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A challenge that community-university partnerships everywhere will face is how to maintain continuity in the face of change. The problems besetting communities continually shift and the goals of the university partners often fluctuate. This article describes a decade-long strategy one university has successfully used to address this problem. Over the past ten years, a community-university partnership at the University of Massachusetts Lowell has used summer content funding to respond creativity to shifting priorities. Each summer a research-action project is developed that targets a different content issue that has emerged with unexpected urgency. Teams of graduate students and high school students are charged with investigating this issue under the auspices of the partnership. These highly varied topics have included immigrant businesses, youth asset mapping, women owned businesses, the housing crisis, social program cutbacks, sustainability, and economic development and the arts. Despite their obvious differences, these topics share underlying features that further partnership commitment and continuity. Each has an urgency: the information is needed quickly, often because some immediate policy change is under consideration. Each topic has the advantage of drawing on multiple domains: the topics are inherently interdisciplinary and because they do not "belong" to any single field, they lend themselves to disciplines pooling their efforts to achieve greater understanding. Each also has high visibility: their salience has meant that people were often willing to devote scarce resources to the issues and also that media attention could easily be gained to highlight the advantages of students, partners, and the university working together. And the topics themselves are generative: they have the potential to contribute in many different ways to teaching, research, and outreach. This paper ends with a broader consideration of how partnerships can implement this model for establishing continuity in the face of rapidly shifting priorities and needs.

This book challenges the common perception that significant regional disparities do not exist in small countries. As small developed countries become increasingly competitive and their economic structures resemble those of the large, a re-assessment of the regional consequences of these changes is of timely importance. Regional Disparities in Small Countries presents a systematic discussion of the unique theoretical, methodological and measurement challenges in analyzing regional inequalities in small countries and a series of empirical analyses addressing the issue of regional convergence and divergence in these countries. With contributions from leading regional scientists and economists, this book also examines the policy experience of small countries in closing regional gaps and the effectiveness of public interventions in this field. TOC:Introduction. Concepts, Theory and Methods: The Liability of Smallness.- Country Size in Regional Economics.- Measures of Regional Inequality for Small Countries.- Investigating Spatial Patterns of Income Disparities Using Coordinate Transformations and GIS Mapping. Empirical Evidence: Regional Employment Disparities in Belgium.- Regional Income Convergence and Inequality in Boom and Bust (Finland).- Regional Disparities in Ireland.- The Persistence of Regional Unemployment Disparities in the Netherlands.- The Dynamics of Regional Disparities in a Small Country (Slovenia).- Interregional Disparities in Israel.- Does Decentralisation Matter to Regional Inequalities? Regional Inequalities in the EU Enlargement Countries. Policy Issues: Has the Financial Economy Increased Regional Disparities in Switzerland over the Last Three Decades?- Regional Policy Lessons from Finland.- The Globalisation of Austrian Regions.- Innovation Policy

Water is the most precious and valuable natural resource in the Middle East and North Africa. It is vital for socioeconomic growth and sustainabilityof the environment. Theeditors present the latest research resultsrelated tothe current water situation,as well as its significance for the peaceful coexistence of the neighbouring countries.The book focusses on the following topics: water resources, water protection, water management and water as a source of conflict.With regard tothe protection of ground water and surface water in the respective areas,topicssuch asewage disposal and soil protection, as well as the transfer of environmental technology are also discussed. TOC:From the Contents: Water Resources: Natural Scarcity of Water Resources in the Semi-arid and Arid Middle East and its Economical Implications; The Jordan River; Hydrology and Management of Lake Kinneret Aimed at Water Quality Protection; The Water Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean and its Relation to Global Warming; Water Resources, Protection and Management in Palestine.- Water Protection: Groundwater Vulnerability Mapping in the Arab Region; Intermittent Water Supply and Domestic Water Quality in the Middle East; Sewage Water Treatments and Reuse in Israel.- Water Management: Water Resources Management in Palestine; Ecosan - Introduction of Closed-Loop Approaches in Wastewater Management and Sanitation; Efficient Groundwater Management for Organizations with a Small Financial Budget.- Water as Source of Conflict: Water Conflict and Water Management in the Middle East; Syria and Turkey in Water Diplomacy; Water Issue among the Riparian States of Euphrates and Tigris Transboundary Rivers

