The "trade-off" approach to benefits cost containment: a strategy to increase employee satisfaction.

Using the author's approach to measure employee receptiveness to benefits "trade-offs", companies can design benefits packages by taking both employee preferences and company costs into account.     

Designing from activities. The "ability /difficulty table", a useful tool to detect the "limit users" in the Design for All Approach

In the Design for All Approach (DfA), an important phase of the design process consists in the individuation of the so-called "limit users", that are that particular group of people with the most "critical" features for the autonomous fruition of a system or a product. Generally, however, it is not easy to identify them in a complete and objective way. A clear and complete outline of design requirements with respect to the "normal" use of a service, product or environment, moreover, is of fundamental importance in inclusive design. In fact, we know how bad design, that doesn't take in account the true "strategies of use", may lead to situations of handicap, also serious, temporary or permanent, regardless if the user is a "disabled" person or not. In relation to this scenario, the paper shows the results of a research which has developed the "Ability/Difficulty Table" ("A/D Table"), a new tool useful to identify the so-called "limit users" and their needs with respect to different activities, linking the main "difficulties", expressed by people, with the "abilities" required to carry out in autonomy the investigated activity.     

Effects of Minimum Wages on Youth Employment: the Importance of Accounting for Spatial Correlation

The relationship between minimum wage increases and youth employment is investigated using county-level data and spatial econometric techniques. Results that account for spatial correlation indicate that a 10% increase in the effective minimum wage is associated with a 3.2% decrease in youth employment, a result that is 28% higher than the corresponding estimate that does not control for spatial correlation. Thus, estimates that do not take into account spatial correlation may significantly underestimate the negative effect of the minimum wage on teenage employment. Improperly controlling for factors that vary systematically over space can lead to incorrect inferences and misinform policy.

Commodified language in Chinatown: A contextualized approach to linguistic landscape1

In Washington DC's newly gentrified Chinatown, recent commercial establishments, primarily non‐Chinese owned chains, use Chinese‐language signs as design features targeted towards people who neither read nor have ethnic ties to Chinese. Using this neighborhood as a case study, we advocate a contextualized, historicized and spatialized perspective on linguistic landscape which highlights that landscapes are not simply physical spaces but are instead ideologically charged constructions. Drawing from cultural geography and urban studies, we analyze how written language interacts with other features of the built environment to construct commodified urban places. Taking a contextually informed, qualitative approach, we link micro‐level analysis of individual Chinese‐language signs to the specific local socio‐geographic processes of spatial commodification. Such a qualitative approach to linguistic landscape, which emphasizes the importance of sociohistorical context, and which includes analysis of signage use, function, and history, leads to a greater understanding of the larger sociopolitical meanings of linguistic landscapes.     

Networks and geography: Modelling community network structures as the outcome of both spatial and network processes

This paper focuses on how to extend the exponential random graph models to take into account the geographical embeddedness of individuals in modelling social networks. We develop a hierarchical set of nested models for spatially embedded social networks, in which, following Butts (2002), an interaction function between tie probability and Euclidean distance between nodes is introduced. The models are illustrated by an empirical example from a study of the role of social networks in understanding spatial clustering in unemployment in Australia. The analysis suggests that a spatial effect cannot solely explain the emergence of organised network structure and it is necessary to include both spatial and endogenous network effects in the model.     

Culture and language promotion in Thailand: implications for the Thai Lao minority of introducing multilingual signage

This article examines the introduction of multilingual Thai/Thai Lao/English signage in commercial areas of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Khon Kaen University, the principal tertiary university for the 19 million citizens of Northeast Thailand, the majority of whom are of the minority ‘Thai Lao’ ethnicity, an ideological construction that is presented in some detail. This introduction of signage followed a previous study to introduce officially sanctioned multilingual direction-giving signage, including the main faculty sign, in three prominent areas of the Faculty. The survey employed a complex methodology to survey the opinions of 300 students together with observation of students and interviews with members of the faculty. The research type is therefore a mixed-methodology investigation of identity and language policy planning, cultural promotion, glocalization, Gal and Irvine’s semiotic ideology structuration process, the (urban) linguistic landscape and Bourdieu’s theories of social reality. The study found high levels of support for the signage from the student body, members of the faculty and the stallholders themselves.     

On comparing a "black" and a "zwarte" school: Towards relevant concepts and illuminating questions

This paper represents some of the first findings from a cross-cultural analysis of student high-school cultures in two countries. The analysis presented here is part of PhD dissertation research being conducted for the University of Amsterdam. We take a close look at the differences and similarities between two schools in seemingly divergent contexts: a high school consisting of mostly African-American students in the Bronx, New York, and a so-called "zwarte" (black) school in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Despite contextual differences, we find that there are many similarities in the types of subcultures that are prevalent at both schools, and the consequences that these subcultures have for social variables such as identity formation, peer group influence, academic expectations, exclusion and acceptance variables, attitudes towards the school, etc. Both allow insight into emerging "Black Atlantic" youth cultural patterns, and the consequences these have for the educational institutions in society.     

