Labour and Epistemic Communities: The Case of 'Managed Migration' in the UK

How do new ideas flow through networks to reframe policy questions, and what role is played by the growing world of think tanks and policy experts? This article takes the remarkable shift in UK labour migration policy since 2000 and demonstrates how policy was redesigned by networks of actors working between and within the worlds of think tanks and government, including the Prime Minister's Policy and Innovation Unit (PIU), the Treasury, the Home Office and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The article shows how different kinds of ideas and knowledge flowed through different actors and networks to influence the reframing of policy, using the epistemic communities hypothesis (ECH) as a theoretical framework for the analysis.     

Coastal Tourism in a Context of Neoliberal Development: Social Change in Mancora,Peru

The case of Mancora, Northern Peru, illustrates a process of neoliberalisation through which conceptions of place, local identities and the recent history of the place have been reformulated due to the rapid expansion of global tourism. In this former fishing village, tourism development altered local conceptions of place, allowing the emergence of contrasting projects for converting it into a beach resort. This process brought about a context governed by land conflicts and tension between local authorities, where local inhabitants reshaped their identities and the recent history of the place in order to gain or maintain ownership over valuable natural resources.     

Community and Families

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present the social organization, social networks and interactive processes supporting family systems living in communities with marginal economies, in disadvantaged neighbourhoods (barrios) in Caracas, Venezuela. Twelve families inserted in four different communities were observed by four researchers, taking thirty-six ethnographic records of the families' daily life activities, as well as the interaction patterns between family members, and between the family system and the community and social organizations. Some characteristics of the organization, structure, and functioning of the underprivileged family systems as well as their interrelations to the community and to the educational and social institutions are shown. It is concluded that the analysis of these interactive patterns permits the researcher to explore the complexity of family life in poverty stricken communities, its culture and process of change.     

社会治安系统工程的一种模式:安全文明小区

安全文明小区在综合治理社区治安过程中的积极意义早已是不争的事实。然而，安全文明小区的运行机制却有持提炼。在本文中，笔者试图探求一种将社会治安系统工程引入安全文明小区中去的思路。     

“Yours for Socialism”: Communist Cultural Discourse in Early Apartheid South Africa

This paper explores the diversity of cultural debates which constellated around the Communist Party in South Africa in the late segregationist and early apartheid periods. It traces the textual remains of an itinerant public debate––dispersed in periodical reviews, magazine articles, journalistic tit-bits and other ephemeral public sphere activities such as debating societies, theater groups and discussion clubs––with a view to complicating and expanding the South African literary-cultural archive. Of particular importance are the practices and protocols of reading, cultural critique and interpretation that characterized the intellectual-political field––or public sphere––which we name the Communist Party. In this way, a fragmented cultural discussion is provisionally reconstituted or “invented” as an important South African tradition and reclaimed as a significant intellectual inheritance. The project thus bears on broader question of reading the past and attempts to negotiate an historical split between uncritical nostalgia and the will to transcend.     

The influence of sample type,presentation format and strength of evidence on juror simulation research

Abstract

Recent research has indicated that treatment of psychopaths in therapeutic communities is problematic in terms of high rates of attrition, low levels of motivation and increased reconviction. However, there has been little previous research investigating in detail how the behavioural diffculties posed by psychopaths in therapeutic community settings could be systematically monitored is order to assess change. This paper reports on the development of a checkilst completed by prison officers designed to measure behaviours association with a poor adjustment to a prison based therapeutic community. Behaviour checklist accores showed statistically significant correlations with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R, Hare 1991), patticularly with Factor 1 scores measuring intarpersonal aspects of psychopathy. The potential for developing this method as a type of dynamic assessment for psychopaths undertaking treatmant is discussed.     

Towards African Communication Science curricula: Challenges for higher education

Abstract

This article explores the integration of Africanism in curriculum content of Communication as a science on the level of higher education. Africanism is not treated as something to be added to curriculum content, but is regarded as an integral part of an institutional strategy of post-apartheid and post-merger transformation. This article is divided into two sections. The first focuses on strategic shifts that have to be considered when revisiting curricula content and the dilemma of linguistic pluralism. The second section deals with the operational processes that are necessary when revisiting curriculum content, by focusing specifically on the application of collaboration and assessment as mechanisms for planning and negotiating changes to curriculum content, plus the nature of key determinants of the interrelationships among academics, higher-education institutions and adult learners. The article concludes with critical questions which Communication curriculum designers and academics need to ask in their research and training endeavours to contribute to the national development goals and social reconstruction.     

Localism and Accountability in a Post-Collaborative Era: Where Does It Leave the Community Right to Challenge?

Since the establishment of subsidiarity in the early 1990s, the European-wide move to devolve governance has been interpreted by previous and present UK governments adopting differing ideological positions within a ‘localism agenda’. Interpretations have changed the dynamics of the community right to challenge, as well as the structure and mechanisms for community accountability. This article adopts the typology of forms of local governance developed by Lowndes and Sullivan (2008, How low can you go? Rationales and challenges for neighbourhood governance. Public Administration, 86 (1), 1–22) to explore the hypothesis that the localism agenda realigns the synergy between neighbourhood rationales; citizen engagement in service delivery and the opportunity for public scrutiny and accountability. It concludes that opportunities for communities to challenge service delivery and ensure increased accountability to the local level will be tempered by increased complexity and demands on local authorities to develop new relationships with both service users and providers.     

Islam and Muslim Communities in the UK: Multiculturalism,Faith and Security

This piece examines the relationship of Muslim communities to the UK mainstream between 2005 and 2010. Using the dual backdrop of the country's embedded multiculturalism policy and its counter-terrorism strategy implemented through the Prevent agenda, the authors brush a picture of a tense yet ultimately resilient relationship. While Prevent was often accused of leading to a securitisation of community policy, it is arguable that tensions have led to increased visibility and leadership capacity from the Muslim community, and a recognition of their role and diversity on behalf of the public and the government.     

Two sides of a coin? New urbanism and gated communities

Abstract

Contemporary residential building trends reflect concerns about privacy, traffic, and managing difference. Despite the radically different premises behind New Urbanism and gated communities, I find on closer inspection that they both respond to similar perceived crises in our cities. New Urbanism answers urban challenges with bold efforts to recapture the strengths of older communities and to supplant unwanted suburban patterns with those believed to have greater resilience and public purpose. Gated communities reveal popular skepticism about the potential for improving urban conditions and a consequent desire to retreat to protected compounds.

In both cases, the new suburbs generally provide housing primarily for the most affluent among us and represent the ascendance of private over public interests. By examining the Canadian urban context, this article explores some ways in which New Urbanism and gated communities differ, while also highlighting the characteristics and dilemmas they share.