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Land degradation is a critical issue in Ethiopia, exacerbating food insecurity by reducing agricultural productivity. Soil and water conservation (SWC) practices are essential to control erosion and increase food production. However, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluations on the impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on SWC practices. This study aimed to assess the contribution of the PSNP to SWC in the Amhara Sayint Woreda. The researchers used a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data. Multistage sampling was used to select households, and data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and observations. The study provided empirical evidence that the PSNP has a positive impact on SWC practices. Key factors influencing SWC participation include age, family size, education, plot size, livestock ownership, credit service, and access to extension services. The results suggest that the PSNP should improve payment for public work participants implementing SWC, undertake institutional reform, and increase public awareness of the benefits of SWC in reversing land degradation and improving food security. This study uniquely contributes to the understanding of how the PSNP influences the varying degrees of participation in SWC practices, filling a critical research gap. The findings can inform policymakers and program managers to enhance the PSNP's effectiveness in promoting sustainable land management and food security in Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Development Studies is the property of Routledge 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.)

Land degradation is a critical issue in Ethiopia, exacerbating food insecurity by reducing agricultural productivity. Soil and water conservation (SWC) practices are essential to control erosion and increase food production. However, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluations on the impact of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on SWC practices. This study aimed to assess the contribution of the PSNP to SWC in the Amhara Sayint Woreda. The researchers used a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data. Multistage sampling was used to select households, and data were collected through questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, and observations. The study provided empirical evidence that the PSNP has a positive impact on SWC practices. Key factors influencing SWC participation include age, family size, education, plot size, livestock ownership, credit service, and access to extension services. The results suggest that the PSNP should improve payment for public work participants implementing SWC, undertake institutional reform, and increase public awareness of the benefits of SWC in reversing land degradation and improving food security. This study uniquely contributes to the understanding of how the PSNP influences the varying degrees of participation in SWC practices, filling a critical research gap. The findings can inform policymakers and program managers to enhance the PSNP’s effectiveness in promoting sustainable land management and food security in Ethiopia.

Copyright of Middle East Journal of Legal & Jurisprudence Studies / Mağallaẗ al-Šarq al-Awsaṭ li-l-ʿulūm al-Qānūniyyaẗ wa-al-Fiqhiyyaẗ is the property of Manar Elsharq for Studies & Research 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.)

Copyright of Middle East Journal of Legal & Jurisprudence Studies / Mağallaẗ al-Šarq al-Awsaṭ li-l-ʿulūm al-Qānūniyyaẗ wa-al-Fiqhiyyaẗ is the property of Manar Elsharq for Studies & Research 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.)

Copyright of HiSTOReLo: Revista de Historia Regional y Local is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Centro Editorial Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Economicas 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.)

Since the 1990s, important regeneration processes have been carried out around urban waterfronts and canals. Urban waterways have undergone a transformation from industrial canals and navigation corridors towards focal points for revitalization and urban development. But, what new roles and values do the canals have as part of sustainable cities development? This article discusses the illustrative case of Regent's Canal, London. The aim is to reveal the relationship and perception changes around Regent's Canal environments through an evolution of its cityscape. Using historic evidence, policy documents, and fieldwork, the article identifies practices of regeneration of the canal's banks in a reciprocal relationship between its capacity for place-making and the influence of the city on its transformation. Although Regent's Canal constitutes a single, continuous element, it defines a changing and more diverse linear canalscape, as a result of the layering of various uses and values like an historical transport, environmental, scenic, and recreational corridor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presents the process of catching up of persons excluded from the primary labour market who participated in the subsidised adult education of public workers in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County between 2016 and 2020, and analyses the success of the training courses based on job placement indicators. The training of public workers enables participants to complete the basic education they have previously abandoned, and accelerates and improves their employability through labour market training and new vocational qualifications. In line with the uneven distribution of public workers across the county, the number of trainees also varies significantly from one area to another, but this is also strongly influenced by the concentration of training in district centres and the different labour market supply. The authors used data provided by the Ministry of Innovation and Technology on the number and distribution of training courses for public workers over the period under review, and conducted a primary survey between September 2019 and June 2021, using a questionnaire to explore the life circumstances, motivations and success rates of 1,285 trainees. However, successful completion of the courses did not necessarily have the expected labour market impact, as a higher proportion of public workers returned to the secondary labour market or became jobseekers after gaining the new qualification. Thus, they have not managed to break out of the triangle defined by the status of 'jobseeker-public worker-student in subsidised adult education'. This shows that they need a significant and complex effort to find a job in the primary labour market, and in many cases, attending training has become more important to them than using it to move on. The main objective of the research is to describe the main characteristics, motivations and internal and external barriers to employment of participants in public work training. In their research, the authors considered the geographical location and the hierarchy of municipalities within the county as a crucial aspect to identify inequalities. From secondary databases, they extracted the main characteristics of the training population and the spatial differences in job placement in the primary and secondary labour markets. Their primary survey, based on questionnaires, also allowed a detailed description of the characteristics of those taking part in training and of the barriers to finding a job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the effect on intimate partner violence of a large public work programme in India that explicitly encourages female participation (MGNREGA). Based on detailed administrative data, we show that the work programme leads to more violence against women. We show that the effect is caused by female employment, and argue that it can be explained by a 'male backlash' mechanism, where husbands exercise violence to regain power within marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite income growth, fertility decline, and educational expansion, female labour force participation in rural India dropped precipitously over the last decade. Nation-wide individual-level data allow us to explore if random reservation of village leadership for females affected women's access to job opportunities, their demand for participation in the labour force, and income as well as intra-household bargaining in the short-and medium term. Gender reservation of local leadership affected female but not male participation in public works and regular labour markets, their income, and their influence on key household decisions with a lag, suggesting that such reservation affected social norms and stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen professionalism is a core concept of the Civic Studies field and one increasingly studied in the broader fields of political science, democratic theory, and organizational studies. It is also a vibrant field of practice. In this article the case studies examine efforts by multiple professionals in diverse fields to approach their work in the spirit of relational, citizen-centered, civic musclebuilding politics that has long been central to Civic Studies scholarship, especially the writings of Harry Boyte and other advocates of "public-work" democracy. The purpose is to suggest the variety of ways in which a culture and infrastructure of everyday democracy can be built and sustained through activities normally relegated to the private or civil-society spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I respond to critical readers of my book, William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic. I argue that James's ultimate preoccupations are ethical, and that his ethical and moral writings constitute a rich resource for pluralistic societies seeking democratic tools for negotiating deep ideological, cultural, and religious differences, and for building a thriving commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new vision of “illiberal democracy” was introduced by the Orbán-led Fidesz government in the 2010s, which marked the end of the welfare state, and the central element of the political discourse once again became the creation of a labour-based society. The new workfarist trend in employment indicated a new direction in active labour market policy, favouring public work schemes. However, public work regulations put a disproportionate burden on the Roma unemployed, while disregarding the contributing factors leading to their material deprivation. This paper examines the new direction in employment and unemployment policy measures, a policy terrain where the workfare regime can be best detected. We placed special emphasis on the Roma minority and how their employment situation is effected by the anti-welfare turn.

In Hungary, public work-based municipal projects played a major role in handling welfare challenges, such that the rise of a precarious rural underclass posited following the postsocialist disembedding of marginalised rural societies from the economy. Given the conditions of an authoritative populist state, this paper explores, using examples of case studies located in disadvantaged rural municipalities, innovative agrarian public work projects, as expressions of the relative freedom of action of local welfare states. Following the critical thinking inspired by Polányi’s theory (1944), it sheds light on these efforts, from countermovements to the neo-liberal disembedding of the economy from society including theories on food sovereignty movements. Thus, it reflects upon the degree to which these agricultural activities could be seen as part of a broader countermovement to the social disintegration of rural areas that emerged in the context of the transition to capitalism.

The article is constructed on the receptions of a historical and biographic method (protography) and devoted to the analysis of life and activity of two representatives of one family — brothers A. M. and E. M. Krasnoshchyok. Data on the biography of the third family member — their sister S. M. Krasnoshchyok is provided too. Youth of these people fell on a prerevolutionary era and was connected with revolutionary activity. The collected actual material allowed the author to show changes in the development and feature of personal manifestations at the people belonging to one family, but to different cohorts of the birth: one of brothers became social democrat, the second — the anarchist. It is shown that the different vital fates of brothers predetermined changes of a historical situation to the country, but at the same time in their actions and acts lines of similarity of characters are shown

In Hungary, public work-based municipal projects played a major role in handling welfare challenges, such that the rise of a precarious rural underclass posited following the postsocialist disembedding of marginalised rural societies from the economy. Given the conditions of an authoritative populist state, this paper explores, using examples of case studies located in disadvantaged rural municipalities, innovative agrarian public work projects, as expressions of the relative freedom of action of local welfare states. Following the critical thinking inspired by Polányi's theory (1944), it sheds light on these efforts, from countermovements to the neo-liberal disembedding of the economy from society including theories on food sovereignty movements. Thus, it reflects upon the degree to which these agricultural activities could be seen as part of a broader countermovement to the social disintegration of rural areas that emerged in the context of the transition to capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that higher education, the authoritative knowledge institution of the age, is a source of growing divisions in the country and also of the dominant theory of power as controlling, politics as partisan warfare, and democracy as customer service. Turning John Dewey's dictum that "education is the midwife of democracy" upside down, higher education trains professionals in every arena to see fellow citizens as clients and consumers to be acted upon, not cocreators of a common life. If higher education feeds the problem, its civic reconstruction is essential for remedy. Such reconstruction needs to draw upon and adapt older understandings of power as "poder," the capacity to act; politics as cross-partisan, negotiating the differences and pluralities of a common life; and democracy as the work of an inclusive "we the people" building a better version of that common life. In such a framework, higher education becomes a genuine commons, a site and catalyst of public resources cocreated and sustained by multiple stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of E-Cadernos CES is the property of Centro de Estudos Sociais 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.)

Civic culture is a term for how citizens actively live out, perform, and create public life through our habits, actions, words, and public work. A vital civic culture, with an engaged citizenry, is one of the measures of a healthy democratic republic. In this inquiry, we explore how civic education—holistically envisioned across disciplines and types of curriculum—might be imagined in light of civic cultural engagement and creation. We use the recent #NeverAgainMSD youth activism against gun violence as a single case study through which to examine what educators can learn from youth enacting citizenship in real time, contributing to a vital civic culture in an era when many lament youth apathy and disconnection from public life. We argue that much civics education ignores the worth of political emotion, and we describe both the important role of affect in civic culture and curricular possibilities for working with students around the intersections of affect, civic culture, and public work as citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labour market policy includes active and passive labour market programmes, aiming to solve different problems. Active labour market programmes assist the unemployed to find jobs and thus return to the labour market. Passive labour market programmes assist the unemployed by providing various kinds of aid, easing social tensions. Public work can be considered to be an active labour market programme, assisting people who receive social care with income based on public beneficial work. Consequently, public work is justified by some on the basis that it is purported to have some kind of moral foundation, as well as because it supposedly shows results within a short time. Yet, the rationale behind using public work programmes to fight unemployment is contested. Detractors see them as being rather costly, questioning their success and arguing that their overall results are uncertain, especially in the long run. In short, there are in fact pros and cons to using public work, with opinions being rather divisive. This study summarises these pros and cons, analysing the relevant international and Hungarian literatures in the context of active labour market programmes. JEL Classification: I38

The article deals with the application of public activity method on the example of professional training of journalists in US universities. The implemen-tation of journalist public work into curricula has been characterized. The research provides factors that influence the successful integration of journalist public work in the learning process. The difficulties of student public work implementation in the learning process as well as positive results of this method application in practice have been analysed. It is defined that the method of public work promotes the development of leadership, personal and social qualities among journalist students. Based on constructivist paradigm the service-based and collaborative approaches in journalism studying have been analysed. The article also describes how service learning from the point of constructivist approach can facilitate inter-active method of journalist studying. The benefits of experiential learning in jour-nalist educational process have been outlined. Three domains of experiential lear-ning have been identified: cognitive or mental skills; affective or emotional areas; manual or physical skills. It is noted that each domain has series of categories that reflect the level and type of learning. It is stated that each category represents a hierarchy moving from passive learning to active and points out the role of experiences in journalist studying. The article highlights the modes which experiential learning is based on: receptive mode that consists of shooting video, recording speeches by journalists; analytical mode is focused on developing critical thinking of journalists; productive mode is concentrated on accomplishing difficult tasks and journalist adapting to challenging situations; development mode consists of acquiring competence and mastery in professional sphere; psychological mode deals with personal and social growth of journalists. The prospects of further research in this area have been revealed.