scholarly journals Understanding the advantages of earth construction in urban housing in the United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Sharif Zami
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Urban Housing ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Earth Construction ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Research Philosophy ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract Earth building material is beneficial in urban housing in the United Kingdom, particularly with regard to the promotion of environmental sustainability. Due to higher demand to achieve sustainable development around the world, researchers and innovators are increasingly turning their attention to efficient ways to address climate change and excessive CO2 emissions. Contemporary earth construction certainly contributes to reducing current global CO2 emissions and achieving environmental sustainability. Existing literature documents numerous benefits to constructing in earth, yet a critical review of the literature shows that, in many cases, these benefits are empirically unsubstantiated. Moreover, some benefits found in literature seemingly conflict and are often context and/or project specific. This paper aims to address some of these incongruities through an in-depth analysis of the advantages of earth construction in the development of UK urban housing. To achieve this aim, an interpretivist research philosophy was employed, including an up-to-date state of art literature review on the topic, and validation through the Delphi technique and in-depth interviews of construction professionals in the field of earth construction. The results show that earth building is very safe for the environment, it saves energy, promote self-help construction and significantly contribute achieving all aspects of environmental sustainability in the United Kingdom.

scholarly journals A Conceptual Framework Outlining Factors Affecting the Acceptance of Earth as a Sustainable Building Material in the United Kingdom

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 241
Author(s):  
Mohammad Sharif Zami
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Building Material ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Earth Construction ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Uk

Despite the fact that contemporary earth construction may open up new avenues to cutting down CO2 emissions, a review of literature reveals that there is sparse research to date identifying reasons behind why there may be resistance to earth construction as a sustainable construction material in the United Kingdom. The aim of this paper is to formulate a conceptual framework that facilitates a clearer understanding of factors affecting the acceptance of earth as a sustainable material in the UK. To achieve this aim, this study adopted a research methodological framework comprising of an extensive review of literature, the Delphi technique, and in-depth interviews. The conceptual framework provides insight into factors related to the UK context specifically including a lack of technological innovation, resources, well-established supply chain networks, training facilities in universities and building codes. These issues may be addressed through the promotion of earthen architecture as a method of cutting CO2 emissions and introducing earth construction modules in relevant degree programs. Keywords: conceptual framework, factors, building material, earth, environmental sustainability

scholarly journals Big data for climate action or climate action for big data?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395172098203
Author(s):  
Maria I Espinoza ◽  
Melissa Aronczyk
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Intergovernmental Organizations ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Data Practices ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
User Data ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Depth Interviews

Under the banner of “data for good,” companies in the technology, finance, and retail sectors supply their proprietary datasets to development agencies, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations to help solve an array of social problems. We focus on the activities and implications of the Data for Climate Action campaign, a set of public–private collaborations that wield user data to design innovative responses to the global climate crisis. Drawing on in-depth interviews, first-hand observations at “data for good” events, intergovernmental and international organizational reports, and media publicity, we evaluate the logic driving Data for Climate Action initiatives, examining the implications of applying commercial datasets and expertise to environmental problems. Despite the increasing adoption of Data for Climate Action paradigms in government and public sector efforts to address climate change, we argue Data for Climate Action is better seen as a strategy to legitimate extractive, profit-oriented data practices by companies than a means to achieve global goals for environmental sustainability.

scholarly journals Environmental Performance Enters Construction Materials

MRS Bulletin ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 454-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bonfield
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Construction Materials ◽  
Energy Performance ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Legal Term ◽  
Chain Of Custody ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Impact Cost

The environmental sustainability of materials used in construction applications is driving a requirement for the quanti-fcation of performance attributes of such materials. For example, the European Union (EU) Energy Performance in Buildings Directive will give commercial buildings an energy rating when rented or sold. The Code for Sustainable Homes launched by the U.K. Government's Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) in January 2007 sets out the requirement for all new homes to be carbonneutral by 2016. In addition, homes in the United Kingdom will need to signifcantly reduce water consumption from today's average 160 liters (1) per person per day to less than 801 per person per day. Similarly stringent targets are required for waste, materials, and other factors. Such environmental and energy standards are complementing characteristics such as strength, stiffness, durability, impact, cost, and expected life with factors such as “environmental profle,” “ecopoints” (a single unit measurement of environmental impact arising from a product throughout its lifecycle that is used in the United Kingdom), “carbon footprint” (amount of CO2 produced for the lifecycle of the item), “recycled content,” and “chain of custody” (a legal term that refers to the ability to guarantee the identity and integrity of a specimen from collection through to reporting of test results).

scholarly journals THE TASTE OF HOME: THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH COMMENSALITY AMONGST FEMALE MALAY STUDENTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

2022 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 316-334
Author(s):  
Ireena Nasiha Ibnu
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
International Students ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Food And Identity ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Depth Interviews