Urban fragmentation as a research hypothesis: Rabat-Salé case study

Cities in developing countries display distinct spatial patterns which are increasingly recognised as the fragmentation of urban space. Although the reason for this is largely unknown, it is necessary to recognise it in order to shape appropriate urban policies.This paper is concerned with a study of Rabat-Salé, Morocco, testing the hypothesis that physically different fragments determine distinctive ways of using the city. The peculiar morphological characteristics of eight fragments were identified and, based on information from a sample survey, three issues were investigated: places of reference and the accessibility to infrastructure and services; the household's residential trajectory within the agglomeration; and the family network and its spatial location. It was found that the differences in the use of the city were not systematic among the population of the various fragments. What emerges is more a social integration resulting from a mixing at the level of family, clan or region of origin, than a societal fragmentation. The research confirms that although two distinct and at times divergent urban spaces exist, they do not necessarily conflict. These differences depend principally upon household social and economic conditions. It is essential that urban management and planning take these factors into account.     

TAXES, TORTS, AND THE TOXICS RELEASE INVENTORY: CONGRESSIONAL VOTING ON INSTRUMENTS TO CONTROL POLLUTION

Theories of rational political ignorance and congressional voting imply that Congress members may take different interests into account when they vote on technical amendments than when they vote on a bill's final passage. This article uses votes on Superfund reauthorization to examine what factors influence politicians' support for different instruments to control pollution and how the interests Congress members take into account vary with the anticipated degree of electoral scrutiny. Controlling for a legislator's general support for environmental programs, a representative's votes on specific policy instruments in Superfund legislation depended on the district-level costs and benefits of the instruments.     

Cities, material flows and the geography of spatial interaction: urban places in the system of chains

The emerging discourses on world cities and Global Commodity Chains are valuable spatial frameworks for conceptualizing globalization and its spatial consequences. However, both discourses have one thing in common: they neglect the territorial and thus physical dimension of global flows. Hence, in this article I take the perspective of material flows to reconnect the discourses on cities and chains. I aim to clarify the role of urban places and their ability to attract, manage and redirect flows in such networks. I do so by re-examining classical concepts of spatial interaction and reorganization in human geography, with particular reference to centrality and intermediacy. The case of seaports and port cities is further explored to demonstrate the concrete conflicts and opportunities that arise with chain developments and insertion. To determine the relative position of places with regard to global chains and flows, Sheppard's concept of 'positionality' is discussed.     

The Influence of Information Costs on Donor Decision Making

This article explores whether an individual's information costs influence the information‐gathering strategies that he or she turns to prior to donating to a nonprofit. The data for the study come from a telephone survey of residents in a large county in southern California (n = 1,002). The sample was selected using random‐digit‐dialing technology and a computer‐assisted telephone interviewing system. A series of binomial logit models revealed that information costs significantly influenced the information‐gathering strategies individuals turned to in order to learn about nonprofit performance prior to making a donation. Results also revealed that greater confidence in nonprofits did not lead individuals to forgo efforts to obtain information on nonprofit performance altogether. The findings from this study suggest that it is important for nonprofit administrators to recognize, and then take into account, that not all individuals will rely on the same information sources when seeking to learn about nonprofit performance.     

Urban predation: a case study assessing artificial nest survival in a neotropical city

Nest predation is an important ecological driver that can mold avian communities. Previous studies performed in urban areas support both predatory relaxation and increases when assessing natural and artificial nest predation. In this study, we assessed artificial nest predation pressure in a neotropical city considering spatial and habitat traits. Our results show that artificial nest predation was driven by the interaction between location and urbanization intensity, with visual predators being responsible for most predation. This supports the notion that urban areas can act as landscape entities that filter biodiversity. Our study, showing both predation relaxation and intensification in the same urban system, suggests that nest predation dynamics can be diverse throughout urban areas. Thus, the predation paradox can occur in parallel with scenarios in which rises in predator numbers can actually decrease nest survivorship. Future studies investigating nest predation in urban areas should take into account the spatial environmental heterogeneity of their system in order to fully capture the patterns and biases related to nest predation.     

Towards a material ethnography of linguistic landscape: Multilingualism,mobility and space in a South African township1

The study of multilingual landscapes promises to introduce a new perspective into theories and policies of multilingualism, and to provide essential data for a politics of language. However, the theorization of space and language underlying the notion of linguistic landscape is not able to capture the manifold complexities of (transnational) multilingual mobility that is characteristic of many late‐modern multilingual societies. Basing our argument on signage data from a contemporary South Africa in a dynamic phase of social transformation, we argue that more refined notions of space coupled to a material ethnography of multilingualism could provide a theoretically more relevant and methodologically refocused notion of (multilingual) linguistic landscape. Specifically, we take an approach to landscapes as semiotic moments in the social circulation of discourses (in multiple languages), and view signs as re‐semiotized, socially invested distributions of multilingual resources, the material, symbolic and interactional artifacts of a sociolinguistics of mobility.     

