Sustainability and Disaster Planning: What Are the Connections?

In this article, we examine the connections between resiliency and sustainability by asking: Can disaster planning lead to more sustainability actions? In a survey we conducted of 1,899 cities, towns, and counties across the United States in 2015, we found that disaster plans are three times more common than sustainability plans. Our regression models find both types of plans lead to sustainability action as does regional collaboration across the rural‐urban interface. However, we find that hazard mitigation planning may be done without including sustainability staff, citizens, and other officials. After controlling for motivations, capacity, and cooperation, we find that rural communities are more likely to have sustainability plans than suburbs, though their level of sustainability action is lower due to capacity constraints. Our models of multilevel governance find local motivations balance sustainability’s concept of environmental protection, economic development, and social equity—and are more important drivers of action than grassroots or higher‐level government funding and policy. This bodes well in a context where federal government leadership on sustainability is absent.     

The Planned Close of an NGO: Evidence for a New Organizational Form?

This article examines a human rights NGO that ceased operations after only 8 years. A voluntary and planned end, this case raises the possibility of a new form, the time-bound organization. Through a series of interviews with staff, board members, the founder, and key external stakeholders, this study examines the nonprofit’s leadership, time-bound structure, strategic approach, and wind-down process. Drawing on the lessons of this case, this article identifies benefits and challenges of the time-bound organization form. A range of voluntary organizations could learn from this example and consider the form, including nonprofits experiencing a leadership transition, facing environmental threats, or considering a structural change such as a merger.     

Too Strict or Too Lenient?: Examining The Role of School Strictness With Educational and Juvenile Justice Outcomes

Abstract

Although there is research exploring how school punishment practices are influencing academic and juvenile justice outcomes, how strict or lenient school punishment practices are related to aspects of education such as grade retention and dropping out, as well as juvenile justice contact, remains unknown. This study draws from the Texas Education Agency’s Public Education Information Management System to investigate the relationship between strict and lenient school punishment practices, academic progress or failure, and juvenile justice contact. Results indicate that schools with more strict punishment practices can contribute to higher grade retention and juvenile justice referral rates; however, it also appears that lenient punishment practices also exacerbate these same outcomes as well as higher referral rates. The importance of fair, just, and balanced school punishment practices is discussed.     

Regional Proximity Factor: An Advantage or a Disadvantage for Development?

This paper will focus on the assumption that in the actual globalized system, the role of the State is completely changed due to the new global players that are emerging as international and regional organizations. In this context, the regional proximity factor has acquired great importance, as the three case studies will demonstrate. For this purpose, we will introduce some alternative variables to facilitate the use of economic, political and social tools. Then, we will compare countries’ performances at the global and regional level and their social, economic and political results, in order to improve the utilization of the regional proximity factor as a tool to analyze the international relations dynamics and the innovative national approach to the international opening     

Restricted Funding: Restricting Development?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper examines, from a management accounting perspective, the efficacy of the dominant ‘restricted’...     

Marriage: for love,for money…and for time?

Married couples enjoy meaningful economies in time, often choosing to specialize where one spouse focuses on market work and the other on household production and childcare. Using data from the American Time Use Survey 2003–2008, I estimate significant marriage effects upon time use. Most married women gain 33–34 min of leisure each weekday when compared to single women. While marriage does not lead to more leisure for husbands, it allows them to allocate time away from home and towards market work. Lower-income couples work more at home and for pay, and spend less time in leisure than their single counterparts. The temporal and financial gains from marriage for most people are inconsistent with its declining prevalence.     

Math Achievement and Children’s Savings: Implications for Child Development Accounts

In this study, we propose that children who have a savings account may be more likely to have higher math scores than children without a savings account. We find that children’s savings accounts are positively associated with math scores. Children with savings accounts on average score almost nine percent higher in math than children without a savings account. Further, results suggest that children’s savings accounts fully mediate the relationship between household wealth and children’s math scores. However, household wealth moderates the mediating relationship. We find math scores of low-wealth children increase by 2.13, middle-wealth children’s increase by 4.36, while high-wealth children’s increase by 6.59 points. Policy implications are discussed.     

Men and Masculinities in International Development: ‘Men‐streaming’ Gender and Development?

