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Social scientists, geographers, criminologists, and health scientists are often tasked with finding data to best capture the impact of "community context" on individual outcomes, including residential services, physical resources, and social institutions. One outlet for such data in Canada is Digital Map Technologies Inc. (DMTI) Spatial, which offers a national repository of over one million businesses and recreational points of interest. The database is generated through CanMap Streetfiles, which includes geocodes of each point's precise location. These data are available to researchers from their university data library and Esri Canada, but primarily available to private sector and government markets. That said, the goal of the current paper is to encourage researchers to access this rich yet under‐utilized data source. Each service, business, or resource in the DMTI Spatial database is assigned to a respective category using Standard Industrial Classification codes and North American Industrial Classification System codes. It is not clear, however, which is the more reliable coding criteria. We provide an overview of our review of DMTI Spatial data and take‐away suggestions for using this valuable resource for future research on meso‐level residential markers. Key messages: The goal of this paper is to outline existing data source(s) and measures from DMTI Spatial that might help capture meso‐level residential institutions.We recommend "best practices" for using DMTI Spatial data in researchers' own work to capture neighbourhood resources/amenities, or the social infrastructure of the community using either Standard Industrial Classification codes or North American Industrial Classification System codes.We conclude that Standard Industrial Classification codes in DMTI Spatial enhanced points of interest data are more complete—and more accurate—than North American Industrial Classification System codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years increasing attention has been paid to the ways in which diasporic communities can shape global development processes, thorough a variety of intersecting scales and spatialities. This promotion of diasporic‐centred development has occurred in parallel to a narrowing of civic space and it is these juxtaposing narratives that this paper interrogates. This paper firstly considers diasporic‐centred development before moving on to think about how the contemporary narrowing of civic space may be (re)shaping diasporic civic life and participation in global development processes. The paper concludes that the spaces for diasporic civic participation in development are vulnerable to being squeezed in multiple intersecting ways, including through the racialised marginalisation of diasporic communities in everyday life, restrictions on diasporic associational life, the delegitimising of diasporic organisations in the (formal) development sphere and the extra‐territorial narrowing of diasporic civic space by state (and non‐state) actors. It is imperative that we explore the intersections in the diasporic‐civic space‐development nexus, with further research needed to understand how diasporic communities are responding to these changes, how diasporic civic spaces are reconfiguring and reconstituting themselves in this context, and what this means for global development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on a larger research project, which investigates the effectiveness of a culturally appropriate model, namely ūloa, when working with Tongan people. Ūloa is a communal method of fishing in Tonga, which includes all members of the community. A previous paper described the three phases of ūloa: presenting the concept to health providers and community groups; phase two amended the model based on phase one. This paper reports on phase three and findings related to the increased awareness of ūloa model within the mental health services and to raise awareness of how to work with Pacific people and adjust the health service to suit the needs of this population to test its effectiveness. Using reflexive thematic analysis, results highlighted a number of patterns both across the groups, described as napanapangamālie (harmony, balance), ngāue fakataha (working together/oneness), and toutai (fisher). These findings continue to support that the conventional biomedical approach employed in the mental health services overlooks elements of Tongan constructions of mental illness and the intersections between Tongan and biopsychosocial themes. Care that is based only on the 'medicine' rather than bringing the spiritual aspect into care planning (fake leaves) will not serve the needs of the Tongan community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how connectivity to place has brought life to contemporary environmental struggles in what is now known as New York State. Layers of memory, colonization, and stewardship are embedded within a community's relationship with their environment. By focusing on two case studies, the authors will illustrate how this relationship shaped successful place‐based resistance. Throughout our work, we offer the alternative methodology of ecocentric storytelling and artistic representation to elevate the voice of both ecosystems and all their inhabitants. Both case studies are centered on environmental/social movements that foreground the inherent personhood of the natural world. The first will focus on the Ashokan Reservoir, in the Catskill Mountains, on land guarded by the Lenape. It is a location that has suffered multiple waves of colonization and successfully resisted a large damming operation. The second case study will be centered on the Upper St. Lawrence River/Kaniatarowanénhne Watershed, Haudenosaunee Territory, where rural communities are uniting to grant Rights to the Rivers that bring life to their communities. Both cases exemplify the story of communities that defended their livelihoods and environments by uniting with their most reliable allies, the Water, and all their more‐than‐human guardians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late modern change in young people's community life has meant moving from traditional, place‐based communities towards more fluid and situational contexts of belonging. These youth‐initiated attachments often build on amiable relationships that fall under the umbrella of “friendship”. This paper analyses Finnish early youths’ friendship narratives that were produced by sequential participatory methods. It introduces the dimensional and flexible spaces created in and through the participants’ friendships. These indicate relational spheres of actual and imagined activities where young people engage with people and places important to them. As a result, the paper first shows how young people together with their peers develop committed ties of belonging that reach beyond physical connection, and how these ties constitute experiential