Building community capacity in governance and decision making

Civil society is generally understood as the realm within whichpeople can participate collectively and work toward a commoninterest. This article examines the mechanisms for involvingmarginalized groups in this process. The study focuses on parents'experiences with two of Canada's largest community-based healthpromotion programmes for children. The conclusions emphasizethe need to recognize the informal and everyday as importantsites for governance and decision making. In addition, theyadd substance to the claim that women's spaces that focus on‘women's work’ are legitimate sites from which tobuild civil society.     

Non-governmental organizations and the socio-economic development of low-income women in India

This literature review focuses on the socio-economic development of low-income women in India. The study describes how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India attempt to fill gaps in governmental support for marginalized women in the Indian workforce. Some scholars have recommended expanding the boundaries of human resource development (HRD) to include multiple topics in a variety of contexts to investigate the holistic development of individuals. Gaps exist in current HRD literature regarding the status of low-income women in India. This article argues that many Indian NGOs are capable of serving the needs of women in informal work sectors and in addition, they can provide a broad non-traditional context for investigating HRD processes and services at a national level.     

The Aggregation of Expert Judgment: Do Good Things Come to Those Who Weight?

Good policy making should be based on available scientific knowledge. Sometimes this knowledge is well established through research, but often scientists must simply express their judgment, and this is particularly so in risk scenarios that are characterized by high levels of uncertainty. Usually in such cases, the opinions of several experts will be sought in order to pool knowledge and reduce error, raising the question of whether individual expert judgments should be given different weights. We argue—against the commonly advocated “classical method”—that no significant benefits are likely to accrue from unequal weighting in mathematical aggregation. Our argument hinges on the difficulty of constructing reliable and valid measures of substantive expertise upon which to base weights. Practical problems associated with attempts to evaluate experts are also addressed. While our discussion focuses on one specific weighting scheme that is currently gaining in popularity for expert knowledge elicitation, our general thesis applies to externally imposed unequal weighting schemes more generally.     

