Agents for Change or Conflict?

In today’s Latin America, governments implementing public policies for development and against poverty and inequality meet with social movements that engage in practices for social change, poverty reduction, and empowering. In this context, we analyze the interplay between both processes, describing its conflicts in three specific dimensions: the material, the democratic, and the environmental. Social movements are permanently contesting and challenging public policy when they autonomously appropriate public policy resources; yet, governments respond with criminalization and cooptation strategies. In a setting where social conflict takes place in response to existing poverty and inequality levels, movements challenge development and poverty reduction projects of an ‘assistentialist’ and extractivist nature, and propose an integral understanding of development and the emergence of new relationships among individuals, society, and the environment.     

NGO Networks,the Diffusion and Adaptation of NGO Managerialism,and NGO Legitimacy in Latin America

Nongovernmental organization (NGO) networks have become key instruments used by NGOs in Latin America. Because these networks have important roles to play in advocating for the sector, earning public support, and improving the provision of public goods and services, understanding these networks is important to understanding the NGO sector more broadly. The article examines how NGO networks use collective texts to diffuse and adapt managerial practices. NGO networks use elements of managerialism and their adaptations to signal quality, secure recognition in social development, identify strengths and weaknesses of the sector, and define civil society in order to garner sector legitimacy. While looking at managerialism from a critical perspective, the article finds that understanding NGOs networks and the diffusion and adaption of NGO practices can further pinpoint effective sources of sector legitimacy and help to strengthen the sector’s role in social development.     

Distress or disability? Could a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies be a way forward when trying to understand experiences of oppression on the grounds of mental distress?

This article explores whether it is possible to use a theoretical framework drawn from disability studies to understand experiences of social oppression on the grounds of mental distress. Thomas’ extended social relational theoretisation of disablism was used in a PhD project concerned with experiences of mental distress. The tentative conclusion was that Thomas’ conceptualisation of disablism and impairment could offer a way of improving understanding of mental distress and oppression on the grounds of mental distress. However, Thomas and Reeve’s theorisation of the different forms of disablism was not readily transferred to the field of mental distress. Thus, tentative definitions of the different forms of disablism in relation to the field of mental distress were created. Perceived impairment type and disablism appear to be interconnected, and one has to acknowledge what kind of perceived impairment type one is focusing on when theorising disability and the different types of disablism.     

Strength in Diversity? Group Heterogeneity in the Mobilization of Grassroots Organizations

Grassroots groups often find that they need to manage issues of diversity along racial/ethnic, class, gender, religious, and/or citizenship lines, among several other axes of difference. There are strong reasons to expect that diversity is a benefit to such groups, especially in terms of coalition breadth and the widely held expectation that internal heterogeneity helps organizations to resolve collective action dilemmas. Nonetheless, a long tradition within sociological research sets out the expectation that group heterogeneity thwarts the formation of collective identities and group solidarity, and therefore limits the potential for effective organizing. With a particular emphasis on groups active in local community‐based organizing since the 1970s, we review studies on a variety of features of group diversity and their effects on mobilizing processes. We find that although researchers remain somewhat divided on these critical issues, the preponderance of evidence suggests that managing diversity poses significant challenges for grassroots organizing efforts. While these challenges may not easily be overcome, we point to a variety of cases in which group differences offered a significant asset to social change efforts.     

Accelerometry analysis of physical activity and sedentary behavior in older adults: a systematic review and data analysis

Accelerometers objectively monitor physical activity and sedentary patterns and are increasingly used in the research setting. It is important to maintain consistency in data analysis and reporting, therefore, we: (1) systematically identified studies using accelerometry (ActiGraph, Pensacola, FL, USA) to measure moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary time in older adults, and (2) based on the review findings, we used different cut-points obtained to analyze accelerometry data from a sample of community-dwelling older women. We identified 59 articles with cut-points ranging between 574 and 3,250 counts/min for MVPA and 50 and 500 counts/min for sedentary time. Using these cut-points and data from women (mean age, 70 years), the median MVPA minutes per day ranged between 4 and 80 min while percentage of sedentary time per day ranged between 62 % and 86 %. These data highlight (1) the importance of reporting detailed information on the analysis assumptions and (2) that results can differ greatly depending on analysis parameters.     

Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship

This study uses a factorial vignette design embedded in an Internet survey to investigate attitudes toward an adult child and parent living together in response to economic hardship. Over half of Americans said the desirability of intergenerational co-residence depends on particularistic aspects of the family, notably the quality of family relationships. Support for co-residence is greatest when the adult child is single rather than partnered. Support is weaker if the adult child is cohabiting rather than married to the partner, although groups with greater exposure to cohabitation make less of a distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Presence of a grandchild does not affect views about co-residence. There is more support for sharing a home when a mother needs a place to live than when the adult child does. Responses to open-ended questions show that individuals invoke both universalistic family obligations and particularistic qualities of family relationships to explain their attitudes.     

A UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION-SCHEDULING MODEL TO MINIMIZE MULTIPLE-EXAMINATION DAYS FOR STUDENTS

Scheduling university examinations is often done with the objective of spreading a student's required examinations over an examination week. That is the equivalent of the problem of minimizing the number of examinations a student must take on any one day. An approach to scheduling exams which relates the problem to the classical assignment problem is discussed. The model developed is a symmetry-constrained assignment model, and the solution method requires use of a branch-and-bound algorithm. Results from application of the algorithm to six semesters of actual data are presented.