Historic Preservation and Elementary Student Extracurricular Community Service

Elementary students survey buildings in an extracurricular community service project to learn social studies and historic preservation. From these experiences students formed values and dispositions by engaging in a constructivist process of creating knowledge by examining their community. They gathered data, transformed it into information, and shared it with the larger community. Because students learned what community means in reality, not just reading about it, they had a different understanding of how they related to the place they called home. Examining these types of questions helped elementary students have significant experiences that helped them to connect community members with the importance of place. The built environment is the context for historic structures. Student engagement with the social studies curriculum allowed them to create investigations with architecture to broaden their understanding of their world.     

The Consequences of Interpersonal Rewards

Many interpersonal processes impact social inequality, with social status and rewards playing a key role in its creation and form. In everyday interaction, people are defined not only by their categorical and/or achieved statuses, such as their gender and educational backgrounds, but also by their awards and possessions. These distinctions work together to create an understanding of who people are, what kinds of behaviors can be expected of them, how valuable their contributions should be, and the like. These expectations undergird individuals' shared and accepted social reality, with many using status and reward distinctions as shorthand for assessments of competence and worth. Questions therefore arise as to how individuals are affected by the configuration of valuable resources in their environment, namely how rewards are normatively distributed between and within social groups. Can rewards create new status groups? Can the perpetuation of inequalities based on status distinctions be impeded through the use of reward‐based interventions? I discuss the extant literature related to these topics and call for future research to more fully explore how rewards are implicated in processes of social inequality.     

Tokens or Stakeholders in Global Migration Governance? The Role of Affected Communities and Civil Society in the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees

Focussing on the inclusion of those primarily affected as stakeholders (refugees and other migrants), this article addresses a key ambition of the compacts themselves. We employ an ‘inside‐outside’ perspective and firstly ask: which groups participated in the consultative processes, what agenda did they set ‘inside’ the meetings, what alliances did they establish and how did they influence the outcomes? Secondly, we investigate what kind of advocacy took place ‘outside’ of these formalized spaces and what impact it had? By this, we not only contribute to an evaluation of the processes themselves, but also advance current academic debates on strategies, spaces and political opportunity structures for civil society and particularly migrant involvement in global migration governance from below and the larger debate on democratizing global institutions.     

Anti-Jewish disturbances in the North-Western provinces in the early 1880s

This article is devoted to a single wave of anti-Jewish violence in Lithuania which spread through northern Lithuania during the first half of the summer of 1900. It claims that specific incidents that took place during the first half of 1900 at Konstantinovo (news of an allegedly kidnapped girl, the so-called Jewish “procession” and a domestic dispute between Jews and the priest's workmen) were among the most important reasons for the pogroms. At the same time, it is clear that there were some more general (structural) changes in this society which facilitated the occurrence of violence (changes in the economy, growing Lithuanian nationalism, antisemitic tendencies, and pogroms in the south of the Romanov empire in the early 1880s, because they established the idea that violence against Jews was somehow legitimate). Peasants in the Panev??ys and ?iauliai districts took up violence against Jews because, as they understood it, an offence had been committed which no one else (especially the authorities) would put right and so Jews would go unpunished. Uncontrolled rumours ruled the mobs. Since Catholic peasant religious sentiments had been affected the most, it was common religious identity that drew people into a temporary community of action. When Jews were beaten in public spaces, the doors and windows of their houses smashed, the Jews were not only being punished for their alleged offences, but being shown the clearly delineated boundaries within the local social hierarchy. In public life, Jews were supposed to submit to the monopoly of power enjoyed by the Catholic community. Thus, this wave of anti-Jewish violence essentially differs from the deadly pogroms that took place in the early twentieth century in other gubernias of the Jewish Pale of Settlement.     

Personal identity between survival and integrity

In this paper several meanings of ‘personal identity’ are distinguished. It is argued that the ontological questions of unity and persistence should not be analysed using the notion of a person but using the notion of a human organism. The notions of personhood and personality are used to describe the evaluative and normative aspects of being a person. Based on these conceptual distinctions the classical philosophical problem of personal identity is dissolved into four sets of problems. Then it is argued that the ethical problems of intervening in the psyche of human beings should be discussed using the notions of personhood and personality, not unity or persistence. Finally, those ethical problems of interventions in the psyche of human beings directly related to personhood or personality are distinguished from more general ethical problems raised by these interventions.     

