Suchergebnisse

This study investigated the perceptions and attitudes of Malaysian civil sector and private sector workers toward the use and acceptance of Malaysian English, a variety of nonstandard English. A survey using a 20-item Likert Scale questionnaire highlighted some language issues: current perceptions and attitudes about and use of standard English, international intelligibility, public models of language use, and behavioral intentions of civil sector and private sector Malaysians toward standard English. The major findings for the combined sectors were 1) a recognition of the importance of attaining international intelligibility of English in their interactions with foreigners and 2) mixed reactions toward the use of standard English language within their Malaysian society. Differences were found for some items between the civil sector and private sector workers as well as for the factors of age, gender and ethnicity. Studies like this one can be used as a model for replication to find out more about language perceptions and attitudes in other countries and are significant for raising the language awareness needed by educators to better help their students succeed in finding employment, by employers to gain insight into employees' perceptions and attitudes toward and use of English in order to enhance communication. In addition, the study raises important questions and issues such as about the growth and acceptance of non-native varieties of English in Malaysia and other countries.

Concerns have been expressed that Internet use may affect social participation and involvement in the local community. Internet use can be viewed as a time‐consuming activity, and it may come at the expense of face‐to‐face activities. The time people devote to using the Internet might replace time spent on neighborly relations and community involvement. However, the use of computer‐mediated communication in geographically‐based communities might also increase face‐to‐face communication and even solve some of the problems associated with decreasing participation and involvement in the local community. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between membership in a geographically‐based mailing list and locally‐based social ties. A web‐based survey of subscribers to two suburban mailing lists in Israel was conducted to investigate the relationship between membership in a mailing list and neighborhood social ties, social ties in the extended community, and the movement from online to face‐to‐face relationships. It was found that although membership on the mailing list did not affect the extent of neighborhood interactions, it increased the number of individuals a participant knew in the community. Online relationships with members of the local community proved likely to change into face‐to‐face relationships. The results imply that community networking increases social involvement and participation not in the immediate neighborhood but in the extended community and serves to complement traditional channels of communication.

Abstract: Responding to the pressure of internal internationalization, some local communities and schools in Japan started to generate and practice a new philosophy known as "multicultural coexistence" (tabunka kyousei). Based on a long‐term ethnographic research in one of the most progressive multicultural communities and elementary schools in Japan, this paper elucidates the shape of an emerging "multicultural coexistence" education model in Japan and provides some implications for its further development. By focusing on returnee and newcomer students enrolled, the paper argues the transformation of school culture, which will be delineated as an interaction among different agencies at the school: "the margin", "the top", "the outside" and "the inner core". From these ethnographic findings, the paper draws five main features of the emerging model—three that are positive and two that are potentially problematic:

community‐based school reform movement,
teachers as decision makers, learners, and cooperators,
students' knowledge and experience as a shared resource,
country‐oriented approach in difference/similarity framework,
treating all differences equally same.

Referring to the critiques of multicultural education in the United States of America, the discussion suggests that the issue of social justice should be addressed more in the model by highlighting the issue of ethnicity in Japanese society. Changing teachers' attitudes toward such direction is vital and the paper proposes that coherent set of institutional changes, which centre around social justice, are necessary to raise teachers motivation.

Land‐use and ‐cover change is a topic of increasing concern as interest in forest and agricultural land preservation grows. Urban and residential land use is quickly replacing extractive land use in southern Indiana. The interaction between land quality and urban growth pressures is also causing secondary forest growth and forest clearing to occur jointly in a complex spatial pattern. It is argued that similar processes fuel the abandonment of agricultural land leading to private forest regrowth, changes in topography and land quality, and declining real farm product prices. However, the impact of urban growth and development on forests depends more strongly on changes in both the residential housing and labor markets. Using location quotient analysis of aggregate employment patterns, and the relationship between regional labor market changes, the extent of private forest cover was examined from 1967 to 1998. Then an econometric model of land‐use shares in forty southern Indiana counties was developed based on the net benefits to agriculture, forestland, and urban uses. To test the need to control explicitly for changes in residential demand and regional economic structure, a series of nested models was estimated. Some evidence was found that changing agricultural profitability is leading to private forest regrowth. It was also uncovered that the ratio of urban to forest land uses is better explained by incorporating measures of residential land value and industrial concentration than simply considering population density alone.

