Climate Change Adaptation: Community Action,Disadvantaged Groups and Practice Implications for Social Work

This paper explores community-level action in relation to socially based climate change adaptations for vulnerable citizens—older people in particular. While awareness of risk and adaptation has increased in various institutions across Australia, the translation of awareness into action is limited, particularly in the area of socially based adaptive measures for the most vulnerable. Through content analysis of local government documents in two major Australian cities, this paper assesses the extent of action and identifies trends and strategies in relation to social adaptation. Findings indicate varying levels of action and some examples of “best practice,” but overall, evidence indicates more effort is needed at the community level. The role of the social work profession in challenging and broadening discourse is also explored especially in terms of highlighting the social impacts of climate change in future policy development, community action, and initiatives.     

Change in Gender‐Ideology, 1977–1996:The Contributions of Intracohort Change and Population Turnover

This paper addresses the processes underlying the dramatic shift in beliefs about women's work and family roles in the United States over the past two decades. Following Mason and Lu (1988) , we posited this shift to be a function of actual change in individual opinions, as well as changes in population membership that result from births and deaths. Using pooled cross‐sections from the General Social Surveys (1977 to 1996), we found that although demographic processes and microlevel attitude change are both important in understanding attitude trends, the contribution of cohort succession is substantially greater now than in the period that Mason and Lu examined. Multivariate analyses show that (a) the sex difference in attitudes is greater among recent cohorts, and (b) the strong association between education and attitudes that characterized earlier cohorts is significantly weaker among cohorts born after 1945.     

城市扩容中拆迁安置小区公共管理模式研究——以常德市公寓楼安置模式为例

征地拆迁是城市扩容面临的重要课题。常德市采取的公寓楼安置模式在城市扩容和保护耕地红线之间找到了平衡点,创新了拆迁安置模式,达到了城市发展集约节约用地的目的。公寓楼社区公共管理模式不仅关系到征地拆迁工作本身的成效,更关系到安置户的民生福祉和城市的科学发展。要直面公寓楼社区公共管理的突出问题,明确主要任务,创新理念,构建"政府主导+多方参与+业主选择+社区整合"的公共管理格局,按照统筹推进、健全体制、整合资源、责任考评的路径,使公寓楼社区公共管理成为推进安置居民城市融入的重要推手。     

Agents for Change and Changed Agents: The Micro‐politics of Change and Feminism in the Academy

This article explores gender politics and processes in the academy and investigates change from the perspectives of feminist academics. In particular, it explores the experiences of women academics attempting to effect change to the gendered status quo of their own institutions. Focusing on micro‐politics, the feminist movement is empirically explored in localized spaces of resistance and in the small but significant individual efforts at making changes in academic institutions. The analysis is based on interviews with female academics working in business and management schools and focuses on the challenges for change and how change attempts affect their personal and professional identities. The article explores the range of change strategies that participants use as they try to progress in their academic career while staying true to their feminist values and priorities through both resisting and incorporating dominant discourses of academic work. The analysis highlights such tensions and focuses on a contextualized, bottom‐up perspective on change that, unlike more totalizing theorization, takes into account mundane and lived experiences at the level of the individual.     

Social Change and Social Policy in China: National Adaptation to Global Challenge

As a part of designed human intervention against social problems, social policy has to respond and adapt to social changes. In this article, the author aims to discuss social changes that occurred in the past decade in China (including economic, demographic, and cultural changes) and relate them to relevant social policies formulated by the Chinese government to address the concerned social issues. To interpret the roles of the state, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the community in tackling social problems in the changing context of the market economy and globalization, the author attempts to provide a theoretical explanation on the emergence of social policy in China in a new era and to further re-assess the concept of the welfare regime in East Asian countries.     

The Formative Context of Organizational Hierarchies and Discourse: Implications for Organizational Change and Gender Relations

Society as artifact, meaning society as a thing that is made and imagined, is a central aspect of Roberto Unger's constructive social theory. This article develops Unger's social theory, specifically his notions of organizational hierarchy, discourse, and organizational change, and applies it to an understanding of gender relations at work. Constructive social theory is defined with a focus on the instrumental concept of formative context. A critical perspective of Unger's constructive social theory is also presented to illustrate its strengths, challenges and limitations. Drawing on literature from a variety of sources and perspectives, organizational hierarchy, organizational discourse, organizational change and gender relations are viewed through a formative context lens. The concept is then applied as a framework for organizational change through change in organizational discourse, specifically language. Change in organizational discourse through language is utilized as a means of improving gender relations: in particular, the advancement of women in organizations.     

