities. Tracts that the HOLC graded as “C” (“decline in desirability”) and “D” (“hazardous”) had reduced contemporary food access compared to those graded “A” (“best”). Increases in contemporary census tract proportions of Black, Hispanic, or other racial/ethnic minority residents, as well as disabled residents, were associated with reduced food access. Increases in contemporary proportions of residents age 75 years and older or those without a car were associated with better food access. Tracts that underwent housing redevelopment since being graded had better food access, while those undergoing gentrification had reduced food access. Results suggest that issues of redlining, housing discrimination, racism, ableism, displacement, and food inaccessibility are deeply intertwined. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Untying Foucauldian Knots of Power/Knowledge and Tying Better Relationships with the Confucian PersuasionJoseph Harroff (bio)Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy. By James Garrison. Albany: SUNY Press, 2021.Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.—Dewey, Democracy and Education (2)There is no pure self to be redeemed here, but perhaps some kind of rehabilitation beyond the problematic trappings of subject (...) life might be possible.—Garrison, Reconsidering the Life of Power (54)The problem of critiquing power by untangling and retangling ourselves more creatively and intelligently in webs of habit and flows of somaesthetic information and value-laden ethical-political imaginative horizons of futurity is taken up by James Garrison in Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy (2021). By asking a series of ethically sustained and interculturally hermeneutically sensitive questions surrounding the critical problematic as to the conditions for the possibility of how "it is possible to use the sign chains of power to chain power," or how it is possible to "tie power up in its own knots" (p. 18), Garrison makes creative use of "subjectality theory" that foregrounds somaesthetic practices seeking to be in many ways recasting rather than simply reconsidering the life of power. It is through a methodological sounding of the depths of somaesthetic experience and a creative-critical inquiry into the ways in which the complex of social arts understood in the broadest possible conception, including at all ethical and political intersections, that this book enters into the domain of Confucian theorizing of persons as part of never-simply-located root-body-persons (shenti 身體)—that is, as offering a theory of relational persons that is simultaneously and intersectionally caught up in a manifold of social practices of aesthetic, ethical, political, and religious signification. It is by critically interrogating the historical a priori that condition the possibility for any specific knowledge-power discursive interpellation by drawing attention to the complex interplay and entanglement of forces and signification involved in tool-making and tool-using practices as a "sedimentation" (jidian 積澱) of [End Page 809] somaesthetic arts that straddle a polarity of natural-cultural form-functioning, that Garrison makes creative advances in pushing critical theory past a problematic pessimism and/or nihilism that stems from any brute recognition of the "skintight prison" houses we inhabit as a result of Foucauldian power knots.Using the idea of "sedimentation" to better articulate the complex strata of social experience as mediated by aesthetic culture Garrison draws heavily from Li Zehou. Li is suspicious of a Maoist model of conflating theory and practice, subject and object, especially when the treatment is part of a civic and political religiosity that renders the Great Helmsman a supreme leader and unilateral decision-maker in a Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the historico-teleological revolution. For Li, aesthetic sensibility is the "manifestation of the sedimentation of society in nature, and the sedimentation of humankind as a species in the individual."1 And moreover, the "animal structure and quality of psychology" is "transformed into something that has a human nature, in which sensation and rationality are dissolved and combined."2 This complex process of dissolution and combination is more like a Hegelian dialectic of spirit than it is a linear-totalitarian realization of Maoist voluntarism. However, this is what I want to begin challenging by asking what degree Garrison draws upon this aspect of Li. I would suggest that Maoist voluntarism can be read as part of a traditional Chinese philosophical problematic that prioritizes practice in order to realize the truth of nature (gongfu jishi benti 功夫即是本體).This way of approaching the Maoist dynamic of voluntarism seems much closer to the Expansive Learning 《大學》 dynamic of "from the King to the commoners, everyone takes self-cultivation as the root," but would avoid any problematic Maoist hubris regarding the limits, methods and confines of class "struggle." The post-linguistic turn and then return to a Deweyan process metaphysical and creatively democratic inquiry into experience to garner more intelligent methods for critiquing and cultivating embodied and relationally configured habits of perception, speech, and thought via the vocabulary of... (shrink)