Central-local relations have been of particular interest since the Labour government came to power in 1997. Both academics and practitioners have pointed to tensions within the Labour government's reform agenda—between a 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approach; between a drive for national standards and the encouragement of local learning and innovation; and between strengthening executive leadership and enhancing public participation. It is argued that while Labour's modernisation strategy has clear elements of a top-down approach (legislation, inspectorates, white papers, etc) there is also a significant bottom-up dimension (a variety of zones, experiments and pilots, albeit with different degrees of freedom). This article utilises a multi-level governance framework of analysis and argues that, while much of the research using such frameworks has hitherto focused on the EU, recent developments in governance at neighbourhood, local authority, sub-regional and regional levels facilitate its application within a nation state. The central thesis is that, while there is extensive interaction between actors at sub-national level, this should not be seen as a proxy for policy influence. The local political arena is characterised less by multi-level governance than by multi-level dialogue. Sub-national actors participate but they are rarely major players in shaping policy outcomes: the plurality which characterises sub-central governance does not reflect a pluralist power structure.

Many of the challenges China's Muslims confront remain the same as they have for the last 1,400 years of continuous interaction with Chinese society, but some are new as a result of China's transformed and increasingly globalized society, and especially since the watershed events of the 11 September terrorist attacks and the subsequent "war on terrorism." Muslims in China live as minority communities, but many such communities have survived in rather inhospitable circumstances for over a millennium. This article examines Islam and Muslim minority identity in China, not only because it is where this author has conducted most of his research, but also because with the largest Muslim minority in East Asia, China's Muslims are clearly the most threatened in terms of self-preservation and Islamic identity. I argue that successful Muslim accommodation to minority status in China can be seen to be a measure of the extent to which Muslim groups allow the reconciliation of the dictates of Islamic culture to their host culture. This goes against the opposite view that can be found in the writings of some analysts, that Islam in the region is almost unavoidably rebellious and that Muslims as minorities are inherently problematic to a non-Muslim state. The history of Islam in China suggests that both within each Muslim community, as well as between Muslim nationalities, there are many alternatives to either complete accommodation or separatism.

Objective. Local government officials exhibit a variety of responses to morality issues involving "decency" (i.e., pornography, prostitution, sexually explicit businesses). The purpose of this research is to account for these differences.Methods. This research analyzes a subset of data from a larger study of morality policy making at the local level, that is, all cases of decision making on decency issues (e.g., pornography, prostitution, regulation of sexually explicit businesses, etc.) that occurred in the period 1994–2000 in 10 of the 52 largest cities in the United States.Results. In mayoral settings, decision making on decency cases is likely to evoke pro‐decency action from officials when a high level of issue salience is combined with high levels of church adherence, low levels of women's political empowerment, low levels of fundamentalist religious attachment, and higher levels of per capita income. Officials in city manager settings act more favorably toward decency activists if (1) higher levels of salience combine with a lower prevalence of fundamentalist religious adherents and higher levels of per capita income or (2) there is an interaction of salience and low levels of female political empowerment and high unemployment.Conclusions. Although exploratory in nature, the results confirm conventional expectations concerning the importance of salience and the prevalence of church affiliation; the results are counterintuitive with respect to the prevalence of fundamentalist forces and the extent of female political empowerment.

AbstractChange cannot effectively be dealt with unless the nature of change is understood. This attitude to handling change is a point of departure for this work. Society changes, and conditions for organizations change. This will have a critical effect on the conditions for information systems. If necessary corrections are not made to the information system due to new conditions based on new demands on the information system, the information system will eventually be a system that no one will ask for. The purpose of this work is to specify the basis for making adequate corrections on information systems due to new conditions. Change factors, which will influence the conditions for an information system, have been identified by analysing studies in the literature where change factors that induce change to organizations are dealt with. A synthesis of change factors on the level of the organization has been transformed to the level of the individual, where the actual interaction between the information system and its context takes place. Furthermore, an empirical study based on approximately 150 interviews considering users' information needs in three Swedish government authorities has been considered in a synthesis. Based on that the following change factors have been found: external factors: type of work performed, working climate, time at disposal, competition, technology, laws and regulations, economy, feedback, environmental demands and expectations, culture, conflicts; internal factors: stress, experience, habits and motivation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This article focuses on the implementation of the federal law on unemployment insurance (LACI) by the Swiss cantons. Starting in the mid 90s, the second revision of the LACI reformed the Swiss labour market policy. Resulting from a political compromise at the federal parliament between left and right wing parties, this law juxtaposes instruments of reinsertion of the unemployed into the labour market with instruments of control of the unemployed. Thus, the implementation of this federal law varies not only by the degree of application but also by the orientation of application. Some cantons implement the reinsertion instruments and neglect the control instruments, others make intensive use of the control instruments and neglect the reinsertion instruments. Some cantons make an intensive use of both types of instruments while a last group of cantons implements the law in a very sketchy way. The second part of this article deals with the concept of policy style, operationalised around four variables, as an explanation of the diversity of LACI cantonal implementation modes. One quantitative variable—the scope of state intervention—is statistically tested in the entire range of Swiss cantons. The other variables—style of state intervention, co‐ordination and interaction modes of social actors and the main traits of the regional political culture—are examined in six cantonal case studies of the LACI implementation process.