Crucial to the success of the proposed Framework Convention on Tobacco Control will be an understanding of the political and economic context for tobacco control policies, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. Policy studies in Thailand and Zimbabwe employed the analytical perspective of political economy and a research strategy that used political mapping, a technique for characterizing and evaluating the political environment surrounding a policy issue, and stakeholder analysis, which seeks to identify key actors and to determine their capacity to shape policy outcomes. These policy studies clearly revealed how tobacco control in low-income and middle-income countries is also being shaped by developments in the global and regional political economy. Hence efforts to strengthen national control policies need to be set within the context of globalization and the international context. Besides the transnational tobacco companies, international tobacco groups and foreign governments, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations are also playing influential roles. It cannot be assumed, therefore, that the tobacco control strategies being implemented in industrialized countries will be just as effective and appropriate when implemented in developing countries. There is an urgent need to expand the number of such tobacco policy studies, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. Comprehensive guidelines for tobacco policy analysis and research are required to support this process, as is a broader international strategy to coordinate further tobacco policy research studies at country, regional and global levels.

the question "who belongs to the human body?" is now a key question to reflect on biomedical research practices and therapeutic practices. Ethical and political debates in France sometimes tend to caricatorise the possible answers to this question by inventing two enemy camps: one inspired by the Anglo-Saxon liberal philosophy which makes the body the property of the individual and the other inspired by a more European or even more French philosophy, which makes the body the substrate of the person. By leaving the field of the caricatures, it is possible first to measure the place taken by this question in the field of biomedical research and therapeutic practices: what is the status of human bodies whose genome mapping has generally been established? Is it my body, this DNA sequence likely to become a patent object in the future? Who has my body, and to what extent, in a research protocol? Do I own my body when I claim to benefit from abortion or to enter a medically assisted reproduction process, when I intend to change gender, refuse diagnosis, die when I think fit, and encounter opposition from a doctor, the state, a church, my family or various forms of social stigmatisation? In a different vein, it is noted that some health tests put the individual directly in the face of the issue of body ownership: being grafted experiences a real "confusion of me". The contemporary obvious issue of ownership of the human body must not mislead. It does not arise naturally simply because of the development of biomedical research and therapeutic practices. Rather, it must be seen as the result of the meeting between this development and another, that of the motors and political demands that have arisen, since the 1960s in France and many other western countries. ; International audience ; the question "who belongs to the human body?" is now a key question to reflect on biomedical research practices and therapeutic practices. Ethical and political debates in France sometimes tend to caricatorise the possible answers to this ...

Since the 1960s there has been a growing interest in evaluation shown by most Western countries. Alongside discussion of practical and theoretical issues of evaluation, such as methodological developments, best practice, and cross-cultural practice, there has also been increased interest in mapping the history of evaluation activity. Historical discussions are significant for three reasons; first, in providing a record for future generations of evaluators. Second, they provide a consideration of the domestic and international context that has shaped evaluation development, giving each country its distinct institutional make-up and brand of evaluation activity. Third, they assist a country's evaluation capacity development by building on its strengths and compensating for the weaknesses of its history. This article traces the emergence of evaluation within New Zealand using the metaphor of dramaturgy to introduce the settings and actors that we consider to have been constituent of what was played out in the New Zealand situation. Our remit is a broad one of attempting to describe and explain the range of evaluation activities, including program evaluation, organisational review, performance management, and process and policy evaluation. Within this article a broad overview only is possible. As an example of a more in-depth study, a comprehensive article could be prepared on the history of performance management in the public service. Our comments cover developments in the public sector, tertiary sector, and private and professional organisations. It is a companion paper to one on the history of evaluation in Australia, prepared by Colin A Sharp in a recent issue of this journal (Sharpe 2003).

