Indicator development as a site of collective imagination? The case of European Commission policies on the circular economy

ABSTRACT

In recent years the concept of the circular economy gained prominence in EU policy-making. The circular economy promotes a future in which linear ‘make-use-dispose’ cultures are replaced by more circular models. In this paper, we use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to ask how an imaginary of circularity has been assembled and stabilized, which imaginative resources were drawn on, and how goals, priorities, benefits and risks haven been merged with discourses of innovation, sustainability and growth. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with policy officers of the European Commission, we argue that the monitoring framework and indicator development function as a site collective imagination in which desirable ‘circular’ futures are co-produced. These futures are imagined to provide novel opportunities for the private sector and to generate jobs and economic growth while at the same time improving the natural environment as measured by selected environmental indicators.     

Disappearing Dykes? Post-Lesbian Discourse and Shifting Identities and Communities

ABSTRACT

Researchers and activists have argued that the term “lesbian” has been disappearing, in decline for decades, and have focused on tensions around gender and sexual identities as the source of its decline. I identify “post-lesbian discourse” as key concept in the changing landscape of LGBTQ terminology, and I highlight four concerns that emerge in this discourse: shifting lesbian politics, a too-inclusive community, a loss of lesbian spaces, and the meaning of embodied lesbian identity. Rather than focusing solely on gender and sexuality, my aim is to explore the development of post-lesbian discourse and its effects on lesbian identities and communities.     

Intellectual disability and faith communities: perspectives of Catholic religious leaders

Faith communities create community and are important to many individuals with intellectual disability. However, relatively little is known about how intellectual disability is construed among faith leaders and the inclusion of people with intellectual disability in faith communities. To address these gaps in knowledge, we interviewed 12 Catholic priests, parochial vicars, and deacons to explore: their experiences with individuals with intellectual disability; their beliefs towards the involvement of individuals with intellectual disability within faith communities; and how religion informs their understanding of intellectual disability. We identified five religiously-anchored narratives of intellectual disability, and explore implications for individuals with intellectual disability and faith communities.     

Digital identities – overcoming visual bias through virtual embodiment

ABSTRACT

This study sheds new light on the role of identity in virtual environments when virtual representation of self is in support of disabled individuals and the potential impact of their virtual identity on work opportunities. It is widely understood that individuals who live with disability often experience a lifetime of bullying, exclusion, marginalization and rejection. They often experience workplace bias and discrimination. Yet, when they can create an identity and experience embodiment in virtual environments, the results can be extraordinarily powerful – even life-changing. This research builds on nearly a decade of ethnographic research in 3D online immersive social virtual worlds; seven of those years working with disability communities to answer the following: RQ1: In a virtual world where one can choose any avatar form, how does that visual sense of self-representation influence one’s ability to gain access to a social network, to be a leader in that network, and to find work? RQ2: How does realism in representation influence work experiences in these digital worlds? The results reveal the importance of choice in online representation of avatars in creating work and online social engagement. Implications contribute to our understanding of visual bias in the workplace and how emerging virtual reality technologies may open new avenues for meaningful work and social interactions for people with disabilities.     

The opportunity to contribute: disability and the digital entrepreneur

ABSTRACT

A range of scholarly work in communications, informatics, and media studies has identified ‘entrepreneurs’ as central to an emerging paradigm of digital labor. Drawing on data from a multi-year research project in the virtual world Second Life, I explore disability experiences of entrepreneurism, focusing on intersections of creativity, risk, and inclusion. Since its founding in 2003, Second Life has witnessed significant disability participation. Many such residents engage in forms of entrepreneurship that destabilize dominant understandings of digital labor. Most make little or no profit; some labor at a loss. Something is being articulated through languages and practices of entrepreneurship, something that challenges the ableist paradigms that still deeply structure both digital socialities and conceptions of labor.

Disability is typically assumed to be incompatible with work, an assumption often reinforced by policies that withdraw benefits from disabled persons whose income exceeds a meagre threshold. Responses to such exclusion appear when disabled persons in Second Life frame ‘entrepreneur’ as a selfhood characterized by creativity and contribution, not just initiative and risk. In navigating structural barriers with regard to income and access, including affordances of the virtual world itself, they implicitly contest reconfigurations of personhood under neoliberalism, where the laboring self becomes framed not as a worker earning an hourly wage, but as a business with the ‘ability’ to sell services. This reveals how digital technology reworks the interplay of selfhood, work, and value – but in ways that remain culturally specific and embedded in forms of inequality.     

Overfishing,social problems,and ecosocial sustainability in Senegalese fishing communities

ABSTRACT

This study explores living conditions of people in Senegalese fishing communities in relation to environmental change and unregulated fishing by foreign boats, weakening local opportunities and increasing forced migration of youth, creating problems for the future development of local fishery communities. It employs a postcolonial perspective and analyzes data collected through interviews with individuals from Senegalese fishing communities, social workers and relevant documents. The results show local reactions based on alliances between social workers and local community members to overfishing and the need for national and global structural changes. It is argued that EU’s fishing agreements with Senegalese government is one of the reasons behind youths’ forced migration to EU countries and that the betterment of the living conditions of fishery communities in Senegal requires not only already emerging alliances between social workers and local community members, but also national and global structural changes to protect Africa’s fishing communities and local fisheries.     

虚拟仿真婴幼儿实验教学模式构建与运行策略——以山东英才学院学前教育学院为例

与传统实验室相比,虚拟仿真实验室在实验类型、成本与实验条件等方面更有优势,在高校实验教学中的地位越来越重要。山东英才学院积极开展教育资源的信息化、虚拟化和仿真化的建设与应用,通过虚拟仿真婴幼儿实验教学体系基点、目标、方案的构建,对虚拟仿真实验进行合理设计,在创新学前教育人才培养机制方面进行深入研究,旨在推动虚拟实验教学模式的形成和有效运行。     

虚拟世界经济相关概念的界定与解析

随着对虚拟世界经济和网络游戏产业研究的深入,迅速变化的现实与滞后的理论之间的矛盾日益激化。而且,由于新概念的出现,传统经济理论的适用性也存在争议。由于国情不同,中国虚拟世界经济的发展与欧美及韩国之间存在较大的差异,其学术研究的重心和阶段也不同。从经济学角度界定虚拟世界经济基本概念的内涵和外延是接驳统一研究平台的前提,也是使相关研究进一步深入的基础。同时,从学术角度界定虚拟世界经济带来的各种问题也是必要的基础性工作。     

虚拟世界经济收益模式研究

虚拟世界经济收益模式分为直接收益模式和间接收益模式,前者主要包括时间销售和虚拟物品销售等,后者主要包括现实货币交易和微型服务外包.其中间接收益模式对服务贸易发展、产业结构升级、增加低水平劳动力就业都具有特殊意义,更适合中国目前的形势.通过对虚拟世界收益模式新形式的初步分析.为政策制定提供参考.     

虚拟社会对现实社会的影响及对策

虚拟社会是人们在现代互联网环境中相互作用而形成的各类关系体系,它的社会模式来源于现实社会,但又不同于现实社会。虚拟社会对现实社会的政治、经济、文化、信息传播等多方面都带来了深刻甚至变革性的影响,不容忽视。虚拟社会自身也存在诸如诚信缺失、恶意攻击等多种现实问题,这些问题波及着现实社会,对其亟需加强管理。提高虚拟社会的科学化管理水平,应该在明确虚拟环境中的行业责任、加强正面舆论引导和完善相关法律法规等多方面予以努力。