Sandboxes and Heavenly Dwellings

ABSTRACT

Finnish housing was fundamentally transformed during the postwar period of (re-)construction. The emergence of new kinds of urban spaces entailed radical changes in the landscape, housing customs, and details of everyday life. The article explores suburbs as lived spaces, where architecture, environment, and inhabitants come together. I consider the built environment, discussions in the media regarding the new suburbs, and the written memories of inhabitants collected between 1995 and 2000. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the new suburbs symbolized a new way of life and were described enthusiastically in the media. However, from the late 1960s onwards criticism grew increasingly louder. By contrast, inhabitants' accounts present a multifaceted and mainly positive view in tension with media representations, offering a radically different perspective on suburban habitation. In my article, I explore the relations of suburban space and gender through two cases: the modern dwelling described as “heavenly” in the written memories; and the playground with the sandbox as its nucleus. These sites were crucial both in the narratives of suburban living and the planning of new residential environments. I pay particular attention to the figure of the suburban housewife and the agency of inhabitants as well as suburban social networks (claimed to be nonexistent in the then current criticism). My analysis proposes that meaningful social relations were formed in the suburbs, but they were constructed mainly by women and children. I suggest that instead of being the antithesis of modernity, suburbs were key spaces for the formation of the postwar Finnish housing environment, society, and gender relations.     

Social housing mediation: education path for social workers

ABSTRACT

Social mediation constitutes an alternative method to legal proceedings, providing effective support for the management and resolution of the most common types of conflicts between individuals, within families and among neighbours, as well as other types of disputes that can arise from interactions between people. Over the last 20 years, urban areas in Italy with high concentrations of public housing have gradually become zones of social disadvantage in which conflict is widespread, due to a number of different factors. On the local level, some municipalities have started promoting innovative initiatives, thanks in part to the sharing of successful practices, both nationally and internationally. This paper presents the methodology and results of an innovative intervention of social mediation in public housing contexts, carried out in a number of municipalities in the Marche Region with financing provided under two projects of the European Fund for the Integration of non-EU Immigrants. Particular attention is given to training courses for social workers, as well as to actions carried out in public housing neighbourhoods, together with the public housing tenants, in order to manage the various issues related to housing and to prevent and deal with conflicts by reinforcing relations between neighbours.     

Building revolutionary subjectivity: creative tensions in the Plataforma de Afectados por La Hipoteca

ABSTRACT

The paper assesses the Spanish housing activists Plataforma de Afectados por La Hipoteca (PAH, Platform for the Mortgage-Affected) as an example of left-wing convergence. From the perspective of the horizontal democratic practices and civil disobedience tactics they adopt, the paper acknowledges the anarchist, Marxist and reformist influences in PAH and reveals how the creative tension between activists of different persuasions has aided the movement’s relative success. In harnessing and transforming the revolutionary subjectivity of the movement of the squares in 2011, PAH has in turn led to a broader urban radical politics. This new revolutionary subjectivity captures PAH’s legacy and positioning within broader anti-austerity politics.     

Exploring the Hidden Nature of Gambling Problems among People Who Are Homeless

Abstract

Although people with gambling problems are now recognised to be among those groups of people at increased risk of homelessness, little research has explored their experiences. This qualitative interpretive study explored the experiences of people who were homeless and had gambling problems, and the housing and gambling service providers assisting them. In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 service users and 18 service providers. A key finding was that gambling problems among those experiencing homelessness are often hidden; few people presented to housing services admitting to gambling problems. Shame, stigma, and identity issues were described as the main reasons service users did not disclose their gambling activities. The research highlighted that the relationship between service providers and service users was infused with power imbalances and shaped by social discourses and policies that demand self-responsibility and hinder information sharing between service providers and service users.     

Modern Myths

This article outlines some basic characteristics of modern myths that fundamentally differ from the traditional myths on which most myth research is based, namely: their relation to time, and their relation to themselves. The article also takes a closer look at the implications these differences have for our present state of Being. The aim is not to offer yet another variation on the academic discussion of myths, but rather to provide a starting point for further discussion about the peculiarities and impacts pertaining to modern myths.     

Multiple Modernities

ABSTRACT

Meaning is inscribed in the material/built environment and this article considers the materiality of change in urban Africa, focusing particularly on the kitchens of a group of first-generation professionals from northern Ghana who have “made it” and now live in the suburbs of Accra, Ghana. In the hometown area, they live in or are surrounded by the architectural idiom of mud and wattle round huts, whereas in relocation, as these Ghanaians become “modern,” they create modern housing designs. The new aesthetic is performative of their cosmopolitanism, as it speaks to their aspirations for new identities and status. At the same time, members of this new elite perpetuate old practices that are tied to an old materiality. To explore the change in identity and status that is embedded in design, and the accommodation of old and new practices, I focus on the change in the kitchen as it becomes representative of a supremely modern ideal.     

