bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Effects of Variable Ventilation on Gas Exchange in an Experimental Model of Capnoperitoneum: A Randomized Crossover Study
Authors: Schranc Álmos , Südy Roberta , Daniels John , Fontao Fabienne , Peták Ferenc , Habre Walid , Albu Gergely
Published: January 2025

BACKGROUND:

The rapid advancement of minimally invasive surgical techniques has made laparoscopy a preferred alternative because it reduces postoperative complications. However, inflating the peritoneum with CO2 causes a cranial shift of the diaphragm decreasing lung volume and impairing gas exchange. Additionally, CO2 absorption increases blood CO2 levels, further complicating mechanical ventilation when the lung function is already compromised. Standard interventions such as lung recruitment maneuvers or increasing positive end-expiratory pressures can counteract these effects but also increase lung parenchymal strain and intrathoracic pressure, negatively impacting cardiac output. The application of variability in tidal volume and respiratory rate during mechanical ventilation to mimic natural breathing has shown benefits in various respiratory conditions. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the short-term benefits of variable ventilation (VV) on gas exchange, respiratory mechanics, and hemodynamics during and after capnoperitoneum, compared to conventional pressure-controlled ventilation (PCV).

METHODS:

Eleven anaesthetized rabbits were randomly assigned to PCV or VV. Oxygenation index (Pao
2/FiO2), arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide (Paco
2), and respiratory mechanical parameters were assessed after a 15-minute-long ventilation period before, during, and after capnoperitoneum. According to a crossover design, after measurements at the 3 different stages, the ventilation mode was changed, and the entire sequence was repeated.

RESULTS:

Capnoperitoneum compromised respiratory mechanics, decreased oxygenation, and caused CO2-retention compared to baseline measurements under both ventilation modalities (P < .05, for all). Application of VV resulted in lower Pao
2/FiO2 (405. 5 ± 34.1 (mean ± standard deviation [SD]) vs 370. 5 ± 44.9, P < .001) and higher Paco
2 (48. 4 ± 5.1 vs 52. 8 ± 6.0 mm Hg, P = .009) values during capnoperitoneum compared to PCV. After abdominal deflation and a lung recruitment maneuver, VV proved more beneficial for CO2 removal than PCV (41. 0 ± 2.3 vs 44. 6 ± 4.3mmHg, P = .027). No significant difference was observed in the respiratory mechanical or hemodynamic parameters between the ventilation modalities under the same conditions.

CONCLUSIONS:

The detrimental effects of capnoperitoneum on gas exchange were more pronounced with VV. However, after the release of capnoperitoneum, VV significantly improved CO2 clearance. Therefore, VV could possibly be considered as an alternative ventilation modality to restore physiological gas exchange after, but not during, capnoperitoneum.
Effect of intravitreal Bevacizumab on coagulation profile of patients with diabetic retinopathy
Authors: Khalid Iqra , Malik Tayyaba Gul , Tariq Hassan , Sajid Usman
Published: January 2025

Objectives: Intravitreal injections of Bevacizumab are widely used all over the world to treat Diabetic Retinopathy. However, there are thromboembolic events reported with its use. As blood coagulation is related with thromboembolism, the purpose of this study was to determine the effect of intravitreal injection of Bevacizumab on the coagulation profile of diabetic patients.
Methods: It was a quasi-experimental study, conducted at Department of Ophthalmology, Lahore General Hospital from January 2023 to August 2023. Patients with treatment naïve proliferative DR and diabetic macular edema were included and those with renal disease, hypertensive retinopathy, chronic liver disease, ischemic heart disease, previous history of stroke, retinal vascular occlusion, any malignancy, history of using anti coagulants and aspirin and the patients who lost to follow up and did not complete the blood work up after injection were excluded. Patients’ Prothrombin time, bleeding time, clotting time, international normalized ratio and activated partial thromboplastin time were checked before and one week after intravitreal injection of Bevacizumab. Paired t test was used for analysis and p < 0.05 was set for significance.
Results: There were 138 patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria (92 males and 46 females). The mean age was 55±8 years. There was statistically insignificant difference between the coagulation profile before and after intravitreal injection of Bevacizumab.
Conclusion: Coagulation profile is not affected after one intravitreal injection of Bevacizumab. Other factors must be taken into account while injecting Bevacizumab in patients with history of thromboembolic events.
doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.41.2.10289
How to cite this: Khalid I, Malik TG, Tariq H, Sajid U. Effect of intravitreal Bevacizumab on coagulation profile of patients with diabetic retinopathy. Pak J Med Sci. 2025;41(2):355-358. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.41.2.10289
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
TECHNOLOGY FOR DEVELOPING THE BRAND OF AN EMPLOYER OF A PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY
Authors: Gasparovich E. , Urykov A.
Published: January 2025

This study is devoted to the urgent problem of developing and using an employer’s brand to attract and retain staff. The article provides up-to-date statistical information on the current socio-economic situation on the labor market in the Russian Federation.

