Ethnic diversity,ethnic threat,and social cohesion: (re)-evaluating the role of perceived out-group threat and prejudice in the relationship between community ethnic diversity and intra-community cohesion

Research frequently demonstrates diverse communities exhibit lower intra-community cohesion. Recent studies suggest there is little evidence perceived ethnic threat plays a role in this relationship. This paper re-examines the roles of ethnic threat and prejudice in the diversity/cohesion relationship. First, we test threat/prejudice as conceptualised in the literature: as mediators of diversity’s effect. Second, we test a reformulation of the roles of threat/prejudice: as moderators of diversity’s effect. Applying multi-level models to cross-sectional and longitudinal data of White British individuals across England and Oldham (a unique English town case-study) we find neighbour-trust lower in diverse communities. However, perceived-threat/prejudice does not mediate this relationship. Instead, we find perceived-threat/prejudice moderate diversity’s impact on neighbour-trust. The result is diversity only reduces neighbour-trust among individuals who already viewed out-groups as threatening. Longitudinal analysis confirms the importance of out-group attitudes in the diversity/neighbour-trust relationship. In diverse communities, residents whose out-group attitudes improve, or worsen, become more, or less, trusting of their neighbours. However, in homogeneous communities, changes in out-group attitudes are not linked to changes in neighbour-trust. We therefore argue and demonstrate that perceived-threat emerges from other societal processes (such as socio-economic precariousness) and it is when individuals who already view out-groups as threatening experience diverse neighbourhoods that local cohesion declines.     

城乡统筹背景下社区居务监督委员会制度的实践考察与反思

社区居务监督委员会制度是现代社区民主监督制度的重要创新。在地方制度文本的阐释中,社区居务监督委员会制度作为立足现代新型社区场域的新生事物,与传统村务监督委员会制度既存在制度意义上的共同性,又在面向对象与内容上具有差异性。通过比较社区居务监督委员会制度的实践,发现虽然这一制度在社区实践中存在不同的样态,但在发展缘起、组织关系、人员构成、运行机制等方面已形成一些共性的经验。因此,在城乡统筹背景下进一步推进社区居务监督委员会制度的发展,既需要立足城乡统筹规划的发展背景,又需要结合社区居务监督委员会制度实践发展的既有进度。要做到注重城乡社区自治的参照性成长传统,切实实现城乡社区建设的统筹性规划,充分考虑政策设计中地区的差异化发展,并在实践中高度重视盘存与整合社区既有同类资源,以期实现发展效益的最大化。     

论知识管理在高校学生工作中的应用

知识管理作为目前全球最热门的研究课题之一,已经越来越受到各类组织的青睐.文章从知识管理的基本属性出发,分析了知识管理对高校学生工作的作用和意义,探索在高校学生工作中运用知识管理的途径和方法,努力构建新时期学生工作的新途径.     

“There Ain’t No Bond in Town Like There Used to Be”: The Destruction of Social Capital in the West Virginia Coalfields1

There is a paucity of research focusing on the circumstances that cause or contribute to a decline in social capital within communities. Furthermore, relatively few researchers employ qualitative methods in their studies of social capital, despite the multidimensional and many‐layered nature of this concept, characteristics that make social capital well suited for qualitative analysis. To address these two gaps in social capital research, I explore the mechanisms that have led to a depletion of social capital in the southern coal‐producing region of West Virginia. I examine whether the coal industry, which has caused bitter conflicts among residents over environmental degradation and union loyalties, has also undermined social capital in the region. My principal data include 40 semi‐structured, face‐to‐face interviews with randomly selected individuals in a coal‐mining town and a demographically similar non‐coal‐mining town in West Virginia. I analyze the experiences of residents in each town, assessing the qualitative differences in community and personal life associated with social capital. I find that the loss of social capital in the coal‐mining community has arisen through a combination of depopulation and the community‐wide conflict that arose when an anti‐union coal company bought out the union coal mine at which many in the community worked, challenging the union identity so engrained in this region.     

