Normative Goals Research Articles

From the Pearl River Delta to the Greater Bay Area: State spatial selectivity, contingent socio-spatial processes, and variegated geographies of China’s city-regionalism

This paper revisits China’s city-regionalism based on a multi-scalar reading of state entrepreneurialism, with a special focus on the transition from the Pearl River Delta (PRD) to the Greater Bay Area (GBA). We first propose a multi-scalar theoretical framework of state entrepreneurialism to comprehend China’s city-regional development. At the national scale, the central state maintains planning centrality by establishing normative goals through national political mandates and orchestrating socio-spatial reconfiguration of city-regions using various planning techniques (e.g., zoning, annexation, connectivity, and place-making), which demonstrates state spatial selectivity. At the local scale, city-regional development, led by the local state, pivots on the mandates and resorts to market instruments. Place-specific contexts and development trajectories give rise to distinctive ‘regional models’ and contingent socio-spatial processes. From a historical-geographical perspective, these contingent socio-spatial processes represent both the outcome of and the precondition for successive waves of state spatial selectivity in city-regional development. Building upon the dynamic interplay between state spatial selectivity and contingent socio-spatial processes, we present a periodised analysis to delve into the ongoing transformation from the PRD to the GBA. Amidst evolving global-local conjunctures and shifting national political mandates, state spatial selectivity within the PRD-to-GBA transformation is categorised into three periods: (1) 1980s to early 1990s: exploiting zoning technologies to institutionalise exceptionality within delimited areas for undertaking market-oriented experiments; (2) mid-1990s to 2000s: empowering entrepreneurial cities to drive market-oriented development while managing their size, internal hierarchy, and external connections; and (3) 2010s onwards: an intensified planning centrality at the national scale and the reinvention of zoning technologies to emphasise relationality, reshaping the urban-regional and cross-border dynamics of the GBA within an ‘integration’ framework. In conclusion, this paper reflects on the variegated geographies of China’s city-regionalism – the socio-spatially distinctive, temporally evolving and ultimately polymorphic, multi-scalar construction of Chinese city-regions.

Engagement as Revenue in Journalism: Turning Community, Comments, and Access into Economic Viability

ABSTRACT While both the journalism industry and journalism studies research have long celebrated engagement as both a normative goal and a potential revenue source, scant evidence exists illustrating how an organization can turn engagement into profit. This study, utilizing a case study of the sports and culture news organization Defector, examines how one newsroom monetizes engagement. Through the lens of market theory for news production, the study examines what engagement practices Defector enacts, and how those successfully catalyze subscribers to pay almost 50% more annually for the ability to engage with the organization. Lastly, the study introduces, to journalism studies, the concept of market alignment, a necessity for monetizing engagement.

Made in Languaging; Ecolinguistic Expertise

Made in languaging aims to help ecolinguists with recrafting ideation and human practices. Inspired by Alexander and Stibbe, I turn to how ecolinguistic expertise can favour life-sustaining relations. In approaching normative goals, I start with how knowledge is made, self-sustains and is disseminated. Ecolinguistic analysis of languages, discourse and narratives can thus be enriched by tracing how practices inform languaging. In turning to epistemic agency, I emphasise the following: (1) building corpora popularia, organised bodies, in order to enhance life-sustaining relations; (2) illuminating life from the inside; and (3) developing bioecological awareness. I contend that, while all living beings use coordinative activities to bring forth what appears to us, humans also use wording types and practices. As we use the already known, languaging enables subjecthood, a person’s little worlds, and a group’s common realities. Hence, what appears as (and to) experience is made in languaging. When linked to normative concerns, the resulting middle worlds also offer means of putting knowledge to work. As in social epistemology, one might regard ‘wealth and well-being’ as a marker of public good. Yet, critical work shows, appeal to these values is anthropomorphic. In order to encompass nonhumans and the biogenic, one can reject market orientatation by tracing languaging, and knowing, back to living. In showing benefits of so doing, I contrast two evolving wording types. The case of growthism, I suggest, attests to praxis and contrasts starkly with the ideational value of life-sustaining relations. Yet, in both cases, languaging meshes practices, happenings and the effects of action. The move shows how one can challenge the hypostatisation of ideology by pursuing how epistemic agency can contribute to the future of evolution.