Belgium and the Netherlands: Two Different Ways of Coping with the Housing Crisis, 1945–70

ABSTRACT

Belgium and the Netherlands are very different in their spatial outlook and in the way housing is organized. In Belgium individual private dwellings predominate whereas in the Netherlands social housing and planned neighborhoods are much more common. This article aims at unraveling the histories and sensibilities that led to this situation. It argues that the well-known diverging histories of architecture and urbanism make up only one explanation, which needs to be complemented by understanding the different processes of mediation between producers and consumers adopted by both countries. In tackling the postwar housing crisis, Belgium chose to stimulate private initiative by providing tax incentives for home builders. The Netherlands, on the other, hand mitigated the housing crisis by planning new estates of social housing, using new techniques of prefabrication that led to standardized flats. In the Netherlands the process of mediation, oriented towards “correct living,” was dominated by a national organization, which resolutely advocated modernist design as the most rational way to organize the home. In Belgium the task of mediation was taken up by “pillarized” social organizations rather than by a national institution. This resulted in a much stronger bottom-up influence from ordinary dwellers, who convinced their organizations to soften the modernist approach in favor of more traditionally inspired homes and interiors. The Belgian way of organizing home cultures thus came to resemble much more an “American way of living” than its Dutch counterpart—contradicting the prevailing literature that tends to stress the Americanization of Dutch culture while ignoring such patterns in Belgium.     

The Impact of Living in Co-ed Resident Halls on Risk-taking Among College Students

Abstract

Objective: Although previous research has suggested that college housing impacts student behavior and outcomes, recent research linking college housing to risk-taking has been limited. In this study, we investigate if patterns of risk behavior differ based on the type of college housing environment students reside in. Participants: This study utilizes 510 college students living in on-campus college housing. Methods: Students were recruited from 5 college sites across the United States. Participants responded to survey items online that measured current risk-taking behaviors such as binge drinking and sexual activity. Results: After controlling for an assortment of demographic and psychological variables, results indicated that students living in co-ed housing were more likely than students living in gender-specific housing to binge drink and consume alcohol, have more permissive sexual attitudes, and have more recent sexual partners. Conclusions: On-campus housing environments impact college student risk behaviors. Implications are discussed in light of the decline of in loco parentis on most college campuses.     

Qur’anic education and non-confessional RE: an intercultural perspective

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the reported experiences of Muslim students that regularly shift between Muslim ‘supplementary education’ (including its traditional confessional focus on learning to read Arabic and then memorise and recite the Qur’an) and mainstream school education (including its ‘inclusive’ form of religious education’). The aim has been to better comprehend how these students make sense of this dual educational experience while negotiating the knowledge, skills, and values that are taught to them by two often seemingly disparate institutions. A further aim is to place our findings within the growing field of intercultural education. Though both types of education are often thought to be distinct and oppositional – the former as non-confessional and ‘modern’, the latter as confessional and ‘outmoded’ – both English and Swedish students were able to identify a degree of symbiosis between the two, particularly in relation to the process of memorisation. Thus, it became increasingly clear to the researchers that Muslim student reflection on their participation in both traditions of education had an intercultural dimension in the sense of encouraging dialogue and discussion across educational cultures prompting new knowledge and understanding. This article lays out some of the evidence for this conclusion.     

Housing Concepts For and By the Elderly: From Subjects of Design to a Design Resource

ABSTRACT

The perception of elderly residents as a homogeneous group is challenged by the diversification of lifestyles and emphasis on individuality in housing. Recently, there has been a rise in Finland in housing projects initiated by groups of elderly people, where the seniors themselves are seeking to fill in qualitative gaps in the offering of housing. This article presents a comparative analysis of four senior housing concepts that represent both a producer-driven (“for the elderly”) and a resident-driven (“by the elderly”) approach. The study shows that elderly people can be a resource for residential development and that this necessitates a different “design logic” than in conventional senior housing.     

The Design of Mainstream Housing for Downsizers

ABSTRACT

In the United Kingdom, the supply of new homes to the housing market tends to be focused either on “general-needs” housing on the one hand, or on special-needs housing for the elderly on the other, with relatively few people moving into homes that will support their independence as they age. Against the backdrop of the UK's chronic housing shortage and the UK government's recent Housing Standards Review, this case study of a mainstream housing development—which meets so-called “Lifetime Homes” in “Lifetime Neighborhoods” standards—identifies specific design and locational features that have attracted “downsizers” to buy into it, as well as those they subsequently found problematic.     

The challenges of a hidden disability: Social work practice in the field of traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become an important area for social work practice. Children and adults sustaining TBI often undergo hospitalisation, rehabilitation and face the prospect of lifelong cognitive and psychosocial impairments. Families are profoundly affected by the consequences of the injury. TBI is a ‘hidden disability’ because there are typically no physical markers indicating a person has brain damage. This paper aims to provide some guidelines for social work practice in the area, in particular, outlining options for social work interventions at individual, family, community, service system and policy levels. Social workers need to acquire specialised knowledge about brain injury, reformulate traditional models of grief counselling to address the adjustment challenges and utilise community education and service innovation to address the social stigma and reduced level of community participation associated with brain damage. Finally, social workers aim to nurture a sense of hope in the face of the tragedy.     

