Understanding and Planning for Freight Movement in Cities: Practices and Challenges

ABSTRACT

Planning for freight presents a perpetual challenge for governments. Understanding freight flows has attracted increasing research attention, though such knowledge can be difficult to translate to address problems in planning practice. This paper critically assesses the challenges of understanding and planning for urban freight movement, especially with reference to achieving more sustainable outcomes. In doing so, we elucidate guidance for broader analytical and policy approaches suited to meeting diverse public interest objectives. We review the literature with specific reference to the nature of policy problems, while collating existing conceptual knowledge for broad urban land use types.     

Differential Privacy and the Accuracy of County-Level Net Migration Estimates

Population Research and Policy Review - Each decade since the 1950s, demographers have generated high-quality net migration estimates by age, sex, and race for US counties using decennial census...     

Race,Language, or Length of Residency? Explaining Unequal Uptake of Government Pensions in Canada

Canada’s old age security (OAS), a flat-benefit public pension, is internationally lauded as an accessible and effective safety net for seniors. This paper explores discrepancies in OAS uptake using Canadian Census data from 1996 to 2011. Our findings demonstrate disparities in OAS uptake based on immigration status, language proficiency, and visible minority status, disputing claims of “universal” OAS provision. Multivariate analyses confirm a strong “immigrant effect,” with being in Canada for 20 years or less leading to lower rates of OAS utilization. They also confirm that those not proficient in Canada’s official languages are less likely to receive OAS benefits. However, the influence of racialized minority status is found to be spurious; after controlling for immigration status and official language proficiency, many racialized minority senior groups have higher odds of receiving OAS than White Canadians. We conclude with a brief discussion of the tradeoffs involved in considering a potential removal of OAS eligibility barriers for immigrants in Canada.     

The Missing Memory of Canadian Sociology: Reflexive Government and “the Social Science”

The modest literature on the history of Canadian Sociology takes the appearance of a named academic discipline as its object. Canadian Sociology is held to have had some precursors in the 1880s, but really to appear only in the 1920s. It is described as a foreign import and as an activity first of intellectual speculation and moral reform. Observational and analytic practice are absent before 1880. The activities of state agents and government departments in the social field are not discussed. This article offers a richer account through an examination of the larger field from which Sociology was extracted, “the social science,” which was practiced actively in colonial Canada from the early nineteenth century. The social science shaped and was itself shaped by colonial conditions. The article outlines three interrelated moments in social science to carry its claims: inventory‐making, the emergence of “population‐thinking,” and “reflexive government.” Attending to the social science underlines the complex and convoluted relations of sociology with state power. Les rares oeuvrages académiques portant sur l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne prend pour objet l'apparition du terme <sociologie> dans le contexte universitaire. Dans cet optique, ils signalent certains précurseurs de la sociologie canadienne dès les années 1880, mais en fait ils affirment que cette discipline n'apparaît que dans les années 1920. Cette discipline est présentée comme une importation académique et, d'abord et avant tout, comme de la spéculation intellectuelle et comme un projet de réforme morale. D'après cette vision, les pratiques d'observation et d'analyse sociales ne semblent pas exister avant 1880, et les acteurs politiques et administratifs sont absents du terrain. Notre article propose un examen plus riche du vaste champ duquel la sociologie académique fut arrachée: <la science sociale> activement pratiquée au Canada à l'époque coloniale dès le début du XIXe siècle. La science sociale forma et fut formée par les conditions sociales et politiques existant dans la colonie. Notre article expose trois moments pertinents et inter‐reliés de la science sociale: la fabrication d'inventaires sociaux; l'émergence du <penser population>, et l'exercice du <gouvernement réflexif>. La réintégration de l'histoire de la sociologie canadienne dans la science sociale accentue la relation complexe et incontournable entre sociologie et pouvoir étatique.     

