Logic Of Choice Research Articles

Beatific and Horrific Futures–Substance Use According to Young Swedish Adults

Sweden has a long tradition of restrictive policies regarding both legal (such as alcohol and cigarettes) and illegal substances (such as cannabis and amphetamine). However, research is needed on how regulatory frameworks and cultural understandings of substance use play out in the lives of young adults. Utilizing the logics of critical explanation framework, I explore the different logics that young Swedes draw upon when they conceptualize legal and illegal substance use. The data included 30 interviews with 21/22-year-olds who had previously participated in a prospective cohort study. The analysis shows that substance use played a minor role in the participants’ lives. Overall, it represented an obstacle to becoming an adult with a good life. They drew on social logics related to responsibility, ambition, and health to make sense of substance use, regardless of its legal status. These social logics have been used to explain previous years’ decreased use of cigarettes and alcohol among young people, and this study shows that they may also elucidate why illegal substance use is still rare in this group in Sweden. The analysis further suggests that these social logics were naturalized through the political logics of risk and choice, which emphasize the ideal of always being vigilant and safe. To dig deeper into this discourse, I uncover the emotional and ideological dimensions of the participants’ conceptualizations by discussing how they articulate beatific or horrific futures. The beatific future holds a promise of a bright, independent, and productive life, which includes abstaining from substances or using them moderately and responsibly. The horrific, in turn, holds that careless substance use will lead to social exclusion, addiction, and death. The participants’ hopes and fears strengthened the neoliberal idea that a good life is achieved through choice, vigilance, and by avoiding risk.

Integrating Money Cycle Dynamics and Economocracy for Optimal Resource Allocation and Economic Stability

This paper integrates two theoretical frameworks to explore optimal resource allocation and the dynamics of the money cycle in a hypothetical economy. It examined the theoretical background of the problems of choice. The first framework considers an economy governed by an omniscient authority responsible for production and distribution decisions, focusing on the logic of choice and efficient resource allocation. The second framework introduces the concept of the new economic system of Economocracy, emphasizing the role of the Money Cycle theory in economic management and governance. By combining these frameworks, the paper provides a comprehensive understanding of productive and distributive efficiency and examines the impact of the money cycle on economic stability and growth. A mathematical modeling of the money cycle is presented to highlight the relationship between money distribution, economic capacity, and overall economic health. The integrated approach offers valuable insights for optimizing resource allocation and enhancing economic resilience.

Uniform choices: elastic feminism and rhetoric surrounding the 2020 Olympic “pantywar”

ABSTRACT Through a critical-rhetorical analysis of women’s uniform activism that went viral surrounding the 2020 Olympic Games (held in 2021), this article builds on existing feminist scholarship regarding the ideological correspondence of postfeminism and popular feminism within gendered economies of visibility. By giving primacy to the notion of personal choice, women activist athletes (and the media coverage of them) employed postfeminist discursive practices in service of a popular feminist agenda. While the foregrounding of “choice” stretched the reach of their feminism, allowing it to shapeshift to please a variety of audiences and gain notice, its deployment also functioned to undermine their political commitments. Presenting the concept of “elastic feminism” to characterize this tension, this essay explores the power and pitfalls of prioritizing the rhetorically flexible logics of choice.

Sequent Calculi for Choice Logics

Choice logics constitute a family of propositional logics and are used for the representation of preferences, with especially qualitative choice logic (QCL) being an established formalism with numerous applications in artificial intelligence. While computational properties and applications of choice logics have been studied in the literature, only few results are known about the proof-theoretic aspects of their use. We propose a sound and complete sequent calculus for preferred model entailment in QCL, where a formula F is entailed by a QCL-theory T if F is true in all preferred models of T. The calculus is based on labeled sequent and refutation calculi, and can be easily adapted for different purposes. For instance, using the calculus as a cornerstone, calculi for other choice logics such as conjunctive choice logic (CCL) and lexicographic choice logic (LCL) can be obtained in a straightforward way.

The Conflation of Dual Language Bilingual Education With Gifted Programs in New York City Schools

As neighborhoods across New York City gentrify, Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) has become a big draw for gentrifier families. Our research contributes to growing literature on DLBE gentrification by examining how a racially diverse group of parents in two communities perceived DLBE as a school choice option. We found that schools with DLBE programs screened potential students via academic screening tests or school choice processes to determine admission into DLBE programs. This screening process has contributed to a) the conflation of DLBE with the city’s gifted programs, and b) a focus away from admitting and centering emergent bilinguals. While this screening served to further advantage gentrifier families, some parents resisted the opportunity hoarding behaviors of their peers through their alternative school choices and advocacy efforts. In this way, we show how all parents are constrained and impacted by the neoliberal logics of contemporary DLBE policy and school choice.