Computer Information and Human Knowledge

Summary

Modem ideas in social work are subsumed under the term “new thinking.” Controversies in its concepts directly reflect controversies in attitudes toward computer application. Fundamental to modern problems with technology is the persisting dispute between two philosophical traditions. On one side there is the formal and technically oriented thinking; on the other the reflexive, dialectical and hermeneutical approach. The reappearance of the conflict in actual discussions is described considering data storage, formal methodology and the social impact of computer use.     

An approach to the design of housing for Kathmandu, Nepal : Improving utility and facilitating construction

Totally modern design of housing in Nepal causes problems both in its use and construction. The modern designs have arbitrary spatial layouts that are incompatible with the cultural needs of the users. They require many foreign building materials and skills making construction problematic. Whereas modern design can improve performance of building in areas of damp-proofing and thermal control, traditional design provides culturally useful spaces. Traditional housing is easy to build but fails in some technical aspects of building. A synthesis of modern and traditional designs is the most suitable approach to housing design in Nepal and governmental policy should facilitate it by redirecting the education on building technology, by encouraging the production of indigenous materials, by suitable regulatory controls and by incorporating an optimal design in its own housing projects.     

Social Capital,Interpersonal Trust,and Public Housing

Abstract

Addressing the relationship between housing tenure and social disadvantage, this research examines social capital among public tenants in Australia, concentrating on their level of interpersonal trust and confidence in a range of public institutions. Through multivariate analyses of national survey data it also profiles the social and political background of public housing tenants. As expected, public tenants tend to have lower incomes, lower levels of education, and working-class backgrounds, or do not identify with any class location at all. They are less likely to be married or in de facto relationships than people in other housing tenures, but are more likely to identify with the Australian Labor Party than with the Coalition parties. Although public housing tenants have access to secure and affordable housing, they appear to be generally less trusting than private renters or homeowners and exhibit less confidence in government institutions such as the Australian parliament. Public housing tenants express lower levels of interpersonal trust even controlling for a range of social background factors, suggesting that as a form of tenure, public housing in some ways exacerbates the disadvantage of tenants.     

My Collection is Bigger than Yours: Tales from the Handcrafter's Stash

ABSTRACT

This analysis of how Bulgaria coped with socialist modernization in the field of housing takes the concept of “consumption regime” as its point of departure. Applying the lens of “regulated consumption” (as opposed to a laissez- faire regime) allows a differentiation between state care and state control. Bulgarian housing policy relied on the notion of the state as the main actor. The article argues that this state did not contradict traditional values in Bulgarian society but made concerted efforts to meet the essential wishes of the people vis-à-vis their own home. During the late 1940s and 1950s, this tradition was reflected in the way construction was organized as well as in the types of housing provided. By contrast, in the time of socialist large-scale slab building (from the 1960s to 1980s) this tradition was reinterpreted to cover favorable conditions of loans for housing—in the first place for building second houses (villas). The regulation of housing supply through the use of tradition explains the very high percentage of private housing in Bulgaria after the fall of socialism. Housing in socialist Bulgaria corroborates the argument that the appropriation of tradition is an important factor in the domestication of socialist modernization.     

The fecundity of folkloric space: Revising hierarchies in Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men and Lydia Cabrera's Cuentos negros de Cuba

Abstract

This article looks briefly at differences between oral and literate cultures, discusses the personal positionality and institutional authority of Zora Neale Hurston and Lydia Cabrera vis-à-vis their Afro-New World folk stories, and then focuses on a comparative reading of three tropes present in both Hurston's Mules and Men (1935) and Cabrera's Cuentos negros de Cuba (1936, 1940). In their creation myths, stories of the struggle for gender dominance, and trickster stories, Hurston and Cabrera use the folkloric space outside of the modern geopolitical space of the nation as a place to deconstruct and reconstruct hierarchies, creating the possibility for speaking new identities and new worlds into being, thus denying the paradigms of identity articulated and enforced by official culture. The properties of this folkloric space allow for new identities to be formed, in which the radical othering of the African in the New World is replaced by more inclusive paradigms.     

Reflexive Risk-Education and Cosmopolitanism in the Risk Society

Abstract

The extreme environment that students face, in terms of the global risk society, is the unintentional and high-risk consequence of the development of modern society. This paper, therefore, aims to discuss the possible strategies beyond traditional school practices for educators to think and act upon based on sociologists’ theoretical views of and empirical studies on the risk society. I will indicate that current education systems are an accomplice in producing modern risks, and will attempt to analyze the gaps between current education and reflexive risk-education. The gaps are: the experiential gap between individuals and the global society, the public-sphere gap between school and society, and the epistemological/cultural gap between eastern/nonwestern and western cultures. Three possible strategies to develop reflexive risk-education are discussed: developing an integrated curriculum through ‘critical glocal pedagogy’, assembling the social network through collaborations, such as with NGOs, and creating new social imaginations.