Burden Of Choice Research Articles

Alternatives

“I’ll start drinking again... or no, I’ll wait!” said Grishka to himself, hesitating between the two alternatives, “I’d better go to Moscow!”М. Е. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Little Things in Life, 1887.The expression “burden of choice” is well understood by anyone who has ever made a design decision or any other important decision. To make a choice means to reject all variants, all alternatives, except for one. At the same time you are not always sure that you have chosen the best one.Nevertheless, alternatives are necessary, without choices there is no movement and no development. Looking back on this year, we can already say that it has been rich in events, movements and alternatives of all kinds.The autumn marathon of architecture began in August with the XI International Festival “EcoBereg” in Volgograd (8), continued in early September with the XXII Interregional Architectural Festival “Zodchestvo in Siberia 2022” in Novosibirsk (13-38), and then the International Review Competition of graduation projects in Kazan (162). A little later, Ryazan summed up the results of the open competition for architectural projects of the school in its historical centre (6), and immediately after that we had the XXX International Architectural Festival “Zodchestvo” an event of national scale, as well as the Congress of the Union of Architects of Russia (12). Thus, Russian architects had many alternatives for participation. The problem of choice, however, could be solved easily: to participate in everything.The word ‘alternative’ originally had two mutually exclusive meanings. In direct translation from Latin, it means ‘second possibility’, hence the numerous alternative movements in culture, music, politics and so on. Alternative movements are typically provocative, daring and outrageous. We present a short article by Alexander Rappaport about the relationship between the alternative and the opposition.But the alternative is also necessity to make a choice. This necessity is often hard and sometimes even false. Konstantin Lidin speaks about the search for nonalternativeness, ‘battles of styles’ and the delusions which the search for an absolute ideal of beauty leads to in the field of architecture. Andrei Bokov’s article continues his reflections on an alternative way of reality cognition – the visionary way, on the types of visionary architects and their role in the development of architecture.Can vernacular architecture be an alternative to the professional architect? Andrei Ivanov discusses this difficult question using the example of Alexandropol (Gyumri).The traditional culture of China did not know the profession of an architect. Here, the construction art used to be based on traditions and techniques that remained unchanged for thousands of years. The contact with western culture has created uneasy alternatives. Anton Kosta and Xu Shichuang talk about this.Alternative ideas about a historic city, relationship between right- and left-brain thinking in design, paradigms of place development management, old and new capitals etc. are considered in the articles by our new and regular contributors.

The burden of choice and the triumph of the event

In the anthropology of ethics there has been a growing interest in the concept of freedom, defined as the tool of consciousness that enables people to reflect on themselves and their circumstances, and make decisions about what they ought to do. The benefit of understanding freedom as a grounded ethical practice is that it allows us to appreciate how people constitute themselves through the choices they make. What this obscures, however, is an understanding of how freedom figures in situations where people no longer feel the need to consider what they ought to do and where choice becomes redundant. Through an exploration of nonviolent action in the 2011 Yemeni revolution, this essay proposes a notion of freedom as liberation from moral choice, where choice is a burden. It concludes by reconsidering the extent to which ethical thought can adequately account for the varieties of human freedom in different ethnographic contexts.

Youth of Russia: the burden of choice

Youth of Russia: the burden of choice

Book Review: The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion and Algorithmic Culture, by Jonathan Cohn

Book Review: The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion and Algorithmic Culture, by Jonathan Cohn

Non-invasive prenatal testing as a routine procedure of prenatal care

In March 2019, the German Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss (G‑BA; Federal Joint Committee) presented the result of the method assessment process on non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). The aim of this method assessment process was to decide whether NIPT should become a publicly funded procedure of routine prenatal care. The G‑BA decided in favor of NIPT, making the implementation of NIPT very likely, provided that other healthcare and political institutions also agree. This development could be interpreted as empowering from the perspective of reproductive autonomy, since NIPT allows pregnant women to obtain valuable information on the health of the fetus in a fast and easy manner and without the risks of invasive methods. However, the routinization of NIPT also implies ethical challenges. Will the routinization lead to a normalization of prenatal quality control? Will it lead to an expansion to women outside the high-risk group? What would be the ethical implications of such a development? How should physicians, geneticists, and patients deal with the increased amount of obtainable information? What are the implications for choice and decision-making in the prenatal care context? In this paper, we analyze the ethical aspects of the routinization of NIPT, focusing on information and the counseling process, the burden of choice, and the threats to reproductive autonomy by societal interests linked to NIPT.

The Burden of Choice? Assessing the Impact of School Choice on Student Travel and Household Activity Philadelphia

The debate over school choice generally neglects the effects of school choice on student and household travel, and additional work is needed to understand how transportation policies foster educational equity or exacerbate inequity in large urban school districts. This study examines how school choice affects household travel behavior in Philadelphia. School choice creates access to better neighborhoods and schools, but at a cost of increased and inefficient travel. We offer direction for how education administrators and transportation planners can use disparate sources of data to estimate school policy effects and call for improved data collection by local and regional planners.

