Like Oil and Water in the American West: Water Market Access amid Unconventional Oil Production in Colorado

Characterized as a “wicked” problem, water shortage in the American West will soon become a reality—due to increasing population, climate change, and decreased flows. Concurrently, water‐centered technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have facilitated the rapid and widespread growth of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production in the United States. Water markets are increasingly touted as the best, most efficient, and fairest mechanisms for allocating vital and scarce resources. Yet this contention is largely unexplored at the food‐energy‐water nexus, particularly from an environmental justice perspective—where equitable water access for all users is a central concern. We utilize a case study in Colorado's South Platte basin based on 41 in‐depth interviews to show: (1) distortions created in regional water markets as wealthy UOG operators participate in them and (2) ways in which access to water markets becomes blocked for smaller, newer, or water‐poor water users. We also highlight how UOG producers’ presence may inhibit the formation of alternative systems for water exchange. Thus, the participation of UOG operators in Colorado's water markets appears to drive environmental injustice and increased inequity at the food‐energy‐water nexus, rather than facilitating fair or efficient access to water for all users.     

Democracy in Arts Development 1

Too often in the arts, projects are undertaken without clear‐cut aims and ways of assessing whether these aims are accomplished. With regard to “Art for Social Change” projects, it is not difficult to identify activities that might be labelled “dishonest”, “ill‐conceived” or even “unethical”. It is argued here that it is possible, and necessary, to set clear aims, and also to devise effective assessment strategies. It is essential for artists to embrace evaluation in order to help them improve and better understand their work.

     

Integrating gender needs into drinking-water projects in Nepal

It is argued that projects and programs designed to meet the practical needs of men, women, and children in communities should also focus on meeting the strategic gender needs of women. This paper shows what project planners can do to ensure women?s participation in the design and maintenance of development projects without increasing their workloads, and with the goal of raising their status in the family and society, as well as challenging men's prejudice. It utilizes the framework of strategic and practical gender needs in the context of the drinking-water sector, to argue that understanding how these needs are linked is important to the sustainability of drinking-water projects. Overall, this paper pointed out the great need to involve women in the management of water projects in order for it to be effective in reducing the burdens of the people. Moreover, all development initiatives, including improvements in water supply, should have explicit focus on improving women status and increasing their confidence. Meeting such gender needs requires real commitment from concerned individuals on all levels as well as budgetary provision to enhance the capacity of the involved sector, and heighten their awareness. Fulfillment of their strategic gender needs, will in turn, contribute to the sustainability of water projects.     

Poverty,oil and corruption: the need for a Quad‐Sector Development Partnership (QSDP) in Nigeria's Niger Delta

This article starts by charting the conflicting position in Nigeria's Niger Delta between its petroleum wealth and the poverty of its inhabitants before observing how government corruption has hampered development agencies from rectifying this situation. It then examines trans‐national company (TNC) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives via a case study of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). It concludes that, while there are useful projects, their success is felt at a micro level that cannot supplant wider government development. Finally, the article sets out why Quad‐Sector Development Partnerships (QSDP) between an international development agency, the state, TNCs and civil society will help to neutralise the national problem of corruption so that Niger‐Delta socioeconomic development can be improved.     

Amidst the Reign of Behaviour and Disorder: Recalling Schools as Problems

In May 2013 one of the most profoundly influential books of the late twentieth and early twenty‐first century was released in its fifth edition. Yet, it is not unreasonable to speculate that this newest edition will pass largely unnoticed, even as new diagnoses (and the loss of current ones) seep into the everyday. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM‐5) will undoubtedly be influential in education – defining and re‐defining student maladies. Its list of extensive categories provides, so it is argued, a means to uniformly identify mental disorders. Applied in educational contexts, children and young people can thus be categorized by clinical experts and teachers able to identify an individual's problems, and in theory, respond appropriately. Criticism of the DSM includes debate over its application in cross‐cultural contexts as well as the ways that socio‐economic differences are, to put it bluntly, diagnosed differently. Although these issues of diagnosis do get attention, historical contexts can remain bereft in commentary. In this paper we consider the value that historical perspectives can bring to an analysis of the contemporary effects of DSM‐inspired readings of education and disadvantage. The paper also draws on two projects, one with young people, the other with parents of young children, both of whom experienced disadvantage and precarious relationships with education. In these excluded contexts, people are more likely to come into contact with diagnostic repertoires that originate from the DSM. Drawing on Georges Canguilhem's analysis the ‘concept' as well as Michel Foucault's discussion of Canguilhem's work, this paper considers how attention to school problems is important for disengaging with education's appetite for psychiatric disorders.     

