Brownfield redevelopment and affordable housing: A case study of New Jersey

Abstract

A total of 779 New Jersey residents were surveyed to determine the number of people who during the next five years would be willing to move to housing built on brownfield sites that have been remediated to the extent that they pose no plausible brownfield‐related health risk to residents.

Fourteen percent of the respondents said they would be willing to move to and live in housing built on cleaned‐up brownfields. These respondents were disproportionately relatively poor and young and resided in apartments and cities, especially cities where the city government was actively promoting brownfields. These respondents also did not like their current neighborhoods, did not feel threatened by the idea of living on a cleaned‐up brownfield site, and trusted experts to advise them on the health risks involved.     

Experimental analysis of the effect of standards on compliance and performance

Legal directives – whether laws, regulations, or contractual provisions – can be written along a spectrum of specificity, about which behavioral and legal scholarship present conflicting views. We hypothesized that the combination of specificity and monitoring promotes compliance but harms performance and trust, whereas the combination of specificity and good faith enhances both the informative goal‐setting aspects of specificity and people's sense of commitment. To test these hypotheses, we used a 2x2x2 experimental design in which participants were instructed to edit a document with either general or detailed instructions, with a reference to good faith or without it, and with a review of the work or without it. Participants could engage in various levels and kinds of editing, allowing us to distinctly measure both compliance and performance. When participants require information and guidance, as in the case of editing, we found that specificity increases performance relative to the vague standard condition. We discuss the characteristics of the regulatory frameworks in which our findings are especially relevant.     

Perspectives of Mothers,Fathers, and Parenting Coordinators Concerning the Process and Impact of Parenting Coordination

In a small pilot study, 31 interviewees, including 12 parenting coordinators, 11 mothers, and 8 fathers representing 14 different parenting coordination cases retrospectively described child and family functioning both pre‐ and post‐parenting coordination in phone interviews. They also detailed how often and how well different issues that arose during the parenting coordination work (acrimony, problem‐solving communication, triangulation of the child into the conflict) were actively addressed. Parties tended to view coparenting more positively when reflecting on post‐ compared with pre‐intervention, but reported less change in child adjustment. Discrepancy among same‐case informant reports was common. Parenting coordinators (PCs) consistently rated their interventions as more frequent and successful than did parents. Mothers and fathers largely disagreed on interventions they experienced. While this small N pilot can offer no definitive conclusions, it underscores need for research and wisdom in including both parents' perspectives.     

An Examination of the Effects of Personal and Workplace Variables on Correctional Staff Perceptions of Safety

American Journal of Criminal Justice - Research on victimization has progressed dramatically over the last four decades. This research has identified important individual and contextual predictors...     

Agrarian political economy and modern world capitalism: the contributions of food regime analysis

This paper provides a selective survey of food regimes and food regime analysis since the seminal article by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael in 1989, and further traced through their subsequent (individual) work. It identifies eight key elements or dimensions of food regime analysis, namely the international state system; international divisions of labour and patterns of trade; the ‘rules’ and discursive (ideological) legitimations of different food regimes; relations between agriculture and industry, including technical and environmental change in farming; dominant forms of capital and their modalities of accumulation; social forces (other than capitals and states); the tensions and contradictions of specific food regimes; and transitions between food regimes. These are used to summarise three food regimes in the history of world capitalism to date: a first regime from 1870 to 1914, a second regime from 1945 to 1973, and a third corporate food regime from the 1980s proposed by McMichael within the period of neoliberal globalisation. Questions of theory, method and evidence are noted in the course of the exposition and pulled together in a final section which criticises the ‘peasant turn’ of the ‘corporate food regime’ and the analytical and empirical weaknesses associated with it.     

The New Economy,Class Condescension and Caring Labour: Changing Formations of Class and Gender

An argument about the declining significance of class and gender as structural constraints in British society has become common in mainstream sociological theory. Mobility, reflexivity, and detraditionalization are seen as key characteristics of a post‐Fordist, post‐structural society. In feminist theory, however, debates about the reconstitution of class and gender, as well as the symbolic meaning of class, challenge assumptions about detraditionalization. I assess these arguments through an exploration of the consequences of women's changing labour market position and the contradictions between employment and caring responsibilities. I argue that emerging class differences and widening inequalities between women, as well as new class relationships in the home, should be explored further.