Providing information to consumers in the form of food labels about modern systems of animal farming is believed to be crucial for increasing their awareness of animal suffering and for promoting technological change towards more welfare-friendly forms of husbandry (CIWF, 2007). In this paper we want to explore whether and how food labels carrying information about the lives of animals are used by consumers while shopping for meat and other animal foods. In order to achieve this, we draw upon a (...) series of focus group discussions that were held in Italy as part of a large EU funded project (Welfare Quality®). In the focus group discussions we addressed how, when or if, claims made about the lives of animals on food labels intervened in what the participants bought and ate. We contend that such labels bring the lives of animals to the forefront and act as new ‘subjectifiers’ (Latour, Citation2005: 212) that offer a new tool for becoming an ‘ethically competent consumer’, who cares about the lives of animals while shopping for food. However, this offer is not always easily accommodated within existing competences and previous commitments, as it requires a reassessment of existing, and often intimate, practices of shopping, cooking and eating. We argue that new labels carrying welfare claims, with their intention of increasing market transparency, produce two contrasting outcomes: they open new spaces of action, which offer an opportunity for investing in new competences and for engaging with animal welfare issues, in short, they allow an ‘ethically competent consumer’ to emerge, but they also produce another outcome, or a collateral casualty (Bauman, Citation2007), namely the ethically non-competent consumer. ‘In daily matters, be competent’ (From How to live ethically, the Tao Te Ching). (shrink)

: In recent years, research on the family role and entrepreneurship has increased extremely, consolidating itself as a valid and current subject of study. However, a part of the scientific literature seems to lack systematization and the boundaries appear unclear, maybe due to its multidisciplinary nature. This paper presents a systematic analysis of academic research, applying bibliometric indicators and cluster analysis, which define the state of research on the international scene. For this purpose, using three well accepted databases among the (...) research community: Scopus, Web of Science, Business Source, a total of 92 articles were selected and analyzed, published between 1989 and 2019 (until March). The results show that this is a relatively recent field of study, with a multidisciplinary character and in which the most influential authors do not coincide with the most productive scientific journals. A cluster analysis finds out five main areas of literature development: the cluster with the largest percentage of co-occurrences (25%) is the one that relates to the dimensions of entrepreneurship, self-employment and personality; in contrast, the area with a lower percentage of co-occurrences of keywords (12,1%) is refers to family business, succession, economic development and Arabia Saudita. Based on the outcome obtained and the shortcomings above, in the final part of the article, possible points of reflection for future research are exposed, which could be useful to further of this field of study. (shrink)

Providing information to consumers in the form of food labels about modern systems of animal farming is believed to be crucial for increasing their awareness of animal suffering and for promoting technological change towards more welfare-friendly forms of husbandry (CIWF, 2007). In this paper we want to explore whether and how food labels carrying information about the lives of animals are used by consumers while shopping for meat and other animal foods. In order to achieve this, we draw upon a (...) series of focus group discussions that were held in Italy as part of a large EU funded project (Welfare Quality®). In the focus group discussions we addressed how, when or if, claims made about the lives of animals on food labels intervened in what the participants bought and ate. We contend that such labels bring the lives of animals to the forefront and act as new ‘subjectifiers’ (Latour, Citation2005: 212) that offer a new tool for becoming an ‘ethically competent consumer’, who cares about the lives of animals while shopping for food. However, this offer is not always easily accommodated within existing competences and previous commitments, as it requires a reassessment of existing, and often intimate, practices of shopping, cooking and eating. We argue that new labels carrying welfare claims, with their intention of increasing market transparency, produce two contrasting outcomes: they open new spaces of action, which offer an opportunity for investing in new competences and for engaging with animal welfare issues, in short, they allow an ‘ethically competent consumer’ to emerge, but they also produce another outcome, or a collateral casualty (Bauman, Citation2007), namely the ethically non-competent consumer. ‘In daily matters, be competent’ (From How to live ethically, the Tao Te Ching). (shrink)

