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This article analyzes the evolution of governance models within public administrations as they respond to complex socio-political challenges. It emphasizes the need to enhance the legitimacy and representativeness of decision-making processes in the face of persistent issues, social fragmentation, increasing inequalities, and political polarization. The study discusses two primary models: citizen participation, which promotes a more engaged form of democracy, and representative bureaucracy, which seeks to ensure that public administration reflects socio-demographic diversity. However, these frameworks have flaws, particularly in achieving representativeness and maintaining administrative efficiency. To address these issues, the concept of "Externally Active Representative Bureaucracy" (EARB) is proposed, which involves incorporating citizens directly into administrative structures to address specific challenges while improving the legitimacy and representativeness of decisions. The article reviews 155 academic articles to explore the various dimensions and effects of representative bureaucracy and citizen participation. The objective is to illustrate that EARB provides an innovative approach to public administration that bridges bureaucratic efficiency with citizen inclusion, inviting further research into this hybrid model to enhance our understanding of the operation of modern public administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on mobile phone data from the city of Barcelona, Spain, generalized linear models are used to analyse the relationship between urban mobilities and the spatial and temporal patterning of robbery and theft. The hypothesis was made that mobility fluxes may undermine social control mechanisms by altering the socio-demographic composition of urban populations, therefore increasing the risk of crime victimization. The analysis brought together indicators of land use and a measure of the ambient population disaggregated by different profiles of public space users (by sex, age, and place of residence). The results indicate that robbery and theft tend to cluster around locations that attract a higher proportion of non-residents (i.e. national and international visitors). Non-local visitors, who visit the city occasionally or once in a lifetime, lack a comprehensive knowledge of the environment which would help them to navigate safely through the urban space. Therefore, their presence not only unsettles the social routines of public spaces in Barcelona but also reflects negatively in terms of crime occurrence. This finding raises questions about how to accommodate growing mobilities in our cities without detriment to incumbent residents and their safety, which seems to be critical in post-COVID-19 urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial relationship between violent crime and alcohol outlets is well documented. Yet, it is unclear whether on- or off-premises alcohol outlets have greater effects on violent crime and whether this varies by interpersonal crimes and off-premises outlet subtype. This study addresses this gap by using both Routine Activities and Social Disorganization Theories. Using census block groups (n = 1,126) in the Bronx, NY, spatial access methods were used to measure violent crimes from 2018 to 2020 (n = 28,587) and alcohol outlets from 2020 (n = 1,984). Social disorganization measures consisting of various socioeconomic factors and accessibility factors were included. Five models were estimated using a Spatial Lag regression model. A positive direct, indirect, and total effect was observed for liquor, grocery, and drug stores on total violent crime exposure, but on-premise alcohol outlets was not related. Specific types of off-premises alcohol outlets were associated with various violent crimes, with liquor and grocery stores consistently related across all models. On-premises alcohol outlets were not associated with violent crime with the exception of assaults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social isolation and fragmentation represent global challenges, with the former stemming from a lack of interaction and the latter from exclusive mobs—both rooted in communication issues. Addressing these challenges, the philosophical realm introduces the concept of the "mixbiotic society." In this framework, individuals with diverse freedoms and values mix together in physical proximity with diverse mingling, recognizing their respective "fundamental incapacities" and uniting in solidarity. This study aims to provide novel measures to balance freedom and solidarity, specifically the intermediate between isolation and mobbing, within a mixbiotic society. To achieve this, we introduce simplified measures to evaluate dynamic communication patterns. These measures complement traditional social network analysis of static structures and conventional entropy-based assessments of dynamic patterns. Our specific hypothesis posits that the measures corresponding to four distinct phases are established by representing communication patterns as multidimensional vectors. These measures include the mean of Euclidean distance to quantify "mobism" for fragmentation, the relative distance change for "atomism" indicating isolation, and a composite measure derived from multiplying the mean and variance of cosine similarity for "mixism," reflecting the well-going state of a mixbiotic society. Additionally, nearly negligible measures correspond to "nihilism." Through the evaluation of seven real-society datasets (high school, primary school, workplace, village, conference, online community, and email), we demonstrate the utility of the "mixism" measure in assessing freedom and solidarity in society. These measures can be employed to typify communities on a radar chart and a communication trajectory graph. The superiority of the measures lies in their ability to evaluate dynamic patterns, ease of calculation, and easily interpretable meanings compared to conventional analyses. As a future development, alongside additional validation using diverse datasets, the mixbiotic society measures will be employed to analyze social issues and applied in the fields of digital democracy and platform cooperativism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous studies have evidenced that neuropsychiatric disorders (mental illness and emotional disturbances) with aggression (or violence) pose a significant challenge to public health and contribute to a substantial economic burden worldwide. Especially, social disorganization (or social inequality) associated with childhood adversity has long-lasting effects on mental health, increasing the risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders. Intestinal bacteria, functionally as an endocrine organ and a second brain, release various immunomodulators and bioactive compounds directly or indirectly regulating a host's physiological and behavioral homeostasis. Under various social challenges, stress-induced dysbiosis increases gut permeability causes serial reactions: releasing neurotoxic compounds, leading to neuroinflammation and neuronal injury, and eventually neuropsychiatric disorders associated with aggressive, violent, or impulsive behavior in humans and various animals via a complex bidirectional communication of the microbiota–gut–brain (MGB) axis. The dysregulation of the MGB axis has also been recognized as one of the reasons for the prevalence of social stress-induced injurious behaviors (feather pecking, aggression, and cannibalistic pecking) in chickens. However, existing knowledge of preventing and treating these disorders in both humans and chickens is not well understood. In previous studies, we developed a non-mammal model in an abnormal behavioral investigation by rationalizing the effects of gut microbiota on injurious behaviors in chickens. Based on our earlier success, the perspective article outlines the possibility of reducing stress-induced injurious behaviors in chickens