Social Economies Research Articles

Securing commitment and control for the supply of plasma derivatives for public health systems. I: A short review of the global landscape.

The social market economies of the Western world considered the provision of plasma derivatives produced from publicly owned blood services as a legitimate state commitment and, until the last decades of the 20th century, many of the relevant jurisdictions maintained state-supported fractionation plants to convert publicly collected plasma into products for the public health system. This situation started to change in the 1990s, because of several converging factors, and currently, publicly owned/subsidized, not-for-profit fractionation activity has shrunk to a handful of players. However, the collection of plasma from publicly owned blood services has continued and recent developments have increased the interest of state authorities globally to increase the volume of plasma collected to increase the level of strategic independence in the supply of crucial plasma-derived medicines from commercial market pressures, particularly the global for-profit fractionation sector with its dominance of source plasma from paid donors in the United States. This paper reviews the development of the plasma industry and the evolution of the pressures on the supply of plasma, which has led to a situation of scarcity of key plasma-derived medicinal products (PDMPs).

Design of Optogenetic Microimplants for the Treatment of Neurodegenerative Disease

In the context of global aging, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease have become important issues in global public health and scientific research. This is due to their soaring incidence, serious impact on patients’ quality of life, and the huge burden they place on families and social economies. However, current treatments, such as drug therapy and deep brain stimulation, have obvious shortcomings. Moreover, there is a lack of precise neuromodulation tools to study the pathogenesis of these diseases In order to solve these problems, optogenetics has attracted attention in recent years, which uses light as a stimulus signal carrier and can realize the detection and control of neurodegenerative diseases at the level of neurons and neural circuits by implanting micro-implants such as μ leds. This review summarize the recent advances in microimplant technology in the fields of optogenetics and neuroscience, and summarize the development and application of optogenetic microimplants for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases in detail.

Beyond “Pressure”: Peer Influences on e-Cigarette Use in Young Australian Narratives of Vaping

Background In the early 2020s, Australian media and public health organizations described the rapid rise in youth e-cigarette uptake, portraying this as a “peer pressure” problem wherein vulnerable young people were being led or bullied into vaping by the “cool” kids. Yet, the peer pressure framing of vaping fails to account for young people's rituals of nicotine consumption and ways social drug economies are organized. Methods In 2023, we conducted qualitative interviews and ethnographic research with 24 young people ages 17 to 25, both vapers and nonvapers, in New South Wales, Australia. We investigated their embodied experiences of vaping, observations of peers’ vaping practices, and beliefs about vaping policy. We analyzed their accounts for themes and here report our findings, illustrated with participants’ quotes and an ethnographic portrait of a Sydney high school vape seller. Results The notion that young people are “pressured” into vaping lacked emic meaning for our participants. Their accounts reveal three ways that vaping is social beyond “pressure.” First, social vape market offers entrepreneurial teens money-earning opportunities, mediated by social networks and markers of peer esteem, prestige, and trust. Second, vapes are exchanged as both gifts and commodities in sharing economies, offering social opportunities and scripts for recreational interactions. Third, e-cigarettes as material objects provide esthetic and gustatory pleasures that are both individually enjoyed and socially performed in rituals of taste and display. Discussion These three perspectives on the sociality of vaping help nuance our understanding of how and why young people vape, and also suggest why public health outreach efforts may not be effective when they reduce youth vaping uptake to peer pressure. As youth vape use is on the rise in Australia, these perspectives matter for understanding this important social phenomenon and may help policy development move beyond simplifications of youth cultural motivations.

#Nature is trending: Social media, viral landscapes, and digital environmental activism in Oman

Influenced by social media and COVID-19, human relations with ‘nature’ are increasingly shaped by media infrastructures and logics, leading to a global surge of interest in nature tourism and outdoor activities. This article examines the mediatization of relations with nature—or, the more-than-human world—in the Arabian Gulf country of Oman, where nature tourism has developed in the past decade. Through a mixed-methods approach involving fieldwork and interviews between 2022–2024, relations with nature in Oman are shown to be informed by global social media logics, as with the trend of ‘viral landscapes’ in which a nature destination is popularized due to its high value in social media attention economies. However, local practices are also platformed, as Instagram users in Oman exploit three affordances to address the environmental problem of litter. Mediatization may thus entail a circulation of global discourses and practices as well as the emergence of syncretic sociocultural formations.

