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Integration is a contested topic in Singapore's public discourse. One such area is integration through state-sponsored grassroots community volunteerism. Little is however known about such experiences of grassroots volunteerism to integration outcomes. This paper addresses the gap by exploring how new citizen and permanent resident grassroots volunteers make sense of their experiences through 'integration taxes' and 'gestural integration'. In doing so, this paper argues that while grassroots volunteerism offers lower barriers to entry for new citizens, it constraints the diversity of integration by and through new citizen volunteers due to discrimination, marginalisation and staged integration faced in grassroots work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the end of WW2, the Margaret River region (MRR) was a popular domestic destination based on cave explorations. A series of incremental innovations between the 1950s and 1990s reconfigured the destination into a thriving international tourism destination that offers diverse experiences based on wine, surf, and nature. Nonetheless, contemporary external and internal forces are stimulating another shift – one towards sustainability. Apart from the global pro-sustainability agenda, this sustainability transition in tourism is mainly driven by two emerging niches: eco-accreditation and grassroots organisations. This paper adopts the multilevel perspective (MLP) – a commonly adopted framework in the sustainability transitions research field – and combines it with a typology of tourism innovation to examine the evolution of the MRR as a tourist destination. The paper addresses the ongoing sustainability transition in the MRR and discusses both top-down and bottom-up initiatives that stimulate it. In order to provide a holistic view of this transition, the paper also pays attention to the first transition in the destination (i.e. from caves to wine, surf, and nature), and examines its influence on the ongoing sustainability transition. As such, this paper aims to help bridge the gap between tourism geography and the interdisciplinary field of sustainability transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presents the views of the authors on the statements made by Ben Bradshaw concerning the definitions of success and contingencies which affect success in community forestry. The authors agree with Bradshaw on the implication that community forestry must be deemed a success where jobs and revenues were created, even if in some tendencies some objectives were not achieved. They point out that Bradshaw's reference to the work of Adcharaporn Pagdee who conducted a meta-analysis of 69 community forestry around the world, indicates that the relation of expertise, experience and leadership to success in community forest, remains undersearched. The role of experience, leadership and expertise is undertheorized and requires more research.

A move beyond static and representational accounts of science learning and becoming through relations is needed. In this paper extra-learning activities in science offered by a community organization to an elementary class over one academic school year are assessed in light of their contributions to science learning and becoming. The latter is explored through a theoretical grounding and focus on the entanglements of bodies, materials, and affect. In doing so, the paper speaks to the affective turn in science education. The study is grounded in a non-representational and subjective reading of the work affect is doing yet also attends to the role of materials and bodies within that process, speaking to materialism, embodiment, and dignity. One elementary school class, participating in a one-year long activity assumed by a community organization (CO). Data was collected through a video ethnography of the science activities assumed by the CO. Through interaction analysis, telling moments of joint-engagement in science were analysed by centering body-material-affect entanglements. By juxtaposing these moments with background information from interviews of the teacher and the instructor, a bricolage of data sources led to narratives presented as three stories. Making evident entanglements through three stories, the paper offers insights into ways non-representational embodied and material forms of learning and becoming can be studied and documented and the insights they might offer into understanding learning and becoming in science. The stories speak to the kind of work entanglements make evident in terms of lived affect in science but also moments of relations between participants and dignity affirming or undermining work in science learning and becoming. More studies are needed to engage with body-material entanglements in and through affect and report on the manner affect supports dignifying forms of engagement with science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on the translation of sexuality into Chinese have been primarily limited to literary texts and scientific works. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the fansubbing of queer audiovisual material into Chinese. Against the backdrop of a global digital expansion of feminist and LGBTQ+ activists, this paper examines the translation of sexuality via social media. It focuses on the translations of JoinFeminism and Zhihe Society, two grassroots groups committed to addressing gender and sexuality issues in China. This paper uses Gideon Toury's translation norms to analyse how the two groups collectively highlight sexuality as a means of resisting the repression of sexuality in the mainstream media. Moreover, it investigates the implications of the groups' gender-sensitive translation and discusses their creation of an alternative sexual discourse. Drawing on insights from various areas of study such as fansubbing, feminist/queer translation and citizen media, this paper argues that the two groups' translations, as a form of self-mediation, contribute to a specific type of feminist/queer activism in China: one that is less obsessed with political rights, but uses translation and social media to disseminate knowledge related to sexual diversity and therefore to create an online counter-discourse on sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Middle Eastern contexts, like Jordan, the public participation spaces referred to as “invited spaces” for state-led participation are heavily controlled by the state and its representatives. This paper explores the various ways in which grassroots and civic organizations navigate and sometimes manipulate the state apparatus’ planning rules and grids to create alternative modes of meaningful participation in the production of the city. Following the Arab Spring in 2011, local grassroots organizations started adopting “new