Adding the Organizational Perspective: How Organizations Shape Service Work Abroad

International volunteering is an increasingly popular form of service work, but the scholarship on international volunteering has done little to unpack the assertion that organizations shape the international volunteering experience. We demonstrate the utility of taking an organizational perspective by reporting on an ethnographic investigation of an international voluntary service episode in Southern India. In doing so, we attend to all of the parties common to international volunteering—the coordinating international volunteer service organization, the host NGOs, and the volunteers—and pay particular attention to the organizational dynamics that influence the service rendered. We find that the different actors in the service relationship understood successful international development efforts in different ways, which frustrated the productivity of the relationships in question. These mismatched goals were partly the legacy of a partnership-formation process that followed a cultural–historical logic rather than an instrumental one. The consequences were dissatisfaction on the part of volunteers and mixed benefits for the organizations with which they were matched. We suggest that these findings have relevance to other international volunteering sites.     

‘Eyesight to the Blind’: Secular and Religious Dialogue in the ‘Devil's Music’

I adopt a dialogic approach to refute Paul Oliver’s claim that there is no challenge to the authority of the black Church or religion in the segregated ‘race records’ of the first half of the 20th century in the United States. I dismiss the claims of some black theologians that the presence of biblical imagery in the blues means that performers were essentially religious. I show that the dialogue between secular song and religious sermons on record involved mutual parody, satire, and polemic in a common speech genre. Attacks on the Church, its members, clergy, and doctrines were common. Recorded sermons spoke back in defense. Mikhail Bakhtin's concepts offer purchase on the relations between secular and religious recordings in an ongoing struggle for hegemony in black cultural production.     

The attitudes of American sociologists toward causal theories of male homosexuality

The origin of homosexuality has been the subject of systematic study in many disciplines during the previous century. In the social science literature, two general models concerning the etiology of homosexuality have emerged, the essentialist model and the constructionist model. This article reviews these two models and provides empirical data on their relative support. Support for each model has been gauged by assessing the opinions of sociologists. Data was obtained from a random sample of sociologists teaching in colleges and universities throughout the United States. The major finding is that the majority of sociologists now endorse the essentialist position.     

Antisemitism: Different Perspectives

Sociological Forum -     

To be fair,generous, or selfish: The effect of relationship on Chinese children’s distributive allocation and procedural application

Previous research has found that children’s sharing with others relies on fairness norms, but also varies according to their social relationships. The current study focuses on the conflict between fairness and relationship, exploring their impacts across two resource allocation contexts. We used a parallel work task to explore the effect of relationship with different recipients (friend, stranger, or disliked peer) on three allocation patterns (generous, fair, or selfish), when children directly allocated resources (distributive allocation), or applied different procedures to recipients (procedural application). Participants consisted of 123 Chinese children between the ages of 6 and 12. We found that in the distributive allocation context, in which participants directly decided the outcome, children primarily considered their relationship with recipients when dividing resources, not fairness. However, in the procedural application context, in which children could choose different allocation procedures for recipients, children primarily preferred fairness, regardless of social relationship. Moreover, when making distributive allocations, 6‐ to 8‐year‐olds were more selfish toward their disliked peers, whereas 9‐ to 12‐year‐olds tended to be more fair and generous toward their friends and strangers. These findings shed light on the link between social relationship and fairness within different allocation contexts among children of Chinese cultural background.     

Age and gender differences in emotional and behavioural problems during the transition to residential treatment: the Odyssey Project

Utilising a national sample of 1,167 young people in residential treatment, this study explored whether the behav-ioural problems exhibited during the transition to residential treatment varied depending upon the age and gender of the youngsters. Specifically, we asked whether those who were admitted to residential treatment centres (RTCs) aged under 12 had a different set of behavioural problems from those who were 12 years and older when admitted, and whether boys had different characteristics than girls. The 11 scales of the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist were examined. The results revealed statistically significant patterns of associations by age and gender. As populations shift within agencies and across time, knowledge of the behavioural problems associated with age and gender groups can be used to facilitate agency planning and staff training.