Privatisation Results: Private Sector Participation in Water Services After 15 Years

Privatisation of public infrastructure has been the mantra of many development agencies since the late 1980s. Water supply is no exception, and various forms of private sector participation (PSP) have been tried in the water and sanitation sector. This article examines the results of these experiments. It suggests that PSP has had mixed results and that in several important respects the private sector seems to be no more efficient in delivering services than the public sector. Despite growing evidence of failures and increasing public pressure against it, privatisation in water and sanitation is still alive, however. Increasingly, it is being repackaged in new forms such as that of public‐private partnership.     

Policies and strategies for integrating women in agriculture and rural development

Continued economic stagnation, civil unrest, rural-urban migration, and a series of natural disasters have impeded efforts in the Sudan to integrate women into the development process. Although the Four-Year (1988-1989 to 1991-92) Salvation, Recovery, and Development Programs Plan does not explicitly addresses women's issues, its emphasis on food security, appropriate technology for the agricultural sector, small-scale industries and handicrafts, balanced regional development, and the needs of the poorest 20% of the population guarantees that women will be major recipients. There remains a need, however, to increase women's participation in the development planning process and to base projects on reliable data on women's economic activities. More successful in defining women's needs have been community development projects--Western Savannah Development Corporation, Blue Nile Integrated Rural Development Project, Nuba Mountain Project, and Jebel Marra Rural Development Project--that combine income generation, social welfare, and agricultural research. It is recommended that all such large integrated rural development or agricultural projects allot funds specifically for women's activities and ensure coordination with women's organizations to avoid duplication and identify areas of greatest need. Also urged is the development of appropriate technologies that will alleviate women's double burden of poverty and household chores and address the inequitable distribution of income. Establishment of a women's bureau for women's affairs and development within the National Planning Department would facilitate project formulation and evaluation. In need of change if women in development projects in the Sudan are to be successful are laws that limit female land ownership and practices that deny women loans and credit.     

Room for manoeuvre: User participation in water resources management in Burkina Faso

Participation in natural resources management is widely promoted in sub‐Saharan Africa, but faces mounting criticism from social science scholars who rarely engage with it in practice. We use the notion of room for manoeuvre to reflect on a multi‐level participatory approach designed to support the Burkinabè Integrated Water Resources Management policy and propose ways of engaging constructively with local users and policy‐makers. Within an “invited space” of participation, water users’ room for manoeuvre was enhanced through the acquisition of new knowledge on the legal Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) framework. This allowed them to interact with decision‐makers and to extend their networks. Power imbalances were discussed, but this did not lead to modifying existing power structures that hinge on broader societal dynamics.     

Reflections on doing participatory research in health: participation,method and power

The author has reflected on her experience in facilitating three participatory research (PR) projects to identify key issues surrounding participation, method and power. The three PR projects in health, all undertaken in the same region in southeast Australia, assessed the needs of women who have experienced breast cancer, evaluated an Indigenous healthy lifestyle programme and developed and documented a model of coordinated care by a consumer group. In particular, the three participatory projects suggested that participants do not always want to maximise their own participation and may prefer external researcher involvement – relationships, confidentiality, anonymity and time‐impacted perspectives of participation. In one study, quantitative methods were selected and time and previous knowledge of research shaped participants' selection of method. In the projects, power relations were complex and issues of negotiation, inclusion, quality of research, agendas, roles and integrity are discussed. The lessons learned here are that participatory researchers can be open to differing levels of participation and methods while also comfortable with sharing decision‐making in research, even if it alters the research outcome.     