Community and Social Capital: What Is the Difference?

The ideas of community and social capital have received much attention in the last decade, but are plagued by a multitude of conceptualizations, definitions, and operationalizations. This confusion is problematic for both researchers and policymakers trying to use these concepts. While numerous efforts have been made to clarify "social capital" and "community," too often the two are simply conflated. This paper attempts to distinguish between them by looking at the various ways they are related in concrete examples. Drawn largely from the literature, five examples are offered that together describe the complex interactions of place-based communities and social capital networks. These examples also demonstrate distinctions between community and social capital with regard to boundaries, the qualities of social relations and trust in each, instrumentality, the consequences of one for the other, and issues related to multiple communities in a single place. It is hoped that these distinctions will inform the ongoing efforts to develop unique and useful conceptualizations of these two terms.     

A PLACE TO CALL HOME: Identification With Dwelling, Community, and Region

The concept of place identity has been the subject of a number of empirical studies in a variety of disciplines, but there have been relatively few attempts to integrate this literature into a more general theory of identity and environment. Such endeavors have been limited by a lack of studies that simultaneously examine identification with places of different scale. This article addresses this critical omission by analyzing how residents of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, develop a sense of home with respect to dwelling, community, and region. Our results suggest that different social and environmental factors discriminate identification across place loci: specifically, that demographic qualities of residents and interpretive residential affiliations are critical to dwelling identity; that social participation in the local community is essential for community identity; and that patterns of intercommunity spatial activity promote a regional identity. Such understandings, we propose, are important to constructing an integrated theory of place identity, one sensitive to the complex ways the self is situated in the social-spatial environment.     

Resolving complex community problems: Applying collective leadership and Kotter's change model to wicked problems within social system networks

How does collective leadership within social networks resolve chronic and complex problems common to communities? Unfortunately, sometimes it does not, but when it does, the outcome may be truly extraordinary. We use a case study approach to explain how one Midwest community within the USA applied collective leadership within a community network to reduce teen births. It took ten years of what many identified as provocative media campaigns and comprehensive sex education programs to reduce teen births by 65%, significantly exceeding the stated goal. Using Kotter's change model as a backdrop, powerful strategies and provocative creativity reveal courageous leadership within a social network of diverse people and organizations focused on improving the social well being of their community.     

The Meaning of a “Sense of Community” in a Finnish Senior Co-Housing Community

In the foreseeable future, alternative housing options will be needed to meet the needs of and answer to the wishes of older people. Co-housing schemes are developed to fulfill the need for a housing type that provides mutual support and social contacts while alleviating the isolation and loneliness often experienced in ordinary neighborhoods. This study on a senior co-housing community in Finland asked what a “sense of community” meant to the residents and how a sense of community becomes visible in daily life. For these residents, a sense of community meant not only living with like-minded people but also communal activities, doing things together, learning from each other, and having reciprocal support, all of which created a sense of togetherness, belonging, and trust. The findings of this study showed that moving in later life can offer a viable option of having a living environment that one likes, which calls for a broader interpretation of housing policy guided by “aging in place” thinking.     

Policy Implications for Addressing Roma Precarious Migration Through Employment at Home

Roma migration from Romania is often precarious and takes place in circumstances that increase pre‐existent levels of vulnerability. For many, migration is a last resort solution for navigating an insecure economic environment. For others, it has become a source of profit they draw upon, sometimes at the expense of the most vulnerable members of Roma communities. The major challenge this article addresses is how to create the enabling circumstances at home in order to provide alternatives to precarious migration for Roma. Informed by interviews with Roma migrants and with local authorities, this article examines the policy options at local level, addressing Roma precarious migration. It examines the limitations of the current employment policies in relation to Roma in order to identify what seem to work, what sounds promising and what does not work. It advises that job fairs and counselling campaigns are likely to fail, as they do not tackle the structural constraints keeping Roma outside the labour market. Unless linked with realistic employment opportunities, training courses also remain precarious strategies for labour market integration. The article also argues that individualized interventions (including repatriation schemes) are likely to increase community divides. The article supports structural, community‐level measures for tackling unemployment and argues that future policies need to have Roma communities as the ‘unit of intervention’, because the social preconditions for migration are likely to be generated at this level. This policy proposal is grounded in the research finding that an apparently consistent group of Roma migrants, prone to deceitful recruitment and precarious migration, would endorse reasonable and stable economic solutions at home. Yet accepting that circular migration may be inevitable for a number of Roma is an important ingredient when designing policy interventions.     