spatial attachments. Second, it demonstrates how they also make friends with kin and non‐kin adults and how these intergenerational friendships expand the variety of inclusionary spaces available to them. The findings provide alternative insights into young people's experiences and the practices of social and spatial inclusion. We hope they help to develop cross‐generational inclusionary policies that acknowledge youths’ amiable relationships as important potential in their lived communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide an historical perspective on the development of higher education's 'third mission' of social engagement. I explore how practices and structures of 'social engagement' emerged in the Israeli higher education field in the 1970s and early 1980s. Drawing on archival research in three universities' historical archives, and on the theoretical lens of neo‐institutional theory, I explore the origins and emergence of social engagement as a proto‐institution, that is, an institution in the making. My analysis suggests that the current dominant model of engagement in the Israeli field, based on one‐on‐one tutoring for scholarships, has come to marginalize other initiatives that were based on principles of social action. I show how the emergence of a new proto‐institution in an established field is shaped by processes of institutional work, through which actors create, maintain and disrupt institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in major disruption to economic, health, education, and social systems. Families with preschool children experienced extraordinary strain during this time. This paper describes a qualitative study examining the experience of parents of preschool children in Hawaii during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sample: Thirteen (N = 13) parents of preschool children living on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, participated in small group discussions occurring in February and March 2021, approximately 1 year after the start of the pandemic in the state. Discussion transcripts were coded and sorted into themes. Results: Four themes emerged: stressors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, family coping and resources, meaning of the COVID-19 crisis to the family, and family adaptation patterns. Themes mapped to the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response model. Conclusion: Families relied on various resources to cope with stressors experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and adopted new patterns related to seeking healthcare and household emergency preparedness. Findings may inform policies and interventions to support families during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and future public health emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the pattern of changing functions of the rural community consequent on changes in agriculture. The first half of the paper is devoted to the definition of the problem under investigation, an outline of its precise scope and an indication of its limits. The article is concerned both with those social changes in the rural community that are the product of internally generated developments in agriculture and also those that result from the effect on agriculture of the influence of outside factors. The paper confines its analysis to European conditions and, more particularly, to the more-developed rural regions of Europe. Taking up the findings of the Limerick Rural Survey in Ireland, the article illustrates these consequences by reference to them. The first consequence is shown to consist mainly in a weakening of the rigid class system which formerly kept the farm laborer in subordination. Today, due to their shortage and the possibility of bettering their lot by emigration, the status of the farm laborers is being upgraded, to an extent that is having some unsettling effects on the farmer's family, on whom the burden of agricultural work is falling more heavily.

Abstract: Social work services at schools in Hong Kong will begin a new chapter in kindergartens in 2018–2019 school year. Early childhood professionals have long considered family‐centered service delivery best practice. This paper reports a pioneer project on a family‐centered approach in kindergarten social work services in Hong Kong. The project was illustrated according to the following family‐centered principles: (a) The family as the unit of attention, (b) Linking families with community resources, (c) Flexible and individualized service provision, and (d) Creating partnerships and supportive relationships. The value and contributions of family‐centered social work services in kindergartens and implications for social work training in Hong Kong are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We sought to gain insights into the community lives, experiences, and activities of adolescents across multiple categories of special needs. Specifically, we: explored the particular aspects of their lives adolescents felt elicited discrimination; determined whether adolescents feel a sense of community belongingness, as well as the categories of people whom adolescents approach when help is needed; and detailed the leisure activities respondents undertake and with which frequency, in addition to the quantity of friendships they have. We performed assorted descriptive analyses of the McCreary Centre Society's 2013 British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey (BCAHS) database. We found tremendous variation in the survey responses of adolescents, both within and between special needs categories, highlighting the importance of such exploratory analyses. This paper provides inductive population‐based evidence to inform theories about the community lives of adolescents with special needs, as well as to guide programs and policies targeting such youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural resource dependence, although commonly invoked in natural resource sociology, has often been ambiguously defined. Communities are frequently described as dependent on natural resource development, but limited attention has been paid to what that means. In the literature, resource dependence is often treated as over‐specialization in, or over‐reliance upon, the natural resource sectors. However, the logic of over‐specialization conceptually grounds dependence in poor economic outcomes. Thus, a one‐dimensional typology of dependence based on a threshold of the share of development in the natural resource sector—as commonly used—does not fully capture the concept and risks tautology. In this paper, I address this ambiguity by formally defining natural resource dependence as over‐specialization in the natural resource sectors. I then present an ideal typology, known as the Natural Resource Community Typology, and a corresponding classification scheme for rural communities in the United States. The typology integrates both extractive and