Fostering pro-environmental behavior of university students through goal framing theory: the mediating role of environmental knowledge

Purpose This study aims to examine the associations between the three goals (hedonic, gain and normative) and university students’ proenvironmental behavior. After that, the authors investigate how environmental knowledge acts as a mediator between three goals (hedonic, gain and normative) and proenvironmental behavior. Design/methodology/approach The study used the quantitative approach adopting the goal framing theory (GFT) as the theoretical framework, for analyzing behavior of university students toward environment including both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The data was gathered through the distribution of a structured questionnaire to private universities in Chattogram and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings Hedonic and gain goals have positive effects on students’ proenvironmental behavior while the normative goal has insignificant association. In addition, all the three goals are significantly linked with students’ environmental knowledge. Besides, environmental knowledge significantly mediates the association between three goals and proenvironmental behavior. Practical implications The findings can provide valuable insights for integrating sustainability and environmental education into the formulation and planning of curricular and extra-curricular activities, with an emphasis on students’ intrinsic motivation. Originality/value The mediating role of environmental knowledge between three goals and proenvironmental behavior is the unique contribution of this study.

Grandstanding Instead of Deliberative Policy-Making: Transitional Justice, Publicness and Parliamentary Questions in the Croatian Parliament

ABSTRACT Addressing the legacy of human rights violations in public can benefit victims, post-conflict societies and democracy building. But publicness of transitional justice (TJ) processes can also have opposite effects. We assess the relationship between publicness and TJ by leveraging the democratic deliberation theory concerned with the impact of publicness on the quality of policy-making. A comparative analysis of oral and written questions about TJ in the Croatian parliament (2004–20) shows that members of parliament use oral questions for nationalist grandstanding and written questions for substantive TJ policy deliberation. We demonstrate how publicness afforded by parliaments stymies TJ’s normative goals.

The physical environment matters: room effects on online purchase decisions.

People as individual consumers are regularly targeted in sustainability campaigns or communications with the hope of enhancing sustainable behavior at an individual level, with subsequent sustainability transformation at a larger societal scale. However, psychological motivation is complex and campaigns need to be based on an understanding for what individual, and contextual, factors support or hinder sustainable behavioral choices. In a discrete choice experiment, participants made hypothetical online purchases in each of three rooms designed to evoke associations to hedonic, gain, and normative goal frames. Participants were shown a campaign message intended to prime sustainable textile consumption prior to the purchase. For each product (t-shirt or bananas) hedonic (comfort/look), gain (price), and normative (organic/ fairtrade) attributes were varied in an online choice experiment. Preferences for the normative attribute of t-shirts increased in the normative room compared to the room with gain associations. No effect of the rooms with hedonic or gain priming was observed on the choice. The study supports the hypothesis that the physical room can enhance goal frame activation and behavioral choice but concludes that such priming effect is sensitive to specificity of the prime.

Applying recent advances in climate adaptation research to urban heat risk management

AbstractThere is unequivocal evidence that anthropogenic climate change is supercharging temperature and precipitation regimes globally. One of the clearest signals of this is seen in current and projected increases in extreme heat, understood as changes in temperature maximums, longer duration heatwaves, and higher night‐time temperatures. Extreme heat has substantial impacts on socio‐ecological systems through direct impacts on human health and labor productivity, crop yields and water security; and second‐order impacts on infrastructure functioning and hazards (e.g., increased fire and drought incidence). These impacts are differentiated and mediated by preexisting vulnerabilities based on who you are, what you do, where you live, and your capacities to prepare for, prevent, cope with and adapt to heat exposure. Nowhere are these increasing and differentiated impacts of heat more visible than in populous, rapidly urbanizing regions. Governments across the world are piloting and implementing heat management strategies, which are variously called heat‐health plans, heat action plans, heat resilience strategies, and so forth. We argue that such actions and policy agendas can benefit from theoretical advances in the climate change vulnerability and adaptation literature. We synthesize five theoretical advances to highlight the need for suites of actions sequenced in pathways that are more sensitive to trade‐offs, center equity as a normative goal of effective adaptation, acknowledge uncertainty and preexisting differential vulnerabilities, leverage lessons from participatory adpatation planning, and are forward‐looking and preparatory actions. We consolidate these advances and develop an approach to inform urban heat risk management.This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice Climate and Development > Urbanization, Development, and Climate Change The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Climate Science and Decision Making

Consumer Shift from Fast Fashion to Thrift Fashion: An Application of Goal Framing Theory