A theoretical analysis of research on working with the organization’s HR brand has been carried out, and key areas have been identified that organizations currently need to focus on if they want to maintain the attractiveness of the company for job seekers and employees of the company.

The results of a practical study of candidates’ preferences are presented, and the perception of the employer’s EVP value proposition among pharmaceutical companies is analyzed. Based on the diagnosis, the technology of developing the employer’s brand is proposed, through a step-by-step algorithm consisting of four stages: conducting a survey and analyzing the perception of the HR brand of the organization and competitors in the pharmaceutical industry, developing an EVP, testing the HR brand concept, creating a creative communication strategy.

The objectives of the study included interviewing job seekers, analyzing competitors and conducting focus groups to assess the attractiveness of the employer’s brand. The novelty of the work lies in obtaining practical up-to-date data on the pharmaceutical labor market and offering an algorithm for developing an organization’s HR brand.
Institutional–Evolutionary Analysis and Industry-Based Methods in Social Policy
Authors: Srinivas Smita
Published: January 2025

Social policies lack a uniform global history and theories of social policy cannot be applied without context to health policies. This chapter analyses the nuanced relationship between health policy and industrial development, emphasizing in particular the technological capabilities of a nation’s health industry. This influence of technological capabilities, especially medical technology, on health care systems is pivotal, determining the ambitions of health policy, the quality and scope of treatments, cost structures and even insurance priorities. A generic social policy theory devoid of its technological context cannot be extended to all industries. By examining health policy through the lens of a country’s industry and technology, one can comprehend its distinct institutional history and character. This chapter, therefore, calls for a new industry-focused framework for analysing social policy, drawing from examples such as the COVID-19 pandemic and laying out theoretical concerns as well as practicalities of the co-evolution of different institutional domains. It emphasizes the importance of micro-level industry dynamics, including understanding technological progress, the specific institutional and spatial arrangements through which programmes are designed and benefits disbursed, with firms playing changing roles in this process. As such, this dynamic evolution of social policy requires more country- and industry-specific debate and much less generic labour theorizing. The chapter lays out some of the benefits of an institutional and evolutionary perspective to appreciate the complexity and trajectory of social policy development in its context.
Incorporating Informal Workers in Twenty-First-Century Social Contracts
Authors: Agarwala Rina
Published: January 2025

This chapter draws on comparative research across eight countries of the global North and South to offer an initial framework of contemporary trends in informal workers’ movements. Findings suggest that present-day informal workers are mobilizing populations that were often excluded from twentieth-century labour movements. Such populations include workers operating within non-standard employment relationships (such as contract-based construction workers and garment workers, as well as self-employed domestic workers, transport workers and refuse collectors), within non-standard workspaces (including the street, private homes and unregistered worksheds), and socially vulnerable groups (such as women, ethnic and racial minorities and immigrants). The chapter argues that by mobilizing these groups along class and social identity lines, informal workers are fighting to expand the definitions of “workers” and “employers” to include a larger and more diverse range of people, relationships and occupations.
Not everything that moves must converge: evidence from global policy and practice on performance-based accountability
Authors: Verger Antoni , Ferrer-Esteban Gerard , Fontdevila Clara
Published: January 2025

Policy convergence is an often-assumed outcome of transnational policy movement. However, different scholars have recently drawn attention to the need to unpack and critically interrogate such assumptions – going beyond the policy adoption stage and paying greater attention to sources of policy variation. This chapter engages with these debates by examining implementation patterns of performance-based accountability (PBA), a model that has expanded globally over the last few decades. Drawing on analyses of the Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) dataset of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) spanning 55 countries and seven cycles (from 2000 to 2018), our study relies on different convergence tests to assess, first, how and to what extent PBA policies have advanced across different educational systems over time, and, second, the explanatory power of two theoretically plausible sources of variation that might contribute to explaining divergence patterns – namely, administrative regimes and partisan politics. The chapter shows first that there is not a single pattern of convergence in practice around PBA, for while many countries might adopt similar discourses and policy instruments, the uses of such policies and their penetration in schools are very uneven. Second, our study shows that PBA patterns in practice are, to some extent, contingent on administrative regimes, whereas partisan politics appear to have a more limited explanatory power.
Examining inclusive education policy development using a critical realist discourse analysis approach
Authors: Chin Mellisa
Published: January 2025

