Sense Of Individual Responsibility Research Articles

From Farm to Fork: Addressing Food Waste in Households

With the rising environmental awareness, the issue of food waste is drawing considerable attention from civil society, scholars, industry practitioners and policymakers alike. Addressing food waste is crucial, as it incurs a variety of social, health, economic and environmental costs, including greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation and the depletion of natural resources. The objective of this study is to analyze processes in food waste management to gain insight into factors influencing consumer behaviour, attitudes, and practices regarding consumption and food waste and loss prevention in the supply chain. This requires the analysis of decision making methods and waste reduction strategies and approaches, particularly for households. The goal is to emphasize the importance of raising consumer awareness and sense of individual responsibility, especially given the recent surge in collective community intentions to live more sustainably. However, translating these intentions into tangible actions is uncertain and filled with socio-economic complexities. Reports indicate that, households are responsible for approximately half of all food waste generated. Therefore, it's important to review the literature on barriers and triggers related to behaviour patterns and variations in food related lifestyle dimensions, to determine the factors that might influence food handling and food waste knowledge. Targeting households presents a promising starting point for future interventions, highlighting actions that may influence the current food consumption model to reduce the amount of food wasted. The methodological approach was structured into three steps. First, a literature review was conducted to gather insights and identify factors and interconnections between consumer behaviour and food waste. Second, related drivers and triggers were analysed. Lastly, the findings were summarized to highlight gaps and opportunities for improving attitudes towards food waste prevention.

Current Status, Problems and Optimization Suggestions of Financing Mechanism for Urban and Rural Residents' Health Insurance in China

The financing mechanism for urban and rural residents' health insurance has continued to develop, with the financing method further refined on the basis of quota financing, the financing level raised year by year in line with individual contributions and financial subsidies, and the financing responsibility shared by the government and gradually strengthened in terms of individual responsibility. However, the current financing mechanism for urban and rural residents' health insurance is faced with the dilemmas of irrational financing method, insufficient financing level, and unbalanced financing responsibility. In light of this situation, it is recommended that the fixed-ratio financing reform be promoted step by step, that a sound mechanism be established for scientifically determining the financing level, that the sense of individual responsibility be strengthened and the financing responsibility be gradually equalized.

What's Important: Dealing with Gun Violence.

As orthopaedic surgeons, we have been deeply saddened, horrified, and angered by the recent shootings of 2 physicians, an employee, and a patient at a Tulsa health-care clinic. This closely followed the shootings at a Buffalo supermarket and the Uvalde elementary school. While we are not going to list all of the tragic shootings in these past months, we do want to reiterate some of the facts of gun violence. There were 12,393 deaths from guns in the United States in 2021; over half of them were suicides1. There are 434 million firearms in the United States (of which 19.8 million are AR-15s), and 150 million have a “large-capacity” magazine capable of holding at least 10 rounds2. It has been estimated that 40% of households in the United States possess at least 1 firearm3. It is no secret that this country is deeply polarized about how we should respond to the tragedies of gun deaths and injuries. In this essay, we want to present our own views of how we can address problems that urgently need our attention and can actually be fixed. Some of these steps can be taken immediately and some require enormous societal changes. First, we believe that eliminating all guns in the United States or abolishing the 2nd Amendment is impossible. Also, we do not think that our country should outlaw large-capacity magazines as that would make semiautomatic handguns and rifles, which don’t accept smaller magazines, nonfunctional and could turn tens of millions of Americans who own these weapons into criminals. What we can do is increase the age for any firearm purchase from 18 to 21 years, a proposal for which there is widespread agreement. The argument has been raised that 18-year-olds can serve in the military, where they use handguns and assault weapons, but soldiers are highly vetted for service and trained in the proper use of weapons—unlike ordinary 18 to 21-year-olds. Exceptions might be made for young people hunting on their own family’s properties and ranches. This entire issue can also be revisited after data have been collected. There are other measures that merit serious discussion. These include “red flag” regulations that would allow law enforcement to take away firearms from those who have displayed serious mental illness and prior disturbing behaviors. (In fact, this issue was included in the gun safety legislation recently passed by Congress, which provided funding to incentivize states to enact such measures.) In addition, perhaps a 3-day waiting period from the purchase to the pick-up of a weapon should be considered? Could more effort be made to “harden” soft targets (schools, houses of worship, medical facilities, and shopping malls) with properly trained onsite staff members? Could there be more police officers on the streets? We ourselves believe in the importance of the family in stemming gun violence. Parents need to take responsibility for guiding the decisions and actions of their children and teenagers. They must instill, through education and example, a sense of individual responsibility, personal awareness, and pride in community. Those who include religion in their children’s upbringing should stress the tenets that forbid the taking of life (“Thou shalt not kill” according to the 5th commandment of the Judeo-Christian faith traditions). All children and teenagers who show signs suggesting current or future violent behavior toward others or themselves should be referred to health professionals for counseling and treatment as soon as possible. In the long term, perhaps we can focus more on the person pulling the trigger. The news outlets, social media, and we ourselves need to stress the importance of the family (especially fathers for boys and young men), morality, and religious beliefs (the 5th Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”) to hopefully restore individual responsibility and personal awareness. Parents should be held responsible for the moral actions of their children and teenagers. Pride and responsibility in country and community could be restored through education and example. Children and teenagers with disturbing behavior and “mental illness” should be referred to health professionals for counseling and treatment at an earlier stage. Maybe the time is now to come together and take some incremental steps to decrease gun violence. No one denies that addressing gun violence in the United States is difficult. We are a nation in which life and freedom are both revered. However, the time is now to come together and take incremental steps.

