Suchergebnisse

Critical commentary about the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) has included the claim that the media presented a simplistic and stereotyped image of Aboriginal communities at the time of its introduction in 2007, but to date there has been no systematic analysis to support this. This study addresses this research gap through a critical discourse analysis of reportage of the NTER in mainstream and Aboriginal populist print media. The findings reveal major differences in these accounts, with radically different propositions and normative assumptions. Mainstream media were overwhelmingly negative in their portrayal of remote Aboriginal communities, were silent about Aboriginal resistance and portrayed urgent Commonwealth intervention as necessary and heroic. The Aboriginal media provided contextualised accounts of the issues and focused intensely on the human rights implications of the intervention. The findings reveal a concerning racialised divide in representations of the issues facing remote Aboriginal communities in 2007 that helps to explain why the Australian public accepted policies that discriminated against Australia's First Nations peoples.

The 2012 Health and Social Care Act, introduced by the coalition government, has been seen as fundamentally changing the form and content of publicly funded health care provision in England. The legislation was hugely controversial and widely criticized. Much of this criticism pointed to the ways in which the reforms undermined the funding of the National Health Service, and challenged the founding principle of free universal provision. In this commentary we take issue with the argument that the Act represented a radical break with the past and instead suggest that it was an extension of the previous Labour government's neo-liberal reforms of the public sector. In particular, the Act invoked the principles of 'new professionalism' to undermine professional dominance, and attract private providers into statutory health care at the expense of public providers. In turn, this extension of new professionalism may encourage public distrust in the medical profession and absolve the state of much of its statutory health care obligation.

Many Aboriginal leaders are focused on holistic approaches to bring physical, mental, and spiritual health to their citizens, allowing them to participate fully in a community's future. However, teen pregnancy brings specific challenges that need to be addressed if, indeed, children are the future of Aboriginal communities. This commentary looks at how the tools of community economic development (CED) can be applied to move young parents into positions from which they can participate in local economies. CED can be used to address contributing factors to teen pregnancies that are supportive of youth and appropriate to the community in question. Young parents need support to develop the necessary independence and resilience. This brings challenges to community leadership to take steps to encourage the development of healthy sexuality and lifestyles, and to provide the needed education, training, and other community supports. If youth are the future of Aboriginal communities, the cost of ignoring young parents and their children is much too high to ignore.

Abstract Rather than clearly and unequivocally requiring 100% smokefree workplaces and public places (including restaurants, bars and other entertainment venues), Israeli law contains several elements that parallel the tobacco companies' "accommodation" program, which is designed to maintain the social acceptability of smoking and protect industry profits. Rather than 100% smokefree workplaces, smoking is permitted in private offices despite the fact that it then wafts throughout the building. Bars and pubs are allowed to set aside a quarter of their space for smokers, as long as it is in a separate room, and this explains the dangerous levels of secondhand smoke air pollution in Israeli bars and pubs. The weaknesses in the current Israeli laws are sending Israeli citizens to the hospital for secondhand smoke-induced heart attacks, asthma and other diseases. The Israeli government needs to catch up with the rest of the developed world and enact and implement a strong smokefree law.This is a commentary on http://www.ijhpr.org/content/2/1/20/.

Radical activist organizations face the complex task of managing their identity so as to draw political attention but also to appear legitimate and thus gain public support. In this article we develop a picture of the identities of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) members, a group mostly known for their direct action against whaling, via a thematic analysis of material from the SSCS website and interviews with SSCS members. In online commentary, founder Captain Paul Watson establishes several deliberately paradoxical notions of who the Sea Shepherds are. We relate these identity statements to interviews with core activists to examine how they manage the identity conflicts resulting from the group identity, such as being seen as "pirates" and "hard lined vegans." We found that SSCS positions themselves as a diverse and unstructured organization, yet distinctively passionate and willing to take action where others will not. The implications of this research are discussed in relation to the importance of understanding the constraints and conflicts around political activist identities.

Howard Zinn wrote "it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners" (Zinn, 2003). Democracy by Zinn's view operates beyond state nationalism and a capitalist economy. Represented in people movements, it is the grassroots activism, protests, and boycotts of the people from below that gives democracy meaning. This third essay of four prompted by dialogues with Sefita Hao'uli, Kalafi Moala, and Melino Maka explores the political climate in which people movements are transmitted and spread in present day Tonga. If it is "the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners" then which side is the executioner? (Zinn, 2010). Considering the Nuku'alofa riot of November 16th 2006 muddied pro-democracy believability, how have people movements regrouped and recovered? Social activism in this age of political reform conveys what exactly about development? And how do people movements influence Tongan critics, the thinking people, to write social criticism and political commentary?