This chapter presents a critical realist discourse analysis approach to examine how policy actors and mechanisms associated with structural factors from different levels (that is, local and international) interact in the movement of inclusive education policy from the global context to a certain local context. The discussion is initiated with an overview of the inclusive education policy-making terrain in Malaysia and is followed by an examination of the theoretical underpinnings of a critical realist discourse analysis. The theoretical framework will center on two key approaches: Reisigl and Wodak’s (2009) discourse-historical approach and Jessop’s (2005) strategic relational approach. The second section of the chapter presents some empirical insights that follow from the approach delineated in researching policy movement processes. It is hoped that the use of a critical realist discourse analysis approach will provide more nuanced explanations with respect to how, why and through what international and local mechanisms global education policies can be borrowed, developed and evolve.
Indigenous elders as sexual agents through storytelling as a queer and decolonial practice in ‘Canada’
Authors: Burns Madeline
Published: January 2025

This chapter discusses Indigenous elders (largely women and femmes) as folks who have deeply intimate and sexual knowledge of more-than-human-beings (lands, waters, elements, spiritual beings, tricksters, plant and animal nations) and, therefore, as people who play a significant role in sexuality in Indigenous communities. It is argued that elders are sexual agents who have much to teach society about relationality by means of storytelling as a queer and decolonial practice, given that eco-erotic (hi)stories in Indigenous communities trouble settler colonialism and heteronormativity. This chapter also unpacks the settler colonial imposition of alternative versions of time, gender and relationality, in order to demonstrate how elders disrupt this imposition through eco-erotic (hi)stories. This analysis is framed around (hi)stories such as ‘Why Ravens Smile to Little Old Ladies as they Walk By …’, shared by Richard Van Camp and ‘The Woman Who Married the Beaver’, shared by Melissa Nelson.
Street-level bureaucracy in weak state institutions: an introduction
Authors: Lotta Gabriela , Nieto-Morales Fernando , Peeters Rik
Published: January 2025

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the book and present its main arguments. The book explores how street-level bureaucracies in conditions of weak and precarious institutions affect public service delivery, citizens’ experiences of the state, and public policy implementation. Although street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) worldwide face a scarcity of resources, the way structural variations in working conditions affect street-level bureaucracy has received relatively little scholarly attention. The contributions brought together in this book shed light on this issue by focusing specifically on contexts where SLBs commonly face adverse social and working conditions, such as precarity, instability, and endemic violence or corruption.
Underserving the disadvantaged: institutional failures and their consequences for frontline workers and vulnerable publics
Authors: Pires Roberto , Santos Maria Paula , Brandão Beatriz , Rosa Luiza
Published: January 2025

This chapter focuses on how weak institutional settings shape the possibilities for frontline work and for interactions with service users in a way conducive to the mistreatment of disadvantaged publics. It investigates a specific but rather common consequence of institutional weakness: implementation gaps or failures in putting into practice elements of formal policy designs. By examining the implementation of the National Policy on Care for Users of Alcohol and other Drugs in two Brazilian cities (Rio de Janeiro and Brasília), the chapter demonstrates that the insufficiency of essential resources and tools affects the behaviours and actions of frontline workers, leading to experiences of inattention, exclusion, or even harm by vulnerable service users. It outlines a research agenda focused on uncovering how policy implementation in weak institutional settings may contribute to perpetuating (rather than mitigating) inequalities, by reinforcing unequal access to public services.
Citizen agency in street-level interactions: navigating uncertainty and unpredictability
Authors: Campos Sergio A.
Published: January 2025

Frontline work in weak state institutions is influenced by administrative, political, social, and professional factors that make SLBs face more complex conditions to carry out their jobs. One of the primary sources of complexity and ambiguity for SLBs is their interaction with citizens. Previous studies have contributed to understanding how uncertainty affects SLBs while interacting with citizens. However, the relationship between bureaucratic encounters and frontline work in weak institutional contexts remain understudied. This chapter focuses on bureaucratic encounters in weak institutional contexts and how citizens develop their agency through repeated interactions with SLBs. Drawing on qualitative data on the implementation of a CCT programme in Mexico, the chapter argues that repeated interactions between citizens and SLBs reduce ambiguity and uncertainty. However, paradoxically, this process increases complexity for SLBs because it increases citizens’ capacity to act as agents.
A theoretical framework for studying the co-creation of innovative solutions and public value
Authors: Torfing Jacob , Ferlie Ewan , Jukić Tina , Ongaro Edoardo
Published: January 2025