Thrift fashion represents the fastest-growing trend on Instagram. Although consumers are still skeptical about thrift, its increasing popularity among young Indian consumers remains under-researched. Thus, this article analyzes the responsible factors shaping consumers’ purchase intention toward Instagram thrift stores. Responses from 206 Instagram thrift store followers were received using a self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling in SPSS AMOS 21 tests the proposed research model. Six factors influencing consumers’ purchase intention were identified after reviewing relevant literature on the topic. Results indicate that the gain goal frame (economic value), hedonic goal frame (perceived concern and hedonic value), and electronic word-of-mouth significantly influence consumers’ purchase decisions. However, the impact of the normative goal frame (environmental concern) and fashion consciousness was insignificant. The findings of this study could help Instagram thrift store owners plan their communication strategies by identifying the motivating and demotivating factors of conscious consumers’ purchase intention. It is the first empirical article to understand the factors influencing the purchase intention of Indian consumers while purchasing from Instagram thrift fashion stores.

Data governance for the ecological transition: An infrastructure perspective

Data governance for the ecological transition: An infrastructure perspective

Change-making in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): piloting changeology approach using England as a case study

ABSTRACT Piecemeal changes to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process have to date not fully delivered EIA’s normative goals and met today’s environmental challenges. By regarding the to date approaches to change-making as a problem requiring a solution, this paper applies critical analysis to reflect upon current change-making based on England’s EIA system as a case study. The analysis identifies a lack of innovative ideas and sound evidence-based approaches to inform and support the change-making process. Consequently, we argue for an epistemology of change-making (changeology) so that the entire approach can be based on an empirically informed framework, to inform the journey (process) and destination (fit-for-purpose EIA) and make the EIA process fit-for-purpose and aligned to future expectations. Changeology should be viewed as more than informing one-time change-making but as a framework of well-studied practice for changing (or improving) EIA in the long term.

Beyond materialist green transitions: sketching a vitalist approach for evaluating R&I policy towards deep green transformation

ABSTRACT Situated within the growing literature on green alternatives to research and innovation-led green transition approaches, this paper sketches the contours of an emerging transition policy evaluation matrix aiming at going beyond contemporary (new) materialist concerns. To do so, I introduce a vitalist focus on life and establishing all connectedness as a long-term normative goal of just and deep global development policy. For this purpose, I draw from key insights from the recent interim evaluation of the European Framework program ‘Horizon Europe’, as well as non-Western and indigenous and feminist approaches to environmental justice to argue for overcoming an exclusive materialist and individualist preoccupation with green transition as it has been characteristic hitherto. Building on the requirement of a theory of change for encompassing well-being that includes a shifted yet assessable notion of being, I describe the non-linear sequence of green transition phases transcending materialist approaches to shifted energy supply and large-scale decarbonization to include an imaginary of a connected biocentric humanity with a just vitalist concern for life and well-being.

A Cognitive Poetics of Wonder: The Synthesis of Aristotelian Rhetoric, Grammar, and Psychology in Fernando de Herrera’s Anotaciones

Abstract This article argues that Fernando de Herrera, Renaissance Spain’s foremost poetic theorist, blended classical poetics and rhetoric with facultative psychology to craft a revolutionary framework of poetic thought in his most important work, the Anotaciones (1580). Drawing on James J. Murphy’s concept of metarhetoric, the analysis foregrounds how in the Anotaciones Herrera intertwined semantics, cognitive processes involving perception, imagination, and memory, and key rhetorical and stylistic doctrines to theorize the pursuit of wonder as poetry’s normative goal. This complex framework was made possible thanks to the often-neglected influence of Aristotelian philosophy on Herrera. Thus building on Aristotle, Herrera originally contributed to the construction of the epistemological paradigm of the Spanish Renaissance by developing one of the period’s most versatile explanations of how poetry and language engage the mind.

Clarifying and Enhancing the Role of Equality in Youth Work Ethics: The Case for an Equality Studies Approach

ABSTRACT Implicitly or explicitly, youth work practitioners, scholars and advocates typically invoke a set of egalitarian values to explain, justify and promote the ethical basis of their work. Despite such commitments, there exists conceptual ambiguity surrounding equality across much of the youth work literature which has significant consequences for how youth work is framed and defended. This article introduces the interdisciplinary field of Equality Studies and argues that an Equality Studies approach provides a means to (i) clarify equality-related normative goals within the youth work field and (ii) enhance radically orientated youth work by strengthening the conception of equality at its core. It analyses three areas of conceptual ambiguity within the youth work literature with respect to the value of equality, in each case demonstrating how an Equality Studies approach can help remedy the problem. These areas are: (i) the assumption that equality means ‘sameness’; (ii) the limits of equality of opportunity and anti-discrimination; and (iii) the relationship between equality and other values. It then evaluates the concept of ‘equity’, arguing that it is a vague, inadequate and unnecessary vehicle for capturing egalitarian concerns. The article concludes with some comments on the feasibility of radically egalitarian youth work.

