'Mental mobility’ in the digital age: entrepreneurs and the online home-based business

Home-based online business ventures are an increasingly pervasive yet under-researched phenomenon. The experiences and mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enterprises require better understanding. Using data from a qualitative study of 23 online home-based business entrepreneurs, we propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encapsulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on Howard P. Becker's early theorising of mobility, together with Victor Turner's later notion of liminality, we conceptualise mental mobility as the process through which individuals navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, temporal and emotional tensions that are present in such work environments. Our research also holds important applications for alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence of technology on experiences of remunerated work.

Visualizing knowledge in project-based work

This article considers how visual practices are used to manage knowledge in project-based work. It compares project-based work in a capital goods manufacturer and an architectural firm. Visual representations are used extensively in both cases, but the nature of visual practice differs significantly between the two. The research explores the kinds of knowledge that are (and aren't) developed and made visible in strategizing and planning activities. For example, whereas the emphasis of project-based work in the former firm is on exploitation of knowledge and it visualizes its project context largely in commercial and processual terms, the emphasis in the latter is on exploration and it uses a wide range of visual materials to understand physical interdependencies across the project boundary. We contend particular kinds of visual tools can help project teams step between exploration and exploitation within a project, and articulate the types of representations, foci of attention and patterns of interaction involved. The findings suggest that business managers can make more deliberate choices about how knowledge is made visible, and can change visual practice to align the project with exploring and exploiting opportunities. It raises the question: What don't you see within your organization? The work contributes to academic debates about managing through projects, strategising and organizing, while the focus on visual representation disrupts the tacit-codified dichotomy in the broad debate on knowledge and learning, and highlights the craft skills central to strategizing and organizing.

Coordination and control in project-based work: digital objects and infrastructures for delivery

A major infrastructure project is used to investigate the role of digital objects in the coordination of engineering design work. From a practice-based perspective, research emphasizes objects as important in enabling cooperative knowledge work and knowledge sharing. The term ‘boundary object’ has become used in the analysis of mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing around physical and digital objects. The aim is to extend this work by analysing the introduction of an extranet into the public–private partnership project used to construct a new motorway. Multiple categories of digital objects are mobilized in coordination across heterogeneous, cross-organizational groups. The main findings are that digital objects provide mechanisms for accountability and control, as well as for mutual and reciprocal knowledge sharing; and that different types of objects are nested, forming a digital infrastructure for project delivery. Reconceptualizing boundary objects as a digital infrastructure for delivery has practical implications for management practices on large projects and for the use of digital tools, such as building information models, in construction. It provides a starting point for future research into the changing nature of digitally enabled coordination in project-based work.

Playing with history: negotiating subjectivity in contemporary lens based work

Contemporary artists exploring Jewish identity in the UK are caught between two exclusions, broadly speaking: an art community that that sees itself as ‘post –identity’ and a ‘black’ art scene that revolves around the organizations that emerged out of the Identity debates of the 1980s and 1990s, namely Iniva, Third Text, Autograph. These organizations and those debates, don’t usually include Jewish identity within their remit as Jewish artists are considered to be well represented in the British art scene and, in any case, white. Out of these assumptions, questions arise in relation to the position of Jews in Britain and what is at stake for an artist in exploring Jewish Identity in their work. There is considerable scholarship, relatively speaking on art and Jewish Identity in the US (such as Lisa Bloom; Norman Kleeblatt; Catherine Sousslouf), which inform the debates on visual culture and Jews. In this chapter, I will be drawing out some of the distinctions between the US and the UK debates within my analysis, building on my own writing over the last ten years as well as the work of Juliet Steyn, Jon Stratton and Griselda Pollock. In short, this chapter aims to explore the problematic of what Jewish Identity can offer the viewer as art; what place such art inhabits within a wider artistic context and how, if at all, it is received. There is a predominance of lens based work that explores Identity arising out of the provenance of feminist practices and the politics of documentary that will be important in the framing of the work. I do not aim to consider what constitutes a Jewish artist, that has been done elsewhere and is an inadequate and somewhat spurious conversation . I will also not be focusing on artists whose intention is to celebrate an unproblematised Jewishness (however that is constituted in any given work). Recent artworks and scholarship has in any case rendered the trumpeting of attachment to any singular identity anachronistic at best. I will focus on artists working in the UK who incorporate questions of Jewishness into a larger visual enquiry that build on Judith Butler’s notion of identity as process or performative as well as the more recent debates and artwork that consider the intersectionality of identifications that co-constitute provisional identities (Jones, Modood, Sara Ahmed, Braidotti/Nikki S Lee, Glenn Ligon). The case studies to think through these questions of identity, will be artworks by Susan Hiller, Doug Fishbone and Suzanne Triester. In thinking through works by these artists, I will also serve to contextualise them, situating them briefly within the history of the landmark exhibition in the UK, Rubies and Rebels and the work of Ruth Novaczek, Lily Markewitz, Oreet Ashery and myself.