languages and taktikat” (تَكتِيكَات,’ tactics in English, words used by the grassroots to describe their practices) that allowed them to move beyond direct confrontation with the state in the so-called “invented” spaces of participation led by civil society. Building on de Certeau’s notion of “tactics,” this paper looks at these approaches as tactics used by grassroots to negotiate power and participation within neoliberal top-down authorities. Ultimately, it argues against viewing grassroots initiatives solely in terms of a binary lens of legality/informality or “invited”/“invented” dichotomies, as they neither function as insurgents nor remain passive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently the Chinese government has been actively collaborating with nonprofit nongovernmental organizations to provide social welfare services to older adults at the community level. The role played by NGOs in facilitating governance has only recently gained attention in the literature on Chinese NGOs and urban governance. Addressing this gap, the paper advances geographers' understanding of State–NGO collaborations in facilitating urban governance in the Chinese context using fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai on the provision of community eldercare services as an example. It also explains the political control of these NGOs and their changing role in the eldercare market. We argue that collaborations between the state and NGOs in China have gradually transferred eldercare services to the NGOs, and led to a fragmented welfare system, which, as a consequence, has facilitated entrepreneurial urban governance. The paper sheds light on community-based organizations, their collaboration with local governments, and how they have become not only welfare providers but a significant site for social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a framework (OSEC-p model) for the evaluation of health communication, through websites, aimed at breast and cervical cancer screening adherence. For identification of the set of indicators of the model, content analysis of websites was adopted with coding based on both data-driven and theoretically-driven approaches. The proposed model comprises factors on multiple levels (macro-items, items, and micro-items), referring to the strategic orientation aimed at prevention, the organizational structure, corporate tools and stakeholder engagement, content on screening initiatives, compliance with communication principles, and website ergonomics. A pilot study on a sample of websites of Italian local health organizations confirms the applicability of the model and the usefulness of results and indications it offers. The OSEC-p can be considered the first step in a line of research not yet been investigated in the academic field, and aims to be a guideline for managers of healthcare organizations as it allows evaluation (and improvement) of communication via websites aimed at adhering to cancer prevention programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the gap between people and rule (demos and kratos) in democratic societies by exploring the history and practice of broad-based community organising, as applied by London Citizens, United Kingdom (UK). The paper outlines the origins of this model of politics and how it has been translated from the United States to London and the UK. The paper highlights the power of mobilising the demos to put pressure on the decision-making governance structures that determine the kratos. While London Citizens does this through kratos-at-a-distance, the article goes on to explore how hyper-local, neighbourhood-scaled governance structures—'community councils'—could provide a powerful tool to further connect demos to kratos. Such councils could underpin a democratic revival that combines representation and participation at the scale at which people still live their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the history of violent extremism and evaluates the status of countering violent extremism (CVE) policies in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on government, international partners, and NGO programming. Through more than twenty extended interviews with grassroots organizations, politicians, and members of the security administration alongside an exploration of budgetary and personnel data, we seek to illuminate major challenges to official policies and actual, on the ground practices. on the ground practices. Our evaluation of extremist manifestation, government rebalancing, and cross sectoral alignment shows that while authorities in Trinidad and Tobago have recognized the power of non-state actor centered, bottom-up policies in reducing support for terrorism, most visible operations continue to rely on top down, state centric ones. This paper brings with it concrete recommendations for law enforcement, community builders, and residents alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I share the process of designing, implementing, and analyzing a community-based methods course alongside youth organizers, adult allies, and teacher candidates (TCs) through a critical qualitative research project. Informed by intergenerational grassroots community organizations, community-based pedagogy is a praxis to center the strengths and needs of local people, places, and ecosystems in the classroom. I discuss the framework and use of community-based pedagogy in a teacher education methods course as informed by youth organizers and adult allies of two local youth-centered grassroots organizations. To further the development of community-based pedagogy, I examine how the facilitation of adult ally trainings by youth organizers in a methods course informed their community organizing endeavors and also encouraged TCs to conceptualize community-based pedagogy in PreK-12 classrooms. The findings and implications identify community-based pedagogy as a possible strategy for schools, communities, and teacher education programs to collaborate for transformative social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on systems leadership, complexity and paradox theory to elucidate the tensions that organizational actors experience when practising multi-level leadership. We explore these issues through a study of the perceptions and experiences of stakeholders within an Integrated Care System (ICS) in England. Employing a collaborative inquiry approach, data were collected via 19 narrative interviews with participants in key leadership roles across ICS partners and nine co-creation workshops with a total of 86 participants from different parts of the ICS. Findings highlight that in developing multi-level leadership practice, leaders experience contradictory expectations and outcomes, including paradoxes of identity, place, purpose and change. We conclude by suggesting that leadership in