through modifying gut microbiota via cecal microbiota transplantation, with the potential for providing a biotherapeutic rationale for preventing injurious behaviors among individuals with mental disorders via restoring gut microbiota diversity and function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: Broken windows theory suggests that police can prevent serious crime by addressing social and physical disorder in neighborhoods. In many U.S. cities, recent increases in disorder, fear, and crime have initiated calls for an intensification of disorder policing efforts. Disorder policing programs can be controversial, with evaluations yielding conflicting results. Further, a growing number of descriptive analyses of aggressive order maintenance programs raise concerns over varied negative consequences, such as increased racial disparities in arrests of citizens. Systematic review and meta‐analytic techniques were used to conduct an updated analysis of the effects of disorder policing on crime. Fifty‐six eligible studies including 59 independent tests of disorder policing interventions were identified, representing almost twice the number included in the previous review. As part of the meta‐analysis, new effect size metrics were used. The updated meta‐analysis suggests that policing disorder strategies are associated with overall statistically significant crime reduction effects that spill over into surrounding areas. The strongest program effect sizes were generated by community and problem‐solving interventions designed to change social and physical disorder conditions at crime hot spots. Conversely, aggressive order maintenance strategies did not generate significant crime reductions. Policy Implications: The types of strategies used by police departments to address disorder seem to matter in controlling crime, and this holds important implications for police–community relations, justice, and crime prevention. Further research is needed to understand the key programmatic elements that maximize the capacity of these strategies to prevent crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's culture is becoming increasingly secularized and characterized by social fragmentation. Christian teachers in public schools should no longer expect to share the same worldview as their students. It is only natural to ask the question: can anything good come about in a public-school classroom? This essay outlines a Christian vision for individual educators in public and pluralistic contexts that draws from a scripturally informed view of natural law. This paper answers this question in the affirmative: not only can it be good, but it can also be glorious, even if such glories are diminutive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of housing and individual residential mobility on recidivism is nuanced. Individuals may move from prosocial environments to criminogenic environments, or from neighborhoods that are more, or less, socioeconomically disadvantaged. We explore these phenomena using data on individuals on parole in the District of Columbia with community-level Census data. We hypothesize that residential mobility will affect recidivism through changes in both housing types and neighborhood characteristics. Findings suggest that people immediately placed into treatment-oriented or transitional housing had lower rates of rearrest than those in other housing situations. Results of the community-level measures of social disorganization were mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Literature on the influence of homelessness on crime is lacking, particularly at the neighborhood level. This study seeks to understand how homelessness affects crime levels in a large city in the United States. Data/Methods: Crime data, homeless count data, and neighborhood characteristics are obtained from three government public data sources. OLS Regression and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) are utilized to determine the relationship between homelessness and crime on a global and local level. Results: The analyses revealed that homelessness is significantly, positively associated with crime, even when controlling for macro-level correlates of crime. The effect size of homelessness on crime varies across neighborhoods. Conclusions/Implications: Policy implications based on findings of the current study and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study examines the relationship between the features of physical and social environments and neighborhood crime in a large Korean city. We utilized the 112 Crime Calls Data from May 1, 2018 to April 30, 2019, aggregated at the ¼-mile egohood level. We estimated a series of negative binomial regression models to test the effects of social and physical environmental features on crime rates. Furthermore, we examine potential moderating effects between the measures of physical and social environments. The results indicate that incorporating the physical and social environmental features based on the theoretical framework of criminal opportunities and social disorganization can be useful for understanding the spatial patterns of crime in Korean context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Border crimes threaten public safety and security in the United States and the US-Mexico border region. Several evaluations support that data-driven, place-based crime prevention approaches can complement current public safety strategies and help reduce crime. Accordingly, place-based crime prevention may successfully prevent border crimes since these are inherently spatial. However, few studies have analyzed the geographies of Texas-Mexico border crimes, and assessments of data-driven, place-based crime prevention strategies of border crimes still lack a solid empirical foundation - especially in more rural border communities. To address this issue, this study builds police report data (Border Incident Assessment Report (BIAR)), used to record crime information related to cross-border criminal arrests and counter-criminal intelligence collection (2019-2022), for one rural county on the US-Mexico border. Results indicate high degrees of spatial concentrations of human smuggling and drug crimes. This study, moreover, explores how conventional theories of crimes and places (e.g., social disorganization) are able to explain border crimes. Findings indicate that while indicators work reasonably well to explain spatial patterns for drug crimes, more border crime specific indicators and models might have to be developed for human smuggling events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews three recently published books on rural criminology. "Crime and Safety in the Rural: Lessons from Research" by Ceccato and Abraham provides an international synthesis of rural literature, highlighting the importance of studying crime and safety in rural areas. "Rural Transformations and Rural Crime: International Critical Perspectives in Rural Criminology" edited by Bowden and Harkness explores the impact of rural transformations on safety and security. "Woman Abuse in Rural Places" by DeKeseredy focuses on violence against women in rural areas, challenging the notion of social disorganization theory. These books contribute to the growing field of rural crime and justice studies, which has become more diverse, critical, and international in the 21st century. [Extracted from the article]

