Vision Of Citizens Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence, Structure of Knowledge, and the Future Directions for Macromarketing

In this essay, we explore AI critically from the perspectives of the corpus and structure of knowledge, human control of knowledge-based processes (including business decision-making and public policymaking), and capitalist ideology. We present a preliminary test of our argument with a re-analysis of a corpus of citizen visions of desirable and sustainable futures across 30 countries in Europe, demonstrating how pre-trained AI provides findings that appear convincing but in effect lack situational and contextual understanding and depth. Indeed, AI relies on the data that has been used in its training. Our conclusions discuss how capitalism through AI aims for advanced forms of productivity and efficiency that pose new challenges to marketing as an embedded cultural practice. We offer some suggestions for ways macromarketing scholars can help overcome some of these challenges.

Imagine air: Global commons, ‘ecological civilization’, and citizen visions beyond carbon markets in China

In global environmental governance, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions often involve turning pollution rights into commodities, essentially privatizing the air. Policies like carbon pricing and market approaches are considered effective solutions, especially within capitalist systems, and continue to rely on logics of the tragedy of the (atmospheric) commons. In China, the Communist Party proposed environmental policies aligning with capitalist development principles under the concept of ‘ecological civilization’. However, the perspectives on the ground differ from the government’s plans. Citizens, including sci-fi enthusiasts and eco-utopian thinkers in both rural and urban areas, have their own visions for a shared future that go beyond the narrow focus on economic growth, markets and pricing. Contrary to official narratives, interviews, social media discussions and popular artworks reveal that many envision the future ‘ecological civilization’ with clean air as commons for the more-than-human world. I argue that anthropological perspectives must attend to such creative spaces in which political subjects become enfolded in the commons, without eclipsing their potential to reinforce class divisions and social inequalities in environmental aspirations.

Adding Insult to Injury

Should the government censor dangerous anti-vaccination propoganda? Should it restrict the praise of terrorist groups, or speech intended to promote discriminatory attitudes? In other words, should the government curb the advocacy of dangerous ideas and actions (i.e. 'harmful advocacy'), or should the government take a more permissive approach? Strong free speech supporters argue that citizens should be free to engage in and to hear harmful advocacy, arguing that restrictions are deeply objectionable at best, and, at worst, wholly impermissible. To support their position, strong free speech supporters have offered a wide range of arguments and ideas. One of the most interesting arguments revolves around the idea that restrictions on harmful advocacy are deeply insulting to citizens. The worry, broadly understood, is that this kind of censorship is demeaning, treats citizens as though they are stupid, or as though they are children. As such, even when censorship is effective in preventing harms to citizens, it nonetheless comes at the significant political cost of failing to properly respect the citizenry at large. By contrast, so the thought goes, an alternative political scheme that prohibits censorship, or permits it only in exceptional cases, does a better job of respecting citizens as independent, rational, morally responsible agents. This alternative political system may, sometimes, be less effective at preventing speech harms. But it is a political system where citizens can stand tall and hold their heads high. In this paper, I consider and reject three versions of the worry that censorship is insulting. §1 explores the idea that censorship is insulting qua involving a negative appraisal of the citizens being interfered with. The key idea here is that censorship involves a lack of what Stephen Darwall terms ‘appraisal respect’, insofar as the government is suggesting that citizens cannot be trusted to manage their own beliefs and intentions. Drawing on the work of Thomas Nagel, §2 explores the idea that censorship diminishes the political status of citizens. Finally, §3 explores the suggestion that censorship is incompatible with a full appreciation of the thinking nature of citizens, and thus involves a lack of what Darwall would term ‘recognition respect’. The paper argues that censorship is not necessarily premised upon an insulting view of the citizenry. On the contrary, it argues that the best kind of censorship stems from a rich appreciation of the diverse range of capabilities, needs, vulnerabilities, and responsibilities of citizens, as well as the need for co-operation between citizens if societal flourishing is going to be achieved on a large scale. Granted, such a vision places an emphasis on the imperfections and liabilities of citizens – at least when compared to the rather solitary, highly intellectual creature one sometimes finds in the philosophical literature. Still, such a vision of citizens as imperfect falls well short of being genuinely insulting. To err is human. And there’s nothing insulting about being treated like a human.

