Books on the topic 'Social Choice Function'

Recently, public policies of urban regeneration have intensified and multiplied. They are being promoted with the aim to start social and economic dynamics within the local context which is subject to intervention. From the empirical analysis, we realise that such activities are mainly implemented by three subjects or by mixed coalitions (public institutions, actors of the third sector and companies). Within them, each player is moved by a multiplicity of interests and goals that go beyond their own nature – public interest, market and mutualism – and tend to redefine themselves, thus becoming hybrid forms of production of value (social, economic, cultural). By studying a number Italian and Catalan cases, this essay deals with the theory that, under specific conditions and configurations, a collaborative direction – of organization, production and design – would give life to successful procedures, even without the identification of a one-best-way. The collaboration is not simply a choice of operation, but a real production method which mobilises social resources to create hybrid solutions – between state, market and society – to complex issues that could not be faced solely with the use of the rationale of action of one among the three actors. In this framework, the systems of relations and interactions between players and shared capital become an essential condition for the success of every initiative of urban redevelopment, or failure thereof. Such initiatives are brought to life by the strategic role of individuals who foster connections as well as the dissemination of non-redundant information between social networks, and collective and individual actors which would otherwise be separated and barely able to communicate and collaborate with each other. In addition to the functions carried out by knowledge brokers, that have been extensively described in organisational studies and economic sociology, the aforementioned figures act as real social enzymes, that is to say, they handle the available information and function as catalysts of social processes of production of knowledge. Moreover, they increase the reaction speed, working on mechanisms which control the spontaneity.

The research aims to analyse the concept of the 'holiday home' in Italy, a phenomenon that is not very well known and not given sufficient visibility in the tourism sector. The objective is to grasp the role and the degree of response that the holiday homes can offer in order to consolidate a genuinely social and sustainable tourism, which is the specific feature of the Associazione di Promozione Sociale Santa Lucia. The holiday homes represent an efficacious response to the emerging motivations for travel and a new sensitivity towards social and sustainable tourism. The growing opportunities for this sector call for reflection on the mission and future positioning of the holiday homes within the tourist reception panorama, with the deriving choices relating to: the offer, consisting of values more than of services; the functions fulfilled, intimately bound up with the demands of the individual and the territory; the quality of the service, which is not generic but linked to the functions and can be measured in line with objective and subjective parameters. Strategic awareness, managerial capacity and elevated professionalism at all levels are the factors of legitimisation and success of this original reception formula.

This chapter provides an introduction to the use of social welfare functions in welfare economics and social choice theory for the comparative evaluation of social alternatives. With a social welfare function, social preferences depend on individual well-beings. These well-beings are expressed in terms of either preferences or utilities. Three main approaches are considered: Bergson-Samuelson social welfare functions, Arrovian social welfare functions, and Sen’s social welfare functionals. How the measurability and comparability of utility can be modeled and how limitations on the types of utility comparisons that are possible restrict the kinds of social welfare functions that can be considered is also discussed. Extensive social choice theory is used to deal with heterogeneous opinions about how to make utility comparisons.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article.Narrowly understood, social choice theory is a specialized branch of applied logic and mathematics that analyzes abstract objects called preference aggregation functions, social welfare functions, and social choice functions. But more broadly, social choice theory identifies, analyzes, and evaluates rules that may be used to make collective decisions. So understood, social choice is a subfield of the social sciences that examines what may be called “voting rules” of various sorts. While social choice theory typically assumes a finite set of alternatives over which voter preferences are unrestricted, the spatial model of social choice assumes that policy alternatives can be represented by points in a space of one or more dimensions, and that voters have preferences that are plausibly shaped by this spatial structure.Social choice theory has considerable relevance for the study of legislative (as well as electoral) institutions. The concepts and tools of social choice theory make possible formal descriptions of legislative institutions such as bicameralism, parliamentary voting procedures, effects of decision rules (e.g., supramajority vs. simple majority rule and executive veto rules), sincere vs. strategic voting by legislators, agenda control, and other parliamentary maneuvers. Spatial models of social choice further enrich this analysis and raise additional questions regarding policy stability and change. Spatial models are used increasingly to guide empirical research on legislative institutions and processes.

American culture highlights the power of individuals to steer their own course and be masters of their own destiny. In American cultural context, low place in social hierarchy due to low socioeconomic status is taken to imply some deficiency in the persons who occupy this place. This association seems bidirectional: Low place is stigmatizing, and membership in a negatively marked group implies low place in social hierarchy. Low place in social hierarchy limits individuals’ choice and experienced control, influencing identity-based motivational processes. Identity-based motivation theory and its three components: dynamic construction of identity, action-readiness, and procedural-readiness, are used to articulate the health consequences of this interplay. The identities that come to mind and what these identities imply for health is a function of momentary and chronic context. Accessible identities can elicit health-promoting or health-undermining behaviors and interpretations of experienced difficulty. This has implications for intervention.

