46622 research outputs found
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The Menstrual Movement in the Media
This book investigates the impact of the mediation of menstruation and menstrual activism on young people’s knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and interpersonal relationships. Since 2015, the menstrual movement has become increasingly visible on social media and in news media from across the globe. In Great Britain, the menstrual movement brings together a diverse group of activists who aim to reduce menstrual stigma and tackle menstrual inequities. By combining original interviews with 32 menstrual activists and focus groups with 77 young people (including women, men, and non-binary teenagers), this book offers an in-depth exploration of this movement and its impact. This book argues that menstrual stigma has decreased, awareness around related health and social issues has increased, and girls as well as other menstruating young people are feeling an increased sense of connection and solidarity with each other. Menstruation is shifting from a very private experience to one of collective concern. It is evident that social media, and, to some extent, news media, have played a key role in disseminating the discourses and aims of menstrual activists that have engendered some of these changes. Nevertheless, this book also examines how the media have negatively impacted young people and identifies further changes that are necessary for the achievement of gender equality. This book makes a significant contribution not only to the fields of health communication, feminism, social movement studies, and critical menstruation studies, but also provides evidence and recommendations that will be of interest to NGOs, advocacy groups, policymakers, schools, workplaces, and medical professionals. This is an open access book
Exploring Creative Wellbeing Frameworks in Context
This timely edited monograph develops conceptual frameworks for creative wellbeing, exploring the impact on people’s lives and its contribution to a sustainable future, by examining case studies of how creative wellbeing is practised in a variety of contexts. Using sociocultural perspectives of creativity, the authors call to attention everyday wellbeing and the possibilities for a rich life using creative wellbeing as an action competence. Chapters use a diverse range of epistemological positions, embracing quantitative, qualitative, and posthumanist methodologies to explore how integrated nature-culture perspectives can enhance the understanding of creative wellbeing when informed by engagement in natural contexts, but also by the deep connection between nature and culture in creating meaning. Ultimately furthering research into creative wellbeing, improving practice, and inspiring nature and culture practices for all, this book will be of benefit to researchers, postgraduate students, and scholars interested in creative approaches to mental health, positive psychology, and environmental psychology, and creativity and transcendence more broadly
Chapter 9 Cybernetics and Landscape
Grounded in contemporary landscape architecture theory and practice, Cybernetics and the Constructed Environment blends examples from art, design, and engineering with concepts from cybernetics and posthumanism, offering a transdisciplinary examination of the ramifications of cybernetics on the constructed environment. Cybernetics, or the study of communication and control in animals and machines, has grown increasingly relevant nearly 80 years after its inception. Cyber-physical systems, sensing networks, and spatial computing—algorithms and intelligent machines—create endless feedback loops with human and non-human actors, co-producing a cybernetic environment. Yet, when an ecosystem is meticulously managed by intelligent machines, can we still call it wild nature? Posthumanism ideas, such as new materialism, actor-network theory, and object-oriented ontology, have become increasingly popular among design disciplines, including landscape architecture, and may have provided transformative frameworks to understand this entangled reality. However, design still entails a sense of intentionality and an urge to control. How do we, then, address the tension between the designer’s intentionality and the co-produced reality of more-than-human agents in the cybernetic environment? Is posthumanism enough to develop a framework to think beyond our all-too-human ways of thinking? For researchers, scholars, practitioners, and students in environmental design and engineering disciplines, this book maps out a paradigm of environmentalism and ecological design rooted in non-communication and uncontrollability, and puts a speculative turn on cybernetics. Chapters 8 and 9 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license
Future Cities Making
