Suchergebnisse

Neoliberal approaches to urban restructuring may favor the wealthier and more powerful, but neoliberalism alone cannot account for the varied outcomes found among poor urban residents. Using field studies and documentary research on five cities in French-speaking West Africa and India, this study looks comparatively at how different groups use multiple forms of power to pursue individual and collective benefits. Dominant structures produced contradictory discourses that created spaces that served as terrains of struggle between the more and less powerful. Rich and poor created cross-class alliances that sometimes brought incremental benefits to the poor; the poor also used their agency to pursue individual advancement and collective resistance. These efforts have not changed the basic structures, but they have improved urban living conditions.

This article draws on fieldwork in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, where nearly half of the residents are immigrants from the Former Soviet Union, and argues that the immigrants‐turned‐settlers of the 1990s and beyond are the subjects of contemporary normalizing procedures. This renders them the quintessential neoliberal settlers, amenable to market‐adjusted fluctuations in settlement patterns that include opportune expansion, depreciation, and dismantlement. A discussion of immigration in Ariel illustrates an ex post facto politics in the West Bank that puts into relief some of the conundrums of the Israel‐Palestine conflict. The ethnography establishes that it is precisely through their pragmatism that immigrant‐settlers become political agents despite themselves: a conclusion that has serious consequences for the Israel‐Palestine conflict in general.

In this theoretical article we propose an approach to the spatial implications of homeworking derived from the work of social theorist Henri Lefebvre. By highlighting the processes involved in the inherently contested and (re)constructed nature of space in the demarcated home/work environment we draw on Lefebvre to suggest a collapse of this demarcation. We consider the impact of such a collapse on questions relating to the rewards and challenges of home-based work for both workers and their co-residents. In contrast to our approach to the spatial implications of home-based work derived from Lefebvre, we argue that a traditional, Euclidean conception of space risks ignoring the important, symbolic nature of social space to the detriment of both the effective research and practice of homeworking.

This article presents one woman's odyssey, which began with a career in linguistics and later incorporated cultural psychiatry. While engaged in fieldwork as a linguist, studying the syntactic structure of Havyaka Kannada and dialectal accommodation among the castes in a South India village, I developed language skills and rapport with the village residents. Then I transferred my community-wide rapport to research on depression as a cultural psychiatrist. The articles I wrote on depression and its relationship to socialized passivity and endorsed assertiveness in progressive generations of South Indian women, illustrate the impact of change on mental health. The cultural background from my community-based longitudinal study of more than forty-five years has contributed to my understanding disorders in Indian patients living in a globalized world.

This qualitative case study describes the social appropriation of mobile phones among low-income communities in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) by asking how favela (slum) residents appropriate cell phones. Findings highlight the difficulty these populations encounter in acquiring and using cell phones due to social and economic factors, and the consequent subversive or illegal tactics used to gain access to such technology. Moreover, these tactics are embedded in and exemplars of the cyclic power relationships between high-and low-income populations that constitute the unique use of mobile technologies in these Brazilian slums. The article concludes by suggesting that future research on technology in low-income communities focus instead on the relationship of people to technology rather than a dichotomization of their access or lack thereof.

Mobile telephony has diffused more rapidly than any Indian technology in recent memory, yet systematic studies of its impact are rare, focusing on technological rather than social change. We employ network surveys of separate groups of Kerala residents in 2002 and again in 2007 to examine recent shifts in mobile usage patterns and social relationships. Results show (1) near saturation of mobiles among both the professionals and nonprofessionals sampled, (2) a decrease in the number of social linkages across tie types and physical locations, and (3) a shift towards friends and family but away from work relationships in the core networks of Malayalis. We interpret these findings as support for the bounded solidarity thesis of remote communication that emphasizes social insulation and network closure as mobiles shield individuals from their wider surroundings.

This project addresses the lack of neighbourhood statistical data and survey information on the quality of life in the inner city available to community groups. Many organizations and individuals in Winnipeg's inner city are working to enhance individual quality of life in the inner city and to raise the standard of living. However, there is no adequate way, at this time, to measure change occurring in neighbourhoods. Inner city organizations and larger governmental and non-governmental organizations collect data useful to measure outcomes of specific programs and general social trends; unfortunately these data and the survey instruments used are not standardized between organizations. It is difficult to use these data when measuring the community-wide impacts of programs, perceptions of residents, and the social or economic progress of neighbourhoods and communities.

Theory suggests that the cross-border bank lending flow from rich countries to poor countries is facilitated when lending-related legal and social norms are shared and valued equally by both lenders and borrowers. According to this reasoning the fast adoption of Western-style democracy and market economy principles as established by EU standards by many of the East European "transformation countries" since the early 1990s should have raised cross-border lending by banks based in EU 15 countries to clients resident in new East European EU member countries. Exploring cross-border lending activities of Austrian small- to medium-sized regional banks over the period from 1995 to 2008 with panel and spatial econometric techniques this paper provides evidence that is supportive of this presumption.