The logic of choice and the logic of care: conceptualising ethics within everyday food consumption practices

The choosing consumer has been a prominent figure within consumption research, alternatively celebrated as enabling the expression of lifestyles and tastes or criticised for overlooking consumers as embedded in interconnected mundane practices. While sociologically oriented consumption research has explored the multiplicity of consumer roles beyond ‘chooser’, the figure of the choosing consumer persists in many research streams and in our shared cultural imagination. This article joins previous research on the ethics of consumption that has explored tensions between choosing and relational consumers. It does so by introducing the logic of choice and the logic of care to consumption research. Developed by Annemarie Mol (2008), these logics can be seen as ideal types representing contrasting styles of navigating decision-making, ethics, and questions of the good life. The logic of care emphasises attentive doings that aim to improve conditions in specific situations, seeking moderation rather than control, whereas the logic of choice starts out from sovereign individuals making clear-cut decisions. Using examples from a research project on everyday meat consumption practices, we develop a conceptualisation of the central dimensions of these logics within food consumption. The logics of choice and care enact particular worlds and ways of being in them, bringing forth the ontological politics of consumption. Consequently, we advocate for cultivating care in the world of consumption currently dominated by choice, since it enacts a more merciful framing of ethical consumption, emphasising our shared responsibility for ‘as well as possible’ relations without tipping over into guilt.

Lost in the loop - a qualitative study on patient experiences of care in standardized cancer patient pathways

BackgroundThe Norwegian health authorities introduced standardized cancer patient pathways (CPPs) in 2015, aiming to reduce practice variations across hospitals and regions, and improve the continuity, coordination and overall quality of the health care service provided to cancer patients. There has been few studies investigating this change, and that have looked into the organisational and economic benefits of standardized pathways, however the element of care and the patient perspective has been especially neglected. This study explored the care element in cancer patient pathways through an in-depth study of patient experiences.MethodsThe patients were enrolled approximately three years after the introduction of standardized CPPs in Norway. Through a qualitative design with in-depth interviews, a total of 21 interviews were conducted with seven patients between 2018 and 2020. The first interview took place after the diagnosis was established and before treatment, the second interview during treatment, and the final interview approximately one year after the completion of active treatment. The empirical catchment area was eastern Norway. Data were analysed using a theoretical thematic analysis.ResultsThis study sheds light on the complex challenges patients’ faces, while navigating CPPs, including the need for better transition support, improved coordination and continuity in care, and a more holistic approach that encompasses emotional well-being and family support. Three overarching themes were identified: [1] Navigating CPPs: patient care and transition challenges, [2] Fragmented cancer care: challenges in coordination and continuity [3] Unmet needs and overlooked opportunities in CPPs.ConclusionsPatients experience that cancer patient pathways offer good medical treatment, but that the care element deserves more attention. Current CPPs are trapped in a logic of choice, preventing room for the element of care to receive the attention it requires for the patient to truly experience holistic person-centred care and continuous, well-coordinated services. Based in our study we argue there is a need to look into the missed opportunities for using the CPPs as points of departure for more holistic collaborative models for cancer care.

Православие и консерватизм: политические установки религиозных россиян

The article is devoted to the study of the influence of religiosity on the individual political choice of Orthodox Russians. Based on the analysis of in-depth interviews with believers who actively attend religious services, the author identifies a relationship between certain aspects of religiosity (beliefs, religious practices) and conservative attitudes of parishioners. The author reveals the logic of a conservative choice and shows how conservative attitudes associated with shifts in values are combined with conservative attitudes based on religion. The results of the study allow the author to document three types of political positioning arising from a conservative worldview. In the case of loyalty to the current government the conservative logic manifests itself in the desire to maintain stability and avoid political changes. Opposition voting takes the form of a moral protest when voters want to punish the authorities for the actions that are inconsistent with their moral ideals. Non-participation in elections is conservative in the sense that believers avoid politics, which seems to them immoral and corrupt. Employing the qualitative methodology and analyzing individual-level data, the author comes to the conclusion that believers make their decisions about voting largely on the basis of their political attitudes. Religious voters evaluate politicians’ actions and assess the potential ability to influence the political situation. The impact of practices is limited to political participation. The conservative logic of voting is closely related to secular attitudes; religious beliefs and practices of church cooperation can only adjust the choice that was already made.

Translating tools and indicators in territorial RRI.