Life politics,nature and the state: Giddens' sociological theory and The Politics of Climate Change

Anthony Giddens' The Politics of Climate Change represents a significant shift in the way in which he addresses ecological politics. In this book, he rejects the relevance of environmentalism and demarcates climate‐change policy from life politics. Giddens addresses climate change in the technocratic mode of simple rather than reflexive modernization. However, Giddens' earlier sociological theory provides the basis for a more reflexive understanding of climate change. Climate change instantiates how, in high modernity, the existential contradiction of the human relationship with nature returns in new form, expressed in life politics and entangled with the structural contradictions of the capitalist state. The interlinking of existential and structural contradiction is manifested in the tension between life politics and the capitalist nation‐state. This tension is key for understanding the failures so far of policy responses to climate change.     

Solar Festivals and Climate Bills: Comparing NGO Climate Change Campaigns in the UK and Australia

This paper compares climate change campaigns conducted by environmental nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia. The NGOs represent a diversity of political access, financial resources, and international connections. Three campaign activities common to both countries undertaken between 2004 and 2006 are analyzed for their effectiveness via interviews and document review. This examination is embedded within an analysis of the political, economic, policy, and social contexts of each country. It is shown that in the UK climate change has been used as a pivotal leadership issue, that the fossil fuel industry’s influence is not predominant, and that NGOs enjoy political legitimacy. Whereas, in Australia climate change has only recently emerged as a political priority, the fossil fuel industry has had significant political and financial influence, and NGO advocacy has been marginalized. It is argued that NGOs are embedded in the political and policy contexts of their country, and the greatest campaign traction and NGO influence can only be achieved when these contexts provide favorable conditions.

向低碳能源转型以缓解气候变化——以中国、印度为例

中国和印度都相当依赖高碳含量化石燃料。本文阐述两国向低碳能源转型的意义,它不仅能减轻对气候变化的负面影响’,还能令经济增长。文中涉及3个案例——中国的电力部门、北京的经济部门以及印度农村还没通电的家庭——它们都减少了排放温室气体和使用能源,但却增加了成本。可见要为气候友好型低碳经济作出贡献,是需要资金支持和技术转移的。     

Evidence‐Based Management: Implications for Nonprofit Organizations

The article reviews evidence‐based management and its implications for practice and teaching. My focus is on strategic decision making in nonprofit organizations. Evidence‐based management is a process that includes framing the question, finding evidence, assuring accuracy, applicability, and actionability of evidence until the evidence is the best available.     

Children's work and children's well‐being: Implications for policy

This article argues for holistic consideration of children's work. Dominant discourse on “child labour” attends only to dangers of children's work, leading to policies that damage some children's chances for development. Far from being universally negative in children's lives, appropriate work contributes to their well‐being and development, and to transitions to adulthood. Children's work can convey benefits for sustenance and quality of life, provide learning to complement and support school, offer psycho‐social benefits, particularly in building self‐esteem, and help develop social relations and responsibility. These benefits are especially critical for marginalized children. Common policies of abolishing child labour based on age of employment rather than potential harm deny such benefits to younger children.     

Older Adults: Work‐Related Issues and Implications for Counseling

In a period of business downsizing, older workers are at risk for unemployment. They often have difficulty finding suitable replacement jobs and frequently face emotional and financial distress. Employers, as well as older workers, may have perceptions and concerns that can create barriers to reemployment. Older workers are a valuable asset in the labor market. Their plight affects society as a whole. Counselors should be aware of work related issues of older workers, career theories and supporting research pertaining to this unique population, and suitable interventions with which to help older adults make smooth career and life transitions.     

The crowding‐out effect within government funding: Implications for within‐source diversification

The benefits and risks of revenue diversification lead scholars to propose within‐source diversification as a possible compromise. Although this revenue strategy sounds promising, no scholarly attention has been devoted to empirically examining it. This study explores within‐source diversification across government funding, specifically whether nonprofit receipt of support from a major government funder affects support from other government funders. Using a panel dataset of U.S.‐based international development nonprofits from 1995 to 2014, we find that nonprofits with more funding from the major funder are associated with significantly less funding from other funders. This crowding‐out effect weakens as organization size grows. The findings imply that the within‐source diversification strategy might be more desirable for larger organizations with the capacity to manage multiple funding relationships.     

Change in Work‐Family Conflict Among Employed Parents Between 1977 and 1997

Using data from two national surveys (N = 2,050), this paper examines what accounts for the increase in the sense of work‐family conflict among employed parents between 1977 and 1997. Decomposition analysis indicates that the increases in women’s labor force participation, college education, time pressure in completing one’s job, and the decline in free time were related to the increase. Fathers in dual‐earner marriages experienced a particular increase in work‐family conflict. With the same amount of time spent with children, parents felt greater work‐family conflict in 1997 than in 1977. Although masked by the overall increase, some trends, such as the increases in intrinsic job rewards, time with children, and egalitarian gender attitudes, contributed to a decline in work‐family conflict.     