non‐extractive natural resource activity and has two dimensions—the level of development and the level of economic prosperity—and six mutually exclusive categories—extractive specialized, extractive dependent, non‐extractive specialized, non‐extractive dependent, hybrid specialized, and hybrid dependent. I classify counties from 2000 to 2015 and find that while extractive dependence decreased over the study period, non‐extractive dependence increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an axiomatic approach to the measurement of social exclusion. At the individual level, social exclusion is viewed in terms of deprivation of the person concerned with respect to different functionings in the society. At the aggregate level we treat social exclusion as a function of individual exclusions. The class of subgroup decomposable social exclusion measures using a set of independent axioms is identified. We then look at the problem of ranking exclusion profiles by the exclusion dominance principle under certain restrictions. Finally, applications of decomposable and non-decomposable measures suggested in the paper using European Union and Italian data are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Redlining’ is a form of place-based exclusion. It is widely documented in the US, but not in Europe. This paper focuses on a comparative analysis of redlining practices in the two largest cities of the Netherlands: Amsterdam and Rotterdam. It shows that redlining was common practice in Rotterdam in 1999. In 2001, no signs of redlining were found in Rotterdam. However,‘yellowlining’ (lower loan-to-value ratios) was still common in some parts of Rotterdam. In Amsterdam, no neighbourhoods were faced with redlining in either 1999 or 2001. However, in 1999 some neighbourhoods were yellowlined. This paper aims to get a better understanding of the nature and the institutional context of redlining in the Netherlands by explaining how the differences in redlining practices between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and between 1999 and 2001, can be explained. The National Mortgage Guarantee as well as socio-historical, and housing and mortgage market differences and changes, are instrumental in explaining these differences in redlining practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article characterizes the African American Vernacular English (AAVE) form phonemically as d&schwa;n to represent more accurately the auxiliary-like stress assignment of this item vis-à-vis the main verb; and its slight phonetic substance. The data for this paper include 70 sentences with AAVE preverbal d&schwa;n taken from tape-recordings of interviews with 18 working class African American adults, with each sex group divided between younger people and older people. These recordings were made in 1988 as part of the east side Detroit vernacular language project, but the sentences on which this paper is based have not been previously used for other publications. In the interviews, the field-workers tried to elicit casual and spontaneous speech by encouraging informants to talk about their personal histories, childhood experiences, community life and current political concerns. Interviewers were African American working class women who were trained to be relaxed in their speech and demeanor while conducting the interviews. To ensure that the speech used for analysis was not the potentially hyper correct style that is usually found at the beginnings of tape recorded interviews with strangers, the first ten minutes of each tape recording were not transcribed.

This paper describes the process by which a group of minority community representatives became involved in decision-making roles throughout five years of a multidisciplinary research project. Collaboration between community advocates and academic researchers has been rare but will become increasingly frequent, reflecting the changing nature of accountability in social science research. This paper reviews the goals of the interest groups involved and the processes by which conflicts were resolved. Suggestions are made for the consideration of social scientists who anticipate conducting community-related research in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the demand for child mental health services is increasing, while the supply is limited by workforce shortages. These shortages are unlikely to be corrected without significant structural changes in how mental health services are provided. One strategy for bridging this gap is task‐shifting, defined as a process by which services that are typically delivered by professionals are moved to individuals with less extensive qualifications or training. Although task‐shifting can increase the size of the workforce, there are challenges related to training new workers. In this paper, we propose Just‐In‐Time Training (JITT) as one strategy for improving task‐shifting efforts. We define JITT as on‐demand training experiences that only include what is necessary, when it is necessary, to promote competent service delivery. We offer a proof of concept from our own work shifting counseling and academic support tasks from school mental health professionals to pre‐baccalaureate mentors, citing lessons learned during our iterative process of JITT development. We conclude with a series of key considerations for scaling up the pairing of task‐shifting and JITT, including expanding the science of JITT and anticipating how task‐shifting and JITT would work within the context of dynamic mental health service systems. Highlights: Task‐shifting refers to redistributing tasks from professionals to workers who have less training.Task‐shifting may be a key strategy in expanding child services in low resource communities.Just‐in‐Time Training (JITT) refers to efficient, on‐demand training experiences.JITT may strengthen task‐shifting efforts.Task‐shifting and JITT involve unique ethical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on communities often fails to meet two important criteria which permit valid generalizations from the findings. First, studies generally fail to apply the scientific comparative approach and the techniques of multivariate analysis in their design and execution. Second, theory fails to distinguish between properties of communities and properties which are properly classified in other systems. Sociologists who study communities do not share a precise definition of community, nor do they agree how observations about community phenomena are to be incorporated into sociological theory. The discussion that follows will be facilitated, however, if one can make reasonably clear the sense in which this paper deals with the sociological study of community. Community is viewed in this paper as a territorial system. The more comprehensive territorial definitions of community view it as a form of social or ecological organization arising from the fact that people share a common area for their daily activities.

