Identifying habitat sinks: a case study of Cooper’s hawks in an urban environment

We studied a population of Cooper’s hawks (Accipiter cooperii) in Tucson, Arizona from 1994 to 2005. High rates of mortality of nestlings from an urban-related disease prompted speculation that the area represented an ecological trap and habitat sink for Cooper’s hawks. In this paper, we used estimates of survival and productivity from 11years of monitoring to develop an estimate of the rate of population change, λ, for Cooper’s hawks in the area. We used a Cormack–Jolly–Seber approach to estimate survival of breeding hawks, and a stochastic, stage-based matrix to estimate λ. Despite the urban-related disease, the estimate of λ indicated that the area does not function as a habitat sink for Cooper’s hawks (= 1.11 ± 0.047; P = 0.0073 for the null of λ ≤ 1). Because data required to reliably identify habitat sinks are extensive and difficult to acquire, we suggest that the concept of habitat sinks be applied cautiously until substantiated with reliable empirical evidence.     

Source of complexity in the social and managerial sciences: an extended Sen’s theorem

Many disciplines, including the social, behavioral, and management sciences, search for appropriate aggregated outcomes—a search that can be frustrated by complexities and inefficiencies. As shown here, explanations for these difficulties can be found in social choice. Indeed, it is shown why some of these problems are direct consequences of adopted approaches (e.g., management style, choice of a division of labor, or even the use of expertise and experts), and they cannot be avoided. These results are motivated by Sen’s Theorem from decision theory.     

Local press meets transnational activism: news dynamics in an anti‐WTO protest

Transnational protests often involve a cross‐cultural encounter between “foreign” protesters and the local media and public, whose repertoires of contentious practices and discourses may differ. Examining how transnational and local actors interact in these events is one way to understand the significance and impact of transnational activism. At the same time, local media coverage of transnational protests can also be analyzed as such a cross‐cultural encounter. Following these premises, this article examines Hong Kong media coverage of the transnational protests during the World Trade Organization's 6th Ministerial Conference, which was held in the city in December 2005. The analysis focuses particularly on how this non‐routine news event provided the conditions for a more reflective interactive dynamics between the protesters and journalists, which contributed to emergence of media discourses negotiating and redefining the existing cultural understanding of protest actions. However, the case study also shows the limits regarding how far the redefinition and negotiation can go. Theoretical implications of the analysis are discussed.     

Improving citizens’ online engagement via community managers: an explanatory study

The role of community manager is gaining importance as the proper usage of social media becomes a key factor for achieving more active involvement of citizens in social and political issues. Focused on Spanish local governments and in line with the literature of Excellence Theory, this paper aims to analyze whether some characteristics of the community manager function are determinant in their fostering of citizens’ online engagement via social media. In particular ‘independence’, ‘having access to the dominant coalition’, ‘gender diversity’, ‘continuous training’ and ‘culture of the organization’ are the characteristics considered in this paper. As to the main findings, this study confirms that community managers have not as yet achieved their goal of embedding the use of social media by citizens as a means of establishing more direct contact with their local governments. Moreover, in line with Excellence Theory, community managers of local governments should be aware of the importance of having direct access to key managers of the organization in order to better achieve the objectives of the organization and, more specifically, to increase citizens’ engagement. Furthermore, continuous training in issues related to social media truly helps develop the skills and potential of community managers. Likewise, an excellent communication department should rely on good professionals no matter their gender, and, in this sense, the gender of community managers is not a significant factor in their performance. However, the results of this study also reveal that in the case of public sector community managers, an authoritarian culture seems to be a determining factor for obtaining better results in enhancing citizens’ engagement.     

‘This is a stage’: A study of public relations practitioners’ imagined online audiences

Public relations (PR) practitioners are among those cultural intermediaries who privilege symbols, products, and communication rituals in society. Through interviews (n = 26) and analysis of practitioners’ Twitter accounts, this study considers how members of this field identify their personal social networking site audiences and how these behaviors are implicated in the performance of their online identity. Findings indicate practitioners feel pressure to use personal social media in accordance with field-constrained norms and that an “occupational publicness” pressure requires them to be visible online outside of the workplace. The persistent specter of public criticism from audiences and the prioritizing of organizational interests above their own self-expression limits performances of PR practitioners’ authentic selves online.     

Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale: a unique social engagement

Abstract

Art as a social engagement in the West can be dated back to the history of avant-garde art starting from the end of nineteenth century. Rooted in his own cultural background, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s socially engaged art project “Fairytale is more complex than the avant-garde strategy. The work Fairytale established a structure – “1=1,001”. That means on the one hand, the participants can be easily regarded everywhere in Kassel as 1,001 mobile works of art. All of them contribute to an entire work. In other words, the 1,001 people consist of one work. On the other hand, everyone is dealing with their personal issues independent of art. In this sense, the entire work can be divided into 1,001 personal experiences. This structure is based on three principles of Chinese philosophy Taoism – the duality between Yin and Yang, the dynamism between Yin and Yang, and the concept of “uselessness”. Positioning Fairytale within both Western theoretical as well as Chinese philosophical contexts, this essay is to analyze how Chinese philosophy shaped Ai’s strategy of social engagement and his cultural identity – Chineseness.     

Children’s conceptions of the word ‘disabled’: a phenomenographic study

The aim of this study was to investigate the qualitative differences in children’s conceptions of the word ‘disabled’. Two hundred and thirty children, aged 7–12 years of age, were instructed to make a drawing of what came into their minds when they heard the word ‘disabled’. A brief written commentary on their drawing was also requested. The drawings and comments showed that the children had a positive attitude towards the word ‘disabled’. They drew and commented that a disability had medical causes, a technical device was a prerequisite for disabled people, a disability had social consequences and that a disabled person needed support. The children also explained that there were obstacles which impaired disabled people’s performance of activities. Access to some environments and being an active part of society was limited for some disabled people.     

Performing the ‘wounded Indian’: a new platform of democracy and human rights in Bolivia’s autonomy movement

This article examines Right-wing political performances in the Bolivian Eastern lowlands where regional elites claim to be living under the authoritarian dictatorship of Left-leaning President Evo Morales. We analyse how regional elites advocate for political autonomy through embodied and spectacular performances linked to discourses of indigeneity, human rights and democracy. Right-wing leaders try to legitimise their claims for justice and territorial control by strategically aligning themselves with lowland ‘Indians’ – who are equally wounded by Morales’s plan to run a massive highway though their communities and territories. Through theatrical exhibits in the plaza and a spectacular assembly spotlighting an indigenous representative as an emblematic hero of TIPNIS, regional elites perform a shared history of marginalisation, while simultaneously presenting themselves as ‘saviors’. We argue, however, that there is a dark side to these performances, as they elide long histories of racialised labour and economic injustice in the region.     

A longitudinal study of children’s outcomes in a residential special school

ABSTRACT

This study presents findings from a longitudinal study of the Mulberry Bush School (MBS), a therapeutic residential special school in England which provides an integrated approach to education and care for children aged between 5 and 13 years. Four cohorts were followed (23 = boys; 13 = girls), each for a consecutive 3-year period, approximating children’s time at the MBS. Children showed significant improvements in their socio-emotional, behavioural and academic development. The picture is more mixed for children’s attachment representations, which might be expected of the vulnerable and severely traumatised children who make up the MBS population. The importance of these improvements stem from the fact that they were achieved in the face of the exceptional disadvantages and challenges that characterise the lives of all children who attend the MBS. This is testimony to their achievement, and to the potential of the residential special school as a therapeutic learning environment.     

Doctors offline,activists online: an analysis of Chinese celebrity physicians’ politically oriented social media activities

This study explores the social media activities of politically oriented Chinese celebrity physicians. The results of the semi-structured in-depth interviews indicated that the celebrity physicians were dissatisfied because the government treated them as the scapegoats of the failed health care reform. They thus turned to social media to challenge the dominant narratives about the public health system and repair their professional reputations. To achieve these goals, the celebrity physicians produced media content that challenged the dominant governmental discourse about the public health system, and they collaborated to correct conventional media narratives about the medical profession when crises occurred. The findings of this study indicate the formation of a new type of online civil activism that was initiated by a group of professionals and intellectuals.     

