What do people want from urban forestry?—The European experience

The European public has a long tradition of interaction with, but has mixed emotions about forests. On the one hand they see forests as part of nature bringing peace and happiness to all. On the other hand there is a traditional memory of danger in forests, re-inforced by the modern use of under-policed forests for all kinds of criminal activities. Nevertheless, people will use forests very frequently (25% of visitors do so every day), mostly for gentle activities such as walking. Urban forests tend to be managed by traditionally-trained managers who do not understand the public's attitude to forests. The public re-acts to forests on a personal basis. They are not much concerned with ecological purity. Such misunderstandings underlie the high propensity to conflict. With increasing leisure and wealth the range of activities that people wish to carry-out in forests has increased enormously. Many of these activities are mutually incompatible and lead to conflict between users. The social sciences and the new science of environmental psychology can be used to elucidate people's real feelings about urban forests and to assist with overall design. Specific requirements of mutually-incompatible uses can be catered for in separate areas by finding-out and designing-in features which both attract and repel.     

What do refugees want? Reading refugee lip-sewing protests through a critical lens

Through a close reading of lip-sewing protests by refugees over the past two decades, this article develops a theoretical framework for understanding lip sewing as a form of protest and political agency. I consider various lip-sewing protests by refugees and the strategic use of speechlessness and corporeality in these protests to uncover the conditions in which contemporary refugees are imbricated. I argue that this unusual form of protest, as well as the demands that protesters make on states and international institutions through dissensus, reflects the existence of a new kind of refugee that has emerged in response to the contemporary refugee management system that criminalizes displacement.     

What do we call post-apartheid?

In this paper, the author examines the different uses and meanings of the usual expression “post-apartheid.” It has been used extensively in the social sciences, political discourse and the media since the mid-1980s. But what does it refer to, and has it always meant the same thing over the last 20 years? To answer that question, the author reviews the different ways she has used the notion in her research into workers’ forms of thinking and political subjectivities in South Africa since 1996. She distinguishes between its use as a chronological marker, an academic concept open to various problematics and epistemological decisions and a notion used by interviewees under various acceptations. She concentrates more specifically on the sequential implications of the adverb “post” in her work and argues that there have been political sequences in what she (with others) has named “post-apartheid.” She concludes that she intends to stop using this term in order to concentrate on identifying the current political sequence in South Africa.     

What do lesbians do in the daytime? Recover

This paper examines a narrative taken from an ethnographic interview, for the speaker's conversational construction of lesbian and other identities along with ideologized personal history. To tell her story, Marge shifts to the discourse style used in the meetings of addiction recovery groups. She prioritizes the recovery (twelve-step) program's coherence system, structuring her life story in conformity with its terms while narrating a complexly queered identity. Four analyses are given, beginning with a Labovian formal examination and proceeding with a consideration of three types of discourse echoing: interdiscursivity, intratextuality, and manifest intertextuality. This study demonstrates the analytical linking of nonpublic linguistic discourse to social discourses; individual identity construction to social construction (and its coherence systems); and personal history to historical eras. The paper adds the concept of a metalevel complicating action to narrative theory and develops a means of examining intratextuality for critical discourse analysis. It presents a revised view of essentialism for the sociolinguistic study of gender and sexuality.     

Demographic Data on Syrians in Turkey: What do we know?

With the outbreak of civil war in Syria, Turkey has become the host of the largest refugee population in the world. In a country where reliable population registration systems are only recently established and where no extensive legal arrangements on migration existed prior to the Syrian crisis, the whole refugee situation was handled rather unsystematically, with ever-changing institutions and regulations, and various iterations of both. In this paper we present the demographic statistics that have been made public by different sources from the beginning of the crisis up to today because they are hard to reach in one place accompanied by relevant institutional changes; with the aim of assessing the current demographic data and revealing what is missing.     

What do we mean by evaluation?

The popularity of evaluation research has increased markedly in recent years. Although initially associated with experimental and quasi‐experimental methods, current practices and methods have become much more diverse. This paper provides a brief overview of the recent history of evaluation research – its meanings and purposes – and asks whether the current emphasis on ‘evidence‐based policy’ heralds a brighter future. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stranger-Danger: What do Children Know?

The current practice in many schools of educating children on how to keep themselves safe from abuse and abduction tends to concentrate on teaching them about stranger-danger and how to avoid it. However, recent research suggests that children may have difficulty in understanding the stranger-danger message (Mayes, Gillies and Warden, 1990). The present study examines 6-, 8- and 10-year-old children's understanding of the concepts of ‘stranger’ and ‘danger’ by analysing their verbal responses to videotaped sequences depicting child encounters with a variety of known and unknown male adults. Results indicate that, although there is some evidence of developing wariness, children at ages 8 and even 10 years appear still to be vulnerable to approaches made by strangers. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Urban ecosystems: What would Tansley do?

