Local–global linkages: Challenges in organizing functional communities for ecosocial justice

ABSTRACT

Communities face “glocalized” ecosocial problems. Functional Community Organization bridges local problems with globalized issues, organizes community, and meets need. Models describe glocal linkages and their outcomes, but little is known of processes and challenges in organizing. This article qualitatively explores ecosocial organizing challenges in a Community Technology Center in a US city, which organized around e-waste and digital inequality. Findings indicate that Functional Communities may face challenges in organizing aims due to complexities in balancing need while concurrently addressing global problems and issues in structure, funding, and process. This may be mitigated through communication, focus, self-awareness, and reflexivity.     

A quick reference guide to mental health on university campus: a brief rhetorical analysis of fear

I was teaching rhetoric at the University of Victoria when I received the ‘Quick Reference Guide: Assisting Students in Distress’, part of the university’s initiative to address the increasing problem of mental illness on university campuses. I immediately read a rhetoric that presented mental health as Madness, as something to be feared, a threat to the university, class and the individual. This short article is a brief rhetorical analysis of this Guide, and suggests that we must move beyond fear if we are to begin to address the mental health crisis on university campuses.     

Augmenting the Deliberative Method for Ranking Risks

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) characterized and prioritized the physical cross‐border threats and hazards to the nation stemming from terrorism, market‐driven illicit flows of people and goods (illegal immigration, narcotics, funds, counterfeits, and weaponry), and other nonmarket concerns (movement of diseases, pests, and invasive species). These threats and hazards pose a wide diversity of consequences with very different combinations of magnitudes and likelihoods, making it very challenging to prioritize them. This article presents the approach that was used at DHS to arrive at a consensus regarding the threats and hazards that stand out from the rest based on the overall risk they pose. Due to time constraints for the decision analysis, it was not feasible to apply multiattribute methodologies like multiattribute utility theory or the analytic hierarchy process. Using a holistic approach was considered, such as the deliberative method for ranking risks first published in this journal. However, an ordinal ranking alone does not indicate relative or absolute magnitude differences among the risks. Therefore, the use of the deliberative method for ranking risks is not sufficient for deciding whether there is a material difference between the top‐ranked and bottom‐ranked risks, let alone deciding what the stand‐out risks are. To address this limitation of ordinal rankings, the deliberative method for ranking risks was augmented by adding an additional step to transform the ordinal ranking into a ratio scale ranking. This additional step enabled the selection of stand‐out risks to help prioritize further analysis.     

The Architecture of Chemical Alternatives Assessment

Chemical alternatives assessment is a method rapidly developing for use by businesses, governments, and nongovernment organizations seeking to substitute chemicals of concern in production processes and products. Chemical alternatives assessment is defined as a process for identifying, comparing, and selecting safer alternatives to chemicals of concern (including those in materials, processes, or technologies) on the basis of their hazards, performance, and economic viability. The process is intended to provide guidance for assuring that chemicals of concern are replaced with safer alternatives that are not likely to be later regretted. Conceptually, the assessment methods are developed from a set of three foundational pillars and five common principles. Based on a number of emerging alternatives assessment initiatives, in this commentary, we outline a chemical alternatives assessment blueprint structured around three broad steps: Scope, Assessment, and Selection and Implementation. Specific tasks and tools are identified for each of these three steps. While it is recognized that on‐going practice will further refine and develop the method and tools, it is important that the structure of the assessment process remain flexible, adaptive, and focused on the substitution of chemicals of concern with safer alternatives.     

Ideological polarization in a decentralized party system: Explaining interstate differences

During the past decade scholars have noted growing ideological polarization between Democratic and Republican Party elites in the United States. This trend has occurred in a party system traditionally characterized as decentralized. This paper examines whether the trend towards partisan polarization noted by scholars at the national level has affected state party systems in similar ways. Are some state party systems more polarized than others? The paper uses a classification scheme of state party systems developed by David Mayhew to try to explain interstate differences in partisan polarization. The paper concludes that states with political environments that supported pragmatic and non-ideological traditional party organizations are less polarized in the modern era than states without such environments.     

A Note on Forecaster Discord and Consensus Prediction Error

In using survey data, the cross-sectional dispersion of forecasts is commonly used as a proxy for uncertainty. This article proposes a test for the validity of this practice that is a modification of Amemiya's (1977) procedure for estimating heteroscedasticity functions. To deal with the common practical problem of overlapping forecasts, a moving average specification is employed. The technique is applied to the Livingston forecasts of several variables, and the results suggest a significant positive relationship between cross-forecaster dispersion (a measure of forecaster discord) and the variance of ex post prediction errors.     

Outdoor-based play and reconnection to nature: a neglected pathway to positive youth development

Throughout history, outdoor-based play and the connection to nature have been recognized as important contributors to a happy life and healthy development. At times, however, play and nature have been neglected and viewed as frivolous and wasteful. In the early twentieth century, the first play movement took place to get children out of the factories and back outdoors to play. Now, a century later, factors including twenty-four-hour media,stranger danger, and overscheduling of children's time have resulted in a level of play deprivation that is contributing to a host of social, emotional, and physical problems. This article draws on recent research that shows that as many as 40 percent of America's schools have eliminated or significantly reduced recess. Also, children and adolescents are spending an average of fifty-three hours each week in front of screen media, and only 31 percent of mothers report that their children play outside as frequently as they did as children. The deficits in outdoor-based play that arise from these lifestyles have resulted in significant increases in emotional and psychological disorders, decreased capacity to deal with stressors, and decreased physical fitness. This article describes specific organizations and programs that address the problem of play deprivation and reconnection to the outdoors.     

Too Much Fun: Toys as Social Problems and the Interpretation of Culture

Toys are a frequent subject of contemporary claims concerning social problems. Rooted in our culture's longstanding ambivalence regarding leisure and its concerns about children's vulnerability, claims about troublesome toys also reflect anxiety about children's increased susceptibility to non-familial influences, their growing access to toys, and an expanded toy industry, as well as an active social movement sector. Typically, these claims argue that toys represent undesirable values, and that children who play with the toys acquire those values. Parallel arguments may be found in claims regarding other forms of popular and material culture. Interactionists should be wary of making or accepting these claims, because rather than treating children's play as a topic (or empirical study, such claims locate meaning in objects, rather than actors.