By a series of calls within the Horizon 2020 framework programme, the EU funded projects intended to deploy Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) at a territorial level, in regional research and innovation ecosystems. This paper presents efforts to document and evaluate the achievements in TRANSFORM, one of these projects. Evaluative inquiry and theoretical reasoning. Noting the need for a general principle to be interpreted, adapted and translated in order to be rendered meaningful at a local level, we studied precisely these multiple territorial translations of RRI, the organizational and institutional orderings with which they co-emerge and the challenges that come with these translations. An important shared feature is that RRI work does not start from zero, but rather builds on pre-existing relationships and repertoires of collaboration. The RRI project is hence a way to continue ongoing work and follow pre-set purposes, aims and objectives, as a form of "maintenance work". In this very human sense, RRI is deployed with a logic of care in the regional context, while the Horizon 2020 calls and proposals above all are formulated in a logic of choice, to be assessed by indicators. We warn against undue standardization of RRI by toolification and use of quantitative indicators, and recommend that RRI performance is monitored by methods of evaluative inquiry.

Linking knowledge-intensive firm locations with the urban structure of the city of Munich

: Knowledge-intensive location decisions follow different logics on different scales to optimise their value-creation processes across space. However, the resilience and innovation capacity of the economy and society face structural challenges of deglobalisation, decarbonisation, demographics and digitalisation. At the same time, the demand for knowledge-intensive workers is increasing. The location choices of firms are confronted with rapidly altering market forces. The growing demand-side power of the workforce – and their location preferences – challenge firms and cities to rethink the use and design of space and neighbourhoods. Against the backdrop of this interdependence between strategic location choice and the increasing demand power of knowledge-intensive workers, we examine which locations and thus which spaces are chosen in the Functional Urban Area of Munich and Freising and how this choice has changed over a 10-year period. We assume that, depending on the knowledge base of the firm, the location preferences will differ from each other. We try to elucidate this process of transformation by linking a multi-scalar perspective on firm locations with georeferenced data for each firm location. This relational approach bridges the functional location choice logic of multi-location multi-branch firms in the knowledge economy with spatial attributes at the neighbourhood level, which we use as a spatial interpretive background. The strong preference for easy access to public spaces, urban amenities and mixeduse areas are interrelated through multi-scalar change processes at various inter-scalar levels and thus may alter the urban scale and, eventually, the wider city-regional scale. The findings will enable local planning and real estate development strategies to reconcile the acute transformation needs of firm locations with integrative urban development in order to create added spatial value for the entire city.

Entre o risco e o prazer: reflexões sobre a prevenção e tratamento do HIV no contexto atual do uso da PrEP por homens que fazem sexo com homens

This study offers a set of reflections on the relationship between risk and pleasure in the field of HIV prevention and care, as it mediates new biomedical prevention/care technologies, particularly pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), among men who have sex with men (MSM). We begin by investigating some studies about condomless sex between men, more specifically barebacking and PrEP use among young MSM. We base our analysis on the assumption that PrEP, as one of these new actants, has reconfigured the field of HIV prevention/care, especially in relation to the dimensions of risk and pleasure, with the potential to considerably reduce the chances of HIV infection while enabling maximum pleasure and a sense of greater safety and freedom. Despite this progress, we also problematize some of the ambivalences, tensions, and moral conflicts that still exist in the field of prevention, especially the potential for condomless sex. Finally, taking a praxiographic perspective on health care and foregrounding the situated practices of human and non-human actors/actants in interaction, we consider HIV/AIDS prevention as a more fluid, non-linear, erratic phenomenon that involves multiple types of knowledge, feelings, and participations, and is open to different kinds of experimentation. Besides a "logic of choice", we hold that health care is a permeable, continuous process that is enacted in situated practices and may produce different effects in response to a heterogeneous network of interactions.

The Historical Choice and Cultural Integration of Sinicization of Marxism

As China entered a new era, Marxism entered a stage of high-quality development. Focusing on the Sinicization of Marxism guided by the thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era, China needs to propose a more suitable proposition for constructing socialism with Chinese characteristics and the innovation of Marxist theory. Based on the dynamic evolution of the Sinicization of Marxism, the theoretical analysis framework of Sinicization of Marxism constructed according to the internal logic of historical choice and cultural integration can show the mechanism of Sinicization of Marxism combining the basic principles of Marxism with China's reality. Moreover, from the perspective of the historical changes and practice of Marxism in China, we explore the possibility of moving towards the high-quality development goal of Marxism. The Sinicization of Marxism aims to provide scientific guidance for the Chinese people in line with the times' requirements and continuously improve the theoretical level of Marxism and enhance people's identity. Therefore, we should strengthen the theoretical innovation based on seeking truth from facts to construct the interaction and communication mechanism between the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese excellent traditional culture and world-advanced civilization. In addition, it is necessary to establish an evaluation system for the Sinicization of Marxism, to achieve high-quality development of Marxism, promote the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and meet the people's aspirations for a better life.