Young people’s everyday political talk: a social achievement of democratic engagement

Everyday political talk is an important democratic activity. Research on young people has focused on the role of talk in political socialization. The overall question in this study is: What encourages or impedes young people to participate in everyday political talk? Politics has been described as a potentially unsafe topic. The study investigates young people’s own experiences of conversations in families, peer groups, and social media. The study applies a social interactional approach and understands political talk as a social achievement, related to norms and the management of self-identities. It is based on a multimethod approach comprising individual interviews, group interviews, and diaries. The group consists of 23 high school students (aged 17–18). The results show that the engagement in political talk is sensitive to the social settings. Norms make political topics expected or best to avoid. The family and peer groups are potentially important context for friendly talk, argumentations, exploration of opinions, and identities. The participants are in general more reluctant to express opinions in social media. The fear of face-threatening responses is one important aspect. The study suggests that political talk is an activity in which young people express, reveal, and carefully manage political self-identities.     

The social construction of a cultural disaster: New Labour’s millennium experience

This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Board project on London’s Millennium Dome exposition in the year 2000. The Dome was generally considered to be a cultural disaster in the news media and public conversation. It became a political embarrassment for Britain’s New Labour government but did not prove damaging in the 2001 general election. The article does not dispute the media’s damnation of the Dome but questions its acuity. It also questions the managerialist perspective on the Dome’s ‘failure’ whilst taking into account claims regarding a managerial ‘turnaround’ and an ‘under-reported success’. Empirical evidence and theoretical analysis concerning the political economy of the Dome’s production, its representational meanings and visitor reception provide a more complex and multidimensional explanation. Corporate sponsorship played a key role in the cultural disaster and, in this particular case study, it exemplifies social democracy’s symbolic as well as material coalescence with neo-liberalism. A distinction is made between associative and deep sponsorship that is illustrated with examples from the Dome. A typology of generous and reflexive visiting is also formulated in order to analyse the visitor data.     

Examining the effects of social networks formed in a senior-oriented online community on older participants’ subjective well-being in China

In recent decades, the dramatic socioeconomic changes that have occurred in China have increasingly affected the social lives of older Chinese adults. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the social networks developed in an online community contributed to the subjective well-being of this age group. The underlying mechanism of this effect was examined by investigating a senior-oriented online community (OldKids). An online survey was administered to participants in the OldKids network. The results showed that the proposed theoretical model was effective in demonstrating that their participation in the OldKids network improved the participants’ subjective well-being through the mediation of perceived social support and feelings of social connectedness. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed in this paper.     

Children’s perception of social boundaries: The intersectionality of age and social group affiliation in rural Pakistan

This study explores how children perceive social boundaries in rural Pakistan. It discusses that children develop and navigate their social relationships through their perception of social boundaries, which are shaped by kinship and sociospatial organisation in rural areas. Children's perception of social boundaries is also mediated through the intersectionality of their age and social group affiliation. An ethnographic case study of a village in Southern Punjab, Pakistan, is presented here. It uses a quantifiable photo-elicitation technique and social mapping to analyse children's everyday mobilities and intersectionality in the cultural context of rural Pakistan to illustrate their perception of social boundaries.     

Documents as ‘risky’ sources of data: a reflection on social and emotional positioning – a research note

As units of analysis, documents are often seen as unproblematic, easily accessed sources of data. This research note discusses and reflects on a research project where documents were not easy to access and instead prompted significant negotiation, contained disturbing information and images and had an emotional impact on the researcher. A reflexive account is provided in this paper, which draws upon feminist methodological theory and explores the researcher’s experiences of using documents in research. The paper concludes that documents should not always be categorised as a low risk data source, rather issues such as access difficulties, ethical dilemmas and potential emotional harm, should also be considered.     

Screening/Meaning: Hollywood’s Long Career in India

This article provides a brief and concise account of Hollywood’s long engagement with cinema and the audience in India. The focus is on the new phase that this complex relationship has entered, with Hindi films being produced under the direct and total control of Hollywood-based producers and financiers, on an experimental basis.     

Piloting a social work doctoral programme: Ukraine’s vignette

In Ukraine the last decade was marked by significant changes in social work education development that evidence its academization and professionalization. International cooperation was a useful catalyst in these processes. The above has specific implications for developing the three cycles of social work education in Ukraine – Bachelor, Master and PhD programmes. Implemented in 2009–2012, an international project involving six European countries supported piloting of the first PhD programme in social work in Ukraine. This programme encountered a set of challenges that originated from the particularities of social work education in Ukraine and the broader academic context. Participatory observations and reflections demonstrate the challenges evident in Global North–Global South professional relations. Ukrainian social work education history evidences permanent localization of the international standards and experiences that have had various effects on social work academization.