Because of the limited range of treatments available for ALS, care is centred on maximizing quality of life (QoL). There is no universal definition of QoL, and no single instrument of choice with which to measure it. Health-related QoL (HRQOL) refers to physical and mental health status, whereas global QoL incorporates socioeconomic and existential factors outside the medical realm. Instruments for measuring may be generic or disease-specific. With the exception of bulbar function, QoL in patients with ALS is largely independent of physical strength and function, but is related to psychological and existential factors, and possibly to social supports, religiosity, and multidisciplinary clinic care. The ‘response shift’ phenomenon generally results in stable QoL over time in those with ALS. The choice of a QoL instrument depends on the goals of the user, and depends on whether it is being used for individual clinical care, measuring research outcomes, or assessing groups of individuals.

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a central concept in climate change economics. This chapter explains the SCC and investigates it philosophically. As is widely acknowledged, any SCC calculation requires the analyst to make choices about the infamous topic of discount rates. But to understand the nature and role of discount rates, one must understand how each of these economic concepts—and indeed the SCC concept itself—is yoked to the concept of a value function, whose job is to take ways the world could be across indefinite timespans and to rank them from better to worse. A great deal, therefore, turns on the details of the value function and on just what is meant by “better” and “worse.” This chapter seeks to explicate these and related issues, and then to situate them within the evolving landscape of federal climate policy in the United States.

This chapter examines how Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s comic opera Le Nozze di Figaro was affected by the practice of censorship during the Josephine Enlightenment. It first discusses three aspects of Le Nozze di Figaro’s genesis as mentioned by Lorenzo Da Ponte: Mozart’s choice of the stage play La folle journée by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais; the remarkably quick working out of the score; and permission for performance. It then analyzes the circumstances surrounding the censoring of Beaumarchais’s performance of La folle journée and the opera’s release. It also evaluates freedom of the press and censorship in Austria under Joseph II, who accelerated and radicalized the implementation of reforms in the spirit of a controlled enlightenment. Finally, the chapter considers Beaumarchais’s theory of comedy in which he emphasized the social function of theater, albeit not in the political sense that was claimed in the subsequent reception of Figaro.

Dances and balls appear throughout literature as a place for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships: as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo and Juliet can attest, dance scenes provide an opportunity for writers to criticize societal expectations about courtship and partner choice, while simultaneously entertaining their readers. In this book, Sonia Gollance examines Jewish mixed-gender dancing in German and Yiddish literature, arguing that dance provides a powerful lens for understanding Jewish acculturation, secularization, and modernization. Gollance examines the specific literary qualities of dance scenes, such as the parallels between dance figures and plot structures, while also paying close attention to the broader social implications of Jewish engagement with dance during in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While traditional Jewish dance was among men only (or women only), mixed-sex dancing was the very sign of modernity, and thus a charged and complex arena for understanding the limits of acculturation, the dangers of class mixing, and the role of erotic engagement in modernization. Gollance’s book is organized around the spaces in which mixed dancing would take place: the tavern, the ballroom, the wedding, and the dance hall. Gollance also draws connections between the cultural history of social dance and contemporary popular culture, illustrating how mixed-sex dancing continues to function as a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions.

Although most will be at least somewhat familiar with the biological role hormones play during puberty and pregnancy, many are likely unaware that hormones—chemical messengers that are secreted by cells and that travel through the body to reach specialized receptors—impact multiple aspects of our lives from conception onward. Behavioral endocrinology and evolutionary psychology are complementary disciplines wherein scholars seek to understand human behavior. Evolutionary psychologists contend that human psychology and behavior are functional outcomes of natural and sexual selection pressures encountered in the ancestral environment. In this view, selection pressures designed adaptations of the mind and body, which produce behavior through a variety of psychological, neurological, and physiological mechanisms. Behavioral endocrinologists study the hormonal and neuroendocrine mechanisms that influence or regulate behavior. They investigate these bidirectional relationships between hormones and behavior using measured, estimated, or manipulated circulating hormone levels, or by studying the associated biological circuitry. Understanding how hormones function as underlying mechanisms for potentially adaptive responses in specific environmental contexts informs an evolutionary perspective on human psychology. This book explores various topics within behavioral endocrinology from an evolutionary perspective. Each chapter explores a subtopic within one of three themes: (1) development and survival, (2) reproductive behavior, and (3) social and affective behavior. Current knowledge on diverse subjects, such as hormonal influences on life history strategy, mate choice, aggression, human hierarchical structure, mood disorders, and more, is outlined and exciting future directions are discussed. The intersection of evolutionary psychology and behavioral endocrinology affords compelling research into human psychophysiology.