The following is excerpted from Sean Gurd’s translation of Euripides’ Hippolytus published with Uitgeverij this year. Though he was judged “most tragic” in the generation after his death, though more copies and fragments of his plays have survived than of any other tragedian, and though his Orestes became the most widely performed tragedy in Greco-Roman Antiquity, during his lifetime his success was only moderate, and to him his career may have felt more like a failure. He was regularly selected to (...) have his plays performed in the annual festival of Dionysus at Athens. But the plays were performed in a competition, and in the competitions he lost and lost, winning first place only five times in a career that spanned more than forty years. His corpus reads like the remains of a life spent trying to get a few things right and never being quite satisfied: scenes and schematized combinations of elements recur again and again, each time slightly changed. Hippolytus itself is an example: it contains two scenes in which a sick or dying character lies on a couch or a stretcher and is surrounded by silence and grief; he had experimented with such scenes in Alcestis, and would work with them again in Herakles and Orestes. Nor, judging from appearances, was he immune to the desire to score a hit, or to satisfy the audiences and the judges at the competition. Hippolytus is a rewrite of another Hippolytus, performed several years earlier, which scandalized the audience and certainly did not take first place. In that earlier Hippolytus (called by later writers Hippolytus Veiled), Euripides fashioned a Phaedra who was neither ashamed of loving her stepson nor incapable of taking steps to satisfy her desire. The forwardness of her approach to Hippolytus so outraged him that he covered his head with a robe (hence the play’s later title). Euripides liked to write energetic and self-confident women like this. He staged his Medea in 431, just three years before he revised Hippolytus, and in it the jilted title character murders her children in revenge for Jason’s new marriage to a more politically advantageous wife. Another flop: the play came in third of three. Evidently the judges did not like their women showing agency, especially when the consequences were transgressive. “The ornament of women,” wrote another great Athenian a little earlier, “is silence.”i Euripides’ Medea and his first Phaedra had other decorations. So three years after Medea crashed and burned and some time after the first Hippolytus suffered the same fate, he produced another Hippolytus play with a different setting and story. How could this one not have been a reaction to the failure of the first? “Second thoughts are always better,” he has one of his characters say, as though he were offering an apology for his first thoughts on the same story. In this new version, Phaedra is suicidally ashamed of her love, choosing to die rather than have it discovered, and willing to bring down her beloved Hippolytus in the service of the same end. Now it is Phaedra herself who covers her head in shock and horror at her desire. Only an intermediary, a slave of the house and an old crone with her fingers in all sorts of illicit pots, communicates Phaedra’s secret – against orders – and in consequence brings about the demise of two resolutely moral figures. It worked. For his tale of two well-born nobles with an unswerving commitment to moral action, destroyed by the meddling of a slave (and by the hostility of some particularly uncaring divinities), the judges crowned Euripides winner. It was the first time he had won, after almost thirty years of work. *** What Hippolytus wants more than anything else, as he protests with outrage just before leaving Trozen for the last time, is the benefit of due process – oaths, witnesses, an investigation that would reveal who really lusted after whom. Ironic, given that in the first Hippolytus, as far as we can make out, he did get a trial – but too late, and Theseus’ successful processing of Hippolytus failed to prevent his death. I cannot help hearing in the second Hippolytus’ complaints the anger of his authorial semblable who lost year after year by a process of judging that might have seemed brutal to him. Judges took no cognizance of how he worked, how long or hard or why; they just voted, and Euripides lost. But then I hear, in the fate of the first Hippolytus, an even grimmer commentary. Processed or not, we lose. We run aground. At the very least, this might cast a darker shadow on the business of watching or reading a play: in that twilight, things move too fast to make a fair assessment and, in any case, the reasonably