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This research examines individual voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Our research speaks to the new funding challenges traversing the British arts sector. Historically reliant on government funds, increasingly regional non-profit arts organisations must diversify their income sources and target a range of voluntary givers. By drawing on practice theories and interpretive qualitative data, we illuminate how giving understandings, procedures and engagements interconnect and interact, coming together in ways that lead to specific giving choices that prioritise cause-based charities over the arts. In doing so, we make two original contributions towards existing sociological research on voluntary giving. First, we transform and broaden the scope of empirical research by conceptualising voluntary giving as an integrative practice. Second, we offer a lens through which to investigate and explicate shared social processes, mechanisms and acts that traverse structures and individuals, co-construing and reproducing voluntary giving patterns.

"Poverty is a complex global challenge rooted in intertwined social, economic and political factors, which excludes people from participating fully in normalised social and market-based activities. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated poverty-related issues such as food insecurity, and growing numbers of people are having to rely on welfare assistance. This pandemic, coupled with austerity measures implemented across many European countries over the past years, has impacted negatively on towns, cities, regions and countries, leaving places and communities depleted. This edited volume curates a collection of relevant research addressing the challenges of poverty and the political-economic measures that perpetuate it. It adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to covering relevant theories, methodologies and policy-oriented research, highlighting the interlinkages between poverty and austerity that have resulted since the 2008 financial crisis. In particular, the book focuses on food insecurity as one of the most extreme manifestations of poverty, but also addresses interconnected issues such as unemployment, homelessness and poor health. The contributors primarily utilise diverse qualitative methods that give voice to lived experiences of poverty, while also considering quantitative approaches that are essential for measuring food insecurity and modelling the impacts of austerity. The book will be of significant interest to anyone researching poverty and austerity with an interest in social policy, human and cultural geography, marketing and consumer culture, economic policy, public health and sustainability"--

This article examines lived experiences of food insecurity in the United Kingdom as a liminal phenomenon. Our research is set within the context of austerity measures, welfare reform and the precarity experienced by increasing numbers of individuals. Drawing on original qualitative data, we highlight diverse food insecurity experiences as transitional, oscillating between phases of everyday food access to requiring supplementary food, which are both empowering and reinforcing of food insecurity. We make three original contributions to existing research on food insecurity. First, we expand the scope of empirical research by conceptualising food insecurity as liminal. Second, we illuminate shared social processes and practices that intersect individual agency and structure, co-constructing people's experiences of food insecurity. Third, we extend liminality theory by conceptualising paraliminality, a hybrid of liminal and liminoid phenomena that co-generates a persistent liminal state. Finally, we highlight policy implications that go beyond short-term emergency food access measures.

There has been limited coverage of the corporate responsibility (CR) practices of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the mainstream CR literature. Furthermore, there has been no systematic analysis of the responsibilities of the high value jewellery industry and jewellery SMEs in particular. This study explores the potential for harm and value creation by individual stakeholders in fine jewellery production. Using the harm chain and institutional theory to frame our investigation, we seek to understand how small businesses within the fine jewellery industry respond to the economic, social and environmental challenges associated with responsible jewellery production, and to investigate how they perceive and negotiate the tensions between responsibility and the resistance derived from the operational norms of secrecy and autonomy within the industry. Our exploratory research provides illustrative examples of how complex harm networks operate within and across the fine jewellery industry, and demonstrates the interrelationships that exist across the different stages of the fine jewellery harm chain. Findings suggest that institutional forces are coalescing towards a more responsible agenda for the fine jewellery industry. Moreover, while CR is a tool to disrupt harmful institutional norms and practices within such an industry, it requires the co-creation of new transformative business models and multi-stakeholder involvement including firms (SMEs and MNEs), trade associations, nongovernmental organisations and consumers. Solutions include national and international legislation, price adjusted certification routes for small firms, harmonisation of industry CR standards to reduce overlap in certification and regulation and gem and precious metal ''track and trace'' schemes.

This study aimed to evaluate the mechanisms of flood tolerance of the root system of Erythrina crista-galli L. plants by measuring the activity of antioxidant enzymes and oxidative stress components in the leaves and roots. Additionally, the activity of fermentation enzymes in the roots was measured. The following two treatments were used: plants with flooded roots, which were maintained at a given water level above the soil surface, and non-flooded plants, which were used as the control. The measurements were performed at 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 days after treatment. The following parameters were evaluated at each time-point: the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase and ascorbate peroxidase, the quantification of lipid peroxidation and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) content in the leaves, roots, and adventitious roots, and the activities of lactate dehydrogenase, pyruvate decarboxylase and alcohol dehydrogenase in both the primary and adventitious roots. There was an increase in the activity of catalase and ascorbate peroxidase in the leaves to maintain stable H2O2 levels, which reduced lipid peroxidation. In the roots, higher activity of all antioxidant enzymes was observed at up to 30 days of flooding, which favoured both reduced H2O2 levels and lipid peroxidation. Activity of the fermentation enzymes was observed in the primary roots from the onset of the stress conditions; however, their activity was necessary only in the adventitious roots during the final periods of flooding. In conclusion, E. crista-galli L. depends on adventitious roots and particularly on the use of the fermentation pathway to tolerate flood conditions.