For more than a decade, Melbourne has had the fastest-growing population of any Australian capital city. It is expanding outward while also growing upward through vast new high-rise developments in the inner suburbs. With an estimated 1.6 million additional homes needed by 2050, planners and policymakers need to address current and emerging issues of amenity, function, productive capacity and social cohesion today. Planning Melbourne reflects on planning since the post-war era, but focuses in particular on the past two decades and the ways that key government policies and influential individuals and groups have shaped the city during this time. The book examines past debates and policies, the choices planners have faced and the mistakes and sound decisions that have been made. Current issues are also addressed, including housing affordability, transport choices, protection of green areas and heritage and urban consolidation. If Melbourne’s identity is to be shaped as a prospering, socially integrated and environmentally sustainable city, a new approach to governance and spatial planning is needed and this book provides a call to action.

This chapter looks at the relevance of the concept of ‘differentiation’ for the study of religion. Differentiation plays a major part in most explanations of secularization, but it is important to distinguish two different senses of the term. Social differentiation—social division resulting primarily from the division of labor in modernizing nations—is normally secularizing due to the fragmentation of overarching religious institutions into competing sects and denominations. This is correlated with increased religious pluralism, which is generally secularizing, due to decreasing dogmatism. Functional (or structural) differentiation has important implication for religion: as religion becomes separated off as a discrete subsystem, it loses power and influence. The creation of secular alternatives leads to a decline in the popularity of religious services. The chapter argues that claims that modernization is characterized by de-differentiation—as advanced by rational choice theory/supply-side approaches—are unconvincing.

Low morale can develop from a sense of poor coping with a predicament that cannot be changed, often encountered with progressive diseases like advanced cancer. The prevalence of clinically significant demoralization in patients with cancer is 15%. Demoralization can be diagnosed when a poor sense of coping is associated with low morale, reduced hope, and a sense of feeling stuck, with related symptoms of feeling helpless, pointless or purposeless, and with doubts about the value of continued life. Meaning-based coping may need to be evoked to reduce the accompanying distress and social and functional impairment that can develop. Diagnoses like demoralization syndrome, adjustment disorder with demoralization, and major depression with demoralization help to guide the optimal choice of treatment. Cognitively informed and existentially oriented therapies can help to restore morale and sustain engagement with the living.

Contrary to a common picture of relationships in a market economy, people often express communal and membership-seeking impulses via consumption choices, purchasing goods and services because other people are doing so as well. Shared identities are maintained and created in this way. Solidarity goods are goods whose value increases as the number of people enjoying them increases. Exclusivity goods are goods whose value decreases as the number of people enjoying them increases. Distinctions can be drawn among diverse value functions, capturing diverse relationships between the value of goods and the value of shared or unshared consumption. Though markets spontaneously produce solidarity goods, individuals sometimes have difficulty in producing such goods on their own, or in coordinating on choosing them. Here law has a potential role. There are implications for trend setting, clubs, partnerships, national events, social cascades, and compliance without enforcement.

This book investigates the role of context in affecting political opinion formation and voting behavior. Building on a model of contextual effects on individual-level voter behavior, the chapters of this volume explore contextual effects in Germany in the early twenty-first century. The contributions draw on manifold combinations of individual and contextual information gathered in the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) framework and employ advanced methods. In substantive terms, they investigate the impact of campaign communication on political learning, the effects of media coverage on the perceived importance of political problems, and the role of electoral competition on candidate strategies and perceptions. Other contributions deal with the role of social and economic contexts as well as parties’ policy stances in affecting electoral turnout. The chapters on vote choice explore the impact of social cues on candidate voting, effects of electoral arenas on vote functions, the role of media coverage on ideological voting, and effects of campaign communication on the timing of electoral decision-making. The volume demonstrates the key role of the processes of communication and politicization in bringing about contextual effects. Context thus plays a nuanced role in voting behavior. The contingency of contextual effects suggests that they should become an important topic in research on political behavior and democratic politics.