multi-level contexts requires oscillating between competing polarities in a dynamic equilibrium with attention to localized interactions. MAD statement Integrated Care Systems were enacted across England in July 2022 to enhance the capacity for statutory, voluntary and community organizations to work in partnership to improve health outcomes across diverse populations. Multi-level systems leadership, however, poses significant challenges around navigating the inevitable tensions that arise when working with complexity. Through qualitative research in a vanguard ICS, this paper highlights a range of paradoxes faced by leaders and organizations and proposes implications for policy and practice in enabling dynamic equilibrium and working in contexts of uncertainty and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers and community organizations are increasingly operationalizing food sovereignty, and argue that participatory, community-engaged food sovereignty metrics can enhance insights about local contexts, and opportunities for food sovereignty. In Haiti, one of the most food-insecure countries in the world, peasant and civil society organizations have been calling for food sovereignty for over a decade, and the state recently published a food sovereignty policy document, marking an important paradigm shift. In this paper, we share a case study of a food sovereignty tool that was designed through a participatory, community-based process in Northern Haiti, offering a blueprint and lessons learned that we hope will be useful to others working to operationalize food sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan's dropping birthrate is a frequent topic in both media and political discourse and yet, an increasing number of non-Japanese women are giving birth in the country. While praised for several of its women-centered features, Japanese maternity care also faces criticism for its perceived inflexibility and lack of cultural sensitivity. This article presents a comprehensive overview of Japanese and English language studies on non-Japanese women's access to maternity care in Japan. It highlights the challenges many women encounter, such as linguistic and cultural barriers, as well as institutional and physician inflexibility. The article also acknowledges noteworthy aspects, including excellent midwifery and support for new mothers. Ultimately, this paper argues that research utilizing in-depth narratives from foreign women is necessary to develop a more culturally sensitive approach to maternity care. It also underscores the need for medical professionals to collaborate with grassroots organizations to understand the dynamic needs of non-Japanese women and sufficiently support them through pregnancy, birth, and post-natal care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the managerial literature and policymakers have recently emphasized the potential role of university spin-offs (USOs) as drivers of regional development. Specifically, USOs may support regional development by exploiting the scientific knowledge developed by their parent universities into industrial innovations, thus spreading knowledge spillovers that can be in turn exploited by other local firms. In this paper, we analyse how the use of these spillovers at the regional level may depend on the USOs' capabilities to implement scientific knowledge into their innovation development as well as to align this knowledge to the needs of local organizations. We discuss how these capabilities may be more easily developed by USOs of generalist universities that focus their scientific effort on a broader range of scientific domains and tend to establish stronger relationships with local firms. To test our hypotheses, we analyse data on the patents filed by a large sample of German and Italian USOs. Our results confirm that both a larger use of scientific knowledge and a higher generality of the parent university increase the regional impact of the USOs' inventions. These findings may shed further light on the actual contribution of USOs to the regional development, by providing a better understanding of their role in the transfer of scientific knowledge from the parent universities to the other actors operating in the regional environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the papers in the March 2005 issue of the "Journal of Social Work Practice." Stefanie Buckner's paper considers the process of interpretation in qualitative research on the concept of reflexivity. Linda Andersen applies ethnographical methods and psychodynamic ideas to the exploration of a flashpoint in modern welfare and in modern ‘individualisation’. Gerhard Riemann’s paper focuses on ethnographic and narrative methods in social work training, and focuses on field notes as a means of allowing the author to step back from his/her own practice and make it ‘strange’. Sue Brennan reflects on her work with parents in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, while Brian Rasmussen writes about cumulative trauma, which he carefully distinguishes from ‘burn out’.

Between the sub-disciplines of children's geographies and geographies of sexualities lie the spatialities of children's and youth's sexualities, an understudied subfield especially in non-metropolitan contexts. This paper examines the co-creation strategies of three LGBTQ2S out-of-school youth programmes in the Canadian peripheral municipality of Surrey, British Columbia. It argues that larger youth populations, a circumscribed hetero-temporality, and limited spatial resources necessitate attention to specific modes of co-creating out-of-school spaces for suburban LGBTQ2S youth (aged 15–24). The paper examines the practices of adaptive spatial co-creation with suburban LGBTQ2S youth within the fragmented local suburban governance landscape of community organizations. In contrast with the public visibility stressed within adult urban gay identity politics, a goal of 'more-than-safety' is primarily achieved for suburban LGBTQ2S youth through privacy, invisibility, and boundary work that results in weak integration, a lack of collaboration, and the re-bounding of identity parcels across suburbia's extensive geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poor performance by local government institutions in service delivery has contributed to the proliferation of community-based organisations (CBOs) in many African countries. This development is unfolding within the context of growth in the aspirations of people and societies for greater transparency, democracy and participatory management. Such a scenario calls for greater social accountability by CBOs. This paper applied a realist approach guided by an action research process to assess the facilitation of community scorecards in improving social accountability by CBOs using the REPAIR project in Zimbabwe as a case