Addressing Sustainability within Public Procurement of Food: A Systematic Literature Review

Public procurement has been recognized as a tool to promote more sustainable production and consumption practices. As such, an increasing body of literature has become available in recent years focusing on the sustainable public procurement of food. This article reviews the literature on the sustainable public procurement of food with the aim to analyze how sustainability is framed. This is done by analyzing what aspects of sustainability are emphasized and what practices are identified as sustainable. A systematic literature review was conducted between the years 2000 and 2020, identifying 103 articles. Results from the literature review indicate that the focus has primarily been on studies to evaluate and explore policy and good practices for procuring sustainable foods. A dominant focus on specific foods types and origins, e.g., those locally sourced and organic foods, is highlighted by a large share of the literature to address all three sustainability pillars. We observed that most articles focus on all three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic), addressing different aspects and types of foods, although the focus varied depending upon geographic location. Despite many studies identifying opportunities and potential, few articles assess the sustainability or outcomes of procurement processes through quantitative or qualitative methods or how actors in the procurement process can improve procurement toward more sustainable foods. This indicates a need for further case studies and guidelines to measure the development, progress, and performance of public food procurement.

It’s Practice. But is it Strategy? Reinvigorating strategy-as-practice by rethinking consequentiality

In this essay we revisit the radical agenda proposed by strategy-as-practice scholars to study strategy as it emerges within people’s practices. We show that, while much progress has been made, there is still a dominant focus on articulated strategies, which has implications for what is seen as strategic. We anchor our argument in the notion of consequentiality – a guiding yet, ironically, constraining principle of the strategy-as-practice agenda. Our paper proposes a deeper understanding of the notion of strategy as ‘consequential’ in terms of both what is important to a wider range of actors and also following the consequences of these actors’ practices through the patterns of action that they construct. In doing so, we offer a conceptual and an empirical approach to reinvigorating the strategy-as-practice agenda by inviting scholars to take a more active role in field sites, in deciding and explaining what practices are strategic.

Frederic Leighton's Flaming June, Thermodynamics, and the Heat Death of the Sun

At the close of the nineteenth century, amid pervasive fears of decadence and widespread pessimism, Frederic Leighton (1830–96) completed Flaming June (1895). Taking as its starting point Victorian responses to the work that seem incomprehensible to viewers today, this paper examines the possible meaning behind Flaming June's more impenetrable iconography. The following discussion highlights the significance of thermodynamics in the work's cultural context. It examines the impact of an implication of the second law of thermodynamics, known as the Sun's heat death – a fated apocalyptic event – and suggests that this resonated with late Victorian audiences plagued by concerns of degeneration and decadence. Considered within this context, this paper reveals further layers of meaning embedded within the imagery of Flaming June available to a Victorian audience, but which have since been eclipsed by a dominant focus on other aspects of the painting's cultural milieu.

Hyper-ideal Sociality

Within the literature on ‘rushing rituals’ at institutions of higher education, there is a dominant focus on the creation of cohesion or communitas (Turner 1969) between students. This focus causes these rituals to be treated analytically as disjointed from the broader context of the institutional setting. Rushing is often treated as 1) something that figures purely on the level of students and 2) something extraordinary that is opposed to or the opposite of the ordinary life at institutions. Building on extensive fieldwork among students at the Danish Technical University, this article challenges the treatment of rushing as disjointed from the institutional setting. Through empirical examples, the article shows that students’ conduct in rushing is strongly informed by the professional ideals at educational institutions and it is argued that rushing activities can be understood as extreme enactments of these institutional ideals. Rushing activities are conceptualized as rituals of hyper-ideal sociality, that is, social scenarios where institutional ideals become grotesquely clear enactments that legitimize and teach students the social order of institutional life. Through a close analysis of rushing activities at the Danish Technical University the article exemplifies how activities such as partying, fancy dressing, games and competitions come to reflect the professional ideal of the institution and serve as ways to teach and rehearse specific preferable behaviour.

Glial cells: More than just a silent disciple of neural system

The dominant focus of neuroscience has long been neurons and synapses; thus, under the neuronal doctrine, the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders has come to be recognized, ignoring other types of CNS cells. Many cells, including neurons and glial cells, make up our brain: astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, NG2 cells, microglia and ependyma. Neurons were known to be the brain's basic information processing unit, so much of the neurological research was based solely on neurons. Recent research, however, show that glial cells are far more than just the "glue" binding the CNS neurons together. Glial cells provide neurons with support functions and they are much more numerous than neurons. A novel theory has shown that glial and neurons can talk and understand the same chemical language, so glial cell dysfunction results in abnormal neuro - glial interactions, which in turn impairs neuronal cell functionality. It can shed new light on the explanation of several mysterious aspects by digging up the glial functions and further comprehension of these vital cells, and the interaction between neurons and glial.

