Resistance,Ritual Purification and Mediation: Tracing a Dayak Community's Sixteen-Year Search for Justice in East Kalimantan

In recent discussions on access to justice in Indonesia, little work has been done that illuminates the processes of conflict which inevitably arise in attempts to obtain justice based on informal actions and results, rather than on recourse to institutions. While many scholars and donor agencies tend to create the impression that non-institutional processes of justice-seeking are entirely unpredictable or ungoverned by regularities, in this article I seek to fill this gap by exploring patterns of conflict in East Kalimantan that are associated with Amartya Sen's realisation approach to justice-seeking. I will look into a conflict between a group of Dayak villagers and an oil palm company in East Kalimantan which started sixteen years ago with the establishment of three oil palm estates on customary land, causing complex changes to local people's lives as well as several injustices. The villagers pursued a variety of strategies to gain redress, which I describe as active resistance, ritual purification and mediation. In the analysis I draw upon Turner's concept of social dramas. I show that considering the long-lasting conflict in East Kalimantan as social drama helps to refine socio-legal approaches to conflict and access to justice as processual. The article will contribute to models of justice-seeking that can be associated with Amartya Sen's model of justice as realisational.     

Measuring time use in surveys - Concordance of survey and experience sampling measures

It is still unclear to what extent time allocation retrospectively reported in questionnaires reflects people’s actual behavior. Addressing this research gap, we analyze the congruence of time use information assessed through retrospective questionnaires and through experience sampling methodology. Participants completed standard survey questions on time allocation. In addition, a mobile-phone-based experience sampling technology obtained snapshots of, on average, 54 momentary activities in which respondents participated while pursuing their normal daily routines.Results indicate that the associations between standard survey questions and experience sampling methods are quite substantial for long-lasting and externally structured activities, such as paid work. In contrast, associations between survey and experience sampling methods are somewhat weaker for less externally structured, short-term and infrequent activities, such as errands, housework, and leisure. However, further research is required to elucidate which method (experience sampling method or survey questions) results in more reliable and valid measures for short-term and sporadic activities.     

Charitable Giving: What Influences Donors’ Choice Among Different Causes?

While the literature is replete with studies that identify factors explaining why people are likely to make monetary contributions, less is known about which particular charitable causes they are likely to choose and how much they donate to them. This article examines donor choice among eight different causes using survey data collected in 2011 for a nationally representative sample in Austria. In particular, the study investigates the role of individual-level factors: subjective dispositions such as empathic concern, trust, and religiosity, and resources such as education and income. We find that subjective dispositions rather predict a donor’s incidence of giving among causes but not the amount donated. Human resources, in contrast, are associated with both the incidence and the amount donated to particular causes, and they also mediate the impact of subjective dispositions. What is more, the study reveals that being asked to donate has the highest explanatory power regarding the incidence of giving among all causes investigated.

     

Contemporary Philanthropy in the Spotlight: Pushing the Boundaries of Research on a Global and Contested Social Practice

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This article is intended as the leading article in a special issue devoted to the achievements, limitations, opportunities...     

Preparing social workers for ecosocial work practice and community building

ABSTRACT

In the context of the global ecological crisis, the profession of social work is increasingly shifting to embrace an ecosocial lens, recognizing the centrality of the ecological environment for human existence and the inextricable linkages of wellbeing for people and planet. Social work educators are contributing to this shift as leaders in the transformation of their home institutions and communities. We present examples within two models of education for ecosocial work, the infusion model and the integration model. Exemplars are based on the authors’ expertise and contributions to ecosocial work education, community building, and ecosocial change, both locally and globally.     

Exploring approaches to child welfare in contexts of domestic violence and abuse: Family group conferences

This article sets out to explore service provision for families affected by domestic violence and abuse. For most families where there are child protection concerns, there are possibilities for intervention from child welfare agencies and domestic abuse services, but these have been criticised as having distinct and disconnected practice cultures and orientation. Recognising this divergence, in this paper, we advocate for safeguarding children affected by domestic violence and abuse using the family group conference (FGC) model. This offers possibilities for a coherent response that integrates both child‐ and women‐centred concerns in a holistic approach to family safety and well‐being. Furthermore, it is well documented that safeguarding work involves professionally‐led decision‐making that is pre‐occupied with the management of risk. FGCs, however, promote a partnership approach that engages families in a more democratic decision‐making process. As such, FGCs offer families the opportunity to develop their own safety and support plans for the protection and care of children recognising the family's inherent strengths.     

Modeling Lung Carcinogenesis in Radon‐Exposed Miner Cohorts: Accounting for Missing Information on Smoking

Epidemiological miner cohort data used to estimate lung cancer risks related to occupational radon exposure often lack cohort‐wide information on exposure to tobacco smoke, a potential confounder and important effect modifier. We have developed a method to project data on smoking habits from a case‐control study onto an entire cohort by means of a Monte Carlo resampling technique. As a proof of principle, this method is tested on a subcohort of 35,084 former uranium miners employed at the WISMUT company (Germany), with 461 lung cancer deaths in the follow‐up period 1955–1998. After applying the proposed imputation technique, a biologically‐based carcinogenesis model is employed to analyze the cohort's lung cancer mortality data. A sensitivity analysis based on a set of 200 independent projections with subsequent model analyses yields narrow distributions of the free model parameters, indicating that parameter values are relatively stable and independent of individual projections. This technique thus offers a possibility to account for unknown smoking habits, enabling us to unravel risks related to radon, to smoking, and to the combination of both.     

Toward a critical sociology of lifestyle migration: reconceptualizing migration and the search for a better way of life

This article places under critical and reflexive examination the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of lifestyle migration. Developed to explain the migration of the relatively affluent in search of a better way of life, this concept draws attention to the role of lifestyle within migration, alongside understandings of migration as one stage within the ongoing lifestyle choices and trajectories of individual migrants. Through a focus on two paradigms that are currently at work within theorizations of this social phenomenon – individualization and mobilities – we evaluate their contribution to this flourishing field of research. In this way, we demonstrate the limitations and constraints of these for understanding lifestyle migration; engaging with long‐standing debates around structure and agency to make a case for the recognition of history in understanding the pursuit of ‘a better way of life’; questioning the extent to which meaning is made through movement, and the politics and ethics of replacing migration with mobilities. Through this systematic consideration, we pave the way for re‐invigorated theorizing on this topic, and the development of a critical sociology of lifestyle migration.     

Does the female cycle matter? Looking at aggressive intentions after social exclusion*

Excluded people vary in their coping with social pain. The menstrual cycle has shown to moderate experiences related to pain. We therefore investigated the influence of the menstrual cycle on aggressive intentions in response to social exclusion. Results revealed no effect of the menstrual cycle alone. However when exploratory taking dispositional social anxiety into account, we found women low in social phobia to report more aggression in response to social exclusion in the luteal than in the non-luteal phase. In this phase, they indicated a similarly high aggression level than women high in social phobia who did not differ between the luteal and non-luteal phase. These findings are discussed within the framework of evolutionary adaption.