"No fertile soil for pathogens": rayon, advertising, and biopolitics in late Weimar Germany

Recent research on twentieth-century German history has begun to re-examine the centrality of race as a category of analysis. While not discounting its importance in the shaping and enacting of Nazi policies and practices, race is seen instead as one among many factors leading to the crimes of the Nazi regime. In this paper, the author considers the role consumerist desires and fantasies played in the wider context of the inter-war European fascination with notions of technology, "hygiene," democracy, and modernity. Using advertisements that were created to promote manufactured-fiber (rayon) apparel, this article suggests that continuities across cultures and time periods necessitate a re-evaluation of race as the signal organizing principal. Instead, the author argues that by complicating the intersections between class, science and technology, and an emerging, but troubling, modernity, 1920s rayon advertising offers an especially rich site for analysis of the ways in which biopolitics and nascent consumerism both sold products and constructed ideologies before 1933, and influenced the post-war welfare state.     

AIDS,the individual,family and community: psychosocial issues

Understanding of the psychosocial factors associated with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) at both the individual and societal levels is essential to the design of programs aimed at treating the virus and containing its spread. In Africa, AIDS has profound implications for economic development, the general quality of life, demographic patterns, male-female relationships, child development, and family structure. Relevant psychosocial issues include fear of the unknown and the tendency to depersonalize AIDS victims, burn-out on the part of caretakers, fear of contagion, fear of being around a dying person, helplessness, and anger. Poverty undermines coping capacities and pushes many families affected by AIDS into disorganization and crisis. Moreover, the shame and guilt associated with AIDS in Africa leads many families to isolate themselves from social support. Through trends such as the loss of skilled manpower to AIDS and a need for aging parents to reassume full care of infected adult children, AIDS has disrupted Africa's social system as well. Community education is essential to reduce fears related to living amidst those who are infected, sick, and dying and minimize the erosion of societal institutions.     

Using the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to analyze the acequias of El Río de las Gallinas,New Mexico

As population and economic growth increase urban water demands, and traditional irrigation plays a smaller role in direct subsistence in New Mexico, irrigators on small, traditional systems often feel threatened. This paper uses the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to analyze the irrigation ditches of the Gallinas River, in San Miguel County, and aims to facilitate understanding of the persistent distrust some Gallinas irrigators feel toward city, state, and federal agencies. This distrust, sometimes due to a perception of differing property rights structures that result in what many irrigators feel is unfair treatment by various agencies, and sometimes to a simple lack of understanding, is often perpetuated by recounted stories of malfeasance. Degree of social capital, knowledge of water law, and technology vary greatly. While there are not many problems with outsiders, some of the larger ditches report very poor social capital.     

The Role of Distributional Coalitions in Welfare Regimes: Chile, Costa Rica and El Salvador

Do social policies in Latin America promote or discourage distribution? And if they do promote distribution, are coalitions a prerequisite? Drawing from a typology of welfare regimes elaborated for 18 Latin American countries, this article explores responses to these questions by addressing three emblematic cases: Chile, Costa Rica and El Salvador – that is, countries where the management of social risks primarily revolves around markets, states and families, respectively. Although the article is exploratory, findings suggest that societal coalitions have been, and are likely to continue to be, weak in market welfare regimes, strong in state welfare regimes and contingent to policy sectors in familialistic welfare regimes.     

Urban community in China: service, participation and development

With the rapid urbanisation and population growth in the cities, the People's Republic of China has recognised the importance of community development based on an ever-increasing demand for social services. In 1994, the Chinese government adopted community service as an alternative way of providing the supplemental safety net in urban areas. Along with this top-down approach, resident-initiated activities, participation and grassroots organisations at the community level are growing at an incredible pace. Using a case study, this study explores the context and aspects of community services, participation and community development in a Chinese urban community. Results indicate that China's reformed market economy and welfare system presses ordinary urban people to reconnect to the local community to ensure welfare security and quality of life. Community participation in China has rediscovered the path of community development and re-interpreted the top-down and bottom-up approaches in the context of community services.     