‘The fidelity of promising’: Egoism and Obligation in Austen

Abstract This essay reads the promises that permeate Sense and Sensibility (1811) in the context of late eighteenth-century discussions about the nature and value of voluntary obligations, probing Austen’s engagement with ideas advanced by thinkers including David Hume, Adam Smith, William Paley, William Godwin, and Edmund Burke. In doing so, the essay contributes to long-standing debates about Austen’s ethical vision, highlighting her simultaneous commitment to and critique of the individualist ethos structuring modern life. Austen’s approach to promises, the essay argues, is broadly aligned with that of Hume, Smith, and Paley: like these philosophers, Austen suggests that one is bound by a pledge whenever one knowingly raises another’s expectations concerning the existence of an obligation even if one does not intend to be bound. Yet Austen is less optimistic than these thinkers are about men’s willingness to honour their pledges. She uses the resources of fiction—in particular, experiments with third-person narration and point of view—to examine the problems that result from the unequal power relations between men and women as well as the tendency of individuals to conflate desire with expectation. Even as Austen attempts to shore up a sense of individual responsibility in her society, she implicitly acknowledges that, in some cases, breaking a promise may result in more happiness than keeping it would.

Women Face to Fear and Safety Devices During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: Impact of Physical Distancing on Individual Responsibility, Intimate, and Social Relationship.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Italy had its first epidemic manifestations on January 31, 2020. The socio-sanitary rules imposed by the government concerned the social distance and management of intimate relationships, the sense of individual responsibility toward public health. Physical distancing and housing isolation have produced new representations of intrafamily, generational, neighborhood, community responsibility, bringing out a new “medicalized dimension” of society. In light of this contextual framework, the research aims are to analyze how: the perception of individual responsibility for public and familial health and physical distancing has redrawn the relation between subjects-family-community; the State's technical-health intervention has reformulated the idea of social closeness, but also how the pandemic fear and social confinement has re-evaluated a desire for community, neighborhood, proximity; during the lockdown families, friends, neighbors have reconstructed feelings of closeness and forms of belonging. The methodology used is quanti-qualitative and involved 300 women through an online questionnaire. The data collected highlight how the house during the lockdown is perceived as a safe place and how women implement both the recommendations and the behaviors aimed at preventing contagion, but also ways that allow coping with the situation from a perspective of well-being. Furthermore, the data show how the dimension of distancing has loosened the relational dimension outside the family unit, with a greater distancing compared to pre-pandemic data. However, the majority of women report that they have joined solidarity initiatives, demonstrating that they want to maintain ties and participate actively in community life.