high definition of what you see and hear belies the truth of indistinction, the multiplicities just below the surface. Watching is a constrained activity, a form of captivity, but reading is plastic. This translation was begun to supply the script for an audio version of the play, recorded in the spring of 2012, and here and there it sacrifices literalness for sayability and the voices and passions of the actors on that occasion. But it was finished to be read, and engineered to create a reading caught between the poles of specificity and non-specificity that the play itself conjures and relies on at its generative core. Thus two texts: the one clear, perhaps overprecise, respectably modern in its presentation, and the other ancient, a reasonable approximation of the classical reading process, and indistinct in vital ways. Like early modern dramatic texts, the exact provenance and original function of the scripts that have made it down to us are unknown. We do know that the ultimate survival of Hippolytus was thanks to its wide-spread use as a school text. But its relation to the first performance in 428 BCE is a matter only of speculation. Euripides presumably had a fair copy before production began; it was probably modified during rehearsals. The actors may have had copies, too (probably the young men who served in the chorus did not). The chor?gos, a wealthy Athenian who paid for the production, might have been presented with or just made sure to get his hands on a high-quality text, to commemorate the play’s success. Fans might have been able to buy copies. Any one of these sources might have provided the ultimate progenitor of our text. Several of them might have, in fact, if later editors compared and conflated traditions. The plays toured extensively in the Greek-speaking world, and were restaged as repertoire for centuries afterwards. In the process they were subjected to enough modifications by producers and actors that in the later fourth century the Athenian statesman Lycurgus had a law passed prohibiting performances at Athens from deviating from the official “city” text of the tragedies (which he had commissioned). It is unlikely that the city text was the last word; but it marks an important moment in Athens’ role in their dissemination, since after this the major sites of textual curatorship moved overseas, to Alexandria, Pergamum, Rome, Antioch, Constantinople. Any single text of any single play is thus no more than a moment of clarity and stability, crossed and subtended by multiple vectors of change, including that of textual flux (from Euripides’ first drafts to the latest printed text) and that of Euripides’ life work as a writer, in the light of which the Hippolytus is just one attempt to produce something exactly right, to win the prize or finally satisfy himself or prove to himself that all this longing for perfection was a waste of time. I am intrigued by the possibility that a single text might somehow serve as a lens onto this wider zone of indistinction, representing a small region clearly but nonetheless containing a blurred image of the whole, like a Leibnizian monad. After all, no text is a witness: it is, rather, a perception and a performance, and what every Hippolytus must perform is the awkward overlay of singular and plural, social practise and subliminal drive, that structures the tragedy. Modern critical editions can do this by juxtaposing a (relatively) clean and simple text with a textual apparatus reporting variants and theorizing the relationship between textual instantiations. A translation lacks the resolution to catch the fine variations which feed into the construction of an apparatus. But there are other means to hand. Guessing at the exact words of the original text is always just that – guessing – though Hippolytus is less problematic than plays like Iphigenia at Aulis. But we can make a pretty secure guess at what such a text looked like. Texts read by fifth-century readers were fundamentally different from what is presented in the best medieval MSS and printed in modern publications. The texts of Euripides’ time and for many centuries afterwards did not indicate word division with spaces (or by any other means) and were extremely sparing in punctuation, often avoiding it altogether. There was only one “case” of letters – what we call “capitals.” Musical sections were inscribed as though they were prose, without line endings to reflect their rhythm or their rhetorical structure. There was no indication of the speakers within a dramatic text, either. The earliest surviving dramatic texts, which come from over a century after Euripides’ death and a time which was much more elaborate and precise in its textual culture, indicated speaker-change with a little line or paragraphos below the line and a double-point [:] at its end. This convention almost certainly does not date back to Euripides’ own time; it may not even date to Lycurgus. In any case, such indications were understood to be readers’ marks: they did not have the same authority as the text and they were subject to readers’ revisions. At least ideationally, if not in concrete and distinguishable fact, a dramatic text was understood as containing no indication of speaker-change (and certainly none of who was saying what). The reader had to figure that out for him-/herself. The clear, legible, easy texts we are accustomed to reading are the fabrications of medieval and modern reading cultures. The first text, then, presents the translation as the text would have been in the mid-fourth century, perhaps decades after Euripides’ death. The second text processes Hippolytus, makes sense of it and makes it “readable.” That is: too distinct, dangerously so. It gets in your way, conjures fantoms, tries to make you see. Fragments of the Hippolytus Veiled, otherwise almost entirely lost, are juxtaposed with similar passages in the text – not to suggest a reconstruction, but a dialogue and a complex set of reassessments. I have not tried to represent the full variety of textual variants, but I have signalled where, for one reason or another, the text is soft and different editions propose excisions or changes. The two texts must be read together: you, reader, form the bridge between the distinctly seen and the indistinct invisible. You, in the end, will be its mask. *** illsandhateddiseaseswhatcanidoforyouwhatshouldinotdohereisthelightandthebrightairyoursickbedisnowout s idethehouseyoureverywordwastocomeherebutyouwillrushbacktoyourbedroomagainyoufadequicklyyoudelig htinnothingyoudislikewhatyouhaveyoulovewhatyoudontitsbettertobesickthantendthesickthefirstissimpleto the secondattachesheartspainandhandsworkeveryhumanlifeispainfulthereisnoendtotoildarknesshidesbehindclo udswhateverisdearerthanlifeweproveunhappyloversofwhatshineshereforlackofknowledgeofanotherlifethere isnoproofforthingsbeneaththeearthonlystoriessustainus liftmybodystraightenmyheadthebondsofmylimbsareloosenedtakemyhandsandmypalearmsthishatistooheavy formyheadtoweartakeitoffspreadmyhairovermyshoulders couragechilddonttossandturnsoviolentlyyouwillbearyoursicknessmoreeasilywithpeaceandanoblemindallmort alssuffer aiaiiwanttodrinkpurewaterfromadewyspringiwanttoliebackandrestunderthetreesinsomegrassymeadowchildw hycrydontsaythesethingsnearthecrowdhurlingwordsmountedonmadness sendmetothemountainiwillgototheforestwherebeastkillingdogspressthespotteddeergodsilongtoshouttothedo gstoshootthethessalianjavelinpastmyblondhairtoholdthebarbeddartinmyhandwhythisanxietychildwhatdoyouc areabouthuntingwhydoyoulustforflowingspringstheresahillwithwaterjustnexttothetowerwecangetyouadrinkt h ereartemismistressofthesaltlakeandthecoursethunderingwithhorseshoovesiwishiwereonyourplainsbreakings t uds whythrowthesefrenziedwordsaboutjustnowyouweresettingoutforthemountaintohuntandnowyoulongforhorses onthewavelesssand thesethingsneedanoracletotellwhichgodreinsyouinanddrivesyoufromyoursenseschild whathaveidonehowfarhaveibeendrivenfromgoodthoughtsiwascrazyiwascursedbysomepowerpheupheualasn ursecovermyheadagainimashamedofwhativesaidcovermeatearmovesdownfrommyeyeanditembarrassesm eithurtstostraightenourmindanditisterribletobeinsanebesttodiebeforeyoubecomelucidagain illcoveryoubutwhenwilldeathcovermeimoldivelearnedalotmortalsshoulddrinkoffriendshipmoderatelynotfrom th edeepestmarrowofthesoulamindslovecharmsshouldbeeasytoundoorthrustawayortiemoretightlyitisaverydiffic ultweightforonesoultolaborovertwopeopleasiamwrackedbypainforhertoomuchdisciplinecausesmoreharmthan pleasureandwarswithhealthipraisetoomuchlessthannothinginexcessandthewiseagreewithme *** Scene 1 Enter Phaedra and the Nurse; the former is recumbent on a couch while the latter bustles about her with gestures that might be those of a caregiver or a guard. NURSE Ills and hated diseases! What can I do for you? What should I not do? Here is the light, and the bright air; your sick bed is now outside the house. Your every word was to come here, but you will rush back to your bedroom again. You fade quickly. You delight in nothing. You dislike what you have. You love what you don’t. It’s better to be sick than tend the sick – the first is simple. To the second attaches heart’s pain and hand’s work. Every human life is painful. There is no end to toil. Darkness hides behind clouds whatever is dearer than life. We prove unhappy lovers of what shines here for lack of knowledge of another life. There is no proof for things beneath the earth. Only stories sustain us. PHAEDRA Lift my body, straighten my head: the bonds of my limbs are loosened. Take my hands and my pale arms. This hat is too heavy for my head to wear. Take it off, spread my hair over my shoulders. NURSE Courage, child; don’t toss and turn so violently. You will bear your sickness more easily with peace and a noble mind. All mortals suffer. PHAEDRA Aiai. I want to drink pure water from a dewy spring. I want to lie back and rest under the trees in some grassy meadow. NURSE Child, why cry? Don’t say these things near the crowd, hurling words mounted