In light of the uses and misuses of history in Zimbabwean politics in recent years, this research report focuses on how versions of the country's liberation war history have become a site of struggle over the definition of Zimbabwean national identity. As identity politics'often do, Zimbabwean nationalism draws on a wide field of cultural symbols of identity and political discourses of inclusion and exclusion. Therefore, the report takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the issue of national identity by mapping out the imaginary field of Zimbabwean nationalism. This approach opens up the possibility of cross-reading the political discourses of the President and the ruling party ZANU (PF) with opposing voices such as those in the works of the author Yvonne Vera. This cross-reading shows how Vera's novels and the political discourses participate in the struggle over Zimbabwean national identity by offering different versions of the nation's history in the form of patriotic history, feminist nationalism, or narratives of difference. In this way the research report adds to our understanding of power and resistance in Zimbabwean politics of national identity. ; CONTENT -- FIELD OF INTEREST -- Problem definition -- Method -- YVONNE VERA -- A feminist writer -- A writer of history -- A Zimbabwean writer -- Summing up -- DISCOURSES OF NATIONAL HISTORY -- Analytical framework -- A discourse of spiritual history -- Rhodesian settler discourses -- Zimbabwean nationalist discourses -- Summing up -- NATIONALISM AND AFRICANISM -- Analytical framework -- Patriotic history -- Discussion -- MATABELELAND AND NATIONAL UNITY -- Analytical framework -- Ugly history -- Rape: A perversion of dialogue -- The spirit of national history -- Discussion

Preliminary Material -- A Divided Kingdom? Reflections on Multi-Ethnic Britain in the New Millennium /Lars Eckstein , Barbara Korte , Eva Ulrike Pirker and Christoph Reinfandt -- The Little Book Of Tommy: Another Tommy Akhtar Investigation /Patrick Neate -- The Rhetoric of Multiculturalism /Rajeev Balasubramanyam -- Bridehood Revisited: Disarming Concepts of Gender and Culture in Recent Asian British Film /Ellen Dengel-Janic and Lars Eckstein -- Multi-Ethnic Britain on Screen: South Asian Diasporic Experience in Recent Feature Films /Sandra Heinen -- Babylon North: British Muslims after 9/11 in Yasmin (2004) /Claudia Sternberg -- Representations of Multicultural Society in Contemporary British Novels /Lucie Gillet -- 'Sameness' in Contemporary British Fiction: (Metaphorical) Families in Zadie Smith's On Beauty (2005) /Sabine Nunius -- Out of the Ordinary – and Back? Jackie Kay's Recent Short Fiction /Ulrike Zimmermann -- Teenage Transformations in Multi-Ethnic Britain: Rehana Ahmed's Walking a Tightrope (2004) /Daniel Schäbler -- Between Orthodoxy and Modernity: Mapping the Transcultural Predicaments of Pakistani Immigrants in Multi-Ethnic Britain in Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) /Nadia Butt -- Racism in the Diaspora: Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers (2004) /Cordula Lemke -- Images of Muslim Britain Go Global: A Reading of the British Council's Touring Exhibition Common Ground /Eva Ulrike Pirker -- Female Views: Cultural Identity as a Key Issue in the Work of Black and Asian British Women Artists /Ingrid von Rosenberg -- The Dub Renaissance – Reflections on the Aesthetics of Dub in Contemporary British Music /Christoph Härter -- Scapes of Refuge in Multicultural Britain: Representing Refugees in Digital Docudrama and Mockumentary /Sissy Helff -- 'If you're not on paper, you don't exist': Depictions of Illegal Immigration and Asylum in Film – on Michael Winterbottom's In This World (2002) and Code 46 (2003) /Kathy-Ann Tan -- Envisioning a Black Tomorrow? Black Mother Figures and the Issue of Representation in 28 Days Later (2003) and Children of Men (2006) /Barbara Korte -- Escaping the Matrix: Illusions and Disillusions of Identity in Gautam Malkani's Londonstani (2006) /Michael Mitchell -- 'East is East and West is West': A Reading of Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal's Tourism (2006) /Ellen Dengel-Janic -- 'Stop Thinking Like an Englishman' or: Writing Against a Fixed Lexicon of Terrorism in Patrick Neate's City of Tiny Lights (2005) /Yvonne Rosenberg -- 'A deconstructed shrine': Locating Absence and Relocating Identity in Rodinsky's Room (2000) /Stephan Laqué -- 'Societies Within': Council Estates as Cultural Enclaves in Recent Urban Fictions /Susanne Cuevas -- Interview with Rajeev Balasubramanyam /Angela Kurtz -- Interview with Patrick Neate /Violeta Topalova -- Index -- Acknowledgements.