Introduction: Hyper-Visuality: Images in the Era of Social Platforms, Digital Archives and Computational Economies

Introduction: Hyper-Visuality: Images in the Era of Social Platforms, Digital Archives and Computational Economies

Hindrance to sustainable development: Global inequities, non-progressive education and inadequate science-policy dialogue.

Social habits and economies driven by profit are opposing efforts to reach a path of sustainable development. In addition, many communities worldwide have diverged away from nature through consumerism and technology. In the context of the escalating risks and consequences related to global challenges such as the climate crisis and ecosystem degradation, education for sustainable development and science-driven decision-making offer tremendous opportunities for improvement.

Context-based civic blockchain: Localising blockchain for local civic participation.

Experiments in alternative forms of urban digitalisation include blockchain-based applications as enablers of civic action in local communities, inspired by different visions than blockchain-based speculative cryptocurrencies. This article investigates how blockchain technology can be oriented towards locally embedded applications. It explores the case of a blockchain-based wallet app that aims to support social collaborative economies and civic participation in urban communities by tokenising social and economic assets. Building on studies on the embeddedness of urban digital platforms with a local character, this article studies how the app under consideration is shaped by, and adapted to, the needs and resources of local socio-economic contexts. Two pilot experimentations on the app are considered, concerning systems for rewarding civic participation and urban sharing economies. The empirical analysis concerns the methodology for introducing the app into local socio-economic contexts, the way in which local actors interpret its properties, and the resulting iterative co-design of its functionalities. The article defines and discusses the extent to which the civic blockchain is rendered context-based by this methodology, and highlights similarities and differences with other urban digital platforms. The empirical evidence drawn from this research contributes to the debate on how community members, researchers and digital experts together can realise alternative forms of urban digitalization.

Closer than You Thought. Constitutional Grounding of the Social Market Economy in Poland and Italy

The article aims to investigate the system of the social market economy in Poland and Italy. It compares constitutional provisions, distinguishing national commonalities and discrepancies. They are the basis for the identification of the precepts common to all social market economies in Europe. The analysis concludes that combining economic rights with social interests is essential to establishing the social market economy.

Business Management for Sustainability

The purpose of this paper is to address a fundamental flaw in prominent approaches to managing businesses for sustainability. Current management strategies fail to recognize the fundamental differences between economic, social, and moral or ethical values. Economic values are instrumental, individual, and impersonal. Social values are reciprocal, communal, and personal. Moral values are altruistic, spiritual, and universal. These are not arbitrary definitions but expressions of basic differences among the three types of value. These differences reveal the fundamental flaws in attempts to assign economic value or objectively quantify the social and ecological costs and benefits of economic enterprises. The transactional, social, and moral economies are defined in ways that avoid compromising the differences in values. In addition, a natural hierarchy exists among nature, society, and economy that requires a corresponding hierarchy of moral, social, and economic values in managing sustainable organizations. The strategies, motives, and metrics that have dominated sustainable business management for the past several decades, and the related research and educational programs that support them, fail to reflect differences among economic, social, and moral values that are critical to sustainability.

Safety risk assessment of sustainable construction based on projection pursuit model optimized by multi-intelligent algorithm: a case study of new chemical projects.

With the rapid development of urban and social economies, the safety accidents in the construction process of the new chemical plant have caused huge losses to the city. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the risks in the construction process of chemical projects and propose preventive measures. A novel risk assessment model based on multi-intelligence algorithm optimization projection pursuit was developed to assess the construction safety risk and determine the risk level. In this model, the best-worst method and the entropy weight method were used as subjective and objective evaluation methods, respectively. The theory based on the idea of the distance function was applied to the model to calculate the combined weight value. The results showed that the three evaluation objects with the highest risk value were the air compression station plant, regional control room, and hazardous and solid waste temporary repository. The risk values of these three buildings were 2.2557, 2.2160, and 2.1654, respectively, and the corresponding risk level was high. On-site safety managers should take immediate measures in these high-risk buildings to reduce the possibility of accidents. This study is a new attempt to consider the construction safety risk of the new chemical project.