The tendency for neighborhood patterns of association to localize the exchange of farm information on a person-to-person basis is demonstrated in this paper by the analysis of two types of interpersonal relationships. Conditions which help to explain this relationship are examined and evaluated, and the relationship of neighborhood residence to the evaluation of sources of farm information is considered. Although consideration of the relative influence of neighborhood and clique patterns of association is beyond the scope of this study, the data show that clique members are more likely to live outside neighborhoods than inside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of rural microfinance in improving livelihoods among people living in rural communities remains uncertain. This is not only because of weaknesses in the design and implementation of microfinance, but perhaps more critically because of constraints in the rural financial environment. Despite the existence of limited rigorous studies, this paper presents state-of-the-art evidence on the impact of microfinance on beneficiaries, with particular emphasis on issues of rural finance, and argues that for microfinance to be more effective, not only do new impact methodologies and more diverse types of financial services need to be developed, but also, primarily, risks and operating costs need to be reduced to make rural clients more attractive to financial intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promotion of social inclusion of disabled children and their families is currently high on the UK political agenda. Research shows that disabled children and their families are highly disadvantaged, both economically and socially. This paper reports some of the findings of a qualitative study, entitled On Holiday!, which involved analysing the views of 297 people across six local authority research sites in England including 86 disabled children and young people. The study showed that many disabled children and their families experienced high levels of social isolation and exclusion during out-of-school periods and during the school holidays in particular. The paper recounts some of the experiences of disabled young people and their families and ways in which local authorities can promote their social inclusion. We argue that disabled young people and their families can only be truly socially included and empowered when all levels of the local authority (managers, officers and elected members) recognize the rights and entitlements of disabled children and have the political will and commitment to implement them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two contexts of meaning to gain systemic comprehension of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from the standpoint of a Systems Thinking Practice, called Interpretive Systemology. The first interpretive context is based on a notion of the social sector affected by the performance of the organization, which will allow us to open a space to explore about the ethical issue regarding a definition of boundaries from a standpoint of the organization and challenging some of the insufficiencies of such perspective to deal with the issue of CSR. The second context of meaning is grounded on searching for a social meaning of the organization through a grasping of it by asking about the practices in which the organization is engaged. This context will allow to approach CSR from a historical–ontological perspective in order to consider CSR as a result of an impoverishment of social practices to hold in the social milieu and the appearance of the organization as a way of providing a weak network of relations that is now compelled to find social legitimacy by addressing an unanswered question about the social order in which the organization appears. A core concept in this second context is social learning understood as a process that is currently undermined by a strong emphasis on training in organizational skills without pursuing a process of social learning as the ground upon which organizational skills are funded and articulated. In this sense, CSR is asked to answer about the production not only of its products and services, but also of other collateral effects or by products, such as how the people become engaged in a giving organizational setting. In this regard, it is claimed that community learning and engagement with the organization is central to enhance the CSR from a holistic perspective. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on city-regionalism can be criticized for neglecting the mundane ways that cities and regions are socially reproduced (and contested) through processes of household decision-making and routine coordination. Moreover, dominant debates on macro-scale governance and economic competitiveness rarely question the way strategic city-regional partnerships equate notions of ‘liveability’ with marketability. However ‘smart’, these initiatives persistently fetishize growth, allowing little scope for collective endeavour or an ethic of care — values which Linda McDowell (2004 ) points out are fundamentally undermined by neoliberalism. This paper challenges the ‘top-down’ discourse of city-regionalism both on the grounds of what it examines (economic efficiency and governance) and how this is viewed (partially and globally). The case is made for raising awareness of the structural inequalities which restrict the ‘choice of choices’ actually available to households competing for public services on the basis of uneven resource entitlement. This calls for an understanding of a ‘whole’ economy, recognizing the full value of unpaid care-giving, volunteering and ‘free’ environmental resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores changing relationships between apparel firms and rural labor markets in Wisconsin over the last decade. Mainstream explanations of recent changes in the apparel industry suggest that rural communities will lose tedious or physically demanding, low-skilled apparel manufacturing jobs but will gain more information-intensive and desirable "apparel service" employment. Through case studies of apparel firms located in two Wisconsin communities, the paper argues that current changes in the industry not only affect communities unevenly but, even in regions where apparel service firms have provided significant numbers of new jobs, these jobs are less well paid, more casually structured, and less secure than manufacturing employment has been. The paper argues that current concepts of the economic embeddedness of firms in communities need to be refined to permit consideration of the kinds of leverage and voice that community organizations have