Bridging the divide in urban sustainability: from human exemptionalism to the new ecological paradigm

This paper reviews the main bodies of contemporary urban sustainability theory. From this analysis, two underpinning paradigms of urban sustainability are identified: (1) The ‘Human Exemptionalism Paradigm’ (HEP), which emphasizes the ability of humans to overcome environmental problems—see Urban Sociology, Urban Ecology, Urban Geography, Urban Psychology and Political Economy; and (2) The ‘New Ecological Paradigm’ (NEP), which emphasizes the criticality of ecological limits to human progress—see Urban Metabolism, Energy/Emergy Analysis and Ecological Footprinting. Each of these approaches is critically reviewed, highlighting their main assumptions, theoretical and practical foci. It is argued in the paper that if the related issues of urban sustainability and development are to be progressed, there needs to be: (1) a greater maturation of the NEP approaches, which are ‘relative newcomers’ to the area of urban theory; and (2) greater integration and dialogue between the HEP and NEP approaches to urban sustainability than has hitherto been the case.

Bridging the gap between social work practice and community based welfare agencies

This article argues that social work in the UK needs to renegotiate its relationship with community welfare agencies. It begins by examining what we mean by local community and how welfare needs reflect complex non-linear dynamics unique to the local circumstances. It is argued that these are not always recognised in centralised policy agendas. The article broadly draws a parallel between policy issues for the European Community and for the national state. The drive for both is towards uniformity, which potentially fails to acknowledge the unique circumstances at both the national level between nations and the local level between communities.

The focus of the analysis is the lack of engagement with the subtleties of the local within the arena of social work education and practice. With the opportunity presented by the introduction of a new social work degree in the UK, the authors describe how a social work programme in Liverpool undertook a piece of research with the aim of creating an appropriate place for community welfare agencies in practice placements, the academic curriculum and, ultimately, with the next generation of social work practitioners. Eight welfare agencies within the proximity of Liverpool University, an area known as Toxteth, agreed to participate in the research to investigate what kind of placement module would enable local welfare agencies to engage meaningfully in the social work degree. Out of this process emerged a model for research based curriculum development involving local community agencies and academic institutions. More specifically for Liverpool, it placed the notion of social work's relationship with local community welfare at the heart of professional development for qualifying social workers, paving the way in this region of England for closer links between welfare agencies associated with civil society and professional social workers.     

The development of social work education in Russia since 1995

This article presents the findings of a four-year survey on the development of social work education in Russia from 1995 to the present day. Through a series of questionnaires, interviews and discussions with Russian academics, practitioners and students, the study looks at a variety of issues including the high rate of attrition. It focuses on aspects of students’ practice placements such as the type, length and quality of practice placements, the students’ workload and the supervision provided. It also looks at the contribution that international collaboration has made to the development of social work education in Russia.

The survey concludes that there is a need to enhance the overall package for social workers and raise the status of the profession in order to retain qualified personnel. Longer practice placements which start in the first year and are adequately funded and supervised are seen as the key to retaining new graduates. It concludes that although international projects have made a difference to those participating at the time, it is difficult to disseminate these benefits beyond the immediate region. Now that international funding to Russia has been reduced it is critical that any remaining funding is accurately targeted and properly coordinated.     

试论洪大容的实学思想

朝鲜李朝后期的“北学派”肇始于洪大容,他的实学思想具有开创意义,尤其在宇宙自然观方面,为“北学派”实学奠定了宇宙自然观、世界观的基础。他的“实心实学”也受到当代韩、日两国实学界的关注。在“北学派”实学家中,洪大容最先到了中国,考察了京、热、冀、辽的经济、政治、文化、社会民情、风土文物,最早提出了北学中国的主张,因此,具有重要的文化史意义和开风气的作用。     

英语教学中的文化渗透

英语国家社会文化和汉语文化存在着很大差异,在英语教学中,不但要教会学生英语语言本身,也要传授给学生英语语言中所承载的社会文化内涵,使学生学到真正地道的英语,从而真正达到文化交流的目的。     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Developing a multi-level organization-public dialogic communication framework to assess social media-mediated disaster communication and engagement outcomes