International audience ; The paper revisits participation and decentralization in relation to local clientelism, arguing that they share the personalization of links between residents and the State and the local possibility to adapt state policies. The line between decentralization-participation on the one hand, and clientelism on the other, is therefore easily blurred. The paper thus argues that clientelism is not per se anti-democratic, some forms allow for local and immediate accountability of politicians. However, in most cases, it contributes to fragment or sedate local organizations or social movements and it prevents contestation of existing policies and dominant power structures. The paper thus challenges the idea that the promotion of decentralization and participatory institutions intrinsically leads to more democratic forms of government.

El propósito de este artículo es analizar la conformación de escenarios de gestión asociada, Gobierno/ciudadanía, a fin de solucionar, entre otros problemas, la inseguridad en un conjunto habitacional de población relocalizada, en la ciudad de Posadas (Argentina). El análisis gira en torno a los problemas delictivos desencadenados por crecientes situaciones de marginalidad, y los intentos de solución a partir de las mesas interactorales entre vecinos del barrio y actores gubernamentales. ; The purpose of this paper is to analyze the conformation of associated management scenarios, government/citizenship to solve, among other problems, insecurity in a housing complex for relocated population in the city of Posadas (Argentina). The analysis focuses on the growing crime problems generated by situations of marginality and the attempts at settlement between neighborhood residents and government actors.

International audience The paper revisits participation and decentralization in relation to local clientelism, arguing that they share the personalization of links between residents and the State and the local possibility to adapt state policies. The line between decentralization-participation on the one hand, and clientelism on the other, is therefore easily blurred. The paper thus argues that clientelism is not per se anti-democratic, some forms allow for local and immediate accountability of politicians. However, in most cases, it contributes to fragment or sedate local organizations or social movements and it prevents contestation of existing policies and dominant power structures. The paper thus challenges the idea that the promotion of decentralization and participatory institutions intrinsically leads to more democratic forms of government.

Objective: To compare all cause mortality between the north and south of England over four decades. Design: Population wide comparative observational study of mortality. Setting: Five northernmost and four southernmost English government office regions. Population: All residents in each year from 1965 to 2008. Main outcome measures: Death rate ratios of north over south England by age band and sex, and northern excess mortality (percentage of excess deaths in north compared with south, adjusted for age and sex and examined for annual trends, using Poisson regression). Results: During 1965 to 2008 the northern excess mortality remained substantial, at an average of 13.8% (95% confidence interval 13.7% to 13.9%). This geographical inequality was significantly larger for males than for females (14.9%, 14.7% to 15.0% v 12.7%, 12.6% to 12.9%, P

The authors examined a strategic policing initiative that was implemented in a high crime Nashville, Tennessee neighborhood by utilizing a mixed-methodological evaluation approach in order to provide (a) a descriptive process assessment of program fidelity; (b) an interrupted time-series analysis relying upon generalized linear models; (c) in-depth resident interviews. Results revealed that the initiative corresponded with a statistically significant reduction in drug and narcotics incidents as well as perceived changes in neighborhood disorder within the target community. There was less-clear evidence, however, of a significant impact on other outcomes examined. The implications that an intensive crime prevention strategy corresponded with a reduction in specific forms of neighborhood crime illustrates the complex considerations that law enforcement officials face when deciding to implement this type of crime prevention initiative.

Much of the research on African American adolescent sexual decision making has focused on teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among poor or urban residents. Few studies consider the sexual profiles of middle-class African American female college freshmen from diverse locales. This study uses bivariate and logistic regression analyses to examine sexual behavior among ninety-one African American female freshmen attending college in the eastern and midwestern areas of the United States. Findings include detailed profiles of sexual behavior for this understudied population. Modeling results show that, although maternal sexual socialization does not influence whether respondents are virgins, sexually permissive views and practices such as heavy petting affect whether respondents are virgins. However, involvement in romantic relationships is the strongest predictor of sexual intercourse.

Green communities are a new form of development, but their affect on consumer behavior has not been well-researched. In June 2006, a mail survey of new homeowners was conducted in two pairs of green and conventional master-planned communities in Florida to determine if there were differences in their green design preferences, perceptions of the term green and retention of green marketing initiatives. Homeowners in conventional communities, compared with homeowners in green communities, expressed similar interests in many green design features, and most did not have negative connotations with the term green. Sales points used for marketing in the green communities were somewhat absorbed by their new residents; still, marketing practices can be diversified. The results suggest that green design features are an important consideration for people buying homes in master-planned communities.