in confronting new forms of corporate capital. The two case studies demonstrate that corporate embeddedness and its labor market outcomes are linked to changes in the global market in which firms compete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper conducts a review of various issues of women's poverty and participation in informal sector trade in Eastern and Southern Africa. Poverty is endemic in the region, where an estimated half of the population lives on less than one dollar per day. This situation is more pronounced for women and has added significance in the subregion where nearly half of the households are headed by women. Women's deprivation is manifold and ranges across the economic, social and political arenas. Women are heavily involved in the informal sector and cross-border trade. These activities are generally low-paying, tedious and erratic. They also tend to be survivalist in nature and unsophisticated, involving the sale of cheap perishable commodities. These have now expanded to involve trade in biological and forest resources in a region that is being devastated by HIV-AIDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the previous work of Budowski, Murphy and Butler, this paper develops a conceptual framework that examines tourism industry relationships from a human ecological perspective. In particular, predation, competition, neutrality and symbiosis are used to illustrate that tourism industry stakeholders (i.e., various types of tourism, operators, local people, and other land users) value and use resources differently and, in doing so, place varying levels of pressure on each other and the resource base. Human ecology is identified and discussed as a field of research that holds potential in strengthening our understanding of tourism's human ecological interactions. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of social exclusion has become a central organizing concept in social policy research. Indeed “social exclusion” has displaced many of the terms formerly in use, such as “inequality”, “deprivation” and “poverty”. Social exclusion is a multidimensional concept embracing economic, social and political deprivations, that alerts us to the significance of social identity, culture, agency and, ultimately, power relations. In contrast to some earlier research traditions, the perspective of social exclusion draws our attention to how people can be “shut out of society” by their inability to participate in customary leisure activities. The ability to participate in leisure is the product of both access to leisure goods and services, and a sufficient quantity of leisure time. An analysis of Australian Household Expenditure Survey data shows that the consumption of leisure goods and services is powerfully determined by income. Consequently, low income can lead to exclusion from leisure participation. However, analysis of Time Use Survey data also shows that access to time for leisure participation is most powerfully determined by hours of employment, family responsibilities and gender. After controlling for working hours, household income has no significant effect on available leisure time. A leisure-time poverty line, based on half-median leisure time, is used to show which groups are most excluded from leisure by time constraints. The paper concludes by considering a range of policies to alleviate social exclusion from leisure participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the role of sheltered housing following the introduction of new community care arrangements in 1993 and examines the continuing uncertainty about its exact role as community care continues to develop. It reports on a study conducted in Shropshire, using a postal survey and interviews with older people and service professionals. The study highlights the importance of sheltered housing for older people, particularly in relieving them of concerns about maintenance and repairs, social isolation and security. These factors were crucial for their overall peace of mind and quality of life. While only a small proportion of tenants received help under social services' community care arrangements, the additional support, monitoring and service coordination provided by wardens helped some of them to remain in sheltered housing when residential or nursing home care might otherwise have been necessary. Sheltered housing was overwhelmingly popular with older people -- but their satisfaction was closely associated with the availability and quality of the warden service. Although sheltered housing is not currently in vogue in housing policy, the paper argues that it plays a vital role in local provision for older people and needs to be more closely integrated into community care policy, while at the same time preserving the characteristics that make it popular with its residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps the differential distribution of therapeutic work within the programmes of two therapeutic communities found in psychiatric hospitals. It is shown that in one of the two communities, therapeutic work was largely restricted to the small groups and to those large groups attended by the psychiatrists. The other community displayed a distribution of therapeutic work which was spread across the whole formal weekly programme and into informal interaction outside the programme. These contrasting distributions are traced to differing patterns of internal communication which affected the ability of nurses and patients to work collaboratively with the psychiatrists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Expanding traditional sociological conceptions of community to include environmental considerations in community research, this paper stresses the importance of documenting both subjective and objective environmental concerns, as well as reconciling such differences as are presented and details precedence. Some recent data on the nature of social contact in high-rise ‘communities’ illustrate this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to what might be regarded as a basic postulate in sociology, when a number of persons are in interaction over a period of time, mutual expectations and norms develop concerning the behavior of the persons involved, and the individual's actions are not independent of these norms and expectations. the postulate is the basis of the hypothesis that relationships among neighbors affect many of the individual operator's decisions concerning the farm business. The author of this paper seeks to test the hypothesis that the extent to which farm operators adopt recommended farm practices is, in part, a function of the operator's neighborhood of residence.

