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In Sri Lanka, womens labor force participation has never exceeded 35% in over three decades. As of 2022, the country was ranked 110 out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forums Gender Gap Index. The gaps in womens participation in the formal economy alongside womens limited political empowerment are two leading causes for the country to be lagging in such global gender equality indicators. At a large cost to the economy, the existence of archaic gender norms that promulgate womens unpaid care work often exclude women from the formal labor force. This paper dissects the socio-economic and socio-political factors that lead to the invisibility of women in Sri Lankas economy, while seeking to understand how such underlying causes have been aggravated within the precarity of the post-pandemic context. It is important, now more than ever, to recognize the invisibility of women in Sri Lankas formal economy, while bringing about a transformative vision with a multi-pronged approach to address existing gaps and challenges. With reference to key principles of feminist economics, including the theoretical foundations of Claudia Goldin, Nancy Folbre, and Diane Elson, among others, the paper will make a case for inclusivity and intersectionality in policy recommendations aimed at encouraging womens entry, active engagement, contribution, and retention in Sri Lankas economy. The paper reaches a conclusion that when women lead, participate, and benefit equally in all aspects of life, societies and economies will thrive, thereby contributing to sustainable development and inclusive economic growth.
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PurposeThe world of work is changing and creating challenges and opportunities for the employment inclusion of young people with disabilities. In this article, the perceptions held by young adults with disabilities regarding participation in the future of work are examined.Design/methodology/approachOne-on-one interviews were conducted with Canadian young adults (ages 18–36 years) living with a disability. Participants were asked about their thoughts regarding the impact of the changing nature of work on their labor market involvement and career aspirations. A thematic analysis was performed to identify and examine emergent salient themes.FindingsIn total, 22 young adults were interviewed;over half held secure employment. Career aspirations and work-related decisions were primarily shaped by a participant's health needs. The future of work was seen as a more proximal determinant to employment. Digital technologies were expected to impact working conditions and create barriers and facilitators to employment. Participants who indicated being securely employed held positive expectations regarding the impact of digital technology on their work. Participants working precariously held negative appraisals regarding the impact of digital technologies on employment opportunities. The role of technological and soft skills was critical to participating in a labor market reliant on advanced technology. Participants reported barriers to developing job skills related to their disability and their work arrangements.Originality/valueThis research highlights the importance of considering changes in the future of work, especially the digital transformation of the economy, in the design of initiatives which promote the employment inclusion of young adults with disabilities. Despite the significance of the changing nature of work, supporting health needs and encouraging access to secure work arrangements also remain paramount.
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Vaccination hesitancy has become a central concern and is a barrier to overcoming the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis. Studies have indicated that mis/disinformation plays a role on the attitudes and behaviours towards vaccination. However, further formal statistical models are required to investigate how fake news relates to vaccination intent and how they mediate the relationship between socioeconomic/political factors and vaccination intent. We studied a sample of 500 Brazilians and found that people were mostly not susceptible to vaccine mis/disinformation. In addition, we found that their vaccination intent was high. However, suspicions that fake news could be true raised doubts over the vaccination intention. Although age and political orientation directly influenced vaccination intent, we found that the relationship between socioeconomic/political factors and vaccination intent was strongly mediated by belief in fake news. Our results raise the need to create multiple strategies to combat the dissemination and acceptance of such content. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
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PurposeThe authors analyze the effects of political freedom and personal freedom on the spread of COVID-19 in a cross-country study. The authors also investigate how income inequality, urbanization and previous experience with a similar respiratory epidemic/pandemic, such as SARS and MERS, affect the spread of COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employ data from 102 countries to examine the relationship of countries' economic and sociopolitical factors, such as political freedom and personal freedom and their COVID-19 infection cases per million population at 120 days, 150 days and 180 days after the reported 10th infection case. The authors also include the log term of real GDP per capita to control for counties' economic development and regional dummies to control for regional-specific effects.FindingsResults of this study show that personal freedom, rather than democracy, has a significant positive effect on countries' COVID-19 infection cases. On the contrary, democracy has a negative impact on the infection rate. The authors also find that socioeconomic factors such as higher income inequality and urbanization rate adversely affect the COVID-19 infection cases. A larger older population is associated with fewer infection cases, holding everything else equal. Previous experiences with the coronavirus crisis affect countries only at the 120 days mark. Real GDP per capita has no significant effect.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this paper is to jointly explore personal freedom, which implies a social framework with more emphasis on self-value and self-realization and political freedom, that is, democracy. The authors show that it is personal freedom, rather than democracy, that contributes to higher COVID-19 infection cases. Democracy, on the other hand, reduces the number of infection cases.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2021-0769
