The future of urban biodiversity research: Moving beyond the ‘low-hanging fruit’

In this era of rapidly urbanising human populations, urban practitioners are under increasing pressure to create resilient and sustainable cities and towns. Urban ecologists currently have a unique opportunity to apply solid, evidence-based research to help create biodiversity-rich and sustainable cities and towns for the future. Unfortunately, there is currently a mismatch between the questions planners, designers and decision-makers are asking urban ecologists that would allow them to improve the biodiversity outcomes in urban areas, and the questions urban ecologists must ask to contribute to the development and application of the science of urban ecology. For a number of reasons, urban ecologists over the past 25 years have primarily focused on describing the patterns of biodiversity in cities and towns using broad, aggregate predictor variables (e.g., distance to city center, land-use, percent cover of impermeable surfaces and vegetation, etc.). We refer to these results as ‘low-hanging fruit’. If the discipline of urban ecology is going to provide the necessary information to inform actions to preserve and enhance urban biodiversity, we need to move beyond place-based research, and work towards the development of confirmed generalizations regarding the relationship between the structure and function of urban ecosystems and biodiversity. We propose three essential strategies for achieving this refined understanding: 1) defining the study window to place the study into a broader global context, 2) collecting and using more explicit question-driven measures of the urban condition in order to improve our understanding of urban ecological drivers, as well as recording more detailed ecological responses to provide insights into the ecological mechanisms underlying an observed response, and 3) expanding studies to include multiple cities, regions and countries. These strategies will help to expedite the ability of urban ecology to contribute to the creation of biodiversity-rich, healthy, resilient cities and towns.     

Adolescence and parental influence

Treatment of a borderline mother and her adolescent daughter is approached with a combination of individual and conjoint sessions, enabling the therapist to identify the distortions within their relationship and to interpret these to the individuals. Mother and daughter attempt to involve the therapist in a collusion in the rejecting-abandoning projection. A combination of interpretation and presentation of a real, nurturing object enables the adolescent to become more interested in peers and able to go to college, and the mother to become less accident prone and able to keep her job.     

Police Reforms in Child Abuse Investigation: Their Success and Limitations in the Struggle to Uphold Children's Rights

SUMMARY. The past decade has shown increased awareness, concern and understanding about the extent of child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, and the caring agencies response to listen to and to support the young victims. This article looks at the response of the police service over that decade to meet such demands and to work jointly and responsively with social services to further the welfare and protection of children. It also examines the constraints and limitations of the police and social services when they attempt to uphold the rights of child victims and to gain redress through the criminal justice system     

The meanings of citizenship: media use and democracy in South Africa

In 1994, South Africans embarked on a project to create new meanings of citizenship in order to transcend the disenfranchisement and divisions created by apartheid. This article examines the context in which new forms of citizenship are evolving in South Africa and how South African citizens use the media to give meaning to concepts such as “an active public sphere,” “civic agency” and “participatory politics.” The objective of the research is to provide information about the way in which the media contribute to the quality of democracy in South Africa through mediating citizenship in a way that improves prospects for citizens to exert influence over public decisions. As has been the case in other post-authoritarian and postcolonial settings, the continuation of existing unequal relationships to government persists even when new democratic spaces have opened up. This article interrogates the assumption that media are central to citizens’ political and civic engagements in a transitional society marked by persisting inequalities. This interrogation draws on empirical research with citizens to investigate the question that the media are central to constructions of citizenship and participation and engagement with democratic processes. Our research finds that young South Africans interviewed are disengaged from politics and find that the media does not speak to or connect with their everyday lives. They view the state on both national and local levels as not being prepared to listen to their experiences, ideas or conditions of life. While the respondents trust the media as credible institutions, they do not experience the media as being relevant to their lives. The perceived disinterest of the state and the lack of relevance of the media, work together to create a sense of powerlessness and inability to influence policy-making among the young people interviewed. For the media to intervene in this state of affairs, it would have to create more opportunities for young people to participate directly in meaning production through the media, starting by listening more closely to their experiences in order to respond to their concerns in a relevant way.     