Social Entrepreneurship in Pakistan: Challenges and Prospects

Social Entrepreneurship (SE) benefits the society by helping to achieve social and economic goals. SE is receiving scholarly attention around the globe but its development is still moderate in Pakistan. Despite the growing trend, the dominant focus of scholars remains the ideological debate about the meaning and definition of SE. Such an approach inhibits the exploration of its other facets. Casting the gap in literature, this paper aims to find out the challenges and prospects that social entrepreneurs face in their journey, specifically in Pakistan. Keeping in view the emerging importance of this sector, this study discusses the findings of 14 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with leading social entrepreneurs, practitioners and academicians related to the field to understand the phenomenon at hand. Drawing upon the findings of the study, useful insights have been put forth as its theoretical contribution. Moreover, local and national government can benefit from the findings to enhance consciousness regarding the fourth sector of the economy, eventually augmenting the available social capital.

Project Earthrise: Inspiring Creativity, Kindness and Imagination in Planetary Health

The concept of planetary health blurs the artificial lines between health at scales of person, place and planet. At the same time, it emphasizes the integration of biological, psychological, social and cultural aspects of health in the modern environment. Our grandest challenges in the Anthropocene ultimately stem from human attitudes to each other and to our environment. However, solutions rarely confront the underlying value systems that created these interconnected problems, or the attitudes that perpetuate them. Too often, the dominant focus is on the “worst of human nature”, and devalues or neglects the importance of empathy, kindness, hope, love, creativity and mutual respect—the deeper values that unite, empower and refocus priorities of individuals and groups. Here, we call to normalize more creative, mutualistic approaches—including the perspectives of traditional and indigenous cultures—to positively influence normative value systems. We revisit the power of inspiration with the profound example of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photo which galvanized a fledgling planetary health movement over 50 years ago. Through the inaugural Earth Day that followed, we are reminded that its early organizers were not constrained in how they defined the “environment”. They and their primary speakers were as concerned about value systems as they were about pollution—that we cannot hope to solve our problems without addressing the attitudes that created them in the first place. We explore the ways in which the awe of Earthrise—and the contemporary science of creativity and studies of utopian thinking—might reinvigorate imagination, kindness and mutualism. We revisit the fundamental challenge offered by Pulitzer-Prize-winning microbiologist Rene Dubos and others in the afterglow of the Earthrise photo, and the inaugural Earth Day. This is a question of imagination: What kind of world we want to live in?

Pathways to Leadership within and beyond Cambodian Civil Society: Elite Status and Boundary-Crossing

Elitisation in Cambodian civil society and how such processes relate to holding elite status in the state, electoral politics, and economic fields, is poorly understood. This article seeks to identify different pathways to becoming an elite within and beyond Cambodian civil society. We focus on four case studies, representing different forms of organisations within the sectors of agriculture and youth. Three main questions are explored. Firstly, we identify different forms of capital needed to reach elite status in civil society. Secondly, we explore how elite status within civil society is related to elite status within other fields, by identifying three pathways of boundary-crossing (Lewis, 2008a) from civil society into the state, electoral politics, and economic fields. Thirdly, we map the perceived possibilities and limitations of each field. In exploring these questions, this article argues for a reappraisal of Cambodian civil society, shifting attention to the networks and platforms that fall outside of the dominant focus on professional NGOs. By empirically tracing how elites move between fields, it aspires to provide a better understanding of the contours of, and relations between, civil society and other fields (including government, electoral politics, and business), including in terms of what particular forms of power pertain to each.

Editorial

This editorial introduces a special edition of Conjunctions that explores how cultural participation policies, projects, and practices could be improved through recognising the pervasiveness of past failures. It introduces current policy debates on cultural participation and posits that the dominant focus on ‘cultural deficits’ and ‘non-participants’ rather than on how activities are currently funded has resulted in a failure to increase the number and diversity of people participating in state subsidised cultural activities. It further suggests that a culture of evaluating success, rather than critically reflecting on failure, results in cultural participation policies and projects that replicate past failures and maintain an inequitable status quo. This special edition attempts to challenge existing narratives of unqualified success by offering alternative narratives that consider failure from different perspectives and at different points in the design and implementation of cultural participation policies and projects. In doing so it highlights the extent to which success and failure coexist and the richness of insight that comes from considering both. This matters because it is only such open and honest critical reflection that has the potential to facilitate the social learning needed for those who can exert the most power in the cultural sector to acknowledge the extent of the structural change required for cultural participation to be supported more equitably.

Occupational Therapy Research in Schools: A Mapping Review

Background. Throughout the world, schools have become an important place for professional integration for occupational therapists. Objective. To map the production of knowledge on research related to the keywords “occupational therapy” and “school.” Method. A mapping review was performed, searching the terms “occupational therapy” and “school” in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The data were used to construct a descriptive map of the production of knowledge about occupational therapy and school. The following data were categorized and extracted: years of publication, journals of publication, authors’ and coauthors’ countries, descriptors, informant population, beneficiary population, place of research, and occupational therapy propositions. Results. It included 127 research articles covering from 1988 to 2017. This has been a scientific field under construction for at least 30 years, largely centralized in the United States of America, mostly dedicated to children, and focused on disabilities, with an emphasis on rehabilitation through descriptions and analyses of interventions for individuals or, when it was for groups, with the final goal of benefitting individuals with disabilities. Implications. Examining the existing scientific production invites us to reflect on whether the dominant focus in this field has responded to the contemporary problems of schools.