From negative to positive internationalised protection: Attenuated solidarity and the practice of refugee protection

Abstract This article explores the growth of international civilian-protection concepts since the 1990s and the question of what protection means in a qualitative sense. It makes a significant intervention in advancing a typology of positive and negative protection, allowing more systematic analysis of whether protective practices fulfil the normative goals of internationalised protection and creating openings for expanded imagination of possible protective practices. It is argued that practices of refugee protection during this period have been shaped by logics of externalisation that seek to maintain distance between protector and protected and attenuate cosmopolitan solidarity with vulnerable non-citizens, both of which have detrimental impacts on the depth of protective practices and the experience of protection. These practices occur at the intersection of conflicting interpretative backdrops – between the cosmopolitan-minded commitments to the protection of vulnerable non-citizens and backdrops that frame migration as a problem. Using the case of the United Kingdom (UK) asylum system, the article argues that this is generative of negative protection – practices providing immediate physical protection, but simultaneously constructing conditions of acute vulnerability. Conversely, positive protection might be found in practices that embody fuller solidarity with protected people and enable them to flourish as a socially embedded individuals.

‘Taking Responsibility for the White Collective’: Implicated Subjects and Transformative Justice in the United States

ABSTRACT∞ Transitional justice largely ignores that majority of actors who, though not directly responsible for violence, are structurally implicated in systems of injustice that (re)produce violence. Their absence is incompatible with the normative goals of the ‘transformative justice’ agenda, which include targeting the causes of (structural) violence, a project decidedly shaped by the presence of implicated subjects, especially in cases of historical injustice. This article engages a select group of implicated subjects – anti-racist white activists in the United States – to examine what their endeavours and struggles to reckon with their implication in the ongoing histories of racism and white supremacy can tell us about the boundaries of a transformative justice model. Drawing upon nine months of participant observation and 30 in-depth interviews within predominantly white activist spaces in the Greater Boston area, I contend that viewing transitional justice from the lens of implicated subjects serves to trouble the field’s transformative aspirations.

Discursive strategies for citizen participation in the EU: a normative assessment of the Conference on the Future of Europe

ABSTRACT This article outlines an analytical framework to discuss the achievements of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE). We focus on the normative goals incorporated to the organizational strategy of the European institutions, which we use as standard for the assessment of the Conference outcomes. Firstly, we identify the discursive strategies that have been incorporated into the EU’s institutional development: ‘neopluralist’, ‘strong public sphere’ and ‘participatory’. Secondly, we analyse how these strategies combine in the official documents to specify the normative goals of the Conference, as well as the mechanisms and procedures implemented to achieve them. We consider that these strategies assume a ‘deliberative system approach’ that give us criteria for the assessment of the Conference. Thirdly, we use these normative criteria to evaluate how the institutions have justified the final outcomes and the corresponding proposals. We conclude that the Conference has been dominated by a neopluralistic ‘deliberative governance’ approach that has led commentators and EU institutions to assess it adopting a narrow understanding of participation as if limited to citizens’ panels. On the contrary, our analytical framework stresses the relevance of improving democracies through different interconnected mechanisms involving and representing citizens in a complex way.

Raising the Buddha’s Hand

Deity yoga is a practice found in Tibetan Buddhism involving visualizations that have the normative goal of “becoming one” with a supernatural being. During the practice, practitioners report experiencing that their own body transforms into the body of the deity. This paper offers a potential cognitive explanation of how such an experience is possible. Applying findings from cognitive science on the phenomenon of illusory ownership, we argue that the practice of deity yoga has the necessary means to cause an experience analogous to the famous “rubber hand illusion” in which one misattributes their ownership to a fake hand. In this paper, we 1) introduce deity yoga practice and its key aspects; 2) discuss illusory ownership and its explanation embedded in a predictive processing framework; 3) argue that visualization in deity yoga may induce the experience of illusory ownership; and 4) conclude with a short discussion of the hypothesis’ limitations and of ways to test our hypothesis. Overall, the paper suggests how the practice of visualization in deity yoga may lead to an experience of a transfer of identity onto an imagined supernatural agent.

