Looking Backwards: 1968 Thirty Years Later 1

This essay is intended to open a discussion about building a coherent account of the decline of AIDS street activism amongst lesbians and gay men in the US in the early 1990s. It does so by demonstrating how a narrative of key events in the rise and decline of this activism can be structured by being linked to the trajectory of racial politics in the larger society. The argument is made that AIDS street activism was ultimately overwhelmed by political isolation caused by the withering of a broader "rainbow politics," and by an expanding white racial backlash in the larger society. In this context there was little room for the political development of movement participants, and movement solidarity was shattered as the broader culture and politics of racial backlash penetrated the movement.     

Central‐city and suburban migration patterns: Is a turnaround on the horizon?

Abstract

The huge population losses that characterized many older, larger U.S. cities during the 1960s and 1970s slowed and in some cases ceased during the 1980s and early 1990s. Periodic media reports of neighborhood turnarounds, commercial revitalization, and improvements in housing and the quality of life in selected inner‐city subareas have been taken as signs that central cities are retaining middle‐class residents and even attracting some back from the suburbs.

Analysis of metropolitan household migration patterns based on the U.S. Census Bureau's 1980 and 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples and more recent Current Population Surveys shows that the dominant trend in residential movement among most population subgroups is still toward the suburbs. While not discounting reports of central‐city neighborhood turnarounds and selective demographic revitalization, our findings imply that those improvements are limited and that a widespread back‐to‐the‐city movement is not likely in the foreseeable future.     

Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and measuring an elusive concept

Abstract

The literature on urban sprawl confuses causes, consequences, and conditions. This article presents a conceptual definition of sprawl based on eight distinct dimensions of land use patterns: density, continuity, concentration, clustering, centrality, nuclearity mixed uses, and proximity. Sprawl is defined as a condition of land use that is represented by low values on one or more of these dimensions.

Each dimension is operationally defined and tested in 13 urbanized areas. Results for six dimensions are reported for each area, and an initial comparison of the extent of sprawl in the 13 areas is provided. The test confirms the utility of the approach and suggests that a clearer conceptual and operational definition can facilitate research on the causes and consequences of sprawl.     

Structural Reform of Local Government in Australia: A Sustainable Amalgamation Model for Country Councils

Abstract. Council amalgamation has always been the major policy instrument for structural reform in Australian local government. While the Australian literature has spawned taxonomic attempts at classifying models of structural change in local government, a serious deficiency in this body of work has been the specification of amalgamation as an undifferentiated category embodying the unconditional merger of many small local authorities into a single larger entity. This paper seeks to remedy this problem by developing a model of sustainable amalgamation and contrasting it with unconditional amalgamation in using a stylised example derived from four existing Western Australian country shires contemplating consolidation.     

Pitfalls in Strategic Planning: Lessons for Legitimacy

The paper considers how planning as a political activity is underpinned by concepts of justice and how professional practitioners are consistently faced with making ethical choices in the public interest. The key objective is therefore to identify the centrality of ethics in praxis. In this context, political liberal theory is empirically useful in exploring both the role of participants and the processes employed in strategic planning. A case study analysis generates key issues which are relevant to planning in the wider arena and an extensive series of interviews provides interesting insights into the dynamic between those involved and the effectiveness of procedures followed.     

Like Mother,Like Daughters? Campaigns for Tribal Peoples’ Rights in the Commonwealth

Abstract

Intent on stealing land and plundering resources, the British Empire labelled its tribal subjects as ‘backward’ and used the excuse of bringing them ‘civilisation’ to appropriate their land and resources. This study examines the development of campaigns for tribal peoples’ rights in various Commonwealth countries since independence. It shows how methods of campaigning have been largely consistent since the birth of the indigenous rights movements, involving the public in letter-writing, demonstrations and vigils, and using publications and the press to raise awareness of rights violations and abuses. It illustrates how many Commonwealth governments today, like the former imperial rulers, believe in the ‘backwardness’ of their tribal citizens, but today it is ‘development’ not ‘civilisation’ that lies behind the theft of their lands and resources.     

Money and the Message: The Role of Training and Coaching in Graduation Programming

Graduation programmes are innovative because they combine regular cash transfers with livelihood promotion and – most innovatively – a combination of training and tailored coaching. The latter is sometimes considered the ‘X-factor’ in the graduation model, but little evidence exists regarding its role in affecting change. This paper presents findings from a mixed methods evaluation of a graduation programme in Burundi. We find that (i) training and coaching are important complements to cash and material support in achieving positive change, (ii) positive effects extend to the wider community, and (iii) continuous, tailored, and positively engaging modes of messaging are imperative for achieving change.     

The gypsy as vanishing mediator in Russian television coverage of inter-ethnic tension

The article addresses the representation of gypsies in Russian television news bulletins and popular drama series over a 15-month period. It seeks first to explain the prominence of the media image of the gypsy relative to the size of the Roma population and second to account for the relationship between fictional and non-fictional modes of representation. Situating itself within the broader field of post-Soviet Russian identity studies and applying qualitative tools differentiated according to the arena of analysis, it looks at questions of lexicon, voice and viewpoint in relation to news and issues of characterization, fictional space and plot with respect to drama. The two apparatuses are linked through a shared emphasis on narrative, and in particular on its dual orientation toward the exceptional (what makes a story worth telling and capable of embracing “difference”) and the typical (what enables it to represent and project “identity”). In its central argument it maps this dual “identity/difference” dynamic onto the gypsy's liminal status as both “of the self” and “of the other”, and its mediatory function: the ability to serve as a proxy for ethno-cultural difference more generally, and to negotiate the tensions between the cultural and racial aspects of ethnicity.