Dialogic communication has long been viewed as vital for effective organization-public relations. Yet, it is under-theorized whether and how organizations’ disaster communication messages may embody dialogic communication principles, and how various dialogic features are associated with different public engagement outcomes on social media. Extending the Organization-Public Dialogic Communication (OPDC) framework to the context of social media-mediated disaster communication, we propose a multi-level framework to assess the dialogic capacity of Facebook messages sent by disaster management organizations during a natural disaster. Three levels of dialogic communication characteristics (i.e., message structure-level, topic-level, and linguistic level) are examined using content analysis and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). Results identified media richness, correcting, and confirming topics as three consistent predictors of public engagement of all types. Meanwhile, there exhibit greater variations regarding how other topical features and linguistic characteristics are related to public’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement during a disaster.     

Moving forward the dialogic theory of public relations: Concepts,methods and applications of organization-public dialogue

Advanced information and communication technologies and social media (Web 2.0) have significantly shaped every aspect of contemporary society since Kent and Taylor’s (1998) proposal of dialogic principles, which later evolved into dialogic theory of public relations. It is now time to move the theory forward. The special section aims to advance the dialogic theory of public relations by reviewing the scholarship in organization-public dialogue to pinpoint critical issues for its development and introducing studies that take the dialogue approach to examine a range of public relations practices in China. In this introduction, we first identify critical issues to be addressed for the development of the dialogic theory of public relations and then introduce the articles included in the section. We conclude by proposing research directions for the theoretical and practical development of the dialogic approach to public relations.     

The coevolution of trade agreements and investment treaties: Some evidence from network analysis

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are expected to promote trade and investment relationships. One critical feature of such agreements is the network, so the multiplex coevolution of RTAs and BITs should be captured by the dynamics of their two networks. Although many studies have examined the roles of RTAs and BITs, most studies do not account for crucial network properties. This study explores how RTAs and BITs coevolve by applying a stochastic actor-oriented model of multiplex network evolution. In particular, we examine the roles of (i) cross-network dyadic interinfluences and (ii) within- and cross-network preferential attachments to discuss the dynamic relationships between RTAs and BITs. The results are as follows. First, our estimation supports cross-network dyadic interinfluences. Countries that sign a BIT are willing to establish an RTA, while those that sign an RTA are reluctant to establish a BIT. Second, concerning preferential attachments, countries prefer to sign BITs with partners that have more RTA and BIT links. However, countries tend to form RTAs with partners that have more BIT links but are reluctant to form RTAs with those that have more RTA links. We discuss possible justifications for these results, including arguments regarding the benefits and costs associated with the formation of RTAs and BITs.     

Does the β-measure make empirical sense? A vignette experiment on humans’ judgment of social dominance

Dominance hierarchies play an important role in governing the social interactions of humans and other species of social animals. In a social group, dominance relations can be inferred from the directed network of matchups between actors. Methodologists have proposed different ways to measure social dominance in directed networks. One such measure, the “β-measure” (van den Brink and Gilles, 2000), emphasizes the quality of defeated opponents in a way that an actor is seen as being more dominant when s/he defeats opponents who are more rarely defeated. While insightful in theory, the validity of the measure in people’s perception remains questionable, considering the cognitive complexity imposed by this measure, compared to a simpler measure that merely counts the number of defeated opponents. We conducted a vignette experiment with human subjects (professional athletes) to test their judgments of the dominance relation in a hypothetical tournament. Fitting our parametric model to peoples’ evaluations in the experiment, we found strong evidence in support of the β-measure: Although, in general, contestants who win more in the tournament are regarded as being more dominant, the contents of the winning records matter, such that those who beat more victorious opponents are further regarded as more dominant than those who defeat less victorious opponents. We also found a gender difference, in that men have a stronger propensity than women to adopt the β-measure when judging social dominance.