Navigating communities: race,place, and travel in the history of maritime Southeast Asia

This paper examines intersecting notions of distance, place and community across Insular Southeast Asia for the last several hundred years. The piece is not an attempt to chronicle all these affiliations over time and space, but is rather an effort to re-think how people have moved in Southeast Asian history, who they did this with and why. The essay is divided into three parts. The first section looks at some of the meanings of place in the last five centuries, as place has pertained to communities in ‘centers’ and maritime ‘peripheries’, as well as in several supposedly discrete arenas. The second section focuses on people, and how different communities in Southeast Asia have envisioned the terms and conditions of movement in divergent ways. The last third of the paper concentrates on period, or how conceptions of community, distance and travel have changed over time. It is hoped that this essay will show how all three of these variables – people, place, and periodization – have intersected in specific, complicated ways in shaping local notions of ‘community’.     

Coming of Age in the Bubble: Suburban Adolescents' Use of a Spatial Metaphor as a Symbolic Boundary

This article explores how suburban middle‐class adolescents use a spatial metaphor, “bubble,” as a symbolic boundary. The narratives about the bubble, collected through focus group discussions and ethnographic observations, show consensus among the teenagers about the socioeconomic and cultural superiority of the community, but they also reveal opposing views on its moral status. I also find that the teens use the same metaphor to draw moral distinctions among their peers, based on whether they align their identity with the norms and values the bubble symbolizes. I argue that the adolescents living in this community develop a strong place identity, even when they identify flaws with it, because their mundane references to the bubble provide them with an opportunity to critically examine the implication of their middle‐class status.     

Learning From Reform as Learning: Lessons at the Intersection of Implementation Research and Learning Theories

This article discusses how to analyze educational reforms in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used as a central catalyst to change practises. We explore the relationship between theoretical conceptualizations and empirical findings drawing on the work of Larry Cuban and Yrjö Engeström. We claim that reform research has traditionally been too preoccupied with looking for the intended changes. One problem with this “top-down” approach is that it conceals changes that happen at the microlevel. As a result, we are left with little understanding of how educational practises change in relation to ICT reform interventions at the interactional level. As an illustrative case, we draw on the analysis of a reform program that focused on the use of ICT in teacher education and show how this reform took place and examine what was interactionally accomplished across the institutions that took part.     

Education after Abu Ghraib

Drawing upon Theodor Adorno's famous essay, ‘Education After Auschwitz, ‘this article examines the question of how education should be engaged in light of the abuse and torture by American soldiers and personnel that took place at Abu Ghraib prison. The essay attempts to understand not only how the photographs of abuse and torture signalled a particular form of public pedagogy, but also how pedagogy itself becomes central to understanding the changing political, ideological, and economic conditions that made the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib possible and what the latter implies for how we understand both cultural politics and the growing authoritarian nature of American society.     

WhiteSpace,Brown Place: Racialized Experiences Accessing Public Space in an Arkansas Immigrant Community*

This article examines the experiences of Latinos in Northwest Arkansas as they partake in community life within the Jones Center as a public setting traditionally dominated by legal and cultural practices intended to maintain white outlooks. We develop a conceptual model of race and space to theoretically frame how the implementation of an entrance fee system in this community setting shapes public space access into a restrictive racialized place. Drawing on ethnography and visual data gathered between fall 2014 and spring 2015, we found that the administration of the Jones Center made no effort to foster a more inclusive environment, creating a social atmosphere wherein participants construct the place as a whitespace. Whereas some challenged the exclusionary dimensions of symbolic white markers through spatial practices of resistance, others remained in what we call racialized subspaces. We argue that this form of restricting access aims to systematically, yet subtly preclude access to specific areas of the setting—i.e., swimming pool and ice rink. Nevertheless, participants in this study also demonstrate how community resiliency enables them to use “non-restricted” areas within the whitespace as mechanisms to disrupt the meaning of white markers symbolically embedded in areas where access cannot be negotiated by local Latinos.     