The expansion of the scope and significance of co-creation in public policy and governance prompts the integration of different theoretical strands that together can help us illuminating the antecedent conditions, the processes of multi-actor collaboration, the creation of innovative solutions and the assessment of their public value. Exploring the affinities and complementarities of relevant perspectives such as theories of co-creation, public value management, public innovation, collaborative governance, network governance, strategic management and digital era governance may foster a more comprehensive framework for studying the co-creation of public value outcomes such as needs-based services, effective governance and democratic legitimacy. This introduction seeks to explain why we must transform the public sector in order to spur co-creation, how strategic management and digital platforms can support this transformation, and why we must bring together and synthesize different bodies of theory when studying the complex processes of co-creation and their drivers, barriers and outcomes.
Co-creation of nature-based solutions: guidelines for citizen engagement
Authors: Nunes Nathalie , Hilding-Hamann Knud Erik , Ferreira Isabel
Published: January 2025

The promoters of urban regeneration processes have been mostly committed to the involvement of the inhabitants and stakeholders of their areas of intervention in deprived urban districts by means of innovative practices, such as in the case of nature-based solutions (NBS). In this context, social workers increasingly play a role in engaging citizens in nature-based activities. This chapter explores the research and fieldwork around citizen engagement and the co-creation of NBS in the framework of the URBiNAT project, aiming at an urban inclusive and innovative nature. We present developments and findings in relation to understanding local participatory cultures and identifying significant factors impacting citizen engagement, namely a research construction and instrument to inform the tailoring of participatory methods and tools for the co-design and co-implementation of NBS, as well as a ‘living’ framework of guidelines for citizen engagement and co-creation of NBS. These developments and findings have also paved the way to learning points for other similar city NBS development projects, based on the study of participatory implementations of NBS. We particularly analyse how guideline categories addressing core leverages for successful citizen engagement in the co-creation of NBS are combined according to various city cases.
Social entrepreneurship as social innovation: what about social work?
Authors: de Bell Leendert , Bugarszki Zsolt , Cox Geof
Published: January 2025

Although the contribution of social entrepreneurship to social innovation is becoming increasingly acknowledged in theory and practice, it is less apparent in relation to social work. This chapter aims to contribute to a better understanding of social entrepreneurship in relation to issues of social innovation and social work. We will do this by focusing in particular on work integration of vulnerable groups, one of the most dominant impact areas in which many social enterprises are active and which most directly relates to the traditional domain of social work. The chapter analyses specific examples from the UK and the Netherlands to discuss how social enterprises have contributed to systemic change in the social domain, and what its possible implications could be for the future of social work.
Educational Collateral Damage
Authors: McLean Anton
Published: January 2025

This book argues that to address the longstanding concerns around the outcomes of disadvantaged students, there needs to be a greater focus on their position in the education system. Part I presents the key themes and issues discussed throughout the book. Chapter 1 discusses why disadvantaged students have become educational collateral damage. Chapter 2 examines the nature and impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on children in England’s education system. Chapter 3 seeks to broaden the notion of ‘exclusion’ with a consideration of how disadvantaged children can become both excluded from, and also within, their schools. Spatial concepts are drawn from to examine the way exclusion is layered and how this, in turn, is experienced by disadvantaged students. Chapter 4 considers what a more socially just situation for disadvantaged students may look like. Part II presents exclusion experiences. These include the perspectives of students who have been permanently excluded from mainstream schools and the staff who support them in two pupil referral units based in two of the most deprived areas in England, one in the north and the other in the south. Additionally, the perspectives of senior leaders of mainstream schools are presented. Three types of social space in the education system are analysed. Chapter 5 discusses the nature of mainstream space in schools. Chapter 6 presents inner exclusion space. Chapter 7 considers outer exclusion space. The book concludes by reflecting on the author’s research to discuss what more needs to be done to bring about social justice for disadvantaged students.
Inner exclusion space
Authors: McLean Anton
Published: January 2025

This chapter presents inner exclusion space. This is the space where students who are termed ‘persistently disruptive’ operate when they are not quite engaging in mainstream space but are not quite fully detached from it either. It draws from the author’s research – interviews with various students who have found themselves permanently excluded from mainstream schools and who now attend pupil referral units (PRUs), the staff who support those students and senior leaders working in mainstream schools. Three themes are presented: firstly, rupture which marks the process of students being placed outside of mainstream space. Secondly, the detachment that takes place as the students become further embedded in inner exclusion space. Thirdly, the ways in which students become deemed incompatible with mainstream space are discussed with the size of the secondary school and the stretching of resources for the number and variety of needs raised as particular barriers to effective inclusion.
“Actions speak louder than words”
Authors: McLean Anton
Published: January 2025