Business parks are a ubiquitous feature of city-edge development. They have attracted attention for their lack of sustainability, spurring interest in how they can be reconfigured or reimagined in the face of ecological collapse and social fragmentation. Inspired by calls to notice everyday practices at the city edge (Tzaninis et al. 2021. "Moving Urban Political Ecology Beyond the 'Urbanization of Nature'." Progress in Human Geography 45 (2): 229–252; Tsing 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Gandy 2022a. "Ghosts and Monsters: Reconstructing Nature on the Site of the Berlin Wall." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47: 1120–1136.) and drawing on data from a participant-led photography exercise at a suburban business park in the north-east of England, this article explores how workers employed at businesses on the park engage with and value its natural assets. We set out from Tzaninis et al.'s (2021) contention that the dominant framing of suburbia as 'non-place' or 'no man's land' has the effect of denying the many intriguing practices unfolding at the city's edge. Resonating with Tsing (2015), we highlight the significance of everyday interaction with nature in an ecologically vulnerable landscape as a creative, open-ended and, potentially, hopeful process. Focused on denizens of the business park, our data draws attention to the possibilities and potentialities of more-than-human encounters, the feeling of tranquillity generated by green spaces, and the sense of freedom that derives from bodily movement in a natural setting. These open-ended practices are distinct from, and 'other than', the dominant way of doing business in the park. Such encounters, drawn out by auto-photography, foment a radical connectedness with nature through which a powerful sense of custodianship and responsibility can find expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Next to their traditional role as places for information provision and knowledge transmission, public libraries increasingly also function as important social infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. As such, they can help to address systemic challenges such as social fragmentation, loneliness, exclusion and precarity. However, the library not merely is a social infrastructure, but becomes one each operating day through continuous labour by a network of stakeholders. This paper specifically examines library staff and their routinised practices to provide, perform and maintain the library as social infrastructure. The empirical research was carried out in four public libraries in the Netherlands and focussed on staff members who were in a 1-year post-graduate programme to become a community librarian, and their close colleagues. It consisted of two phases: first librarians were shadowed at work, followed by a focus group interview on the multiple problems librarians encounter to (re)make their library into social infrastructures. These include coping with limited space, collaborating with other institutions, difficulties to reach out to the community, financial struggles and differentiating interpretations of the library's primary function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint innovation across countries plays a vital role in international networks of knowledge-intensive businesses. We study how the cultural backgrounds of collaborators influence success in international innovation. Intercultural proximity implies shared values and norms that can engender trust and cooperation in innovation. However, social fragmentation can induce conflict and mistrust, whereas joint innovation can progress through the tolerance and acceptance of different views. Our gravity model analysis of international patent cooperation data shows that social fragmentation complements intercultural proximity along the social identity dimensions of religion, ethnicity, and language to promote joint innovation. Intercultural proximity operates through trust, especially for countries with weak intellectual property rights laws, while social fragmentation operates through tolerance and acceptance, especially for countries with strong IPR laws. Economic strength, trade, and institutional differences are also important predictors of collaborative innovation. We confirm that geographical distance between countries lowers cooperation, but it cannot explain away the positive effects of intercultural proximity and social fragmentation. Plain English Summary: Co-innovation increases with intercultural proximity – and even more so when countries are socially fragmented. International joint innovation allows knowledge-intensive businesses to synergistically draw upon the ideas, expertise, and experience of innovators from their respective cultures (countries). However, such collaborations are often hampered by the uncertainty of partner exploitation and free-riding especially in the absence of formal institutions such as strong intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. In such cases, while intercultural proximity (e.g., along the dimensions of religion, ethnicity, and language) can promote cooperation through the informal institution of trust, social fragmentation can induce mistrust and in turn hamper collaboration. This is puzzling in light of evidence that fragmentation also promotes innovation. Thus, we empirically show that the positive effect of intercultural proximity operates through trust especially when IPR protection is weak. The positive effect of fragmentation on international patent cooperation operates through tolerance and acceptance especially when IPR protection is strong. This implies that nurturing tolerance and acceptance while strengthening IPR and developing the intellectual property ecosystem in fragmented societies, building intercultural trust, and increasing diversity in countries, alliances, or firms can promote co-patenting success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unequal exchange in international trade lies at the crossroads of all the major contradictions of the current global capitalist system: class, spatial and ecological. Countering unequal exchange can offer the basis for a broad global social coalition demanding a new international economic and ecological order. It can unite the claims of social and ecological movements around a common agenda where global social justice meets global environmental justice. The objective conditions are provided by the common ground of concrete interests that binds together various political and social actors in the global South and North who are harmed by corporate neoliberal globalisation. Building the subjective conditions, however, requires overcoming theoretical reductionisms and political sectarianisms that contribute to the fragmentation of social struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The myriad applications of artificial intelligence (AI) by the private and public sectors have exploded in the public consciousness in the postpandemic period. However, researchers and businesses have been working on AI technology applications for decades, and in many ways, governments are rushing to catch up. This article presents an argument that the future of AI policy in the United States will be driven in large part by current and future state-level policy experiments. This argument is presented by drawing on scholarship surrounding federalism, regulatory fragmentation, and the effects of fragmentation on business and social equity. The article then presents the case of autonomous vehicle policy in the states to illustrate the degree of current fragmentation and considers the effects of layering new AI policies on top of existing rules surrounding privacy, licensing, and more. Following this consideration of existing research and its application of AI policy, the article presents a research agenda for leveraging state differences to study the effects of AI policy and develop a cohesive framework for governing AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social cohesion and financial tensions are the key components of psychosocial well‐being, yet the relationship has rarely been examined. This article, which offers an empirical investigation into the complex and multidimensional character of social cohesion, examines how financial stress affects social relations in Australia and analyses the moderating effect of social support using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. The results indicate that financial stress has negative effects on social cohesion and has the potential to contribute to social fragmentation. It was found that structural