Abstract This work examines closely the constitution-centered proposition on political legitimacy, offered by John Rawls in Political Liberalism in response to the problem posed for government by consent by facts of deep-lying disagreement among citizens. An answer, Rawls thought, could lie in the possibility of a framework law for a society’s politics—a “constitution,” including a bill of rights—that all, despite other disagreements, could find reason to accept. The work offers explication of the thought behind Rawls’s proposal, while also placing it in relation to a duality of functions—–“regulatory” and “justificatory”—for which lawyers in constitutional-democratic societies typically look to their countries’ bodies of constitutional law. Conflicts in practical implications from these functional attributions, the work suggests, can help explain the persistence of debates in constitutional-democratic venues over topics ranging from choices between “legal” and “political”—or between “written” and “unwritten”—constitutions, to thinness versus thickness in formulations of constitutional principles and guarantees, the place of constitutional fidelity among liberal political virtues, activism versus restraint in the conduct of judicial constitutional review, original-meaning versus moral-reading approaches to constitutional interpretation, and extension of constitutional substantive guarantees beyond negative restraints on the government to take in affirmative state obligations for satisfaction of the basic material needs of citizens, and for protection of them against oppression from nongovernmental social powers. The book also looks into whether some later-arriving work from Rawls signifies modification of the procedurally dependent basis for political justification than it finds in the first edition of Political Liberalism.

This chapter addresses how camps functioned as sites of rebellion and daily acts of resistance. As camps transitioned from military to civilian control, they developed conflicting regimes of discipline with competing definitions of physical and political freedom. Camp authorities and refugees struggled to determine whether refugees could enter and leave the camps freely, and if they could choose where and when to settle. The chapter considers how camp authorities sought to limit refugees’ freedoms and what rationales they offered—within a liberal democratic society—for these restrictions. In Britain, refugee camps dramatized the tensions around mobility (physical, social, and political) that characterize democratic states and selves.

This chapter analyses the political economy of continuity in Mexico. High levels of patenting and accentuated transnational dominance of the pharmaceutical industry, both functions of the choices of the 1990s, created an environment that was inhospitable to efforts to reform the new pharmaceutical patent system. The chapter examines a set of revisions to the new pharmaceutical patent regime in the 2000s, all of which were resolved to the benefit of patent-holders seeking greater rights of exclusion. The analysis demonstrates that persistent over-compliance was not because of Mexico’s obligations under NAFTA, but rather despite the opportunities for tailoring that were allowed by this agreement. Within-case comparative analysis offered by these case studies provides variation on the preferences of health officials in the Mexican Executive, the interests and strategies of the local pharmaceutical sector, Mexico’s sensitivity to external pressures, yet the outcomes were similar, as a result of Mexico’s changed social structure.

The Aesthetic Animal answers the ultimate questions of why we adorn ourselves; embellish our things and surroundings; and produce art, music, song, dance, and fiction. Humans are aesthetic animals that spend vast amounts of time and resources on seemingly useless aesthetic activities. However, nature would not allow a species to waste precious time and effort on activities completely unrelated to the survival, reproduction, and well-being of that species. Consequently, the aesthetic impulse must have some important biological functions. An impulse is a natural, internal behavioral incentive that does not need external reward to exist. A number of observations indicate that the aesthetic impulse is exactly such an inherent part of human nature, and therefore it is a primary impulse in its own right with several important functions. The aesthetic impulse may guide us toward what is biologically good for us and help us choose the right fitness-enhancing items in our surroundings. It is a valid individual fitness indicator, as well as a unifying social group marker, and aesthetically skilled individuals get more mating possibilities, higher status, and more collaborative offers. This book is written in a lively and entertaining tone, and it presents an original and comprehensive synthesis of the empirical field, synthesizing data from archeology, cave art, anthropology, biology, ethology, and experimental and evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics.

Criminal justice used to be thought of as a field autonomous from politics and the economy, with the management of crime and punishment being seen as essentially the responsibility of government. However, in recent decades, policies have been adopted which blur the institutional boundaries and functions of the public sector with those of for-profit and civil society interests in many parts of the penal/welfare complex. The impact of these developments on society is contested: Proponents of the ‘neo-liberal penality thesis’ argue economic deregulation, welfare retrenchment, individualised choices – and associated responsibility – may be aligned by market forces into efficient delivery of ‘law and order’. Set against the neo-liberal penal position are arguments that the corporate sector may be no more efficient in delivering criminal justice services than is the public sector, and reliance on the profit motive to deliver criminal justice may lead to perverse incentivisation of NGOs or state agencies. It is to this debate we add our contribution. Criminal justice is an ideal sector in which to consider the implications arising from the differing incentive structures held by different institutions, both private and public, citizens, governments, social enterprise and the corporate sector. All agree on the need for criminal justice, even as they compete in the policy sphere to dictate its form and delivery.

Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Adolescents: Workbook (UP-A) provides evidence-based treatment strategies to assist adolescent clients to function better in their lives. This treatment is designed for adolescents who are experiencing feelings of sadness, anxiety, worry, anger, or other emotions that get in the way of their ability to enjoy their lives and feel successful. The workbook is written for adolescents and guides them through each week of the program with education, activities, and examples that will help them to understand the role that emotions play in their behaviors every day. Adolescents are taught helpful strategies for dealing with uncomfortable emotions and will receive support in making choices that will move them closer to their long-term goals. The evidence-based treatment skills presented in the accompanying Therapist Guide may be applied by the therapist to adolescents with a wide variety of emotional disorders. The UP-A takes a transdiagnostic approach to the treatment of the emotional disorders. Some of the disorders that may be targeted include anxiety disorders (e.g., generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, specific phobias, panic disorder, illness anxiety disorder, agoraphobia) and depressive disorders (e.g., persistent depressive disorder, major depressive disorder). This treatment is flexible enough for use with some trauma and stress-related disorders (including adjustment disorders), somatic symptom disorders, tic disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. The transdiagnostic presentation of evidence-based intervention techniques within these treatments may be particularly useful for adolescents presenting with multiple emotional disorders or mixed/subclinical symptoms of several emotional disorders.

This book examines the 1898 anti-Jewish riots in western and central Galicia, the Habsburg province acquired in the eighteenth century partitions of Poland and now divided between Poland and Ukraine. This volume explores how Jewish-Catholic relations functioned; how antisemitic tropes and writings gained traction at local levels even in regions with high rates of illiteracy; how the Habsburg state provided or attempted to provide stability and law and order to its far-flung provinces in the decades before World War I. At the center of interest are the choices made and actions taken on the ground by peasants, townspeople, Jews, local officials, as well as the interpretations imposed on these actions by interested parties farther removed from the scene. This book considers the new forms of political organization and virulent Catholic antisemitism that facilitated the transformation of confrontations between Catholics and Jews into a series of attacks moving from town square to village tavern while drawing ever greater numbers of people as participants in or objects of communal violence. The 1898 anti-Jewish riots and their aftermath—mass arrests, trials, political mobilization, and government and military intervention—did not simply arise from Galician backwardness. This examination of the experience of anti-Jewish violence in this rural corner of the Habsburg Monarchy is a local study of European-wide political, economic, social, and cultural transformation.

Global Migration beyond Limits carefully considers but ultimately rejects the idea that migration is driven by the choices of individual migrants, and instead starts from the idea that institutions shape all forms, forces, and functions of migration. Of these institutions, however, land is central, whether in internal migration, international migration, or global migration. Historically or currently, the evidence also clearly shows that migration and migrants transform both the sites where migrants are resident and the places from which migrants travelled. The change is more transformational than previous accounts have established, sometimes involving turning around dead cities and towns into vibrant local economies and reconstructing food networks for entire regions and nations. This book also raises serious analytical questions about three bodies of literature: mainstream economic accounts of migration, environment, and inequality; mainstream sustainability science and alternatives to it (e.g. ecological economics); and conservative and nativist claims about population problems and alternatives to them centred only on the freedom that a borderless world could create. Obeng-Odoom argues that much of the crisis of migration and sustainability can be understood as a reflection of global long-term inequalities and cumulative stratification, reflected at different scales in the global system, though the form of migration is conditioned by more than economic forces. The so-called migration crisis, therefore, seems quite routine and familiar. It is an outward expression of the political-economic system in which socially created value is privately appropriated as rents by a privileged few who use institutions such land and property rights, race, ethnicity, class, and gender to keep others in their place in the global economic and stratification ladder.