Logics of career choice - concept and results of an approval-sensitive career guidance workshop.

To manage the transition from school to work, young people need to learn about occupations, explore their own (professional) interests, skills and values, and make career-related decisions. According to Gottfredson's Career Construction (CC) theory (1981), young people - influenced by their need for social approval - have already narrowed down their spectrum of acceptable occupations by the time they participate in school-based career orientation programs. Therefore, we focus on career guidance interventions that take into account their need for social approval. We present first results of an intervention study of a newly developed approval-sensitive workshop, "Logic of Career Choice." It challenges students' mostly unconscious need for social approval, raising awareness and prompting reflection and action on this aspect of their career choices. By analyzing a sample based on a quasi-experimental treatment-control group research design, we examine to what extent this workshop can contribute to reaching its objectives [n = 1236 students in secondary schools; treatment group (n = 766); control group (n = 470)]. Confirmatory factor analyses indicate the reliability of the new measurement instruments. The six examined constructs include (1) the relevance of social approval, (2) the feeling of autonomy, (3) interest in career choice, (4) reflection of needs, (5) intention to act, and (6) reported career choice activities. The results reveal partial confirmation of hypothesis (1) regarding the importance of social approval and (2) the feeling of autonomy. However, the constructs (4) reflection of needs and (5) intention to act show parallel developments in both the treatment and control groups, leading to the rejection of these hypotheses. The constructs (3) interest in career choice and (6) retrospectively reported activities regarding career choice show unexpected effects of the workshop. Interest in career choice decreases significantly more in the treatment group than in the control group, and the treatment group reports significantly more retrospective career choice activities. The discussion interprets the results in the context of their scientific and practical implications, with special attention given to the decrease in interest in career choice in the treatment group and the increased retrospective reporting of career choice activities.

Tripartite evolutionary game analysis of the collective intelligence design ecosystem

The Collective Intelligence Design Ecosystem (CIDE) is a dynamic system with multiple interests intertwined, and the utilization of matching tools provides a way for all parties to create value-added benefits. However, not everyone will adopt a matching strategy after balancing the benefits and losses. Revealing the logic of each party's choice and how this choice affects the evolution of the CIDE is beneficial for improving the sustainability of the CIDE. Therefore, this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game system that includes designers, requesters, and the platform. Some practical insights are derived by simulating the actual operational data of the Zhubajie (ZBJ) platform. First, a modest penalty for designers can speed up the evolution of the CIDE. Second, requesters will invariably choose the task matching mechanism, but mobilizing the platform and designers to participate in matching requires setting a reasonable allocation ratio of remuneration. Third, while the platform's compensation is immaterial to the designer, it is critical to the requester. Finally, although incentives motivate designers to make matches, the absence of incentives might hasten the CIDE's convergence. These conclusions may serve as a roadmap for ensuring CIDE's stability and orderly operation.

Online health communities and the patient-doctor relationship: An institutional logics perspective

Taking an institutional logics perspective, this study investigates how “internet-informed” patients manage tensions between the logic of personal choice and the logic of medical professionalism as they navigate treatment decisions and the patient-doctor relationship. Based on 44 semi-structured interviews with members of an online health community for people with diabetes, this study finds that patients exercise a great deal of agency in evaluating healthcare options not only by activating the logic of personal choice but also by appropriating the logic of medical professionalism. Furthermore, patients are strategic in deciding what community advice to share with their doctor or nurse depending on the healthcare professionals' reaction to the logic of personal choice. In contrast to many previous studies that emphasise patient consumerism fuelled by information on the Internet, this study provides a more nuanced picture of patient-doctor relationship engendered by patients’ participation in online health communities.

Constituting link working through choice and care: An ethnographic account of front-line social prescribing.

