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This paper considers how mediated sport's promotional culture works to hail us in interlinked gender, fan, and consumer identities. The paper draws on findings from a recent series of studies to illustrate how an emergent dirt theory of narrative ethics helps move beyond Althusser's notion of ideological hailing to understand the dynamics of power and contraints at play in strategic sporting narratives that stereotype men and women and their roles as fan and consumer. The discussion focuses on the dynamics of narrative hegemony and the prospects and limits of social change in the ethics that undergird sport-related narratives in consumer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of place branding in urban development has more importance than ever. Nevertheless, little attention is given to how place branding strategies are interrelated with planning, especially in post-socialist urban development. The purpose of this paper is to critically explore experimental educational projects conducted through cooperation between academia and local governments in Serbia, perceived as a simulation of strategic planning and place branding. We argue that educational projects hold power to create additional value in place and contribute to place branding by using a variety of planning and design instruments as a means of transformative spatial and social change both for communities and students as future planners. This paper uses theoretical exploration to develop reflective structural elements and a set of criteria essential to interlink strategic planning and place branding, thus providing a unique apparatus for the evaluation of educational projects. By emphasizing the possibilities and limitations of educational projects, the paper contributes to the theoretical advancement of place branding and strategic planning interlink and sheds light on the effects that those projects may have on spatial development and governance of the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper investigates and introduces the idea of development discourse and women empowerment questions in Sindh. Based on the investigation and analysis of the writings by Sindhi intelligentsia in the Sindhi print media and book publications that present the discourse of development, progress, prosperity, and social change in Sindh, in this study paper we engage with and call attention to the question of women empowerment. By integrating women empowerment and rights in this paper, we aim to set the research agenda and draw attention to gender and development theory and practice. In a way, this paper takes up and supports the gender-sensitive research approach to development discourse, public policy, and planning in Pakistan. It prioritizes gender and women's empowerment framework in research, teaching, and development practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue lays out the key themes and arguments across the five research papers and Viewpoint. Foremost, we highlight how by bringing this research across diverse Asian cities together into one special issue, the work reveals how water is foundational to the city. To illuminate how our work on water urbanisms in Asia has the potential to 'rethink the way in which cities operate' (Xiao, 2016, 3367), this special issue examines the central paradigms of 'water and the city' by emphasising the 'water work' of multiple actors, to identify possibilities and opportunities, in addition to 'governance failures' in the production of the urban form (Bakker et al., 2008). In particular, these papers provide compelling evidence that to comprehend fully the future of Asian cities in the Anthropocene, it is necessary to understand their related topographies, their water systems and, also, their practices and politics of water distribution. These contributions are thus well positioned to contribute to engaged debates in geography and planning on development, water and the 'urban condition' as linked to environmental change and social justice, through a range of disciplinary approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how a multimodal narrative methodology can open a creative, relational and safe space, in which refugee-storytellers negotiate their positioning within racialised power imbalances. Personal narratives that facilitate storytellers' agency have a potential to empower and elicit social change. When refugees are denied their right to claim/speak/act, the act of narrating becomes a vehicle for social change. Creative workshops delivered in the Calais 'Jungle' refugee camp in 2016–17 enabled us to co-construct a relational space with refugee participants, based on the principle of ethical hesitancy. In this paper we argue that the relational space offered possibilities for refugee storytellers to resist and challenge the representation of refugee stories, whilst giving rise to ethically important moments. These moments provide important perspectives on how practitioners and researchers can use narrative processes in creating spaces of resistance and social change with refugee participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical history of the city of Rijeka is a rich treasure trove of events, celebrities and valuable innovations in the field of healthcare. The historical development of Rijeka was largely determined by her geopolitical position as a border town with a multicultural population, marked by strong conflicts of interest and numerous identity turmoil. The great exodus of the domicile population of Italian nationality after World War II has significantly changed the social picture of the city. Among many of such esuli (immigrants) were brothers Giovanni (b. 1932) and Abdon (b. 1933) Pamich, whose lives are reminiscent of the fate of many displaced people from Rijeka who were forced to live in exile after the war. After leaving their hometown during the formative years of their childhood, they had successful careers in Italy in the fields of medicine and healthcare. The older brother Giovanni became a successful surgeon and the younger Abdon a psychologist. Along with his positions as the head of general surgery at the Monfalcone and Gorizia Hospitals, Giovanni Pamich was teaching at the University of Trieste. Abdon Pamich collaborated with the best Italian tennis players in the field of sports psychology, and was a psychologist for the Italian handball team. They both practiced athletics, and Abdon Pamich won the silver medal in speed walking at the 1958 European Championships in Sweden and the gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In addition to emphasizing the achievements of the two brothers in the field of medicine, this paper also addresses the position of the migrant, which is highlighted in Robert Covaz’s book “Abdon Pamich, memorie di un marciatore (Rome, 2016), an exciting biography of an emigrant from Rijeka. The paper also explores the concept of thematizing the limits of differences and experiences of migration of Rijeka residents facing the existential issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a model of delivering live interlingual subtitling (LIS) as a formal translation and interpreting (T&I) service in Korea, replacing the existing model of combining stenographic transcriptions with simultaneous interpreting. The