Ecosystem services provided by urban spontaneous vegetation

Spontaneous vegetation colonizes large areas in and around cities. These unmanaged areas are considered to have low economic value or indicate dereliction, but recent research suggests that these can contribute valuable ecosystem services. This study evaluates indicators of ecosystem services in three habitats: urban spontaneous vegetation (USV), managed lawns, and semi-natural urban forest, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. USV had higher indicator values for habitat provisioning (plant species diversity, invertebrate abundance and taxonomic diversity) than the other habitats. Indicators of climatic regulatory services (albedo and leaf area index) in USV were similar to those in lawn habitats. Organic carbon content of the soils, an indicator of carbon storage, was lowest in USV but only marginally lower than in lawns. Standing biomass, an indicator of production services, was lowest in USV but lawn production may have been overestimated. While USV sites are usually transitory components of the urban landscape, they deserve further consideration due to their provision of ecosystem services, in some cases to a greater extent than conventionally valued urban habitats.     

The use of vignettes to empower effective responses to attempted sexual assault

Objective: Women assertively resisting sexual aggression have the best chances of avoiding completed rape. Especially with acquaintances, there are significant social and psychological barriers to resistance. Novel vignettes depicting acquaintance rape were designed to enhance self-efficacy, reduce unrealistic optimism, and empower assertive resistance. Participants: The data were collected using a Web-based survey of 449 female college students from multiple universities in August–October 2014. Methods: Between-subjects mixed-methods design. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four vignettes and complete self-report measures of personal vulnerability, self-efficacy, and beliefs and intention about resistance. Results: Although vignettes did not impact self-efficacy, one vignette enhanced perceived controllability and decreased unrealistic optimism. Women who read about completed acquaintance rape described intention to use physically assertive responses at double the rate of women reading about successful resistance. Conclusions: As low-cost, easily disseminated materials, vignettes about sexual assault may enhance campus prevention efforts.     

Unruly Voices in the Museum

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the use of audio recordings and oral memory for the critical engagement with colonial pasts in ethnographic museums by focusing on the traveling exhibition What We See, curated by Anette Hoffmann (2009). Specifically, it draws on Jeffrey Feldman's notion of colonial “contact points,” i.e. material traces of colonial encounter, to highlight the exhibition's ability to convey and critique the sensory experience of colonial contact. In What We See, this colonial contact consisted in an anthropometric project conducted in South-West Africa, today's Namibia, in 1931, resulting in an archive of anthropometric measurements and photographs, life-casts, and phonographic recordings. The exhibition proposed an innovative way of reworking this archive by staging an intricate interplay between sound and sight, thereby disrupting conventional ocularcentric forms of display. However, this multisensory approach provoked highly divergent reactions at its various exhibition venues. This article argues that the divergent reactions in Cape Town, South Africa, and Vienna, Austria, were due to different levels of what Ann Stoler describes as “colonial aphasia”—that is the context-dependent difficulty of addressing disquieting colonial pasts and its sensory dimensions.     

The Psychoanalytic Social Worker/The Social Work Psychoanalyst: What Shall Be Our Message?

Many social workers experience a powerful bond with their profession and with the contributions of psychoanalysis. This paper explores these bonds and demonstrates the substantial overlap, and occasional divergence, which exists between these two important fields. It is especially gratifying to see the renewed emphasis on the treatment relationship in contemporary psychoanalytic writings because the relationship has always been central to social work practice. Finally, all psychoanalytic social workers are encouraged to invest themselves in transferring the legacy of their work to beginning social workers, social work students, and the generations of social workers that will follow them.     

Videotaped Life Review: Its Personal and Intergenerational Impact

While the literature reports therapeutic benefits of life review in the elderly, systematic involvement of family members and extensive use of video recording are uncommon. Outcomes of videotaped life reviews with 30 individuals in the general population, conducted in collaboration with family members, are described. Mutually enhanced sense of self and self-esteem were observed. Interviewees felt less fearful of traumatic events after reviewing them in the context of their entire lives. For family members afraid to ask their parents directly about painful events, the camera created safe transitional space and opportunity for more genuine connection. Using examples from popular media and the author’s videotaped work, this paper will define life review, describe the heightened need for life review in the latter stage of life, the value of systematically involving family members, and implications for including life review methods in psychotherapy.     

Inclusive education policy provision in South African research universities

The 4-A Framework suggests that all inclusive education systems must be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. South Africa is committed to establishing an inclusive education system that does not exclude students with disabilities. South African university disability policies translate the imperatives of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into institutional mandates that govern the implementation of inclusive education. The aim of this study was to determine to what extent disability policies at South African research-intensive universities addressed the markers contained in the 4-A Framework. The framework was reworked and operationalised for the higher education context, and expanded to include a fifth marker, namely affordability. A deductive thematic analysis, using a protocol based on the five markers, was used to analyse these policies. Results indicate that, of the five markers, affordability was not sufficiently addressed. Various disclaimers also limit policy provisions related to other markers.