Spending Time: An investigation of the relationship between emotions, time and spending

<p>The significance of exchange within our daily lives encompasses not only the economic exchange of physical commodities but more abstract entities such as knowledge, skills and beliefs. This research investigation developed from a desire to understand my personal engagement with money and the design of money, through the exploration of shopping and spending habits. The activity of spending and everyday provisioning is one which has come to form a large component of our everyday lives and is partly informed by the non-economic aspects of exchange described above. This has led researchers, such as Daniel Miller (1998), to investigate the cultural phenomenon of consumerism. As our ability to consume has expanded to an almost unlimited wealth of products to choose from, a consumer has been able to form an imagined relationship with their purchases and may even regard it as a physical manifestation of various emotions. This level of constant spending and provisioning demands further examination, as the systems designed to enable us to consume are the same which have capitalised on our emotions. By making use of ethnographic methods of investigation (specifically interviews and qualitative survey tools), this research explores how an increased level of monetary literacy could be developed towards a consumers everyday spending. Through the design of a research tool, The Spending Map, a process of critical reflection is encouraged where it is possible to exhibit a dialogue that can capture, catalogue and critique the emotional engagement a consumer has towards their spending.</p>

Spending Time: An investigation of the relationship between emotions, time and spending

<p>The significance of exchange within our daily lives encompasses not only the economic exchange of physical commodities but more abstract entities such as knowledge, skills and beliefs. This research investigation developed from a desire to understand my personal engagement with money and the design of money, through the exploration of shopping and spending habits. The activity of spending and everyday provisioning is one which has come to form a large component of our everyday lives and is partly informed by the non-economic aspects of exchange described above. This has led researchers, such as Daniel Miller (1998), to investigate the cultural phenomenon of consumerism. As our ability to consume has expanded to an almost unlimited wealth of products to choose from, a consumer has been able to form an imagined relationship with their purchases and may even regard it as a physical manifestation of various emotions. This level of constant spending and provisioning demands further examination, as the systems designed to enable us to consume are the same which have capitalised on our emotions. By making use of ethnographic methods of investigation (specifically interviews and qualitative survey tools), this research explores how an increased level of monetary literacy could be developed towards a consumers everyday spending. Through the design of a research tool, The Spending Map, a process of critical reflection is encouraged where it is possible to exhibit a dialogue that can capture, catalogue and critique the emotional engagement a consumer has towards their spending.</p>

Information System for Corporate Performance Assessment and Reporting

There are discussed current trends of corporate performance assessment (measurement of economic/financial, environmental, social and governance key performance indicators) and corporate reporting in this paper. In corporate performance assessment we focus particularly on food and agricultural sector. The core of the paper is the proposal of the prototype of information system for small and medium enterprises, which would enable various enterprises to introduce sustainable reporting. We propose a relational data model with several abstract entities to represent various differences in various reporting frameworks. Our goal is to design a generic information system which may be used by small and medium enterprises to start with their corporate performance assessment and reporting. The overall structure of the information system is described in the paper, along with the core data model and possible extensions into XBRL based reporting and business intelligence.

Abstract Objects in the Causal Order

<p>Abstract entities have long been viewed as entities that lack causal powers; that is, they cannot be constitutive of causes or effects. This thesis aims to reject this claim and argue that abstract objects are indeed part of the causal order. I will call this thesis ‘AOCO’ for short. In the first chapter I argue that other philosophers have committed themselves to the claim that some abstract objects have been caused to come into existence. In the second chapter, I argue that the best solution to Benacerraf’s problem is to concede that abstract objects have a causal influence on what we believe. In the third chapter I examine and evaluate objections to AOCO.</p>

Abstract Objects in the Causal Order

<p>Abstract entities have long been viewed as entities that lack causal powers; that is, they cannot be constitutive of causes or effects. This thesis aims to reject this claim and argue that abstract objects are indeed part of the causal order. I will call this thesis ‘AOCO’ for short. In the first chapter I argue that other philosophers have committed themselves to the claim that some abstract objects have been caused to come into existence. In the second chapter, I argue that the best solution to Benacerraf’s problem is to concede that abstract objects have a causal influence on what we believe. In the third chapter I examine and evaluate objections to AOCO.</p>

The Architecture of the Cosmos

In the first part of the book, I discuss the discovery of gravitational waves and the birth of multimessenger astronomy. Borrowing the structure of Dante’s Paradise and Inferno, I illustrate the biggest mysteries of modern cosmology and argue that multimessenger astronomy, and in particular gravitational waves, may hold the key to unlock these mysteries, and may thus help a bridge between the realm of gravity, and that of quantum physics. Stars. Black holes. Galaxies. Even the most well-known celestial objects are so removed from our daily experience that we might almost mistake them for abstract entities. Yet they are no less real than the objects that surround you as you read these lines.