The ecosystem concept was introduced in ecology originally to solve problems associated with theories of succession and ecological communities. It has evolved to become one of ecology’s fundamental ideas, and has proven to be applicable to a wide variety of research questions and applications. However, there is controversy about whether or how well the ecosystem concept is suited to urban habitats. By examining Arthur Tansley’s original presentation of the ecosystem concept, and exploring how the ecological context of the concept has changed, we indicate that the fundamental concept of the ecosystem is well suited to urban ecological studies. The concept can be clarified for urban use by including a social complex and a built complex to insure that human social institutions and actions, and the structures and infrastructure they build are explicitly included in the ecosystem concept. The ecosystem concept is thus seen as clearly robust to use in urban areas.

What's up? What young teens and parents want from youth programs

Young teens and their parents clearly state that the "if you build it, they will come" approach, even if it is well built, is only part of the solution for engaging young people in learning opportunities. Interviews with youth and parents explore what they are doing and what they say they want in their nonschool hours. Opportunities that are flexible, less structured, and more leisure-based emerge as priorities. Although relatively content with the options currently available to them, when pressed, youth and families want more connections between people and age groups as well as more of the free-spirited, organic activities likely to emerge in neighborhoods and communities.     

What shall we do with the cyclic profile?

A Condorcet method for a single-seat preferential election is defined by the way it handles cases without a Condorcet winner. Such cases are described in terms of cyclic candidate triples. Sometimes election theory considers intricate patterns of intersecting cyclic triples. In practice, cyclic triples are rare, but they may be created as part of strategic voting against a Condorcet winner. This strategy, often called burying, is difficult to apply, but critics will detect a missed opportunity and regard it as a punishment for honest voting. A new Condorcet method, SV, lets a cyclic triple be won by the candidate with the smallest opportunity to defeat a Condorcet winner this way. A new geometric model allows visual comparison of the opportunities under various methods.     

Participation in the city: where do women fit in?

Women's priorities have often been ignored in the design of human settlements, the location of housing, and the provision of urban services. New forms of urban partnership are needed to develop participatory processes which include women and men at all stages of urban development. Participation is most commonly associated with political participation or activity. The author gives an overview of the "gendered city", then looks at how men and women benefit and contribute to urban life, through examples of opportunities for making a living and for using urban resources and services. She then moves away from participation as entitlement to consider participation as empowerment, looking at some problems faced by women in public office and grassroots organizations. The paper concludes in arguing that a gender perspective will not inform urban policy and planning processes automatically. Sections discuss gender and poverty in the city, making a living in the city, urban planning as a gender issue, getting around the city, access to resources and services, violence in the city, women's participation in urban governance, women's representation in public office, community organization and advocacy, men and gender issues, and forging linkages through participation.     

What motivates single women to save? the case of Japan

Using Japanese panel data, we analyze precautionary savings due to staying single in the presence of income uncertainty. Our panel analysis finds that compared with young women who are likely to get married within 3 years, those who are not plan to have 44 percent more savings for precautionary purposes, and 108 percent more for retirement. These results suggest that in facing higher risk of income fluctuation due to choosing to marry late or remain unmarried, young women intend to have more wealth to mitigate the income risk inherent in single life.     

Theory-based evaluation in practice. What do we learn?

Theory-based evaluation (TBE) explores the how and why of program success or failure. Advocates of TBE claim that it produces information unavailable in traditional process and outcome studies. This article examines six published papers of TBEs. It finds that the authors of the papers do not always make explicit the relation of their data to the theory of the program. Nevertheless, it was evident in one or more cases that TBE identified unnecessary program components, located intermediary changes, raised new questions, contributed to a paradigm shift, highlighted the difficulties of taking successful pilot programs to scale, and provided clarity and focus for the evaluation. Interestingly, in none of the studies was the original theory completely right. Lessons for the future of TBE are drawn.     

What do we mean by Human-Centered Design of Life-Critical Systems?

Human-centered design is not a new approach to design. Aerospace is a good example of a life-critical systems domain where participatory design was fully integrated, involving experimental test pilots and design engineers as well as many other actors of the aerospace engineering community. This paper provides six topics that are currently part of the requirements of the Ph.D. Program in Human-Centered Design of the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT.) This Human-Centered Design program offers principles, methods and tools that support human-centered sustainable products such as mission or process control environments, cockpits and hospital operating rooms. It supports education and training of design thinkers who are natural leaders, and understand complex relationships among technology, organizations and people. We all need to understand what we want to do with technology, how we should organize ourselves to a better life and finally find out whom we are and have become. Human-centered design is being developed for all these reasons and issues.