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Pauses (by Inventory of Behaviours)
No full textIOB contributed Pauses to the symposium as a way to activate IOB in the moment, to literally pause/ interrupt the work of the symposium and bring another rhythm/ register to the event. The Pauses involved: chewing gum together silently for a minute, everyone painting their nails and smoothing tin-foil
MANdatory - why men need (and are needed for) gender equality progress
Get PDFWhile much progress has been made towards gender equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, education and society, recent years have also revealed continuing challenges that slow or halt this progress. To date, the majority of gender equality action has tended to approach gender equality from one side: being focused on the need to remove barriers for girls and women. We argue that this is only half the battle, and that a focus on men is MANdatory, highlighting three key areas: First, we review men’s privileged status as being potentially threatened by progress in gender equality, and the effects of these threats for how men engage in gender-equality progress. Second, we highlight how men themselves are victims of restrictive gender roles, and the consequences of this for men’s physical and mental health, and for their engagement at work and at home. Third, we review the role of men as allies in the fight for gender equality, and on the factors that impede and may aid in increasing men’s involvement. We end with recommendations for work organizations, educational institutions and society at large to reach and involve men as positive agents of social change
What do videogames want? Preserving, playing and not playing digital games and gameplay
Get PDFVideogames are disappearing. At a time when there are more gaming platforms and titles available than ever before, it might seem strange to claim that videogames are disappearing. And yet, despite their apparent abundance, the processes of material and digital deterioration render hardware and software unusable as hard drives fail, discs become unreadable, activation servers are re-allocated and newly released systems offer limited compatibility with existing libraries of games and peripherals. Adding to this, journalistic, retail and marketing practices fuel a marketplace of perpetual innovation that rationalises and justifies the rapidity of supersession and obsolescence.
As such, videogames are, without doubt, disappearing and the continued – and accelerating – loss of this material denies future generations access to their cultural heritage and robs the next generation of developers historical reference material to draw on. As Henry Lowood (2009) pointed out more than a decade ago, we need to take action ‘before it’s too late’.
Building on ideas initially explored in Best Before (2012) and developed through the Game Over (2018) and Time Extend! (2020) White Papers, this paper outlines a range of different approaches to preserving, interpreting and exhibiting videogames. The paper offers an overview and critique of existing approaches and revisits some of the methodological and conceptual presuppositions that underpin game preservation and even the academic discipline of game studies as a whole. Returning to first principles, the paper asks ‘What Do Videogames Want?’. This deceptively simple question appears similarly straightforward to answer. Surely, videogames want to be played? The idea that videogames have to be played to be understood seems almost self-evident. In fact, as this paper demonstrates, we might even say that videogames need to be played and that, without the constitutive acts of play and performance, there is no game
Evaluating the impact of depreciation on the profitability: UK fashion companies
Get PDFThis study investigates the sophisticated dynamics of depreciation and its
influence on the profitability of fashion companies in the United Kingdom. The UK's
fashion industry has gained substantial growth recently and witnessed escalated sales
in both new and used apparel. However, the fashion industry faces sustainability
challenges due to the predominantly resulting rapid expansion of the fashion sector.
