Staff and family attitudes to fences as a means of detaining people with dementia in residential aged care settings: The tension between physical and emotional safety

This study investigates staff and family attitudes towards the use of the fences that surround many aged care facilities in Australia, in the context of indefinite detention of people with dementia. This indefinite detention has been described in a report from an Australian Senate Inquiry as “a significant problem within the aged care context”, which “is often informal, unregulated and unlawful”. Five focus groups comprising direct care workers, family members, nurse unit managers and facility managers discussed the reasons for and their attitudes towards fences. The results show a tension between the provision of physical and emotional safety. This is to say that even while it is illegal to detain people with dementia against their will, and even while participants understood the negative impact of fences on the well‐being and emotional safety of people with dementia, they accepted and supported the presence of perimeter fences because they provided the perception that fences kept people with dementia physically safe. This has implications for redressing the balance between physical and emotional safety in policy and practice.     

河北省省级贫困县农村居民移居城市意愿研究——基于邯郸市广平县的调查分析

当今中国，经济发展飞速，农民工源源不断涌入城市，长期以来形成城乡二元结构，农民移居城市意愿在京津冀一体化和推进城镇化背景下呈何状态、有何变化？笔者通过实地调研，分析问卷数据，分析移居城市意愿的影响因素及变化，并提出可行性建议。     

Corporate collective action and the market cycle of the cloth industry in Nieuwkerke,Flanders, 1300–1600

This article addresses the connections between corporate collective action and economic development in the pre-industrial Low Countries. It focuses on a micro-historic case study: the textile industry of the village of Nieuwkerke in the county of Flanders. This rural cloth centre witnessed an exceptional industrial expansion between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. Following the recent proposition by Bas van Bavel that market economies follow a fixed pattern of development, the chronology of the evolution of Nieuwkerke’s cloth industry can be discussed in terms of three phases. This article argues that the first phase of development (1358–c.1500) was characterized by limited success because of pressure from the city of Ypres. The second phase (c.1500–c.1550) was marked by an industrial boom, predicated upon successful corporate collective action intertwined with the perception of social equality among the village’s cloth entrepreneurs. The third and final phase (from c.1550) was one of stagnation and decline, caused by the breaking down of the collective and concomitant social polarization. The case study thereby closely conforms to van Bavel’s theory about market cycles. Yet, the correlation between economic decline and social polarization should in this case be understood in terms of changing perceptions of inequality, rather than increasingly unequal opportunities.     

Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on knowledge and the knowledge society within the Sustainable Development Goals

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to analyze discourses of knowledge and the knowledge society in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discourse analysis is a collective name for a number of scientific methodologies for analyzing semiosis, namely how meaning is created and communicated though written, vocal or sign language. Employing a genealogical approach which locates discourses in the field of prior discourses, two prior discourses of the knowledge society are identified in the key document of the SDGs. The concepts knowledge and knowledge society are found to have a marginal position within the main policy document “Transforming our world,” adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. The techno‐scientific‐economic discourse is found to be dominant at the level of implementation and of goals, while there is some evidence of the pluralist‐participatory discourse at the level of vision and strategy. Analysis of some of the policy advice provided by international organizations and civil society indicates that more pluralist‐participatory discourses on knowledge were represented when the SDGs were being formulated. Developed countries and the corporate sector were very influential in determining the final text and were probably instrumental in excluding more transformational discourses and maintaining the status quo.     

Domains of Motivation in Men and Women for Initiating and Terminating Procreation in an Evolutionary Perspective

Children require considerable resources such as time and money to be raised. Still, despite the heavy costs involved, most people do decide to have children, a fact that raises the question of what motivates them to do so. Moreover, after having one or more children, people decide not to have additional ones, even though they might still be fertile. This raises the question of what motivates people to terminate procreation. The present paper aims to address these questions using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In Study 1, we used in-depth interviews and open-ended questionnaires that lead to the identification of 66 reasons for which people have children and 23 reasons for which people stop having children. In Study 2, we used principal component analysis that classified these reasons in broader motivation domains, 15 for procreating and 4 for terminating procreation. Sex differences were examined in each domain. By placing procreation in an evolutionary framework, this study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the motives that drive people toward and away from the process of having children.     

