Shouts of the street: Identity and the spaces of authenticity

Abstract

For a long time the street has occupied a cherished place in the lexicon of urbanism. Romanticised as the site of authentic political action, celebrated and reviled as the font of ‘low’ culture or feared as a signifier of dangerous territorialisation, the street can be gazed at, walked through and appropriated time and again in representations of the city. This paper looks at some of the tensions in the notions of spatiality that are both masked and naturalised in our common use of the term.

The paper takes as its empirical focus the racialised and racist mobilisations that occurred in the East End of London in the late summer of 1993. A local by‐election with a very high profile BNP (fascist) presence, the racist assault on seventeen year old Qudddus Ali, which left him for several days near death in intensive care, and the subsequent clashes in Whitechapel and Spitalfields which sprang from attacks on the shops and restaurants of Brick Lane by far right activists culminated in serious clashes between police and local Bengalis and a petrol bomb attack on the local police station.

The paper shows that ‘the street’ invokes a range of spatialities that are a constitutive feature in understanding not only the parochial specificities of Spitalfields and Stepney, Wapping and Whitechapel, but also the very nature of racist and anti‐racist mobilisation. At times the vocabulary of resistance may appear similar or even identical to the language of the carceral and territorial imperatives that codify and institutionalise racist practices. On closer inspection subtle distinctions arise from particular articulations of street sensibilities, raising questions that are essential for a plausible and politically progressive reading of recent violent disorder and indispensable to an understanding of the constellation of contemporary debates around public space and the perennial discussion about ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in anti‐racist mobilisations.     

Individual Exploration,Sensemaking, and Innovation: A Design for the Discovery of Novel Information

Discovering novel information can result in the generation of potentially valuable new ideas and can therefore be beneficial to organizations interested in innovation. To be useful, novel information must have a particular relationship to existing organizational knowledge. It must be far enough away to qualify as novel, but it must be close enough that it can be understood and exploited. Therefore, a key challenge for novel‐information discovery (NID) is to find concepts that have such relationships to a given starting point or focal concept of interest. Despite the potential benefits, organizations face a number of challenges when discovering novel information on the Web: locating it, understanding its relevance, and making sense of it given the constraints and biases of existing mental models. In this article, we develop an understanding of the challenges of NID and how a tool can support individuals in locating and translating novel information into novel ideas. Using a design science approach, we develop a design theory for NID. A prototype is developed and evaluated. Our findings show that an NID tool performs better than other Web search tools such as Google in terms of the perceived levels of novel information provided and radicalness of the ideas generated.     

Meeting the Needs of Visually Impaired People Living in Lifetime Homes

ABSTRACT

This article explores perceptions on the suitability and effectiveness of Lifetime Homes standards (LTHS) for those with visual impairment in Northern Ireland. LTHS are a series of mandatory United Kingdom public-sector housing design interventions, providing a model for ensuring accessible and adaptable homes throughout an occupant's life span. An aging demographic with increasing incidence of diabetes has led to rising numbers of elderly, visually impaired people wanting to remain in their homes for longer. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 key stakeholders and thematically analyzed. Although findings show that employing LTHS offers benefits to visually impaired residents, shortcomings were also identified. Evidence indicates a need for policy makers, health-care professionals, and housing associations to modify practices to better meet the housing needs of visually impaired people. Findings may also be applicable to those with other impairments and disabilities in relation to housing for elderly residents.     

Social Density of Gambling and Its Association with Gambling Problems: An Initial Investigation

The role of social factors in pathological gambling has received relatively little systematic research. The goal of the current study was to examine the relationship between a target individual’s gambling behavior and the gambling behavior among that individual’s parents, siblings and five closest friends. The specific aims were, first, to apply a novel brief assessment to study the social density of factors relating to pathological gambling; second, to replicate previously observed findings involving the social aggregation of alcohol and tobacco use; and third, to examine social density findings among the three domains. Participants were 128 frequent gamblers from the Athens, Georgia area, 79.7 % male with a mean age of 34.2 (SD = 11.7). Participants were assessed using the Diagnostic Interview for Gambling Severity for gambling severity, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for alcohol abuse, the Fagerstrom Test of Nicotine Dependence for tobacco use, and the novel Brief Social Density of Gambling, Alcohol, and Tobacco Assessment. Significant relationships were observed between participants’ and friends’ activity within all domains: gambling (ps = .001), alcohol use (p < .001) and tobacco use (p < .001). Relationships with friends’ activity across domains were less strong. Distinct patterns of associations with parents and siblings were not observed. Thus, social aggregation was observed across the three domains of potentially addictive behaviors, generally with specificity within domains and with friends, not biological relatives. Methodological considerations and potential applications of these findings are discussed.     