study. Focus was placed on understanding the generative mechanisms within specific contexts under which social accountability outcomes emanated. The paper identified key contextual drivers, generative mechanisms and key outcomes, consolidated into streams of Context-Mechanism-Output (C–M-O) configurations. The paper concludes with recommendations on the potential utility of the C–M-O configurations for future facilitation of social accountability interventions for CBOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically interrogates the 'integrative potential' of football by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that includes 84 semi-structured interviews with refugees, asylum seekers and local community organizations, and five interviews with representatives of national football associations across Southeast Europe, a region that has hitherto been under-examined in this field of research. The results show the uneasy and strained relationship between football and integration, characterized by incongruity between micro-level practices and experiences of solidarity and inclusion, and State-sponsored marginality and deterrence taking place in Southeast Europe. We provide empirical evidence for social connections, facilitators (i.e. language and communication, safety and stability), and rights as relevant, meaningful and challenging domains of integration in the context of football. We conclude that foundational rights, and hence dehumanizing policies and discourses, need to be addressed if the proclaimed 'integrative potential' of football is to be realized beyond social connections and sporadic examples of access to decent work through football. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon semi-structured interviews of Chinese entrepreneurs in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, this paper demonstrates the commonly marginal influence of kinship, townspeople attachment, and ethnic identity on Chinese entrepreneurs’ interpretive framework on their social networks and business activities. Instead, their narratives were dominated by individualistic reasoning based on rational judgments and pragmatic considerations. Meanwhile, Chinese entrepreneurs found ethnic market in Ikebukuro accessible and competitiveness and the policy support from the Japanese state friendly to business operations. However, they were not keen on interacting with local civic organizations and kept themselves aloof from local communities. These features could be concluded as networked individualism with superficial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was a disrupting force that magnified social inequities and service gaps in underserved urban communities. It was also a “window of opportunity” for the Black Lives Matter movement and Indigenous reconciliation synergies to spur calls to action for more open and inclusive dialog regarding community food security. Increasingly, community-based organizations (CBOs) that have not been traditionally food-focused are becoming more involved in food security responses. These factors have offered space to revisit antiquated and exclusionary practices within resource allocation and decision-making processes that reinforce systems of oppression within the food system. We explore the interconnection between CBOs, municipal actors, and funders in Toronto and draw upon the concept of co-governance to unpack their evolving relationships and influence on equity-focused change in policies and practices. Based on an analysis of interviews (n = 48), this paper articulates that a number of realized progressive, yet incremental, changes have been made, including changes to policies and internal practices and targeted support for Black and Indigenous communities. However, ultimately, a transfer of resources and influence is required in order to achieve the broader goal of harnessing food system equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAlthough environmental education (EE) scholars celebrate the diversity of organizations that engage in this work, the challenge remains how to bring these organizations together. Over the last decade, scholars have called for building bridges, but we still know very little about organizational networking and integration processes in EE. In this paper, I analyzed a case study of the first local education office (LEO) to manage an EE network in California. Drawing on institutional theory, I found that the LEO cultivated a local EE organizational field through three complementary strategies of relational work: enabling connections, aligning the field, and holding space. These three strategic tools enabled EE organizations to connect, develop a shared meaning system, and grow their capacity to serve schools. Based on my findings, I propose a model for managing local EE networks, as well as theoretical constructs for understanding organizational processes within the evolving EE landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractSurvivors of sexual violence often experience short-and long-term mental and physical health conditions due to the victimization. Rape Crisis Centers are community-based advocacy organizations that provide free supportive services to survivors of sexual assault, such as 24-hour crisis hotlines, medical advocacy, individual and group therapeutic services, and victim advocacy services for those with cases within the criminal justice system. However, the efficacy of these services in assisting survivors is not well known, often due to researchers’ lack of access to clients. In this paper, we investigate the experiences of survivors directly from the survivors receiving psychotherapy services from a Rape Crisis Center in an urban jurisdiction in the Midwestern United States. We qualitatively interviewed nine survivors who attended individual and/or group therapy. In-depth analysis showed that four themes emerged regarding their experiences. Two themes pertain to positive outcomes—emotional processing and group therapy dynamics. One theme concerns obstacles. The final theme relates to suggestions for service improvement. The discussion includes summaries of the reflective findings and recommendations for future practice. This research contributes to informing and improving practices and policies to better serve survivors of sexual assault. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of representative bureaucracy has provided an important yet limited framework for understanding exclusion in the public sector. This theoretical paper engages with critical approaches to argue for an expanded theory that centers social equity. Close attention to the relationship between the public and nonprofit sectors illuminates how public institutions protect and reproduce White, masculine space by shifting the burden of representation onto racially minoritized public administrators and community-based nonprofit organizations led by and for people of color. An expanded theory will (1) advance an understanding of both sectors as institutional spaces that protect Whiteness and impede full representation and (2) recognize the importance of the labor required to counter inequities and actively represent minoritized constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canton (present-day Guangzhou) has long flourished as a port city. As the city expanded in the nineteenth century, the risks of conflagrations increased; streets became more crowded, buildings were more often made of wood, and there was more use of open fires. The reconstruction of Canton after conflagrations provides an excellent way to observe the resilience of urban space, understood here as the result of interactions among different stakeholders. This paper explores how authorities, local communities, foreigners, and Hong merchants addressed fires and rebuilt through laws, regulations, technologies and cooperation, and how responses to fire destruction shaped urban space. Divers stakeholders affected the reconstruction of buildings and streets. The government made laws to widen streets, communities built watchtowers, and foreigners made new plans for Thirteen Factories, a neigbhorhood along the Pearl River. At the same time, conflicts between communities and foreigners obstructed plans for urban transformation and maintained the stability of urban structures. The communities kept the traditional local community organizations the 'Kaifong' (local organization in street) who opposed the widening streets and fought against proposed fire zones around Thirteen Factories, thus pitching local interests against those of the foreigners in a complex social, political, and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite the growing importance of local action to counter violent extremism (CVE), empirical research on the local organization and management of CVE is scarce, especially regarding public administrators' strategic work to translate policies and recommendations into frontline practice. Based mainly on ethnographic data and departing from new institutional theory, the paper refines our understanding of the symbolic, material, and relational work used to translate a diverse flow of ideas into concrete action in diverse institutional settings. Due to the institutional complexity, the cultural skill of the local CVE coordinator is identified as pivotal to successfully legitimizing and implementing CVE efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coalitions of community organizations and labor unions have played a central role in the recent expansion of municipal legislation regarding low-wage work. To date, most studies of community-labor coalitions have focused on their successes in meeting policy goals set by organized labor. This paper shifts focus to the challenges community organizations encounter when they participate in union-led campaigns. Analyzing survey data from a national study of community organizations, we show that collaborating with unions can inhibit community organizations' resource-intensive strategies, local-level organizing, and mobilizing capacity. Using data from fieldwork with community-labor coalitions in Chicago, St. Louis, and Denver, we then explore three strategies community organizations use to mitigate these downsides: shaping campaigns, rationing participation, and not participating. Each strategy has distinct benefits and drawbacks. Regardless of the strategy community organizations adopt, our analysis shows that the experience of participating in union-led campaigns leads community organizations to reexamine their approaches to organizing, movement building, and public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how social movement organizations shift scale through the case of the immigrant rights movement. This was largely a local movement for the first decades of its existence. However, in the late 1990s, repressive federal policies increased the salience of national politics for many organizations. While recognizing the importance of national politics, many organizations remained mostly engaged in local politics for nearly a decade. The aim of this paper is to examine why immigrant rights organizations stayed local for so long after the threat shifted to the federal level and why they actually shifted to the national scale when they did. It does so by focusing on the case of Los Angeles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall image of Indian Muslims today is of a community deprived of a minimally decent life, having low educational attainment and experiencing socio-cultural stagnation. But, interestingly, Kerala's Muslims stand out in sharp contrast to their counterparts in most parts of the country as they are doing well, not just in education, but in most other aspects of life as well even as a century ago they were put in a defined image box and appeared to represent a community steeped in illiteracy and poverty. Equally interesting is their story of overcoming barriers to socioeconomic and educational development at the heart of which is the role played by social agencies though not fully captured in the available literature. Against this backdrop, the present paper aims to bring into sharp focus the role of social agencies, notably non-political community organizations, in shaping educational development among Kerala's Muslims. By foregrounding the 'Kerala Experience', this paper argues that structural barriers to education of a community, Muslims in the present case, are neither fixed nor immutable. It is possible for Muslims to address their educational backwardness by themselves through sustained, engaged and organized forms of efforts. The paper also discusses the lessons from the Kerala Experience and ask if the 'Kerala Model' is worth emulating for overcoming educational backwardness of Muslims in other parts of the country. Key words: community organization, education, Kerala, Mappila, Muslims, voluntary organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of austerity on anti-racist and community organizing. We focus on three key shifts: changes to public funding, the push to entrepreneurialism and the mainstreaming of Equalities legislation. The paper contributes to critical understandings of the changing relationship between civil society and the state and the challenges this creates for working against racism. We highlight how austerity acts as an alibi to further diminish race as a policy concern. Organizations and activists are encouraged to act as entrepreneurs and confront each other as competitors, rather than allies in a political struggle. This leads to a very real sense that solidarities are being deliberately ruptured in order to "divide and conquer" and diminish collective organizing capacity. We