Propuesta de un índice de ciudad inteligente para municipios de Argentina

The development of smart cities has yielded into a desirable objective among many cities around the world. International indexes of smart cities focus on large urban cities without interest on intermediate cities of developing countries. This paper pretends to fill this gap by proposing a smart city index for the capital cities in Argentina, together with Buenos Aires City and Bahia Blanca. The index is compound of four dimensions: Environment, Governance, Society and ICT, and Mobility and Transport which are based on a set of indicators. Data emerges from official websites and national statistics. In the case of Bahia Blanca, a wider smart city index with subjective indicators from an online survey is built. Alternative versions of the index, weighted (according to the vision of citizens, enterprises and politicians) and non-weighted are provided. Results show that the cities of Bahia Blanca, Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires and Cordoba are the third smartest cities in Argentina.

Raising European Citizens? European Identity in European Schools

AbstractCitizens' identification with Europe could consolidate European integration. European Schools, created for children of EU officials, should mirror the EU's vision of citizens of member states united in (national) diversity. Instead, this study reveals that European School students construct an explicitly European in‐group and deviate from EU visions by differentiating themselves from a more national and less mobile lifestyle. The article draws on qualitative content analysis of in‐depth and focus group interviews with teachers and 101 students in European Schools in Germany, Luxembourg and England. This elucidates the relationship between European schooling and this peculiar but ultimately European identity. In a dual mechanism, by ‘doing Europe’, students actively nourish a transnational social network in school; by ‘telling Europe’, students are more passively exposed to European and diverse national narratives. Both the analysis of how their European identity emerges and descriptive underpinnings show the complexity of European identity construction even under most favourable conditions.

Embedding European citizen visions in sustainability transition: Comparative analysis across 30 European countries

Embedding European citizen visions in sustainability transition: Comparative analysis across 30 European countries

Citizen visions for European futures\u2014methodological considerations and implications

In recent years, citizen involvement has been increasingly recognised as a source of complementary insights to expert-based foresight. This article analyses citizen visions on desirable and sustainable futures gathered in three recent European involvement projects and reviews how the methodology of topic modelling can be applied to identify commonalities in the visions and how the identified topics are distributed across the citizen involvement projects. A common topic addressing a European citizen desire for wide-ranging societal development with an emphasis on education was identified in the modelling. In addition, three specific topics that correspond to the foci of each involvement project were evident: ‘local production’, ‘cultural variety’ and ‘concerned collectives’. Hence, the results indicate that there are further opportunities for further citizen involvement activities and that specifically focused open-ended envisioning events can contribute to unique sets of citizen-induced topics for the future. These results are particularly useful for the institutionalisation of citizen involvement in foresight studies.

LACK OF CONGRUENCE BETWEEN EUROPEAN CITIZEN PERSPECTIVES AND POLICIES ON CIRCULAR ECONOMY

The concept of circular economy has become a catchphrase for describing redesign of economies and industries towards better sustainability. The consideration of consumers holds a prominent role in the concept, yet consumers‟ concerns and hopes are not well accounted for. This article takes a forward-looking approach to the relationship between consumers and policies on circular economy. It analyses an extensive and systematically collected corpus of European citizen visions on desirable and sustainable futures from this perspective, and compares the outcomes to newly adopted circular economy policies in Europe. The article argues that European policies on circular economy should increasingly connect to energy and climate issues as well as social topics, if they are to build congruence between citizen and policy understandings, and thereby raise public acceptance for the concept. Keywords: circular economy, policy congruence, consumers, citizen visions, sustainability, topic modelling

How do Europeans want to live in 2040? Citizen visions and their consequences for European land use