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Establishing the aims and objectives of a welfare state is an integral part of the political, economic and cultural debate, in particular, the repercussions of a welfare state on economic systems and social institutions;the sociopsychological consequences of a welfare state;and the scope, conditions and definitions of welfare. Some discussions address a theological and religious approach to the issue, specifically the Churches' teaching on welfare and the Churches' influence on the birth and development of the welfare state. The Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland [EKD]) has also joined the global discussion. The EKD advocates the welfare institutions;moreover, it stresses the contribution of the Protestant theology and culture to the emergence of the social state in Germany. This article aims to outline the Protestant approach to welfare axiology. Following a brief sketch of the welfare theory, it examines the previous and current Protestant influences on the welfare state and system. It also presents significant attempts to distinguish crucial values and the most serious challenges of the welfare state. The primary sources of the reflection are the recently published documents of the EKD (Denkschrifts), and the source literature. Contribution: The theological proposals of the Evangelical Church in Germany contribute to the axiological and ethical debate on welfare and the social state. The research addresses the focus and scope of the journal of the promotion of multidisciplinary aspects of studies in the general theological area.
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Nation-state cyberattacks, and particularly Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), have rocketed in the last years. Their use may be aligned with nation-state geopolitical and economic (GPE) interests, which are key for the underlying international relations (IRs). However, the interdependency between APTs and GPE (and thus IRs) has not been characterized yet and it could be a steppingstone for an enhanced cyberthreat intelligence (CTI). To address this limitation, a set of analytic models are proposed in this work. They are built considering 234M geopolitical events and 306 malicious software tools linked to 13 groups of 7 countries between 2000 and 2019. Models show a substantial support for launched and received cyberattacks considering GPE factors in most countries. Moreover, strategic issues are the key motivator when launching APTs. Therefore, from the CTI perspective, our results show that there is a likely cause-effect relationship between IRs (particularly GPE relevant indicators) and APTs.
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The term itself has connotations of permanence, rigidity, and continuity, all of which seem fairly scarce amid fluctuating mask mandates, multiple natural disasters, and shifts from in-person, to hybrid, to virtual instruction. Flexibility in Design Thinking and in Teaching Flexibility in our thinking-both for young people in their own design work, as well as for us as educators in our designs toward transformative educational opportunities- allows us to not only stay up to date with a fast-paced, dramatically changing sociopolitical and technological world but also to be responsive to those with and for whom we're designing. Using a pedagogy of civic multiliteracies that she piloted with a group of Indonesian American youth in the summer of 2019 (Thakurta, 2021), Ankhi extended these foundations to center the young women she worked with in the US and currently works with in India as critical designers of civic meaning. Through the flexible structures of her sessions- characterized by certain routines (e.g., check-ins, whole group discussions) and freedoms (e.g., what topics could anchor those whole group discussions)-the youth and Ankhi collaboratively created space to grapple with emergent social crises.
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The increasing complexity of tourism and sustainability offers opportunities and challenges among diverse stakeholder perspectives. The need for sustainable and nature-based approaches exists throughout the growing body of literature from among a number of dimensions and measures. One of the overarching goals of the paper is to examine whether tourists will choose a destination or hotel that is actively working to improve the environment while examining how Hawaii’s tourism is nature-based as well as other measures of sustainability while enjoying a slice of paradise in the Hawaiian Islands. This study explores tourism sustainability concerns in Hawaii, such as the influence of the tourist sector on the environment and will address if Hawaii should be recognized as a sustainable tourism destination. A survey instrument was developed where 454 respondents participated. According to the findings of this research, tourists visiting Hawaii support environmentally sustainable tourism practices leading towards a more sustainable tourist destination.