In this, the concluding chapter of the book, the author considers the implications of the research findings for social justice for disadvantaged students. The author returns to Iris Marion Young’s five faces of oppression and discusses examples of exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. The chapter finishes with some final thoughts about what more can be done to address the various inequalities at play affecting disadvantaged students, and how we may arrive at a more socially just education system.
Poetry for research in higher education
Authors: Illingworth Sam , Jack Kirsten
Published: January 2025

Chapter 4 explores the potential of poetry in higher education research. It discusses methods and techniques for using poetry in academic research, addressing challenges, and finding solutions. The chapter includes case studies and practical exercises demonstrating poetry’s application in practice, emphasising its role in enhancing research methodologies and outcomes.
Poetry for reflection
Authors: Illingworth Sam , Jack Kirsten
Published: January 2025

Chapter 5 focuses on the role of poetry in reflective learning. It discusses how poetic reflection can shift perspectives, promote empathy and support inter- and intrapersonal development. The chapter includes case studies and exercises for planning reflective activities, promoting poetic reflection among colleagues.
Towards an Eclectic Framework
Authors: Husted Emil
Published: January 2025

This chapter has three distinct purposes: to summarize the previous chapters and reiterate the basic aspects of the four perspectives; to show how each perspective rests on a number of core assumptions and blind spots; to advocate for an eclectic framework for party organization analysis that combines perspectives in new and interesting ways. To establish the basis for an eclectic framework, I draw on Gunther Teubner and distinguish between two strategies for analytical eclecticism. The first is integration and seeks to combine perspectives that rely on many of the same assumptions about party organization and social science more broadly. Here, I show how the classical perspective can be combined with the cultural perspective and how the configurational perspective can be combined with the configurational perspective. The second strategy is friction and seeks to combine perspectives that rely on diverging assumptions. Here, I show how particularly fruitful research can be conducted if the cultural perspective is combined with the comparative perspective because each perspective allows scholars to shine a light on the other’s blind spot.
Making, Unmaking, Remaking: Working-Class Forces in Formation
Authors: Gallas Alexander
Published: January 2025

What I need to discuss in greater detail, for the purposes of this book, is working-class formation. After all, the key theoretical argument put forward in it for the analysis of strikes is that they facilitate working-class formation. So far, I have not addressed this issue. In this context, it is worth turning to Althusser, who argues that there are roughly two different conceptions of working-class formation, which differ in terms of their sequencing.
Between Representation and Intermediation: The Double Character of Workers’ Mass Organizations
Authors: Gallas Alexander
Published: January 2025

Luxemburg shows how class struggles act as a catalyst of class formation. She highlights the importance of often localized and sectoral labour struggles and argues that they became interlinked in the revolutionary conjuncture of Russia in 1906. According to her, these struggles can be both spontaneous and the result of the strategic calculations and tactical considerations of mass organizations, and the latter can be revitalized through their involvement in struggles (Luxemburg, 2008: 128, 135). This suggests that there is a specific strategic role for mass organizations in facilitating advances of labour, which raises the question of how they advance or block processes of working-class formation. As I have argued in Chapter 5, there is a tendential separation of economic, political and cultural class struggles in capitalism, which has a stabilizing effect on capitalist class domination. Connected to this separation is the official recognition of class struggle, that is, its legalization and institutionalization. In a broad understanding, any activity with direct, unidirectional class effects can be seen as constituting an instance of class struggle. But if a capitalist state under the rule of law exists, ‘official’ procedures of the class struggle tend to emerge. These are legally enshrined mechanisms that institutionalize collective action. They invite negotiations between capitalists and workers over the distribution of material and ideational resources and the organization of society, whose outcomes are relevant for the class relations of forces. There are three sets of mechanisms that are particularly important in this context: the regulations surrounding labour disputes (economic dimension); political procedures that create binding decisions concerning the way society is run (political dimension); and the rules and conventions sustaining public fora in which battles over imaginaries and ideas take place (cultural dimension) (Table 5.6; see also Althusser, 1969: 96; Poulantzas, 1974: 15; Esser, 1982: 232–5). Historically, these mechanisms emerged as a result of class struggles that had not yet been channelled.
From Golden Age to Golden Age?
Authors: Bone John
Published: January 2025