The Shelf Life of a Disaster: Post‐Fukushima Policy Change in The United States And Germany

How can large‐scale disasters prompt policy change beyond the local environment in which they occurred? Working at the intersection of political sociology, disaster studies, and cultural sociology, we introduce the concept of the shelf life of a disaster to analyze the short and limited impact of Fukushima Daiichi on U.S. nuclear energy policy and its vitality within Germany. American media, nuclear industry representatives, regulators, and policy makers contributed to a tepid political environment for policy change by expanding symbolic distance from Fukushima, focusing on U.S. superiority to Japanese infrastructures. While this technicist orientation was evident in Germany as well, its distancing effects were offset by a conjunction of mechanisms that packaged Fukushima as a precursor to an inevitable German nuclear catastrophe.     

Chronic and Proximate Depression Among Mothers: Implications for Child Well‐Being

This article uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Well‐Being Survey (N = 2,427) to examine the association between the chronicity and timing of maternal depression and child well‐being. Maternal depression, particularly chronic depression, is linked to internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors in children, and children have worse behaviors when mothers report proximate depression. Children of depressed and nondepressed mothers have similar cognitive outcomes. Results also suggest that boys are more vulnerable to maternal depression than girls and that socioeconomic advantage does not buffer children from the consequences of maternal depression. Given that impairments in early childhood may place children on disadvantaged life‐course trajectories, early intervention and treatment of depressed mothers may help ameliorate social disparities.     

Sexual‐Minority and Heterosexual Youths' Peer Relationships: Experiences,Expectations, and Implications for Well‐Being

The current study compared the peer relationships and well‐being of 60 sexual‐minority (i.e., nonheterosexual) and 65 heterosexual youths between the ages of 15 and 23. Sexual‐minority youths had comparable self‐esteem, mastery, and perceived stress as did heterosexuals, but greater negative affect. Younger sexual‐minority male adolescents had smaller overall peer networks than did young male heterosexuals, whereas older male and female sexual minorities had larger numbers of extremely close friends within their networks than did heterosexuals. Younger sexual‐minority adolescents had lost or drifted away from more friends than did heterosexuals. Regardless of age, sexual‐minority youths reported disproportionately high worries about losing friends, low feelings of control in their romantic relationships, and fears of never finding the type of romantic relationship they wanted. Sexual‐minority youths that were “out” to more heterosexual peers had larger peer networks but more friendship loss and friendship worries. Youths' relationship experiences and concerns mediated sexual identity differences in negative affect.     

Extending the Intergenerational Stake Hypothesis: Evidence of an Intra‐individual Stake and Implications for Well‐being

The intergenerational stake hypothesis suggests that parents are more invested in their children and experience better quality parent–child ties than do their children. In this study the authors examined variation in reports of relationship quality regarding parents and children intra‐individually (do people report better quality ties with their children than with their parents?) and whether within‐person variations have implications for well‐being. Participants age 40–60 (N = 633) reported on their relationship quality (importance, positive quality, and negative quality) with their parents and adult children. Individuals reported their relationships with children were more important and more negative than relationships with parents. Individuals with feelings that were in the opposite direction of the intergenerational stake hypothesis (i.e., greater investment in parents than children) reported poorer well‐being. The findings provide support for the intergenerational stake hypothesis with regard to within‐person variations in investment and show that negative relationship quality may coincide with greater feelings of investment.     

The Prospects for Foreign Debt Sustainability in Post‐Completion‐Point Countries: Implications of the HIPC‐MDRI Framework

The Enhanced HIPC Initiative was launched in 1999 to reduce the Net Present Value (NPV) of foreign debt of the world's poorest countries to a sustainable threshold of 150% of their exports. This article applies a simple growth‐with‐debt model to 16 post‐completion‐point HIPCs to assess whether this goal will be met by 2015. Its somewhat optimistic base‐case projections suggest that participation in the current Enhanced HIPC‐MDRI initiative will only reduce the NPV of their total external debt to 176% of exports by this date. Sensitivity tests which expose these countries to adverse exogenous shocks help draw attention to policies that could ensure that they do not again accumulate unsustainable debt levels.     

Displacement and local linguistic practices: R‐lessness in post‐Katrina Greater New Orleans

Variable r‐lessness in New Orleans English is a salient linguistic feature tied to local place‐based identity. In this study, I examine rates of r‐lessness in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which caused large‐scale displacement in the region. Participants come from the linguistically conservative suburb of Chalmette, where r‐lessness is more robust than in New Orleans proper. Participants’ connections to Chalmette were measured in two ways: (1) post‐Katrina location status, i.e. whether participants returned or relocated after the storm; (2) place orientation, captured via an ethnographically informed, multifaceted measure of stance and exposure to places outside of Chalmette. Analysis revealed that place orientation better predicts rates of r‐lessness than post‐Katrina location. I argue that the marked quality of r‐lessness makes it available for identity‐driven use to express a connection to Chalmette. This study demonstrates one way to account for the linguistic implications of individuals’ shifting allegiances to places they live(d).