Designing Sustainability Indicator Frameworks for Information Flow: A Case Study of B-Sustainable

In the early 1990s, community indicators gained currency as a principal means of turning visions of sustainability into action. In the intervening years, indicator projects have been launched by communities the world over to guide and measure progress towards sustainability, but their effectiveness in serving this purpose has also been questioned. These critiques have focused attention on how information is organized within indicator systems in addition to the content and quality of the information itself. This case study draws on the work of Sustainable Seattle, an early pioneer in developing community indicators through participatory processes, to create a next-generation sustainability indicators system, the B-Sustainable Information Commons. The study aims to make the framework’s design explicit according to its purposes by reflexively analyzing the design in relation to the theory and practice of framework development. The framework’s most ambitious goal is to stimulate “information flows” that will lead to collective understandings of emerging sustainability patterns.     

Creating a Mentally Healthy Community Through the Use of Behavioral Health Indicators

Recent decades have seen the development of robust systems of community health indicators, but those indicator sets tend to have few indicators related to behavioral health. Gauging community behavioral health can be complex, but given the interconnectedness of health and behavioral health and the high social and financial cost of unaddressed behavioral health needs, it is essential to develop meaningful indicators. A community-based participatory research project in Austin, Texas developed behavioral health indicators based on a review of social indicators movements across the globe, existing sets of proposed key indicators of mental health and mental illness, and ongoing community initiatives in Austin relevant to behavioral health. The community behavioral health indicators have been refined through the challenging process of implementing them in the face of competing efforts and imprecise communication about their use. While indicators should always be adapted to suit local conditions, this indicator set should provide a good starting point for researchers and communities to assess and improve the behavioral health of their community.     

Connecting Data to Action: How the Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project Contributes to Better Outcomes for Youth

Community indicator projects have the potential to deliver new knowledge about the quality of life in local communities and drive actions to improve them (Phillips 2003; Holden Social Indicators Research 92:429–448, 2009; Memon and Johnstone 2008). However, the connection between the information produced by community indicator projects and the actions taken to improve conditions in communities remains under-researched (Holden Social Indicators Research 92:429–448, 2009; Hezri and Dovers Ecological Economics 60:86–99, 2006). This is because community indicator projects have mainly been conceptualized as producing information for action rather than as part of an action process (Memon and Johnstone 2008). This paper provides a case study of a community indicator project with an explicit plan to move beyond the data and into action. A review of one of the oldest community indicator projects in the United States, the Santa Cruz County Community Assessment Project (CAP) demonstrates how an action oriented community improvement cycle has contributed to measurable improvements for children and youth in one California County. The paper identifies key elements that were important for turning CAP data into local actions and concludes with lessons for community indicator practitioners and questions for future research.     

A diary study on the role of psychological detachment in the spillover of self-control demands to employees’ ego depletion and the crossover to their partner

This study examined whether daily self-control demands at work deplete one’s self-control resources (i.e., ego depletion) at work and whether these demands have prolonged effects by spilling over to the home domain via a lack of psychological detachment. Moreover, we investigated the daily crossover of ego depletion at home between partners and its influence on spousal interactions. Results of our dyadic diary study revealed that daily self-control demands at work are positively related to ego depletion experienced at work and at home, and negatively related to psychological detachment. Psychological detachment is directly negatively related to ego depletion experienced at home and mediates the positive relationship between self-control demands at work and ego depletion at home. With regard to crossover mechanisms, we found support for a direct positive crossover of ego depletion of the actor to the ego depletion of the actor’s partner. In addition, the ego depletion of the actor’s partner related directly negatively to providing spousal support and positively to spousal conflict and moreover mediated the relation between ego depletion of the actor and both spousal interactions. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Political Participation of Islamists in Syria: Examining the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's Mid-century Democratic Experiment