This second scene-setting chapter continues where the previous one left off, charting some of the main features of the emergence of modern Western society from the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment, industrialization and urbanization to the present. The difficulties in adapting to the increasing demands and complexities of modern societies associated with increasing population density, complexity, technological and cultural advancement are engaged with. Here the ‘growing pains’ of modern society and the often violent and conflictual competition to impose order and control both within societies and across the globe is discussed. The development of capitalism is central here as a system of both development and highly unequal exploitation, leading us towards the present where our divided societies are beginning to fracture as more and more benefits are captured by the few and risks are imposed on an expanding majority. The chapter ends by discussing how pressure from below, together with the shared experience of the Great Depression and war, provided a window for the emergence of the qualified and short-lived progressive postwar era where some of the inequities and injustices of the past were beginning to be confronted, and a greater sense of order, wellbeing and hope for the future emerged.
The Climate Emergency and Neoliberal Nihilism
Authors: Bone John
Published: January 2025

This chapter considers the potential impact of climate change and environmental degradation on the economy and society, as well as how this is perceived by the public. A key argument here rests on the perceived incompatibility between the current global neoliberal economic growth model and environmental sustainability. Of particular interest is the growing gulf between those preoccupied by and active on environmental issues, and the large constituencies who appear to either deny that there is an issue or that it is particularly relevant to their everyday lives. Questions on the influence of the fossil fuel industry, neoliberal politicians, and the wide range of commercial and financial interests that have employed a range of strategies to forestall climate action, putting profit before people and the planet, are addressed. This includes a discussion of the way in which the neoliberal right has established climate concerns as a wedge issue in the so-called ‘culture wars’. Finally, there is a focus on the broader question as to how we might respond to substantial shifts in climatic conditions over the longer term, including potential echoes of pre-Holocene patterns of forced migration in a world where rising nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment is a growing phenomenon.
Branding: Hindering Heterarchy in a Startup Accelerator
Authors: Kuhn Timothy
Published: January 2025

This chapter explores the practice of branding at a startup accelerator, connecting the concept to orders of worth in entrepreneurship. Drawing on the Communicative Theory of the Firm (CTF), it emphasizes the significance of the multiple and competing logics that underpin evaluations of value in the context of new firms’ emergence. The chapter examines practices of valorizing the technologically cool, mentorship, and funding in the accelerator’s efforts to launch startups. The accelerator’s branding practices influenced the startups’ authoritative texts and, in turn, their purposes and their wanting. The chapter underscores that such branding practices hinder the startups’ heterarchy: the accelerator’s branding practices narrowed the evaluative criteria to which the startups could appeal, limiting their potential for profitability.
Binding: Collective Atomization and B Corps
Authors: Kuhn Timothy
Published: January 2025

The final case study explores the evolving landscape of corporate purpose and social responsibility, particularly in the context of B Corporations (B Corps). The chapter delves into the various forms of binding associated with B Corps, from the legal structure and certification process to the platform's role in shaping firms' authoritative texts and, in turn, their decision-making. It also addresses the tensions and contradictions inherent in B Corp operations, highlighting the complex interplay of values and property rights in shaping firms' trajectories and decision-making processes. As in the other empirical chapters, a dis/organizational consequence of the particular constitution of the authoritative text emerges. In this case, ‘collective atomization’ signifies the tension, even contradiction, of situating a firm as a collective in terms of its participation in a ‘socially responsible’ movement while, at the same time, understanding its atomization with respect to individualized sites for decision-making and value propagation. That outcome, however, can foster new potential trajectories for these firms.
Genesis: How Would Jesus Redistribute Bread?
Authors: Alakavuklar Ozan Nadir
Published: January 2025

This chapter delves into the symbolic layer of the Free Food Store by dissecting faith-related discourses and practices. Utilizing a rich array of sources, including organizational documents, interviews and observational data, the chapter unearths the complex interplay between the politics and morality inherent in food rescue efforts via charitable organizations. It sheds light on how faith-driven initiatives carry a transformative potential, yet face impediments posed by the prevailing neoliberal policies in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. The chapter argues that a nuanced examination, which questions the monolithic conceptions of both neoliberalism and faith, is pivotal for comprehending the significance of ‘alternatives’ in addressing food insecurity while also acknowledging the inherent tensions, challenges and prospects within this complex landscape.
An Overview of the Evolution of Diplomacy in Europe and Africa
Authors: Theron François
Published: January 2025

The first known peace treaty was signed about 2300 BC between a king of Ebla in present-day Syria and a king of Assyria. Early forms of diplomatic interaction reveal a system with a common language, with its own law, customs and protocol. In 432 BC, the basic rules and conduct of diplomacy were adopted by the ancient Greeks at the Congress of Sparta. This became a template for much of the diplomacy of the next 22 centuries until the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo in 1812. By force of arms, the Romans established a general peace, the Pax Romana, over what was a world empire. Yet Rome made major contributions to what in future would become international law by incorporating into Roman law some of the laws and customs of the peoples of non-Roman origin living within the empire. This played an important part in the development of international law by Grotius. The chapter describes the origins of the modern states system before proceeding to outline the start of the global states system. Following this predominantly European focus, it then turns to Africa and positions the continent as a diplomatic actor.
A Diplomatic Conduit: The Role of Science Diplomacy in Africa
Authors: Masters Lesley
Published: January 2025