Vignettes of Communities in Action: an exploration of participatory methodologies in promoting community development in Nigeria

Three interconnected arguments are explored in this article.It begins by a reconsideration of community development, notfrom official and agency definitions but from what makes developmentreal and satisfies not only physical needs, but also the spiritualas well as psychological. The second part looks at Theatre forDevelopment (TFD) as a system of actualizing the participatoryagenda so direly required, so often talked about and very consistentlyignored in community development. I argue that TFD in its performativeapproach to discussing issues, forging alliances and communitycohesion contributes to community development. In this instance,we witness TFD as a community art for instigating participationand change. I also talk about how in combination with otherparticipatory methods, TFD can be empowering. This combinationis what I call methodological conversation and the aestheticsthat defines this conversation involves respect, dialogue, inclusionand flexibility. The case study section narrates the way inwhich this methodology has been applied in the turbulent environmentof the Niger Delta in Nigeria. I argue that TFD, ParticipatoryLearning and Action (PLA) and Questionnaire methods were thetriumvirate of approaches that allowed us to understand issuesand for communities to listen to us. The challenge remains howto define and develop an enduring relationship between researchers,community and government who may have the wherewithal for action.     

Development Tracks: The Theory and Practice of Community Development

It was and is an important text, and looking back, it becomesclear how in many ways New Zealand was advanced in its thinkingon Community Development. The language and the concepts wereexpressed differently from today, but that is a comment nota critique. The editor, Ian Shirley, with a history as a community workerand later an academic had produced other writings on communitydevelopment, but little of the standing of this work had beenwritten either before or since on the theory and practice ofcommunity development in New Zealand. Twenty-three years on,this book is still read by students and teachers of communitydevelopment. So, has it that stood the test of time or is therenothing to take its place? The book does not     

Radio Free Europe and the Catholic Church in Poland During the 1950s and 1960s.

A review of the literature on Radio Free Europe’s role throughout the Cold War reveals its underdeveloped historiography. Yet, how valuable are RFE’s reports and broadcasts as a tool for historical exploration? Drawing on a wealth of materials from Polish programming, this analysis uses the case study of the role of the Catholic Church in Poland throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, to appraise not only the content of RFE reports but also the extent to which they can be used as a historical tool. The reports reveal, for example, that the Church became politically active already in the mid 1960s during its struggle with the Communist regime over the Millennium anniversary celebrations and the issue of Poland’s Western territories. This analytical framework allows for an examination of RFE’s comments in terms of what they might tell us about what really happened, and in terms of what they actually tell us about the station’s perceptions of what happened. The station’s position as an observer, critic and participant in the turmoil of the Cold War, gave it a distinct ability to access both the realities behind the Iron Curtain and the Western perceptions of what was happening in the satellite countries.     

Teachers and health workers: partners in primary health care. Experiences from Papua New Guinea

Primary health care (PHC) involves community health education. When health priorities in rural communities are focused on the vulnerable under-5-years-of-age group then one has to examine who actually cares for this age group and what are the most appropriate means of reaching them through health education programs. In the context of rural communities in Papua New Guinea the linking of school and community health programs has been taking place. Examples and insights from programs where teachers and health workers attempted to find appropriate channels for integrating child and adult education in order to improve the health status of the very young child are described. The school programs used a child to child approach to develop in children a sense of shared responsibility with adults towards better health for themselves, younger children in their care and the environment of the community. The goal was a health program that applied to the whole community, where division between child and adult learning activities was not so sharply drawn, and where formal school programs and nonformal community education programs were to complement and contribute to each other. A campaign against infant diarrhea and death through dehydration was implemented. As a result of a 3-day planning workshop a program was drawn up for schools and communities. The workshop covered causes of diarrhea, fluid loss and dehydration, simple preventive and curative measures, essential hygiene habits and current community practices. Teachers, health workers and community leaders fashioned a program of activities for school children and adults. It was discovered that adults often feel a barrier between themselves and the child's school learning. Also, a gap often exists between what is taught in school and what is needed and can be applied to community health priorities. Thus, an effective community health education program that includes both children and adults in an integrated program will need to cover the varying ages and groups of community members who, with different degrees of responsibility, take care of themselves and others.