Resource Mobilisation, Utilisation and Wellbeing of Social and Solidarity Groups In The Assin Fosu Municipality, Ghana.

Purpose: The study focused on farm-based cooperatives in the Assin Fosu municipality and examined resource mobilisation as well as the factors that determine resource utilisation and the wellbeing of social and solidarity organisations.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: 180 respondents from six registered farm-based cooperatives in the Assin Fosu Municipality were chosen for the study using a mixed research design and a multi-stage sample method that included purposive, proportional, and simple random sampling procedures. The Focus Group comprised cooperative chairpersons and was further expanded to include the Municipal Co-operative Officer, who was specifically chosen as a key informant. In addition to narratives drawn from qualitative data, descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to examine the data.
 Research Implications/Limitations: The limitation of this study is the measurement of farm size and income which were based on the mental construct of farmers because most of the cooperative members did not keep records. This tended to distort the reality related to farm size and income which were included in the construct of wellbeing and collective resource mobilisation.
 Findings: We discovered that, except for cooperatives based on cocoa, resource mobilisation was low across all the cooperatives. The study found that the mobilisation of resources and the collective purchase of agricultural equipment and supplies, which reduced production costs, were the driving forces behind resource utilisation. The main wellbeing indicators were longer membership durations and group resource mobilisation and utilisation.
 Practical Implications: The findings of the study will help contribute to the management of social and solidarity groups in Ghana and broaden the understanding of how this development approach affects livelihoods. It is also hoped that the findings will contribute to the mitigation of the cost of neoliberal policies by providing a path to wellbeing at the micro and informal levels through group resource mobilisation and utilisation.
 Social Implications: Social and Solidarity organisations serve as an alternative to economic organisations that are based on neoliberal principles. This is because the latter favours the dominant few in developing economies culminating in widespread poverty, inequalities, and a decline in wellbeing. To maximise wellbeing, cooperatives should intensify resource mobilisation, and utilisation whilst maintaining their membership.
 Originality/Value: The novelty of this paper lies in its contribution to the literature on social and solidarity economies. It provides information on the missing link on how farm-based cooperatives mobilise and utilise resources for the wellbeing of their members.

The Work of Art in the Age of Multiverse Meme Generativity

This article adapts Walter Benjamin’s theory of technological reproducibility to examine how generative AI transforms art. Through analysis of a range of works of art and online popular culture, the article theorizes the aesthetics of generative AI. From the characteristic glitches and recurrent formats, the aesthetics are conceived as muddled confusions of parts, attempts at reinserting what Benjamin terms aura, and as surrealist assemblages of characters, styles and worlds. In Benjamin’s conception, popular culture becomes our collective imaginary, which today feeds into a memetic visual conversation of imitation and variation. AI points toward an age of multiverses where characteristics, current events and cultural artifacts blend together to achieve success in social network attention economies. Following Benjamin, the article examines the politics of these transformative media technologies. More than a risk to the livelihood of artists and deep-faked disinformation, this article argues for the radical potential in freeing visual culture from the property rights of corporations.

Characteristics and formation mechanism of Land use conflicts in northern Anhui: A Case study of Funan county

The rapid development of global urbanization and industrialization not only promotes a significant improvement in the level of socio-economic development, but also exacerbates the complexity and vulnerability of regional land resource utilization, resulting in frequent land use conflicts and seriously constraining the sustainable development of regional socio-economic and ecological environment. Taking Funan County as an example, based on interpretation data of Landsat TM/ETM remote sensing image data from 1980 to 2020, this paper analyses the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of land use conflict in Funan County from 1980 to 2020 using the ArcGIS spatial analysis method, land use conflict measurement model, geographically weighted regression and geographical detector and then deeply analyses the main factors affecting land use conflict in Funan County and its driving mechanisms. In descending order, land use types undergoing the most change include cultivated land, urban and rural construction land, grassland, forestland and water area. The results of land use change are mainly the occupation of cultivated land by construction land, water area and forestland. Overall land use conflict in Funan County is serious with approximately 80 % of land use in the county in conflict, the severe land use conflict is mostly concentrated in urban and township built-up areas, and there is an increase trend year by year. Land use conflict is the result of multiple factors. Policy, economic development, and the social population and natural environment are the key driving factors behind land use conflict, which have a significant impact on the direction, location, scale and rate of land use transfer.Accurately identifying regional land use changes and conflicts and exploring the driving mechanism behind land use conflicts are of great significance for achieving the sustainable development of regional social economies and ecological environments.