Strengthening Clinical Research in Marriage and Family Therapy: Challenges and Multilevel Solutions

There is a critical need for high‐quality and accessible treatments to improve mental health. Yet, there are indications that the research being conducted by contemporary marriage and family therapy (MFT) scholars focuses less on advancing and disseminating clinical interventions than in previous decades. In this article, we describe challenges to increasing rigorous clinical research in MFT. We use systems mapping and the intervention‐level framework to identify strategic goals designed to drive innovation in clinical research in the field. It is our hope this article encourages dialog and action among MFT stakeholder groups to support clinical science that will improve the health and functioning of families.     

Something new in old Europe?

This paper investigates whether EU research programmes have led to innovations in European social research. This is based on an assessment of a group of EU‐funded projects on the changing nature of work in Europe. EU‐funded projects have contributed to the creation of a European social space for European researchers, but at the cost of consolidating English as the lingua franca of European social research. Such projects tend to involve heterogeneous research actors and are oriented towards policy issues. To some extent they are therefore representative of a ‘Mode 2’ form of knowledge production. More clearly, they have ensured that social research about Europe is no longer simply comparative research. The new EU Sixth Framework Programme on RTD will undermine many of these achievements through its focus on conventional definitions of ‘excellence’ and the insistence on large‐scale research instruments.     

Daring ‘life‐return projects’ to post‐Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article discusses the prospects for realization of rights‐based return against the backdrop of a twenty years‐long (inter)nationally managed return process to post‐Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. It draws on 42 in‐depth interviews with two different waves of returnees: early assisted returns (1997‐2005), and later self‐organised returns (2005‐2013). Our findings show that realization of return implicates the courageous well‐planned and self‐orchestrated life return projects, closely inter‐linked with the construction of the complex micro‐social structures buffering against the unpredictable macro‐social context of post‐Dayton BiH. Instead of being propelled by formal and assisted return programmes, it is rather the intricate relational practices with space(s) and people – continuously investing in the multisite local and transnational social networks, and flexible mobility and settlement patterns ‐ shaped by social agency of the returnees that lead to realization of the return projects.     

少数人的可持续发展：绿色城市发展与居民住房支付能力探析

不少旨在改善旧城空间的棕地开发项目和重建项目,都将可持续发展列为明确的目标。然而问题的关键是,这些重建项目的好处是否公平地分配到原有的社会成员或者街坊手中,或者,是否以牺牲现有居民和商贩的利益和现有社区的多样性为代价,使新搬来的高收入住户获得更多好处？加拿大维多利亚市棕地开发的案例分析,为本文所探讨的由棕地开发引发的收入差异问题提供了例证。第二个案例研究了多伦多的社区,指出在已有的社区内进行可持续发展项目,并不能确保维持和鼓励现有的社会多样性和公平性。英属哥伦比亚省温哥华市Downtown Eastside的一系列填空性建设项目也证实了类似的趋势,即它们对周边社区产生了很大影响,而且事实上给可持续发展带来了反作用。因此,可持续发展与社区中产化及高档化之间的关系比我们想象的更加复杂。     

Team effectiveness in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) projects

The incorporation of team context into research and practice regarding team effectiveness in NGOs projects is a constant challenge. The research seeks to address the gap and identify the critical determinants of team effectiveness in projects undertaken by non-governmental organizations. Using a systematic process, the study involved both literature and focus group discussions to generate the required items. A total of 157 respondents (Team Members and Team Leaders) were part of the study that filled the questionnaires. Using exploratory factor analysis followed by confirmatory factor analysis, both convergent and discriminant validity was established. The present study found that team effectiveness in NGO social projects has a total of seven dimensions namely: Inter team coordination, community social linkage, team performance, knowledge, skills, and attitudes, leadership communication and engagement, decision making and information sharing, and team formation. There is a significant lack of research on team effectiveness in NGO projects. Where considerably large proportion of research on team effectiveness has focused on the corporate sector, the non-governmental teams have been neglected. This study clearly highlights the determinants that make up team effectiveness in NGOs. The determinants identified will help to specifically look at the effectiveness of teams in NGO projects. The study would help NGOs identify the dimensions in which they may be performing in a weaker manner and direct their energies in improving the factors.     