Child Sexual Abuse Attributions Among Undergraduate Psychology Students in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Experimental vignettes were used to investigate attributions relating to child sexual abuse with a focus on the degree of blame allocated to the family and to society, factors thought to be particularly relevant in a collectivist society. One hundred and sixty-two undergraduates in Singapore evaluated media reports describing a case of child sexual abuse. A 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects design manipulated victim sex, perpetrator sex, and victim–perpetrator relationship. Participants rated the vignettes on degree of blame and prevention potential and rated the abusiveness of the case. Individualism and collectivism attitudes of the participants were also measured. While the highest blame ratings were attributed to perpetrators, significantly more blame was attributed to the family and to society than to the victim. The demonstration of the present attributions of blame to family and to society is a timely finding given recent recommendations to broaden approaches to child abuse prevention by moving away from a reliance on school based child protection programs, which leave the onus on the child to prevent and report abuse, toward a public health approach, which is particularly inclusive of parent and community education approaches . Allocation of some blame to victims, in spite of their status as children, while not a unique finding in victimology research, emphasizes the challenges still to be faced in encouraging the reporting of child sexual abuse.     

Sociologies of Space, Work and Organisation: From Fragments to Spatial Theory

Work organisations are made by the arrangement of space and working lives are made and lived through these spaces. Yet, explicit interest in space has been marginal to the development of sociologies of work organisation. Despite this, spatial analysis has often offered support to established theories of work and organisation. This paper reviews this contribution, excavating the spatial from past studies intended to address the labour process; semiotics and discourse; and the nature of everyday working lives. The second part of the paper emphasises the importance of making space more central to our conceptual and theoretical concerns and draws on spatial theory from social and cultural geography to do so. The paper endeavours to integrate the fragmented insights from different scholarly paradigms in the sociology of work with this spatial theory and to promote an enhanced spatial sensibility for the sociology of work and organisations. This review and fusion contributes to wider calls to develop a new sociology of work that prioritises the centrality of space to understanding work.     

上海教育国际化的配套政策及服务体系研究

上海教育国际化的核心内涵是通过教育活动国际化、教育者与受教育者的国际化、教学机构国际化以及国际维度与观念融入过程的国际化等途径，推动上海整体教育水平的提高，吸引和培养高素质的国际型人才，服务于上海经济社会可持续发展的大局。上海教育国际化的配套政策要围绕优质教育资源的引入和输出展开：制定“引智”政策，以吸引优秀海外专家、学者，扩大开放现行科研体系，引入教育国际化高端资源；制定教学计划与课程国际化建设、“留学上海”系列服务、优质教育资源引进、“国际化品牌项目”支持、全社会共同参与、服务体系信息化等政策。建立以政府各相关部门为主体的管理体系、以高校及其他办学机构为主体的教学体系及以企业、各类社会组织及市民为主体的社会服务体系。     

The institutionalization of expertise in university licensing

This article draws on ethnographic data from a field leading university licensing office to document and explain a key step in the process of institutionalization, the abstraction of standardized rules and procedures from idiosyncratic efforts to collectively resolve pressing problems. I present and analyze cases where solutions to complicated quandaries become abstract bits of professional knowledge and demonstrate that in some circumstances institutionalized practices can contribute to the flexibility of expert reasoning and decision-making. In this setting, expertise is rationalized in response to institutional tensions between academic and business approaches to deal making and professional tensions between relational and legal approaches to negotiation. Abstraction and formalization contribute both to the convergence and stability of routines and to their improvisational use in professional work. Close attention to these processes in a strategic research setting sheds new light on an interesting tension in sociological theories of the professions while contributing to the development of a micro-level, social constructivist institutional theory.     