“Soothing My Child's Soul and My Own”: Dealing with Pregnancy Loss in Postcommunist Romania

AbstractIn Romania—where induced abortions were legally prohibited during communism and are now morally condemned by many—those who lose a pregnancy against their will have long been regarded with suspicion, confronted with a sense of culpability, and surrounded by silence. This ambiguity is reflected in the local terminology and the perceived etiology of loss. In this article, which is based on 15 months of fieldwork between 2012 and 2015, I illustrate the various meanings and manifestations of a silenced sense of culpability around involuntary pregnancy loss in the lives of women from Bucharest and a small town in Central Romania. I also show how many of these women attempt to break the silence around their lost fetuses and carve out a personal space of commemoration and consolation. Their informal use of forbidden religious rituals paradoxically allows them to confirm the existence of their lost little ones and to position themselves as caring, rather than culpable, mothers. [pregnancy loss, commemoration, culpability, postcommunist Romania]

From Pillarized Active Membership to Populist Active Citizenship: The Dutch Do Democracy

This contribution about the Netherlands to the special issue [or: section] on volunteering and civic action focuses on changes in public understanding and policy perspectives. Developments since the second half of the nineteenth century show shifting emphases on active membership (based on associational life and typical of the phenomenon of ‘pillarization’), active citizenship (based more on an individual sense of responsibility and more or less political in nature) and unpaid work (volunteering as a gift to society and other people). Government policy over the last two decades has focused heavily on ‘reponsibilization’ of citizens, both as regards providing help to others when they need it (unpaid work/informal care) and in terms of their relationship with the society in which they live (active citizenship). We expand further on the recent notion of the ‘do-democracy’ as a populist and anti-political way of doing things together on a small scale instead of engaging in democratic controversies and trying to get a grip on big issues.

Dangerous Safety or Safely Dangerous. Perception of safety and self-awareness in public space

Exposure to perceived danger awakens our environmental awareness and sense of individual responsibility. In our rapidly evolving contemporary urban environments, the design of public space is often constrained and focussed on risk mitigation. Designers often rely on the inclusion of mechanisms to control behaviours (eg walls and fences) or rely on displays of authoritarian surveillance (eg CCTV and extensive warning signage). Measures also known as target–hardening (Saraiva & Pinho, 2011). This can create a reliance on the authoritarian control of urban space, which could result in the disuse of self-regulating mechanisms such as individual responsibility and environmental awareness.This study investigates perception of danger in public space through a scenario-based investigation focussed on Brisbane, Australia. This study enquires how we sense danger, what provokes our sense of danger and how this affects our environmental awareness. Current exemplary design responses that aim to improve safety in public space are also discussed. The study highlights a need for further research about how authoritatively secured space affects city users, sense of place and community.