Résumé L'intégration « à la française » a toujours mis l'accent sur la mixité précoce, la fréquentation maximale des espaces sociaux ordinaires pour favoriser la participation sociale des personnes handicapées. La normalisation maximale projetée vise un idéal d'assimilation. Les personnes handicapées ayant investi le sport dans cette logique se sont engagées dans des pratiques en club ordinaire, s'efforçant de jouer le jeu de « l'identique ». Une étude clinique menée au travers d'un protocole longitudinal sur une période de dix ans expose le cas d'une jeune sportive paraplégique, et retrace une trajectoire marquée par une volonté permanente de normalisation soutenue par l'environnement familial. Une analyse qualitative de l'évolution psychologique, sociale, sportive et professionnelle de cette jeune femme, entre 22 et 32 ans fait apparaître que la logique d'assimilation, incorporée comme ligne de conduite, a produit des effets pervers qui ont entravé le processus d'intégration sociale et conduit le sujet à des conflits de représentations qui débouchent sur une situation bloquée. L'étude permet de mettre en évidence les interactions entre représentation de soi, identité sociale, représentations du sport et de ses différentes modalités de pratique (sport de loisir, sport de haut niveau, pratique intégrée, pratique entre pairs), et souligne les effets singuliers produits par la logique d'assimilation dans le cas étudié. Elle met en évidence les processus par lesquels le sport, classiquement présenté comme espace de socialisation et d'intégration, peut paradoxalement mener à l'isolement social.

Society's relations to animals pose possible blind spots in sociological theory that may be revealed and illuminated by studying systems of human‐animal interaction. By investigating whether and how animals enter into key processes that shape self and society we may determine the ways in which animals might be included in the core subject matter of sociology. An earlier discussion of the role of animals in sociology initiated by Weber is reviewed. Issues that debate raised about the extent of linguistically‐mediated human‐animal intersubjectivity are updated. It is in principle difficult to rule out animal languages, and some animals have acquired human language. But sociology may follow a more fecund empirical route by examining successful human‐animal performances produced by enduring interspecies relationships. Following this route, this paper specifically argues that the human self should be seen to take root in the available mixed species community. To show this, the work of G.H. Mead is revisited and corrected in light of recent work on early human development, and conceptual analyses of language, the body, and the self. The formation of the self is not dependent on only linguistic exchanges; a nonverbal nonhuman other can contribute to the self‐reflective sense of being a human self. Based on this reasoning, examples of studies of humans with wild and domestic animals illustrate the potential for a human‐animal sociology.

El artículo interpreta el papel jugado por los medios de comunicación en la reciente guerra contra Iraq. Analiza la cobertura, las fuentes y el contenido de la información de los medios estadounidenses. A través del caso concreto del periodismo "embedded", ejemplifica las nuevas formas de injerencia gubernamental en la transmisión de la información. Para contrastar, retoma igualmente lo sucedido en Europa y estudia la interacción entre los medios de comunicación, su estructura de propiedad, la guerra, y las diferencias culturales y sociales entre países. Sugiere que el problema entre conflicto y prensa, además de concernir al periodismo, muestra el subdesarrollo de las sociedades en cuanto a su prensa y el valor de la información en situaciones críticas. ; The article interprets the role played by the media in the recent war against Iraq. It analyzes the cover, the sources and the content of the information of the American media. Through the specific case of the "embedded" journalism, it illustrates the new forms of government intervention in the broadcasting of the information. To contrast this, the article mentions what happened in Europe and studies the interaction among the media, its structure of property, the war, and the social and cultural differences among countries. It suggests that the problem among conflict and press, besides concerning to journalism, shows the underdevelopment of the society's press and the value of the information in critical situations.

This article discusses the violation of rights of disabled persons in the South African justice system. Its particular focus is the infringement of rights of deaf and hard-of- hearing people as a result of communication barriers in police stations and courts. While deaf and hard-of-hearing people comprise a small percentage of disabled individuals who come into contact with the justice system, the violations that occur are endemic and symptomatic of a disregard by justice officials of the rights and needs not only of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons, but of all disabled people. It is argued that a scheme comprising three components can guarantee the rights of deaf and hard-of- hearing people in South Africa's justice system. The first and most fundamental component is a recognition by justice officials that the right of the deaf and hard-of- hearing to be treated fairly in the justice system is constitutionally required. The second component requires amended and augmented legislative provisions to flesh out the content of the constitutional rights. The third component is that practical guidelines should be disseminated among justice officials to direct their day-to-day interactions with deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Such a scheme can prevent future violations of rights of the disabled and enhance the goal of equality for all South Africa's citizens.

Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt aus einer neorealistisch-kognitiven Sicht eine Erklärung für das regelmäßige Scheitern von Regionalisierungsmaßnahmen im Indischen Ozean vor und legt dar, wie ihnen dennoch zum Erfolg verholfen werden könnte. Der zugegebenermaßen nicht gerade bescheidene Zweck dieser Erklärung wiederum besteht in der Hoffnung, dadurch den ins Stocken geratene Regionalisierungsprozeß auf realistischer Basis wieder in Gang zu setzen. Die zentrale These dieser Arbeit lautet, daß Regimebildungs- und Regionalisierungsversuche im Indischen Ozean regelmäßig scheitern, weil der Rahmen dieser Initiativen falsch gewählt wurde: der Indische Ozean ist nach Ansicht des Autors in der Perzeption der beteiligten maßgeblichen Akteure keine eigenständige Region, daher kann es auch keine erfolgreiche Regimebildung auf der Ebene des Indischen Ozeans geben. Nach dem Wissensstand des Verfassers wurde diese These bisher noch nicht vertreten, vielmehr wurde (und wird) von der epistemischen Gemeinschaft der 'Indik-Experten' als treibender Kraft hinter den erfolglosen Regionalisierungsbemühungen die Existenz einer eigenständigen Region stillschweigend vorausgesetzt. Indem sie diese stillschweigende Übereinkunft kritisch hinterfragt und letztlich auch als fehlgeleitet entlarvt, betritt diese Dissertation wissenschaftliches Neuland. Es wird sich im Verlauf der Untersuchungen zeigen, daß Regionalisierungsversuche im Indischen Ozean, die ihn komplett abdecken sollen, tatsächlich auf Sand gebaut sind. Es wird sich aber auch zeigen, daß eine Regionalisierung im Indischen Ozean nicht unmöglich ist, wenn man den korrekten geographischen Rahmen wählt: In seinem nördlichen Teil � dem Golf von Bengalen und der Arabischen See � sind aufgrund des sicherheits- und wirtschaftspolitischen Interesses Indiens als eines hegemonialen Staates nachhaltige Regionalisierungsimpulse wahrnehmbar, die sich mittlerweile auch auf die Arabische See ausgedehnt haben. Tatsächlich besteht bezüglich des Golfs von Bengalen sogar Grund für verhaltenen Optimismus. Die Quintessenz dieser Dissertation lautet daher, daß die epistemische Gemeinschaft als bisher wichtigster Impulsgeber und Ideenlieferant gut beraten wäre, sich in den nächsten Jahren vornehmlich mit dieser maritimen Subregion zu beschäftigen und den dortigen, noch recht zaghaften Prozeß nach Kräften zu fördern. Die Vorgehensweise dieser Dissertation schließt sich metatheoretisch und methodisch weitgehend an das Vorgehen Barry Buzans an, der für den asiatisch-pazifischen Raum die � perfekt auf den Indischen Ozean übertragbare � Frage stellte: "Asia-Pacific: what sort of region in what sort of world?" Buzan stellt als Kriterien für das Vorhandensein einer "Region für sich" das Vorhandensein von gemeinsamen Merkmalen (shared characteristics), geordneter Interaktionen (patterned interactions) und gemeinsamen Perzeptionen (shared perception) heraus.

Good forest governance lets all relevant stakeholders participate in the decision-making processes. Illegal logging and forest degradation are currently increasing, and logging bans are ineffective in reducing forest degradation. At the same time interest in forest plantations and concern about poverty problems of people adjacent to forests continue to increase rapidly. Governments have identified the development of small forest plantations as an opportunity to provide wood supplies to forest industries and to reduce poverty. However, the development of small plantations is very slow due to an imbalance of power and suspicion between communities and large companies. Current regulations do not offer many links amongst various stakeholders. The paper proposes a framework to link up social, economic and biophysical dynamics using multiagent simulation to explore scenarios of collaboration for plantations. Multiagent simulation is a branch of artificial intelligence that offers a promising approach to deal with multi stakeholder management systems, such as the case involving common pool of resources. It provides a framework, which allows analysis of stakeholders' (or agents') decisions in interaction. Each stakeholder has explicit communication capacities, behaviors and rational from which emerge specific actions. The purpose of this modeling is to create a common dynamic representation to facilitate negotiations to grow trees. Collaborations involving multistakeholders, especially local communities and wood based industries, appeared to offer the most promising pathway to accelerate plantation development toward local communities' poverty alleviation and forest landscape improvement.