The aspirations, motivations and choices of individual European citizens are a major driver of the future of global, European and local land use. However, until now no land use study has explicitly attempted to find out how the general public wants to live in the future. This paper forms a first attempt to survey European citizens to understand their desired future lives in relation to consequences for European land use. We used a crowdsourcing experiment to elicit visions from young Europeans about their lives in 2040. Participants completed a graphic novel around carefully selected questions, allowing them to create a story of their imagined future lives in pictures. The methodology worked well, and the sample seemed reasonably representative albeit skewed towards an educated population. In total, 1131 responses from 29 countries were received. Results show a strong desire for change, and for more sustainable lifestyles. There is desire for local and ecologically friendly food production, to eat less meat, to have access to green infrastructure and the ability to cycle to work. However, international travel remains popular, and the desire for extensive food production and owning detached houses with gardens will likely result in complex land use trade-offs. Future work could focus more specifically on quantifying these trade-offs and inform respondents about the consequences of their lifestyle choices. This was a first attempt to use crowdsourcing to understand citizen visions for their lives in the future, and our lessons learned will help future studies improve representativeness and increase responses.

“Taming the Media Monster”: Teen Pregnancy and the Neoliberal Safety (Inter)Net

Discourses constructing teen pregnancy as a dire result of misguided welfare policy helped to usher in the punitive welfare reform legislation of 1996. An important counterpart to that law has been an increase in private sector teen pregnancy prevention work, led by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. In response to calls for innovative, market-based approaches to social welfare, the National Campaign has spearheaded a trend of utilizing new media technologies, such as social networking websites, mobile and smartphone capabilities, and online gaming in teen pregnancy prevention. This article examines the social-media-based work of the National Campaign, showing the heavily disciplinary and moralizing functions of these strategies and their role within a new construction of social welfare. It argues that these tactics form a redefined notion of the social safety net based on a vision of citizens distributing vital, attractively packaged information among themselves via a privatized cybernetwork in order to maintain social well-being through the cultivation of proper sexual and reproductive behavior. Within this framework, teen sexuality emerges as the most urgent target for discipline and management. Viewed as impulsive, naive, media savvy, and trend obsessed, teenagers appear to require provocative market-based interventions into their most intimate moments. Grounded in the neoliberal discourses of multiculturalism, market rationality, and intimate citizenship, this teen pregnancy prevention work ultimately serves to obscure and undergird the punitive work of welfare reform and its deepening of inequalities based on race, class, gender, and sexuality.

Re-Meaning The Indigenous Muisca Cemetery 0f Usme, Colombia: Ethnography of Collaborative Project and Patrimonial Debate

The paper exposes an ethnographic view of a collaborative field work, made in Hacienda El Carmen in Usme, Colombia, a terrain where an indigenous muisca cemetery was found. The analysis focuses on the struggles between the named “authorized patrimonial discourse” and the “cultural process of patrimony”. In the first part, I want to expose the processes that led us to purpose a current collaborative research project implemented by the Universidad Santo Tomas’ Group of Memory and the Indigenous Muisca Community of Bosa. Based on a situational analysis methodology, this part is the result of an ethnographic field work of some spaces of dialogue and encounter among different logics to understand the patrimony and the heritage. In middle of struggles with the public institutions, the academy and other social groups, the muisca people build and negotiate their ethnic identity as part of their cultural and political project. In the second part, the situational analysis will be applied in scenarios where the muisca people began to interpret the archaeological territory of Hacienda El Carmen. In this part, I will try to expose some epistemological reflections about alternative and inclusive ways of knowledge and remembering. The new senses and narratives, produced as a result of this exercise, let us thinking about the symbolic strategies used by the muisca people to occupy an important place in the present and the possibility of understanding and purposing current citizen visions from creative and original ways of incorporate ancestral memories.

The tragedy of citizen deliberation – two cases of participatory technology assessment

Despite welcoming rhetoric and increased practice of citizen participation in S&T governance, there is little evidence of the political impact of such processes. In this paper I will analyse how the roadblocks to translating the results of citizen participation to effective policy making manifested in the context of two transnational participatory technology assessment projects, global-level World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) and EU-level Citizen Visions of on Science, Technology and Innovation (CIVISTI). Resulting from the analysis, three types of roadblocks are identified: (1) diffuse understanding of the usability of deliberation as a component of policy making (cognitive level); (2) inadequate infrastructures for facilitating the translation of public-interest oriented deliberations into effective public policy (structural level); (3) inadequate resources and skills in deliberative bodies for effective social outreach of participatory processes (operational level). The paper contributes to more effective pTA by proposing a new ‘guiding vision’ for citizen deliberations, anticipating more influential policy pathways and proposing new skills for pTA.