Examining the Role of Intergenerational Relations in Food Systems: Evidence from Western India

Food systems and their normative goal of achieving food security remain a robust global agenda. However, with the shifts toward a sustainable food system, there is an increasing interest in consolidating evidence on multiple dimensions of the food system. This article is an empirically grounded argument for using intergenerational relations to expand understanding of food systems by looking beyond the usual security outcomes and emphasising social welfare outcomes. Drawing on ethnographic research in an indigenous village in western India, I examine a rural, local food system and the transformations therein because of various socio-economic drivers, including changing livelihood opportunities. Evidence shows growing generational solidarity, with some positive effects for environmental sustainability and for revaluing indigenous culture, including traditional food systems, and generating new local livelihoods. Simultaneously, though, tensions are being created around intergenerational autonomy and cultural expressions. Moreover, the food transition has resulted in a decline in the nutritional content of local diets, which has health implications. This article raises questions whether trends towards sustainability and resilience are necessarily mutually reinforcing for natural resource-dependent indigenous communities and our natural environment.

The European Union's forced labour regulation: Putting the ‘brussels effect’ to work for international labour standards

In September 2022, the Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation on prohibiting products made with forced labour on the Union market. This arises in a context of rising concern over many years about breaches of workers’ fundamental rights and core standards of the International Labour Organization in supply chains of products that are marketed in Europe, particularly where multinational corporations have offshored production to states without the high labour standards enforced in the EU. There has also long been widespread concern, particularly from trade unions, that such offshoring enables manufacturers to undercut labour protections of European workers. Furthermore, the offshoring of manufacturing has enabled certain third countries to develop their industrial and technological capacities in ways that create geostrategic risks for the EU and its Member States, as these third countries become ‘systemic rivals’ of the Union. First, this article argues that the proposed Regulation fits with Anu Bradford's theory of the ‘Brussels Effect’ exposited in her 2019 book of that name, and that the Union should take advantage of Bradford's insights in developing the Regulation and future legal instruments. Bradford established the Brussels Effect as an empirical reality; this article makes a normative case that, in this instance, the EU institutions should actively embrace it as a means to advance its goals. The proposed Regulation is an example of the Union leveraging market power to accomplish normative goals, by exporting its values to third countries. This offers room for the EU to be a force for good in the world, answering some of the qualms raised in Bradford's work about the potential ‘imperialism’ of the Brussels Effect. The present article argues the Union should go further, try to ‘externalise’ more of the social acquis in the field of labour law, leveraging its international market power to both improve labour standards around the globe. This article challenges Bradford's original contention that the Brussels Effect does not apply to labour standards, arguing instead that it is possible, and normatively desirable, for the Union to follow this Regulation with a broader suite of measures aimed at globalising European labour standards, with benefits for both third-country nationals and citizens of the Union. Second, the article links the proposed Regulation to concern about the geostrategic vulnerability of Member States and the Union as a whole, where essential products are manufactured in third countries. This became apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic, with many critical supplies predominantly manufactured outside the Union. The ‘strategic autonomy’ agenda of the EU implies re-shoring of important industry, which is more easily accomplished where EU regulation lessens the ability of third countries to undercut the EU with low labour standards. This will have long-term economic benefits for the Union and its citizens, as well as depressing the potential for systemic rivals to the Union to develop their industrial and technological capacities at the expense of the Union and its Member States, and deprive governments that disregard fundamental rights of workers of revenues from investment, manufacturing and exports to the Union.

RADio* – An Introduction to Measuring Normative Diversity in News Recommendations

In traditional recommender system literature, diversity is often seen as the opposite of similarity, and typically defined as the distance between identified topics, categories or word models. However, this is not expressive of the social science’s interpretation of diversity, which accounts for a news organization’s norms and values and which we here refer to as normative diversity. We introduce RADio, a versatile metrics framework to evaluate recommendations according to these normative goals. RADio introduces a rank-aware Jensen Shannon (JS) divergence. This combination accounts for (i) a user’s decreasing propensity to observe items further down a list and (ii) full distributional shifts as opposed to point estimates. We evaluate RADio’s ability to reflect five normative concepts in news recommendations on the Microsoft News Dataset and six (neural) recommendation algorithms, with the help of our metadata enrichment pipeline. We find that RADio provides insightful estimates that can potentially be used to inform news recommender system design.