social cohesion is more affected by financial stress than cognitive social cohesion. This study also uncovers the beneficial and buffering effects that social support can bestow on financial stress trauma sufferers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban greenspace (UGS) has been recently linked to public safety. Criminologists, however, have been largely absent from the discussion about this association, despite having important theoretical tools and empirical findings to contribute. In the current study, we review the prominent criminological perspectives that may be used to explain the association between UGS and crime. Furthermore, we draw from prior work to extend beyond the question of whether UGS affects crime to the more crucial question of when it does. Using a sample of block groups in Washington, D.C., we examine the association between two measures of UGS—tree canopy coverage and noncanopy vegetation coverage—and violent and property crime. We also assess the moderating effects of antecedents to social disorganization (poverty and homeownership) on the association between UGS and crime. Our results suggest that both types of UGS are associated with fewer crimes, even while controlling for a range of criminogenic factors. The effects of tree canopy coverage appear to be crime general, while the effects of noncanopy vegetation coverage only apply to violent crime. The effects of tree canopy, however, are weaker in communities characterized by high levels of poverty and low levels of homeownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient Andean agricultural landscapes have been the subject of a large number of archaeological and agro-ecological studies, which generally refer to regions with favourable environmental conditions or, in the case of arid and semi-arid environments, those with irrigation facilities. The aim of this article is to present and analyse the pre-Hispanic rain-fed farming systems widely represented in two adjacent regions of Bolivia's arid and cold southern Altiplano. The search for archaeological agricultural areas combined aerial analysis and field surveys. Agro-ecological characterisation was based on historical and ethnographic studies of the region's present-day populations. Despite their geographical proximity, similar environmental conditions, and same agropastoral way of life, the typology of cultivated areas developed in the southern altiplano differs significantly. Within this same framework of adaptation and resilience, the sectorisation of agricultural systems observed in these two regions reveals a regional productive specialisation that favoured internal exchanges and exchanges with other regions. These differences are related to two models of non-centralised, low-inequality societies—one strongly based on cohesion and the other characterised by greater fragmentation and social conflict—underlining the limits of strict environmental determinism in shaping agricultural landscapes. These results provide new food for thought in the debate on the use and value of rain-fed agricultural practices and more broadly on the diversity of adaptations by human societies in extreme and unstable environmental contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth spend much of their time socializing and hanging out with friends, as well as engaging in extracurricular activities, in areas surrounding their schools. Additionally, many studies document a criminogenic effect of schools on the surrounding neighborhood. Yet little is known about how the structural characteristics of those areas shape adolescent involvement in criminal and delinquent behavior. Using recent data drawn from surveys of adolescents in three major U.S. cities, the American Community Survey, and the US Census, we analyze (1) the effects of school neighborhood contexts on adolescent crime and (2) the extent to which individual propensity (i.e., moral beliefs and self-control) moderates the effects of the school neighborhood context. We find that concentrated disadvantage and ethnic heterogeneity of the school area impact delinquent behavior only among youth with certain moral beliefs. Our findings highlight the need to identify the conditions under which social context matters and to focus on different types of neighborhoods beyond residential areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly attention directed toward hate crime, especially across communities, has grown in the past two decades. Rural communities, however, have been neglected in such empirical inquiry, driving issues on the ability to draw reliable conclusions on ecological variations of such offenses. Thus, we examined structural and demographic predictors of hate crime across rural and urban counties, focusing our attention on whether patterns varied in predicting anti-Black, Hispanic, and White crimes from 2012 through 2016. Using social disorganization and the defended communities perspective as explanatory frameworks, we find important differences and similarities between these settings, with implications for theory and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) chemotherapy increases the risk of life‐threatening complications, including septic shock (SS). An area‐based measure of social determinants of health, the social disorganization index (SDI), was hypothesized to be associated with SS and SS‐associated death (SS‐death). Methods: Children treated for de novo AML on two Children's Oncology Group trials at institutions contributing to the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) database were included. The SDI was calculated via residential zip code data from the US Census Bureau. SS was identified via PHIS resource utilization codes. SS‐death was defined as death within 2 weeks of an antecedent SS event. Patients were followed from 7 days after the start of chemotherapy until the first of end of front‐line therapy, death, relapse, or removal from study. Multivariable‐adjusted Cox regressions estimated hazard ratios (HRs) comparing time to first SS by SDI group. Results: The assembled cohort included 700 patients, with 207 (29.6%) sustaining at least one SS event. There were 233 (33%) in the SDI‐5 group (highest disorganization). Adjusted time to incident SS did not statistically significantly differ by SDI (reference, SDI‐1; SDI‐2: HR, 0.84 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.51–1.41]; SDI‐3: HR, 0.70 [95% CI, 0.42–1.16]; SDI‐4: HR, 0.97 [95% CI, 0.61–1.53]; SDI‐5: HR, 0.72 [95% CI, 0.45–1.14]). Nine patients (4.4%) with SS experienced SS‐death; seven of these patients (78%) were in SDI‐4 or SDI‐5. Conclusions: In a large, nationally representative cohort of trial‐enrolled pediatric patients with AML, there was no significant association between the SDI and time to SS. Time to first septic shock event was not associated with the social disorganization index (SDI), an area‐based measure of social determination of health, in children with acute myeloid leukemia treated on two Children's Oncology Group trials. Septic shock–associated mortality is rare in children with acute myeloid leukemia, and differences by SDI were not able to be detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social integration, a huge issue triggered by migration, leads to potential social fragmentation and confrontation. Focusing on the precise enhancement of "inner" subjective social integration is the ultimate urbanization solution to enhance people-centered well-being and promote full social integration. This article used data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey 2017 (CMDS 2017) to reveal the spatial patterns and mechanisms of subjective social integration in Chinese cities. We make an innovative attempt to introduce multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to address the appropriateness of policy formulation by addressing the spatial variation in the factors. The results demonstrate that the influences on subjective social integration have a strong spatial heterogeneity in