Continuous improvement of a face protection mask using quality function deployment

-This article aims to examine the applicability of the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and the Kano model considering the expectations of the client, to a personal facial protection equipment against the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), a disease that has caused a global pandemic, posing threats to public safety and social economies. In the first phase of the study, user requirements are identified at the local level based on current designs through the Kano model. This data is then merged with a Voice of Engineer (VoE) chart listing technical attributes and characteristics corresponding to items in Voice of Customer (VoC). The quality characteristics are then obtained by calculating the weights according to the level of importance, which are then transformed into measurable technical attributes in the House of Quality (HOQ). Through the weighting process using the pareto diagram, the main technical characteristics are identified, in which attention must be paid and the resources to be considered to satisfy said requirements must be evaluated. Finally, as a result, a 3D design is defined to make the prototype considering the needs of the client, which allows deducing the good applicability of the Kano-QFD model to carry out the development process of any product.

The return of comparative economic systems: An extension of János Kornai's contribution

AbstractKornai profoundly contributed to place the system to the centre of economic analysis. His multidisciplinary system paradigm is fundamental for understanding and analysing the variety of economic solutions and its consequences. The strong scientific foundation of Kornai's approach provides a fruitful opportunity to further develop and apply it to the most fundamental economic issues, such as explaining the different performance and strength of different economies and societies. The inclusion of a multidisciplinary perspective has the significant advantage of keeping under control non-economic factors that influence economic activities and performance and allows to account for the real behaviour and evolution of economies and societies. It can also contribute to explain the resilience of economic and social systems and economies. The paper takes stock of the importance of Kornai's analysis and method and applies them to better understanding the nature and working of the European Union and its difficulties. Based on Kornai's approach, the paper considers how the European Union should evolve to make itself workable and resilient in front of a threatening international environment.

How do the people that feed Europe feed themselves? Exploring the (in)formal food practices of Almería’s migrant and seasonal food workers

The EU's Farm to Fork strategy (European Commission European Commission. 2020. Farm to Fork strategy. https://food.ec.europa.eu/horizontal-topics/farm-fork-strategy_en. Accessed 31 August 2023.) highlights the need for a resilient food system capable of providing affordable food to citizens in all circumstances. Behind the provision of affordable food for EU citizens there is the effort of many migrant and seasonal food workers (MSFWs). In Almería, Spain, the area with the biggest concentration of greenhouses in the world, MSFWs face vulnerability in the form of physical and institutional invisibility despite performing the essential task of providing affordable food for the EU’s food system. This paper aims to move on from structuralist concerns and place MSFWs’ lived experiences at the center, including the (in)formal nature of their food practices, to understand how the people that feed Europe feed themselves. A combination of social practice theories and diverse economies is used to explore MFSWs’ daily food routines. These theories are used as lenses that inform the data collection process, performed through semi-structured interviews, photography, and observations. The findings of the study reflect a dynamic portfolio of (in)formal practices that evolve based on the length of stay in the county. These practices demonstrate how the EU food system resilience relies on the diverse economies of migrant settlements. We conclude that informality is a reality in the EU food system, and that shedding light on previously hidden food practices and their structures can help us envision food security interventions that are inclusive for all actors involved.