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Overwhelmed and worried about their students and families, teachers in a regional professional network from New York and New Jersey met regularly as a structured online professional learning community (PLC) during the 2020-2021 school year to support each other as they searched for answers to the question, "How do we engage students in remote and hybrid situations in the current sociopolitical context?" As the year unfolded, the teachers collaboratively shifted their stance from one of simply providing emotional support to one of sustained practitioner research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). The work of Jackson and Temperley (2007), who wrote about networked learning communities, was particularly relevant to our context. [...]in analyzing the data, we adopted Jackson and Temperley's (2007) frame to consider how Ivelisse learned (1) from her PLC colleagues, (2) with her PLC colleagues and her students, (3) on behalf of her students, and (4) about her own process of learning. Ivelisse's students' homes and The group drew on participants' practitioner communities experienced the knowledge, public knowledge of engagement devastating effects of COVID-19 and teaching with and through technolog
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In this book review, I detail unique interventions, gaps, and insights the authors of the text, Studying Latinx/a/o Students in Higher Education: A Critical Analysis of Concepts, Theory, and Methodologies, collectively make for the study of Latinx/a/o students in higher education, such as the imperative for culturally relevant, asset-based lenses to approach Latinx/a/o student issues. I highlight how the book is timely and necessary given the current sociopolitical climate, coupled with an enduring COVID-19 pandemic, and I note how it will behoove all members of higher education to critically interrogate how effectively current approaches to serving Latinx/a/o students accomplish their intended aims using texts such as this one. Additionally, I offer complementary resources for readers as they engage with this book and reconceptualize their understandings of Latinx/a/o students in higher education.
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Important people owned and/ or marked in copies of French or English versions of the work, including kings and queens of both France and England too numerous to list, French royal ministers such as Louis XlV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert (16191683);Napoleon's chief aide-de-camp, Baron Gourgaud;and Napoleon himself.3 In England, George I gave a copy4 of the Fayttes to the Cambridge University Libraries in 1715;by 1773, George III perhaps missed it or perhaps was thinking of events taking place across the Atlantic, for he bought another copy, one bearing numerous marginal notes.5 Much later, Winston Churchill may have had access to his family's copy of Caxton's translation.6 Perhaps more surprising is that non-elite people of several stations, as well as several women, owned (and/or left marginalia in) copies. Never having gone to war, trained soldiers, or used gunpowder herself, Christine could not self-authorize as, for example, Chaucer had had his Wife of Bath do, voicing her reliance on "experience, though noon auctoritee" on the subject of marriage.7 Christine's subject matter called for a different authorizing epistemology, and she provided it amply in text and paratext, in rhetoric and visual representation.8 But posthumously, how did her auctoritas withstand sociopolitical changes, the end of the Hundred Years' War, changes in the technology of warfare, mediation into the wider distribution of print, and a Deleuzean déterritorialisation into the "frenemy" territory of England? After Christine's death, another kind of social capital, a sociopolitical and (in the end) economic authority, became attached to her work, in part because so many well-made manuscript copies and printed editions have survived in both French and English, and in part because so many of them later became rare collectibles. [...]although it is possible to reconstruct provenance that includes people well outside France and England (such as the known owners in Russia, Switzerland, and Japan), I concentrate here on owners of and markers in the English copies, who are mostly English people in England, signaling a few who were French, Welsh, and, later, American.