China, a vast and unevenly developed country. Expanding on the typical factors, household registration and political participation affect North China more than other regions; and housing and marriage have a greater impact in South China, especially in the Pearl River Delta and the Eastern Seaboard. Income, welfare, and healthcare are indiscriminately sweeping through most of China. Such a conclusion reminds the Chinese government that it needs to consider not only addressing some of the national constraints to subjective social integration but also imposing precise, site-specific changes for different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper models the welfare consequences of social fragmentation arising from technological advance. We start from the premise that technological progress falls primarily on market-traded commodities rather than prosocial relationships, since the latter intrinsically require the expenditure of time and thus are less amenable to productivity increases. Since prosocial relationships require individuals to identify with others in their social group whereas marketable commodities are commonly the objects of social status comparisons, a tradeoff arises between in-group affiliation and inter-group status comparisons. People consequently narrow the bounds of their social groups, reducing their prosocial relationships and extending their status-seeking activities. As prosocial relationships generate positive externalities whereas status-seeking activities generate negative preference externalities, technological advance may lead to a particular type of "decoupling" of social welfare from material prosperity. Once the share of status goods in total production exceeds a crucial threshold, technological advance is shown to be welfare-reducing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the human ecological model views neighbourhood instability as a function of household-level decisions, the present study draws on a political economy of place perspective to highlight how the profit-seeking interests of outside actors shapes instability, with consequences for neighbourhood crime. Using data on neighbourhoods in Los Angeles County from 2007 to 2013, I decompose levels of stability according to housing dynamics (displacement, development, changing rents, sales, low-income units), and assess their direct and indirect association with violent and property crime. I find that, over a 7-year period, poorer neighbourhoods are more vulnerable to these exchange-value pressures, stability is more consequential to crime in high-poverty neighbourhoods, and certain housing dynamics are associated with increasing crime through their detrimental effect on renter stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is rich research on tourism destination evolution, the literature on how normative social and environmental goals (as opposed to contingent events or economic imperatives) drive the evolution of tourism towards more sustainable forms remains under-developed. As a result, the overall understanding of how sustainability in tourism is pursued on the ground and what context-specific factors shape these processes is still insufficient. To address this lacuna, the paper draws upon the sustainability transitions (ST) agenda that focuses on the ground level processes of transitions and conceptualises sustainability transitions as multi-actor, multi-dimensional, evolutionary, disruptive and contested processes. As such, the paper offers a constructive response to Niewiadomski and Brouder's (2022) call for bridging the gap between the research on tourism evolution and the sustainability transitions agenda. More specifically, the paper adopts selected concepts of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) (which have long proved helpful in research on both tourism evolution and sustainability transitions) to address how sustainability in tourism is mindfully pursued in the Outer Hebrides (Scotland, UK) and what geographical and historical factors shape this transition. The analysis draws from 17 semi-structured interviews (conducted in 2020-2021 with tourism businesses and various organisations involved in tourism in the Outer Hebrides) and documentary analysis. Two main groups of place- and path-dependent factors that shape the ongoing transition to sustainable tourism in the Outer Hebrides are identified: 1) institutional and social fragmentation, and 2) infrastructural deficiencies and challenges. The paper finds that the transition to sustainability in tourism in the Outer Hebrides is fragmented and intermittent. Although numerous promising changes are taking place, the transition suffers from a lack of systemic and systematic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amanda Holt's book "Family Criminology" offers a unique and significant perspective on the relationship between families and crime. Holt, an expert in the field with a multidisciplinary background, explores the intricate dynamics of family criminology and its impact on societal factors. The book is structured into nine chapters, each focusing on different aspects of family criminology, including family structure, crime within families, and families as victims of crime. Holt utilizes various theoretical frameworks and provides practical cases and methodological challenges to enhance readers' understanding. The book's contributions include a shift in focus towards the role of family in criminology, a multidimensional perspective on crime and family, and insights into the impact of crime on families. However, the book has limitations in terms of its global focus, reliance on secondary data, and lack of attention to nontraditional family structures, economic crimes, and the influence of technology. Overall, "Family Criminology" is a significant contribution to the field of criminology, offering valuable insights for researchers and policymakers. [Extracted from the article]

This study looks at the spatial distribution of robbery against residents as a function of nonstationary density and mobility patterns in the most densely populated city in Spain, Barcelona. Based on the geographical coordinates of mobile devices, we computed two measures of density of the ambient population and the tourist presence, for work days, weekends, and holidays in 2019. Negative binomial regressions are then estimated to analyse whether these measures are correlated with the risk of robbery, controlling for land use and the characteristics of the social environment. The model reveals that residents' chances of being exposed to robbery in Barcelona depend on the social relevance and tourism attractiveness of certain places at particular times of the year. Our results disclose two sources of social disorganization as stronger predictors of the occurrence of robbery in Barcelona, respectively linked to structural processes of residential instability and daily and seasonal mobility patterns. On the one hand, we found that the effect of the density of international tourists on the outcome variable is mediated by residential volatility, which is assumed to be associated with housing shortages in neighbourhoods where short-term vacation rentals are widespread. On the other hand, the ability to exert effective social control is significantly undermined in urban areas, where the ambient population and the volume of tourists outnumber the resident population, thus increasing incidents of robbery victimization. The implications of these findings for urban policy and crime prevention in the Catalan capital are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of doubt in France in relation to witchcraft and subsequent legal trials involving witchcraft, and it mentions attitudes about magic and belief. According to the article, the dislocation of doubt and uncertain attitudes towards magic are attributed to processes involving exclusion and return, marginalization and contagion, and fragmentation and recombination. Modern views about vaccinations and racism are also assessed.