The turn of the 20th and 21st centuries has been a very dynamic period of change in Poland and around the world; also a period of change in thinking about the economy and agriculture. The present work is a study of the decline, divestments and development of agriculture in the areas of fragmented farming structure. The reflections presented herein, upon the processes of the remodelling of agrarian structures, of divestments in farming, and disagrarisation, are mostly anchored in the achievements of the theory of spatial economy (land management), and the microeconomic theories of choice, including the theory of an agricultural holding (farm) and land rent theories. The work focuses on the economic issues of remodelling the agrarian structure, but due to the nature of the issues discussed herein, specifically in relation to family-owned farms, the social and environmental aspects also needed to be taken into account – in response to the need for a heterogeneous approach, which is increasingly stressed in economic sciences today. The main objective of the research was to diagnose and assess the scale and scope of the mechanisms and processes that inform the decline and growth of agricultural holdings in the areas with fragmented farming structure. The study covered the area comprising four regions (provinces) of south-eastern Poland, which – according to the FADN nomenclature – form the macro region of Małopolska and Pogórze. The study of subject literature has been enriched with an analysis of available statistics; data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN); information obtained from the Department of Programming and Reporting at the Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture; and author’s own research conducted among farm owners. The information thus obtained made it possible to: • Determine the theoretical premises for the spatial diversity of agriculture, and the role of small farms in the shaping of agrarian structure. • Adapt the concept of “divestment” for the description and analysis of the phenomena occurring in agriculture. • Indicate the role and importance of the processes of divestment and disagrarisation in the restructuring of agriculture. • Assess the natural, social and economic determinants of the process of restructuring agriculture in areas with fragmented farming structure. • Assess selected aspects of economic efficiency of agriculture in areas with fragmented farming structure, with the focus on small and micro farms. • Carry out an ex ante evaluation of the impact of agricultural policy instruments on the process of restructuring of agriculture in the macro region of Małopolska and Pogórze. • Identify the indicators of decline and fall, and barriers to the liquidation of farms. • Assess the relationship between the level of socio-economic development, the structure of farming, and the quality of agricultural production space in a given territorial unit, versus the intensity of the economic and production disagrarisation processes in agricultural holdings. • Propose targeted solutions conducive to the improvement of the farming structure in areas with a high framentation of agriculture. Observation of the processes occurring in agriculture, and the scientific theories created on the basis thereof, have shown that even the smallest farms have a chance to continue in existence, provided that we are able to positively verify their adaptation to the changing conditions in the environment. Carrying out farming activity is a prerequisite for implementing the economic, social and environmental functions associated with family farms. At the same time, based on the analyses performed, we need to assume that the advanced processes of the production and economic disagrarisation of agricultural holdings are to a greater extent determined by the anatomical features of agriculture, and by the natural conditions, than by the level of socio-economic development of the given territorial unit. In the current economic climate, the remodelling of the agrarian structure is only possible with the active participation of the institutions responsible for the creation of economic growth and agricultural policy development. It is extremely important from the point of view of environmental protection, and the viability of rural areas, to support small farms engaged in agricultural activities, and to introduce such instruments that will enable the replacement of an economic collapse with divestments, carried out in a planned manner, and allowing for thus released agricultural resources to find alternative application in units with a higher development potential. The area of theoretical research requiring further exploration includes the issues such as transactional costs of the liquidation of agricultural holdings, and the assessment of the economic effectiveness of conducting divestments.