ECO-CONSUMERISM AS THE WORLDVIEW POSITION

Problems which humanity encountered with due to the unethical scientific and technological progress, irrational energy consumption, merciless resource pumping and inefficient management were at the level of passive debates for quite a long time. However, the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystem and noticeable modification of its climate background require radical changes in the political, economic and cultural courses, humanity transition to the usage of sustainable energy resources and environmentalisation of the individual consciousness. On April 22nd 2016 was signed the Paris Agreement within United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which deals with the decrease of level of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere starting in 2020. The meeting was intended to demonstrate that although the amount of energy and financial expenditures of the states today is high, but it cannot be compared to those the governments will face in the case of irreversible climate change and necessity of adaptation. The imposition of these issues at the level of interstate discussions, global concerns about the planet ecology, individual initiative and voluntary steps in order to save life on the planet, without a doubt, deserve respect and must be supported. Nevertheless, at the present stage, for the effective implementation of announced decisions strict accountability and sanctions for evading the stated arrangement should be provided. In addition, actions of the states at the global level need to be supplemented by human individual contribution to the process of environment preservation. Among the effective methods for achieving environmentalisation of the mass consciousness there are social advertising, transformation of eco-consumerism in the fashion trend, and cinematography (an advantage of the one in comparison to the cumbrous scientific researches is that its products are understandable for the mass consumers). In terms of environmentalisation of human consciousness the encouraging of young people to create innovative projects in waste recycling sphere is quite promising. Actually, there are many examples that recycling can be not just useful but interesting as well: bins that “thanking” to the passersby for the rubbish (theUnited Arab Emirates) and broadcast the latest news and weather forecasts (theUK), containers in the form of bottles and newspapers (Singapore), machines that feed stray animals (Turkey) etc. Thus, installation of the smart garbage recycling systems in public places and educational institutions will help to form individual sense of responsibility for the environment and other living species on the planet, encourage thoughtful consumption and recycling, and eliminate the policy of mindless consumerism. Among the countries that have already achieved noticeable results in the economy transition to the sustainable energy consumption there are China, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, particularly, the Utrecht city, and the Canary island El Hierro. Even though these implementations of effective energy saving technologies in everyday life of ordinary people are local and territorially limited, it appears that with the increase in the number of citizens who are aware of the benefits of eco-friendly energy consumption, stronger will be their demands to rethink public policy in this area. Meanwhile, it is important to promote among masses the principles of green consumerism that base on the consumption of organic products, energy production from the renewable resources, environmentally friendly activities etc. This type of food and energy production also has potential to stabilize the world market: the price will not vary depending on the richness of fossil fuels deposits or their availability as such. Thus, if the consumers are supplied with energy from the sustainable resources, it will decrease the final product price and allow redirecting of saved funds to the other areas. Furthermore, expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, technological development, moral and physical perfection of the person, cleansing and supporting of ecosystems, production of high-quality organic products instead of distribution of cheap counterfeits, improving of the healthcare industry are able to ensure the formation of the modern ethics of responsibility and humanity transition to the next stage of its development. Finally, attention should be paid to the designing projects of future ecopolis – city, which produces and consumes energy in the most effective and harmless to humans and the environment ways.

The new information literate: Open collaboration and information production in schools

Widespread participation in collaborative writing and public discourse on blogs, news sites, Wikipedia and other online information sources is creating a new class of information literacy skills. In a series of qualitative studies, I examined high school students’ information assessment practices as they helped build a collaborative online information source. I identified two types of strategies for assessing information sources: first-order strategies involve adopting known heuristics for assessing sources whereas second-order strategies involve reflective construction of standards based on students’ understanding of how information is produced and the tasks in which they are engaged. I link these constructs to the literature on knowledge building and use them to explain both information assessment strategies and how participation in information production on open collaboration platforms can provide learners with a concrete vantage point from which to consider the information sources they use. Moreover, I find that learners can experience responsibility for contributing to new knowledge in several dimensions, including a shared and individual sense of responsibility in both local and global contexts. Finally, I discuss implications of these findings for research on collaboration and learning as well as for educational practice.

Person – Centered Perspective in the Madrid Declaration

Principles of ethics are more important than rules, declarations and codes for a variety of reasons but basically because it is the principles that provide the basis for the latter and determine the ethical stance of each individual practitioner through whom the rules, declarations and codes are filtered. The essence of the above conclusion is reflected in the preamble of the Madrid Declaration, the ethical code of the World Psychiatric Association, where the psychiatrist’s individual sense of responsibility is identified as the basis of ethical practice.Ethical psychiatric practice (as described or implied in the Madrid Declaration and in other similar texts) is personified par excellence. Yet, there are certain parts of the Declaration that are more relevant to the person-centered approach. These are the following:Paragraph 1. Advocating therapeutic interventions that are least restrictive to the freedom of the patient.Paragraph 3. Suggesting that the patient be accepted as a partner by right in the therapeutic process. Empowering the patient to make informed decisions on the basis of one’s personal values and preferences.Paragraph 4. Safeguarding the dignity and human rights of the patient.Paragraph 5. Informing the patient about the purpose of an assessment (especially if the psychiatrist is involved in third-party situations).Paragraph 6. Safeguarding the privacy of information obtained through the therapeutic relationship.Paragraph 7. Safeguarding the autonomy and physical and mental integrity of the patient in research.The two person-centered ethics principles that are prominently highlighted in the Madrid Declaration are the principle of autonomy and the Hippocratic principle of “do no harm”.

