From blank spaces to flows of life: transforming community engagement in environmental decision-making and its implications for localism

Localism advocates the participation of ‘local’ groups in governmental decision-making processes. While making policy more context/place specific is a progressive goal, this paper suggests that the processes through which this occurs, and underlying conceptual approaches to scale and place, require a careful analysis. Although often side-lined, Indigenous experiences of localism are key to seeing these issues as critical responses to place and politics, rather than relegating them to an ‘Aboriginal’-specific issue. This paper outlines two practical implementations of Aboriginal inclusion in environmental decision-making, in Canada and Australia. These case studies demonstrate both the failings of current framings of localism and ‘environment’ in policy-making and the inadequate responses of governments to the complexities of place making. These challenges are illustrative and symptomatic of wider issues about how environmental policy and place are currently envisaged. This paper suggests a new methodological framing of these issues that positions the current framing as one view among many, offers a non-relativist frame of communication for moving beyond inclusion and outlines the implications of this reframing for localism.     

Are cost-inclusive evaluations worth the effort?

Relative costs are as important as relative effectiveness when choosing between program alternatives or among a set of programs competing for scarce funds. Nevertheless, the number of cost-inclusive evaluations remains comparatively small. This article presents the results of three first-time cost-inclusive evaluations each performed by an experienced evaluator. Each evaluator performed a different type of cost-inclusive evaluation using different tobacco control programs as examples: "standard" cost-effectiveness analysis, threshold or break-even analysis, and a simulation model. Results are presented in terms of the challenges faced, and informational and insight benefits gained, as well as in terms of program cost-effectiveness. All three evaluators agreed that the benefits from performing cost-inclusive evaluations are well worth time and effort involved. They also found that this type of evaluation provides abundant information that can be used to improve program effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.     

Color-Blind Racism in Post-Obama America: An Examination of Attitudes Toward Hurricane Katrina Evacuees in Houston, Texas

The issue of racism in America continues to be an important topic, particularly in reference to whether and to what extent it still exists and continues to impact the life chances of racial and ethnic minorities. This article examines Bonilla-Silva’s theory of color-blind racism within the context of attitudes of respondents in Harris County, Texas, toward the evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Data from the 2006 and 2010 Houston Area Surveys are used to address whether color-blind racism frames impact citizen attitudes toward the evacuees and whether that impact differs pre- and post-Obama’s presidential election. The logistic and ordinal regression analyses reveal support for the impact of color-blind racism frames, particularly that of cultural racism, on attitudes toward the evacuees. Additionally, that impact, although stronger in the 2006 data, persists in 2010. Limitations and implications for future research are also discussed.     

Children after Divorce: Whose Rights? Whose Responsibility?

Concern about the increasing welfare bill for supporting parents and the growing number of mothers and children living in poverty after divorce or separation has recently led Governments to seek new strategies to enforce maintenance payments. A major emphasis in these arguments has been that noncustodial parents (usually fathers) have a responsibility to provide economic support for their children, and that children, mothers and the community have a right to expect this support. At the same time, there has been an increased concern by fathers for their rights to custody and access to their children after divorce or separation. These two concerns, however, have tended to be treated as separate issues, and little attempt has been made to examine the possible interaction between the two, or to examine systematically the respective rights and responsibilities of mothers, fathers, children and the community. These issues are examined here in the context of an analysis of interpersonal rights and responsibilities for financial support and child care.     

Refining the Concept of Political Will: A Gender Perspective

While politics are known to be prevalent at managerial levels, there is currently little insight into what drives managers to engage in organizational politics and whether there are gender differences in this respect. In the current study we explore the concept of political will by using a qualitative approach based on 14 semi‐structured interviews with managers (five men and nine women) in a global semiconductor company. We identify key dimensions of managerial political will consisting of three attitudinal ambivalences: functional, ethical and emotional. We also examine gender differences along these dimensions and discuss managers' political will in the context of a masculine organizational setting. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of the findings and further research directions.     

Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States

The declining prevalence of two-parent families helped increase income inequality over recent decades. Does family structure also condition how economic (dis)advantages pass from parents to children? If so, shifts in the organization of family life may contribute to enduring inequality between groups defined by childhood family structure. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, I combine parametric and nonparametric methods to reveal how family structure moderates intergenerational income mobility in the United States. I find that individuals raised outside stable two-parent homes are much more mobile than individuals from stable two-parent families. Mobility increases with the number of family transitions but does not vary with children’s time spent coresiding with both parents or stepparents conditional on a transition. However, this mobility indicates insecurity, not opportunity. Difficulties maintaining middle-class incomes create downward mobility among people raised outside stable two-parent homes. Regardless of parental income, these people are relatively likely to become low-income adults, reflecting a new form of perverse equality. People raised outside stable two-parent families are also less likely to become high-income adults than people from stable two-parent homes. Mobility differences account for about one-quarter of family-structure inequalities in income at the bottom of the income distribution and more than one-third of these inequalities at the top.     

Community engagement in the Aboriginal Families Study: Strategies to promote participation

Background

Aboriginal women and families are under-represented in Australian research on pregnancy and childbirth. The Aboriginal Families Study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of a representative sample of women giving birth to an Aboriginal baby in South Australia between July 2011 and June 2013, using methods designed to respect Aboriginal culture and communities.

“Moving from transactional government to enablement” in Indigenous service delivery: The era of New Public Management,service innovation and urban Aboriginal community development

Over the last 40 years, Aboriginal Community Based Organisations have played a distinctive role in society in relation to urban Aboriginal peoples and their rights to self‐determination and community development in the Australian city of Newcastle. They have proven essential to advocacy, the maintenance of community development, and the creation of new Aboriginal social infrastructure (community organisations, facilities, services, and supporting infrastructure). Autonomy has been empowering for local Aboriginal people. Major reforms to the delivery of government social services, particularly government enablement of a new social service market based on New Public Management principles, threaten this success. This interpretive, qualitative case study illustrates the effects of social service market enablement. It draws on a case study of the effects of social service market enablement on urban Aboriginal Community Based Organisations in Newcastle, showing the antagonistic relationship between social service market enablement and Aboriginal community enablement and development. It ends with a discussion of how Aboriginal community development in this city could be re‐enabled in light of the Prime Minister's arguments in his 2017 Annual Parliamentary Closing the Gap speech providing particular value in the context of policy discussions about moving from transactional government to enablement in Indigenous affairs.