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ABSTRACT Smoking is responsible for over 8 million deaths globally per annum. While socially disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected, few interventions effectively reach these groups. We progressed a participatory action research (PAR) study on smoking‐related health inequalities in the context of the current UK cost‐of‐living crisis. We worked with people living in deprived neighbourhoods in rural northeast Scotland. The objective was to engage affected communities together with the health authority in cooperative action learning. Community‐based participants (n = 9) engaged in a series of workshops (n = 8) adopting roles as co‐researchers, collecting and arranging new data and evidence. We then connected with service providers in a series of additional workshops (n = 3) to analyse and interpret the data, appraise local action and reflect on the process. Community partners identified a convergence between increased stress owing to the crisis, and increased availability, affordability and acceptability of tobacco‐related products, namely e‐cigarettes. The situation was compounded by lack of awareness of available cessation services. A shared action agenda was developed prioritising: (a) the stress‐related root causes of smoking, (b) inclusive access to cessation support, (c) incentivised cessation with locally framed messaging and (d) deliberative dialogue between communities and service providers. There was a high level of engagement, openness and honesty and the strategic relevance of the process was acknowledged. The study provides holistic understandings of health and hardship and demonstrates that existing services can be enhanced with community intelligence. We provide practical methods to support policy commitments to community health emphasising mutual empowerment between service users and providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical-Legal Partnerships (MLPs) have been widely acclaimed for promoting health equity and achieving meaningful outcomes. Yet, little to no research has analyzed if this critical work has been done with communities — through meaningful engagement and building power — or if it has been done for communities without their involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strengthening economic resilience and social resilience will speed up the return to normal life due to the impact of the earthquake. For this reason, efforts need to be made to increase economic resilience and social resilience. This research aims to analyze efforts to strengthen economic resilience and social resilience carried out by the Cinajur district government and other stakeholders and their impact on national security. The research method uses qualitative with a case study design. The research subjects were 28 informants. After the data is collected, data analysis is carried out by condensing the data, presenting the data, and drawing conclusions. The results of the research show that strengthening economic resilience has been achieved well as demonstrated by the repair of 600 houses, roads and buildings have been rebuilt, People's livelihoods are returning to normal so they can earn income; and social strengthening was achieved well, which was marked by government functions returning to normal, education running normally, people receiving free health insurance and the functioning of community groups returning to normal, Cianjur culture experienced a decline in the value of 2 of the 7 pillars but did not affect the interaction of people's lives. The suggestion that can be made is for the regional government and community leaders, especially religious figures to raise awareness as a community that is experiencing the decline of Cianjur's two cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work is dedicated to studying the movement/collaborative network Somos MAG in south Brazil as an expression of the contemporary trend of collaborative networks in local independent fashion, but also as a space of immanence of noises that serve to think and possible future scenarios for different agents and areas, directly involved in local creative economies. Such factors are manifested in territories such as cities or regions, and they are increasingly integrated into a global economic and cultural dynamic, guiding creative proposals in values of localism and proximity. Through an interdisciplinary methodological arrangement, the study will present the operation of principles that relate Comprehensive Sociology, Interpretive Anthropology, Dialogism, Strategic Design and Foresight, with a view to identifying elements that allow the constitution of Possible Future Scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to examine the impact of investments in community organizing made as part of a 10-year comprehensive community initiative focused on community power building in California. Data from multiple sources were used to examine the relationship between investments and one measure of civic engagement, voter turnout. Comparisons were made over time (2010–2019) and between intervention and propensity-weighted comparison sites. Analyses determined that investments by the funder were positively associated with turnout; this effect differed across elections and was largest in 2012. Broad investments to support community engagement, organizing, and base building had a positive impact on voting, an important indicator of civic engagement. In historically marginalized or underserved communities, investing in power building can yield benefits despite structural barriers that result in inequities. As restrictive electoral reforms grow across the country in the wake of the 2020 election, initiatives designed to build power may support proactively organizing against these changes or provide the infrastructure to understand and navigate them. Investing in community power building is a promising strategy for philanthropic organizations, organizers, and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the issue of empowerment in participatory budgeting (PB). We position empowerment as part of the generally agreed theory of change in PB yet acknowledge the limits of an individual construction of empowerment that neglect sufficient attention to dynamic relations of power in participatory spaces and surrounding social contexts. Using the three forms of power theorized by Lukes (1974) and Gaventa (1980), we examine the ways in which these forms of power constrain individual and collective agency and transformative outcomes in participatory projects. We shift the gaze from empowerment to the concept of community power to suggest that getting beyond small adjustments to local services and resource allocations to substantive changes in relations of power may depend on ordinary citizens coming together in sites of radical possibility to define themselves, deliberate, and then act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the history of New York City community boards and how their legal and practical roles have evolved over the last 50 years. It mentions background of local and sublocal government structures and highlights the present-day fight over their role in City government. It also mentions charter revision that removes their reactive advisory power on many local planning decisions and replaces that authority with greater funding and power.