It takes a Village: community practice, social work, and aging-in-place

The US population of older adults will increase significantly in the coming decades. Most of these individuals prefer to age in their homes/communities. However, most communities are not prepared to handle the long-term care needs of an aging population. This article examines one model that communities are using to help older adults age-in-place, the Village. A conceptual lens based in community practice and empowerment theory is offered to explicate this model and critically evaluate social work's role in it. It also presents challenges to social work roles in facilitation and evaluation of the model.     

Your lying,incompetent and selfish member of Congress: Cynical appeals in U.S. Senate advertising

Scholars still do not fully understand what activates cynicism in citizens. Although many expect that negative campaigning contributes to this, no consistent evidence has been found. This research introduces a new measure of appeals to cynicism that expands the commonly used positive–negative taxonomy of tone in advertising. Through a content analyses of more than 600 political advertisements aired during U.S. Senate elections, we identify the extent to which candidates use cynical appeals and the conditions under which these are used. We find that appeals to cynicism are common, are distinct from negative appeals, and that most often, ad sponsors target opponents with cynical appeals, describing them as selfish, dishonest and incompetent. Cynicism appears to be a central part of American campaign rhetoric, used by all sorts of candidates, regardless of party, in many different situations. The prevalence of appeals to cynicism may help explain rising cynicism among the public.     

Recognising the face of the other: Difference,identity and community

Social work's role in creating social solidarity requires an engagement with identity politics through careful negotiation of the boundary between the private and the public spheres and hence ensuring a balance between personal freedom to define one's specific identity and the public entitlement to belong to a political community as citizens. Current political and cultural trends, reflected also in social policies, impact severely on that boundary maintenance task inasmuch as privatisation encroaches on formerly public domains while simultaneously details of private concerns receive public attention through their commercialisation by the new media. It is suggested that social work's political role be asserted more explicitly in terms of the application of the Global Agenda which needs to penetrate to the level of person‐to‐person interaction.     

Narratives, community and land use decisions

This article explores the narrative character of community, arguing that communities are intrinsically storied. Narratives are conceptualized as social acts and are thereby of inherent importance to social scientific endeavor. Following Weber, narratives also are seen to be entrenched in institutions and in the political economy of communities. State tourism and land use decisions are suggested as ideographic situations in which such entrenchment is found.     

Developing an aging prepared community: collaboration among counties, consumers, professionals and organizations

This paper reports on a collaborative process to create an "aging prepared community" in a four county region. The process benefited from a generous grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation that supported an 18 month planning period which included input from service providers and a vast array of aging persons and their families, including particular efforts to reach underserved populations from multicultural, inner- city and rural communities. Under the umbrella of the Elder Network of the Capital Region, the process is now beginning its implementation period with foci on the following: linking health, social service and faith communities; developing accessible health education and wellness programs; creating and implementing a regional system of information and assistance; and mounting a media campaign.     

儿童参与、城市社区与社会资本

在中国,长期以来儿童一直被作为弱势群体而被排除在社区参与之外。实际上,儿童参与对于整个社区的发展有着不可忽视的作用。面对中国城市社区各阶层成人参与率低、社区内社会资本没有充分被调动的情况,本文试图探讨通过社区“儿童参与”来带动“成人参与”进而形成整个社区的社会资本这一社区发展模式。     

Exchange rate premia and discounts for retail purchases using Mexican pesos in El Paso, Texas

This paper studies the exchange rates at which Mexican pesos are accepted for retail purchases in El Paso, Texas. A stratified random sample of 586 participating firms is surveyed to examine two aspects of reverse dollarization in the El Paso/Ciudad Juárez border region. The first is to determine the percentage of retail businesses in El Paso that accept foreign currency in the form of Mexican pesos. The results suggest that just over 13.1% (77/586) of all retail firms in this market accept pesos, which on average, comprise 4.35% of total sales for those firms. The second is to calculate the effective exchange rate at which firms accept Mexican pesos. We find that 68.5% of firms accepting the peso do so at a premium. We discern these two aspects further utilizing various multivariate analyses.