Instrument and Place Nouns in the Romance Languages

Even the most primitive hunter-gatherers occasionally had to give names to tools and places, and the need for instrument and place nouns has grown ever since in tandem with the unfolding of human culture. It is therefore no wonder that the majority of languages of the world, among them Latin and the Romance languages, have specific patterns of word formation to this effect. As is the case with other categories of word formation, those referred to with instrument noun and place noun do not constitute conceptually homogeneous sets, but sets of conceptually related subcategories. Instrument nouns comprise objects that can range from simple tools and gadgets to complex machines, but can also represent less prototypically instrumental objects like chemical substances or pieces of clothing and armor, as well as more abstract entities that are often referred to as means. Place names, in turn, cover subcategories as diverse as terrains, fields and groves, burrows, stalls and other buildings, countries, regions, and towns. Vessels represent a category located halfway between instrument and place nouns: an inkpot, for example, is an artifact designed to contain ink and as such close to an instrument, but can also be viewed as a place where ink is stored. Both instrument and place nouns can take as bases nouns and verbs, more rarely adjectives. This description of the two categories is essentially valid for both Latin and Romance. The category of place nouns has remained relatively stable at the conceptual level throughout the period considered here, although many changes can be observed for individual suffixes. Instrument nouns, by contrast, have suffered a major overhaul in the wake of the scientific and industrial revolutions.

A pandemic year and the offense to the younger generations. Suggestions and hypotheses.

To summarize this article with a single expression, we could enclose it in a lack, which has been widely argued on all its pages: the programming one. Moreover, there was a lack of planning and ability to predict for many institutions and most of the citizens. Or, still, there was often a failure to prevent, in order to remedy instead, and not always adequately. With a particular reference to Italy on these pages. The above-mentioned four limits or wounds are particularly serious for our country in this pandemic year. Furthermore, this pandemic caught everyone unprepared and inexperienced. And, then, too many people - I am referring to the Government here - sold themselves to a lot of virologists and various mass media exponents, etc., who have frequently ended up increasing the unease of a nation, which is exhausted at a sanitary, economical and psychological level, with an excess of self-representation and easy self-confidence, too. In particular, this text makes school and university and, therefore, those who attend them, from children to young people, its focal point. They are not considered as abstract entities, but embodied people still belonging to an Italy at high speed: from the rapidly increasing poor people in the Southern Italy, which has not progressed yet and is in a great difficulty, to a middle class who, far from being as the fundamental nerve centre of the Italian productive fabric in the last century, is being overcome by pockets of poverty, misery and unemployment on the other hand. Thus, the invitation to reopen school and university rooms, as it has happened for factories and companies for months. Obviously, in safe conditions. And with all the necessary due contextual measures. Moreover, in the desirable interpenetration between classroom teaching and distance learning for the next future, whi To summarize this article with a single expression, we could enclose it in a lack, which has been widely argued on all its pages: the programming one. Moreover, there was a lack of planning and ability to predict for many institutions and most of the citizens. Or, still, there was often a failure to prevent, in order to remedy instead, and not always adequately. With a particular reference to Italy on these pages. The above-mentioned four limits or wounds are particularly serious for our country in this pandemic year. Furthermore, this pandemic caught everyone unprepared and inexperienced. And, then, too many people - I am referring to the Government here - sold themselves to a lot of virologists and various mass media exponents, etc., who have frequently ended up increasing the unease of a nation, which is exhausted at a sanitary, economical and psychological level, with an excess of self-representation and easy self-confidence, too. In particular, this text makes school and university and, therefore, those who attend them, from children to young people, its focal point. They are not considered as abstract entities, but embodied people still belonging to an Italy at high speed: from the rapidly increasing poor people in the Southern Italy, which has not progressed yet and is in a great difficulty, to a middle class who, far from being as the fundamental nerve centre of the Italian productive fabric in the last century, is being overcome by pockets of poverty, misery and unemployment on the other hand. Thus, the invitation to reopen school and university rooms, as it has happened for factories and companies for months. Obviously, in safe conditions. And with all the necessary due contextual measures. Moreover, in the desirable interpenetration between classroom teaching and distance learning for the next future, which is still to be entirely created in the Italian reality. We have written these reflections, having in mind the psycho-social and educational conditions of the younger generations, so that an age of crisis does not become a double crisis in the way we are risking, and not for a little while, at present. With negative repercussions on them and all the times to come, whose signs are already evident, although they are mostly ignored. It is rather indispensable to translate them into opportunities for growth and life, culture and mental health. And with an Italian socio-economic gap which is nevertheless increasing. Finally, we have in mind that the right to study for each person and everyone is the only social lift which can change the destiny of a country, Italy, and also restart its economy and employment. Because skills are also a fundamental variable of GDP growth, such as a democracy effectively implemented and not only acted in words. ch is still to be entirely created in the Italian reality.

The sexual difference around hetero-sexism and queerness; philosophical-sociological perspectives

The following pages are intended to show why sexual difference constitutes a category that surpasses both the traditional hetero-normative model and the postmodern multiplication of infinite self-determined genders. Both false alternatives are founded on a dualistic framework that separates and excludes some kind of fixed and eternal abstract entities, on the one hand, and on the other, finite signifiers that are increasingly fragmented. Sexual difference, on the contrary, allows us to posit the self-differing and immanent multiplicity of each sex without the need to reify or eliminate them.

Never again? The role of the global network of R2P focal points in preventing atrocity crimes

The Nuremberg judgement famously held that crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities – but who, then, is to prevent these crimes? In 2005, all UN Member States agreed that it was their responsibility to protect populations against atrocity crimes (short R2P). In 2010, the idea was born to appoint senior government officials to act as individual R2P Focal Points to help implement this historic pledge. This article critically examines the focal point idea and its practice, focusing on the experience of the Danish R2P Focal Point as well as the role of the Global Network of R2P Focal Point which today has members from 61 UN member states. The article highlights the significant potential of the R2P Focal Points but also a series of pre-conditions that need to be met if the appointment of a R2P Focal Point is not to remain a mere gesture.