In the UK, belief, and faith are protected under the legal frame of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) and the Equality Act 2010 (Perfect 2016, 11), in which a person is given the right to hold a religion or belief and the right to change their religion or belief. It also gives them a right to show that belief as long as the display or expression does not interfere with public safety, public order, health or morals, or the rights and freedoms of others (Equality Act 2010). The Equality Act 2010 protects employees from discrimination, harassment and victimisation because of religion or belief. Religion or belief are mainly divided into religion and religious belief, and philosophical belief (Equality Act 2010, chap. 1). The Dialogue Society supports the Equality Act 2010 (Perfect 2016, 11). Consequently, The Dialogue Society believes we have a duty to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations within our organisation and society. The Dialogue Society aims to promote equality and human rights by empowering people and bringing social issues to light. To this end, we have organised many projects, research, courses, scriptural reasoning readings/gatherings, and panel discussions specifically on interfaith dialogue, having open conversations around belief and religion. To encourage dialogue, interaction and cooperation between people working on interreligious dialogue and to demonstrate good interfaith relations and dialogue are integral and essential for peace and social cohesion in our society, the Dialogue Society has been a medium, facilitating a platform to all from faith and non-faith backgrounds. The Dialogue Society thrives on being more inclusive to those who might be overlooked in society as a group. Although women seem to be in the core of society as an essential element, the women who contravene the monotype identity tend to remain in the shadows. The media is not just used to get information but also used as a way of having a sense of belonging by the audience. The media creates collective imaginary identities for public opinion. It gathers the audience under one consensus and creates an identity for the people who share this consensus. Hence, a form of media functions as a medium for identity creation and representation. Therefore, the production and reproduction of stereotypes and a monotype representation of women and women of faith in media content are the primary sources of the public's general attitudes towards women of faith. In the context of this report, the media limits not only women's gender but also their religious identity. The monotype identity of women opposes the plurality of the concept of women. Notably, media outlets are criticised for not recognising the differences in women's identities. Women of faith are susceptible to the lack of representation or misrepresentation and get stuck between the roles constructed for their gender and religion. Women who do not fit in these policies' stereotypes get misrepresented or disregarded by the media. Moreover, policymakers also limit their scope to a single monotype of women's identity when policies are made, creating a public consensus around women of faith. As both these mediums lack representation or have very symbolic and distorted representations of women of faith, we strive to provide a platform for all women from faith and non-faith backgrounds. The Dialogue Society has organised women-only community events for women of faith to have a bottom-up approach, including interfaith knitting, reading, and cooking clubs. Several women-only courses have informed women of the importance of interfaith dialogue, promoting current best practices, and identifying and promoting promising future possibilities. We have hosted panel discussions and held women-only interfaith circles where women from different faith backgrounds came together to discuss boundaries within religion and what they believed to transgress their boundaries. Consequently, we organised a panel series to focus on the roles of women of faith within different areas of society, aiming to highlight their unique individual and shared experiences and bring to light issues of inequality that impact women of faith. Although women of faith exist within all areas of society, we chose to explore women's experiences within three different settings to give a breadth of understanding about women of faith's interactions within society. Therefore, we held a panel series titled 'Women of Faith', including three panels, each focusing on a particular area: Women of Faith in Community, Women of Faith in Public Service, and Women of Faith in Media. In this report, following the content analysis method to systematically sort the information gathered by the panel series, we have written a series of recommendations to address these issues in media and policymaking. This paper has a section on specific policy recommendations for those in decision-making positions in the community, public service, and media, according to the content and findings gathered. This report aims to initiate and provide interactive and transferable advice and guidance to those in a position. The policy paper gives insight to social workers, teachers, council members, liaison officers, academics and relevant stakeholders, policymakers, and people who wish to understand more about empowering women of faith and hearing their experiences. It also aims to inspire ongoing efforts and further action to accelerate the achievement of complete freedom of faith, gender equality in promoting, recommending, and implementing direct top-level policies for faith and gender equality, and ensuring that existing policies are gender-sensitive and practices are safe from gender-based and faith-based discrimination for women of faith. Finally, this report is to engage and illustrate the importance of allyship, the outstanding achievement through dialogue based on real-life experience, and facilitate resilient relationships among people of different religious positions. We call upon every reader of this report to join the efforts of the Dialogue Society in promoting an equal society for women of faith.

