A formative evaluation of the recovery public works programme in Blantyre City,Malawi

Public works programmes (PWPs) are popular social protection instruments in the context of chronic poverty but very little has been published in the way of implementation and outcomes of these programmes. This paper presents a formative process and outcome evaluation of the recovery PWP in Blantyre City, Malawi. The evaluation used longitudinal household survey data of PWP beneficiaries, programme records and interview responses from programme staff and community leaders. Largely, the process evaluation findings showed an agreement between actual and planned activities. The outcome evaluation found indications that the PWP community assets offered some potential benefits to the communities, and that PWP wages allowed the beneficiaries to purchase some food. This however, did not translate into more meals per day, nor did the earnings prevent the decline in household assets as expected. Given a plausible PWP theory and high implementation fidelity, the PWP wage rate or number of days was either just enough to smooth participant income, or insufficient altogether, to enable achievement of more distal outcomes.     

Planning for community: understanding diversity in resident experiences and expectations of social connections in a new urban fringe housing estate,Australia

Master-planned estates are a major source of new housing for growing cities. Much research finds these residential developments lack genuine social connections between residents despite marketing of ‘close-knit’ community. Selandra Rise is a new residential development on the urban fringe of Melbourne, Australia. The estate was planned with a focus on community infrastructure and resident well-being. The resident population was younger and more culturally diverse than most other master-planned community case studies. A longitudinal research design was used to explore resident understanding, experiences and needs relating to place-based community. Interviews were conducted with residents before moving to the estate and 9–18 months after moving. Some residents considered community as an amenity provided by the master-planned environment that did not require their social participation. Others aspired to make social connections with neighbours but had varying levels of success. Past experiences which contributed to aspirations for connecting with local community, and the ways that these aims were realised or hindered, are discussed. Understanding diverse resident expectations of community and insights from their lived experience are used to make recommendations for planning new neighbourhoods and designing community development programmes.     

Reconsidering “community liberated”: How class and the national context shape personal support networks

The “community liberated” thesis has been influential in describing contemporary social support systems. Specifically, “community liberated” argues that people do not seek support in their immediate neighborhood but rather entertain a network of far-flung ties to support-providing alters. This paper uses personal network data from six countries – Australia, Germany, the US, Austria, Hungary and Italy – to evaluate this argument and shows that the degree of liberation of one's community is strongly linked to one's socioeconomic status – specifically, one's education level. Additionally, we describe strong country-level heterogeneity in the spatial dynamics of personal support networks and find national contexts to be moderating the effect of education on community liberation, especially in Italy and Hungary, thus suggesting network geographic dispersion to be linked to national economic structures and labor markets. The paper thus elucidates the effect of two different, yet related social contexts on personal networks: the class context and the national context.     

Checkbooks in the Heartland: Change over Time in Voluntary Association Membership

Numerous scholars documented declines in America's social capital through the mid‐1990s but we do not know whether the trend has continued. Further, despite warnings by Robert Putnam and Theda Skocpol that the quality of Americans' voluntary association memberships has also deteriorated—moving from active, “face‐to‐face” memberships to passive, “checkbook” memberships—data have not been available to test this claim. In this article, we use both the Iowa Community Survey and the General Social Survey to explore the changing nature of voluntary association membership between 1994 and 2004. We demonstrate that not only are declines in voluntary association memberships continuing in the new century but there has been a shift in the intensity of voluntary association participation over time. We observe a decline in active membership over time and an increase in checkbook membership over time. These findings provide support for Putnam's claim that checkbook membership is increasing at the expense of more active types of memberships.     

当前我国加强和完善社区管理和服务体系研究

加强和完善社区管理和服务体系具有重要意义。目前,我国街道办事处的职能不明确,条块分割,社区居委会行政化严重,社区公共服务亟待提高和完善,城乡社区服务资源严重不足,社区工作者人数少,工作任务重,社区工作专业化水平不高。因此,要发挥基层政府的主导作用,积极推进街道管理体制创新,健全基层群众自治制度,创新社区管理模式,完善社区公共服务体系,增强街镇和社区实力,推动我国社会工作的社区化。     

铸牢陆地边境民众中华民族共同体意识初探

以中国99个陆地边境口岸为例,在边境界定、边境县人口统计基础上,分析发现,影响边境民众铸牢中华民族共同体意识的因素主要有四个方面:陆地边境区域经济社会发展滞后,边境民众对铸牢中华民族共同体意识的认识有限,跨国民族(含跨境、跨界民族)的民心相通作用发挥不足,周边国家关系深受大国渗透及干涉。铸牢中华民族共同体意识的可行性路径有"五全":一是全覆盖,即中国边境区域全覆盖;二是全小康,即持续推进边境人口全面建设小康社会;三是全方位,即全方位设计符合边境实际的铸牢中华民族共同体意识的内容;四是全辐射,即将铸牢陆地边境民众中华民族共同体意识与周边国家命运共同体意识连接起来;五是全过程,即注重铸牢中华民族共同体意识过程建设,达到文化润疆的目标。根据边境民众对铸牢中华民族共同体意识的认知程度,铸牢中华民族共同体意识的内容包括山河恋、家国情、中国心、邻国缘。     

和平对我们意味着什么？

从普世的层面来说,和平指的是人类作为一个共同体之内部的和谐相处关系状态。在比较具体的层面,可以将和平放置在中国历史、传统、文化,以及现实处境的场域中来做充分注意文化差异性的思考。和平是一种宁静的状态,是一切公共关系、秩序的最高原则。真正、持久的和平必须建立在一种珍视和平价值的文化基础上。人类必须建设一种浓郁的和平文化,使之成为比竞争文化更为基础性的自觉。世界和平是世界人民的诉求,必须由世界人民通过对话、交流、融合建设起来。和平是所有人类的根本需求,是最值得珍视的人类社会状态,保持和平,需要建设和平的文化,也需要国际秩序保障机制的改革建设。     

民族法制的中国经验及其贡献

在中国，平等、团结、互助的社会主义民族关系已经建立并进一步巩固发展，这是实施民族区域自治制度的结果，它为当代国际社会解决民族问题提供了有益的经验。这些经验是对民族团结概念作宪法安排以建构公民认同；以少数民族干部制度作为沟通的制度性安排；自治权作为发展权的制度设置以实现各民族的共同繁荣发展；设立少数民族聚居区的独特安排，保证了民族关系历史与现实的统一；以多元与一体并存的发展形式，保证各民族语言文化的平等共同发展。     

制度嵌入性与地方食品系统——基于Z市三个典型社区支持农业（CSA）的案例研究

针对日益恶化的食品安全现实,部分消费者退出了部分主流食品系统,转而纷纷采用替代性的地方食品系统模式。而在地方食品系统中,社区支持农业(CSA)是其最主要的表现形式。文章对Z市三个典型的社区支持农业模式(即消费者推动型、生产者推动型以及NGO推动型)是如何再嵌入到具体的制度情境中,从而解决食品品质不确定性这一问题进行了论述。同时,对于这三大模式之间的异同也进行了简要的分析。     

社区治理主体问关系:问题、成因与重构

社区治理主体间关系是一个关乎社区治理绩效的重要问题.当前我国社区治理主体间存在着权力冲突、关系混乱的状态,不利于推进社区的和谐与发展.社区治理主体间关系存在问题的直接原因在于社区治理明显的"行政化倾向",而这又根源于我国传统计划经济体制、行政管理体制以及文化观念的影响.要理顺社区治理主体间关系,需要综合平衡各种社区治理...