This paper studies the intricate relations between violence and the politics of community in a Muslim enclave in the east coast of Sri Lanka. The enclave will not only be studied as a war-ridden place, but more so in order to explore the antinomies of community that stem from an inherent governmentality that was triggered by the territorial prisonhood of the enclave situation. Violence, as we will show, is not an interruption, but an intensified continuation of politics - of the politics of community and its dynamics of unity and friction, which bring to the fore questions of the relationality of politics/religion, the boundaries of the political in Sri Lanka's Muslim community as well as in Sri Lanka's fragmented and violence-striven polity more broadly. It will be argued that what is at play is a politics of purification, whereby violence becomes a project of community: violence in the name of purity and an imaginary of community produces 'antinomies of community', i.e. the paradoxes of unity and friction that transgress political collectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the linked fields of population, migration, and ageing, international retirement migration (IRM) has emerged as a strong focus for empirical research. Thus far, the classic studies have been on European North–South IRM, with a specific concentration on iconic regions such as the Costa del Sol, southern France, and Tuscany. But the geography of IRM is constantly changing, as prior destination regions become "saturated" and perhaps too expensive, so that new "frontiers" are opened up. One such frontier is the Italian region of Marche, now seen as a cheaper and more "authentic" region than Tuscany. This paper uses interview narratives from 69 older age British, Dutch, and German people who have relocated, as either permanent settlers or seasonal residents, in the Marche, in order to answer two questions. The questions relate first to the main drivers of IRM at the decision‐making level and, second, to the experiences of living there, including advantages and disadvantages. We find the participants for the most part engaged in active ageing, growing their own produce, and joining in local community life and are appreciative of the beauty of the hilly landscape. However, "full" integration is hampered by language and cultural barriers, whereas the bureaucracy is their main complaint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents some results from a multi-year research project on immigrant associations in the province of Milan, Italy. The analysis yields numerous issues for reflection and recurrent features of particular significance. The first is the fact that for all the associations surveyed, their main goal and the essential reason for their existence was the desire to integrate their community of membership into the host society. However, such integration did not consist in a desire to be assimilated into Italian society. Quite the opposite: the majority of the associations studied were wholly committed to maintaining -- and sometimes rediscovering -- the identity and culture of their reference community. The second main feature is that immigrant associations are crucial nodes in a dense network of relations involving numerous actors of very different kinds: the immigrants themselves, other immigrant associations, third-sector organizations, and the local authorities. The third and final important issue concerns the representativeness of immigrant associations: whether, that is, they can be considered the legitimate representatives of the community of membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores contrasting narratives of place meaning in a tourism site in Southern Thailand. Specifically, I analyse the parallel discourses of community change through tourism development embedded in international backpacker narratives, and those of the local Thai elite. By configuring identity and power around binary oppositional categories such as West as economically powerful and dominant/non-West as economically weak and subordinated, ‘traditional’ tourism studies often locate the dynamics of change in the international tourism industry. To date, there is little research on the very real and important ways that people working in tourism assert agency and understand their own identities in everyday contexts. I argue that local communities can, and often do, shape the changes that tourism development initiates in very creative and adaptive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing community capacity to improve health is a cornerstone of community-based public health. The concept of community capacity reflects numerous facets and dimensions of community life and can have different meanings in different contexts. This paper explores how members of one community identify and interpret key aspects of their community’s capacity to limit the availability and use of tobacco products. Particular attention is given to examining the interrelationship between various dimensions of community capacity in order to better understand the processes by which communities are able to mobilize for social change. The study is based on qualitative analysis of 19 in-depth interviews with key informants representing a variety of community sectors in Harlem, New York City. Findings indicate that the community is viewed as rich in human and social resources. A strong sense of community identity and connectedness underlies this reserve and serves as a catalyst for action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory and research suggest that there is a basic and irreducible human yearning for a relationship with something that transcends ourselves, something sacred. The sacred can be understood not only in individual terms, but also in terms of relationships, settings, and communities. Empirical studies indicate that the sacred has powerful implications for human behavior; it can be an organizing force and a resource to people in their most difficult times, yet it can also be a source of seemingly intractable problems. This paper reviews several of the promising steps psychologists have taken to learn about