Accompanying increased participation by Islamists in parliaments across the Middle East in the past two decades, there continues to be a debate as to the sincerity of their commitment to democratic values and systems. Scholars have traditionally pursued the issue through the inclusion/moderation model, or through concepts such as ‘post-Islamism’. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, however, represents a rare case for the study of Islam and democracy because its democratic engagement preceded its later period of violent and ideological radicalism by decades. The group contested elections within the first two years of its formation, meaning that its positions on democracy were ‘moderated’ neither by pluralist political pressures nor by the failure of a previous non-democratic ideology. This article therefore examines the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood's performance in Syria's political processes between 1947 and 1963 as a case study of Islamism and democracy, evaluating substantive indicators of democratic engagement, such as electoral practices, pact formation, policy adaptation and approaches to executive government. Using recent interviews with Brotherhood members, memoirs, archival material and newspapers, the article argues that, during this time, while the Brotherhood was not the most effective political actor, it did demonstrate a reasonably diligent commitment to democracy.     

PREDICTORS OF SELF‐REPORTED GAINS IN A RELATIONSHIP‐BASED HOME‐VISITING PROJECT FOR MOTHERS AFTER CHILDBIRTH

We assessed mothers’ self‐reported gains from a postpartum home‐visiting (HV) project in which home visitors are volunteer mothers from the community. Hypotheses were that gains are positively related to (a) mothers’ felt‐closeness with their home visitor, (b) mothers’ level of sociodemographic risk, and (c) the home visitors’ preproject training in support services for families or children (Professionalism). One hundred sixty‐four clients returned written evaluations of the HV project. Items assessing gains were reduced to two factors: Improved Well‐Being (“Self”) and Improved Infant Care (“Infant”). Repeated measures general linear models, with Gains (Self, Infant) as the repeated measure, and multiple regression analyses evaluated the hypotheses. Across the sample, gains on both factors were moderate, although gain scores were higher regarding Self than for Infant. Results show that (a) Mothers’ felt‐closeness with their volunteer was strongly related to mothers’ gains; (b) high‐risk mothers gained more from the project than did mothers of lower risk, particularly regarding Infant Care; and (c) mothers visited by volunteers who were professionals reported more substantial gains than did mothers visited by volunteers who were not professionals. Findings can help explain variance in mothers’ gains from such projects and could be useful in improving their efficacy.     

Peaceful waters: Community action in sustainable scarce resource management in a rural Zimbabwean setting

I explored community collation approaches to sustainable water management by a rural Zimbabwean community for social justice and equity with inclusivity. Informants were a convenience sample of 27 community dwellers; including villagers (n = 20), community leaders (n = 2), and policy makers (n = 5). They responded to semi-structured interviews regarding their engagement in community action for sustainable water resource management. Thematic analysis of the data yielded themes to suggest diversity in stakeholder interest, the importance of collective community participation, and attending to group cohesion processes. Regular community dwellers appeared to value local oversight and control of the water resource management; while policy makers were more invested in water resource management institution building than the mundane water resource management issues. Sustainable water resource management in rural settings is likely with identifying and bridging any gaps between local user interests and institutional policy interests.     

Exploring the meaning of participation in a community art project: A case study on the Seeming project

In Australia, community art has drawn significant research attention in regard to its potential as a community development strategy. Despite the fact that researchers have presented evidence for the positive developmental outcomes of participation in community art projects, a gap remains in understanding how and why people's participation in a community art project can lead to those positive outcomes. This research explored the meaning of participation in a community art project from the vantage point of the people who experience it. Ten participants were interviewed about their participation in a community art project (The Seeming) held in Bendigo, Australia. Following thematic analyses we identified three themes of how participants viewed their participation in a community arts project. These themes included giving voice to the silenced, creation of social connections and challenging and reproducing stereotypes. Participation means coming together and the findings highlight the potential of community arts projects for promoting the creation of new relationships and new stories about community. However, there are also problematic stories about self and others that were not deconstructed. It is argued that the settings in which different groups join can be meaningfully extended if there is an explicit concern with consciousness raising and deconstruction of normative stories. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Crafting mosque-state relations through community-service work: the case of Yardam mosque in Kazan,Tatarstan

ABSTRACT

This contribution examines a symbiotic relationship between the state, represented by local government officials, and a mosque through a case study of the Yardam mosque in the central Russian region of Tatarstan. What in 2002 began as a community service-based project at a small mosque in the outskirts of Tatarstan’s capital Kazan, grew into a charitable foundation and a rehabilitation centre for the blind and disabled, housed under a newly-built mosque. The foundation is able to maintain its large-scale operations by forging strategic partnerships with local elites – local government officials and entrepreneurs – and by ensuring that the mosque’s leadership supports ‘traditional Islam.’ In turn, the local government showcases the mosque as a positive example of traditional Islam in Tatarstan: peaceful, community-service-oriented, and loyal to the state. As such, Yardam serves as a ‘desirable norm’ for the state and a real-life lesson for religious organisations: to be successful, their vision, mission, and work must be aligned with those of the state. Ultimately, the case of Yardam illustrates how Russia’s religious policy with the focus on ‘tradition’ can shape ‘mosque-state’ relations at the local level.     

Can Community Indicators Live Up to Their Expectations? The Case of the Flemish City Monitor for Livable and Sustainable Urban Development

The City Monitor is a policy instrument and has been used to measure the state of 13 Flemish cities in 2004, 2006 and 2008. The community indicators of the City Monitor provide feedback on the evolution of a multitude of phenomena, and so they represent an opportunity for policy learning about the livability and sustainability of those cities. Indicators simplify the representation of societal problems and in that sense they are helping the communication between city authorities and their stakeholders. In this article we also focus on two innovative characteristics of the co-design methodology of the City Monitor. First of all, indicators were constructed on the basis of a normative vision about urban sustainability. We argue that a sustainability framework can give value added to map vital signs of the quality of life in Flemish cities. Secondly, the City Monitor was being developed with the participation of about 200 experts, coming from city governments and other administrations, civil society and academic world. It is our argument that the participatory approach fosters the use of community indicators and generates interesting side effects. As a third argument, we indicate the importance of the attitude of city authority people for its implementation within the city organisation. The City Monitor is certainly meant as an input for urban policy debate about the quality of life in the major Flemish cities. Does it live up to its expectations? And will the vision and indicators on urban sustainability stir up the debate about urban sustainable development?     

The Social Conditions for Successful Peer Education: A Comparison of Two HIV Prevention Programs Run by Sex Workers in India and South Africa

Peer education is a community-based intervention being implemented worldwide as an approach to HIV prevention. However, its results are inconsistent, with little consensus on why some projects succeed while others fail. Considering peer education as an ‘intervention-in-context’, we systematically compare the context and the implementation of two peer education interventions run by sex workers, one in India and one in South Africa, which produced contrasting outcomes. In so doing, we aim to identify key factors in the projects’ successes or failures that may inform future peer education efforts. The Indian project’s relative success was facilitated (1) by a more stable and supportive social, material and political context, and (2) by a community development ethos which devoted significant resources to sex workers’ involvement, ownership and empowerment, as opposed to a biomedical approach which marginalised sex workers’ concerns. We conclude with lessons learned and implications for current trends in peer education.     

Capital social et vie associative de quartier en contexte multiethnique: Quelques réflexion à partir de recherches Montréalaises

This article employs the dichotomy between bonding and binding social capital put forward by Robert Putnam to query some of the assumptions underlying calls to use social capital as a public policy tool in the immigration field: Drawing on this concept to revisit a series of studies on associational life in Montreal’s multiethnic neighborhoods, the author highlights the importance of the immigrant’s role in neighborhood associational life as well as the malaise provoked by certain immigrant associational networks—expressions of bonding social capital—among local, municipal, and community bodies. Not all types of immigrant social capital are equally valued at the local level.     

Islam as a new social actor in Italian cities: mosque controversies as sites of inclusion and separation

Most Muslim immigrants oscillate in the public sphere between three levels in the public sphere: the local, the national and the transnational. While the national and transnational levels continue to be marked by a strong degree of conflictuality, it is at the local level where new integration strategies are implemented and ‘social capital’ is acquired. The comparison between two similar debates over the construction of a mosque in the Italian cities of Bologna and Florence with opposite outcomes reveals the importance of the local dimension in the construction of a national Islam and the significance of appropriate participatory tools in the inclusion of Muslims in the local public sphere. In particular, the article highlights the link between the legitimacy of Islam in the fabric of the city and the degree of openness of the Islamic community. It also illustrates how overcoming the reluctance and fear of different actors can allow citizens to assimilate the idea of ‘a mosque in the city’ and not just of ‘a mosque for Muslims’. The article describes how the use of appropriate tools, particularly of participatory decision-making, has made it easier for marginalised or politically excluded individuals to take steps towards full citizenship and for the Muslim community to emerge as a legitimate social actor in the local public sphere.     

Navigating the insider-outsider hyphen: A qualitative exploration of the acculturation challenges of Aboriginal athletes pursuing sport in Euro-Canadian contexts

ObjectivesThe purpose of this project was to explore the acculturation challenges of Aboriginal athletes (14–26 years) from Canada as they moved off reserves to pursue sport within non-Aboriginal (Euro-Canadian) communities. The project was also aimed at contributing to the acculturation literature in sport psychology through an Indigenous decolonizing methodology.DesignUniversity academics partnered with Aboriginal community researchers from one reserve to facilitate an Indigenous decolonizing methodology rooted in practices from the local culture. The project was articulated as a form of cultural sport psychology.MethodsMandala drawings were used to facilitate conversational interviews with 21 Aboriginal athletes about their experiences relocating off reserves and the acculturation challenges they faced as they attempted to pursue sport within Euro-Canadian contexts. A local Indigenous version of an inductive thematic analysis was then conducted.ResultsThe acculturation challenges of Aboriginal athletes coalesced into two major themes: (a) culture shock (which occurred in relation to the host culture), and (b) becoming disconnected from home (which occurred in relation to the home culture). These themes illustrated how the athletes’ sense of identity and place were challenged and changed, as they (re)negotiated meaningful positions for themselves in and between two cultural realities.ConclusionThis project centralized a culturally resonant mode of knowledge production embracing local Aboriginal ways of knowing. This approach facilitated deeper insights into athletes’ acculturation challenges, which contextualized the complexity and fluidity of the acculturation process.     

Faith in community and communities of faith? government rhetoric and religious identity in Urban Britain

This paper examines the concept of community and the discourse around it in the context of the religious diversity in urban areas in England. Sociology has a long history of working with, deconstructing, and at times rejecting the usefulness of the term ‘community’ and many scholars have in the context of postmodernity preferred to talk about processes of identity formation and networking. Constructions of identity in which faith affiliation plays a salient role are probably becoming more common and more politically significant. However, an integrated theory of the relationship between religion, community, ethnicity, and identity remains to be developed and this paper attempts some tentative first steps.

In their search for ‘feel good’ terminology, politicians in democracies such as the UK have often turned to the language of community and continue to do so. Faced with the task of managing local conflicts and delivering services which are responsive to the demands of users, contemporary governments have increasingly adopted communitarian positions and the language of social capital. In recent years in the UK, religion has moved up the political agenda and an official discourse and policy initiatives structured around the notion of ‘faith communities’ have emerged.

The New Labour government has indeed put its faith in community and sought to co‐opt communities of faith into its ‘project’. However, it is far from clear that there is a coherent understanding of the notion of faith community or of the two words that make up the phrase. One may question whether the government discourse resonates with the understandings of community and identity in the major faith traditions found in the contemporary city. An examination of some of the official discourse set alongside the changing and conflicting identities of some ‘faith communities’ in London and other British cities suggests that the British State's current simplistic approach to engaging with religious diversity is an inadequate basis for policy development.     

Conceptualizing ‘social capital’ for health promotion in small local communities: a micro‐qualitative study

This paper reports on a micro‐qualitative case study of peoples' experiences of local community life in a south‐east English town. This material is used as the basis for a critical discussion of the suitability of Putnam's notion of social capital as a conceptual tool for the design and evaluation of ‘community strengthening’ policies and interventions. The study was motivated by a concern that too much debate about social capital has been conducted by academics and policy‐makers in a top‐down manner, with inadequate attention to the realities of life in the local communities that they refer to. Three‐hour semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 37 residents in two less affluent wards in our town of interest. Informants—half men and half women, and spread across the 15–75 age group—were encouraged to talk about their personal experiences of local community life. Interview findings are presented within the ‘norm’ categories of trust, neighbourliness and reciprocal help and support, and the ‘network’ categories of participation in informal networks, voluntary groupings and community activist groupings. Our case study points to a number of ways in which Putnam's concept needs to be refined if it is to inform ‘community strengthening’ policies and interventions in England. Far more notice needs to be taken of the role played by informal networks of friends and neighbours in the construction of local community life. Attention also needs to be given to the complex and shifting geographical spread of peoples' significant social networks. Putnam's conceptualization of cohesive local communities and his unitary notions of trust and local identity may also be unduly essentialist. In our particular communities of interest, they failed to capture the fluidity of local community norms and networks in a rapidly changing society. They also failed to do justice to the extent to which social distinctions—such as age, gender, ethnicity and housing tenure—shape and constrain the way in which people create, sustain and access social capital. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Web Waves and Positive Resonance in the Community in Milan

This article describes a project for the prevention of substance abuse and the development of community with an ecological approach. Each stage of the project, which targeted youths in a suburban area in the north of Milan, involved ICT and the design and implementation of a Web infrastructure open to the local community. A cyberspace of integration of contexts has been realised through participation practices to promote dialogical environments and open relations. The premises underlying its approach, social transformation and the margins of its area of reference, the stages of the project and an interpretation of its outcomes for the youths themselves and the wider local community are presented.     

政策执行偏差严重程度对公众地方政府责任判断的影响机制

为探讨地方政府政策执行偏差严重程度对公众地方政府责任判断的影响机制。采用问卷法对728名社会公众进行调查,结果显示：（1）公众地方政府有意性判断和公众地方政府可控归因中介了政策执行偏差严重程度与公众地方政府责任判断之间的关系。（2）政策执行偏差严重程度还通过公众地方政府有意性判断→公众地方政府可控归因的中介链作用于公众地方政府道德责任判断。并对研究的实践启示进行了讨论。     

Education of Foreign Children in Japan: Local Versus National Initiatives

Immigration has long been a controversial subject in Japan, with the country’s historic aversion to foreign populations well noted. This article seeks to discuss recent developments in Japanese immigration policy, looking specifically at how both local governments and the national government address education issues for foreign children. Examining the specific case of Kawasaki City’s foreign student educational policies in detail, this article compares local initiatives to national policy developments, arguing that Kawasaki has been a pioneer in many cases and that the national government has ultimately adopted similar resolutions. The national government, for its part, has been slow to take up issues addressing immigrants, trailing more progressive cities like Kawasaki, but has slowly been making efforts to improve foreign student education. In the broader sense, this article argues two additional points: that largely ethnically homogenous countries like Japan are no longer able to completely ignore their immigrant populations and that highly centralized states are moving slowly toward empowering their local governments.     

The Kurt Cobain Suicide Crisis: Perspectives from Research,Public Health,and the News Media

The suicide of rock star Kurt Cobain in 1994 raised immediate concerns among suicidologists and the public at large about the potential for his death to spark copycat suicides, especially among vulnerable youth. The Seattle community, where Cobain lived and died, was especially affected by his sudden death. An overview of Cobain's life and death is presented and various crisis center and community-based interventions that occurred are discussed. Preliminary data collected from the Seattle Medical Examiner's Office and from the Seattle Crisis Center to assess the potential impact of Cobain's death on completed suicides and the incidence of suicide crisis calls are presented. The data obtained from the Seattle King County area suggest that the expected “Werther effect” apparently did not occur, but there was a significant increase in suicide crisis calls following his death. It is hypothesized that the lack of an apparent copycat effect in Seattle may be due to various aspects of the media coverage, the method used in Cobain's suicide, and the crisis center and community outreach interventions that occurred. The Cobain suicide and the role of media influence on copycat suicides are further discussed in commentaries from public health and news media perspectives.