Editorial

This editorial introduces a journal devoted to the issues surrounding women and their rights. As the development debate moves from women's need to their rights and to an understanding of the cultural roots of legal systems and the effects of the mass media in presenting alternative life styles as possibilities, the immense implications of using rights-based language in development emerge. This debate moves women from being the recipients of welfare to a state of empowerment. Women must be afforded individual rights which are linked to community rights. In addition, rights must be granted to women in their public and private domains. The dangers of using a rights-based language to assert women's claims to economic, political, and social equality in economic, political, and social life arise from the reality that the social position of men will usually place men at an advantage with the law. Legal processes which stress dichotomies may fail to improve real social situations. Also, the language of human rights may pit one set of rights (a woman's right to choose abortion) against another (the fetuses' right to live) to women's disadvantage. Areas governed by both customary and civil law pose other difficulties, especially since they require women to understand the law in order to use it. Development efforts which stress rights hope to meet immediate needs and to achieve a strategic end. Nongovernmental organizations can play an important role in asserting and enforcing the freedom of individuals and groups within groups. They can also build capacity at all levels of society and explore linkages between women's economic participation, decision-making within the home, and wider political participation.     

上海推进“城中村”改造研究

改造"城中村",有利于改善居民居住生活质量,促进城乡统筹发展;有利于盘活存量用地,推进土地的节约、集约利用;有利于改善城乡形象、推进宜居城市建设。上海进一步推进"城中村"改造,须加强领导,推进"城中村"改造的体制机制建设;要均衡各方利益,调动政府、开发商和农民三方的积极性;要摸清底数,对纳入全市统一改造计划内的"城中村"实行目录管理;要因地制宜,针对各个"城中村"不同的情况进行分类指导;要突破创新,建立、健全支持"城中村"改造的政策体系;要营造氛围,形成有利于推进"城中村"改造的良好外部环境。     

Contested memories: efforts of the powerful to silence former inmates' histories of life in an institution for 'mental defectives'

This paper discusses the barriers encountered in undertaking an oral history project with survivors of a total institution for 'mental defectives' in the province of Alberta, Canada. Powerful social actors were able to bar access to survivors through legal guardianship orders, and to make access to the institution and its grounds and to publicly archived materials quite prohibitive to the researcher. In addition to overt efforts on the part of powerful social actors to block the project, concerns about the potential to discredit survivor narratives led to changes in the research design. Specifically, research and literature about the 'acquiescence' of intellectuals with intellectual impairments led the researcher to broaden the sources for this history as a preemptive strategy. Despite these barriers, survivors of the institution provided a rich and powerful testimony to the brutality of institutionalization, and provide us with an emancipatory history from the perspectives of those most oppressed by disability policies and practices.     

Domestic violence: analysis of a community safety alarm system

This paper presents the findings of an analysis of the trial period of a local authority community alarm system adapted to protect adult and child victims of domestic violence and enable them to remain living in their own homes. The system was augmented as a response to government guidance on promoting interagency initiatives to tackle the crime of domestic violence. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to seek the perceptions and experiences of referrers, service users and potential service users in the context of the administration, resource implications and cost‐effectiveness of the new system. The evaluation discovered that potential service users were anxious about police and social services involvement in relation to child care. The system was considered to be protective, enabling women and children to remain in their own homes, and relatively cheap to operate. It has the potential to provide a deterrent to perpetrators and enhance interagency cooperation in protecting children, subject to further refinement and longer‐term evaluation. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Central American regional integration in science,technology and innovation: a new challenge

In recent years in international cooperation policies and public policies of the Central American (CA) region multilateral mechanisms were generated to form interinstitutional networks that drive science, technology, and innovation (STI) as the engine for regional economic growth. In the agreements social, political, and economic disparity were taken into account in order to stimulate the articulation between actors and potentialize local strengths to generate critical mass on the level of knowledge and build a research core base. The aim of this article is to identify institutional and productive capacities acquired in the countries of the region (CA) that encourage interaction on a national level and create favorable conditions to generate regional agreements to build regional interaction on STI. Results show deficiencies in the linking between public and private agents derived from the limited funds destined to I+D, the insufficient channels of information and the lack of interest of the investigations to respond to priority problems of the region, which weaken links with the productive sector. From there, arise the need to build a joint and collaborative work agenda to consolidated the institutional environment and favors the capacities to absorb knowledge.     