The pellets of waste produced by Society Electric [Listrik Kerakyatan (LK) 2] at the STT-PLN have not been efficiently utilized in terms of energy. The STT-PLN canteen consists of 14 stalls with an installed electricity capacity of 1300 VA, each with 12h of use/day. This study aimed to convert LK 2 waste pellets into electrical energy to supply electricity to the STT-PLN canteen. This research method uses quantitative methods, i.e., by calculating the amount of energy produced adjusted to the needs of the canteen. Gasification technology was chosen due to its high efficiency and lower emission impacts in the waste combustion technique. Based on the analysis, the gasifier engine that complies with this requirement was TG30-1 with a maximum capacity of 25 kVA and requires a flow rate of 10 kg.h-1 of waste pellets. The amount of waste pellets used for this plan was 120 kg.day-1. The assessment results of this plan indicated a net present value of IDR 302,218,609.33, an internal rate of return of 25.7983%, and a PBP of 5.66 years. Based on the economic analysis, the establishment of plants for the conversion of waste to power was declared feasible to operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explains the perception of the nation in the political thinking of Svetozár Hurban Vajanský, which is founded on primordialist starting points and has a holistic character. In this context, the relationship between the nationally conscious elite and the people is analysed in more detail. The ambivalence of Vajanský's political thinking is evident in the fact that, in many ways, he formally promotes Ľudovít Štúr's original idea of unity, but, within Slovak political discourse, he promotes the idea of programme uniformity. Subsequently, this becomes a source of cultural and political isolationism. This fact is complemented in parallel by reflecting the primary acculturation importance of the national elite in developing the national consciousness of the population. Vajanský also incorporated the idea of Slavic mutuality into the national emancipation concept of developing Slovak national identity. Its content is in line with Štúr's ethnic romanticism. The historicist concept of the development of Slavs under Russian protection also appears in his thinking. Vajanský's Russophilism was, thus, loosely tied to the ideas of Russian Slavophiles and the idealising perspective of the Slavs' civilisational mission, who were to form a new, more spiritual and culturally advanced, civilisation circle compared with the morally declining nations of the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English School accounts of international relations always stressed some degree of interaction between political international society and ideational world society. Yet, English School research, relying on agential and structural premises, often misses how and where international society and world society interact. If intermediation between the two societies is identified, it often remains abstract. I argue that identifying agents and the standards defining their practices helps to understand intermediation between international society and world society. I suggest that likely candidates that practice intermediation are rooted in both international society and world society. This is because practices rooted in both realms are also defined by the standards of both realms. I argue that the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General are likely intermediation instances between international society and world society. Both are equally footed in international society and world society. Given their organizational embedding in international society, both rely on practices informed by international society standards such as diplomacy. Yet, both also rely on world society standards such as their concern for humanity. Focusing on the sanctity of the individual rather than only on state-based interests and agendas of international society marks their concern and caring for refugees. I illustrate this argument with advocacy, an intermediation practice. Deprived of membership in a community, solutions for refugees in international society require political and moral theory from world society, relying on concepts such as humanity. Advocating for refugees on the grounds of world society's common humanity, the Pope and the United Nations Secretary-General are intermediation instances between world society and international society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We present a systematic review of studies of grassroots innovations for sustainability transitions that employ power and empowerment theory. • The analysis integrates sociological and political science theories of power and empowerment that are fairly new to the sustainability transitions scholarship. • Conceptual development of power and empowerment related to grassroots innovations is limited. • We identify a reproduced epistemic bias that favours analyses of power and empowerment as strategic exercises. • Three main avenues for future research are proposed. The sustainability transitions scholarship is increasingly applying power and empowerment frameworks to investigate the role of grassroots innovations in the politics of societal change; however, theoretical fragmentation persists. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 88 studies on grassroots innovations for sustainability transitions that employ the lenses of power and empowerment. We take stock of the conceptual development of power and empowerment in the grassroots innovations literature and propose directions for future research to stimulate further theorisation of these terms. Our study shows that grassroots innovation scholars reproduce an epistemic bias towards power and empowerment as strategic exercises, thereby inhibiting our understanding of the range of forms of power and empowerment manifested in and through grassroots innovations and how these forms shape innovators' struggles and achievements to leverage societal change. We call for a richer theorisation of power and empowerment of grassroots innovations beyond strategic conceptualisations of these terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forecast and estimation of total electric power demand of a residential community, its baseload, and its heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) power component, which represents a very large portion of a community electricity usage, are important enablers for optimal energy controls and utility planning. This paper proposes a method that employs machine learning in a multi-step integrated approach. An LSTM model for total electric power at the main circuit feeder is trained using historic multi-year hourly data, outdoor temperature, and solar irradiance. New key temperature indicators, TmHAVC, corresponding to the standby zero-power operation for HVAC systems for summer cooling and winter heating are introduced using a V-shaped hourly total load curve. The trained LTSM model is additionally run with TmHVAC and zero irradiance inputs yielding an estimated baseload, which is representative of typical occupancy patterns. The HVAC power component is disaggregated as the difference between total and baseload power. Total power forecasts of an aggregated residential community as seen by major distribution lines are experimentally validated with a satisfactory MAPE error below 10% based on a 4-year dataset from a representative suburban community with more than 1800 homes in Kentucky, U.S. Discussions regarding the validity of the separation method based on combined considerations of fundamental physics, statistics, and human behavior are also included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the first empirical and cross‐national analysis of citizens' views about the democratic importance of the public sphere. We first identify three normative functions that public spheres are expected to perform in representative democracies: they provide voice to alternative perspectives, they empower citizens to criticise political authorities and they disseminate information on matters of public interest. We then argue that citizens develop differentiated views about the importance of these democratic functions, depending on (1) their ability to influence political decisions through public debate, and (2) the extent to which voice, critique and information address democratic problems they particularly care about. Drawing on Wave 6 of the European Social Survey, the statistical analysis indicates that citizens in most European countries consider the public sphere very important for democracy, especially its role as a supplier of reliable information. However, certain groups tend to care more about different aspects of the public sphere. More educated citizens are more likely to assign greater importance to all three functions. Members of cultural and sexual minorities are more likely to emphasise the importance of giving voice to alternative perspectives, while citizens dissatisfied with the government are more likely to prioritise public criticism and access to reliable information. Finally, in countries with more democratic public spheres, differences based on education and minority status are wider, while differences based on government satisfaction disappear. These findings support the claim that citizens care more about the public sphere when they can effectively influence political decision making through public debate or when the public sphere addresses democratic problems that are especially important to them. Moreover, our results indicate that citizens see some of the functions that public spheres perform as core aspects of democracy, comparable in importance to free and fair elections and the rule of law. The article thus advances an empirically grounded defence of the centrality of public debate for democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored how air quality management processes associated with Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) in West Oakland, California, represent a shift in power relationships between government agencies and communities toward the goal of addressing legacies of environmental injustice. We drew from a statewide assessment of community engagement in AB 617's first year, and an analysis of the West Oakland AB 617 process. The first comprised 2 statewide surveys (n = 102 and n = 106), 70 key informant interviews, observation of all AB 617 first-year sites, and analysis of related planning documents. The second comprised 2 rounds of interviews (n = 22 and n = 23, with a total of 19 individuals) and extensive participant observation. Several factors are necessary for pursuing environmental justice: (1) invest in community partnerships and collaborations, (2) honor community knowledge and data, (3) ensure that community constituents share power in environmental governance, and (4) adopt explicit racial justice frameworks. Although still a work in progress, AB 617 offers important lessons for community and policy organizations nationwide engaged in environmental justice. (Am J Public Health. 2022;112(2):262–270. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306592) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, communities have responded to police violence in U.S. cities through confrontational models of community organising that evolved from patriarchal and male approaches. Very often, these approaches have not produced the hoped-for outcomes. In this article, I argue that a women-led community organising model, grounded in feminine relational power-with epistemologies, can lead to innovative policy changes, including in contexts of intractable problems, such as police misconduct. This article presents the Midwife for Power community organising model, which creates space for women organisers to nurture solidarity and creativity across all lines of difference, centres personal testimony and uses collective inquiry to create relational power to address injustice. Theoretically, this model draws on the rich insights of Black and Latina organisers and scholars, as well as traditions of intersectional solidarity. In order to illustrate the model, this article presents an empirical case study of a successful police accountability campaign.

In this research note, we present analysis of initial qualitative data collection from a larger community-engaged research project we are conducting about intergenerational community visions in Appalachian Ohio. Many people working in community action efforts in southeast Ohio today had their start during the War on Poverty programs in the 1960s. These community leaders are now at retirement age and, along with the context of an aging population in many small Appalachian Ohio communities, are confronting challenges to leadership succession. At the same time, younger generations across the region are becoming more active in their communities, but it is unclear the extent to which the two generations, younger and older, are working together. Through analysis of three focus groups with intergenerational community leaders in Appalachian Ohio, we find five common themes that participants discussed as important for communitybuilding as well as some evidence of tension between generations. Based on these findings, we make two practical recommendations for community leaders and groups interested in developing intergenerational collaboration, and we contribute to the academic literature on intergenerational community-building in rural Appalachia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, communities have responded to police violence in U.S. cities through confrontational models of community organising that evolved from patriarchal and male approaches. Very often, these approaches have not produced the hoped-for outcomes. In this article, I argue that a women-led community organising model, grounded in feminine relational power-with epistemologies, can lead to innovative policy changes, including in contexts of intractable problems, such as police misconduct. This article presents the Midwife for Power community organising model, which creates space for women organisers to nurture solidarity and creativity across all lines of difference, centres personal testimony and uses collective inquiry to create relational power to address injustice. Theoretically, this model draws on the rich insights of Black and Latina organisers and scholars, as well as traditions of intersectional solidarity. In order to illustrate the model, this article presents an empirical case study of a successful police accountability campaign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, a massive oil well blowout and subsequent oil spill triggered community resistance to oil company operations in Santa Barbara county and its surrounding waters. The county has had surprising success in regulating and reducing oil development. That success is due to the combined effectds of grassroots mobilization, longterm organization, and the availability of state agencies and laws that legitimize community participation in corporarte development approvals. Despite Santa Barbara's relative affluence, its ongoing battle with the oil industry may be useful for formulating a theory of community empowerment globally.

The forecast and estimation of total electric power demand of a residential community, its baseload, and its heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) power component, which represents a very large portion of a community electricity usage, are important enablers for optimal energy controls and utility planning. This paper proposes a method that employs machine learning in a multi-step integrated approach. An LSTM model for total electric power at the main circuit feeder is trained using historic multi-year hourly data, outdoor temperature, and solar irradiance. New key temperature indicators, TmHAVC, corresponding to the standby zero-power operation for HVAC systems for summer cooling and winter heating are introduced using a V-shaped hourly total load curve. The trained LTSM model is additionally run with TmHVAC and zero irradiance inputs yielding an estimated baseload, which is representative of typical occupancy patterns. The HVAC power component is disaggregated as the difference between total and baseload power. Total power forecasts of an aggregated residential community as seen by major distribution lines are experimentally validated with a satisfactory MAPE error below 10% based on a 4-year dataset from a representative suburban community with more than 1800 homes in Kentucky, U.S. Discussions regarding the validity of the separation method based on combined considerations of fundamental physics, statistics, and human behavior are also included.

Objective: To examine the association between life assets (including demographic factors) and substance use among high school students. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 1,713 participating students were asked to fill out questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, frequency and standard deviation); associating factors were analyzed via univariate analysis and ordinal logistic regression. Results: Among the participants, 67.5% were females with a mean age of 16.4 ± 0.96 years. On average, the participants have a good level of overall life assets, except for community power. Those with a mean age of 14.3 years engaged in substance use early, with peer influence being a leading cause (8.1%). 48.0% of the participants had used substance in their lifetime, and 74.7% of them had used only 1 substance, with alcohol being the most prevalent (97.7%). An excellent level of participant life assets, especially wisdom power, was negatively associated with substance use (OOR = 0.48). Other significant factors that discouraged substance use were being an only child (OOR = 0.75), having a high cumulative grade point average (GPA) (OOR = 0.63), and belonging to a two-parent family. (OOR = 0.79). Conclusion: This study affirms a negative relationship between an excellent level of life assets, especially wisdom power, and substance use. Demographic factors like being an only child, having a high GPA, and belonging to two-parent households also showed a strong negative association with substance use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Kampung Ledok Code, a small riverside community in Yogyakarta that was less exposed to outside influence and in the beginning had tenuous bonds among the population. It aims to understand how this marginalized society articulated and made use of gotong royong to engineer the kampung's transformation. Challenging the traditional perception of gotong royong as a collective spirit that has long been an important element of Indonesian national culture, some critics argue that gotong royong is a political construction for manpower mobilization. Yet people also attempt to make use of gotong royong for their own purposes. This article argues that gotong royong is historically constructed, but that the Ledok Code community employed the concept toward a variety of ends. It began with a communal spirit that bonded the population. It became a popular strategy to gain recognition, then a kampung ritual to generate neighborhood improvement. Eventually, gotong royong was institutionalized as a social norm to regulate the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments around the world have privatized public services in the name of efficiency and citizen empowerment, but some argue that privatization could also affect citizen participation in democratic governance. We explore this possibility by estimating the impact of charter schools (which are publicly funded but privately operated) on school district elections. The analysis indicates that the enrollment of district students in charter schools reduced the number of votes cast in district school board contests and, correspondingly, reduced turnout in the odd-year elections in which those contests are held. This impact is concentrated in districts that serve low-achieving, impoverished, and minority students, leading to a modest decline in the share of voters in those districts who are black and who have children. There is little evidence that charter school expansion affected the outcomes of school board elections or turnout in other elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of communal rights in medieval Castilla livestock economy is studied here in the general context of feudalism crisis, reconsidering the impact of certain encroaching practices in the use of pasture and forests, and their implications in the development of differentiated estates. This text analyses three regions in order to identify an individualization of peasantry's property rights and its correlate in institutional processes that intervened in community power distribution. It aims to specify the impact of political and market factors in village societies through changes found in livestock practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy services are crucial to human wellbeing and development, and without reliable energy, it is difficult to escape subsistence lifestyles and poverty. Here, we report on four identical capacity rural minigrid interventions undertaken in Kenya and Uganda with differing socioeconomic characteristics and demographics. The research outcomes presented briefly discuss the preparation stages of the interventions including community surveys that informed the technical design, deployment phases, and setup of the community cooperatives to manage the minigrid projects. The main focus here is on lessons learned, including system design and minigrid performance under various load profiles. The results show a clear and increasing uptake of power by the communities with intensities varying depending on the electricity tariff used. Across the four minigrids, daily electricity growth rates are seen to vary by a factor of 8. The Ugandan minigrids operated at close to utility grid tariff and reached the 28-kWh/day design limit within two years. By contrast, the Kenyan minigrids charged a higher cost recovery tariff, which capped the demand and systems operate below the design limit. These findings have implications not only to system design but also to system stability and longevity. The approach taken here, of community centered cooperatives running the delivered minigrids, is now embedded within the rural electrification authorities/agencies in both countries, with additional similar projects being planned in 2019/2020. The application, ramifications, and replication of such a minigrid concept as compared to other approaches are also discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Sherry Arnstein's classic "A Ladder of Citizen Participation" still shapes our understanding of citizen participation within and beyond planning. However, Arnstein's citizen control offers communities only partial authority. Rather, community control does not fundamentally alter the political and economic power differences between stakeholders that limit community influence over outcomes. In response, we describe a co-production participation model for inclusive participation to help communities confront the political and economic power relationships that limit their influential participation. Residents directly and influentially engage in a dynamic and iterative problem-solving process throughout problem formation and implementation. Co-production recognizes that truly inclusive community development requires adaptive and enduring processes to address the political and economic power inequalities that shape local decision making. In this way, co-production offers an evolving participation model, rather than a specific outcome or process, to continually refine strategies toward more equitable processes. To illustrate this argument, we describe a community-based initiative in California's Coachella Valley. We trace the initiative's evolution toward a co-production model of community engagement, shifting the initiative's strategies and goals toward greater community power. This evidence shows how a co-productive model can more effectively tackle political and economic power imbalances through adaptive, flexible, and long-term participatory processes. Takeaway for practice: Co-production models can offer new ways for planning practitioners to advance more inclusive community participation, with greater resident power sharing. Fundamentally, planners and local practitioners must extend participation beyond engagement and inclusion, using adaptive, long-term participation models, with capacity building and resource sharing, to build and sustain community power. This sustained approach challenges traditional government decision-making models, requiring power holders to shift greater power, resources, and influence toward communities. Power holders must hold spaces of power for communities while simultaneously building resident ability to effectively gain, retain, and exert local control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]