The Burden of Choice, the Complexity of the World and Its Reduction: The Game of Go/Weiqi as a Practice of “Empirical Metaphysics”

The main aim of the text is to show how a game of Go (Weiqi, baduk, Igo) can serve as a model representation of the ontological-metaphysical aspect of the actor-network theory (ANT). An additional objective is to demonstrate in return that this ontological-metaphysical aspect of ANT represented on Go/Weiqi game model is able to highlight the key aspect of this theory – onto-methodological praxis.

The burden of choice: a qualitative study of healthcare professionals\u2019 reactions to ethical challenges in humanitarian crises

Healthcare professionals are a vital aspect of public health delivery in humanitarian crises. Both overt and subtle complexities in the decision making process during periods of instability may involve moral and ethical considerations. Few studies have examined the lived experiences of healthcare professionals encountering ethical challenges in the field. The aims of this qualitative study were to explore how healthcare professionals perceive complex ethical choices and to understand the impact these challenges had on them both personally and professionally. The data was analyzed using manifest and latent qualitative content analysis. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: ethics as a sense of right or wrong, adversely bearing the burden of choice, held hostage by institutional constraints, and the difficulty of preparing for ethical challenges. The overarching theme struggling to make the right choice established that ethical challenges created difficulties for healthcare professionals both in negative psychological outcomes and the perception of reduced patient care. Awareness of these ethical challenges can help organizations to fully support healthcare professionals in the field to reduce personal struggles and provide optimal care delivery.

EVERYDAY POLITICS OF SCHOOL CHOICE IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY

AbstractSchool choice is promoted as one strategy to improve educational outcomes for African Americans. Key themes in Black school choice politics are empowerment, control, and agency. Using qualitative interviews with seventy-seven poor and working-class Black parents in Chicago, this article asks: How well do the themes of empowerment, agency, and control characterize the experiences of low-income African American parents tasked with putting their children in schools? Also, what kind of political positions emerge from parents’ everyday experiences given the ubiquitous language of school choice? I find that in their own recounting parents focused on finding a quality school while experiencing numerous barriers to accessing such schools; parents expressed experiential knowledge of being chosen, rather than choosing; and parents highlighted the opacity, uncertainty, and burden of choice, even when they participated in it quite heartily. I argue that their stories convey limited and weak empowerment, limited individual agency, and no control. Their perspectives conjure policy frameworks and political ideologies that require a discussion of entitlements and provision, rather than choice.

“Click”-Inspired Chemistry in Macromolecular Science: Matching Recent Progress and User Expectations

This year, it has been a decade that the concept of “click” chemistry was pioneered in polymer and material science by the exploration of the synthetic scope of copper-catalyzed azide/alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC), the “click” benchmark. The impact on the endeavors of polymer chemists has been substantial because the power of this concept, featuring modularity, orthogonality, and versatility for the design and synthesis of polymeric materials, was recognized very soon in macromolecular research groups worldwide. After this first burst of research activity, challenging the boundaries of CuAAC in terms of attainable polymer constructs, ongoing method development, and implementation, in response to the need for metal-free alternatives, resulted in a valuable toolbox of “click”-inspired conjugation methods. Because of the large diversity of employable reactions, applied in various polymeric systems, the first-time or occasional “click” user will be confronted with a burden of choice. Therefore, the principal aim of this Perspective is to clearly denote the recent progress of “click”-inspired chemistry in macromolecular science by detailed conceptual analysis and to provide some selection procedures, allowing potential users to readily match their expectations of “click” chemistry to the state-of-the-art. Consequently, first-time or occasional users should be able to identify and select the most appropriate “click”-inspired reaction for their purposes and eventually contribute to the next generations of advanced polymeric materials.

Configuring Product Variants in Customisation Strategies for House-Building

Mass customisation involves the provision of product variants that fulfil clients' specific requirements seeking to increase product values. The configuration process involves a chain of decisions, which needs to be undertaken to create product variants that meet each client specific requirements. In this paper, this chain of decisions is conceptualized in terms of customisation units. Each customisation unit encompasses a customisable attribute (e.g. size, colour) and the range of items offered for this attribute. A design science approach was adopted in this investigation. In this approach, knowledge is produced by creating and testing a solution, which provides practical and theoretical contributions. A method is proposed to analyse and improve the configuration process by conceptualizing this process as a tree diagram. The proposed method is used to analyse the configuration process developed by organisations of the house-building sector based in the U.K. and Brazil: a manufacturer of floor tiles, contractors, and registered providers. These analyses enabled a comparison of the distinct configuration processes adopted. In addition, problems associated to the configuration process (such as burden of choice) and opportunities for improvements were also identified. Finally, alternative chains of decision were also devised based on these analyses to address the problems identified.