In this competitive business environment, understanding the role of depreciation in
shaping profitability becomes pivotal. Examining data collected from 17 UK-based
fashion companies spanning the 2018 to 2022 period, this research precisely analyses
how depreciation influences key financial indicators: return on assets, return on
equity, and operational profit. The methodological approach involves the application
of quantile regression analysis, and it offers an in-depth exploration of the
relationship between depreciation and these vital financial variables. The findings of
this study reveal that there is no statistically significant relationship between
depreciation and return on equity or return on assets within the purview of UK fashion
companies. However, a positive and statistically significant relationship exists
between the depreciation and operating profit. This positive relationship potentially
arises from various factors such as enhanced asset utilization, long-term investments,
involvement in capital-intensive industries, sustained revenue growth, and
improvements in asset quality. These findings have significant implications for
stakeholders within the UK fashion industry. While depreciation may not strongly
influence return on equity or return on assets, its correlation with operational profit
reveals a nuanced aspect of financial performance within these companies
Against dystopias with ecological literacy
Get PDFThe longstanding dismissal of the ecological in civilisations that have developed dramatic ecology-altering and planetary boundary crossing technologies is at the crux of contemporary planetary polycrisis. Desirable and even viable futures depend on the design of new ways of living on the planet based on understanding humans in dynamic entanglement with the more-than-human context. Prioritising ecological relations is a fundamental break with assumptions of modernity and associated technologies, social practices, and future visions. We bring design and ecological knowledge together to describe foundational work in designing transitions to Ecocene Protopias, i.e., places of continuous ecological transition. As our springboard, we identify defuturing work in particular formulations of utopian thought. By describing future visions that accelerate ecological harms, we draw attention to the ecology-denying assumptions underlying techno-utopian stories and ideologies. This paper presents ecological literacy as a foundational critical and imaginative capacity to avoid dystopias emerging from traditions that dismiss the ecological. Sustainable and regenerative design practice depends on bolstering designers’ ecological literacies to enable more effective collective reimagining and redesigning future ways of living within planetary boundaries
Anxious expressions: remote relationships in the Canning correspondence network 1760-1830
Get PDFThis is the first in-depth study of familial anxiety in the long eighteenth century. Focusing on
the letters of one family, the Cannings, this thesis explores the emotional expressions of
anxiety across the lifecycle, from 1760 to 1830. Though the Cannings are not representative
of all families, the extensive archives of around 1500 letters, from fourteen members of the
family, mean that various perspectives and relationships are presented . The Cannings also
had many reasons to be anxious: death, hardship, reputational concerns, war, and familial
rifts were some of the challenges they faced across this seventy-year period, as well as more
everyday anxieties. The thesis uses Hitty and Mary Anne Canning's lives as the backbone to
explore courtship and early marriage, pregnancy, parenthood, growing up, later life and
death and grief. It aims to consider how anxiety operated within remote relationships
during this period, particularly adopting history of emotions methods to uncover the
nuances within remote familial relationships. This study demonstrates how anxious
language and tone was an important linguistic tool in correspondences and was used to
renegotiate familial relationships in a variety of situations.
It affirms that anxiety existed across the lifecycle and across all relationships in different
strengths, and that social and familial relationships were crucial in the expressions of various
anxieties. These anxieties largely remained constant across the time period covered but
were expressed in idiosyncratic ways, dependent on familial relationship, age and social and
individual contexts. Thus, context is inherently important for understanding the nuances of
emotional expressions in letters. Most importantly, this thesis shows how anxiety was used
to express other emotions, most notably grief and love. Overall, it argues that more
attention should be paid to the everyday expressions of anxiety, not just considering anxiety
in relation to mental health
An evaluation of costing systems to promote sustainable financial growth within small-medium enterprises
Get PDFThis research evaluates the effectiveness of the traditional and activity-based (ABC) Costing systems in promoting sustainable financial growth in UK-based small-medium enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, it aims to understand the differences between traditional costing and ABC systems and their impact on
organizational competency and financial growth. A mixed-method approach, including qualitative and quantitative data analysis, was employed. The study concludes that ABC is the most effective costing system for promoting sustainable financial growth in SMEs. Traditional costing leads to inaccurate data and hindered management competency. ABC eliminates cost distortion, aids decision-making, and encourages long-term development. Additionally, the availability of a wider range of products/services positively impacts financial growth. While the initial implementation of ABC may be costly, it offers long-
term benefits, including improved organizational competency and profitability
Tourism management modelling: what it does and does not
Get PDFThe article presents a critical review of my past attempts in social phenomenon modelling. The review brings up issues embedded in positivist paradigm that are concerned with the cause-effect covering law based on purely events regularities, ontological conflation, and the symmetry principle of positivism i.e., explanation = prediction. Incorporating new realist thinking in contemporary philosophy of critical realism, practical solutions are suggested to overcome the issues, which encourage the use of mixed methods, analytical dualism, application of realist notion of causal laws, and that of not lawlike predictions