illustrate how this is compounded by the cumulative affective consequences of austerity measures, often at considerable costs in terms of a broader collective agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper connects two debates previously featured in City: 'Assemblage and Critical Urban Praxis' and 'London's Housing Crisis and its Activism'. The paper uses assemblage thinking to explore how community organisations and campaigns in London use a combination of different tools, which engage with the planning system and other actions or strategies outside planning, to resist council estate demolition and propose alternative community-led plans incorporating the needs and wishes of residents. The paper first looks at the planning tools available in the English Localism Act 2011 for involving residents in decision-making processes, examining their limitations when being used to oppose council estate demolition while proposing alternative plans. Four case studies of campaigns and community organisations—Greater Carpenters Neighbourhood Forum, Focus E15, Save Cressingham, and West Ken and Gibbs Green Community Homes—are then used to explore how they have generated three kinds of assemblages which create capabilities for self-organisation, resisting demolition, and influencing decision-making processes. The first kind of assemblage combines formal and informal strategies—some engaging with the planning system and some not; the second uses both formal and informal organisations based on the desired objectives and the nature of their actions; and finally, the third builds support networks with professionals and other initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to make a contribution to the extensive literature that seeks to develop methods that allow rigorous and robust analysis of the spatial and temporal impacts of public policy interventions on property (real-estate) values. It argues that the hybrid repeat-sales/hedonic method developed in real-estate studies over the last 30 years has considerable, but as yet under-developed, potential as a policy analysis tool. Using data from Glasgow, UK, the empirical analysis illustrates how the technique can be used to understand the spatial spillovers and the dynamic temporal effects of a historic £100 million state-led, area-based, urban-renewal programme, New Life for Urban Scotland. The paper concludes by arguing that, with the rise in the availability of rich geocoded, micro-datasets, this framework is sufficiently flexible to be used to evaluate the real-estate market impacts of a wide range of public policy interventions. Significantly, as the case study demonstrates, the framework overcomes some of the sustained criticisms of the more commonly used hedonic modelling approach. There is, however, still much to do to enhance the technical qualities of the models through further application. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Community-based adaptation (CBA) has gained traction in the management of climate risks within developing societies, due to its capacity to include local knowledge and build the adaptive capacities of vulnerable groups and communities. Yet little is known about what happens when such projects are implemented on the ground. This paper presents the results of a research project that sought to understand local perceptions and responses to planned CBA interventions in rural coastal communities in Bangladesh. Based on a qualitative approach, this paper presents the dominant narratives within local communities about the NGO-initiated CBA project. Findings highlight there is a deep disconnection between the objectives of CBA interventions and the perceptions of local communities about the project. Such a difference in perceptions meant that project participants prioritized personal gains over the creation of collective capacities to adapt to climate change. The paper concludes that in order to resolve such tensions, the gap between 'community-based' adaptation theory and practice needs to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities are complex systems defined by the interaction of social, economic, environmental, and physical systems. The dynamic response and recovery of a community to a disaster is often tied to the response and recovery of its organizations. This paper employs the Community Capitals framework to understand how organizations contribute to community resilience. The organization-level functionality is defined as the capability of an organization to be used for its intended purposes. Organizations are not solely physical objects, staff and supply chain are identified as critical non-physical components contributing to organizational functionality alongside conventional physical components. Fault trees and a probabilistic framework are developed to measure organizational functionality failure. A fault tree is presented in detail for three organizations, namely, banks, gas stations, and schools, to illustrate the different components necessary for functionality of different organizations. Lastly, a framework for evaluation of community resilience based on organizational functionality is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the politics of spatial justice in the knowledge-making practices of planning expertise in postwar Sweden. The paper traces the genealogy of 'standards' in modern Swedish planning, arguing that this was a fundamental form of planning knowledge which came to articulate a 'universalist' politics of justice. Standards were constructed as a way to measure and make complex calculations about a range of 'needs', making the overarching goal of planning to address the universal human needs measured by standards. This technocratic articulation of justice had limitations. Standards often proved difficult for grassroots groups to contest this expertise, but were a mode of knowledge well-suited to corporate interests looking to influence planners to make space for their standardized consumer products. These tensions came to the fore in the planning of postwar Sweden's green outdoor spaces, where the standards for car users played a crucial role in shaping the landscape and planners hesitated to define national standards for areas such as parks and green space provision. Expert knowledge such as standards might, then, be a powerful tool to systematically shape space according to a particular articulation of justice, yet Sweden's technocratic road to spatial justice also exemplifies the dangers of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, Blacks have out of necessity prioritized survival in educating their younger generations for existence in the racially hostile and divided context of the U.S. This education and religious education has occurred formally and informally in homes, schools, community organizations, and in congregations. This