Children's caring roles and responsibilities within the family in Africa

In many Sub-Saharan African countries, the care of chronically ill, disabled or elderly relatives is usually regarded as the responsibility of family members, within a broader landscape of often overburdened healthcare systems, the expense of medical fees, very limited access to social protection and policies that emphasise home-based care. Recent studies have demonstrated that children and youth, particularly girls and young women, take on considerable caring roles for chronically ill and elderly relatives in Africa. This article reviews the available research on young people’s caring roles and responsibilities within families affected by chronic illness and disability in Sub-Saharan Africa. I discuss how children’s caring roles challenge global and local constructions of childhood and suggest ways of conceptualising the socio-spatial and embodied dimensions of children’s everyday care work within diverse household forms. I analyse evidence on outcomes of care and children’s resilience in managing their caring responsibilities and examine the complex array of processes that influence whether children take on caring roles within the family. I argue that relational, intergenerational and lifecourse approaches to researching children’s caring responsibilities within the family have considerable potential for future geographical research and could provide further insights into the ways that care is embedded in social relations, cultural norms and structural inequalities operating in different configurations in particular places.

HIV care and interdependence in Tanzania and Uganda

Within many communities in East Africa, people living with HIV are increasingly involved in delivering home-based care and healthcare for family members and peers. Such interdependent caring relations blur conventional boundaries between ‘care-givers’ and ‘care-recipients’, and constructions of 'service users' as dependent, passive recipients of healthcare. The participation of people living with HIV in healthcare provision, home-based care and peer support groups can enhance ‘relational autonomy’ for both care-givers and care-recipients, although such initiatives often play out in highly gendered ways. The care and support of people living with HIV, particularly the emotion work of caring, however, continues to be associated with women's and girls' assumed 'natural' nurturing roles and has been largely devalued and overlooked in HIV policy and practice to date.

Developing social interaction and understanding in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: a groupwork intervention

Background: Difficulties with social interaction and understanding lie at the heart of the communication disorder that characterises the autism spectrum. This study sought to improve social communication for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by means of a groupwork intervention focusing on social and emotional perspective-taking, conversation skills, and friendship skills. It also aimed to address some of the limitations of previous interventions, including a lack of generalisation to other settings, so as to maximise inclusion in the community. Method A group of 46 high functioning children and adolescents with ASD (38 boys, 8 girls, age range 6-16 years) were allocated to one of 6 intervention groups. Each group met over a period of 12-16 weeks for a minimum of one 1 1/2-hour weekly session aimed at promoting key areas of social interaction and understanding, supported by home-based practice. Results: Significant gains were achieved in comparison with a normative population, and individual parent ratings showed marked and sustained changes in the key areas targeted in the group sessions. Conclusion: Social communication in children and adolescents with ASD can be enhanced through the use of a groupwork intervention addressing social interaction and understanding.