‘Things fall apart’: social imaginaries and the politics of cohesion

‘Social cohesion’ has been adopted on policy agendas across Europe. In the way the notion has been applied on recent public policy agendas, social problems are generally brought into connection with deficiencies in the social fabric and with scenarios of social disintegration. Policies towards cohesion, in turn, rely on ideas of civic activation and the inculcation of a sense of individual responsibility. Cohesion thus appears intimately linked to a revision of the role of government. To understand what it is that connects the turn to cohesion with new understandings of social governance, the article proposes the lens of ‘social imaginaries’. Drawing on contributions by Charles Taylor, Cornelius Castoriadis and Ernesto Laclau on ‘social imaginaries’, it suggests that this conceptual tool proves useful to understand how, with cohesion, a re-description of society links up to a re-orientation of social governance.

Flood Perception and Mitigation: The Role of Severity, Agency, and Experience in the Purchase of Flood Protection, and the Communication of Flood Information

Protection of human life and property from flooding is a strategic priority in the UK. We examine how to encourage home owners to protect themselves and their residences. A model of factors that influence the decision to buy flood-protection devices is tested using survey data from 2109 home owners. The results show that the majority of respondents have not purchased domestic flood protection ( N = 1732; 82.1%). Purchase of flood-protection devices was influenced by age; perceived seriousness; and beliefs about, and trust in, the role of regulators in managing flooding. In younger respondents the perceived seriousness of the dangers of flooding acted as precursors and barriers to action depending on individual sense of responsibility and agency. The second part of the study examines responsiveness to information. Information about flooding alone was insufficient to promote behavioural change, particularly among people who had not experienced a flood or who believed that they were not in a flood zone. Implications for understanding flood protection, managing agency issues, and flood-communication campaigns are discussed.

A public language: some sociological implications of a linguistic form

YN AN EARLIER PAPER an attempt was made to show a | relationship between two forms of linguistic expression and the way Xrelationships to objects were established.l It was argued that one form of language use, called a public language, facilitated thinking of a descriptive order and sensitivity to a particular form of social interaction. In the earlier paper a public language was discussed with reference to its use by the unskilled and semi-skilled strata, but approximations to a public language may well be spoken in such widely separated groups as criminal sub-cultures, rural groups, armed forces and adolescent groups in particular situations. Characteristics of a public language are: 2 I. Short, grammatically simple, often unfinished sentences, a poor syntactical construction with a verbal form stressing the active mood. 2. Simple and repetitive use of conjunctions (so, then, and, because). 3. Frequent use of short commands and questions. 4. Rigid and limited use of adjectives and adverbs. 5. Infrequent use of impersonal pronouns as subjects (one, it). 6. Statements formulated as implicit questions which set up a sympathetic circularity, e.g. 'Just fancy?', 'It's only natural, isn't it?' 'I wouldn't have believed it.' 7. A statement offact is often used as both a reason and a conclusion, or more accurately, the reason and conclusion are confounded to produce a categoric statement, e.g. 'Do as I tell you', 'Hold on tight', 'You're not going out', 'Lay of that'. 8. Individual selection from a group of idiomatic phrases will frequently be found. 9. Symbolism is of a low order of generality. IO. The individual qualification is implicit in the sentence structure, therefore it is a language of implicit meaning. It is believed that this fact determi-'es the form of the language.

Herr und Knecht — die Ambivalenzen der Selbstunternehmung

The introduction of the “Ich AG” (single person corporation) at the beginning of 2003 has led increasingly to the establishment of an own autonomous corporate model. It combines various concepts of individual freedom as well as independence from prescribed socio-economic structures allowing for personal self-realization on the one hand, with risks and constraints requiring a significant sense of individual responsibility on the other. Given this polarity this new form of entrepreneurship tends to become a continuous process of self-assertion and self-compromise.

Municipal service bundling: the case of san antonio’s neighborhood sweep program

Local governments play important roles in creating public value for their residents. Recognizing this, they have made improving local quality of life a high priority. Such emphasis has led to the development of various service innovations designed to make urban areas better places to live and work. This article examines one such innovation, the city of San Antonio’s Neighborhood Sweep program (or, simply, “Sweeps”). Sweeps is an example of a general service delivery strategy we term “municipal services bundling” (or MSB). MSB entails targeting resources to particular neighborhoods and tailoring bundles of public services designed to meet neighborhoods' respective needs. Analysis of survey data collected from residents of “swept” neighborhoods from 1999 to 2002 suggests that MSB can have positive effects on overall levels of neighborhood satisfaction and, in the case of Sweeps, may empower local residents while promoting their sense of individual responsibility for neighborhood appearance.