Background and Purpose: Commensality is an act of eating together among migrant communities as a means of passing down the culture and ethnic identity. There is very limited discussion on commensality that pays attention to food sharing and eating that extends beyond the traditional forms of social relationships, identity, and space among the Malay community abroad. Thus, this article aims to explore the connections of social relationships through food, space and identity amongst female Malay students in the United Kingdom.   Methodology: This research is based on one-year ethnographic fieldwork amongst female Malaysian Muslim students in Manchester and Cardiff.  Thirty in-depth interviews were conducted with both undergraduate and postgraduate students from sciences and social sciences courses. Besides, in-depth interviews, participant observation, conversation and fieldnotes methods were deployed as supplementary for data collection.   Findings: This paper argues that cooking and eating together in a private space is a way for them to maintain social relationships and overcome stress in their studies, and fulfil their desire to create harmony and trust at home. Besides, places such as the kitchen, play an essential space in building the Malay identity and social relationships between female Malay students’ communities in the host country.   Contributions: This study has contributed to an understanding of the meaning of friendship, identity, space, and the discussion on the anthropology of food from international students’ perspectives and migration studies.   Keywords: Food and identity, commensality, Malay students, friendship, international students.   Cite as: Ibnu, I. N. (2022). The taste of home: The construction of social relationships through commensality amongst female Malay students in the United Kingdom. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 7(1), 316-334. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol7iss1pp316-334

scholarly journals Culture Shock and Job Expectations Adjustment among Nigerian Self-Initiated Expatriates in the United Kingdom

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Oluwadare, Sunday Victor
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
Cultural Adjustment ◽  
Job Dissatisfaction ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Job Expectations ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Depth Interviews

Purpose: A great number of people in the world today, live and work outside the shores of their nations of origin. It is imperative to investigate how they are faring in the face of job satisfaction/dissatisfaction and the divergent cultural environment of their sojourn in order to correctly harness their inter-cultural usefulness across the globe. This research investigated the factors that influenced the relocation of Nigerians to the United Kingdom and sustained them there, in spite of their job experiences and culture shock.Methodology/Approach: Methodology triangulation of both questionnaire survey on seventy-six participants and six in-depth interviews was employed. Reflexivity, thick description and grounded theory were the approaches engaged in the data analysis and Interpretation of results.Findings: The findings revealed that multiple reasons like education, economic, socio-political and personal, are ‘pushing’ Nigerians from home and ‘pulling’ them to the United Kingdom. It was also discovered that the Nigerians in the United Kingdom, are experiencing different forms of job dissatisfaction and culture shock but for some salient reasons, they adjust fairly well to the environment.Keywords: Self-initiated expatriates, job expectations, culture shock, and socio-cultural adjustment.

scholarly journals What is the literacy supportive role of the school librarian in the United Kingdom?

2020 ◽  
pp. 096100062096456
Author(s):  
Margaret K. Merga
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Hybrid Approach ◽  
School Libraries ◽  
Literacy Skill ◽  
School Librarian ◽  
School Librarians ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Supportive Role ◽  
Depth Analysis

Building students’ literacy skills is a key educative purpose of contemporary schooling. While libraries can play a key role in fostering literacy and related reading engagement in schools, more needs to be known about school librarians’ role in promoting these goals. To this end, this article seeks to identify the nature and scope of the literacy supportive role required of the school librarian in the United Kingdom. It also investigates how this aspect is situated within the broader competing role requirements of the profession. Using a hybrid approach to content analysis including both qualitative and quantitative methods, this article presents in-depth analysis of 40 recent job description documents recruiting school librarians in the United Kingdom to investigate these research aims. The vast majority of documents (92.5%) included literacy supportive roles or characteristics of a school librarian, and recurring salient components included supporting literature selection, having a broad and current knowledge of literature, promoting and modelling reading for pleasure, devising and supporting reading and literature events, promoting a whole-school reading culture, working closely with students to support reading and literacy skill development, and implementing and supporting reading programmes. This literacy supportive role was found to sit within a potentially highly complex and diverse work role which may compete with the literacy supportive role for time and resourcing in school libraries. This research suggests that the role of school librarians in the United Kingdom is both complex and evolving, and that school librarians in the United Kingdom have a valuable literacy supportive role to play in their school libraries.

scholarly journals Welfare conditionality and social marginality: The folly of the tutelary state?

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Del Roy Fletcher ◽  
John Flint
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Contemporary Evolution ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Support Mechanisms ◽  
Therapeutic State ◽  
Social Marginality ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Depth Interviews

In a contemporary evolution of the tutelary state, welfare reform in the United Kingdom has been characterised by moves towards greater conditionality and sanctioning. This is influenced by the attributing responsibility for poverty and unemployment to the behaviour of marginalised individuals. Mead (1992) has argued that the poor are dependants who ought to receive support on condition of certain restrictions imposed by a protective state that will incentivise engagement with support mechanisms. This article examines how the contemporary tutelary and therapeutic state has responded to new forms of social marginality. Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with welfare claimants with an offending background in England and Scotland, the article examines their encounters with the welfare system and argues that alienation, rather than engagement with support, increasingly characterises their experiences.

Disability and the Implications of the Wellbeing Agenda: Some Reflections from the United Kingdom

2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAIRE EDWARDS ◽  
ROB IMRIE
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Present Form ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Politics Of Happiness

AbstractA wellbeing agenda has emerged in government that seeks to promote a ‘politics of happiness’, in which citizens are, as the New Economics Foundation put it, ‘happy, healthy, capable and engaged’ (2004: 2). This article explores the wellbeing agenda in the UK, and its implications for disabled people. We argue that it is unlikely, in its present form, to contribute to the development of social theoretical, or more politically progressive, analysis and understanding of disablement in society. This is because of the emphasis on biologism, personality and character traits, and a policy prognosis that revolves around self-help and therapy, or individuated actions and (self) responsibilities.

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