Low-cost optical tracking for immersive collaboration in the CAVE using the Wii remote

We present a novel way of interacting with an immersive virtual environment which involves inexpensive motion-capture using the Wii Remote®. A software framework is also presented to visualize and share this information across two remote CAVETM-like environments. The resulting applications can be used to assist rehabilitation by sending motion information across remote sites. The application’s software and hardware components are scalable enough to be used on desktop computer when home-based rehabilitation is preferred.

Low-cost optical tracking for collaborative applications in immersive virtual environments

We present a novel way of interacting with an immersive virtual environment which involves inexpensive motion-capture using the Wii Remote®. A software framework is also presented to visualize and share this information across two remote CAVETM-like environments. The resulting application can be used to assist rehabilitation by sending motion information across remote sites. The application’s software and hardware components are scalable enough to be used on a desktop computer when home-based rehabilitation is preferred.

The division of labour under uncertainty

Reductions in the division of labour are a significant feature of modern developments in work organisation. It has been recognised that a reduced division of labour can have the advantages of job enrichment and lower coordination costs. In this paper it is shown how advantages from a lesser division of labour can stem from the flow of work between different sets of resources where the work rates of individual production stages are subject to uncertainties. Both process and project-based work are considered. Implications for the boundaries of the firm and for innovation processes are noted.

The timing and societal synchronisation of energy demand

It is increasingly important to know about when energy is used in the home, at work and on the move. Issues of time and timing have not featured strongly in energy policy analysis and in modelling, much of which has focused on estimating and reducing total average annual demand per capita. If smarter ways of balancing supply and demand are to take hold, and if we are to make better use of decarbonised forms of supply, it is essential to understand and intervene in patterns of societal synchronisation. This calls for detailed knowledge of when, and on what occasions many people engage in the same activities at the same time, of how such patterns are changing, and of how might they be shaped. In addition, the impact of smart meters and controls partly depends on whether there is, in fact scope for shifting the timing of what people do, and for changing the rhythm of the day. Is the scheduling of daily life an arena that policy can influence, and if so how? The DEMAND Centre has been linking time use, energy consumption and travel diary data as a means of addressing these questions and in this working paper we present some of the issues and results arising from that exercise.

Care, disability and HIV in Africa: diverging or interconnected concepts and practices?

Recent research and policy have recognised the central role of unpaid care-givers (often women and girls) in the global South. Disability rights perspectives, however, challenge the language of ‘care’ and ‘dependence’. Drawing on qualitative research with women living with HIV and children caring for them in Tanzania, and on learning from the National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS in Uganda (NACWOLA), this paper explores the divergences and interconnections between the concepts and practices of care, disability and HIV in the context of East Africa. Despite the development of interdependent caring relations, both care-givers and people living with HIV in Tanzania experience ‘diminished autonomy’. The participation of people living with HIV, including disabled people, in home-based care and in peer support groups, however, can enhance ‘relational autonomy’ for both care-givers and care-recipients. We reflect on opportunities and challenges for mutual learning and cross-movement advocacy by disabled people, people living with HIV and care-givers.

Bio-inspired ant colony optimization based clustering algorithm with mobile sinks for applications in consumer home automation networks

With the fast development of wireless communications, ZigBee and semiconductor devices, home automation networks have recently become very popular. Since typical consumer products deployed in home automation networks are often powered by tiny and limited batteries, one of the most challenging research issues is concerning energy reduction and the balancing of energy consumption across the network in order to prolong the home network lifetime for consumer devices. The introduction of clustering and sink mobility techniques into home automation networks have been shown to be an efficient way to improve the network performance and have received significant research attention. Taking inspiration from nature, this paper proposes an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based clustering algorithm specifically with mobile sink support for home automation networks. In this work, the network is divided into several clusters and cluster heads are selected within each cluster. Then, a mobile sink communicates with each cluster head to collect data directly through short range communications. The ACO algorithm has been utilized in this work in order to find the optimal mobility trajectory for the mobile sink. Extensive simulation results from this research show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves home network performance when using mobile sinks in terms of energy consumption and network lifetime as compared to other routing algorithms currently deployed for home automation networks.