This paper illustrates the progress the ESPON 1.3.3 project "The Role and Spatial Effects of Cultural Heritage and Identity", started in December 2004 by a network of 12 European Universities under the leadership of Ca' Foscari University of Venice. The conceptual framework of this project lies on the assumption that the cultural heritage of Europe is not just an ensemble of tangible assets to be conserved, but rather an element of dynamism of the territory, affecting trajectories of regional development. Thus the identification and valorisation of the cultural heritage is to be considered an integral component of regional planning, with the potential to increase cohesion within an enlarged European Union. The establishment of an "European identity", gaining from difference and variety, is also part of this vision (Graham et. Al, 2000: 26). In this light, the ESPON 1.3.3 project sets out to highlight the spatial expressions and effects of heritage assets and identify the (existing or potential) elements of territorial coherence at the regional and local scale, mapping the geographical aspects that are actually strengthening regional identities and networks. After introducing a list of regional indicators of the European cultural heritage and identity, reflecting elements such as heritage presence, concentration and diversity, based on the whole NUTS III regional delimitation, the paper addresses the issue of how cultural aspects are related to the main socio-economic trends shaping Europe and affecting regional cohesion. The study highlights existing spatial patterns in such relations, and identifies emerging issues for inclusion of the cultural theme in spatial planning, especially looking at significant areas for cross-border cooperation.

Are the U.S. capital markets losing their competitiveness? A fascinating question, but what does it mean and how can it be intelligently assessed? This Article will explore the newly popular thesis that draconian enforcement and overregulation are injuring the United States and will offer a sharply contrasting interpretation: higher enforcement intensity gives the U.S. economy a lower cost of capital and higher securities valuations. This higher intensity attracts some foreign listings, but deters others. This Article will proceed by first mapping the marked variation in the intensity of enforcement efforts by securities regulators in selected nations and then relating these variations to (1) the cost of equity capital, (2) the extraordinary listing premium that non-U.S. firms exhibit upon cross-listing on a U.S. exchange, and (3) the alleged flight of some foreign issuers from the U.S. markets. Once properly disaggregated, the impact of high-intensity enforcement appears to yield both costs and benefits. In overview, high-intensity enforcement may dissuade some issuers from entering the U.S. market and, thus, could be responsible for some of the asserted decline in the "competitiveness" of the U.S. capital markets. But, at the same time, other firms are attracted to U.S. markets. In effect, there is a separating equilibrium as foreign issuers go both ways. The critical issue for the controlling shareholder of the foreign issuer (who is the real decision maker in most cross-listing decisions) is whether the private benefits of control that it will sacrifice by entering the U.S. market exceed (or fall below) the value to it of the higher securities valuation and reduced cost of capital that it will gain from cross-listing in the United States.