paper examines three aspects of survival: survival and emancipatory education, survival and justice, and survival with emerging Black generations. Three examples will be offered that highlight each aspect of survival. The examples will demonstrate how education generally and religious education in particular have undergirded pedagogies of the sacred for the survival of Black life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Whilst advancing outcomes for young people transitioning from out-of-home care is a national priority, no synthesis of Australian interventions that support their transition from care and into independence currently exists. The aim of this systematic scoping review was to examine the characteristics of such interventions delivered in Australia and to evaluate their impact. Papers were included if they assessed the extent to which transitional support interventions, delivered in Australia, improved housing, employment, education, financial, health, or social functioning outcomes. Eleven studies were included. Interventions primarily adopted a case management approach to support care-leavers' transition. Interventions facilitated improvements in care-leavers' independent living outcomes (e.g., housing, education, and financial stability), but less so in health outcomes. This synthesis provides guidance for how research organizations in partnership with community service organizations and statutory services should develop and deliver interventions to support young Australians transitioning from care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the intricate dynamics of trust-building between museums and community organizations, proposing a paradigm shift in understanding professional relationships, likening them to personal relationships with their inherent complexities. The authors examine the common perception of "soft skills", as well as prevailing institutional power imbalances and financial constraints that affect the capacity for community engagement. It sheds light on the challenges faced by professionals tasked with relationship-building outside conventional office hours and spaces, calling for a reevaluation of professional norms that might hinder authentic engagement. Drawing an analogy to an ecological relationship, the authors highlight the interconnectedness of actions within communities, akin to a watershed, scrutinizing the impact museums have on their communities and downstream partners, and urging reflection on responsibilities and accountability for societal consequences. Relationships between organizations, like relationships between people are essentially organic, and often messy as they evolve and grow. The authors emphasize the need for sustained investment in effective, reciprocal community engagement beyond mere cleanup efforts. Ultimately, this argument calls upon museums to proactively address root causes, invest in robust community relationships, and revamp institutional practices to foster accountable, sustainable community partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian urban agriculture movement marks a change in urban landuse policies that includes a greater diversity of gardeners as views on sustainable agriculture promotes local food movements. Benefits of urban agriculture are well documented in the social science, environmental and health literature. Much of the literature on urban food-gardens in Canada focuses on community gardens and school gardens and gardening programmes, while there has been little attempt to gather and synthesise this research with a focus on the governance and management of grassroots urban agri-food organisations. We have undertaken through a systematic scoping review to reveal the extent of the current body of knowledge surrounding urban grassroots agri-food organisations in Canada, as well as governance and management paradigms and challenges. Of the Canadian studies, 15 were qualitative case studies (surveys, observations, etc.), 11 were exploration/analysis papers (analysis of primary research collected elsewhere), one was a literature review and 1 was a quantitative analysis. Significant challenges in grassroots foodgardening are explored. We found that for greater success of urban agriculture, municipal policymakers need to intentionally and radically shift policy to plan for and integrate urban agriculture networks into the urban environment without taking over the networks themselves. We also find that there is a lack of broad research into the influence of gender dynamics on the organisation and management of urban agriculture or community gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International development partnerships are characterised by inherent power relations with community partners often seen as needing assistance in fixing their problems. In this paper, we discuss the limitations of this perspective on the example of gender equality in the Pacific. We explore applied theatre tools to work with a variety of stakeholders to problematise policy issues while exploring different worldviews and knowledges. Our work demonstrates how the voices of community-based organisations can be recognised by governments and donor agencies and how practices of applied theatre can provide tools for designing, reflecting, and advocating for change in joint partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I propose a different classificatory lens to analyse the collective action of civil rights groups in India. To date, this collective action has been variously classified as 'non-party groups,' 'macro initiatives' for grassroots groups, 'action groups or support groups,' as part of an emergent new left citizen's initiatives, but mostly as a 'social movement' or 'human rights movement.' These differences in classification are not due to a considered disagreement; but because this activism is acutely understudied. Examining the history of such groups and the activist interviews I conducted, I argue for a re-classification of civil rights activism as ally activism i.e. they are allies of several, rather than a party to any particular social movement. Ally activism needs to be understood on its own terms to reveal their role in democratic deepening within South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models that can integrate aspects of society such as institutions, perceptions and behaviours with aspects of the natural system such as rainfall, runoff and water quality may help us understand and manage complex human–water systems. In this paper, a socio-hydrological model is developed for the Black Volta (Mouhoun) watershed in Burkina Faso. The model captures the relationships between the awareness of water quality issues and capacity of local organizations, land use in the riparian zone, agricultural practices and suspended sediment concentration as an indicator of water