Wie finanzieren sich Völkergemeinschaften? Vom Kaiserreich zur Eurokrise – Drei Modelle im Vergleich

Abstract Five eras of multilevel public finance are discussed: the German Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union before and after the euro crisis. Multilevel systems can work efficiently as long as they are organized according to the principle of institutional congruence where the circles of beneficiaries, decision makers and tax payers coincide. Systems of institutional incongruence, in contrast, are prone to cost shifting and long-run unsustainability. Their dynamics often end in a deadlock in which citizens opt for a unitary state dispensing them from the burden of choice without providing them a stable budget.

The burden of choice

Choice is the buzzword of the decade. Choice in education, choice in the car we drive, and even choice in health care. Being given a choice is supposed to be a liberating experience. It is supposed to give individuals the power to make informed decisions about many aspects of their lives.

Italy's Growing Burden of Choice in Security Policy

NATO, the EU, and the UN have been the cornerstones of Italy's foreign policy since WWII: although they continue to provide a point of reference, these institutions are undergoing major changes that reflect – and partly create – a very unpredictable international environment. The evolving security agenda, choices made by key allies (especially the United States), and domestic political forces are putting Italian decision-makers under pressure. There is a serious problem of resource constraints while the country is still unwilling to make clear-cut choices based on unavoidable tradeoffs. The past few years have witnessed a mix of continuity and change due to the political orientations of successive governments under these challenging circumstances.

Inescapable burden of choice? The impact of a culture of prenatal screening on women’s experiences of pregnancy

Drawing on research in progress, this paper examines the costs for pregnant women of trends towards routine screening in pregnancy. In particular, the notion that the array of choices contingent with prenatal screening may constitute an unwelcome ethical burden for pregnant women will be considered, as well as the extent to which women are able to give free and informed consent for screening. The development of new technologies in the area of reproductive health, including new tests to detect fetal abnormality during pregnancy, has triggered considerable ethical debate about the possible benefits and dangers of such screening. While such debate has tended to focus on the value of the individual technologies themselves, the ethics of how the technologies are implemented, of how the encounter between lay people and biotechnology is best to be conducted, have received comparatively little attention. This is particularly true in the case of prenatal ultrasound, a technology which has increasingly become part of routine prenatal care for the majority of pregnant women._This discussion will consider whether such screening may contribute to an ideological climate in which it may no longer be possible to experience pregnancy as a ‘normal’ embodied state. As an area of concern identified by participants in this research, the issue of informed consent for prenatal screening will be a key focus, including a brief case study highlighting one participant’s experience.

From prescribed reading to the excitement or the burden of choice

PurposeThe paper focuses on e‐learning from an information literacy perspective and promotes the view that information literacy education needs to play a central role within any e‐learning initiative. The main aim of this paper is therefore to present the claim that e‐learning must be supported by an information literacy framework to enable an effective interaction between learners, information literacy educators and complex information environments.Design/methodology/approachLiterature‐based analysis of the main issues covered. These include: the challenges generated by the proliferation of digital information and the consequent need for information literacy education to counteract the phenomenon of information overload; the comparison of the information literacy approach promoted by Australia and the USA with the ICT‐skills approach adopted by the UK.FindingsExamples of information literacy frameworks promoted by the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Australian and New Zealand Institute are used to illustrate the strong association between the “learning‐how‐to‐learn” model, lifelong learning and the global knowledge economy. The UK perspective on e‐learning reveals a similar lifelong‐learning agenda, although in this case ICT skills, not information literacy, are identified as a priority, even though the effectiveness of lifelong‐learning competences depends on the learner's ability to interact with constantly changing information and knowledge structures.Originality/valueThe paper promotes the view that a fully‐fledged information literacy education, based on nationally recognised standards, must underpin any pedagogical initiative especially in the area of e‐learning which requires the learners’ active engagement with a wide range of information sources and formats. The paper is therefore relevant to those professionals involved in the development of policy and provision at higher education level.

Homophobia and the Postmodern Condition

This article seeks to understand the ‘gay issue’ in the Western Church as a postmodern phenomenon that has been brought to the fore by a large, growing, and increasingly vocal fundamentalist movement. ‘Fundamentalism’ is not too strong a term to use, for a large proportion of evangelical Christians believe the Bible to be the ‘infallible Word of God’. Standing argues that the dissolution of absolutes at the heart of the postmodern condition has left many experiencing life as devoid of meaning and unbearably uncertain. Fundamentalism offers a quick and easy solution, removing the burden of choice and individual responsibility from believers' shoulders. In response, Standing believes that a radical theology that embraces the indeterminacy of postmodern existence, rather than seeking to negate it, offers a way for people to be both religious and at the same time fully open to our new world. Therefore, we may start to consider what a postmodern queer theology might look like.

Homo Optans (On the Human Condition and the Burden of Choice)

Homo Optans (On the Human Condition and the Burden of Choice)

Germany and the Burden of Choice

Germany and the Burden of Choice