Although W. E. B. Du Bois addresses crime in Black communities in many of his writings, he is rarely recognized as having a cohesive theory on crime, and his work is often conflated with Shaw and McKay's social disorganization theory. While both social disorganization and Du Bois's theories pushed sociology and criminology away from pseudo-biological explanations of crime to the social environment, the Chicago School analyzed how social control broke down within neighborhoods, while Du Bois analyzed how racist social and economic exclusion of Black communities led to crime. Du Bois's criminological theories of social disharmony and racial injustice also consider the social construction of crime and the criminalization of Blackness where social disorganization does not. Focusing on the relations of racial exclusion led Du Bois to propose solutions to crime that focus on mechanisms of oppression and economic injustice across various levels of society. This approach differs widely from community-level interventions driven by social disorganization theory, which focus on improving informal social control within neighborhoods. Du Bois's theories on crime and the social environment provide an analytic lens for sociologists to link the social organization within communities to the social organization across communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people hesitate to summon state authorities to address concerns? Previous research has focused on cultural orientations about law enforcement, such as legal cynicism. In addition, people are often in a position to turn others in, requiring attention to how potential reporters understand the meaning and consequences of implicating others. This article identifies empathy as an underexamined lens through which marginalized groups view state intervention. I argue that amid shared social roles with those potentially reported to authorities, individuals invoke empathy in disavowing reporting. I advance this argument using the case of child abuse and neglect reporting, analyzing in-depth interviews with 74 low-income mothers in Rhode Island. Respondents disavowed or expressed ambivalence about reporting other families to child protection authorities, often justifying their non-reporting by empathizing with mothers they might report. Drawing on their own experiences of scrutinized and precarious motherhood, respondents imagined how they would feel if reported and balked at calling on child protective services, understanding reporting as an act of judging and jeopardizing another's motherhood. The findings challenge conceptions of non-reporting as necessarily indicating social disorganization. Rather, hesitation to mobilize authorities can constitute an expression of care, kinship, and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This preregistered scoping review provides an account of studies which have examined the spatial patterning of emergency reactive police demand (ERPD) as measured by calls for service data. To date, the field has generated a wealth of information about the geographic concentration of calls for service, but the information remains unsynthesised and inaccessible to researchers and practitioners. We code our literature sample (N = 79) according to the types of demand studied, the spatial scales used, the theories adopted, the methods deployed and the findings reported. We find that most studies focus on crime-related call types using meso-level (e.g., neighborhood) spatial scales. Descriptive methods demonstrate the non-random distribution of calls, irrespective of their type, while correlational findings are mixed, providing minimal support for theories such as social disorganization theory. We conclude with suggestions for future research, focusing on how the field can better exploit open data sources to 'scale-up' analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This secondary data analysis of 1731 low-birth-weight children and their parents in the United States investigated children's health and its associations with social disorganization, social structural factors, social relationships, health/mental health, and access to health insurance/services. The study drew on data from the 2021 National Survey of Children's Health. Logistic regression yielded results showing low-birth-weight children's excellent/very good/good health to be associated positively with parents' education and health. In turn, child health was associated negatively with being Black, having a family income at or below the 100% federal poverty level, difficulty parenting the child, child chronic health condition(s), parent mental health, and substance use in the family. The implications of the present findings in terms of interventions promoting maternal and child health as well as participation in government assistance programs for low-income families are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term co-radicalization refers to intergroup hostilities leading to conflicts through cycles of reciprocal threat. This article explores the concept of co-radicalization in violent and non-violent terms and its potential application particularly in Turkey and broadly in the Middle East, a region characterized by ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, as well as socio-economic disparities. Drawing from the social fragmentations recently observed in Turkey, where scientific research on radicalism and co-radicalization is insufficient, the article offers several subjects of scrutiny, including (1) socio-economic co-radicalization between the native and migrant people in the fringes of the urban spaces, (2) the religious norm carriership led by the state institutions and the rise of “Deism” and atheism in response, and (3) the variety of non-violent radical expressions feeding each other, from music to satire. We conclude that the study of coradicalization should be distinguished from the reductionist approaches to the concept, which tend to take terrorism and radicalism synonymously; the social scientific goal is to obtain a deeper understanding of the intricate dynamics behind societal divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to relate natural teleology to the practice of governance. To do so, it presents the phenomenon of social fragmentation and evaluates it –following A. MacIntyre– as a negative aspect of contemporary social (dis)order due to the moral and psychological disintegration it promotes among ordinary people. Such disintegration leads to conflict and confusion between desires and goods. Among the causes of fragmentation, analytical philosophy and the social theory of existentialism stand out and, at their core, the abandonment of natural teleology. Institutional governance is not immune to fragmentation, so the author suggests that a perspective that explicitly integrates natural teleology in the practice of governance may have practical implications in decision-making and can constitute a significant, albeit partial, contribution to achieving social and moral cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim religious professionals are caught between the expectations of the community they serve and belong to and the expectations of the society they live in. Drawing on Helmut Plessner's notion of "antithetical tensions between community and society", this study addresses