Search results for "514"
showing 10 items of 369 documents
Activity typologies as a design model for the ubiquitous detection of daily routines
2018
Emerging technologies open up new visions and business potential for systems design and development in the areas of wellbeing and health. New technologies enable the detection of human performance and early changes in physical and cognitive functioning, making it possible to monitor an older person’s wellbeing. This kind of technology or service sets significant requirements for design, as design concepts must be able to capture the complexity of people’s daily lives in terms of activities and environments. Technology itself is “blind” unless designers can adapt it to human life. There is thus a distinct need for comprehensive design and development models that generate adequate human requi…
Predictors of school students’ leisure-time physical activity : An extended trans-contextual model using Bayesian path analysis
2021
Abstract Background:The trans-contextual model (TCM) has been applied to identify the determinants of leisure-time physical activity participation in secondary school students. In the current study, the TCM was extended to include additional constructs that represent non-conscious, implicit processes that lead to leisure-time physical activity participation alongside the motivational and social cognition constructs from the TCM. The current study used baseline and follow-up data from an intervention study to test the extended TCM.Methods:The current study adopted a two-wave prospective design. Secondary-school students (N = 502) completed measures of perceived autonomy support from physical…
Values that Underlie and Undermine Well–Being: Variability across Countries
2017
We examined relations of 10 personal values to life satisfaction (LS) and depressive affect (DEP) in representative samples from 32/25 countries ( N = 121 495). We tested hypotheses both for direct relations and cross–level moderation of relations by Cultural Egalitarianism. We based hypotheses on the growth versus self–protection orientation and person–focus versus social–focus motivations that underlie values. As predicted, openness to change values (growth/person) correlated positively with subjective well–being (SWB: higher LS, lower DEP) and conservation values (self–protection/social) correlated negatively with SWB. The combination of underlying motivations also explained more comple…
Mobile media, gender, and power in rural India
2019
This article traces the diffuse connections between mobility and power by exploring how mobile phone use contributed to gendered power relations in rural India. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork on the use of mobile phones, conducted periodically between 2005 and 2013 in the village of Janta in West Bengal, India, and compared to earlier fieldwork in Janta, before the village had any phone system. Analysis of the increased mobility reveals how mobile phone use emerges within interconnected, changing fields of power. The political sphere earlier perceived as predominantly local was replaced by translocal political practices characterized by increasing mobility. Although new political pra…
Distances and proximities of care : Analysing emotio-spatial distances in informal caring
2018
This article analyses how emotio-spatial distances in informal caring are experienced by Finnish women who are employed and simultaneously caring for an ageing relative. The article's research questions are: how do spatial distance and proximity shape informal carers' emotional responses to caring? What kinds of emotion do spatial ‘distance’ or ‘proximity’ evoke in the interview accounts of informal carers? The article draws on theorisations regarding emotional geographies of care. The data consists of two focus group interviews with a total of 12 women who were combining employment with caring. The analysis shows that spatially proximate carers have difficulty detaching from caring, wherea…
Doing gendered and (dis)embodied work. Care work in the context of medico-managerial welfare state
2013
Whether and how technology-driven managerial reforms affect the field of human service work is a timely question for social sciences. In an increasingly technology-assisted working-life, material conditions such as one’s age and gender may be losing their significance as signifiers of professional identity. Welfare service work is traditionally understood as feminine work that comprises of embodied, situational and social practices of care work. Over the past few decades, public management reforms have called for reassessment of welfare service workers’ occupational skills through practices of medico-managerial service management and occupational accountability. As a result, workers technic…
Empowered by stigma? Pioneer organic farmers' stigma management strategies
2019
Abstract Pioneers of organic farming often faced social challenges as their innovative ideas on agriculture not only encountered opposition in the conventional farming community, but led to stigmatization of organic farmers as social deviants. In this study, we examine what kind of stigma management strategies pioneer organic farmers engage with in order to cultivate an alternative positive image of themselves. Our research is based on the interviews with 14 pioneer organic farmers. Based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews, we provide a model of those strategies that the creation from a stigmatized to valued identity requires. Our study increases the understanding of the institutio…
Different meanings of ´knowledge as commodity` in the context of higher education
2013
Commodification has been and still is one of the key processes within capitalist market economies. Since the 1970s, different forms of knowledge have increasingly been subjected to this process. In this paper the commodification of knowledge in the field of higher education is defined in a broad sense as an example of the intensive enlargement of capitalism. I argue that knowledge shares some features of public goods and can be subjected to commodification both as an educational product and academic research itself. However, the simple dichotomy of public vs. private good is not nuanced enough to understand the status of knowledge within higher education. How to reconstruct this dichotomy,…
Encountering ethics in studying challenging family relations
2013
This article focuses on ethical considerations in the study of challenging family relations. Our perspective derives from multidisciplinary family studies, including social sciences, psychology and educational sciences. Our concerns include why and how to apply a sensitive approach in studying challenging family relations, and what the key ethical issues are in studies of this kind. We examine questions of multiplicity in family relations, the particularity of vulnerable family relations and the roles of researchers and gatekeepers in the research process. The article is based on a research project where informants were both children and adults, and both qualitative and quantitative data we…
Towards a theory of transnational academic capitalism
2013
This article draws attention to the relative lack of theoretically and methodologically elaborated approaches to understand and explain the complex relations between transnationalization of higher education and globalization seen especially from the point of view of global capitalism. The main aim of this article is to contribute to the construction of a theory of transnational academic capitalism (TAC). A theory of TAC argues that those networks, practices and activities that are blurring the boundaries between higher education, markets and states are increasingly becoming transnational without supposing that this transformation implies that local and national levels are insignificant in s…