How do private entrepreneurs transform local social capital into economic capital? Four case studies from rural Denmark

Bourdieu's (1986) General Theory of the Economy of Practices assumes that people perpetually transform tangible and intangible forms of capital according to certain ‘laws of conversion’. On this background, and combining sociology and micro-economics, we analyze specific strings of capital conversion in time and space. More specifically, we raise the question: How do private entrepreneurs transform local social capital into economic capital? We combine in-depth interviews with four private entrepreneurs in rural Denmark with Prisoner's Dilemma game theory. Thus each of our cases illustrates one of the outcomes in the PD matrix. In this way we explain why only one of the four entrepreneurs succeeds in capitalizing social capital.     

Closeness,loneliness, support: Core ties and significant ties in personal communities

Past research has introduced further distinctions within the strong ties that form our personal communities. This work aimed at a comparison between core and significant ties in terms of their emotional closeness to ego, the social provisions that are exchanged, the relationship maintenance behaviours reported, and ego's loneliness. Measures for all these variables were assessed in a survey study. Evidence for a trade-off between the number of ties and their level of intimacy was obtained such that having more core ties was associated with lower levels of intimacy. Distinct signatures for friends from both sets of ties emerged for friendship maintenance behaviours and social provisions exchanged. Further, social and emotional loneliness were differentially related to the number and the intimacy of core and significant ties.     

转制社区治理结构的制度分析——以广州市天河区A村为个案

以A村作为转制社区研究对象,通过实践观察,发现转制社区存在着公共服务短缺、集体企业转型受阻、居委会工作本末倒置、居民身份认同模糊等问题。从制度分析的视角揭示了不合时宜的制度安排,城乡二元结构的存续、资源依赖关系的强化是制约转制社区与城市社区接轨的主要原因。因而建议改变路径依赖,重构新型的社区治理结构,增加政府有效制度供给。     

Multiculturalism’s categories and transnational ties: the Bangladeshi campaign for independence in Britain, 1971

Accounts of the changing categories operative within British multiculturalism have commonly focused upon the gradual division of identities. Analysing the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War’s effects in Britain, this article suggests that a narrative of categorisations in British multiculturalism must be more complex, sensitive to shifts in time and both bottom-up and top-down factors. Whilst the mobilisation of second-generation British Bangladeshi community organisations in the 1980s firmly established Bangladeshis as a distinct constituency of multiculturalism, the 1971 campaign, conducted in a context less sensitive to the internal diversity of ethnic minorities, contributed to a more partial recognition of Bengalis as distinct. Such categorical shifts, the article suggests, are therefore the result of both domestic and transnational politics. In the British Bangladeshi community, ‘homeland’ political issues, particularly those centred on the relationship between Bangladeshi culture and Islam, have mapped heavily onto British struggles about how the community is framed. The transnational mobilisations, by bringing British Bangladeshis into increased contact with mainstream institutions, have often assisted rather than frustrated integration. Nevertheless, the importation of Bangladeshi political conflict to Britain has at times been resisted by British elites, reflecting again the importance of the dialect between bottom-up and top-down action in producing multiculturalism’s structure.     

Language Use and Violence: Assessing the Relationship Between Linguistic Context and Macrolevel Violence

Scholars have produced a sizable body of research assessing the macrolevel links between immigration and crime. However, researchers have given far less attention to related questions about the effects of language use on aggregate levels of violence. The current study addresses this gap in research by exploring the ways that patterns of language use—specifically, language heterogeneity and Spanish‐language concentration—are related to year 2010 serious violent crime rates for nearly 2,900 census places across the United States. Results of our analysis reveal that linguistic heterogeneity is associated with increased violence and that this relationship is stronger in disadvantaged contexts. In contrast, Spanish‐language concentration appears to be protective against violence and mitigates the violence‐generating effects of structural disadvantage, net of immigration and other macrostructural characteristics. Implications of these findings for research on immigration, communities and crime, and related theoretical perspectives on immigrant revitalization and macrostructural theories of crime are discussed.