Social embeddedness, defined as the interaction of economic activities and social behavior, is used in this study as a conceptual tool to describe the growing phenomenon of food community networks (FCNs). The aim in this paper was to map the system of relations which the FCNs develop both inside and outside the network and, from the number of relations, it was inferred the influence of each FCN upon the formation of new socially embedded economic realities. A particular form of FCN (...) was taken under consideration: solidarity purchase groups (SPGs). Performed with the aid of social network analysis on a sample of SPGs in Sicily (a region in southern Italy), the study allowed us to identify a relational (internal) social embeddedness, in which groups of consumers and farmers are directly influenced by reciprocal interactions, giving rise to more or less numerous links of reciprocity and trust depending on the number of interactions. It was also identified a structural (external) social embeddedness, generated by the nature of relations that the SPGs undertake with the various social actors. From the results of our analysis it emerges that SPGs lie at the intersection of many social realities, influencing them and in turn being influenced by such realities. We highlight the major role played by consumer and environmental associations in affecting the phenomenon of social embeddedness. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship, individual activities with a social objective, is used in this study as a conceptual tool for empirically examining farmers’ participation in alternative food networks. This study verifies whether their participation is driven by the social entrepreneurship dimension to satisfy social and environmental needs. We develop a more inclusive view of how social entrepreneurship is present among farmers participating in AFNs by using a behavioural approach based on three main psychological constructs: attitude, objective, and behaviour. The empirical results show (...) that two types of farmers participate in AFNs. One type is closer to commercial entrepreneurs; the main attitudes and objectives affecting their behaviour are oriented toward profit maximization and farm progress. The second type is closer to social entrepreneurial activity; the main objectives affecting their behaviour are oriented towards satisfying social and environmental needs. The study’s results offer implications and suggest recommendations concerning social entrepreneurial practices and the motivations of the farmers who participate in AFNs. (shrink)

Cet article présente une synthèse du rôle des animaux dans la religion égyptienne en se focalisant tout particulièrement sur le cas des entités hybrides. Alors que l’association avec un ou plusieurs animaux est l’une des caractéristiques des divinités égyptiennes, l’interprétation soulève plusieurs difficultés méthodologiques. Dans la plupart des cas, ces associations sont relativement simples, et mettent en rapport, selon des modalités diverses, un animal avec une divinité ; de telles relations sont alors relativement faciles à identifier et peuvent faire l’objet (...) d’une typologie, en tout cas rudimentaire. Un cas de figure plus complexe est par contre posé par les représentations qui mobilisent non seulement un animal, mais aussi plusieurs motifs iconographiques à la fois. Le présent article commence par identifier les principales formes d’association d’animaux à des divinités, pour ensuite s’interroger plus longuement sur le cas des associations plus complexes, qui sont ici étudiées à partir de deux exemples paradigmatiques : les divinités protectrices et les habitants de la Douat ou monde souterrain. (shrink)

La autora articula su exposición en tres partes: Su propia experiencia de lo clásico, su experiencia de lo Cristiano y finaliza con la “aventura de una experiencia clásica en América Latina”. Cada aspecto configura los hilos con que se teje una reflexión clara y coherente, sobre el verdadero sentido de una experiencia intelectual.

The article focuses on Intranet technology as the result of overlapping negotiations among social actors inside organizations. Such negotiations are aimed at establishing and embedding specific relations and representations of work, communication, and learning into the technological artifact. Two case studies are presented to analyze practices and processes of implementation and use of the Intranet. The fieldwork, carried out in two companies in Italy and the United Kingdom, shows how specific contexts and organizational histories can affect such processes. Despite the (...) “optimistic” imagery associated with Intranet technology and the high expectations about its communicative and economic efficiency, the article points out many constraints in the process of implementation and use. Company history and culture, skills and work groups, and use of other technologies and media are relevant factors to account for the current use of the two systems and their low degree of integration into everyday working and communicative practices. (shrink)

In this paper we study the set of MV-algebras with given prime spectrum and we introduce the class of spectral MV-algebras. An MV-algebra is spectral if it is generated by the union of all its prime ideals (or proper ideals, or principal ideals, or maximal ideals). Among spectral MV-algebras, special attention is devoted to bipartite MV-algebras. An MV-algebra is bipartite if it admits an homomorphism onto the MV-algebra of two elements. We prove that both bipartite MV-algebras and spectral MV-algebras can (...) be finitely axiomatized in first order logic. We also prove that there is only, up to isomorphism, a set of MV-algebras with given prime spectrum. A further part of the paper is devoted to some relations between bipartite MV-algebras and their states. Recall that a state on an MV-algebra is a generalization of a probability measure on a Boolean algebra. Particular states are the states with Bayes’ property. We show that an MV-algebra admits a state with the Bayes’ property if and only if it is bipartite. (shrink)

We explore the notion of a measure in a mereological structure and we deal with the difficulties arising. We show that measure theory on connection spaces is closely related to measure theory on the class of ortholattices and we present an approach akin to Dempster’s and Shafer’s. Finally, the paper contains some suggestions for further research.