the sacred, learn from spiritual communities, and collaborate with these communities in efforts to better the world. Research and practice in this area is enriching our understanding of the meaning of community and the meaning of spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter offers a selection of references and resources on structures, processes, and outcomes of community college governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges facing health and welfare policymakers as well as researchers in most developed countries is the increasing demand for aging services and aged care. Low birth rates and rapid increases in the percentages of elderly people make aging and aged care one of the top-priority issues among the national agenda of many countries. The responses of governments have included initiatives to extend productive working lives and promote self-funded retirement; to promote healthy, active aging; and to encourage more care to be delivered in home and community settings. Technology will be a major enabler of these strategies. People requiring health services are increasingly being offered more care in their own homes and community settings as an alternative to hospital admission and to delay or avoid moving into institutional care. Research is providing intelligent technology to enable care in the home as well as to monitor safety, security, and quality. Innovation will provide greater independence and better access to care in their own homes for the elderly, sufferers of chronic illness, and persons with disability and reduce the incidence of hospital admissions and the length of stay when admissions do occur. Technologies will support families and professional caregivers and are expected to reduce costs. This paper reports on developments in technology to support care for the aged in home and community settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community has long been a key academic concept and lay narrative, especially in commentaries of rural as opposed to urban life. Although community is proffered as an antidote for a plethora of emotional, social and policy challenges in contemporary Western societies, we argue that it is problematic. Previously, we suggested that community is a device mobilised in response to fears surrounding finitude. In this paper, we again draw on Nancy's theorising of singularity and being-in-common, but also engage with his yet more fundamental conceptualisation of ‘being singular plural’ to suggest directions for new geographies of singular and collective life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper reviews the international research on young people leaving care. Set in the context of a social exclusion framework, it explores young people’s accelerated and compressed transitions to adulthood, and discusses the development and classification of leaving care services in responding to their needs. It then considers the evidence from outcome studies and argues that adopting a resilience framework suggests that young people leaving care may fall into three groups: young people ‘moving on’, ‘survivors’ and ‘victims’. In concluding, it argues that these three pathways are associated with the quality of care young people receive, their transitions from care and the support they receive after care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whiteness enables the coherence of an alliance organized to promote community food security and sustainable farming. This unnamed presence shapes a discourse identifying the focus of struggle as well as resource allocation, conference form and content, list serv discussions, staffing and programming. Unacknowledged white privilege gives the lie to the movement's rhetoric of justice, good intentions and sustainability. And yet it is clear that racism is an organizing process in the food system: people of color disproportionately experience food insecurity, lose their farms and face the dangerous work of food processing and agricultural labor. Critical analyses of social movements argue that a failure to confront difference undermines progressive change efforts. The paper provides evidence of how the community food movement reproduces white privilege and proposes ways it might engage with anti-racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an exploration of problem drug use in the urban environment, connecting with broader concerns about the progress and contradictions of city redevelopment and change. The discussion is situated within some recent theoretical debates about the political economy of uneven development, urban restructuring and neoliberal governance. The empirical discussion is based on studies of economic and social change, conflict and grassroots praxis in the inner city of Dublin, Ireland, wherein a heroin crisis has impacted for the last few decades, affecting in particular working-class communities disadvantaged by broader patterns of economic restructuring and urban renewal. This provides some important analytical and political insights from a city that has undergone rapid and intense transformation and deepening patterns of inequality over recent decades, alongside the emergence of new forms of urban governance and community organization and contestation. The paper concludes with some considerations about the place and meaning of problem drug use in the city based on the foregoing theoretical and empirical discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents preliminary analysis of a larger study examining the re-making of the Port Adelaide waterfront. It offers insights into the way the processes of urban entrepreneurialism endeavour to appropriate and transform landscapes by building on a particular heritage of place while simultaneously dismantling this image to recreate an alternative form. The proposal to refashion the Port's waterfront into a lifestyle and tourist destination will dramatically transform the current socio-spatial organisation of working and community life as perceived and valued by those local communities currently living in and around the Port area. The removal of a small group of boatyard operators from the inner-harbour, as part of the redevelopment, is symbolic of local concern of the potential loss of a particular way of working and community life that is steeped in history, heritage and class and is particular and peculiar to the Port Adelaide waterfront. The findings support the view that the process of urban entrepreneurialism in the re-imaging of place is transformative, selective and exclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social and environmental study of the Akkar watershed, on the northern boundary of Lebanon and Syria, was initiated in January 2001 and completed in January 2003. The study was a cooperative Lebanese–Syrian–Canadian research project funded by the Canadian International Development and Research Council. The aim of the project was to utilize scientific information and data derived from the watershed study to define issues and possible solutions to be included in a bilateral watershed management plan. The project consisted of four components: watershed maps from remote sensing and geographical information systems, sampling and analysis of water samples, analysis of applicable legislation and institutional arrangements, and a programme of public participation. The direct impact on the watershed by the daily activities of its communities implies that these communities should be involved in both evaluation and management of the watershed. It is very important that environmental management and conservation relate to land use and policies to assure sustainability. A successful conservation approach integrates institutional, geomatics and public participation aspects, leading to the communities themselves being self-regulating. This will strengthen the sustainability within the watershed to enhance the quality of living of its inhabitants. This paper deals strictly with the aspects of the public participation programme on the Lebanese side of the watershed. This programme was designed to ensure wide public involvement and wide dissemination of information derived from the technical study of the watershed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a response to the trappings of globalisation and the commoditisation of the sphere of production, women continue to play a crucial role in securing livelihoods by guaranteeing access to food in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas. Based on a survey of food vendors, this paper evaluates women's input through informal earnings, the coping strategies devised to stave off poverty occasioned by the economic meltdown, the travails of meeting the daily demands of family survival and the influence on gender relations. The profile of vendors indicate that most are assuming greater headship of households, they straddle between the home and their business premises with attendant effects on time, mobility, health and labour. Amid these hurdles, the vendors are barely able to address the basic needs of their families. However, they are becoming economically empowered as they exercise greater leverage in intra-household resource allocation. These minimal gains are offset by a heavy tax burden, the poor regulatory framework for informal sector activities and the incessant crackdown by municipal authorities. Reconciling the trade-off between income generation and care-giving hinges on drawing additional labour from the family-especially the girl child and some supportive family relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada and elsewhere, there is a growing belief that farming and rural communities have become effectively disconnected from one another. While attention to recent media reporting suggests that incidences of conflict are now as common as examples of support and collaboration, it is suggested that many examples of complementarity remain. These evolving relationships may, however, be linked to the nature of specific farm development trajectories. Such possibilities warrant empirical examination, with attention to known diversity in the family farm sector. This paper reports on an empirical investigation of farm and community linkages in North Huron County, Ontario. The paper builds upon a recent investigation of change in family farming in this region and seeks to document the ways in which local farmers continue to look to their rural communities for support of various kinds. Data are drawn from a survey of farmers in Ashfield and Colborne Townships in 1999. The research explores community linkages around three dominant themes: participation in organisations, purchasing and perceptions and experiences of community support for farming. The findings indicate the persistence of strong linkages between farms and local communities in the study region but point to a potential tendency for disconnection between farms pursuing aggressive expansion and local community organisations and businesses. There is some evidence that jobs and a variety of farm household considerations may form key linkage points between the two sectors, with the importance of these mediated by farm business trajectories and the family life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a framework for understanding social exclusion that is multidimensional, dynamic, multi-leveled, and relational. Inspired by Polanyi's classification of the modes of economic inclusion, we propose that social inclusion and exclusion processes are rooted in four types of social relations: market (exchange and barter), bureaucratic (rational-legal), associative (common interest), and communal (complex reciprocity and shared identity). Each type reflects different, but integrated processes of social exclusion and inclusion. These four types are outlined conceptually, then operationalized using data from a Canadian survey conducted in 1995 rural households. The results show the extent to which the four types of relations are used for social support, their interdependence, and their relationship to selected household characteristics and outcomes. The policy implications discussed emphasize the ways in which building capacity in all four types of relations can increase the level of social inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]