questions of how Muslim religious professionals experience these tensions and how they cope with them. The data presented are based on semi-structured interviews conducted as part of exploratory research on Muslim service providers in the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. The findings show that Muslim religious professionals have to deal with community-related challenges such as generational differences, social change and fragmentation, together with outside influences including radicalisation and challenges related to society. Given the recurrent debates on Islamic radicalisation and terrorism in media and politics, they are expected to prove they are peaceful and loyal citizens, even though they are more often than not accused of not being integrated into society. Muslim religious professionals work strenuously, often on a voluntary basis, to do justice to expectations from both sides and try to be non-provocative by engaging in low-profile activities. Finally, they reach out to the wider society, e.g., by participating in inter-religious dialogue and, therefore, engage in bridging activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sanctuary places, such as counties, continue to be a contentious topic in the sociopolitical arena, with politicians debating whether these jurisdictions serve as havens for immigrants or contribute to increased criminal activity, arguing that they provide safe havens for criminals despite the lack of research to support their claims. Using county-level crime data from 2015 to 2019, this research examines the relationship between sanctuary status and various crime categories, including violent and property crimes, employing negative binomial regression to analyze the effects of sanctuary status on county-level crime counts. Findings indicate that sanctuary counties do not experience higher crime rates; in fact, some evidence suggests lower crime rates in these areas. The results challenge stereotypes about immigrants and highlight the need for policies that support immigrant communities without compromising public safety, contributing to the broader understanding of immigration, sanctuary policies, and their societal impacts. Limitations, directions for future research, and policy implications are also discussed to consider social disorganization factors in other studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been highly controversial in China and beyond. The burgeoning of social media has created an online activist field where participants utilize networked framing practices to engage in connective actions related to GMO risks. However, a dynamic perspective on the co-production of GMO risk discourses has yet to be fully explored, and it is still under debate whether such a collective interpretation is fragmented. To address this gap, this study investigates the risk-invoked GMO controversy by longitudinally exploring the structural characteristics and discursive power structures in the networked framing of GMO risks on social media. This study examines 356,227 GMO risk posts from 2010 to 2020 on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. A longitudinal social network analysis and computational text-mining approach are used to construct representation networks among participants based on their joint sponsorship framing practices of GMO risks. The findings suggest that there is a multipolar discussion fragmentation in the networked framing of GMO risks. However, the temporal evidence shows that the risk discussion has become increasingly interconnected and less structurally fragmented over time. In addition, this study highlights the unequal distribution of discursive power among participants; nevertheless, the analysis reveals that this inequality has shown signs of easing over the study period. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the GMO controversy from a risk perspective and sheds light on the dynamics of networked framing practices and discursive power structures on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the challenges, strategies and prospects of interfaith dialogue in the post-truth age. Conflicting truth claims constitute one of the major obstacles in establishing dialogue and rapprochement among believers. Some members of faith communities have an exclusivist view of the truth, which prevents them from embracing other truths. This would hinder the progress of interfaith ecumenism. Using qualitative content analysis, the results of the current study show that the rise of post-truth poses additional challenges to the progress of interfaith dialogue since it evaluates the truthfulness of information based on personal believability and inclinations. In the age of post-truth, societal fragmentation is amplified as there are polarized conceptions of truth. Some strategies can be undertaken in response to these challenges, such as nurturing empathy, compassion, and religious moderatism through formal and informal education. In addition, critical argumentation and civil dialogue within academia should be adopted for a larger society. This paper argues that the prospects for interfaith dialogue in the post-truth age depend on the strength of civil society actors who can moderate the tension and polarization within the society by maintaining civility either offline or online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is a global menace with some countries of the world notoriously deep in it. Nigeria, a developing country has been battling, however, unsuccessfully with the scourge of corruption despite measures put in place to curb it. This paper chronicles the antecedents of corruption in Nigeria. It reviews the anti-corruption strategies with a view to proffering a robust, aggressive, and productive engagement against the recalcitrant nature of corruption in the country. The theoretical framework of the study is anchored on Social Disorganization Theory (SDT) and Social Learning Theory (SLT). Among the varying recommendations made by this paper, is the need to rejig, reinvigorate, and re-awake consciously, conscientiously, and systematically, the traditional anti-corruption institutions such as the National Assembly, the Judiciary, the Police, offices of the Accountant General, Auditor General, among others, to the understanding of their paramount role and vanguard position in championing very effectively, the anti-corruption war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the current study is to examine factors related to opioid overdose deaths within the framework of social disorganization theory. We identify county-level factors related to overdose deaths among a series of measures related to economic (unemployment, health insurance coverage, and poverty) and socio-structural (prescribed opioid pills, racial heterogeneity, drug arrest rate, county rurality, and Appalachian location) disadvantage. Using panel data on counties in the United States drawn from five major, federal-level datasets, we perform a series of stepwise mixed-effects models to examine the relationships between economic and social markers of structural disadvantage and opioid-involved overdose deaths between the years 2006 and 2012. The proportion of poverty, unemployment, Appalachia, and pills prescribed are associated with increased opioid overdose deaths over time. A series of interactions