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This paper applies an innovative approach to monitoring social effects occurring before and during construction of two hydroelectric dams in Canada. The two studied dams, Site C and Keeyask, are under construction in Canada and underwent community-based impact assessment (CBIA). News coverage and the CBIA documents were analyzed to understand and compare how those two groups perceive social effects induced by the two projects. CBIAs contain concerns expressed by affected people, whereas news coverage can include quotes from both affected people and decisionmakers involved in the assessment process. By contrasting these datasets, we found that the documents are complementary: while CBIAs are comprehensive in assessing community concerns, news outlets can reveal how those concerns evolved throughout different phases of the projects' implementation. This approach fills a gap in SIA around monitoring of key social effects around local conflicts and disputes, psychosocial effects, socioeconomic effects, and cumulative effects on a daily life. Furthermore, by contrasting the views identified within the impact assessments and the media, the study demonstrates how specific concerns diverged: affected people focus on local social effects while decisionmakers' interests lie in a broader political perspective grounded in local sacrifices 'for the good of the whole province'. Our analysis emphasizes the role of political power over decision making that can inhibit CBIA and social impact assessment practice from contributing to socially sustainable projects., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

We investigate ways in which international evangelical Christian humanitarians talk about time as they engaged in humanitarian assistance and development work in South Sudan. Our focus on Christian development work is motivated by a desire to understand how and why people persevere in humanitarian work and reconcile seemingly impossible circumstances and to further elaborate sociological conceptions of time as experienced by people in their own lives. We argue that their faith commitments produce ways of understanding time and causality which make possible their attachment to risky and dangerous work. Our work is based on in-depth interviews with people who work or have recently worked for Christian faith-based organizations in South Sudan (n = 30). Drawing on Tavory and Eliasoph's () concepts of life narratives and life projects, we treat our participants as culturally competent actors who skilfully construct their stories through drawing on collectively shared faith-inflected ideas about temporality and causation. We argue that these ideas represent an important resource for getting through the risks, challenges and uncertainties of doing humanitarian work in complex crises., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

Non-confrontational engagement practices like ethical consumption are a popular form of everyday politics. Existing research into these practices offers positive evaluations (highlighting the value of everyday engagement in public life) and critical perspectives (questioning whether myriad small acts can address structural barriers to equity and sustainability). Meanwhile, less emphasis has been placed on understanding the underlying ideals and motivations for political action that seeks to avoid traditional politics. In order to advance such understanding, this case study uses participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 57 individuals whose daily paid or unpaid leadership roles shape eat-local initiatives. We find that in the local food realm, participants idealize pleasurable, convivial and pragmatic engagement and these ideals culminate in a particular form of everyday action we term 'small-p politics'. The paper offers a theoretically and empirically informed investigation of non-traditional political engagement in eat-local movements, concluding that it emerges from a site where: (a) cultural change is prioritized above contentious politics; (b) rejecting traditional political activity is linked with achieving tangible outcomes; and (c) consumers are deemed the ideal agents of change. Non-traditional politics play a prominent role in the landscape of contemporary civic engagement. This research advances our existing knowledge of such practices by providing a thick description of the political ideals that endorse consumption-based approaches to change in the realm of local food., (© London School of Economics and Political Science 2017.)

Assessing the perception of key stakeholders within the forest sector is critical to evaluating their readiness to engage in adapting to climate change. Here, we report the results of the most comprehensive survey carried out in the Canadian forestry sector to date regarding perceptions of climate change. A total of 1158 individuals, representing a wide range of stakeholders across the five most important forestry provinces in Canada, were asked about climate change, its impact on forest ecosystems, and the suitability of current forest management for addressing future impacts. Overall, we found that respondents were more concerned about climate change than the general population. More than 90% of respondents agreed with the anthropogenic origins of climate change, and > 50% considered it a direct threat to their welfare. Political view was the main driver of general beliefs about the causes of climate change and its future consequences, while the province of origin proved to be the best predictor of perceived current impacts on forest ecosystems and its associated risks; and type of stakeholder was the main driver of perceived need for adaptation. Industrial stakeholders were the most skeptical about the anthropogenic cause(s) of climate change (18% disagreed with this statement, compared to an average of 8% in the other stakeholders), its impacts on forest ecosystems (28% for industry vs. 10% for other respondents), and the need for new management practices (18% vs. 7%). Although the degree of awareness and the willingness to implement adaptive practices were high even for the most skeptical groups, our study identified priority sectors or areas for action when designing awareness campaigns. We suggest that the design of a strategic framework for implementing climate adaptation within the Canadian forest sector should focus on the relationship between climate change and changes in disturbance regimes, and above all on the economic consequences of these changes, but it should also take into account the positions shown by each of the actors in each province., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.