Brooms and Ballots: #WitchTheVote, the Nostalgic Internet, and Intersectional Feminist Politics on Instagram

Over the past decade, there has been significant scholarly and mainstream attention to the use of digital media technologies to engage in feminist politics and activism. This article explores an example of small-scale, feminist digital activism: the #WitchTheVote hashtag on Instagram. Using a visual and discursive analysis of 75 Instagram posts and interviews with four self-identified witches active on Instagram during the summer of 2020, we argue that #WitchTheVote is an example of reflective nostalgic activism that challenges the mediated popular feminism most visible across social media attention economies. This case study demonstrates the potential for doing intersectional feminist politics online that contradicts both popular feminism and its attendant platform conventions, imagining a different kind of feminist politics that troubles visibility, attention, celebrity, large audiences, and consumption as part of contemporary digital feminism.

Quantitative Analysis of the Uncertainty of Drought Process Simulation Based on Atmospheric–Hydrological Coupling in Different Climate Zones

Droughts can lead to drought disasters, which have become one of the main natural disasters affecting the development of social economies and ecological environments around the world. Timely and effective drought process simulation and prediction based on atmospheric–hydrological coupling is crucial for drought prevention and resistance. The initial condition (IC) is one source causing uncertainty in drought process simulation and prediction, and the impacts are different with drought duration, basin size and region. Therefore, a quantitative method that measures the uncertainty caused by ICs on the drought process simulation in different climate zones is proposed in this study. In this study, the VIC (Variable Infiltration Capacity) model at a resolution of 0.05°, which is proven as an ideal model to reflect drought processes, was used as the hydrological model to obtain soil moisture. By analyzing the Soil Moisture Anomaly Percentage Index (SMAPI) error characteristics that were simulated based on different ICs, an uncertainty index for drought process simulation was constructed in different climate zones. It was found that with the development of a drought process, the uncertainty converges, and it decreases to within 10% after a drought occurs for 5 to 6 months, while it is less than 5% in the particular basin in a humid region. In climate transition zones, both the uncertainty and its decrease rate are greater than those in humid regions. Climate characteristics, as well as soil types and vegetation types, are fundamental factors that cause differences in drought process simulation and uncertainty changes. The precipitation and temperature distribution more obviously vary spatially and temporally, a greater uncertainty is caused by ICs. This quantitative method reveals the impact of ICs on drought process simulation in different climate regions and provides a basis for the further improvement of drought simulation and prediction based on atmospheric–hydrological coupling.

Neuromuscular Magnetic Field Measurement Based on Superconducting Bio-Sensors.

These years, disease-causing and disabling diseases have caused great concern. Neurological musculoskeletal disorders are diverse and affect people of a wide range of ages. And the lack of comprehensive diagnostic methods places a huge burden on healthcare systems and social economies. In this paper, the current status of clinical research on neuromuscular diseases is introduced, and the advantages of magnetic field measurement compared with clinical diagnostic methods are illustrated. A comprehensive description of the related technology of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), magnetic field detection noise suppression scheme, the development trend of the sensor detection system, and the application and model establishment of the neuromuscular magnetic field is also given in this paper. The current research and development trends worldwide are compared simultaneously, and finally the conclusions and outlook are put forward. Based on the description of the existing literature and the ideas of other researchers, the next development trends and my own research ideas are presented in this paper, that is, starting from the establishment of a neuromuscular model, combining medical and industrial work, designing a sensor system that meets clinical needs, and laying the foundation for the clinical application of a bio-magnetic system. This review promotes a combination between medicine and industry, and guides researchers on considering the challenges of sensor development in terms of clinical needs. In addition, in this paper, the development trends are described, including the establishment of the model, the clinical demand for sensors, and the challenges of system development so as to give certain guidance to researchers.

Debt and Desire: Differential Exploitation and Gendered Dimensions of Debt and Austerity

Austerity as management of public debt is at the core of neoliberal policies and proceeds as differential exploitation. To explore the gendered dimensions of debt, the paper inquires how debt is bond to desire and inscribed in bodies. After indulging in David Graeber’s, Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guttari’s work, the analysis focuses on accumulation through debt and dispossession. Drawing on Verónica Gago, Luci Cavallero and Silvia Federici, it reflects how current economies of debt exploit feminized work in times of authoritarian neoliberalism. The paper sheds light on solidaristic struggles against austerity that manifest a desire for social transformation and economies of care.