The inclusion of men and masculinities in gender and development policies and practices has emerged in the last decade as a critical component for achieving gender equality and women's empowerment. This article analyses the contemporary character and progress towards ‘men‐streaming’ of gender and development, and argues that implicit in any action towards gender equality and working with men is the requirement to base action on a clear understanding of the politics of masculinities and the relational aspects of gender equity and equality.     

Networks and Complexity: Directions for Interactionist Research?

In this article I consider the potential importance of social networks for symbolic interactionism. Specifically, I argue that symbolic interactionism operates with an underdeveloped and often tacit conception of networks; that network analysis offers us various tools for further developing and operationalizing this conception, empirically; and that doing so would be to our considerable advantage. In addition, I argue that a stronger focus on networks would give interactionism an inroad into important contemporary debates on “complexity,” building on an obvious but again underdeveloped affinity between these two academic domains. Moreover, tackling complexity raises important and central sociological concerns of structure/agency and micro/macro, with the additional payoff that interactionism can develop and demonstrate its strengths, as an approach, in addressing the problems often associated with these concerns.     

Invisible Development? Remittances for Housing and Transnational Reproduction Strategies among Migrant Households in Colombia

In recent years, the Colombian government has embraced the migration‐development agenda by designing programmes to channel remittances to key sectors such as housing and finance,in an attempt to institutionalise migrant households’ transnational economic practices. However, little is known about migrant households’ multifaceted transnational practices, their broader impact on households’ and localities’ socioeconomic development and migrants’ engagement with these migration‐for‐development programmes. Drawing on qualitative data collected along the Colombia‐UK migration network, this paper contrasts the narrow interpretation of development that underpins the migration‐development agenda, as exemplified by the remittances‐for‐housing programmes implemented in Colombia, with the more nuanced social and economic contributions that remittance‐financed housing investments have for migrant households’ and communities’ socioeconomic development. Thus, it provides a more nuanced interpretation of development to account for the often invisible, socioeconomic spinoffs that occur in the process of migrant households’ attempts to produce and reproduce their livelihoods transnationally.     

Academic and Career Development of Undocumented College Students: The American Dream?

Little is known about the academic and career decision‐making process for college students with undocumented status. This study used a multiple case study approach to explore how academic and work‐related decisions were made for 2 college students with undocumented citizenship status. Participants responded to a series of questions about their academic and career development. Data collected from these interviews were analyzed by a research team. After cross‐case analysis, 6 themes emerged: (a) barriers; (b) emotional impact; (c) resiliency, supports, and coping; (d) discrimination; (e) familial and cultural influences; and (f) academic, work, and career factors. Findings suggest that counseling professionals should attend to systemic, academic, and work‐related barriers that directly affect the educational and career decisions of students with undocumented citizenship status. Future research could expand on the present study by further exploring systemic and contextual factors that influence how undocumented students make academic and career choices using varied qualitative and quantitative methodologies.     

An Elixir for Development? Olive Oil Policies and Poverty Alleviation in the Middle East and North Africa

The evolution of olive oil markets has sparked interest in policies that promote olive oil as a means of inducing rural development across the Middle East and North Africa. This article describes policies that link olive oil markets to rural development in Morocco, Syria and Tunisia and evaluate their effectiveness. It uses a framework that combines producer heterogeneity and market differentiation to describe how rural poverty impacts will be shaped by production, quality and marketing constraints. While the flow of olive oil from producers to the market may have increased, that of information and incentives in the reverse direction is still limited, something that too few olive oil policies aim to improve.     

Millennium Development Goal Achievements and Policies in Education and Health: What Has Been Learnt?

This article reviews the effectiveness and efficiency of key policy instruments for MDG (Millennium Development Goals) achievement, focusing on the role of demand‐ and supply‐side factors in education and health‐service utilisation. It comes to the following conclusions. First, specific policy interventions can have a considerable impact on social‐service utilisation. Second, demand‐side policies have proved extremely effective in the education sector, but may need more consideration in the health sector. Third, policy effectiveness and efficiency are highly dependent on initial conditions and the specificities of the respective policy. Fourth, complementarities between MDG targets are likely to be very important.