Meta-analysing community action projects in Aotearoa New Zealand

The current Labour Government in Aotearoa¹ New Zealand has overseena revival of interest in devolved community decision-makingand a burgeoning of locality-based community action and communitydevelopment projects. This paper reports on a meta-analysisof ten community action projects. The activation, consolidationand transition or completion stages of the projects were examinedto identify commonalities in structures and processes that eitherenhanced or impeded the projects meeting their objectives forsocial change. The importance of processes for critical reflection,the analysis of power dynamics between stakeholders, and recognitionof the social, cultural and historical context of a project'sgenesis will be discussed.     

‘Just teach us the skills please,we'll do the rest’: empowering ten‐year‐olds as active researchers

This paper discusses the outcomes of an initiative to empower ten‐year‐olds as active researchers. It debates some of the barriers that are commonly cited with regard to children of this age taking ownership of their own research agendas—power relations, competence, knowledge and skills—and challenges the status quo. It describes a study in which a group of ten‐year‐olds participated in a taught programme aimed at equipping them with the knowledge and skills to design their own research. This empowering process resulted in the children undertaking research projects of their own choosing, designed, carried out and reported entirely from their perspective. Reports from two of those projects are presented as part of this paper.     

‘Going Out’ or Staying In? The Expansion of Chinese NGOs in Africa

This article examines the overseas behaviour of Chinese non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in two African nations, Ethiopia and Malawi, with varying political regime types. Our findings suggest that, irrespective of regime type, Chinese NGOs have yet to make a substantial impact in either nation. We argue that, despite the strength of the Chinese state and high levels of international development assistance given, domestic politics and regulatory frameworks in host nations still matter a great deal. Our study suggests that the Chinese model of international development will continue to be one in which temporary one‐off projects are favoured; and, insofar as social organisations will play a role, they will be in the domain of government‐organised NGOs rather than grassroots NGOs.     

Contesting Water Rights: Collective Ownership and Struggles against Privatization

The post‐1980s have seen increasing struggles over rights to water. Water rights have involved intense protests and campaigns against privatization of water including bottling of water and advocacy for citizens control of water. We review scholarly work to focus on four main aspects: the complexities intertwining globalization processes, the state, and water rights; collective ownership of water resources; peoples’ participating in managing and using water; and the campaigns against privatization which have emerged in both the developing and developed world in different ways. The conclusion calls for adopting a social movement lens to examine the struggles for water rights by providing some lead research questions around the macro and micro level theoretical approaches.     

Implementing Single Session Therapy

In recent decades, discussion about clinical practice has been dominated by a focus on evidence‐based treatments, whilst the translation of evidence‐based treatments into practice has been neglected or avoided. The single session therapy (SST) field reflects this general trend. As a result, the community has not benefited from available service improvements simply because they have not found their way into core practice or been translated across state‐wide services. This article draws on a range of implementation projects managed by The Bouverie Centre, in particular a successful state‐wide SST implementation project conducted in collaboration with Victorian community health counselling services, to raise implementation dilemmas and suggest practical ideas about the translation of SST ideas into mainstream clinical practice. It is hoped this discussion will be of interest to those wanting to translate any new idea into practice.     

The state and the development of an information society: Greek policy and experience

The paper looks into the dynamics of information society policy and its implementation in the Greek context. It argues that information society development is a contested process, influenced by pre‐existing state, economy and society relations. Based on this, it looks into the different aspects of the idiosyncratic path which the evolution of the Greek information society has followed, particularly after 2000. Using Bob Jessop's strategic‐relational approach (SRA) to the state as an analytical framework and drawing on a number of in‐depth interviews with relevant political actors, it provides insights into policy implementation by examining: the public management of information technology projects, how such projects were received in bureaucratic structures and practices, as well as the relationship between the state and the information and communication technology (ICT) sector in public procurement processes. The emphasis is on the period 2000–2008, during which a major operational programme on the information society in Greece was put into effect. The paper also touches upon the post‐2008 experience, suggesting that information society developments might include dynamics operating independently and even in contradiction to the state agenda.