Communication as work: we have recently experienced a profound transformation in the processes of production. While the assembly line excluded any form of linguistic productivity, today, there is no production without communication. The new technologies are linguistic machines. This revolution has produced a new kind of worker who is not a specialist but is versatile and infinitely adaptable. If standardized mass production was dominant in the past, today we produce an array of different goods corresponding to specific consumer niches. This (...) is the post-Fordist model described by Christian Marazzi in Capital and Affects. Tracing the development of this new model of labor from Toyota plants in Japan to the most recent innovations, Marazzi's critique goes beyond political economy to encompass issues related to social life, political engagement, democratic institutions, interpersonal relations, and the role of language in liberal democracies.This translation at long last makes Marazzi's first book available to English readers. Capital and Affects stands not only as the foundation to Marazzi's subsequent work, but as foundational work in post-Fordist literature, with an analysis startlingly relevant to today's troubled economic times.This Semiotext edition includes the afterword Marazzi wrote for the 1999 Italian edition. (shrink)

In societies founded on communication, it is increasingly important to think about the formation of subjectivities and of their political function. In this context, a reflection concerning a course given on these themes at the University of Pittsburgh in the Spring of 2004 tries to identify strategies of positive engagement in the contemporary social and political milieu. The presence of writers such as Antonio Negri and Jacques Rancière in a class syllabus will be considered as a contribution to the autonomous (...) and egalitarian formation of the political subject during his/her passage through the American academic system. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The purpose of this essay is to investigate the meaning of the concept of identity within a framework of the phenomenological theory of ...

Starting from the social construction of technology approach and proposing a literature review of the concept of technological frame, the distinction or continuity between contexts inside and around technology is analyzed as constitutive of a thicker frame. A multilayered articulation of the technological frame is proposed. Organizational history, identity, interorganizational relations, along with discursive practices and communicational routines are seen as the components of the intranet technological frame. Discursive practices, therefore, mediate between macro components belonging to the organizational dimension and (...) micro components concerning the practice of specific organizational communities or workgroups and the inscribed patterns of use through which technology is temporarily stabilized into specific artifacts. The analysis of the frame as set of practices and contexts is carried out by referring to sociotechnical literature and findings of a completed Ph.D. dissertation about intranet technology. (shrink)

This volume analyzes and studies how vagueness occurs and matters as a specific problem in the context of theories that are primarily about something else.

In recent years, the study of women entrepreneurship has experienced great growth, gaining a broad consensus among academics and contributing above all to understanding all those factors that explain the difficulty of women in undertaking an entrepreneurial career. This document tries to contribute to the field of study, thanks to a systematic analysis through the publications present in the topic. For this purpose, 2,848 peer-reviewed articles were analyzed, published between 1950 and 2019, using the Scopus database (SCImago Research Group). Through (...) the use of a series of bibliometric indicators it was possible to define the current state of research on the international scene. The analysis revealed that it is a multidisciplinary field of study and that has started to expand further since 2006, culminating in 2019, which makes it become a current and valid object of study. The analysis of the clusters allowed to isolate 6 different lines of research in which emerged, on the one hand, the importance of entrepreneurial education, social entrepreneurship and the socio-cultural context of reference (e.g. culture, family and institutional support) as tools to overcome the gender gap, on the other, the importance that women entrepreneurship assumes in the economic growth of the country (especially in developing economies), promoting social inclusion and combating poverty and discrimination. The study presents an important contribution to reflect on current policies and to outline future lines of investigation. (shrink)

Conducting feminist research during the global COVID-19 pandemic has evoked a renewed interest in the concept of care within our research team. The purpose of this paper is to provide concrete examples of how feminist ethics of care changed the initial and ongoing design of a community-engaged research project in Ontario, Canada. Drawing from examples and lessons learned, we focus on various adjustments to our methodological decision-making that intentionally honoured and prioritized our responsibilities to community partners, research participants, broader communities (...) impacted by research, and the research team. By illustrating the methodological and ethical implications of these decisions, we argue that attending to these responsibilities prioritized both feminist research ethics and feminist ethics of care. As a result, we propose moving towards a conceptualization of a feminist research ethics of care, and discuss the value of this concept for researchers studying social justice. (shrink)

We face with the question of a suitable measure theory in Euclidean point-free geometry and we sketch out some possible solutions. The proposed measures, which are positive and invariant with respect to movements, are based on the notion of infinitesimal masses, i.e. masses whose associated supports form a sequence of finer and finer partitions.

During the struggle of Spring 2003, teachers had to face questions which are essential both for themselves and for the future of schools. Confronted simultaneously with the establishment of a transnational state and with a transfer of decision-making power toward territorial communities, they must revise their old ideological models and to survive, they must confront these models with realities on the ground, which some of them are already exploring. But it was above all on the occasion of the struggle over (...) the exams that the Republican structure, founded on the morality of work, revealed its obsolescence. The teaching world must henceforth responsibly consider its political role in the disaster of social selection. (shrink)

Let${\mathbb K}$be an algebraically bounded structure, and letTbe its theory. IfTis model complete, then the theory of${\mathbb K}$endowed with a derivation, denoted by$T^{\delta }$, has a model completion. Additionally, we prove that if the theoryTis stable/NIP then the model completion of$T^{\delta }$is also stable/NIP. Similar results hold for the theory with several derivations, either commuting or non-commuting.