This open access book describes the complex dynamics that coevolve in cities and from cities, to inform agendas for urban research and urban policy with a view to future city missions. It provides a suite of research-informed chapters on urban pathways that are early signals and visions for how future cities can be shaped and transformed as well as chapters from policy, industry and intermediary organization actors that relate and respond to these pathways from a mainstreaming and implementation perspective. This edited collection intends to trigger and capture an ambitious transformative agenda amongst researchers and practitioners who have as their mission to shape urban futures. While there is proliferating literature on cities, urbanism and urban governance, this book offers a unique selling point – implying a research positioning point – to the field of sustainability transitions by intersecting research on urban sustainability transitions and missions-oriented research. The focus on the nexus of game-changers, pathways and innovations sets the book firmly in the leading edge of urban transitions research. The book engages with a breadth of disciplines including sustainability science, urban planning, urban design, mobility, energy, climate change science, urban ecology, urban sociology, architecture, data science, sustainability transitions studies, policy analysis and policy studies, as well as environmental governance. As an output, it aims to engage with and inspire future research and teaching/education in the fields of architecture and urban planning, urban design, environmental governance, sustainability science, innovation studies and urban sociology
Finance, Growth and Democracy: Connections and Challenges in Europe and Latin America in the Era of Permacrisis
The present volume uses a comparative regional approach to analyze how permacrisis—an extended period of instability and insecurity—has been experienced and dealt with in the European Union (EU) and Latin America. Written by academicians and policy experts from both regions, the volume has three main objectives. Firstly, it critically evaluates the response of regional organizations and governments in the EU and Latin America to the crises that have shaken these regions in recent years. Secondly, chapters contribute to a better understanding of the promised benefits and risks of digital currencies and fintech more generally to economic growth, financial stability and inclusion. Finally, the volume promotes an understanding of the challenges of permacrisis in both the EU and Latin America, as well as encouraging their cooperation at the multilateral and bi-regional levels. Providing an interdisciplinary perspective, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of international relations, international political economy, international finance and economics, international law, global governance, and regionalism, as well as public officials of ministries of foreign affairs, finance and the economy, public officials of international and regional organizations. This is an open access book
Chapter 11 Circular Economy on Bioplastics and Biobased Polymers
Biobased biodegradable polymers are emerging as an alternative to fossil fuel-based plastics. Biodegradable Polymers, Blends and Biocomposites: Trends and Applications discusses trends in the development of microbial/other renewable source-based bioplastic products, their blends and biocomposites applications in various industrial fields. It covers biodegradable polymeric materials preparation, extraction, formulation, modification of properties, product development and applications and end-of-life options. Furthermore, the book discusses topics like bioplastic resources, isolation procedures, utilization at commercial level and markets and economy. Features: Explains emerging application possibilities of biobased biodegradable polymers. Provides detailed application notes on agricultural waste-based bioplastics. Covers microbial and agro-based biocomposites and their applications. Summarizes bioplastic degradation and blending research. Discusses application possibilities of biobased biodegradable polymers. The book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in polymers and composites
Poetry, Performativity, and Ordinary Language Philosophy
How can Ordinary Language Philosophy (OLP) help us understand poetry? Against John L. Austin’s exclusion of poetic utterances as parasitical, Philip Mills explores how contemporary poetics broadens the aims and scope of OLP. Through the analysis of French and American poetry that reinterprets notions such as illocution, perlocution, and language-games, Mills develops a poetic philosophy of language, revealing its viral and transformative nature. Poetry, Performativity, and Ordinary Language Philosophy bridges philosophy and poetry, showing how poetry contaminates and reshapes our ways of thinking and being in the world, and combining the poetic and the ethical in the notion of ‘poethics.’ This Open Access book offers a new perspective on the poetic and literary potential of OLP and the intersections between the philosophy of language and poetry
Chapter 6 Conclusions
This book presents the legislative networks in charge of drafting democratic reforms as gatekeepers to the actual adoption, implementation and internalisation of democratic norms in selected post-Soviet countries. It demonstrates that the composition of legislative networks which draft the legal reforms in Armenia, Georgia and Moldova, is controlled by powerful political actors who seek to have their preferences reflected in the reform outcomes. Furthermore, the book shows that there are limited modifications after the adoption of the first draft by these legislative networks, despite the later reform stages being the focus of the existing literature. The book’s analysis of political reforms in the Rule of Law, inter-institutional and electoral accountability in these three countries identifies the control strategies used by domestic political elite to restrain the space for democratisation, while instrumentalising the institutional framework to increase its power. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of democratisation, post-Soviet studies, East European politics, EU politics and policy, comparative politics and international relations