Exploratory Evaluation of a School-Based Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program

Internationally, efficacy studies of school-based child sexual abuse prevention programs display a series of methodological shortcomings. Few studies include adolescent participants, recording of disclosures has been inconsistent, and no studies to date have assessed presenter adherence to program protocols or summated the costs of program implementation. A pretest–posttest waitlist control design was used to evaluate the Tweenees program delivered to grade 6 (n?=?88) and grade 7/8 students (n?=?117) compared to a control (n?=?185). Outcome measures included a knowledge/skills questionnaire, systematic coding of disclosures, and video interaction analysis of lessons. Costs were calculated per student, class, and school. Adolescents made small knowledge and skills gains indicating a program ceiling effect. Implementation analysis suggests low levels of adult control facilitated disclosures. Program costs were relatively inexpensive. Recommendations are made for future research.     

Linguistic Analysis as a Method for Assessing Symptoms After Sexual Trauma Among Female Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatients

ABSTRACT

Using a sample of female psychiatric inpatient adolescents, the current study aimed to extend this literature to an adolescent sample for the first time by examining if linguistic markers and their subcategories (cognitive process words, pronoun use, and somatosensory detail) in a trauma account are related to trauma symptomology and recovery during inpatient care. Results indicated that greater use of body words and fewer insight words were related to increased trauma symptoms at admission. In addition, use of fewer cognitive process words at admission predicted greater symptom change at discharge, extending previous research findings to an adolescent sample. Findings suggest that linguistic analysis may be an important component of adolescent trauma symptom assessment and treatment monitoring.     

Public housing and the politics of stigma

This paper considers the problem of stigmatisation towards tenants residing in public housing. It draws on the findings of a research panel investigation set up to explore the opportunities available for activists and campaigners to address stigma and engender a more positive understanding of public housing and its contribution to ameliorating economic disadvantages. The deliberations of the panel highlighted that, even within a forum sympathetic to the goal of addressing stigma, many conceptual, strategic and practical differences arise and need to be worked through. The paper reviews these challenges through a discussion of recent academic literature and a commentary on the contributions made by participants in the panel discussions. It concludes with the argument that the problem of stigma needs to be contextualised in a wider political setting that takes account of the contested aspects of the policy process and the role that powerful interest groupings have in agenda‐setting, alongside material factors such as poverty. The stigmatisation of public housing tenants is best understood as a symptom of systemic forms of inequality and asymmetrical power relationships. These difficulties also apply to campaigns to tackle the problem. Supporting forums that allow these power relationships to be interrogated is the first step towards change.     

How Creative Contributions Emerge Over the Lifespan

The starting point for this article is, What are the hegemonic models of man and woman that educational practices are orientated toward in gypsy communities (models that are often in conflict with mainstream schooling institution's models of socialization)? We do not find the collectivism/individualism approach for explaining socialization in minority cultures helpful, for it can lead us to misunderstand the continuous process of change through which communities challenge existing power relations and thereby change society. The alternative proposed here is the analysis of the role of multivoicedness in the process of cultural change, hybridation, and resistance. A set of conversations with members of a Spanish gypsy community give us a “text” where multiple voices contribute, showing a mixed culture where “traditional” voices are in a constant dialogue with “modern” voices. Minority culture cannot be interpreted as a “traditional” culture, for minority culture includes voices of the hegemonic culture in various different forms and provokes hybridation as differentiation, creating a complex framework for children's socialization.     

Sampling hidden populations: lessons learned from a telephone-based study of persons recently diagnosed with HIV (PRDH)

This paper describes a flexible, multi-stage, nonprobability sampling process used in a study of persons recently diagnosed as HIV-positive (PRDH). From July 2007 to June 2008, we used venue and chain-referral sampling strategies to recruit PRDH in the US. We sought equal distributions (n = 20) of eligible PRDH from four self-identified subgroups: gay or bisexual men (GBM), heterosexual men (HM), heterosexual women (HW), and male-tofemale transgender women (TGW). We categorized 30 sampling venues as websites, health clinics, or other networks. For 359 volunteer respondents, website venues proved more productive compared to health clinics and other sources. Website venues were most efficient for sampling recently diagnosed GBM and HW. Passive sampling methods were less effective in recruiting HM and TGW. Sampling approaches should be flexible and tailored to reach sub-categories within hidden populations. The sampling process itself produced valuable knowledge about social networks of hidden HIV populations.