While the understanding of science diplomacy continues to evolve, its application in statecraft needs further analysis. The political nature of science diplomacy means that it is more than activities of scientific cooperation, where cooperation itself can create ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the race to address global challenges leading to further structural divisions. In the main, the literature uncritically claims science diplomacy as a panacea for building mutually positive relations between parties; yet, given the global international structure, this is often a one-sided affair dominated by those with a developed capacity in science diplomacy. This exploratory study begins by addressing the concept of science diplomacy, its political purpose and its place as a tool in the diplomatic toolbox. The chapter then considers the role of science diplomacy in the African context and in facilitating communication, negotiation and representation. This aims to move discussions away from addressing the meaning of the concept of science diplomacy, to considering questions of capacity, application and its impact in practice.
Labour Law and the Concept of Personhood
Authors: Rodgers Lisa
Published: January 2025

The aim of this chapter is to explore the different ways in which personhood can be conceptualized in law generally and how far those conceptualizations could and have infiltrated labour law. The chapter starts with an investigation of legal personhood and the law and the distinction between naturalist and legalistic approaches to legal subjectivity. Rationalist, religionist, and naturalist positions are explored in terms of how far they have been incorporated into labour law theory and the implications of their adoption for labour law. This includes an investigation of the intersection between different views of personhood, labour law, and human rights. The final section of the chapter attempts to move the debate forward by introducing Sinzheimer’s ‘socialist’ view of the relationship between labour law and personhood, which it is argued sets up the initiative for a more ‘relational’ approach to labour law and the person.
The Challenge of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Rodgers Lisa
Published: January 2025

This chapter investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our most basic assumptions about our ‘selves’ at work, and (hence) the relationship between labour law and social justice. On the one hand, the pandemic reemphasized worker corporeality and led to a greater incursion of health and safety concerns into the workplace. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic served to accentuate the individualist and rationalist conception of the person at the heart of the law of the workplace. The chapter investigates the obstacles that this individualist/rationalist conceptualization of the person has caused in regulating the workplace both during and post-COVID. This approach has led to the erosion of collective and negotiated solutions, the equation of employee and employer struggles, and the inability of the law to protect those workers most in need. It is argued in the chapter that the analysis of labour law in the pandemic points to the need for a greater engagement with the moral project of embedding relationality at the heart of labour law, in order that labour law can better respond to labour market ‘shocks’.
Boundaries of Queerness
Authors: Kehl Katharina
Published: January 2025

Recent decades have seen increased mobilization of LGBTQ rights in various nationalist projects of (non-)belonging. This book provides new insights into how race, sexuality and gender feature in these projects by examining contemporary constructions of Swedishness. It combines explorations of boundary making and belonging with queer conceptualizations of subjectivity, read through a racialization lens.
The author analyses constructions of Swedishness through LGBTQ rights across three empirical sites: a ‘pride parade’ organized by the Swedish populist right, Swedish Armed Forces’ marketing material, and an Instagram account for racialized LGBTQ people. The analysis shows how constructions of Swedishness rely on separating an LGBTQ-friendly Swedish Self from various dangerous racialized Others. These separations are maintained by narratives of threat and protection, making LGBTQ people intelligible as potential victims while locating anti-LGBTQ violence firmly outside of White Swedishness. The book identifies various ways in which racialized LGBTQ people manoeuvre these normative grids of intelligibility, carving out liveable lives in the context of exclusionary constructions of Swedishness.
The book contributes a deeper understanding of the multiple ways in which gender, sexuality and race are part of (nationalist) boundary-making moves. It points to the urgency of engaging with how these boundary-making moves draw upon and enable grids of intelligibility that make some queer lives more liveable than others. And it reminds the reader that if we look at boundary making through a queer performative understanding of intelligibility, even the most (homo)normative and (homo)nationalist notions of (non-)belonging remain sites of contestation and re-articulation.
Polarization
Authors: Bastos Marco
Published: January 2025

In this chapter we take stock of the context of polarized politics and hybrid media environments undergirding the Brexit vote, where news stories were discussed, disseminated, and interpreted within politically homogeneous online communities secluded from diverse ideological information. We discuss echo-chamber communication in the Brexit debate against the backdrop of divisive and affective polarization, with significant differences in the Leave and Remain campaigns that speak to the fundamentally different social networks to which these groups are attached. The chapter also unpacks the often-confused concepts of echo-chamber communication and filter bubbles and reports on methods to identify politically homogeneous communication online and offline.
Social Media Manipulation
Authors: Bastos Marco
Published: January 2025

