Rhetoric and the recovery of civil society

By privileging the search for an overall order, both in its theorizing and in its aim, modern social theory has paid insufficient attention to the ‘zones’ of activity in between established institutions-called here the realm of civil society. This is an important neglect. For although the activity in such zones appears essentially disorderly, it permits many local and momentary orderings. Indeed, if one can speak of the ‘common sense’ of a social group at all, then it consists not only: 1) in the argumentative contesting of a whole range of not-as-yet wholly formulated visions of future ways of ‘going on’, but also in: 2) the provision of the historically developed socio-ontological resources required for their realization. Civil society thus contains the ‘seeds’ of future possibilities. Taking activity in this realm seriously means that our current task in social studies, is not the scientific one of discoveringan already existing order, but that of enabling the reinstitution of what, traditionally, was the task of rhetoric: to explicate, in a non-eliminative form of competition involving rival formulations, the implications of different accounts of the nature of our social lives together.     

Inner‐city concentrated poverty and neighborhood distress: 1970 to 1990

Abstract

Tract‐level data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses of population are used to identify poverty neighborhoods, extreme poverty neighborhoods, distressed neighborhoods, and severely distressed neighborhoods within the nation's 100 largest central cities. Changes in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of these neighborhoods are documented, including racial/ethnic composition; poverty population concentration; school dropout rates; and rates of joblessness, single‐parent households, and welfare receipt.

Results show that despite some encouraging individual city turnarounds in the Northeast (especially in New York, Newark, and Philadelphia), urban poverty concentration and neighborhood distress worsened nationwide between 1980 and 1990. The greatest deterioration occurred in midwestern cities, particularly in Detroit. Southern cities, whose neighborhoods and cities typically improved during the 1970s, slipped during the 1980s; conditions in western cities also deteriorated. Blacks fared worse than whites and Hispanics during the 1980s in terms of increased concentration of poor in poverty tracts and distressed urban neighborhoods.     

International Law Book Facility Officially Launched

There has been growing international consensus on issues related to child labour – evident in various declarations, platforms, conventions, programmes of action etc. Child labour is the economic exploitation of children, or performance of any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. Poverty is the principal cause of child labour. Mostly the children work to support their families and also for their own survival. Paradoxically, however, child labour further aggravates the poverty syndrome as it usually deprives the children of education and opportunity to acquire skills for developing earning potentials. Other causes of child labour include family indebtedness, the lack or poor quality of schooling or non‐formal education, breakdown of extended family, uneducated parents, local cultural setting, and consumerism. It goes beyond economic exploitation or hazardous employment to include forced labour, trafficking, sexual exploitation and the use of children for the production and trafficking of illegal drugs. This article will ponder the socio‐legal situation of child labour and the large number of legislative enactments regarding labour in India, as well as their realities on the ground.