illustrate that markers of disadvantage, including opioid prescriptions, often operate in tandem to exacerbate opioid overdose deaths. Based on standardized coefficients, the most predictive factor related to opioid overdose deaths is the volume of opioid pill prescriptions in a county on a year-to-year basis. Overall, this study emphasizes the utility of criminological theory in policy-related work focused on the opioid crisis. Our work also highlights the need for federal agencies to release data already collected on opioid pills to further our understanding of how to combat the opioid crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Cosmopolitics of Solidarity" by Johanna Leinius explores the fragmentation of social (feminist) movements in Latin America and analyzes the construction of difference within transnational social movements. The author develops a theory of cosmopolitan solidarity and examines how moments of solidarity are negotiated in encounters between heterogeneous actors. The book provides a thoughtful theoretical analysis combined with empirical case studies, making it a valuable resource for critical feminist and postcolonial movement research. The author emphasizes the need for a decolonization of feminism and the recognition of difference in order to foster transformative solidarity. [Extracted from the article]

Regular violence pervades the slums in Port Harcourt, a metropolitan city where people inhabit for the purpose of work, among other reasons. The curiosity to understand the relationship of work with this violence is felt by the researchers who, from the review of relevant literature, observed that intellectual response to the issue dealt with political violence and effects on social development. The researchers therefore observed an existing gap in knowledge of the relationship between urban slum violence and work in the slum areas of Port Harcourt. Four research hypotheses were posed to guide the study. The study adopted the social disorganization theory in the explanation of the variables of the study. Simple random sampling method was adopted in the selection of the respondents of the instruments of the study, and some slums in the city were selected randomly. The study adopted cross-sectional research design and generated data through survey. The data for the study was generated through the administration of structured questionnaire and Focus Group Discussion. Sample size of 400 was determined by the Taro Yamane statistics. We analyzed data of the study using descriptive statistics. Thus, chi-square statistics was utilized in testing the hypotheses of the study. The qualitative data were organized into conceptual themes and categories. The study concluded that urban slum violence hinders school activities, business activities, fishing activities and employment opportunities for people in the slum areas of Port Harcourt. Thus, the study established that urban slum violence has a negative impact on work in the slum areas of Port Harcourt. Hence, policy recommendations were made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stream analogy of lethal violence (SALV) argues that homicide and suicide are similarly driven by frustration and aggression. SALV research has examined forces of production (i.e., lethal violence rate [LVR]) and forces of direction (i.e., suicide-homicide ratio [SHR]). The current study applies 6 foundational social disorganization theory (i.e., the systemic model) structural predictors and 3 unique social controls to help explain the LVR and SHR. Using data from 229 South Korean community areas, the study tracked lethal violence for 6 years for each area, yielding 1,374 observations for analysis. Findings reveal mixed support for the systemic model. Urban area was negatively associated with the SHR's initial level, but positively associated with increased SHR rates of change. Variations in the residential instability and divorce rates had positive effects on only the initial LVR level. Children's nursery facilities fully mediated the link between structural characteristics and increased SHR rates of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines administrative data on housing transactions with monthly crime data for the years 2014–18 to investigate the link between residential turnover and crime. Using a panel of 34,753 small neighbourhoods in England and Wales as well as street-level data for London, estimates from models with multiple fixed effects suggest that higher turnover is associated with higher overall crime rates. These effects are small and driven by increases in property and violent crime. Using information on price growth, I document differential effects for high-turnover, high price growth ('attractive') and high turnover, low price growth ('declining') areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated county-level correlates of human trafficking arrest levels in Ohio. Study variables were comprised of measures derived from social disorganization, social capital, and physical contexts of Ohio counties (N = 88). A negative binomial regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between county arrest counts and independent variables. Larger counts of human trafficking arrests were explained by higher levels of racial/ethnic heterogeneity, a social disorganization measure. Additionally, an increase in demand reduction strategy use was associated with a predicted increase in human trafficking arrest count. Further research on the influence of social variables and anti-human trafficking efforts on human trafficking arrest levels is needed to better understand how to effectively identify and combat human trafficking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child marriage is a global social phenomenon that has even been identified as a crucial issue of child protection in the 21st century and has been addressed by various countries in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Indonesia itself has declared a child marriage emergency because by 2020 it was included in the 10 countries with the highest number of child marriages in the world, ie, about 1,220,900 children with early marriages were scattered in 22 provinces, one of which is East Java with 6084 cases in 2020, with the largest percentage in Madura Island and one in Sumenep Island with a total of 1723 cases. The Havana Convention of 1990 states that the elimination of the causal factors of social problems in a society is the most effective means of addressing the social problems themselves and must be an integral part of social defense itself. This paper is driven to identify and analyze the determinant causal factors of child marriage in Sumenep. It is written based on empirical legal research with a socio-legal approach, which prioritizes primary data obtained from the results of interviews and questionnaires and is analyzed descriptively and qualitatively. The results show that the causal factors of child marriages in Sumenep are dominated by cultural practices such as the "tan-pangantanan" tradition, which is also promoted by the government as part of the preservation of local traditions, the conceptual shift of 'Tompangan' Tradition, excessive fanaticism toward Muslim Priests (Kyai), low education, economic gain, and the worriness of free sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]