Suchergebnisse

The first comprehensive study of plastics, from the moment they were invented to the present day Expands the existing research on the materiality of plastic, considering it as both a disposable and durable productAn essential read in times of environmental and health crises, when humanity must find new ways of existing and transform, among other things, our culturePacked with insight from 24 contributors across 17 chapters Plastics, Environment, Culture and the Politics of Waste examines plastic as a distinct cultural, political, and environmental phenomenon. It outlines the intricate relationship with plastic that humanity has been building over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, drawing on examples from history, the arts, and literature, as well as examining the place of plastics in the current health, environmental, and energy crises. The aim of this book is to reveal the complex nature of plastics, from their rapid incorporation into our advancing ways of life, to the reenvisioning of plastics' role in human life and how, through abundant production, consumption, and disposal of plastics, humanity has initiated a toxic invasion of natural environments and human and nonhuman bodies. Bringing together various perspectives from the humanities, this edited collection contributes to the ongoing research on plastics and petrocultures and emphasizes the crucial significance of addressing the plastic crisis through culture

Omar Zein's Culture and Project Management explores the cultural impact on projects and their management, providing the reader with an understanding of the main elements of cross-cultural theory within the project environment. These include our perception of context, achievement, power and group dynamics; and how we approach ambiguity and time. He then identifies key aspects of project management where cultural sensitivity is essential (for example, planning, risk management, project communication and leadership) and offers a structured plan for developing what he calls 'cultural tuning' withi.

This article begins by examining recent work on labour history by some French and British historians, who have been influenced by postmodernism and the 'linguistic turn' but often find themselves locked into what are primarily 'cultural' explanations of labour's identity and development. It disputes the culturalist methodology and stresses that an alternative model of discourse analysis insists on contextualisation, which in turn re-instates the significance of realms of explanation outside language, text and culture. It also sees the comparative method as a means of identifying historical structures, and concludes with a schematic account of European labour in the twentieth century.

PurposeThis paper aims to assess the relationship between cultural profiles and the economic, environmental and social dimensions of electricity companies' reporting based on the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) sustainability framework.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used the competing values framework, developed by Cameron and Quinn, as the theoretical starting point, with primary data collected through surveys that assessed organizational culture and with secondary data collected through the GRI indicators reported by the companies.FindingsFirst, the framework shows whether a company's organizational culture corresponds with one of the following options: clan, adhocracy, market or hierarchy. The results show that most of the companies' organizational cultures were hierarchical, characterized by a greater need for stability and control and a formal work environment. Clans were the second most popular type of organizational culture, characterized as having greater internal flexibility, more informal environments and fewer hierarchical levels. Second, by combining the above results with the assessment of the GRI indicators in the companies' sustainability reports, the study checked whether the companies had strong (balanced) or non-balanced cultures. The results show that there was a greater correlation between a strong (balanced) culture and the total value of the reported indicators, compared to a non-balanced culture.Originality/valueThe paper takes an innovative approach by correlating two different but well-recognized methodologies as a way to create a more holistic assessment that can help stakeholders to understand both the way these companies work and how this choice reflects the transparency of their reporting.

The effects of displacement on culture can have significant impacts on the psychological & physical welfare of individual refugees & on the social dynamics within a refugee population.

AbstractThere is a long history of scholars finding in architecture tools for thinking, whether this is the relationship between nature and culture in Simmel's ruins, industrial capitalism in Benjamin's Parisian arcades, or the rhythms of the primordial in Heidegger's Black Forest farmhouse. But what does it mean to take seriously the concepts and dispositions articulated by architects themselves? How might processes of designing and making constitute particular forms of thinking? This article considers the words and buildings of Lahore-based architect Kamil Khan Mumtaz (b. 1939) as an entry point into such questions. It outlines how professional architecture in Pakistan has grappled with the unsettled status of the past in a country forged out of two partitions (1947 and 1971). Mumtaz's work and thought—engaging questions of tradition, authority, craft and the sacred—demonstrates how these predicaments have been productive for conceptualizing time, labor and the nature of dwelling in a postcolonial world.