Addressing an artist's engagement with critique as embodied in an instance of a formalized research process, this text elaborates three distinct phases of association. First it looks at one particular theory of critique that informed the conception of an artwork. Then it looks at how the artwork put that theory into practice; how the theory was embodied, and finally, the issue of how the artwork inflects the theory, when that inflection may be seen as the action of critique upon critique. Specifically, the understanding of 'critique' that this text elaborates (in the form of the report upon the theory for an artwork) is 'immanent critique'. Informed by Marxist theory, this aims to 'recognise and free the future from its distorted form in the present' – as defined by Walter Benjamin. (As such, its values are not transcendental, but found in experience or a 'work'.) It is Benjamin's discussion of the politics of immanent critique, and the tactics that those politics imply, that informs the artwork's theory more precisely. In particular, this article is concerned to assess how immanent critique is advanced by the semiotic method Benjamin proposed for the 'Arcades Project', and the role of the pseudonym, which he deployed too, in order to advance his critical objectives. Reviewing how these tactics for immanent critique were adopted by an artwork – 'The Faust Supplement 2002' – the article then turns to the question of how the actuality of practice adapted them. In mapping the gaps that open up between the 'theory' and 'the practice', the text proposes practice as a medium of critique in its double sense of acting for (a specified) critique and being critical (of that critique). It notes that the recognition of this mediation has been encouraged by the institution of 'research in art-practice'. The article concludes by proposing that 'critical practice' maybe re-signified to emphasize the criticality of practice – distinct from its deployment of the theories that inform it.

Although much research has been done on the existence and formation of risk and issue based health policies, there is only little insight in health policy development processes in a broader context. This hampers intervention in these policy processes to adequately develop integrated and effective health policies. Legislation in the Netherlands requires municipalities to develop and implement local health policies. These policies are supposed to aim at the promotion of health across sectors and with a strong community involvement. Health policy development processes have been studied in four Dutch municipalities. For each case, we identified a range of stakeholders and monitored the change or stability of their characteristics over 3 years. In addition, for each case, three overlaying maps of networks were made addressing communication and collaboration actions within the defined set of stakeholders. We point out a number of barriers which impede integrated policy development at the local level: the importance given to local health policy, the medical approach to health development, the organizational self-interest rather than public health concern, the absence of policy entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, this article advocates the use of complementary theoretical frameworks and the expansion of the methodological toolbox for health promotion. The value of stakeholder and network analysis in the health promotion domain, at this stage, is two-fold. First, mapping relevant actors, their positions and connections in networks provides us with insight into their capacity to participate and contribute to health policy development. Second, these new tools contribute to a further understanding of policy entrepreneurial roles to be taken up by health promotion professionals and health authorities in favour of the socio-environmental approach to health. Notwithstanding the value of this first step, more research is required into both the practical application as well as in the theoretical connections with, for example, ...

'Sport promotes integration': this idea seems to be commonly accepted both in France and in the UK, even though the authorities in each country see the issue of 'ethnic minorities' very differently. This article draws on research based on interviews with the main actors of 'socio–sports' policies in the cities of Lyon and Birmingham and on analysis of consultation procedures and official documents, to show that sport provides a set of symbolic markers that helps the authorities, professionals and 'ethnic minorities' to get their bearings in an uncertain multicultural situation. Although 'ethnic minorities' try to control the direction of sports policies in pursuit of their own objectives, their strategies tend to be 'routinized' around markers legitimized by the authorities in response to the success of certain sporting practices. Sports policies, therefore, promote 'security' of identity for these 'minorities' by 'mapping' their environment using the values and principles of sport.'Le sport favorise l'int´gration': cette idée semble communément admise en France et en Grande–Bretagne alors même que leurs autorités respectives envisagent de manière très différente la question des 'minorités ethniques'. À partir d'une recherche fondée sur des entretiens avec les principaux acteurs des politiques 'socio–sportives' des villes de Lyon et de Birmingham, et sur l'analyse des procédures de concertation et des documents officiels, l'analyse montre que le sport trace des repères symboliques qui permettent aux pouvoirs publics, aux professionnels et aux 'minorités ethniques' de s'orienter dans une réalité multiculturelle incertaine. Mais si ces dernières tentent de contrôler l'orientation des politiques sportives de manière à poursuivre leurs propres objectifs, leurs stratégies tendent également à se 'routiniser' autour des repères que les pouvoirs publics ont légitimé pour répondre au succès des pratiques sportives. Les politiques sportives favorisent dès lors la 'sécurisation' identitaire de ces 'minorités' en 'cartographiant' leur environnement à l'aide des valeurs et des principes du sport.