This chapter discusses the emergence of the disinformation landscape that supported influence operations deployed in the Brexit referendum, a watershed development resulting from the shift in the governance of social technologies from communities of users to social media algorithms. We revisit key events such as the deployment of data-driven microtargeting in political campaigns epitomized by the Cambridge Analytica data scandal and the ensuing data lockdown enforced by social media platforms. These developments severely restricted independent research on mis/disinformation campaigns by preventing data access to social media data and rendering problematic content, including mis- and disinformation, increasingly more inscrutable and unobservable. The chapter concludes with a set of lessons learned from studying disinformation during the Brexit campaign.
Accountability of Social Platforms
Authors: Bastos Marco
Published: January 2025

This closing chapter discusses the public accountability of social media platforms that have eluded policymakers. We discuss the challenges in detection and mitigation of misinformation that emerged in the Brexit debate on social media. We also discuss the growing perception that social networking sites are opaque platforms unaccountable to regular users and governments alike, with sentiments towards Twitter bots and trolls often taking centre-stage. We argue that social media algorithms, in particular Facebook and YouTube recommendation engines, remain largely unaccountable to public scrutiny and that the criteria underpinning algorithmic decisions on which news stories are distributed to users are intellectual property deemed commercially sensitive and therefore inaccessible to the public.
The Modern Slavery Agenda in the UK: Labour Market Enforcement Perspectives on Law and Policy
Authors: Weatherburn Amy
Published: January 2025

This chapter considers the UK’s modern slavery agenda from a labour market enforcement perspective by focusing upon the law and policy measures that have been introduced since the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and purport to prevent and disrupt severe exploitation in the labour market. Where precarity in employment becomes the norm and is tolerated in society and in the law, the threshold for combating exploitation becomes unacceptably high. The chapter outlines the role of the state in facilitating such exploitative working conditions and emphasizes that the state’s role in ensuring that the labour market landscape upholds the rights of workers is crucial to combating labour exploitation. The chapter first interrogates the introduction of law and policy changes, that saw an expansion of labour market compliance measures and were intended to build on the modern slavery legislation with a view to tackling illegal working and worker exploitation. While the second section reveals a paradox of the labour market enforcement approach to tackling modern slavery outlined in the first section by considering the structural injustice that emanates from the ‘hostile environment’ created by immigration law and policy framework and ultimately exacerbates the precarity of migrant workers and the overall security of the labour market. The chapter advocates a continued fight against such a situation by improving efforts to ensure the enforcement of measures against labour market non-compliance are prioritized over and above immigration law enforcement, which in turn mitigates the perpetuation of the structural factors that contribute to exploitation and abuse.
Saviours or Disrupters? The Role of Non-State Actors in the Government-Centric Realm of Anti-Trafficking in Belize
Authors: Francis Cherisse
Published: January 2025

This chapter argues that non-state actors are valuable for combatting human trafficking. Yet, despite their continuous presence in anti-trafficking, domestic, regional, and international law foci remain upon the respective governments’ contribution. This rhetoric and practice inaccurately position non-state actors (NSAs) as corollaries supporting national governments as ‘donors’ or ‘rescuers’. Using qualitative data from Belize this research critically analyses various approaches to partnerships to fill the gaps in knowledge on such anti-trafficking partnerships. The chapter will show that collaborations which are intentionally formed with careful and creative consideration of the local contexts can be a first step towards NSAs being fully engaged with current government-centric anti-trafficking frameworks.
Researching Justice: How Do You Make the Research Process ‘Just’?
Authors: Herman Agatha , Inwood Joshua
Published: January 2025

Ideals of justice shape how we do our research even if we are not always explicit about how justice, and the way we understand how justice works within our lives, impacts on our research questions, stakeholders, methods or dissemination strategies. This chapter introduces key concepts and talks explicitly about how this edited book emerged. We argue for the importance of opening the ‘black box’ of research methods, positioning this within a multifaceted and grounded ‘justice-as-praxis’ perspective that centres justice in our lives and our research practices. The chapter moves on to consider the key elements of just research practices, reflecting on the ‘doings and sayings’ that constitute research, the need for both a broad and inclusive ‘who’ of research and to decolonize research relations and agendas, alongside the conflicting pulls of different ideologies of ‘good scholarship’. The chapter then presents the author brief and outlines the book structure, before concluding with a personal commentary from one of the editors on the perceived perils and pitfalls of honest disclosures of research practices.