Delay causes analysis in complex construction projects: a Semantic Network Analysis approach

Delays are among the most crucial adversaries to the success and performance of construction projects, making delay analysis and management a critical task for project managers. This task will be highly complicated in large-scale projects such as construction, which usually consist of a complex network of heterogeneous entities in continuous interaction. Traditional approaches and methods for the analysis of delays and their causes have been criticised for their ability to handle complex projects, and for considering the interrelationships between delay causes. Addressing this gap, this research introduces an alternative approach for delay causes analysis by adopting Semantic Network Analysis (SNA) method. The paper reports the results from an investigation of delays in construction projects in the Oil-Gas-Petrochemical sector using SNA. The method’s capacity to identify and rank delay causes, which can assist managers in selecting appropriate measures for eliminating them, are empirically examined and discussed. The paper argues that SNA leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the main causes of delay in large and complex projects, allowing a better identification and mapping of the interrelationships between these discrete factors.     

Initiative in work teams: adaptation and validation of the Personal Initiative at Group Level Scale / Iniciativa en los equipos de trabajo: adaptación y validación de la Escala de Iniciativa Personal a nivel Grupal

In this study, we conceptualize personal initiative as a collective construct and adapt and validate a scale to evaluate it with a sample of 308 Spanish participants belonging to 91 work teams. Personal initiative at group level is a behavioural syndrome in which the team shows an approach to work that is self-initiated, proactive, persistent, capable of modifying the atmosphere and pro organization. As a predictive variable, we analysed the climate for initiative as well as personal initiative at group level. The resulting variables that were analysed referred to organization and team performance, with the team productivity and innovation as the criteria, analysing radical innovation. The scale has suitable psychometric properties. The results show that there is a relationship between the two predictive variables. Furthermore, personal initiative at group level is related to team productivity, while the climate for initiative is related to innovation.     

Public income transfers and wealth accumulation at the bottom: Within and between country differences in Canada and the United States

Both Canada and the United States are considered liberal welfare states, yet exhibit notable differences in income poverty attributed to social policy. While a more generous welfare system lifts many above income poverty, models of household financial behaviour suggest that more income from the state should displace private savings via a substitution effect. Using nationally representative wealth surveys from Canada and the US from 1998/1999 to 2016 we extend knowledge on the relationship between the welfare state and private wealth accumulation. Specifically, we study household asset poverty defined as financial asset levels that fall below three-month adjusted income poverty threshold. Asset poverty rates varied over time in the two countries and were higher in the less generous US welfare state. Further, income transfer share was positively related to asset poverty in Canada but not in the US. Counterfactual estimates offered evidence of the substitution effect in Canada, where higher levels of transfers may crowd out private asset accumulation. Results invite further consideration of the concept of asset poverty and its relationship to welfare state characteristics.     

文化软实力绘就武陵山区美丽乡村新图景 ——以石柱县金铃乡银杏村为实践标杆

位于武陵山区石柱土家族自治县的金铃乡银杏村，是集少数民族、革命地区、集中连片的特困地区。一方面该村以自然山水风光为资源禀赋，以培育民族文化精神高地为乡村振兴“铸魂”、“赋能”；以“非遗文化+扶贫”的路子，激活了乡村的内生动力；文化扶贫直抵人心取得了“点石成金”的效果，让土家人充分享受到文化释放的红利。另一方面，该村作为“民族团结进步示范村”，以做深做实民族团结工作为抓手，充分让民族政策惠及土家万户，生动地实现了民族团结之花在土家大地上常开常盛。一个个串联成珠的实践案例，为武陵山打赢脱贫攻坚战更好地接续乡村振兴发挥了活标杆的示范引领作用，向世人展示一幅色彩斑斓的美丽乡村新图景。