Presumptive taxation of the hard-to- / Victor Thuronyi -- 'Sizing' the problem of the hard-to-tax / Friedrich Schneiderb -- Is it really so hard to tax the hard-to-tax? The context and role of presumptive taxes / Sally Wallace -- Discussant comment / William Randolph -- Mapping the US tax compliance continuum / Chin-Chin Ho -- Costs and benefits of marginal reallocation of tax agency resources in pursuing the hard-to-tax / Dmitri Romanov -- Discussant comment / Mark Rider -- Sales taxation in a global economy / Matthew N. Murray -- Taxing agriculture in a developing country : a possible approach / Indira Rajaraman -- Discussant comment / Kelly Edmiston -- Creating a favorable tax environment for small business / Michael Engelschalk -- Taxing the urban unrecorded economy in sub-saharan Africa / Gerard Chambas -- Introduction to the volume / Sally Wallace -- Discussant comment / Milka Casanegra -- Reaching the hardest to tax : consequences and possibilities / Roy Bahl -- Measuring hard-to-tax income by tax compliance and national accounts information / Francois Vaillancourt -- Measuring hard-to-tax income by tax compliance and national accounts information / Francois Vaillancourt -- Discussant comment / Laura Sour. - The goal of this edited volume is to take a hard, objective look at the many different aspects of taxing the hard-to-tax, as well as the many different approaches that have been employed around the world. In the developed and developing world, taxing certain kinds of activities, sectors, or individuals - the so-called hard-to-tax - is a challenge for governments. In the past, the practical side of this issue has received some attention, mainly from those working in the trenches of tax administration. There has also been some analytical work on such things as presumptive taxation, as well as some empirical work on measuring the hard-to-tax. However, the lessons from all of this work have been very unevenly disseminated, and there are clearly many unresolved issues. With the steady advance of such things as globalization, internet commerce, and tax shelters, the issues in taxing the hard-to-tax will become even more pressing

Includes bibliographical references. ; The relationship between species distribution and environment has always been a central issue in ecology. The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the role of abiotic and biotic factors in mediating the distribution of woody plants, particularly invasive alien species. Predictions of the future distribution of invasive species are required for management, conservation actions, and legislation. Using predictive geographical modelling, this thesis assesses the role of spatial scale in understanding the determinants of species distribution, modelling invasion spread, and taking conservation decisions. The species distribution databases were collated in a Geographic Information System from various sources (from field mapping to remote-sensing data), and at various spatial scales (from local to sub-continental). Classification and regression trees, a flexible non-parametric statistical technique, were developed for each case study. I show that static modelling approaches, such as classification trees, are appropriate for modelling species distribution at regional to sub-continental scales. More mechanistic approaches, which include biological attributes, are required for accurate modelling of species abundance at local scale. A hierarchy of environmental factors was observed. Abiotic factors such as climate were more important for modelling species distribution at broad scales, whereas biotic factors were the fine-scale drivers of species distribution and abundance. This highlights the scale- dependence of prediction accuracy and of environmental drivers. Predictive habitat modelling was also applied to modelling future land use changes (including invasive alien species) in the context of conservation planning for the Cape Floristic Region. Effective conservation planning requires a detailed assessment of current land use patterns and future land use scenarios. Conservation planning is generally derived at regional scale but implementation takes place at finer scales. I investigated the transition from broad-scale planning to fine-scale implementation. This work emphasises the importance of diverse and fragmented habitats in measuring conservation value. This thesis concludes by linking predictive habitat modelling, species determinants, and application types to the spatial scale analysed.