Legitimating impotence: Pyrrhic victories of the modern environmental movement

The strengths and limitations of the modern environmental movement are assessed, using a contextual analysis, with a framework drawn from pragmatic analysis. Empirical summaries from recent policy-making supported by the movement: in community-based recycling, local toxic waste movements, and water pollution control document the fact that the movement has indeed developed some sustainable resistance in policy-making in the U.S. and at the Rio Conference. But it has also ignored those consequences of environmental protection which degrade the living conditions for many people of color and other low-income groups. The movement's failure to form enduring coalitions for linking environmental protection to social justice limits the movement's power, by permitting disempowered groups to be mobilized in opposition to environmental protection. We outline an alternative strategy, built around sustainable legitimacy, which will require changes in the composition and program of environmental movement organizations.     

Evaluating the effects of treatment switching with randomization as an instrumental variable in a randomized controlled trial

The purpose of this study was to utilize simulated data based on an ongoing randomized clinical trial (RCT) to evaluate the effects of treatment switching with randomization as an instrumental variable (IV) at differing levels of treatment crossovers, for continuous and binary outcomes. Data were analyzed using IV, intent-to-treat (ITT), and per protocol (PP) methods. The IV method performed the best, since it provided the most unbiased point estimates, and it had equal or higher power and higher coverage probabilities compared to the ITT estimates, and because a PP analysis can be biased due to its exclusion of non-compliant patients.     

Wula (Voices) of Aboriginal women on barriers to accepting smoking cessation support during pregnancy: Findings from a qualitative study

Aim

To gather Aboriginal women’s stories of smoking and becoming pregnant to identify the barriers in accepting smoking cessation support during pregnancy.

Unpacking intergenerational (IG) programs for policy implications: A systematic review of the literature

Intergenerational care is a program where both the younger and older generations are receiving programmed care in an environment where activities and resources are shared between them. Anecdotally, an intergenerational care program takes on many forms. This paper presents a systematic literature review of intergenerational care models. Our findings are relevant to policy makers as the paper highlights the opportunities to create an age-friendly environment by introducing intergenerational models in Australia, where intergenerational care development is in its infancy. Future research will help articulate the personal, social, and economic value of intergenerational care.     

An Inclusive Approach to Knowledge for Mental Health Social Work Practice and Policy

As the integration of health and social care services progressesin the mental health sector, there is concern that mental healthsocial workers are disadvantaged, relative to health professionals,because they cannot identify the knowledge base for their practice.This paper argues that this concern is partly the product ofassuming that the knowledge base has to be premised upon randomizedcontrolled trials. Instead, it proposes a non-hierarchical frameworkbased on that developed in health research in Canada by Upshurand colleagues that generates a typology of knowledge whichis congruent with the main forms of inquiry that are relevantto mental health social work practice. The framework recognizesthe contribution of randomized controlled trials to the knowledgebase but also validates knowledge drawn from qualitative, epidemiological,practitioner and user knowledge. It is argued that the frameworkprofiles a wider knowledge base than that promoted by conventionalevidence-based practice, and also could be a basis for futuredevelopment of the research agenda in mental health social work.     

Pollution and perception: Social visibility and local environmental mobilization

Why does local environmental degradation lead some communities to rebel while others remain politically complacent? This comparative analysis seeks a partial answer to that question through examination of the impacts of the social visibility of local environmental problems on political mobilization in the Great Lakes Basin. The data upon which this paper is based is drawn from original field research conducted in six environmentally contaminated communities in both the U.S. and Canada. The paper examines the efforts of industry, government and environmental organizations to manipulate the visibility of contaminants in order to promote or prevent the emergence of grass roots political activism. However, the data indicates that socially visible environmental disorganization increases local awareness of contamination, but has little bearing on the definition of that contamination as a problem requiring political action. The transformation of awareness of environmental problems into local political mobilization is not determined primarily by the social visibility of contaminants, their sources, or their impacts on the environment.     

Debate Pollution rituals in Sweden: the pursuit of a drug-free society

The logic of Sweden's restrictive drug policy has led its advocates to promote increasingly extreme measures. Making the consumption of drugs not only a criminal offence but an imprisonable one has enabled the authorities to subject suspected drug users to urine and blood tests. This extreme policy can be understood as a response by a society so obsessed by health, cleanliness and order that drug use has taken on symbolic significance. In its determination to rid the social body of drugs, the Swedish authorities have shown that they will seek our pollution by whatever measures available. In doing so they are in danger of becoming repressive and intolerant.     

Racism and Democracy Reconsidered

The use in genocidal propaganda of a modified ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’ (the assertion that African ‘civilisation’ was due to racially distinct Caucasoid invaders from the north/north-east of Africa) has become a key feature of commentary on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In order to historicise the Hypothesis, the article first traces the transformation by European anthropology of the ‘Hamite’ in to a racial object and how the extraneous provenance of ‘the Tutsi’ was articulated in colonial Rwanda. The article then critically assesses the centrality of the Hypothesis in constructing the Tutsi population as a target of genocide. Finally, the article explores both the inadvertent and explicit ways in which contemporary commentary reiterates aspects of the ‘Hamitic assemblage’.