‘There is Nothing Here for Us..!’ How Girls Create Meaningful Places of Their Own Through Movement

This article focuses on how girls create places of meaning and opportunity through collective movement. It is based on an ethnographic study of the everyday experiences and mobility of 10–13 year old girls living in a suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. 1 The girls ventured for a sense of freedom and a ‘place of their own’ to pursue their interests and social relationships. For some girls the creation of places where they felt ‘at home’ would entail breaking rules and transgressing spatial boundaries set by adults.     

Optimal connections: strength and distance in valued graphs

We identify some issues in measuring the strongest path connecting pairs of actors that arise in attempts to generalize binary graph concepts to valued graphs. Neither Peay’s path value nor Flament’s path length indicators take into account the costs of interacting via long chains of intermediaries. We proposed two alternative measures of optimal connections between dyads, respectively, dividing each measure by the distance between a pair (number of lines in a path). We illustrate these average path value (APV) and average path length (APL) measures with a hypothetical five-actor valued graph, observing instances where an indirect path may yield a stronger connection than a direct path. Computer programs to calculate these measures out to three steps for small graphs are available on request.     

Analyzing gender in public places: Rethinking Goffman’s vision of everyday life

In this study, I discuss critically some of Goffman’s work on public places, with regard to how that work represents women’s experience in public and how women’s experience changes the notions of public places that Goffman portrayed. I draw on an eighteen-month participant observation of one small city (Santa Fe, NM) and a set of in-depth interviews done with both female and male residents of the city. Here, I concentrate on three areas: the normalized distaste for public places that is encouraged in women by their fear of crime in public and the measures they are informed they must take as crime-conscious pedestrians and shoppers; street remarks that are often difficult to manage and impossible to resolve successfully; and access information—information the woman discloses that can be used as a clue to her identity and home and, potentially at least, as ammunition for further harassment of her. I use these areas to illustrate how gender-conscious appraisal is necessary in order to appreciate the character of public places. Her book,Urban Ritual, is forthcoming from University of California Press.     

Leaving Chicago for Iowa's "Fields of Opportunity": Community Dispossession, Rootlessness, and the Quest for Somewhere to "Be OK"

In recent years, urban development and public housing demolition have posed challenges to the social and geographic rootedness of low-income African Americans in urban areas. In particular, in Chicago, widespread public housing demolition, occurring in the context of rapid gentrification, has contributed to increasing shortages of affordable low-income housing. This study uses in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the migration experiences of men and women who have left urban neighborhoods and public housing developments in Chicago searching for affordable housing and economic opportunity in eastern Iowa. This particular analysis focuses on experiences of social and geographic "rootlessness" that emerged as a major theme in these interviews. Participants describe community dispossession in Chicago that has threatened not only the ties between individuals and their social support networks, but also connections and claims to the places in which these ties are rooted. Narratives that describe leaving Chicago in this context and then trying to get by as a stigmatized outsider in "someone else's city" speak to a process of dislocation that may disrupt critical social-support resources that are known to mitigate the consequences of structural disadvantage.     

Beyond "banking for the poor": credit mechanisms and women's empowerment

This article describes some strengths and limitations of credit programs for women in developing countries. It is urged that development planners recognize the importance of the selection of the type of credit mechanism in the long term. Ethical issues should be decided upon before the credit mechanism is operable. Organizations should make clear what level of commitment there is to empower borrowers. Most organizations give loans to women and assume empowerment will take place without devising strategies to ensure empowerment. Credit mechanisms include credit for the poor and credit by the poor. A sound financial portfolio and 100% repayment are not the appropriate criteria for securing the empowerment of women. Empowerment of women is related to "building the capacity of borrowers to manage and control decision making." UNICEF's framework of gender equality and women's empowerment identifies levels of empowerment as "welfare, access, conscientisation, participation, and control." Development planners should be aware that provision of credit also has the potential to increase a poor family's debt. Delinquency may be hidden by overlapping loans that trap borrowers. Fewer installment payments increase the chances of a debt trap. Reducing the number of installments may reduce administrative costs and conform to production processes, but may also lead to a debt trap. There is now considerable emphasis on investing in low-income women entrepreneurs as a highly efficient means of achieving social and economic objectives. Credit programs aim to support the growth of small, self-sustaining businesses, to improve women's opportunities, and to provide alternatives to exploitation by local money-lenders. This article describes the following credit mechanisms: bank guarantee systems, government credit schemes, intermediary projects, direct lending projects, banks for the poor, credit unions, and village-based banks.     

"Class" in Tibet: Creating Social Order Before and During the Mao Era

This article examines the categories and concepts through which the Tibetan social world has been represented, prior to and during the Mao era (1949-1976). The categories typical of the pre-Communist Tibetan polity are first described, with emphasis on the close connections between politics and religion. With the advent of Chinese Communist rule in Tibet, a new account of social identity was introduced where, as a key Marxist concept, "class" became the decisive factor for identifying people. The article describes how the "class" system was put into practice in the Tibetan areas of China and how the introduction of "class" categories provided an account of social identity that paved the way for radical social transformations that were subsequently launched by the Chinese authorities.