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The development and application of new forms of automation and monitoring, data mining, and the use of AI data sources and knowledge management tools in the water sector has been compared to a ‘digital revolution’. The state-of-the-art literature has analysed this transformation from predominantly technical and positive perspectives, emphasising the benefits of digitalisation in the water sector. Meanwhile, there is a conspicuous lack of critical literature on this topic. To bridge this gap, the paper advances a critical overview of the state-of-the art scholarship on water digitalisation, looking at the sociopolitical and ethical concerns these technologies generate. We did this by analysing relevant AI applications at each of the three levels of the UWC: technical, operational, and sociopolitical. By drawing on the precepts of urban political ecology, we propose a hydrosocial approach to the so-called ‘digital water ‘, which aims to overcome the one-sidedness of the technocratic and/or positive approaches to this issue. Thus, the contribution of this article is a new theoretical framework which can be operationalised in order to analyse the ethical–political implications of the deployment of AI in urban water management. From the overview of opportunities and concerns presented in this paper, it emerges that a hydrosocial approach to digital water management is timely and necessary. The proposed framework envisions AI as a force in the service of the human right to water, the implementation of which needs to be (1) critical, in that it takes into consideration gender, race, class, and other sources of discrimination and orients algorithms according to key principles and values;(2) democratic and participatory, i.e., it combines a concern for efficiency with sensitivity to issues of fairness or justice;and (3) interdisciplinary, meaning that it integrates social sciences and natural sciences from the outset in all applications.
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This Special Section presents diverse scholarly voices examining the silenced, underexposed, intersectional forces that fortify science and technology platforms in their work to automate public abidance. The articles probe, from diverse global locations and perspectives, the contemporary work of various “platforms,” understood broadly as technology and software, health, social media, and policy platforms. The articles probe these systems and platforms with attention to the assumptions and practices embedded in their algorithms, protocols, design specifications, and communications, and, in turn, the political, cultural, governance, and mediated practices they make possible. The research studies and practice-based work herein expose the complex and shifting sociopolitical codes and contexts that condition technology, artificial intelligence (AI), surveillance, health, social media, and state platforms that support systems of care, news, communication, and governance. These exposures show how platform craftiness works differently in different spaces to privilege and damage, often with ghostly obscurity. Attentive to how platforms operate in complex contemporary viral modes, the section seeks to locate and expose these traces, draped in what communication scholars Sangeet Kumar and Radhika Parameswaran (2018, 345) refer to as “chameleon cultural codes” that, in changing and transforming into unrecognizable forms, feed global imaginaries.
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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the influence of different quantitative (traditionally used) and qualitative variables, such as the possible negative effect in determined periods of certain socio-political factors on share price formation.Design/methodology/approachWe first analyse descriptively the evolution of the Ibex-35 in recent years and compare it with other international benchmark indices. Bellow, two techniques have been compared: a classic linear regression statistical model (GLM) and a method based on machine learning techniques called Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost).FindingsXGBoost yields a very accurate market value prediction model that clearly outperforms the other, with a coefficient of determination close to 90%, calculated on validation sets.Practical implicationsAccording to our analysis, individual accounts are equally or more important than consolidated information in predicting the behaviour of share prices. This would justify Spain maintaining the obligation to present individual interim financial statements, which does not happen in other European Union countries because IAS 34 only stipulates consolidated interim financial statements.Social implicationsThe descriptive analysis allows us to see how the Ibex-35 has moved away from international trends, especially in periods in which some relevant socio-political events occurred, such as the independence referendum in Catalonia, the double elections of 2019 or the early handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.Originality/valueCompared to other variables, the XGBoost model assigns little importance to socio-political factors when it comes to share price formation;however, this model explains 89.33% of its variance.
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This article deals with the problems of new social and political divisions associated with the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by inhabitants of megacities and city administrations. The author considers different approaches to the conceptualization of "digital divides" and to the study of their sociopolitical consequences, analyzes the main dimensions and levels of the digital divide in the context of current sociopolitical processes and development trends, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, and considers different approaches to overcoming them in a modern megacity. Three main levels of the digital divide in modern societies are identified and characterized: (1) the availability of the material basis for the use of digital technology (technical level);(2) the skills for its use by various people (social level);and (3) actual opportunities for the full participation of the individual in the life of a modern "digital" society and democratic participation in political and social processes, including the exercise of their civil rights and freedoms, in expanding social connections and relations (the political level). It is shown that while these three "traditional" types of digital gaps-inequalities in access to ICT, in the level of digital skills and the possibility of full participation in the political life of the modern digital society-remain and grow in importance in the megacity context, their new aspects, such as access to big data sets, the degree of dependence on automated decision-making systems (algorithms) using artificial intelligence technologies, and digital exclusion and separation on the relational level are becoming increasingly important. Some sociopolitical implications of the new digital divide and associated political risks are identified. It is concluded that the measures taken to mitigate and reduce the digital divide in the modern metropolis have so far been mostly partial and palliative, with a focus on improving the material basis for the use of digital technologies rather than on overcoming the deeper sociopolitical causes and consequences of digital divisions and gaps. It is shown that policies to reduce the digital divide and digital inequality in modern megacities are particularly important because megacities are home to the most politically active populations.
