Understanding Local Environmental Concern: The Importance of Place

Urban‐rural differences in environmental concern are the primary way that place has been conceptualized within the social bases of environmental concern framework, yet there has been little convergence in empirical findings to support such differences. We assess the influence of place of permanent residence and other sociodemographic measures of the social bases of environmental concern approach alongside two social‐psychological constructs: place attachment and place outlook. Our work focuses on second homeowners in three rural, natural amenity communities of the northeastern United States (n = 405). Second homeowners who permanently reside in rural places exhibited lower levels of local environmental concern about their second home area than suburban and urban residents, when “rural” was defined at the county scale. We did not observe differences in local environmental concern based upon urban‐suburban‐rural permanent residence when place of permanent residence was defined at the tract, block group, or zip code levels. Place attachment and place outlook explain more variance in local environmental concern than all sociodemographic indicators combined. Our findings suggest that second homeowners' local environmental concern is not strongly or consistently shaped by the urbanity or rurality of their permanent residence, but that place‐based, social‐psychological constructs may offer mechanisms through which social‐structural forces shape environmental concern.     

Mapping social work education in the West Africa region: Movements toward indigenization in 12 countries’ training programs

This article presents the results of a systematic mapping of social work training programs in countries throughout West Africa, a region historically under‐represented in global discussions of the social welfare workforce. The research illuminates how social workers and related professionals are trained to engage in social work practice in a number of West African countries. The research was conducted in two phases. In the initial phase, the research team collected documents from 12 West African countries and conducted phone interviews with relevant individuals. The second phase included field research in five West African countries ? Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal ? where the research team conducted semi‐structured interviews and group discussions with 253 individuals. Framed by indigenization theory, this study describes social service training institutes in West Africa and highlights the varying degrees to which programs have been adapted to indigenous and endogenous realities in the postcolonial era.     

Homosexual not Homogeneous: A Motivation-Based Typology of Gay Leisure Travelers Holidaying in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

The gay traveler, a segment of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) travel market, is perceived to be a homogeneous market segment as a result of the assumption that gay men have a unique “homosexual lifestyle.” This assumption is problematic as it conceals many other important variables, and it may hinder effective destination marketing. A Web-based electronic survey was completed by 469 gay male travelers, and attribute-based benefit segmentation was carried out by applying a hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward’s procedure with Euclidean distances. The typology is based on the push and pull framework; the motivations of travelers were assessed both in terms of their socio-psychological motivations and destination attributes of Cape Town. The typology empirically suggests that gay travelers are not homogeneous, and that sexuality influences the travel behavior of a minority of gay men. Consequently, not all gay travelers or activities by these travelers can be labeled as “gay” tourism.     

The Impact of Societal-Level Institutional Logics on Hybridity: Evidence from Nonprofit Organizations in England and France

We examine how societal-level institutional logics impact the way in which hybridity develops in nonprofit organizations using international, comparative and qualitative case studies of community regeneration organizations in England and France. The research applies theoretically based conjectures about types of hybridity to empirical data generated from 20 interviews, document analysis and observation in five nonprofits in the city of Lyon and five in Sheffield. We find that the French nonprofits are ‘blended’ hybrids that integrate state and community institutional logics, while ‘assimilated’ hybrids combining state, community and market logics are found in the English cases. Undertaking contextually situated analysis of institutional logics generates new knowledge on the influences on nonprofits’ rules, practices and narratives, so improving the level of knowledge about, and capacity to manage, this sector.     

Racism, IQ and Down's Syndrome

There is a consistent difference of some 15 IQ points between the test means of American black and white citizens, and there has been a fierce debate as to whether this can be best accounted for by black intellectual inferiority or by such environmental factors as prejudice and discrimination. However, even supporters of the environmental hypothesis have neglected to apply it to the population-people with Down's Syndrome - to which it is most clearly applicable, and this failure of imagination indicates the boundaries of discourse in the field of intellectual disability. The complex relationship between racism and prejudice against people with Disability is illustrated by Dr Down's use of the term 'mongolism'. Down's characterisation of people with intellectual impairment as equivalent both to children and to people of different races fits the need for a working explanation of intellectual impairment. The characterisation is none the less worthless, and we need new frames to shape our observations.     

Experimentation and Planning in Community Care

The dominant ideology in services for people with learning disabilities is clearly normalisation, or social role valorisation, as it has recently been termed. The emphasis is on the role that a person has within society. However, in Western society, what seems to be valued is power, individualism, enterprise, wealth, beauty and so on. It is not yet clear how we will be able to help people with learning disabilities to achieve such valued social roles. An alternative may be to consider whether we can design communities which value co-operation, affection and interdependence (rather than independence) and I shall describe first a fictional community which has such ideals, and then a real (albeit small) community, in Mexico, where conditions are arranged such that these ideals may be realised. I will then go on to outline some aspects of the philosophy which underpins these communities and which might be relevant to designing co-operative communities. These include the importance of setting objectives; the valuing of human diversity; the importance of viewing a person as a function of her or his social relations; acknowledging the complexity of human behaviour; and the distinction between rule-governed and contingency-shaped behaviour.     

Performance Decline and Turnaround in Public Organizations: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis*

Public sector performance is currently a significant issue for management practice and policy, and especially the turnaround of those organizations delivering less than acceptable results. Theories of organizational failure and turnaround derive largely from the business sector and require adaptation to the public service. The performance of public organizations is more complex to measure, is related to institutional norms, and the idea of ‘failure’ is problematic. Empirical findings from a real‐time, longitudinal study of poorly performing English local authorities are used to develop an initial theory of performance failure and turnaround suited to public organizations. The paper argues that the typical performance of public organizations over time is cyclical. Where cognition and leadership capability are absent, organizations fail to self‐initiate turnaround. In this situation authoritative external intervention is necessary. The strategies applied are principally concerned with building a leadership capability that engages senior politicians and managers in order to overcome inertia and collective action problems. The theory is presented in the form of seven propositions that provide a basis for further research across the public sector.     

Psychology, Education and the Ghost of Kaspar Hauser

It is argued that the interventions of psychology have changed their predominant goals and orientation in recent times. Previously, psychology operated practices of differentiation within the school population, preserving the 'normal' through the exclusion of the deviant. Now, the predominant orientation is one of normalisation. The ideology of normalisation is shown to 'fit' with the generalities of the 'new', social-critical developmental psychology; but the predominant model for the implementation of normalisation practices utilises behavioural pedagogies and objectives-based curricula. The question is considered of whether there might be a social-developmental alternative.     

Emotions, embodiment and the sensation of society

The study of emotions has attracted an increased amount of attention from mainstream sociologists in recent years, both because of its potential to provide an added dimension to the analysis of such subjects as social conflict, gender inequalities and the organisation of the workplace, and as a result of its relevance to theoretical and methodological debates which have long characterised the discipline. This paper suggests that some of the core questions facing this subject can be interrogated productively by engaging critically with the work of one of the most important ‘founding figures’ of the discipline, Emile Durkheim. What Collins (1988) refers to as the ‘underground wing’ of Durkheim's work has yet to be fully utilised or developed by sociologists concerned with emotions, yet it provides us with a suggestive and provocative means of reconceptualising the gulf that often exists within contemporary work on emotions as malleable and controllable, on the one hand, and that concerned with emotions as intransigent ‘somatic states of being’, on the other. As such, Durkheim's writings constitute an important resource for sociologists concerned with the ongoing project of ‘embodying’ the discipline.