Incredible Edible – social and environmental entrepreneurship in the era of the “Big Society”

PurposeThe purpose of this case study is to allow the exploration of social entrepreneurship, environmental improvement and volunteering in the context of the UK's declared Big Society. Recently, there has been increased interest in “environmental” as well as social entrepreneurship. Volunteering is also an area of growing concern in policy circles, particularly with the advent of the “Big Society”, the UK Government's vision of citizen involvement.Design/methodology/approachThe case was written with both secondary and primary data and with the co‐operation of Incredible Edible. Primary data include street questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews with relevant stakeholders.FindingsIncredible Edible is an environmental initiative started in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Basically community members – largely volunteers – have looked for opportunities where they could plant and grow fruits and vegetables that others could just help themselves to. Any spare land and space has been seen as suitable. From this the themes of local food growing and self sufficiency have taken over. Over a (short) period of years the initiative has grown and received considerable support from local stakeholders as well as extensive publicity. The initiative has attracted attention elsewhere and not just in the UK. But its real impact has been on the community and its sense of place.Practical implicationsThe data have been used (so far) to write a case that traces the journey of the people behind the initiative, their motives and their impact. It explores a number of themes, namely: social entrepreneurship in action; improving the local environment aesthetically; the Big Society and volunteering; the local economic and social impacts – a new sense of place; improved diets and healthy eating – but also the impact on other local businesses which sell rival food products; how local successes can be replicated elsewhere; and the sustainability of initiatives such as this.Originality/valueThe case demonstrates five important themes that could be seen as a litmus test for the effectiveness of projects and initiatives in the Big Society – namely the presence and commitment of a visionary who provides the purpose and direction, volunteers, velocity – and emergence, visibility, and value.

Forward-looking activities: incorporating citizens’ visions

Looking back on the many prophets who tried to predict the future as if it were predetermined, at first sight any forward-looking activity is reminiscent of making predictions with a crystal ball. In contrast to fortune tellers, today’s exercises do not predict, but try to show different paths that an open future could take. A key motivation to undertake forward-looking activities is broadening the information basis for decision-makers to help them actively shape the future in a desired way. Experts, laypeople, or stakeholders may have different sets of values and priorities with regard to pending decisions on any issue related to the future. Therefore, considering and incorporating their views can, in the best case scenario, lead to more robust decisions and strategies. However, transferring this plurality into a form that decision-makers can consider is a challenge in terms of both design and facilitation of participatory processes. In this paper, we will introduce and critically assess a new qualitative method for forward-looking activities, namely CIVISTI (Citizen Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation; www.civisti.org), which was developed during an EU project of the same name. Focussing strongly on participation, with clear roles for citizens and experts, the method combines expert, stakeholder and lay knowledge to elaborate recommendations for decision-making in issues related to today’s and tomorrow’s science, technology and innovation. Consisting of three steps, the process starts with citizens’ visions of a future 30–40 years from now. Experts then translate these visions into practical recommendations which the same citizens then validate and prioritise to produce a final product. The following paper will highlight the added value as well as limits of the CIVISTI method and will illustrate potential for the improvement of future processes.

Crowdsourced Media Accountability Services — Medienkontrolle in Bürgerhand

Crowdsourced Media Accountability Services — Medienkontrolle in Bürgerhand

Changing perspectives and pragmatics of good governance and e-governance in India: a shared vision of citizens

E-governance is an unprecedented opportunity for us to change the way the country is governed. The governments are today in the process of transformation worldwide. This research is an effort to evolve a Shared Vision of Stakeholders for leveraging the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for delivering good governance through the Participatory Stakeholder Assessment (PSA) and its weighted analysis. It is an attempt to identify and establish linkages between the factors responsible for creating a conducive environment for effective/successful implementation of e-governance and factors relating to good governance, e-governance issues and challenges, demography, economy, geography, culture and others, especially in the Indian context.