on madness. PHAEDRA Send me to the mountain. I will go to the forest where beast-killing dogs press the spotted deer. Gods! I long to shout to the dogs, to shoot the Thessalian javelin past my blond hair, to hold the barbed dart in my hand. NURSE Why this anxiety, child? What do you care about hunting? Why do you lust for flowing springs? There’s a hill with water just next to the tower; we can get you a drink there. PHAEDRA Artemis, mistress of the salt lake and the course thundering with horse’s hooves: I wish I were on your plains breaking studs! NURSE Why throw these frenzied words about? Just now you were setting out for the mountain to hunt – and now you long for horses on the waveless sand. These things need an oracle to tell which god reins you in and drives you from your senses, child. PHAEDRA What have I done? How far have I been driven from good thoughts? I was crazy, I was cursed by some power. Pheu pheu. Alas. Nurse, cover my head again. I’m ashamed of what I’ve said. Cover me – a tear moves down from my eye and it embarrasses me. It hurts to straighten your mind and it is terrible to be insane. Best to die before you become lucid again. NURSE I’ll cover you. But when will death cover me? I’m old; I’ve learned a lot. Mortals should drink of friendship moderately, not from the deepest marrow of the soul. A mind’s love-charms should be easy to undo, or thrust away, or tie more tightly. It is a very difficult weight for one soul to labor over two people, as I am wracked by pain for her. Too much discipline causes more harm than pleasure and wars with health. I praise “too much” less than “nothing in excess,” and the wise agree with me. ***. (shrink)

In this chapter we consider computer tools for architectural design based on shape grammar design systems, and evaluate the advantages and disadvantage of handing over these tools to inhabitants for the design of their apartments. This evaluation is qualitative by considering the values of inhabitants, architects, and cities that are affected by this hand-over. Shape grammar design systems when applied to architecture enable computer tools to generate new designs and adjustments of existing designs of apartments on the basis of design (...) rules. First, focussing on individual housing, it is argued in this chapter that the use of shape grammar design systems by inhabitants for designing their apartment realises the values of customisation and inhabitant autonomy without compromising design quality and structural safety. Second, focussing on cities, it is argued that a wide-spread use of these grammar design systems creates for cities a bottom-up inhabitant-led renewal of neighbourhoods and urban structures that maintains the social fabric in neighbourhoods and the architectural identity of cities. Values that are less realised by the hand-over are financial feasibility and ecological sustainability. Third, shifting to philosophy of technology, we present shape grammar design systems as a technology for design for values in architecture that allows for flexibility in the values designed for over the longer time periods characteristic to architecture. These systems are a technology that enables the incorporation of values of inhabitants, architects, and cities by the designs of apartments, and they are a technology that enables inhabitants to adjust their apartments through time to their developing needs and wishes. (shrink)

The complete system of knowledge is a standard trope of science fiction, a techno-utopian dream and an aesthetic ideal. It is Solomon’s House, the Encyclopaedia and the Museum. It is also an ideology – of Enlightenment, High Modernism and absolute governance. Far from ending the dream of a total archive, 20th-century positivist rationality brought it ever closer. From Paul Otlet’s ‘Mundaneum’ to Mass-Observation, from the Unity of Science movement to Wikipedia, the dream of universal knowledge dies hard. As a political (...) tool, the total archive encompasses population statistics, gross domestic product, indices of the Standard of Living and the international ideology of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Health Organization, the free market and, most recently, Big Data. Questions of the total archive engage key issues in the philosophy of classification, the poetics of the universal, the ideology of surveillance and the technologies of information retrieval. What are the social structures and political dynamics required to sustain total archives, and what are the temporalities implied by such projects? This introduction and the articles that follow describe and place in historical context a series of concrete instances of totality. Our analysis is arranged according to four central themes: the relationship between the Archive (singular) and archives (plural); the image of the archive and the aesthetics of totality; pathologies of accumulation; and the specific historical trajectory of the total archive in the 19th and 20th centuries. (shrink)