Link worker social prescribing has become a prominent part of NHS England's personalisation agenda. However, approaches to social prescribing vary, with multiple discourses emerging about the potential of social prescribing and different interpretations of personalisation. The transformational promise of social prescribing is the subject of ongoing debate, whilst the factors that shape the nature of front-line link working practices remain unclear. Based on 11months of in-depth ethnographic research with link workers delivering social prescribing, we show how link workers' practices were shaped by the context of the intervention and how individual link workers navigated varied understandings of social prescribing. Following the work of Mol, we show how link workers drew differentially on the interacting logics of choice and care and trace a multiplicity in front-line link working practices within a single intervention. However, over time, it appeared that a logic of choice was becoming increasingly dominant, making it harder to deliver practices that aligned with a logic of care. We conclude that interpreting personalisation through a logic of choice could potentially undermine link working practices that privilege care whilst obscuring the need for wider investment in health care systems and the social determinants of health.

Analysing the potential for modal shift based on the logic of modal choice

This article explores how the logic underlying modal practices tends to modulate the population’s responsiveness to improvements in global transport supply. Based on a quantitative survey conducted in 2018–2019 among the working population of the cantons of Bern, Geneva and Vaud, it presents the construction of eight types, each of which corresponds to a specific combination of action logic and allows segmentation of travel behaviour. The exploration of the links between this typology and three metropolitan areas shows that the weight of the types within the active population is associated with the quality of the transport offered, especially at the workplace, and that the use of the different means of transport for commuting within the types stays consistent with the opinions of the respondents, as confirmed by an ordinal regression. All the results presented in this article show that a modal shift objective in daily mobility requires a strategy that is segmented by these types.

Les arbitrages individuels en matière de temps de transport

In the context of a global health crisis, digital tools play a growing role in daily lives of students and working people. Many people now work from home and study online. Do these virtual exchanges replace spatial mobility? To answer this question in this article, we focus on individual trade-offs in terms of travel choices and, more specifically, in terms of travel time. Based on the work of Y. Zahavi and the hypothesis he made of the stability of time budgets on a daily scale, we question the relevance of an extension of the thinking to the weekly stability of these time budgets (with and without the weekend) and also to the stability of the perceived time budgets. Our challenge in this article is to better understand individual choice logics to ensure more efficient political measures. English title: Individual trade-offs in travel time budgets. Knowledges and practices in Switzerland

Housing logic: Rationalities behind housing choice behavior in coping housing market dynamics among urban residents in Sebeta Town, Ethiopia

Urban residents do have rationalities and justifications for the housing situation they are living in. This research is aimed to address the research question that proposed why housing choice behavior is different from person to person and why residents choose the housing type that they are living in given that in the dynamic housing market there are different housing options. The researchers are dedicated to investigating housing logic that guides urban housing choice behavior as a response to housing market dynamics. Understanding the housing logic behind the housing choice behavior of urban residents in a dynamic housing market is a logical basis of this research. This study benefited from both theoretical and empirical analysis because the literature review was supported by empirical observation. To achieve the research objective, the explanatory mixed-method sequential research design was employed where quantitative data were collected from 384 respondents who were randomly selected whereas qualitative data were collected via in-depth interviews and focus group discussion. Urban residents decided to utilize housing type that fits their overall socio-economic capacity and coping abilities. Findings indicated that urban residents shifted their housing choice from formal to informal markets which imply the logic of housing choice behavior. This shifting has happened due to the lowered extent of supportiveness of formal housing market dynamics and the decline of coping abilities that was associated with the socio-economic crisis. The authors came up with the conclusion that the major housing choice logic of urban residents is affordability, accessibility, adequacy, and aptness factors. The authors would like to suggest to the municipality to strengthen the formal housing market given that the informal housing market is likely to aggravate social injustices and inequitable housing development.

A Two-Layer Location Choice Model Reveals What’s New in the “New Retail”

The New Retail is an emerging e-commerce model in recent years. It claims innovation in creating competitive advantages through intensive Internet-based data to promote online-to-offline interactions. Whether this self-claimed innovation would cause a different rationale in the choice of store locations is a subject worthy of investigation. In this article, taking Beijing’s Starbucks and Luckin coffee stores as cases, we build a two-layer business location choice model to examine the problem. The model consists of a macroscale (city-wide) submodel and a microscale (street block) submodel. Results show that the macroscale store location choice logics for the two are consistent, with differences predicted by economic geographical laws, thus rejecting the hypothesis of the big-data-driven location choice advantage for the New Retail. Results from the microscale model, however, suggest that the difference between the two brands is better explained with cognition and behavioral theories, where the delivery agents, rather than the customers’ environmental cognition characteristics, shape the New Retail’s peculiar store location preference over less “fancy” urban locales. We argue this unique location preference is indeed something new in the New Retail. We conclude the article with discussions on the relevance of the cognitive and behavioral perspectives in the business location choice problem, and suggest incorporating the microscale layer that explicitly considers these aspects in addressing the problem in real-world settings.