quality. Scenarios are generated for the current situation and for plausible pathways to achieve improved water quality through different riparian land management strategies. Scenario comparison show how water quality improvements are generated if institutional support, resources and capacity of local level organizations are substantially increased compared to current levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study relies on participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore how StreetWise, an organization with a newspaper by the same name, mobilizes symbolic and material support for people without homes or those at risk. Pragmatism is used to understand how StreetWise ameliorates the experience of homelessness by building community. In stark contrast to forces that erase “the homeless” from the public scene, StreetWise integrates people without homes, as vendors, into community life by providing employment and raising awareness about poverty-related issues. Through its structure, mission, and business plan StreetWise encourages an engaged citizenry and enhances civic discourses. StreetWise provides scholars with a context within which to understand the reflexive and interactive organization-society relationships that strive to support a democratic way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the third and final of a series that has previously presented the rationale (Rier and Indyk, this volume) and major program elements (Indyk and Rier, this volume) of an approach to link community and tertiary sociomedical providers, clients/patients, sites, and systems into an integrated response to HIV/AIDS. The primary goal has been to improve sociomedical HIV/AIDS services for a hard-to-reach inner city population. The current paper first summarizes the main advantages (e.g., greater efficiency; more realistic, effective programs with greater credibility among the community; stimulation of knowledge production and dissemination amongst players rarely formally engaged in such activities; creation of a platform useful for other applications) of this work. It then examines some of the main organizational challenges in conducting the work (involving issues such as personnel, coordination, funding, turf conflicts, sustainability). From this discussion emerge organizational requisites to conducting this work (e.g., development of key boundary-spanning figures; attention to the specific interests of potential linkage partners; translation efforts to demonstrate the value of participation; a continuous quality improvement approach featuring wide distribution of feedback in user-friendly form; flexibility, tact and patience), so that others can adapt and apply the linkage approach to manage HIV/AIDS or other problems. Finally, we explain how theory and practice have driven one another in this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community information systems (CINS) are emerging as important tools for community, government, and educational organizations. This paper considers the training, evaluation, and outreach efforts relating to the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System (NIS), a collection of online applications that integrate and distribute housing and demographic data. It presents an overview of the types of NIS users and uses and some specific examples of how the NIS is being used for individual property inquiries, community surveys, needs assessments, and research. Finally, the paper discusses the barriers to more analytical uses and offers recommendations for social work education aimed at preparing social workers to support community organizations in their efforts to harness the potential of CINS for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, 'authoritarian neoliberalism' has emerged as a leading framework for understanding the specificities of neoliberalization post-2007/8 financial crisis. The concept has acquired particular salience in the study of urban transformations as cities have been portrayed as key sites for the articulation of authoritarian neoliberalism. This paper argues against a purely territorial conceptualization of authoritarian neoliberalism in cities, conceiving the latter as targets of neoliberal restructuring construed within an overarching, centralized state. Rather, it argues that understanding the state as a multiscalar field of social compromises allows us to better flesh out this complex phenomenon. Empirically, it traces processes of regulatory rescaling surrounding the implementation of the Belgrade Waterfront project in Serbia which has simultaneously led to a strengthening of decision-making at the national level and rendered the urban scale more permeable to contestation, paving the way for the emergence of key grassroots organizations like Ne Da(vi)mo Beograd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at understanding the complex relations between bureaucratic literacies, the lives of young people in a situation of precarity and the work of employees of two community-based organisations in Québec (Canada). Drawing on the perspective of the New Literacy Studies, the focus of this article is around the role of literacy mediators that can play youth workers. It also endeavours to clarify the meaning of the term precarity (précarité) by suggesting a multidimensional perspective on it. This paper reveals that literacy mediation can be a form of powerful literacies that offer opportunities to counteract dominant literacies and support new ways of learning. Finally, it suggests a reflection on the importance of the work of community-based organisations in countering the situation of precarity experienced by some young people. It underlines the fact that these organisations are also experiencing financial uncertainty and insecurity that affect their services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To contain the 2019 coronavirus, many localities were placed on lockdown and were required to follow social distancing guidelines implemented by upper-level governments. A consequence of these containment measures was that local practitioners had to conduct economic development remotely, an activity traditionally centered around face-to-face interactions. Thus, this raises the question, how important is face-to-face contact for local economic development? To answer this question, in-depth interviews were conducted with thirty-seven senior management economic development practitioners in the Province of Ontario, Canada from 2019 to 2020. The analysis found that face-to-face contact is highly important for practitioners' economic development efforts because it, among other things, facilitates the creation and transmission of tacit knowledge between practitioners as well as with businesses, community organizations, and other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]