model proposes that these two processes, currently delivered by two different professional groups, should be converged using respeaking technology. As a means to supply relevant talent, the paper proposes that formal interpreting and translation schools should include respeaking using automatic speech recognition technology (ASR) as part of their training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Commons" has been a concept crucial to movements opposing twenty-first century capitalism, and nowhere more so than in the field of communication, where it has underpinned critique of the commodification of digital networks. Yet the ideas about commons articulated at the turn of the millennium by anti-capitalist movements today show signs of exhaustion and disintegration. One reason is their failure to adequately reckon with the power of the modern state and its role as an organizational hub of contemporary capitalism. Starting with a recent exchange on this topic between peer-to-peer computing theorists Michel Bauwens and Jose Ramos and political economist Graham Murdock, this paper looks back at the alter-globalist movement in which contemporary "commonism" incubated and at why such analysis often circumvented the issue of the state. The shortfall in that position is demonstrated by an examination of how deeply state power was involved in the collapse of alter-globalism, and in the rise of the platform capitalism that appropriated many of its experiments in digital commoning. The role the digital pseudo-commons created by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other platform capitalists played in both the immediate successes and longer-term failure of occupy movements, and in the subsequent rise of neofascism and right wing populism, is reviewed. The paper then discusses how, in the aftermath of these setbacks, contending models of left populism and communizing riots mutate or repudiate earlier notions of commons. It concludes by reviewing the possibilities, positive and negative, for the relation of commonists, populists, and communards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research examining the use of Reflective Structured Dialogue in undergraduate classrooms shows that classes that are intentionally designed to invite reflection, curiosity, and connection across difference increase student engagement, comprehension of course content, and willingness to entertain ideas at variance with native worldviews. This paper outlines the principles of dialogic classrooms, including their basis in Reflective Structured Dialogue, an approach to conflict transformation. Moving to a Ph.D. core seminar as a case study, the paper then considers the ways in which conflict management principles--especially the intentional crafting of spaces to hold relationships in curiosity, openness, and vulnerability--can shape what is possible in human relationships. Students who are graduates of dialogic classrooms can shape spaces in professional and other social settings, inviting productive discourse that works against the flattening effects of polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks are one of the main carriers of information diffusion. Changes in social ties will affect the quality of Device-to-Device (D2D) communications especially the video transmission. For further improving the communication utility of users, it is of great significance to effectively integrate D2D communications and social networks. To this end, this paper utilizes a stochastic approach to modeling and analysis of dynamic social ties in D2D collaborative video transmission. Specifically, a stochastic mathematical model is established and analyzed, in which the combined effect of many factors such as interest, geographical position, career, social class, value system, and interaction is considered. Based on the Brownian motion theory, the strength of social ties among social individuals with time is studied. Next, the reliability function and adaptive parameter estimation are performed. Finally, some examples are conducted to illustrate the main results of this paper, from which one can see that the proposed model has a good predictive ability of the changing trend of social ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is investigate the influence of shopping malls, which are the samples of modern life and consumerism, on local culture. In this paper one of the qualitative methods, an ethnographic method, is used. One of the biggest shopping malls in the World, Dubai Mall in the UAE was taken as an example. Semi structured questions, which are about their idea on Dubai Mall, were asked to 150 interviewers, who are Emirati citizens. This paper shows that shopping malls have changed the routine of the traditional life and citizens' behavior in Dubai. The result of the study demonstrates even very conservative and traditional societies have changed at the age of globalization. The shopping malls have penetrate the daily life of Emiratis and guide them in accepting of new identities and attitudes which represent Western culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper integrates some of Anthony F. C. Wallace's most important ideas about culture change with some of Melanie Klein's best-known work on psychologically primitive (or early) mental states. The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, viewing what Wallace termed 'revitalization movements' through a Kleinian lens reveals that such movements are often far less adaptive and therapeutic than Wallace's work generally indicates.1 Second, and more importantly, viewing these movements from a Kleinian perspective highlights the parallels between them and contemporary religious movements frequently described as 'fundamentalist,' especially Christian, Islamic, and Jewish movements.2 In the course of developing these arguments, the paper suggests that although the works of Wallace and Klein now appear dated, scholars interested in understanding new movements motivated by a felt need to purify and revitalize what some perceive as a corrupted culture might profit from revisiting and synthesizing these works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to experimental geographies in the context of scientific, research‐based institutions. This focus is under‐explored but increasingly under siege in a "post‐truth", "alternative facts" and "fake news" era in the US and UK. I respond to the current cultural, political and social challenges presented to institutions against this backdrop, arguing for a solution to these challenges: experimenting with institutions. The paper first outlines how experiments have recently become used in experimental geographies. The paper then applies these understandings of experiments to the context of institutions, arguing for engaging with new, key situations rather than necessarily with key "experts". The paper lastly explores one example of such experiments, termed "artist‐led institutions", and their merits for addressing the challenges outlined. I argue these artist‐led institutions demonstrate potential solutions to current institutional difficulties through expanding engagements to include more practitioners and groups rather than just "experts", as part of a turn towards recognising more forms of expertise, and their value for wider conversations. By engaging with wider groups assembled around key situations rather than "experts", artist‐led institutions open up the value of conversations as part of the process of knowledge‐making, rather than solely focusing on the production of outputs in pursuit of certified expertise characteristic of scientific, research‐based institutions. In doing so, the paper contributes to a discussion involving experimental geographies and institutions which may yet become increasingly audible in an age of uncertainty, as 21st Century challenges unfold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Irrefutably, many countries of the developing world continue to exhibit economic investments culture primarily premised on maximizing profit and accumulating wealth for oneself. Through this phenomenon, inequality has been glaring, with rich individuals becoming richer, while the majority poor continue to languish in poverty and their human dignity being highly compromised. South Africa as a country battling with pernicious legacies of apartheid presents such a good example. The country experiences a high level of gender inequality, poverty, a culture of violence, and unemployment of women and youth. In the awake of these predicaments, we need to question the dominant exorbitant profit-making investment approaches that undermine people's dignity, freedom and self-value. This paper presents findings from social enterprises to gain insights and lessons on doing business differently. The findings are presented using a conceptual framework abbreviated as 'SISTER'; S – Service; I – Integrity; S – Sustainability; T – Teamwork; E – Excellence; R – Respect. The study emphasizes that, investing in people has to take a paradgim shift by adopting distinctive models aganist the current capitalistic philosophies. The paper emphasis on focusing on peoples' values, capabilities, talents and cultural richness to generate wealth for societal and individual development, and thus lessening the ramifications associated with self-centredness of economic investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a proliferation in the use of the concept of prefiguration to describe and understand many of the protest and social change movements of the past decade. However, there are key aspects of the concept that remain unexplored. In this paper I consider telos and justice, and unveil a temporal paradox arising from the thinking behind prefiguration. Rather than this temporal paradox of prefiguration being the undoing of the concept, it does in fact have the potential to be its strength. The purpose of this paper is to assert, by drawing on Derrida's notion of the impossibility of justice, that the temporal paradox of prefiguration is not something to be resolved but instead is to be foregrounded and navigated. I use research from a food sovereignty collective in the north of Spain to offer an illustration of a prefigurative economic politics that embraces Derrida's justice‐as‐an‐impossibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explain how norms change in the social world through agent-based modelling. Norms are rules, the roots of which lie in society to guide people to perform expected behaviours. Norms exist as sui generis in societies; however, they are improved and transformed by individuals in time. While norms are rather salient for some behaviours, they are subtle for others. The plurality of norms is one of the reasons for this ambiguity. Norm plurality occurs in societies where groups that have different norms for the same behaviour live together and interact constantly. Beyond that, norm differences are the basis on which different groups are defined. How do people change the norms that are already adopted, or how do adopted norms shift to opposite ones? This paper tries to explain norm shifts when there is more than one norm for a specific behaviour in an artificial society in accordance with certain factors: the minority/majority group's norm, group pressure, and loyalty of the individual. Agent-based modelling is a useful tool to understand the social world and create an artificial one. Agents shift their norms to interact with other agents. Results of the simulations show that minority or majority, group pressure, and loyalty are highly effective in norm shifting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the comparative analysis of two crime novels: Tito je umro (2011; Tito is Dead) by Mirjana Novaković and Sibir (2011; Siberia) by Vladimir Kecmanović. Both novels offer a vivid cross-section and criticism of modern Serbian society. The aim of the paper is to present these stylistically diverse crime novels as potent catalysts for necessary social change. The theoretical framework of the paper relies on the political insights of Gordić Petković, Veljković, Sotirović, and Spasić, as well as critical approaches by Messent, Clandfield, Simpson, and Glover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of social innovations for successfully meeting social, economic, political and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century is recognized not only by stakeholders on the local, regional and even national level but also within the Europe 2020 strategy and on a global scale. However, despite this growing awareness, for a long time a sustained and systematic analysis of social innovation, its theories, characteristics and impacts was missing. In this setup, the paper seeks to contribute to a common theoretical ground in social innovation theory by elaborating on a comprehensive concept of social innovation grounded in social theory and discusses consequences for social innovations in the urban context. The paper starts with an outline of theoretical foundations of social innovation and investigates the relationship between social innovation and social change. It then discusses the consequences of a comprehensive concept of social innovation for the local level, highlighting its multi-sectoral perspective. Social innovation ecosystems are introduced as an emerging theoretical approach and heuristic model especially for urban social innovation. Here, results of a global mapping conducted by the international research project SI-DRIVE provide empirical insights into the diversity and current state of social innovation initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing recognition that "human development" frameworks, such as the Capabilities Approach (CA) with its emphasis on the promotion of justice, offer promise for guiding efforts aimed at enhancing mental wellbeing. This article explores challenges that might arise when there is a need to arbitrate among the competing demands of different parties in their efforts to enhance capabilities. Particular tensions can arise when the efforts of particular individuals to enhance their capabilities exert pressure on scarce resources, or threaten the safety and security of people living in precarious environmental contexts. Consideration is given to the need for "an ethos of restraint" to balance the consumption of resources aimed at facilitating human development on the one hand, with the need to promote environmental justice on the other. The paper highlights research that has investigated how environmental factors can impact on mental wellbeing, including rapid urbanization, climate change related issues (such as weather systems, drought, food insecurity and rising sea-levels), and access to "green/blue spaces". As such, the paper explores the important links that can exist between people and the ecosystems in which they live (including the way in which particular cultural beliefs and practices of indigenous groups can be tethered to the land). Elinor Ostrom's "design principles", derived from her work investigating the sustainable use of pooled resources, are presented as a helpful means of assisting members of communities to negotiate and apply "functioning constraints", which can promote environmental justice whilst not compromising efforts aimed at promoting mental wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at organizations working on issues of sex work/sex trafficking in Chicago as a strategic action field (SAF): a space where actors engage in collective action with a shared understanding of the field's purposes, rules, and norms. Through analysis of SAFs, scholars focus on how actors intersect, manifesting in a context that simultaneously allows for reproducing the status quo, as well as producing social change. Using qualitative interviews with members of this particular SAF in Chicago, I demonstrate how actors in the field use the SAF concept of social skill to control the policy field. The challenger organization in particular uses social skill to exploit exogenous shocks to their advantage, pursuing legitimacy through their alignment with human service nonprofits. This paper concludes with a consideration of the use of SAF theory to dynamic fields such as sex work/sex trafficking, conceptualizing how field-level social change may occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper appraises the social security system in India with the aim to see its effectiveness in reducing vulnerabilities and destitution among older people. With the advent of factors of social change like modernization, migration, change in family system and now globalization, have reduced the traditional informal systems of social security. Levels of awareness about various social security measures and issues related to accessing and availing them form part of the discussion in the paper. The paper highlights certain case studies to depict the deplorable conditions of older people in poverty who have not been able to avail benefits of government services. Using secondary data, gaps in existing social security system are put forth. Lastly, suggestive interventions have been presented so as to ensure rightful share of senior citizens on social resources and protection of their well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage relies, to a large extent, on notions of endangerment and consequential attempts to arrest or reverse processes of loss and change. The papers in this special issue engage critically with this underlying orientation, exploring the social and cultural work which is produced through efforts to avert loss. In doing so, the papers also point towards alternative ways of valuing objects, places and practices which are not solely determined by notions of endangerment and risk. We suggest three general themes which connect critical investigation of these issues across the varied natural and cultural heritage contexts through which these papers work – the inevitability of loss; the politics of loss; and the potential in loss. These themes have significant implications not only for the future of natural and cultural heritage preservation, conservation and management but also in mapping out future research directions for critical heritage studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use of film as a method to explore themes of change and loss which emerged during the recording of archaeological features at Orford Ness, UK. Owned by the National Trust, Orford Ness is an exposed shingle spit off the Suffolk coast recognised for its natural and cultural heritage. The research discussed in this paper engaged with a community archaeology project which has been recording features on the shingle spit as they are altered and erased by erosion and other coastal processes. The authors experimented with film as a method to investigate the work being undertaken by practitioners and volunteers in this dynamic landscape. We conclude that, within interdisciplinary heritage research, experimenting with film as a method facilitates the representation of embodied practices and exposes processes of meaning-making. We frame our discussion about the active production of meaning through an analysis of the way that film engaged with qualities articulated in the National Trust's Spirit of Place statement for the site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a critical approach to understanding the social and cultural 'work' of natural heritage conservation, focussing specifically on ex-situ biodiversity cryopreservation practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Frozen Ark, a UK-based 'frozen zoo' aiming to preserve the DNA of endangered animal species, the paper situates the development of non-human animal biobanks in relation to current anxieties regarding the anticipated loss of biodiversity. These developments are seeding new global futures by driving advances in technologies, techniques and practices of cloning, de-extinction, re-wilding and potential species re-introduction. While this provides impetus to rethink the nature of 'nature' itself, as something which is actively made by such conservation practices, we also aim to make a contribution to the development of a series of critical concepts for analysis of ex-situ and in-situ natural heritage preservation practices, which further illuminates their roles in building distinctive futures, through discussion of the relationship between conservation proxies, biobanking and biocapitals. We suggest that questions of value and the role of future making in relation to heritage cannot be disassociated from an analysis of economic issues, and, therefore, the paper is framed within a broader discussion of the place of ex-situ biodiversity cryopreservation in the late capitalist global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s in Poland, many young people dreamed of having western clothes. They were considered the most fashionable, created/signified the social position and allowed teenagers to "feel cool". On the basis of the ethnographic research, the paper presents the sources of inspiration for the clothing choices and the deeper meaning of fashion in those times. Thus, this text is not only a description of teenage clothing choices, but most of all, it is a story of resistance and cultural changes among teens which led to the collapse of socialistic culture. By referring to postcolonial theories, it is shown how international influences impacted everyday decisions and how they enabled the success of consumerism in Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has contributed important insights into the political dynamics inherent in the process of making and showing participatory videos. As a research method and an instrument for social change, participatory video has both potential and limitations for overturning the power dynamics embedded within research and in development processes. This paper focuses on experiences of incorporating participatory video in land management projects in four countries in Africa. Along with other participatory methods, the videos represented an effort to include community perspectives and objectives into the research process. Analysis of participatory video has largely focused on examining the tensions and contradictions involved in the process of making participatory videos. There has been less focus on the content of the videos themselves and what it might suggest for empowerment, voice and representation. This paper attempts to address this gap by examining the implications of the narratives that emerge in five different videos. On the surface, the participants appear to repeat dominant national and global narratives about land degradation. However, the fact that farmers present themselves as experts on these topics and the ways in which they appropriate and reconfigure the dominant narratives, can be seen as an act of empowerment. In this way, they preclude the need for external intervention on how to manage their resources. This paper focuses on experiences of incorporating participatory video in land management projects in four countries in Africa. Along with other participatory methods, the videos represented an effort to include community perspectives and objectives into the research process. This paper examines the implications of the narratives that emerge in five different videos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networked information technologies have brought about extensive changes in the production and distribution of creative cultural work. Inspired by the widespread success of Free-Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS), many proponents of open access advocate reconceptualisation of existing legal protection frameworks in creative works. This paper traces the attempted appropriation of Creative Commons (CC) licences by filmmakers and the consequent formation of an Open Content Filmmaking (OCF) movement. OCF proponents articulated notions of technology-enabled transformation in content creation and distribution, similar to those that inspire the visions of FLOSS and CC advocates. It examines how these creators attempted to address the relevance of openness to their own activities and develop practical open models for filmmaking. Difficulties experienced in establishing viable livelihoods with OCF (as FLOSS developers had done), created tensions between those with a pragmatic or more ideological orientation. The initial vision of a consistent OCF movement, enabled by CC, thus became fragmented. In contrast to FLOSS, where many actors were able to find ways to develop sustainable careers within the industry while contributing to Open Source Software, such generic strategies have not readily emerged for OCF. Drawing insights from Sørensen's (1996) Social Learning framework (Learning technology, constructing culture. Sociotechnical change as social learning: University of Trondheim, STS working paper 18/96) in this paper we untangle the elaborate but often messy strategies deployed by Open Content Filmmakers (OCFs) and trace the multiple and often partial ways they have worked out to utilise CC elements and tools in producing, monetising and distributing their films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries, including Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have included art subjects in their core curriculum. Using the theory of governmentality as a critical lens to investigate the intricate power–knowledge system in relation to curriculum, arts and pedagogy, this paper makes a comparative document analysis of two contemporary arts curricula for children aged 5–6 years—the Beijing Kindergarten Happiness and Development Curriculum in the arts learning area (upper class in kindergarten), and the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (Foundation level). Curriculum is best understood as a multi-faceted phenomenon and this paper draws from research which categorized curriculum into three phases: the intended (or planned) curriculum, the enacted (or implemented) curriculum and the experienced (the learner experience) curriculum. By focusing on the first phase: the intended curriculum, this paper compares the documents that comprise the planned curriculum from two very different contexts, and thus makes a contribution to cross-cultural understanding of early childhood arts curriculum in ways that may lead to social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact of international migration on the transfer of political and social norms. Exploiting recent and unique data on Morocco, this paper explores whether households with return and current migrants bear different political preferences and behaviours than non-migrant families. Once controlling for the double selection into emigration and return migration, the findings suggest that having a returnee in the household increases the demand for political and social change. This result is driven by returnees mostly from Western European countries, who were exposed to more democratic norms in the destination. However, we find a negative impact of having a current migrant on the willingness of the left-behind households to change. This result is driven by migrants to non-Western countries, where the quality of political and social institutions is lower. Our results are robust to also controlling for destination selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water governance strongly depends on the institutional arrangements in place. The plethora of recent inquiries into the adequacy and integrity of governance arrangements in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) indicates a crisis of trust, legitimacy and public confidence – in short, a loss of authority. With the prospect that current arrangements are losing the authority and legitimacy needed to govern the Basin, pressure is mounting for further reforms due to scandals exposed in the media throughout 2017 and 2018. These and subsequent inquiries have revealed serious concerns about probity, integrity, maladministration and the adequacy of compliance and enforcement regimes. The productive potential of this crisis is that draws attention to the need for reforms to governance institutions. This paper aims to explore the redesign of the institutional architecture in the MDB. Given the profound challenges of social and climate change that are demanding reconsideration of the underlying models used in adaptively governing large complex socio-ecological systems, the paper asks what arrangements are suited to the challenges of governing the Basin in the 21st century? This paper explores the nature of the redesign challenge, exploring principles, practices and features of MDB governance. The need for institutions with capacity for strategic navigation, goal seeking and the cultural co-construction of authority are suggested in the interests of cultivating debate about prospective reorganisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconstruction of high-resolution chronologies for prehistoric cultures is a prerequisite for understanding the history of human evolution and its relationship with environmental change, and is valuable for exploring the trajectory of transcontinental cultural exchanges in prehistoric time. The Hexi Corridor of northwest China was one of the earliest centers for long-distance culture exchange in the prehistoric world. The timing and sequence of cultural changes in this area remains poorly understood resulting from the lack of radiometric age control. This paper presents a refined radiocarbon (14C) chronology to resolve the timing of human occupation and cultural evolution in the Hexi Corridor. Radiocarbon dating of crop remains, which have an annual life cycle, has the advantage of eliminating problems such as the carbon stored in 'old wood'. As a result, 14C dates from crop remains are used to test the validity of the 14C dates derived from charcoal, bone and plant remains. The resultant database of ages is modelled using the Bayesian approach. The updated chronology presented in this paper shows generally good agreement with the original dates used to constrain cultural evolution in the Hexi Corridor. However, the occupation of the corridor by the Shajing and Shanma Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age cultures appears to have taken place ~300 years later than previously thought. On the basis of comparing this updated chronology of cultural evolution with palaeoclimatic and historical records, it is proposed that the collapse of the Shajing and Shanma cultures occurred as a result of geopolitical impact rather than climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how ordinary people in Switzerland represent and engage with environmental issues in daily practices. Bringing together conceptual developments in cultural sociology and social practice theory, the paper argues that cultural repertoires strongly shape how representations and forms of engagement play out. It identifies two main repertoires of social and environmental change: adaptation and transformation. The adaptation repertoire is reformist and aligned with individualism and the capitalist growth-paradigm; the transformation repertoire consists of a critique of the market society and calls for systemic change. Using qualitative in-depth interviews and a random survey of residents of Western Switzerland, the analyses show that most people's representations and engagements with environmental issues relate to the dominant repertoire of adaptation, which appears to be very compatible with existing social practices. Although people hint at limits to the adaptation repertoire, only very few of our study participants relate to the transformative repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper explores pedagogical interventions that can be applied to social change centered youth leadership programs. It specifically focuses on two interventions, Image Theatre and autonomy promotion ; the former is a pedagogical tool while the latter is a pedagogical approach. These interventions are vital for social change centered youth leadership programs because they allow facilitators to account for participants' sense of agency and determination while concurrently engaging them in critical social analyses necessary for the advancement of community development and well-being. This paper presents a description of Image Theatre and autonomy support as well as a discussion of how facilitators can apply these interventions to youth leadership programs. The theoretical tenets that inform the aforementioned pedagogical interventions, theory of self-determination and critical consciousness, respectively, are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, donors and development actors have been increasingly mindful of the evidence to support long-term, dynamic social norms change. This paper draws lessons and implications on scaling social norms change initiatives for gender equality to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) and improve sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), from the Community for Understanding Scale Up (CUSP). CUSP is a group of nine organisations working across four regions with robust experience in developing evidence-based social norms change methodologies and supporting their scale-up across various regions and contexts. More specifically, the paper elicits learning from methodologies and experiences from five CUSP members – GREAT, IMAGE, SASA!, Stepping Stones, and Tostan. The discussion raises political questions around the current donor landscape including those positioned to assume leadership to take such methodologies to scale, and the current evaluation paradigm to measure social norms change at scale. CUSP makes the following recommendations for donors and implementers to scale social norms initiatives effectively and ethically: invest in longer-term programming, ensure fidelity to values of the original programmes, fund women's rights organisations, prioritise accountability to their communities and demands, critically examine the government and marketplace's role in scale, and rethink evaluation approaches to produce evidence that guides scale-up processes and fully represents the voices of activists and communities from the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to review the literature on the Delphi method, its characteristics and current applications through an analysis of recent most-cited scientific papers, with an emphasis on three axes, namely, the number of rounds used, stakeholder participation relevance or only academic experts' participation and the possibility of using indicators or techniques different from those related to descriptive statistics. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 57 papers were initially reviewed, 10 of them with a high citation rate. Then, an analysis was made of papers in Scopus for the period 2015-2018 published in the Technological Forecasting and Social Change Journal and in the Futures and Foresight Journal, which had the characteristic of displaying quartile Q1 or Q2 in Scimago in addition to being in Scopus. Findings: Among the main results, the authors observe the tendency to use fewer rounds, a higher prevalence of stakeholder participation and not only academic experts but also the use of new types of modified Delphi such as real-time spatial Delphi, Delphi group, market Delphi, real-world Delphi and policy Delphi. Originality/value: Among the conclusions, the possibility of using other indicators or complementary techniques to the descriptive statistics is highlighted such as number of justifications or comments between rounds, coefficients to quantify the competence or degree of expertise of the participants, measures of the perception of the expert on the usefulness of the presented feedback, graphs of the number of arguments according to the number of questions, the Wilcoxon Ranked Pairs Test, the k means, Kolmogorov–Simonov test and the Mann–Whitney U-test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the themed special issue raises provocative questions about the nature and meaning of co‐production by engaging specifically with voices from the margins – groups and individuals who occupy marginalised embodied subjectivities. Key themes emerging from the papers raise questions about the nature and meaning of co‐production. We suggest a need to move away from a focus on co‐production or even participation towards empowerment and inclusivity. We urge researchers to be explicit about the meaning of the terms "participation" or "co‐production" to think critically about the "communities" with whom we research and how research forges positive social change. The paper highlights the contribution that participative research with groups often positioned in the margins can make to questions of co‐production in geography. We suggest a need to consider power and inclusion rather than participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is becoming the most important human social change in the world, especially in developing countries. However, what is the process of urbanization? What forces are driving the urbanization process? This paper summarizes five main processes of urbanization through various aspects of urbanization in different countries, including economic growth and development, demographic change, social transformation, reshaped and stretched urban spaces, and shrinking cities. Based on the comprehensive method of analyzing urbanization, this paper sorts out five driving forces of urbanization, which are industrialization, modernization, globalization, marketization and administrative/institutional power. The author tries to contribute to the healthy development of urbanization in developing countries through the analysis of process and driving force in urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed research analyzes the external and internal factors that determine the specificity of Solidarity as a community of civil society and driving force of social and cultural changes in Poland. The external factors of these processes are connected with the critical interpretation of social cynicism and 'Marxist collectivism' by autonomic group in Polish society. These processes of social corrosion are considered as a social alienation and consequences of social fragmentation in Soviet period. The paper focuses on the danger of collision between national and colonial versions of memory as well as the social challenge of guarantee the possibility of an integral development of man and community. The internal factors actualizes the interpretation of Solidarity as a community of social changes, the positive activities of Catholic church, religious and secular leaders, of their theoretical ideas in the context of evolution of Solidarity from traditional community to modern one based on democratic values, social and economic motivations. The analysis is centered on the theoretical problem of civil trust, and the meaning of cultural, religious, and moral factors in the activities of Solidarity movement. We regard the problematic of Solidarity at the same time from republican and liberal positions. Synthesizing the different approaches to the historical memory, and to the experience of formation and evolution of community, the paper also explores the role and significance of Solidarity in the process of post-soviet values transformation. The article deals with the value prerequisites of moral-normative community in the country of the former socialist camp, the revival of national identity, as well as the elimination of historical contradictions provoked by the communist regime. The study confirms that social changes became possible due to the successful combination of communitarian and liberal foundations of civil society, the elimination of external influences, and achieving autonomy from the Russian and Soviet historical heritage. In the period of Soviet occupation in Poland, throughout two decades a fundamentally important intellectual discourse was formed, which, in spite of the unfavorable political context, became a consolidating and integrating socio-political force that successfully resisted the totalitarian and unifying tendencies of communist regime. Intellectuals, along with the Catholic church, have become a driving force for social change, playing a key role in shaping the social strategy of national development that has changed the social landscape of 'communist' Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First Nation communities in northern Ontario have unique energy-related challenges within an interdisciplinary context, including historical, geographic, cultural, technological, and regulatory. Presently, undergoing an energy systems transition from off-grid to grid-connection and scoping renewable energy options, these remote communities are exhibiting characteristics of complex adaptive system principles. This is exhibited through non-linear interactions and connectedness among agents and components in the emerging energy system. This paper explores these interfaces through a case study of Poplar Hill First Nation, an Independent Power Authority community. The potentials of the complexity science through a community engagement process is used to encode and enhance understanding of the "contextual" complexities in the development of local economies, adapting to technology advancement, and social changes. The findings will help better appreciate the efforts made by Poplar Hill in their transition to self-sufficient systems with deliberations that may provide practical outcomes. This paper reflects on the deeper trajectories of the human elements embedded within the energy transition process. In conclusion, the paper adds to the academic dialogue on energy system transition adaptations in marginalised Indigenous communities in rural and remote locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolution and change in agricultural practice is a major factor in the codification of social relations and represents one of the main resources employed by human societies to establish a durable relationship with their environment. Using a multi-proxy integrated approach, this paper seeks to decipher the long-term dynamics that have shaped agricultural landscapes in the Basque Country (N Spain). Social and economic indicators (archival records, toponymy and oral sources) are used along with geological core sampling (geochemistry, magnetic, palynological and carpological analyses) to reconstruct a diachronic sequence of human settlement and agricultural management in the village of Aizarna over the last ~1500 years. The oldest records obtained refer to non-agricultural human activities dating back to the Roman period. Later on, traces of agricultural landscape-transformation can be divided into four main phases: 1) the onset of terraced agriculture, defined by the clearance and terracing of previous forested areas during the Early Middle Ages; 2) a Late Medieval reorganisation, with new terraces being (re)constructed close to dispersed farmsteads, linked to the emergence of the modern rural landscape; 3) a new model of intensive polyculture developed during the Modern period as a consequence of the introduction of new crops of American origin; and 4) the mechanisation and commercialisation of the agricultural production over the 20th century. These results provide a valuable pathway for the investigation of currently inhabited rural contexts, and offer, for the first time in this region, an overview on long-term landscape construction in the Atlantic areas of the Basque Country. Unlabelled Image • Farming is a key element of human ecology and landscape modelling in the long term. • Physicochemical proxies show dynamic rural societies with flexible farming strategies. • Agricultural practice is defined by biogeographic, social and economic constraints. • Rural landscapes are currently facing degradation caused by deep Modern changes. • The paper studies long-term landscape dynamics in a case study from the Basque Country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anarchists gather as well as protest, form organizations, projects and networks. These events build strategy, create shared identities, and create new and stronger networks between activists working on different issues in different places. In the 1980s, continent-wide anarchist gatherings emerged as spaces of counterculture and prefiguration when anarchist movements were weak. As the movement grew and the political landscape changed, the form, content and function of gatherings switched to a focus on strategy and organizing, and later to networking and exchange. Analyzing the programs and documents of anarchist gatherings in the US and Canada since 1986, this paper maps two main shifts. First, gatherings changed from being single, continent-wide events that shifted from city to city, to being multiple, local and (often) annual. Second, they moved from an emphasis on identity caucusing and skill building to one of networking and exchange. Influenced by the relational sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and Charles Tilly, the paper ties these changes to the social and political context, interactions in the social movement field (including waves of protest) and dynamics within anarchist movements. The paper concludes by arguing that such events offer insight into changing social movements, and activist strategy, and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European border regions have witnessed a long history of remarkable mobility shocks stemming from complex ecological and economic changes and geopolitical events. The experience of near-continuous regional and global crisis has increased interest towards the idea of resilience, that is, the ability of communities and regions to adapt and cope with disturbances and transitions. Inspired by the literature of regional resilience and the evolutionary approach, this paper will examine the difference that borders and geopolitical conditions make from the perspective of regional resilience and especially 'border-regional resilience'. Particular focus will be on irregular cross-border mobilities and consequent transitions in EU external and internal border towns, here the Finnish towns of Lappeenranta and Tornio. The study points out that the geopolitical environment and the openness of the border partly determine the regional development trajectories and the ways of coping with cross-border mobility-related changes. Although the border location entails some vulnerability, formal and informal cross-border institutions and relations of trust are of crucial importance from the perspective of border-regional resilience. The paper proposes a research agenda for studying border-regional resilience in the context of environmental, economic and social changes and geopolitical events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the image of a public servant of the Russian Federation whose qualities affect the opinion of population about public servants, public service, and the state in general. The paper is based on the results of sociological surveys and is aimed at answering the question whether professionalism is a system-building element in the image of a public servant, what other qualities create this image and how these qualities correlate with the qualities chosen by future public servants - students specializing in state and municipal management. The surveys have been conducted in two Russian cities (Moscow and Langepas (Khanty-Mansi autonomous district)). Participants of the Langepas survey were residents of the city, and those of the Moscow survey were residents of Moscow, respectively, including a group of first-year students specializing in state and municipal management. The data analysis has shown that professionalism based on continuous improvement of knowledge and skills is the system-building element in the image of a public servant. Moreover, the leading motive of professional activity is social and state benefit and the professional activity of a public servant is a necessity. The authority of a public servant depends on his activities and affects the authority of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Focus on community work for the betterment of floating children. • Use social network analysis within a Bourdieusian lens. • Analyse social groupings and the structures behind them. • Look at "small things" that are sociologically meaningful for social change. Drawing on Bourdieu's sociology, the concept of space in particular, this paper discussed the positions and dispositions of floating children in the urban space. It used social network analysis to test the homophily hypothesis that socially similar agents are physically proximate. Data were collected from 45 floating children and urban children in a community school in China. The results rejected the homophily hypothesis, calling for collective activism for small-scale but sociologically meaningful change to disrupt the correspondence between the physical and social distance established through the "site effects" of the hukou (household registration) system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gig Economy platforms have become enmeshed in the fabric of urban sociality. While they have substantially disrupted conditions of labouring, participating in the platform economy has also changed social and moral norms globally. Importantly, what constitutes normative moral and prosocial interpersonal behaviour is key to making platforms function as social environments, but these norms are also constantly challenged and rearticulated through everyday practice among different stakeholders. By drawing on long-term fieldwork across gig economy platforms in urban India, we offer a typology of dynamic social and moral norms around tipping, gratitude, politeness and more that sustain platform interactions. The paper's aim is to re-centre the vitality and dynamism of everyday media practice, social relationships, and cultural values in shaping platforms. Relatedly, moving beyond binaries of exploitation/empowerment, we show how negotiations between agents with differential power contribute to shifts in platform culture that cannot be fully explained through notions of intentionality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss the idea of music as a type of emotional narrative that triggers our emotional responses and drives our attention and expectation in a musical piece. One of the most useful features of narratives is their ability to not only represent multiple realities, but also create new ones by mobilizing and articulating new worldviews, altering power dynamics between people, and establishing new practices: in other words, their potential for creating change and transformation. Examples of this can be seen in using narratives and stories for prompting social change (Westerlund & Partti, 2018), as well as in eliciting psychological transformation in a therapeutic setting (Angus & McLeod, 2004). The implications of musical narrativity in the pedagogical work of music performers are thus discussed and the idea of narrativity as a tool in the pedagogical field is introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]