Economy and mankind are inextricably interlinked. Just as the economy or the production of material wealth is unimaginable without a man, so human existence and development are impossible without the wealth created in the economy. Shortly, both the goal and the means of achieving and realization of the economy are still the human resources. People have long ago noticed that it was the economy that created livelihoods, and the delays in their production led to the catastrophic events such as hunger, poverty, civil wars, social upheavals, revolutions, moral degeneration, and more. Therefore, the special interest of people in understanding the regulatory framework of the functioning of the economy has existed and exists in all historical epochs [A. Sisvadze. Economic theory. Part One. 2006y. p. 22]. The system of economic disciplines studies economy or economic activities of a society. All of them are based on science, which is currently called economic theory in the post-socialist space (the science of economics, the principles of economics or modern economics), and in most countries of the world - predominantly in the Greek-Latin manner - economics. The title of the present book is also Modern Economics. Economics (economic theory) is the science that studies the efficient use of limited resources to produce and distribute goods and services in order to satisfy as much as possible the unlimited needs and demands of the society. More simply, economics is the science of choice and how society manages its limited resources. Moreover, it should be emphasized that economics (economic theory) studies only the distribution, exchange and consumption of the economic wealth (food, beverages, clothing, housing, machine tools, computers, services, etc.), the production of which is possible and limited. And the wealth that exists indefinitely: no economic relations are formed in the production and distribution of solar energy, air, and the like. This current book is the second complete updated edition of the challenges of the modern global economy in the context of the coronary crisis, taking into account some of the priority directions of the country's development. Its purpose is to help students and interested readers gain a thorough knowledge of economics and show them how this knowledge can be applied pragmatically (professionally) in professional activities or in everyday life. To achieve this goal, this textbook, which consists of two parts and tests, discusses in simple and clear language issues such as: the essence of economics as a science, reasons for origin, purpose, tasks, usefulness and functions; Basic principles, problems and peculiarities of economics in different economic systems; Needs and demand, the essence of economic resources, types and limitations; Interaction, mobility, interchangeability and efficient use of economic resources. The essence and types of wealth; The essence, types and models of the economic system; The interaction of households and firms in the market of resources and products; Market mechanism and its elements - demand, supply and price; Demand and supply elasticity; Production costs and the ways to reduce them; Forms of the market - perfect and incomplete competition markets and their peculiarities; Markets for Production Factors and factor incomes; The essence of macroeconomics, causes and importance of origin; The essence and calculation of key macroeconomic indicators (gross national product, gross domestic product, net national product, national income, etc.); Macroeconomic stability and instability, unemployment, inflation and anti-inflationary policies; State regulation of the economy and economic policy; Monetary and fiscal policy; Income and standard of living; Economic Growth; The Corona Pandemic as a Defect and Effect of Globalization; National Economic Problems and New Opportunities for Development in the conditions of the Coronary Crisis; The Socio-economic problems of moral obsolescence in digital technologies; Education and creativity are the main solution way to overcome the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus; Positive and negative effects of tourism in Georgia; Formation of the middle class as a contributing factor to the development of tourism in Georgia; Corporate culture in Georgian travel companies, etc. The axiomatic truth is that economics is the union of people in constant interaction. Given that the behavior of the economy reflects the behavior of the people who make up the economy, after clarifying the essence of the economy, we move on to the analysis of the four principles of individual decision-making. Furtermore, the book describes how people make independent decisions. The key to making an individual decision is that people have to choose from alternative options, that the value of any action is measured by the value of what must be given or what must be given up to get something, that the rational, smart people make decisions based on the comparison of the marginal costs and marginal returns (benefits), and that people behave accordingly to stimuli. Afterwards, the need for human interaction is then analyzed and substantiated. If a person is isolated, he will have to take care of his own food, clothes, shoes, his own house and so on. In the case of such a closed economy and universalization of labor, firstly, its productivity will be low and, secondly, it will be able to consume only what it produces. It is clear that human productivity will be higher and more profitable as a result of labor specialization and the opportunity to trade with others. Indeed, trade allows each person to specialize, to engage in the activities that are most successful, be it agriculture, sewing or construction, and to buy more diverse goods and services from others at a relatively lower price. The key to such human interactions is that trade is mutually beneficial; That markets are usually the good means of coordination between people and that the government can improve the results of market functioning if the market reveals weakness or the results of market functioning are not fair. Moroever, it also shows how the economy works as a whole. In particular, it is argued that productivity is a key determinant of living standards, that an increase in the money supply is a major source of inflation, and that one of the main impediments to avoiding inflation is the existence of an alternative between inflation and unemployment in the short term, that the inflation decrease causes the temporary decline in unemployement and vice versa. The Understanding creatively of all above mentioned issues, we think, will help the reader to develop market economy-appropriate thinking and rational economic-commercial-financial behaviors, to be more competitive in the domestic and international labor markets, and thus to ensure both their own prosperity and the functioning of the country's economy. How he/she copes with the tasks, it is up to the individual reader to decide. At the same time, we will receive all the smart useful advices with a sense of gratitude and will take it into account in the further work. We also would like to thank the editor and reviewers of the books. Finally, there are many things changing, so it is very important to realize that the XXI century has come: 1. The century of the new economy; 2. Age of Knowledge; 3. Age of Information and economic activities are changing in term of innovations. 1. Why is the 21st century the century of the new economy? Because for this period the economic resources, especially non-productive, non-recoverable ones (oil, natural gas, coal, etc.) are becoming increasingly limited. According to the World Energy Council, there are currently 43 years of gas and oil reserves left in the world (see “New Commersant 2007 # 2, p. 16). Under such conditions, sustainable growth of real gross domestic product (GDP) and maximum satisfaction of uncertain needs should be achieved not through the use of more land, labor and capital (extensification), but through more efficient use of available resources (intensification) or innovative economy. And economics, as it was said, is the science of finding the ways about the more effective usage of the limited resources. At the same time, with the sustainable growth and development of the economy, the present needs must be met in a way that does not deprive future generations of the opportunity to meet their needs; 2. Why is the 21st century the age of knowledge? Because in a modern economy, it is not land (natural resources), labor and capital that is crucial, but knowledge. Modern production, its factors and products are not time-consuming and capital-intensive, but science-intensive, knowledge-intensive. The good example of this is a Japanese enterprise (firm) where the production process is going on but people are almost invisible, also, the result of such production (Japanese product) is a miniature or a sample of how to get the maximum result at the lowest cost; 3. Why is the 21st century the age of information? Because the efficient functioning of the modern economy, the effective organization of the material and personal factors of production largely depend on the right governance decision. The right governance decision requires prompt and accurate information. Gone are the days when the main means of transport was a sailing ship, the main form of data processing was pencil and paper, and the main means of transmitting information was sending letters through a postman on horseback. By the modern transport infrastructure (highways, railways, ships, regular domestic and international flights, oil and gas pipelines, etc.), the movement of goods, services and labor resoucres has been significantly accelerated, while through the modern means of communication (mobile phone, internet, other) the information is spreading rapidly globally, which seems to have "shrunk" the world and made it a single large country. The Authors of the book: Ushangi Samadashvili, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University - Introduction, Chapters - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11,12, 15,16, 17.1,18 , Tests, Revaz Shengelia, Doctor of Economics, Professor of Georgian Technical University, Chapters_7, 8, 13. 14, 17.2, 17.4; Zhuzhuna Tsiklauri - Doctor of Economics, Professor of Georgian Technical University - Chapters 13.6, 13.7,17.2, 17.3, 18. We also thank the editor and reviewers of the book.