Power, but scant responsibility

Journalists working in the British press need now to be part of the answer and not the cause of a continuing crisis, writes Marsh, editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. To this end, they need five characteristics. First, toughness - to resist the hypocrisy that values a scalp, that values a resignation or public humiliation while professing indifference to the effects of the press on the public sphere. Second, belief - belief that finding the truth and telling it is a public good. Third, responsibility - an individual sense of responsibility for journalism's purpose in scrutinising government and public institutions fairly and with the intent of enabling them to work better. Fourth, accountability - accountability for the results of the profession and the acceptance that journalism isn't something you just do and walk away from. Fifth, ambition - ambition for a profession built on values; fairness, impartiality, open mindedness, inclusivity. Britain needs journalists who read from both sides of every balance sheet and who know that a partial truth - in both senses of the word - is more lethal than a blatant untruth.

Democracy and Economic Development: Modernization Theory Revisited

Interest in the relationships between society and politics is as old as written history. Ecological theories, suggesting a relation between the geographic location of homelands and the personalities of the residents and their governments, were advanced by scholars such as Aristotle, Cicero, Ibn Khaldun, and Montesquieu and may be viewed as efforts to explain the contextual determinants of political systems. Such literature in the era, however, has focused on the conditions of democracy. Historical studies suggest that modem democracies can occur only under certain conditions of capitalist industrialization. Karl Marx identified the bourgeoisie as the major force behind the emergence of democracy. He argued that the capitalist class used parliamentary systems and mechanisms to capture the control of the state from the traditional elite. Similarly, Moore, in his study of major western democracies, and Soboul, in his analysis of the French Revolution, stressed the role of the middle class and urban bourgeoisie in the transformation of political systems into democracies.' Max Weber marked the importance of Protestantism in the development of western democracies. He considered individualism and a sense of individual responsibility, inherent in the Protestant ethic, as the major conditions for the development of burgher classes and a political culture. Contemporary writers, following Weber's lead, have searched for cultural requisites and the elements of a democratic A civic in Almond and Verba and a modern personality in Lerner have been identified as essentials of a participant (democratic) society.2 Tocqueville, in his study of American institutions, pointed out the virtue of voluntary associations as the basis of social pluralism, which in turn nurtures democracy. However, the sociology of knowledge, which emphasizes the influence of structure and organizational setting on the development of attitudes and behaviors, compels us to direct our attention to the structural basis of developing such a culture or personality. In this regard, aspects of modernization appear to be the common explanatory factors used in the analysis of democracy.

Advocacy and AGU

In May 1982, the AGU Council approved the following policy on the Union's role in advocacy on public issues.The American Geophysical Union is an association of scientists, scholars, and interested lay public for the purpose of advancing geophysical science. The Union shares a collateral sense of responsibility to assure that the results of geophysical research are made available to benefit all mankind. The Union encourages its members to exercise their individual sense of responsibility in addressing political and social issues. Should they choose to act collectively on such issues, other organizations exist for such purposes. The American Geophysical Union, as a society, should preserve its unique position as an objective source of analysis and commentary for the full spectrum of geophysical science.

Advocacy and AGU

In May 1982, the AGU Council approved the following policy on the Union's role in advocacy on public issues.The American Geophysical Union is an association of scientists, scholars, and interested lay public for the purpose of advancing geophysical science. The Union shares a collateral sense of responsibility to assure that the results of geophysical research are made available to benefit all mankind. The Union encourages its members to exercise their individual sense of responsibility in addressing political and social issues. Should they choose to act collectively on such issues, other organizations exist for such purposes. The American Geophysical Union, as a society, should preserve its unique position as an objective source of analysis and commentary for the full spectrum of geophysical science. Accordingly, the following policies should guide the American Geophysical Union's role as an advocate: