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AbstractThe study examines the critical, but frequently overlooked, role of real estate intermediation in responding to demographic diversity within the organised production of Melbourne’s growth area suburbs. We examined 114 on-site billboards and 38 active residential development sites in the City of Wyndham, one of the most rapidly expanding suburban municipalities in Australia. Our findings underscore the ways real estate intermediation enchants an imagined suburban lifestyle through systematic marketing of community, amenity, and place. In-situ billboards serve as ‘technologies of enchantment’, promoting an Australian housing dream that is less closely associated with individual housing units, but obscures much of the poor social, environmental, and housing outcomes of suburbanisation. Instead, suburbs are presented as a blank canvas for new migrant homebuyers to exercise agency in consuming culture and building community. The study thus highlights the crucial role real estate intermediation plays in the production of future ethnoburbs in the urban fringes. We call for critical scrutiny of the specific use of visual resources that normalise suburban sprawl and substandard housing production by ingraining specific lifestyle imaginations in the Australian public psyche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable innovations have the potential to drive market systems and behaviours towards greater sustainability, yet the collective efforts of various network actors involved in shaping markets for these innovations are poorly understood. This paper examines the activities that public-private innovation network actors engage in when shaping markets for a side-stream-based sustainable innovation. A qualitative case study exploring a technological sustainable innovation that enables the valorisation and reuse of side-streams is used to illustrate the complex nature of market-shaping activities at the crossroads of different industries. The findings indicate that developing sustainable innovations and shaping markets at the intersection of traditionally separate industries require both side-stream producers and side-stream users to align and synchronise their market-shaping processes. To implement these alignments, different forms of intermediation are needed: brokering for exchange, configuring the technological system, and facilitating narrative construction. The public-private innovation network plays a key role in this intermediation by bringing together various actors, connecting their activities, and reconciling divergent perspectives. Our study contributes to a better understanding of market-shaping in a networked, multi-industry setting and the importance of intermediation through public-private innovation networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a distinctive analysis of the value of international intermediation alliances for co-production, based on the way they operate in practice. While much attention is paid to ideal or normative models of co-production, there is less understanding of the complexities that pervade co-production practices in specific contexts or how this shapes outcomes. Despite longstanding critiques and reflection, international partnerships can reinforce unequal power dynamics embedded in already unequal global research and knowledge production circuits. However, such partnerships, despite their structural problems, can also give rise to more informal relations wherein the long-term value of international co-production inheres. We call for a re-examination of these complex sets of informal relations, beyond the structures of partnerships, that enable co-production across local and global divides. Drawing on comparative international evidence, we propose a framework for understanding and action based on the concepts of alliances, allyship and activism. These three characteristics of international co-production partnerships can constitute socio-material infrastructures that help maintain relationships of solidarity and care over time beyond the remit of individual projects. While this is relevant in any co-production context it becomes particularly important in international research projects so that they do not paradoxically reproduce colonising structures of knowledge production in the search for more just cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a comparative analysis of the phenomena of Old Testament prophets and shamans against five key aspects: their social status, calling, intermediation, fortune-telling and magic, rituals and cosmogony, and gender. Numerous previous attempts to compare Old Testament prophets, shamans and sorcerers were based on the superficial likeness between these phenomena and often were mere descriptions. The key challenge for such a comparison is the choice of sources: Biblical texts were written in prescientific times, and information about shamans was recorded by ethnographers and anthropologists. This study is an attempt to systematize approaches to comparing Biblical prophets with shamans and to conduct an independent comparison of these phenomena. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) to consider the problems inherent in the sources; 2) to clarify the basic concepts characterizing these phenomena, and to substantiate the adopted definitions; 3) to highlight the grounds for comparing the Old Testament prophets and Siberian shamans; 4) to conduct a comparison according to the selected criteria; 5) to establish the similarities and differences. The results of the study are that despite the external similarity of the socio-religious role of prophets and shamans, because of their role in mediation between the human and spirit worlds, they have nothing else in common. Firstly, shamans are integrated into the social architecture of their society (tribal affiliation), and prophets can be both part of the social system or be in opposition; the social status of shamans is higher than that of prophets, since they possessed not only spiritual but also real power. Secondly, the calling of prophets and shamans is different (the former, according to the Bible, are called by God for a specific mission, the latter, according to their experience, are tormented by spirits, forcing them to serve them). Thirdly, unlike prophets, shamans are involved in the sphere of magic and divination, and their actions themselves are inscribed in a certain ritual. Fourthly, the cosmological models of prophets and shamans have nothing in common. Finally, gender diversity among shamans is not only wider than among prophets, but also mobile. In conclusion the authors attempt to find a family resemblance between these phenomena are a crude generalization leading to a number of theoretical misunderstandings.

The main aim of the following paper is to unpack the construction processes behind global architecture that have remained conceptually under-theorized and empirically unexplored. This is achieved by shifting the focus away from the brand-name global architects to the invisible, less prominent project architects employed in their celebrity offices. Based on the analysis of qualitative interviews, the paper conceptualizes project architects as key intermediaries and systematizes their embodied practices of intermediation enacted between design and execution. Project architects are revealed as key actors who negotiate between design ideas and the local contingencies, bridging between different sites of materialization. By introducing the conceptual lens of practices of intermediation, the paper explores how architecture takes its physical form, elucidating the micro-geographies behind construction processes. The construction of global architecture is hereby conceptualized as a 'building event', as a situated 'performance', during which professionals can transgress cognitive boundaries between design knowledge and execution expertise, and formal boundaries, defined by contracts, regulatory framework, and organizational hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Howells (2006), the text evaluates the incorporation of intermediation and intermediaries in a systemic context, in particular, in the evolutionary perspective of innovation systems (IS). For this purpose, a semi-systematic review is carried out which shows that empirical work predominates. These reveal that intermediaries enhance IS performance; that through intermediation they solve systemic problems such as the closing of gaps between IS subsystems; and for this purpose they act as mechanisms for coordination and generation of synergies, or for the development of IS actor capabilities. The evidence also indicates that systemic characteristics, such as the prevailing modes of innovation in the IS, condition the role and intensity of the intermediary intervention. These results reveal, in short, a high theoretical potential of the IS-intermediation articulation.

Purpose – Task conflict and relationship conflict are common in organizations. This paper aims to present a unique case of the use of the targeted conflict-resolution technique. The revival of positive group dynamics is aptly shown. Design/methodology/approach – This descriptive case study is developed as a practice insight to showcase how a peculiar case of misunderstanding is resolved in the most unconventional way through the intervention of a mediator who unearths the real cause of contention. The mediator works through logic and emotion to remove negativity. Narration, a necessary component of the case study approach, peeps into the research subject involving flashbacks, flash forward, backstories and foreshadowing. The mediator uses reframing as a tool very efficiently, encouraging the people in conflict to understand the nothingness in their cold war and eventually prompting them to collaborate and compromise. Findings – The shifts in communication dynamics post-mediator’s intervention are subtle and full of wisdom, encouraging introspection and constructive interaction, eventually bridging the differences. The possibility of achieving a state of homeostasis in the future magnifies. The belief in the power of affirmation and manifestation is validated. The heavy, difficult, hardened negativity loses ground and gets transformed. Social implications – Conversation/prayers at the deepest level in several meetings are the communication tools that have immense social relevance in the Indian context. Originality/value – A unique combination of intermediation encompassing written communication and energy transformation is adopted to resolve ongoing conflict by stroking the positive psychology of the partakers. To some, the method may appear to have a spiritual connotation.

Copyright of Economic Series of the Bulletin of the L.N. Gumilyov ENU is the property of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University 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 Management international / International Management / Gestiòn Internacional is the property of Management International 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.)

The extensive use of white collar workers, such as bookkeepers and clerks, played a crucial role in the formation of modern states during the early modern period. This article focuses on the formation of a Debt Office in Sweden, which was opened in 1719 in order to administer the liquidation of the debt accrued during the previous royal regime. By utilizing the available expertise that had been working on the debt market, it was relatively easy for the new parliamentary rule to found the office. The office became part of the credit system when it interacted with various creditors. The clerical staff helped the market to function by providing intermediation, but their role became increasingly contentious. By examining the clerical staff, we learn how the authorities tried to build a trustworthy institution. The case thereby offers another perspective on credible commitment than research which concentrates on formal political institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the examples of Versailles, a series co-produced by Capa Drama with the Quebec company Incendo and Zodiak Fiction for Canal+, and No Man's Land, a Franco-Belgian-Israeli co-production produced for Arte France and the US platform Hulu, this article aims to compare two different dimensions of the globalisation of the series market and the integration of French producers and broadcasters into this new transnational creative ecosystem. The challenge for the production of Versailles was to bring the French heritage series up to the standards of the English-speaking world while promoting French producers' financial and artistic creativity in launching series with distinctive stories onto a global market. For No Man's Land, however, the challenge was to produce a cosmopolitan series, featuring several cultural areas and a multilingual cast. Whether in terms of the broadcasters' globalisation strategy or in terms of the creative or even cross-cultural challenges raised by the production process, both experiences are representative of the way series are emerging today as a laboratory of audiovisual 'glocalisation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigrants‘ encounters with the new legal system of the welcoming country might vary from challenging to easy process. The newcomers’ path of interaction in the field of welcoming countries‘ legalities is related to the legal knowledge and variety of assumptions about the legal world and how it is embedded in the social reality of a welcoming country. There are many factors, that are involved and shape this complexity but one of them is highly meaningful - the role of intermediaries. Therefore, this research focuses on identifying and discussing the different statuses and roles of the intermediaries as they participate in the process of immigrant‘s interaction with the legalities of the welcoming country. These assumptions are based on the 53 qualitative interviews of foreign third-country residents in Lithuania. The results of the analysis reveal the main roles of the intermediaries while immigrants interact with the new legal system of the welcoming country. This research indicates that intermediaries actively or passively participate in the processes of migrants’ gaining legal knowledge, influence their legal behaviour and become a part of migrants‘ legal interactions. Intermediaries are also seen in the variance of official statuses, visibly gaining different roles in legal relationships which results in different outcomes. Therefore, this research draws attention to the need for more profound attention to the immigrants’ legal relationship and deduces practical implications for it as well.

In geography and, to a lesser extent, in urban planning and development, the topic of Public Procurement (PP) has received little consideration from the French and international scientific community. This observation must be set against the abundant scientific literature from the other related disciplines (management sciences, economics and legal sciences). In France, no thesis on this subject has ever been defended in Geography, a few articles and no books have been published on this interaction between PP and "territories". This observation challenges geographers, policy designers and planners, even though, beyond the question of the law that frames it, PP has always been a major instrument of public policies and their implementation. This research project focuses on how PP is taken into account in the analysis of the dynamics of territorial innovation.In particular, it will enrich our understanding of the dynamics of proximity and territorial intermediation processes, which have become key issues in economic geography and Regional Science. The aim is to understand how, on a territorial scale, public procurement enables coordination and matching between the players involved in these territorial innovation dynamics. The smart city perspective is introduced as a relevant analytical framework for studying the manufacture of urban innovation, focusing on the way in which public procurement facilitates exchanges and interactions between stakeholders with sometimes conflicting objectives and differing timeframes. The text describes a research methodology based on a case study of the Toulouse scene engaged in proactive programs to support innovation since 2014, with a protocol incorporating a complete literature review, a systemic analysis, a data collection via semi-structured interviews, and a comparative approach with other similar territorial scenes.

In this article we wish to point out – using the metaphor of a marital crisis – some of the reasons behind the growing conflict between digital technologies and the law. We identify various causes: Over the last years there has been a radical change in roles: once one looked at the law for solutions, now they are searched in digital technologies, seen as very efficient instruments of governance. Legal instruments are inadequate to cope with a phenomenon in constant evolution, and whose economic and socio-political weight is immense. Digital actors have become the most effective law makers, with rules not only prescriptive but directly executable. Our conclusions are that: The digital has changed international relations. We see "digital empires" and "digital colonies": the EU has gradually fallen in the latter category. The EU approach, expressed by thousands of normative provisions, is ineffective and will be counter-productive in respect of its objectives. It would be preferable to adopt a "general principles" model able to govern not only the present issues but also the changes expected in the next years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a parsimonious model of network formation with introductions in the presence of intermediation rents. Introductions allow two nodes to form a new connection on favorable terms with the help of a common neighbor. The decision to form links via introductions is subject to a trade-off between the gains from having a direct connection at lower cost and the potential losses for the introducer from lower intermediation rents. When nodes take advantage of introductions, stable networks tend to exhibit a minimum amount of clustering. At the same time, intermediary nodes have incentives to protect their position, and stable networks can exhibit nodes exploiting structural holes, that is, bridges across otherwise unconnected parts of the network earning intermediation rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revue d'Économie Régionale & urbaine is the property of Librairie Armand Colin 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.)

The public sector is a key economic player in society with a significant purchasing power and therefore has the potential to promote societal change while maintaining a degree of control over use of public funds, transparency and fairness. However, current public procurement processes largely result in purchasing products and services through a generally more pre-planned and rigid type of process.In this paper we argue that the current public procurement process is not “fit for purpose” for a transition to large-scale circular public procurement which aims to optimise value retention. In order to overcome this, we propose a conceptual framework that could support public organisations in aligning the procurement processes and structures with the value propositions of their own operations. We suggest that intermediation is the key enabler for a transition to a more circular economy by stimulating innovation in public procurement and with an ecosystem perspective.

Copyright of Revista Internacional y Comparada de Relaciones Laborales y Derecho del Empleo is the property of ADAPT University Press 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.)

This paper investigates which intermediary practices among European aerospace clusters support their diverse membership. Using a configurational approach, we find nine successful sets of practices spanning cluster members with varying levels of internal resources. We unpack important trade-offs, with no single approach to intermediation being ideal in every context. However, the presence of mutual trust is necessary, hinting that its importance in brokered networks has been understated by past research. Furthermore, equifinality exists even for similar types of members, suggesting the need for future research to be attentive to the existence of multiple viable approaches to cluster intermediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of corporate crimes in the field of consumption, the extent of their victims, and the ineffectiveness of traditional punishments have made it difficult to deal with these crimes. Dealing with corporate crimes outside the criminal justice system and restoring the processes, in addition to supporting the victims, can prevent damage to the reputation and credibility of companies. This research wants to investigate the possibility of using restorative methods in dealing with corporate crime in a descriptive-analytical way and concerning library sources. The findings of the research indicate that regarding corporate crimes, it is possible to apply restorative mechanisms through the use of a horizontal approach along with a vertical approach and strengthening the responses according to the needs of the victims. To overcome the challenges of the classical restorative methods, it is necessary to use new effects, such as the use of mediation structures and the online dispute resolution system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global spread of online work opportunities has inspired a new generation of market-based aid that connects forcibly displaced people to a transnational internet economy. Because refugees face barriers to making a livelihood online, aid organisations and private enterprises support them by building bridges across digital divides, connectivity problems or skill gaps. They thereby become intermediaries and brokers that facilitate connections between refugees and online income opportunities, which often lack decent working conditions and adequate protections. Because digital livelihood initiatives lack the power to reshape these conditions and the value of work in the internet economy, they fail to become mediators with a transformative impact. The result is that the internet economy reshapes livelihoods provision far more than aid can reshape its disempowering effects, despite successes in driving forward refugees’ digital inclusion. Based on more than three years of research including interviews, field visits and surveys, this article foregrounds the current risks that result from the inclusion of refugees into precarious forms of online gig work. To ensure a decent future of work for refugees in the internet economy, the current push for digital livelihoods will require an equally strong push for stronger protections, inclusive regulations and rights.

This paper provides experimental evidence on the economic determinants of inter- mediation networks by considering two pricing rules—respectively, criticality and betweenness—and three group sizes of subjects—10, 50, and 100 subjects. We find that when brokerage benefits accrue only to traders who lie on all paths of intermediation, stable networks involve interconnected cycles, and trading path lengths grow while linking and payoff inequality remain modest as the number of traders grows. By contrast, when brokerage benefits are equally distributed among traders on the shortest paths, stable networks contain a few hubs that provide the vast majority of links, and trading path lengths remain unchanged while linking and payoff inequality explode as the number of traders grows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current literature on the finance‐inequality nexus fall short of providing extensive evidence. This paper fills the gap by framing the financial sector; to the development of financial intermediation (supply side) and individual use of financial services (demand side). The first approach decouples the financial sector into the banking and stock market. We use the 5‐year nonoverlapping averaged data from 1980 to 2017 across 49 countries and employ a panel data fixed effect and two‐stage least squared estimation (2sls). We show that banking and stock market development widens income inequality. Besides, the effect is more prominent in countries that have a banking and stock market than countries only with the banking sector. The second approach uses financial inclusion and financial technology (Fintech) data from three waves of survey data in 2011, 2014 and 2017 on the individual use of financial services across 39 countries. We obtain three key findings. First, institutional quality significantly affects financial inclusion and Fintech. Second, Fintech positively affects inclusion and savings. Third, financial inclusion and Fintech exacerbate income inequality. Our result asserts a natural tendency that financial sector development exacerbate income inequality in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Biológico Agropecuaria Tuxpan is the property of Revista Biologico Agropecuaria Tuxpan 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.)

This article discusses intermediation in three artistic projects by American artists Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022). Entitled The Lagoon Cycle (1973-1984, based in Sri Lanka and the United States), Breathing Space for the Sava River (1989-1990, in the former Yugoslavia) and Endangered Meadows of Europe (1996, in Bonn), these projects defy commodification and openly assert the well-being of ecosystems and ecological change as their main objectives. How is intermediation achieved from these intellectual positions and in these circumstances? The projects have an exhibition component and a performative component of interaction with the social, academic, administrative, institutional or industrial frameworks that surround them (more or less successful depending on the project). They benefited from collaborations with museum institutions, science laboratories, politicians, decision-makers, associations and ordinary citizens. While capital is a major issue for funding these projects and museums represent significant venues where exhibitions were presented, a larger conversation with many of the actors involved was initiated, including the ecosystem itself, which, through the work and beyond it, becomes an agent of its own further dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an exploration of the imbrications of “business and art” in the United States in the second half the 20th century. It brings to the fore the essential, and understudied, role of a major intermediary: Dorothy Canning Miller. As a curator working for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), she played a growing, and pivotal role in the Art Committee at Chase Manhattan Bank. Her work at both the MoMA and on the Art Committee of Chase helps us grasp several layers of art intermediation. The Committee set up in 1959 is a de facto intermediary as a structure. And its composition denotes the paramount importance of such new defining artistic, architectural and business trends at the end of the 1950s as corporate modernism, abstraction and new conceptual approaches of business and bank management, as well as the physical space of bank offices and the space devoted to art in almost each single one of those offices. Within that Art Committee the influence of Dorothy Miller, rises to attain great prominence over the more than 20 years when she advised Chase in art purchases as a member of that committee. She was also involved, first hand, in the perusal of the works and their downright installation as intermediaries—in business and in the physical space of the bank itself, more especially in the iconic buildings and locations which were opened at the end of the 1950s and the turn of the 1960s in the Upper East Side (410 Park Avenue) and downtown in the Financial District of Manhattan (One Chase Manhattan Plaza). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses intermediation in three artistic projects by American artists Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (1932-2022). Entitled The Lagoon Cycle (1973-1984, based in Sri Lanka and the United States), Breathing Space for the Sava River (1989-1990, in the former Yugoslavia) and Endangered Meadows of Europe (1996, in Bonn), these projects defy commodification and openly assert the well-being of ecosystems and ecological change as their main objectives. How is intermediation achieved from these intellectual positions and in these circumstances? The projects have an exhibition component and a performative component of interaction with the social, academic, administrative, institutional or industrial frameworks that surround them (more or less successful depending on the project). They benefited from collaborations with museum institutions, science laboratories, politicians, decision-makers, associations and ordinary citizens. While capital is a major issue for funding these projects and museums represent significant venues where exhibitions were presented, a larger conversation with many of the actors involved was initiated, including the ecosystem itself, which, through the work and beyond it, becomes an agent of its own further dissemination.

The William A. Bradley Literary Agency Records help trace the careers of William and Jenny Bradley, two intermediaries in the cultural exchanges between France and the United States in the twentieth century. The archive offers privileged access to an array of transatlantic negotiations in the interwar period and post-Second World War era. This article first aims at including the two agents into the communications circuit relevant to book history that unfolds from writer to editor and on to reader, at a time when the book industry became more international. The article then unveils the sociability rooted in the agents’ participation in the world of Parisian salons and in the building of literary and intellectual relationships in the transnational space of Paris. Ultimately, the article argues that the Bradleys’ lifework articulates cultures in ways that defy the simplified vision of a unidirectional flux in what has been suggested to be an “American Century” of influence and cultural domination. In sum, an interest in intermediation and a transnational approach bring together considerations over the professional contributions of the French-American literary agents and observations about little-known makers of cultural processes. This article draws from the manuscript of Deux agents littéraires dans le siècle américain : William et Jenny Bradley, passeurs culturels transatlantiques (Cossu-Beaumont, 2023) and hopefully serves to shed light on the journeys of William and Jenny Bradley as Atlantic passeurs.

Evident invisibles emerge in the ethnographic encounter which change the whence and the whither of the ethnographic gesture. Long ago, Margaret Mead critiqued anthropologists for ignoring 'the world in between' that makes their fieldwork possible – this article takes the argument a step further, proposing that all ethnographic encounters are fundamentally 'amidst'. Thus, it calls for a shift from translation to intermediation as the guiding trope of ethnography. Although the practice of ethnography requires the objectification of a 'field', metaphysical pluralism remains the fundamental condition of ethnographic intermediation. In light of that, the article critiques (a) the practice of describing our main methodological disposition as 'participant observation', arguing instead for the older term 'intensive ethnographic research'; and (b) the implicit use of the trope of ethnography-as-translation. Ethnographic examples are taken from the author's own fieldwork in the coastal mangroves of southern Bahia (northeast Brazil) in the late 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the issues of implementing the right to mediation as a social service in the territorial communities of Ukraine. It is specified that the right to mediation was reflected in the law about twenty years ago and is associated with the development of social policy in Ukrainian society, oriented towards international and European standards. It is proved that the inconsistency of the legislator in the social services field has become one of the problems of exercising the right to mediation. From the very beginning, mediation was recognized as the second stage of the social service of intermediation (mediation) at the level of by-laws, and the State Standard was approved to ensure the sufficient provision of this service (State Standard of Social Service of Intermediation (Mediation), 2016). The Law of Ukraine, «On Social Services», adopted in 2019, recognized mediation and intermediation as two separate «basic» social services but did not make any changes that would lay the foundations for a state standard for mediation as an independent social service. As for the Classifier of Social Services approved in 2020, the list of social services provided only uses the term «intermediation» as the name of the social service. However, the term «mediation» is used to describe the place of provision of the social service «intermediation». Such legislative contradictions and terminological inconsistencies affect the work of local self-government bodies, which are obliged to exercise their powers to ensure the provision of social services only on the grounds, in the manner and within the limits provided for by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine. It is emphasised that the approach to the interpretation of mediation as the second stage of social intermediation (mediation) stated in the State Standard is «outdated», as it does not comply with the provisions of paragraphs 10, 18 of Part 6 of Article 16 of the Law of Ukraine «On Social Services», and negates the right to free choice of a social service provider (the right to choose a mediator rather than an intermediary immediately), as well as the right to ensure the best interests of individuals/families in need of social mediation. The article focuses on the problem of low awareness of both the population and officials/relevant employees of local self-government bodies on mediation (its essence and features, mediability of disputes, search and engagement of mediators, etc.), as well as on the latter's obligation to actively inform the population about the social service of mediation and provide advice on the exercise of the right to receive it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]