Conventional notion and praxis of unravelling the discipline of 'urban planning and design' from 'built environment and health' [Corburn, 2004] has contributed to urban conditions unwieldy enough to question the liveability and sustainability [Hill & Peters, 1998] of environment. Growing evidence of unswerving yet meandering effects of the planning actions on environment; and subsequently on public health suggests bridging strong link between planners, urban designers, architects, landscape architects, zoning boards, city councils - all who make decisions on planning and urban design strategies [Botchwey et al, 2009]. By rejuvenating the subject of 'health and the environment', can we emphasize that the 'environment' should be understood as the interplay between ecology (biological), physical (natural & built), social, political, aesthetic, and economic environments [Institute of Medicine, 2001]. This commentary unfolds the notion of healthy city manifestos by exploring the theoretical linkage between urban planning and design and reinforces the needs for professionals' dialogue in generating hybrid discipline towards sustainable outcome in built environment. NOTE: publisher link no longer working (last checked 2019-01-24).

Although public participation is deemed important in South Africa, negative perceptions of its legitimacy are widely acknowledged. Inclusive town-planning processes, as instruments to address inequality, have a significant role in enhancing democracy. This article reports on a study done from a communicative planning perspective, with the aim to investigate the influence of public participation in town planning by means of an analysis of town-planning application procedures between 1992-2008 in the Tlokwe Local Municipality, North-West province, South Africa. The results indicate that only 6% of all commentary on planning applications consists of objections from the public. Technically motivated objections and town-planning firms had the most influence on planning outcomes. This seems to indicate reactive and consultative participation wherein the final decision resides with the local authority. It appears that public participation's idealistic 'feel good' mask does not live up to the expectations of an empowered civil society ; National Research Foundation ; http://www.ajol.info/index.php/trp ; http://www.ajol.info/index.php/trp/article/view/116200

In the literature of the Iranian-American diaspora, the memoir genre has become a predominant lens through which Western audiences "read" contemporary Iran. While many bestselling life narratives have relied on hostage crisis-era tropes of gendered repression and subsequent liberation in exile, new amalgams of style and theme, distortions of perspective, and complicated renderings of the "subject" are now beginning to cross borders. One of these is Shahriar Mandanipour's 2009 novel, Censoring an Iranian Love Story, which this paper examines as an auto-fictional commentary on the memoir genre that both arises from and responds directly to censorship using a self-referential and layered text. Through three central dialectics—ambiguous violence, encoded desire and resistance to diachronic historicization alongside the nation—this paper demonstrates how Mandanipour's auto-fictional and often magical realist attempts elude what Gillian Whitlock terms the transnational "economy of affect" that publicizes, protects and ultimately drives the reception of memoir across borders.

A recent research project, 'Sanskrit Knowledge Systems on the Eve of Colonialism', led by Sheldon Pollock, Christopher Minkowski and other leading Sanskrit scholars, reveals that early modern India from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries witnessed one of the most productive periods in its intellectual history. While this project explores eight disciplines (vyakarana, mimamsa, nyaya, dharmasastra, alankarasastra, ayurveda, jyotis, prayoga), it unfortunately excludes Vedanta as a scope of study. However, the cultural productivity in the area of Vedanta continued and was alive in the early modern period. A good example of this can be observed in the works of Baladeva Vidyabhusana (c. 1700–1793), a Vedantin belonging to the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition. In this article, I analyse Baladeva's commentary on Brahmasutras 2.1.21-25, paying attention to the ways in which Baladeva quotes the writings of Sankara and Madhva. The complex engagements with the earlier Vedantins in Baladeva's writing shows, I believe, that the Vedantic discourse was a part of the flourishing Sanskrit culture in the early modern period.

This research commentary argues that, despite the frequent citing of Michel Maffesoli's book The Time of the Tribes (1996 [1988]) in the consumer literature, the theoretical link between his work on neo-tribes and the literature on consumer tribes is rather weak. Maffesoli's central neo-tribal ideas of the affectual nebula, undirected being-together, the religious model, elective sociality and the law of secrecy are not taken up in consumer tribal discourse. Accounts of Maffesoli's ideas within this discourse are either mainly descriptive or primarily concerned with the notion of 'ephemeral gatherings'. Maffesoli's own (2007) chapter in the edited collection Consumer Tribes (Cova et al., 2007) makes no reference to consumer tribes, nor does he take that opportunity to develop his earlier ideas on neo-tribes. The author, therefore, calls for attention to be paid to the neglected aspects of Maffesoli's seminal book in the context of work on brand communities and consumer tribes, and for further development of the consumer tribal metaphor.

PurposeThis paper seeks to offer a commentary on Psychologically Informed Services: A Good Practice Guide, a recently published operational guidance document on developing psychologically informed environments (PIEs) in services for homeless people.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is an invited opinion piece and comment, based on the specialist experience and viewpoint of the author as Chief Executive of Second Step, a housing association providing support to a range of vulnerable people.FindingsThe new operational guidance is welcomed. The author outlines the use of the concept of a psychologically informed environment, as developed in practice through an initial pilot service run by Second Step. This practice learning was then spread and developed more broadly through other Second Step services.Originality/valueOn the basis of their experience, the author makes observations on what was found most useful, to "inform" their service. The agency has now agreed a Psychological Therapies Strategy, which focuses on developing training for staff on interventions that can be effectively used within the staff role. Reflective practice is promoted throughout the service.