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As urban populations increase, there is growing interest in developing innovative technologies, sustainable urban farming practices, policy measures, and other strategies to address key barriers in urban agriculture that impede improved food security and sustained urban livelihoods. We surveyed forty urban farmers and gardeners (growers) in Louisville, Kentucky, for base-level information to assess their agricultural practices and the various factors or key barriers that could influence such practices. Secondary objectives were identifying areas where practices could be improved, and identifying opportunities for research, outreach, and incentives for urban growers to transition to more sustainable and higher-yielding practices. The majority of these urban growers were white females, were more diverse than Kentucky farmers, and attained a higher degree of education than Kentucky residents as a whole. Most were engaged in urban agriculture for non-commercial reasons, and 11% were full-time urban growers operating farms for profit. Smaller farms were less likely to be operated for profit or have farm certifications than medium-sized or larger farms (Chi-squared = 14.459, p = 0.042). We found no significant differences among farm sizes in terms of whether growers rented or owned the land they were on (Chi-squared = 9.094, p = 0.168). The most common sustainable practices recorded were composting (60%), crop rotation (54%), polyculture (54%), organic farming (49%), and low or no-till (46%). The least common practices were alley cropping (5%), plasticulture (3%), and hydroponics (3%). Small farms were less likely to use crop rotation than medium-sized or large farms (Chi-squared = 13.548, p = 0.003), and farms responding to the survey in the latter part of the data collection were less likely to use compost than expected based on responses from the early part of data collection (Chi-shared = 5.972, p = 0.014). Challenges faced by these growers included limited space, accessibility to farm certification, presence of pests and diseases, and lack of record keeping and soil testing for fertility and contamination. Our study documents the need for more farm certification, education, outreach, training, research, investment, innovative ideas and solutions, collaboration among stakeholders, and better access to land through favorable urban policies and local support.
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This article describes, from a sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural perspective, the governance practices of the COVID-19 epidemic control response in China. We describe that, in line with the “whole of government approach,” strong resource mobilization and control of government departments, companies, and citizen communities has worked efficiently to rapidly contain the epidemic. Community participation at the grassroots level has played a decisive part. We assume that the deeply rooted collectivistic Chinese culture has made residents trust the government’s decisions and comply with the prevention and control strategies. We pose some intriguing questions for more analytical comparative research. They concern the normative interpretation of the influences of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural forces, as well as the balance between “collectivism” and “individualism” in societies.
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Up until now, we have used a fairly conventional academic article writing style and structure in this Special Issue;here in the final paper, we take advantage of a more personal way of writing to share with the readership what, in a broader sense, we think we have been doing and intend to do;and variously locate ourselves with respect to our personal professional trajectories, the field, and the immediate sociopolitical contexts of this work, as well as allude to the processes we have used and the goals we still have. In other words, we need teacher education that discusses critical teaching from a theoretical perspective but that also follows critical pedagogy principles in practice. [...]at the level of educational policies, instead of the implementation of initiatives that focus on control (dictating what should be taught and how), we also need to have teachers’ practices being recognized, valued, and trusted. Through our work as critical educators who work in different levels of education (that is, university and basic and technological levels), we mostly aim at creating spaces for reflecting on possibilities, and perhaps principles, that may elucidate/encourage viable paths for critical language development. For someone born and raised in Paulo Freire’s home country, Brazil, it was exactly my contact with his educational philosophy that made me realize that my duty as a language educator was to go far beyond the teaching and learning of a new linguistic code affiliated with cultural aspects of a dominant and stereotypical target culture.