Embarrassment of Product Choices 2. Towards a Society of Well-being

When there are too many choices, there is no choice. The choices are entangled in a maze of rather confused possibilities. They go through many nebulous paths. Doubt, hesitation, indecision, become the only resolutions possible. Choosing is the anxiety of being wrong! The brand, the quality / price ratio, the aesthetics … give confidence, but often with naivety! There is a gap between the reality of the qualities of the products and the perception of the customer. These are prejudices, illusions, a lack of knowledge … Generally speaking, is the consumer-client able to appreciate, by sight, by touch, or even by a brief trial of operation, all the strengths and weaknesses? a lot of products? Market value dominates the use value. Marketing will discover that we must no longer confuse the consumer (the customer) and the user. The economic system only works because consumers are in the opacity of their choices. The search for technical prowess and above all market value has dominated the search for value in use.

The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions is the first title in Blackwell Publishing Professional's groundbreaking series Issues in Animal Bioethics. This important book examines the ethical and economic importance of production animal well-being and pain management—topics of increasing concern to consumers. The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions offers veterinarians, veterinary and agriculture students, animal scientists, and food animal producers both practical methods to enhance farm animal well-being, and greater understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of those methods. With a variety of perspectives from respected experts and specialists, this book conveys new research findings and promotes valuable discourse on critical issues. Most importantly, editors Benson and Rollin provide feasible instruction to put theory into practice. The theories and applications presented in this book are likely to be legislated in the future. Therefore, it is important for veterinarians in production animal medicine to keep abreast of the latest issues in promoting animal well-being, and implement sound animal welfare methods every day. The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions provides the information veterinarians need to do both.

The Children of Eve is the first book to bring together general material about population and well-being in a single volume. It presents a world history of demographic and economic change that ranges broadly over time and space and which emphasizes the commonality of human experience. The first book to put together material about population and well-being in a single volume Emphasizes the formative population history of Europe and North America over the years since the Middle Ages, and includes discussions of Asia and the southern hemisphere The authors successfully maintain the difficult balance of addressing complex issues in a style that doesn't over-simplify the subject, whilst upholding an approach that is accessible to general readers and students Designed to work as both a stand alone text or a supplement to textbooks in any number of courses

Taking into account significant developments in the metaphysical thinking of E. J. Lowe over the past 20 years, More Kinds of Being:A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms presents a thorough reworking and expansion of the 1989 edition of Kinds of Being. Brings many of the original ideas and arguments put forth in Kinds of Being thoroughly up to date in light of new developments Features a thorough reworking and expansion of the earlier work, rather than just a new edition Reflects the author's conversion to what he calls 'the four-category ontology,' a metaphysical system that takes its inspiration from Aristotle Provides a unified discussion of individuation and identity that should prove to be essential reading for philosophers working in metaphysics.

“An indispensable reference for all researchers interested in the measurement of social welfare. . .” —Fran?ois Bourguignon, Emeritus Professor at Paris School of Economics, Former Chief Economist of the World Bank. “. . .a detailed, insightful, and pedagogical presentation of the theoretical grounds of multidimensional well-being, inequality, and poverty measurement. Any student, researcher, and practitioner interested in the multidimensional approach should begin their journey into such a fascinating theme with this wonderful book.” —Fran?ois Maniquet, Professor, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. A Review of the Multidimensional Approaches to the Measurement of Welfare, Inequality, and Poverty Analyzing Multidimensional Well-Being: A Quantitative Approach offers a comprehensive approach to the measurement of well-being that includes characteristics such as income, health, literacy, and housing. The author presents a systematic comparison of the alternative approaches to the measurement of multidimensional welfare, inequality, poverty, and vulnerability. The text contains real-life applications of some multidimensional aggregations (most of which have been designed by international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) that help to judge the performance of a country in the various dimensions of well-being. The text offers an evaluation of how well a society is doing with respect to achievements of all the individuals in the dimensions considered and clearly investigates how achievements in the dimensions can be evaluated from different perspectives. The author includes a detailed scrutiny of alternative techniques for setting weights to individual dimensional metrics and offers an extensive analysis into both the descriptive and welfare theoretical approaches to the concerned multi-attribute measurement and related issues. This important resource: • Contains a synthesis of multidimensional welfare, inequality, poverty, and vulnerability analysis • Examines aggregations of achievement levels in the concerned dimensions of well-being from various standpoints • Shows how to measure poverty using panel data instead of restricting attention to a single period and when we have imprecise information on dimensional achievements • Argues that multidimensional analysis is intrinsically different from marginal distributions-based analysis Written for students, teachers, researchers, and scholars, Analyzing Multidimensional Well-Being: A Quantitative Approach puts the focus on various approaches to the measurementof the many aspects of well-being and quality of life. Satya R. Chakravarty is a Professor of Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. He is an Editor of Social Choice and Welfare and a member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Economic Inequality.

This important Manifesto argues that we still need a concept of society in order to make sense of the forces which structure our lives. Written by leading social theorist William Outhwaite Asks if the notion of society is relevant in the twenty-first century Goes to the heart of contemporary social and political debate Examines critiques of the concept of society from neoliberals, postmodernists, and globalization theorists

The applications of gamification and the contexts in which game elements can be successfully incorporated have grown significantly over the years. They now include the fields of health, education, work, the media and many others. However, the human and social sciences still neglect the analysis and critique of gamification.

Research conducted in this area tends to focus on game objects and not gamification's logic as its ideological dimension. Considering that the game, as a model and a reference, laden with social value, deserves to be questioned beyond its objects, The

Gamification of Society gathers together texts, observations and criticisms that question the influence that games and their mechanics have on wider society. The empirical research presented in this book (examining designers' practices, early childhood, political action, the quantified self, etc.) also probes several different national contexts – those of Norway, Belgium, the United States and France, among others.

Pregnancy is a time when women need to be prepared mentally and physically to meet the challenges of childbirth and the transitions to parenthood. However, this needs to be within the realms of safe practice. The study on which this book is based is derived from the author's work as a midwife with a special interest in exercise. The main aims of the study were to investigate the effects of undertaking a regular exercise programme during and following pregnancy on psychological well-being, pregnancy and birth outcomes. Data were collected at three time points during and following pregnancy using a variety of outcome measures and were analysed using appropriate statistical testing. Conclusions were drawn indicating that women who participated in regular physical activity tended to have protection against reduction of psychological well-being as measured by a variety of psychological constructs.

Employees have a set of needs as part of the 'psychological contract' of employment. However, organizations operate for a reason and they too have agendas and needs. It is how the two come together that determines the capacity for good human relations and optimum productivity. Employee Well-being Support is an edited collection of expert contributions that explores all key issues in this increasingly critical area.

Promoting the satisfaction, commitment, mental health and well-being of employees is important not only in itself, but also because evidence shows that those who are positive in these respects respond better to change and are more productive. Measures of Job Satisfaction, Organisational Commitment, Mental Health and Job-related Well-being is a unique source of benchmarking data across four widely used questionnaire methods, that provides up-to-date data drawn from 60,000 respondents in 170 organisations across a wide range of industries and occupations. The data is split by sector and occupational group, with the latter broken down further by age and gender, creating a must-have for those using these scales and seeking to benchmark their progress.