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Recent case studies of receiving communities have established that translocal immigrants are transforming their neighbourhoods, producing spaces of identity. While these studies have focused on the reshaping of local power dynamics, less attention has been given to the spaces, themselves, and the qualities that influence identity. This study utilises place identity literature, from environmental psychology, to explore the remaking of MacArthur Park, a public space at the centre of a Mexican and Central American immigrant community in Los Angeles, California. We find that new ‘place identities’ are influenced by the specific physical, social, and cultural elements of the park, as study participants attempt to maintain identities influenced by important places in their sending communities. The result is a park that has emotional significance for participants, significance that leads to agency – everyday and political practices – to protect the park, sometimes in the face of immense challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite skepticism about the common good, the idea has both theoretical content and practical utility. It rests on important features of human life, such as inherently social goods, social linkages, and joint occupation of various commons. It reflects the outcome for bargaining for mutual advantage, subject to a fairness test. And it is particularized through a community's adherence to certain goods as objects of joint endeavor. In the context of the United States, these goods are set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution-in general language, subject to political contestation, for a people who have agreed to live together in a united political community. While the Preamble states the ends of the union, the body of the Constitution establishes the institutional means for achieving them. So these institutions are part of the common good as well. These are the enduring commonalities-the elements of a shared good- that ceaseless democratic conflict often obscures but that reemerge in times of crisis and civic ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of community occupied an important place in the reflections of the sociolog-ical classics. For Marx, Tönnies, Weber, Dürkheim, Simmel, and others, it was a tool of analysis and description or of critiquing and surpassing modern society. Parsons attempts a refoundation (and reunification) of sociological theory. He must, then, face the ubiquity of the notion of community in social theory. Present throughout his work, community reappears crucially in his last theoretical formulations as "societal com-munity." This article will delve into the conditions and implications of a the Parsonian use of the notion of "community." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a crique of Robert D. Putnam's article "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture," focusing on the issues of the measurement of diversity, aggregation bias, and selection bias in the U.S. He opines that a limitation of Putnam's analysis is its inability to distinguish between the effects of community-level ethnic diversity and neighborhood-level residential segregation. He cites failure of the article to examine variations in the trust measure across ethnic groups.

The essay presents the author's reflections on the aftermath of the Virginia Tech school shootings of April 2007 and suggests that the events are signs of a larger problem of institutional dysfunction in school communities across the U.S. The author discusses and advocates the Peacable Schools and Communities Group framework, which outlines a process of ensuring sustainable interpersonal relations in group identities. Applications for the framework are also illustrated through the example of public schools.

The article discusses the impact of public or civic journalism on the public life of host communities in the U.S. and how it maintains its relevance. It profiles the experiences of several U.S. communities in which news media reportage has adapted to the needs of citizens. The Charlotte initiative is said to be one of the most advanced civic journalism experiments. Information revolution is cited as what drives editors and broadcast executives to connect with readers. One of the benefits of civic journalism that is noted is its role in the spirit of cooperation and commitment.

The article focuses on the development in the societies in the U.S. The author mentions that the nation's society comprises of racial, ethnic, and others. He states that some society are envisioned as melting pot, wherein all groups all groups would be assimilated into one homogeneous American amalgam. He adds that others see society as a rainbow wherein people have distinctive colors. He also emphasizes that some see society as an image of mosaic, which is enriched by a variety of elements of different shapes and colors, but it is held together by a frame and glue.

Presents summaries of articles on social issues in the United States. `Effects of Parental Divorce on Mental Health Throughout the Life Course,' by Andrew J. Cherlin, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, et al., which appeared in `American Sociological Review,' dated April 1998; `The Evidence on Class Size,' by Eric A. Hanushek; `How Judges Are Making Public Schools Worse,' by William A. Fischel, and which appeared in `City Journal,' dated Summer 1998.