Influence of Late Life Stressors on the Decisions of Older Women to Relocate into Congregate Senior Housing

Late-life stressors often require individuals to make substantial alterations in behavior and lifestyle and can affect their overall health and well-being. Relocation is a significant life stress, regardless of age. The primary aim of this study is to elucidate the push-pull factors associated with moving into congregate senior housing. The secondary aim is to investigate the decision-making processes and stresses associated with moving into a congregate living environment. Interviews were conducted with 26 women who were new residents in congregate senior housing. Relocation, as expected, was considered to be stressful, although individual differences were found among perceptions of relocation stresses. Women who had made the decision to relocate on their own showed evidence of better psychosocial well-being at the time of the move. One-quarter of the sample chose to move to provide care to another person. As the options for senior housing continue to evolve and the number of adults reaching advanced age continues to increase, it is important to understand the factors that contribute to successful adaptation. This knowledge will enable facility administrators to implement programs and procedures to assist incoming residents with acclimating to their new homes.     

The relationship between infringements on the freedom to research and teach and poor sociological practice

Infringements upon the freedom to research and teach may be experienced as pressures to attend to particular topics of research to the exclusion of others, to conduct research using false parameters and inappropriate methodologies, to reach conclusions acceptable to funders, to apply “sexy” theoretical explanations while ignoring other perspectives, and to respond favorably to consumeristic university student admission and retention policies. Although there is no empirical evidence to support a causal relationship between infringements and poor research and teaching, I am suggesting that the presence of infringements can detract from effective teaching and unbiased research. The literature suggests that at least a portion of scholars are aware of infringements and their negative consequences, yet formal complaints about infringements are rare. Sociologists may permit these infringements out of confusion over the possible outcomes of infringements (in other words, uncertainty about the standards of good and poor practice), out of fear of being punished for noncompliance with the infringements, or because they do not recognize the infringements for what they are. Sociologists may be able to reconstruct the infringements as pressures of the job and the outcomes as acceptable sociological practice.     

生活世界视域下高校贫困生帮扶工作创新

随着高等教育规模的迅速扩大，高校贫困生的数量和比例也在不断扩大，现行帮扶体系存在重物质帮扶轻精神关爱、缺乏差异化的个性心理关怀等问题。生活世界是人的生存真实场域，是与主体活动现实背景紧密相连的丰富多彩的相对于物质的世界。生活世界视域中的高校贫困生帮扶工作旨在走人贫困生的日常生活，贯彻精神帮扶为主物质帮扶为辅的帮杜原则，树立助人自助与育人相结合的帮扶目标，倡导全体总动员，构建强大的校园非正式的心理支持网络等策略，帮助其学会生存和生活。     

‘Placements Online’: Student Experiences of a Website to Support Learning in Practice Settings

Social work practice and education in many parts of the world are implementing an elearning agenda. This article considers the experiences of students using a website developed to support learning in agency settings to discover if and how it can be used to create a ‘bridge’ between the learning environments of the university and practice. The website contains a range of features, including downloadable practice assessment documents, links to university based teaching units, electronic personal notification of placement allocation, and an asynchronous discussion forum.

The action research project which informs this article employed focus groups of students to ascertain their expectations and experiences of the website, in particular the asynchronous discussion forum facility, prior to and on completion of the 80 day placement, combined with analysis of the actual usage patterns and content.

Three quarters of the cohort participated in the discussion forum and findings suggest that students used and valued the discussion forum for its ability to enable the student to student and tutor to student relationships underpinning collaborative learning to be maintained during the placement, and to enable resource sharing and networking.