Custom,contestation and co-operation: peace and justice promotion in Somaliland

This article explores alternatives to prevailing state-centric and legalistic approaches to supporting local security and access to justice. It does so through a case study of an initiative developed by an international NGO in partnership with a group of traditional authorities in Somaliland. The initiative aimed at enhancing local security and access to justice, drawing on customary conflict resolution mechanisms and everyday strategies of self-securing. At the same time, the initiative was shaped by international input and liberal notions of human rights and human security. This approach entailed a renegotiation of both local ordering and international discourse. Drawing on our fieldwork, we examine the initiative as it has evolved since 2003, and discuss what it suggests in terms of prospects for international support to ‘non-state’ actors. In particular, the article draws attention to the potential of working with everyday local practices to enable social change rather than focusing narrowly on reforming legal systems (whether state or customary).     

Impacts,Measurements, and Art Policy: Starting the Change Process

The author discusses a survey of companies with art collections in German-speaking countries—Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Drawing on the data collected in the survey, he highlights the differences between two groups of curators currently responsible for corporate art collections, the "new professionals" and the "management administrators." First, organizational changes in corporations that occurred during the "founding boom" of the 1990s had a significant effect on the roles of corporate art managers, introducing the art-educated "new professional" into the process, which before then had been controlled by the corporate-trained "management administrators." Second, the nature, content, and styles of current corporate art collections reflect specific "corporate cultures." Third, the "new professional" corporate art curators purchase contemporary art for their collections at art fairs, a reality that has significant impact on the art market. The author concludes with an analysis of the relationship between these new professional corporate collectors and the contemporary art market by highlighting significant changes in pre- and post-1990 corporate art collections.     

Sexual Harassment, PTSD, and Criterion A: If It Walks Like a Duck …

Sexual harassment and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are two topics that generate heated debate in the social science literature. When the two are combined in the civil litigation context, the intensity of the debate is heightened by the adversarial context of the courts. The current paper examines research on both sexual harassment and PTSD separately, before addressing the issues that arise for psychologists and psychiatrists who serve as expert witnesses in sexual harassment litigation. Proposed resolutions of controversies are offered that attempt to expand the knowledge base for expert witnesses on the topic of sexual harassment as well as work within the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association 2000) framework of PTSD.     

Que sont devenus les fidèles fonctionnaires de I'administration publique canadienne?

La Fonction publique canadienne vit, depuis quelques années, un important changement culturel: les programmes et services ont ete repensés, les méthodes administratives modifiées, les services à la clientèle adaptés aux nouvelles technologies, et la taille de lÉtat considérablement réduite. Des programmes d'encourage-ment au départ anticipé ont été offerts à de nombreux employés. Pourquoi a-t-on décidé de quitter la Fonction publique canadienne? Si tout était à recommencer, prendrait-on la même décision, au même moment et aux mêmes conditions? Comment réagit-on à la perte d'emploi?À quels types d'activites consacre-t-on son temps depuis que l'on a quitté son emploi? Y a-t-il des projets d'avenir? Les reponses a ces questions different-elles selon que l'on est aujourd'hui retraité ou retraité-actif? 930 ex-fonctionnaires de l'administration publique canadienne de la région du Québec ont été interrogés, dont 616 retraités et 314 retraités-actifs. Des différences ont été observées entre les deux groupes en termes de profils, de motivations à quitter la Fonction publique canadienne, de valeurs et d'intérêts, de réactions vis-à-vis de la perte d'emploi et en terme de réceptivité vis-à-vis les alternatives au départ anticipé qu'aurait pu leur offrir la Fonction publique canadienne. Également, les analyses montrent que la Fonction publique canadienne a manifesté un intérêt très limité dans la mise en place de stratégies qui lui auraient permis de maintenir en emploi une bonne proportion de pré-retraités qui auraient préféré, par exemple, le désengage-ment progressif à la fin d'emploi. Abstract: There has been a major cultural change over the last few years within the Canadian Public Service: programs and services were reformulated, administrative methods were modified, client services were adapted to new technologies, and the scope of the government has been greatly reduced. Early-retirement incentive programs were offered to many employees. Why would an individual decide to leave the Canadian Public Service? Were he or she to start all over again, would the same decision, at the same time and under the same conditions, be taken? How is the individual responding to the loss of employment? To what type of activities is time devoted since leaving employment? Are there projects with a future? Are the answers to these questions different depending on whether or not the individual is retired? Nine hundred and thirty former Canadian public administration employees in the Quebec area, including 616 retired and 314 retired but working, were interviewed. Differences were noted between the two groups in terms of profile, reasons for leaving the Canadian Public Service, values and interests, reactions to the loss of employment, and receptivity to the alternatives (other than early retirement) that the Canadian Public Service could have offered them. Analyses also show that very little interest was shown by the Canadian Public Service for implementing strategies that would have allowed it to retain among its employees a high proportion of early retirees who would have preferred, for example, gradual disengagement instead of outright termination.     

Monitoring deliberate self-harm presentations to general hospitals

Monitoring of deliberate self-harm (DSH) presentations to hospitals (and in other settings) is receiving increased attention in many countries. This is due to greater recognition of the size of the problem and awareness of its relevance to suicide prevention policy initiatives, because of the strong association between DSH and suicide. A system for monitoring all DSH presentations has been in place in the general hospital in Oxford for 30 years. Based on our experience, in this paper we describe procedures for monitoring, including case definition and identification, linkage of persons and episodes in order to investigate repetition of DSH and other outcomes (including deaths), and data protection and ethical issues. We also provide details of how to carry out monitoring, including different models of data collection, and what data to collect. Finally we consider the potential uses of the data for both clinical and research purposes, including evaluation of national suicide prevention initiatives.     

Action research: A model for organizational learning

Traditionally, social research has relied on systematic methods to control variation in the collection of data in order to validate relationships observed among the social phenomena under study. Ironically, many critical problems in the actual operation of public organizations are not amenable to such rigorous controls. An alternative mode of analysis, action research, may prove more useful since it takes into account the dynamic nature of organizations, emphasizing the production of valid information, the element of Fee and informed choice by organization members, and the goal of engendering commitment to action by those involved. Simulated operations designed to enhance the performance of public agencies in unforeseen emergencies provide a setting in which to evaluate the effectiveness of action research as a tool for organizational problem-solving.     

Crisis Management in Hindsight: Cognition, Communication, Coordination, and Control

This article argues that cognition is central to performance in emergency management. Cognition is defined as the capacity to recognize the degree of emerging risk to which a community is exposed and to act on that information. Using the case of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate the collapse of the standard model of emergency management without a clear focus on the role of cognition, the author reframes the concept of intergovernmental crisis management as a complex, adaptive system. That is, the system needs to adjust and adapt its performance to fit the demands of an ever-changing physical, engineered, and social environment. The terms of cognition, communication, coordination, and control are redefined in ways that fit the reality of practice in extreme events. A reframed intergovernmental crisis management system may be conceived as a dynamic interorganizational system that is characterized by four primary decision points: (1) detection of risk, (2) recognition and interpretation of risk for the immediate context, (3) communication of risk to multiple organizations in a wider region, and (4) self-organization and mobilization of a collective, community response system to reduce risk and respond to danger.