Ideology, culture, and ambiguity: The revolutionary process in Iran

Conclusion To varying degrees, polysemous appeals are a feature of nearly all political coalitions and negotiations. But they are especially important in revolutions in which mass protests accompany a sudden collapse and elimination of the old regime state. In such a situation, it is not the case that a few coalition planks are ambiguous in an otherwise institution-alized political structure; instead, even the main outlines of how politics will operate in a new regime is undetermined. Given the chaos and uncertainty, revolutionary unity necessarily focusses upon rejection of the regime itself, and revolutionaries appeal to widely familiar cultural images (as in the appeal to Islam) whose durability within the society has depended on a degree of flexibility in interpretation and application. There is neither time nor reason for the opposition coalition to settle upon a detailed post-revolutionary program.Ambiguous (i.e., polysemous) ideology is an essential component of revolutionary unity and sets the stage for the struggle over the meaning of the revolution, after the fall of the old regime. Different factions struggle over the particular meaning of the images and concepts that had united the revolutionary coalition as a whole. However, this ambiguity makes quite probable an outcome in which revolutions eat their children; the initial revolutionary unity cannot possibly survive, as the construction of a new revolutionary state will necessarily reject some interpretations of the meaning of ambiguous revolutionary ideology.Particularly astute revolutionary leaders - Khomeini or Lenin, for instance - can take advantage of such a situation to create a new revolutionary state in their own image, before many of their potential adversaries fully understand what is happening or how most effectively to resist. In such a case, there often is no obvious, specific program that could truly represent the coalition as a whole, or even a majority of it. The faction that defines the ideology of the revolution by taking control of revolutionary state formation and suppressing alternatives may forever remain a minority. To take one illustration, while both the Bolsheviks and the Islamic Republican Party redefined political discourse, in both cases voting patterns suggested their minority status even after the seizure of power. The Bolsheviks, outpolled by the Socialist Revolutionaries, remained a minority in the voting for the Constituent Assembly after the October Revolution, and thus disbanded the assembly. As the Islamic Republic was institutionalized as a theocracy, voting participation steadily declined. There remains broad opposition to the clerical regime among many initial supporters of the revolution.Nevertheless, while revolutions are situations in which ambiguity is likely to be especially significant, there are different kinds of revolutions; ambiguity will matter more or less depending on exactly how the revolutionary crisis emerges and plays itself out. (Thus the following discussion is partly a response to Skocpol's call for a closer examination of the different revolutionary circumstances that allow ideology to have different kinds of effects.)In some revolutions (though the exception more than the rule) unifying revolutionary ideology will be more specific than the connotative images and concepts that unified the Iranian opposition to the Shah. This is especially likely when there is a revolutionary group poised to implement a program (after the fall of the old regime) because it has a history as an organized, clearly dominant opposition, with an identifiable program and a mass following. This fact may explain why Poland, benefitting from the earlier establishment of Solidarity, at least initially seemed more directed than some of its neighbors in establishing a new political and social order after the collapse of communist states in 1988–1989.Solidarity, then, is an example of the fact that the more time there is for the identity and intentions of a revolutionary group to become known, the less likely that such a group can hide behind an ambiguous program. Protracted civil war is another context that will generally clarify the ideologies of the adversaries, though those adversaries may have initially been united by an ambiguous ideology. And the context of civil war will place great pressure on all organized political groups to choose one side or another.However, sudden revolutionary crises may involve some political floundering for some time, in cases where there is not a long-standing, organized opposition and there do not emerge leaders with a coherent revolutionary vision and the strategic skill to take advantage of the ambiguous ideology and uncertain outcome of revolutionary situations. In the absence of leaders willing or able to negotiate through such unknown terrain, to construct a new state on the basis of a new program - without turning allies into adversaries too quickly - the ultimate meaning of the revolution may be contested for some time. In the case of Madero's anti-reelection revolution in Mexico, for example, mass mobilization and sudden victory over the Diaz regime was followed by the absence of any coherent program, and a subsequent slide into chaos and civil war. A different version of this scenario may be developing in much of Eastern Europe today. Clearly the nations of Eastern Europe experienced sudden state collapse precipitated by mass mobilization. Participants experienced the ectasy and unity of opposition to, and sudden success against, the old regime. But it quickly became unclear what was to be done next. In some cases, there was an apparent commitment to a free-market ideology, but there was little commitment to the details and difficulties that a free-market program would actually entail. While free-market advocates initially appeared dynamic and exciting, their ultimate success may prove superficial. In other cases, as in the former Czechoslovakia, there seemed to be less a post-revolutionary program than an uncertain pattern of continued dismantling of the past, with no obvious replacement offered to guide the future.In such cases, where dominant factions do not commit themselves to a coherent program, Goldstone's explanation of the rise of nationalism may be quite relevant. He argues that nationalism becomes the rallying cry, to a large extent, because revolutionary leaders are unable to deliver on initial promises about economic rejuvenation. Nationalism has of course been one of the primary ideological developments in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Goldstone's schema also helps explain revolutions in which no faction attempts, or is able, to implement a coherent program soon after the fall of the old regime. For example, in cases where the initial crisis weakens but does not eliminate the old regime state, and elites and masses do not both emphasize total elimination of a hated regime, the revolutionary crisis can initiate a protracted process of increasing revolutionary mobilization best explained by Goldstone's approach. Such would be the case in the French Revolution, for example, where none of the main revolutionary players initially advocated what ultimately became the program of the revolution. Still, even in such cases, ambiguous propositions can be a powerful aspect of unifying ideology: Goldstone notes that, in the heady early days of the French Revolution, the will of the people was the one principle that all accepted for the resolution of conflicts.... One could add to Goldstone's observation that this unifying principle was a very ambiguous one.There are additional factors that may be relevant to the role of ambiguity in revolutionary process and ideology, and whose significance is worthy of further inquiry. For example, it seems likely that some significant degree of shared cultural or political identity is necessary for an ambiguous ideology to serve as a point of unity at all. Thus, while ethnic divisions in Iran were certainly significant in the revolution, the main revolutionary proponents thought of themselves fundamentally as Iranians and, usually, as Shiites. However, to unite ideologically all the societies of the former Soviet Union, after the August 1991 failed coup, would have required such extensive ambiguity as to be unworkable. While the images and concepts that unite a diverse revolutionary coalition can be quite general in nature and subject to diverse interpretations, they do have to be shared and strongly felt.The Iranian Revolution demonstrated how significant shared but unspecified revolutionary ideology can be; and Ayatollah Khomeini and the clerical radicals demonstrated what new ideological directions a revolution can take as a result of the perilous and uncertain struggle to define the new regime of meaning that is a crucial aspect of revolutionary states.     

Keep time, stay healthy

Recent studies reveal that sleep loss in humans leads to metabolic disorders. A new study reports the development of metabolic syndrome in mice with altered circadian timing brought about by a mutation in a gene that functions in the biological clock. An intriguing and unanswered question is the relation between a healthy biological clock and normal appetite and weight regulation.     

The Association of Outdoor Recreation and Environmental Concern: Reexamining the Dunlap-Heffernan Thesis1

Abstract Building upon earlier studies, two hypotheses concerning the association between participation in outdoor recreational activities and pro-environmental behavior are tested using data collected in a general population survey from a random sample of individuals in four communities in Pennsylvania. The first hypothesis, that there is a positive association between outdoor recreational participation and pro-environmental behavior, received substantial support. In contrast to previous research, the results did not support the second hypothesis which stated that there will be differences between/among different types of outdoor activities with respect to their impact on pro-environmental behaviors. Clarifications are made with respect to previous classifications of outdoor recreation activities.     

TigerPlace, A State-Academic-Private Project to Revolutionize Traditional Long-Term Care

The Aging in Place Project at the University of Missouri (MU) required legislation in 1999 and 2001 to be fully realized. An innovative home health agency was initiated by the Sinclair School of Nursing specifically to help older adults age in place in the environment of their choice. In 2004, an innovative independent living environment was built and is operated by a private long term care company, as a special facility where residents can truly age in place and never fear being moved to a traditional nursing home unless they choose to do so. With care provided by the home care agency with registered nurse care coordination services, residents receive preventative and early illness recognition assistance that have markedly improved their lives. Evaluation of aging in place reveal registered nurse care coordination improves outcomes of cognition, depression, activities of daily living, incontinence, pain, and shortness of breath as well as delaying or preventing nursing home placement. Links with MU students, faculty, and nearly every school or college on campus enrich the lives of the students and residents of the housing environment. Research projects are encouraged and residents who choose to participate are enjoying helping with developing cutting technology to help other seniors age in place.