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Community Cohesion (community + cohesion)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	77%

Selected Abstracts

Managing Diversity? ,Community Cohesion' and Its Limits in Neoliberal Urban Policy

GEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2008
Julie MacLeavy
The concept of ,community cohesion' has played a defining role in the institution of a new policy agenda for regenerating urban areas in many liberal welfare states. Its particular interpretation supports the installation of urban programmes that are based not on the improvement of the built environment, but rather investment in the social and cultural composition of cities. In particular, the economic and civic participation of individuals living within deprived urban areas is positioned as a key means of redressing situations of inequality and disadvantage. This article reviews the concept of ,community cohesion', its use in urban policy in the UK, and the recent literature on this subject. Through an indicative discussion of the New Deal for Communities programme, it explores the potential implications of ,community cohesion' for disadvantaged policy subjects and considers especially its provisions for ethnic minority groups: a constellation of community in which individuals are understood to experience a ,double disadvantage' as a result of their disproportionate concentration in deprived urban areas, and their subjection to the consequences of racial discrimination (as well as language and cultural barriers). [source]

An ,upside-down' view of rural health care

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 2 2001
Mary Mahoney
Abstract Access to high quality health care services plays an important part in the health of rural communities and individuals. This fact is reflected in efforts by governments to improve the quality of such services through better targeting of funds and more efficient management of services. In Australia, the difficulties experienced by rural communities in attracting and retaining doctors has long been recognized as a contributing factor to the relatively higher levels of morbidity and mortality in rural areas. However, this paper, based on a study of two small rural communities in Australia, suggests that resolving the health problems of rural communities will require more than simply increasing the quality and accessibility of health services. Health and well-being in such communities relates as much to the sense of community cohesion as it does to the direct provision of medical services. Over recent years, that cohesion has diminished, undermined in part by government policies that have fuelled an exodus from small rural communities to urban areas. Until governments begin to take an ,upside-down' perspective, focusing on building healthy communities rather than simply on building hospitals to make communities healthy, the disadvantages faced by rural people will continue to be exacerbated. [source]

Media coverage of ,decades of disparity' in ethnic mortality in Aotearoa

JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 6 2004
Darrin Hodgetts
Abstract For some time we have known that factors such as economic prosperity, community cohesion, and social justice bear on health. These societal influences are particularly pertinent to the health of indigenous groups, such as Maori, who are still responding to processes of colonization. In July 2003 the New Zealand Ministry of Health published a report entitled ,Decades of Disparity', which proposed (among other things) that neoliberal policies of the last two decades impacted negatively on mortality rates for Maori and Pacific peoples, when compared with Pakeha. In this article we explore media coverage of this report through analyses of media releases, radio, television and newspaper items. It is argued that as the story evolved media increasingly challenged the importance of societal determinants of health, preferring individual level explanations. As a result coverage failed to give due emphasis to structural health concerns for Maori, which necessitate social change. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Making People More Responsible: The Blair Governments' Programme for Changing Citizens' Behaviour

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2010
Perri
A distinctive feature of the three Blair New Labour governments' domestic policy was the effort to change citizens' behaviour. Variously explained using such slogans as ,something for something', ,responsibility' and, in combating antisocial behaviour, ,respect', behaviour change was presented by the PM's Strategy Unit as an overarching strategic framework for policy. This included conditionality in welfare to work, health promotion campaigns, a ban on smoking in public places, measures to combat antisocial behaviour and enforce school discipline, home,school contracts, community cohesion and neighbourhood renewal programmes, measures to encourage car sharing and use of public transport, and others to promote domestic waste recycling. This article examines how far the two principal explanatory theories available predict that programme's characteristics. It uses a structured data set on the policy instruments, target groups and content of initiatives undertaken by eight central government spending departments. We find that indeed the strong (more coercive) tools are markedly concentrated on initiatives targeting the poor and low-income working strata. The expectations derived from the two theoretical traditions are not strongly supported. [source]

Creaming off talent or aiding development? (Featuring Viewpoint from Phil Woolas MP)

PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH, Issue 4 2009
Laura Chappell
Think of migration and a long list of related issues come to mind , wages, employment, housing, community cohesion. But what about development, asks Laura Chappell [source]

Globalization and African Ethnoscapes: contrasting Nigerien Hausa and Nigerian Igbo migratory orders in the U.S.

CITY & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2004
RACHEL R. REYNOLDS
This short essay, which is a preface to two full length articles by Reynolds and by Youngstedt, also in this volume, highlights important contrasts between two African migratory orders in cities in the United States, especially by examining economic conditions under which the two communities use global information technologies as tools of community cohesion and formation in diaspora. The central contrast is that Nigerien Hausa experiences rest at the margins of the formal economy or at their engagement within informal economies, while Nigerian Igbo peoples' experiences as brain drain professionals means that they are by nature of their migratory order integrated into the hegemonic core of global capital. Ultimately, our ethnographically-based evidence poses two queries: how does space-time compression operate differentially in the creation of new "global" communities, and secondly, how are significant groups of global actors emerging as the various strands of globalizing economies take new root within and across old ethnic and national and religious imaginaries of community? [source]

"We Are Not Surviving, We Are Managing": the constitution of a Nigerian diaspora along the contours of the global economy

CITY & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2004
RACHEL R. REYNOLDSArticle first published online: 28 JUN 200
This ethnographic piece outlines how the geography of globalization and its socieconomic vicissitudes condition unique life experiences for Nigerian Igbo immigrants in the U.S. The elite class of Igbo people from Nigeria continue to immigrate to the U.S. in large numbers. As professionals, ethnic group members tend to settle in mainstream American neighborhoods, experiencing a high degree of structural integration into global professional workplaces and occupations. Ironically, the same physical and occupational mobility that disperses Igbo elites across the globe and across the U.S. also provides the enhanced means by which Igbo-speaking people sustain their ethnic organizations and diasporic communities. Professional work, normally in places which are assimilated to the American mainstream despite being extra,Igbo contexts, actually encourage habits of interactive communication that are brought into the service of Igbo community cohesion. In that sense, a geographical distribution that is primarily socio-economic is also parlayed into a means by which people come together through travel, through literacy, and through synchronous communication technologies. [source]

Managing Diversity? ,Community Cohesion' and Its Limits in Neoliberal Urban Policy

The Place of Islam in the Geography of Religion: Trends and Intersections

GEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2007
Richard Gale
This article reviews recent geographical research on Islam and Muslim identities. In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, the forms taken by public debate surrounding Muslim communities and societies have been manifold and not always edifying. In the present political climate, where public attitudes to a particular suite of issues are often as misinformed as they are deeply held, the need for academics to furnish insights born out of robust research is acute. While the responses of academics to debates coalescing around Muslim communities and identities have emanated predominantly from religious studies, sociology and anthropology, geographers, with their attention to the spatial components inherent to the articulation of social identities, are making an increasingly significant contribution to our knowledge in this field. This article reviews this contribution, focusing on four areas in which geographical research on Islam has been most pronounced: Muslim residential segregation and ,community cohesion'; the relationship between Islamic dress codes and spatial context in the articulation of Muslim gender identities; the contestation of space that has attended the architectural expression of Muslim identity in urban landscapes and the spatial politics embedded in the construction of Muslim identities at simultaneously national and transnational scales. While the predominant focus is therefore geographical, the article also establishes linkages to other writings on the spatiality of Islam where relevant to the specific themes under discussion. [source]