Direct vs. indirect attitude measurement and the planning of Catalan in Mallorca

2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe Pieras-Guasp

Studies of the sociolinguistic situation of Catalan have generally concentrated on Catalonia and have disregarded other territories where Catalan is also native, namely the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands. Although the three territories share a common history of linguistic oppression, different approaches with respect to language planning on the part of the respective autonomous governments have produced different patterns of sociolinguistic evolution. In this article, the specifics of the island of Mallorca and in particular the sociolinguistic situation of its capital city, Palma, are reviewed. Research on attitudes in the Balearic Islands has made use of direct questionnaires as a tool of analysis. This paper explores the differences between the answers to direct questionnaires and the responses to a matched-guise experiment by way of the traditional distinction between the parameters of status-instrumentality and solidarity-integrativeness. It also proposes that a combination of methods is needed to obtain a clearer picture of the problems still to overcome.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julius M. Gathogo

The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), otherwise known as Mau-Mau revolutionary movement was formed after returnees of the Second World War (1939–1945) ignited the African populace to militarily fight for land and freedom (wiyathi nai thaka). John Walton’s theory of reluctant rebels informs this article theoretically, as it is indeed the political elites who inspired this armed struggle. To do this, they held several meetings in the capital city of Nairobi, drew the war structures from the national level to the sub-location level, especially in the central region of Kenya, and tasked locals with filling in the leadership vacuums that were created. In view of this, the article seeks to unveil the revolutionary history of the Mau-Mau medical Doctor, also known as Major Judge Munene Gachau (born in 1935), whose contribution in the Kenyan war of independence (1952–1960) remains unique. This uniqueness can be attested to by considering various factors. First, he is one of the few surviving leaders who joined the guerrilla forest war while he was relatively young. Normally, the Mau-Mau War Council did not encourage people below the age of 25 to join the rebels in the forest of Mt. Kenya, Aberdare Mountains and/or other places. Nor did they encourage adults past the age of 35 to join as combatants in the forest fight. Second, he is the only known Mau-Mau rebel in Kirinyaga county of Kenya to have gone back to school after the war had ended, traveled abroad, and studied up to a Masters degree level. Third, Munene Gachau belongs in the category that joined the rebels while still relatively educated and eventually got promoted to the rank of Major, upon being confirmed as the Mau-Mau Doctor.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110005
Author(s):  
Rebekah Plueckhahn

This article explores the experience of living among diverse infrastructural configurations in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and forms of stigmatisation that arise as a result. In this capital city that experiences extremely cold winters, the provision of heat is a seasonal necessity. Following a history of socialist-era, centrally provided heating, Ulaanbaatar is now made up of a core area of apartments and other buildings undergoing increased expansion, surrounded by vast areas of fenced land plots ( ger districts) not connected to centrally provided heating. In these areas, residents have historically heated their homes through burning coal, a technique that has resulted in seasonal air pollution. Expanding out from Wacquant’s definition of territorial stigmatisation, this article discusses the links between heat generation, air pollution and environmental stigmatisation arising from residents’ association with or proximity to the effects of heat generation and/or infrastructural lack. This type of stigma complexifies the normative divide between the city’s two main built areas. Residents’ attempts to mitigate forms of building and infrastructural ‘quality’ or chanar (in Mongolian) form ways of negotiating their position as they seek different kinds of property. Here, not only are bodies vulnerable to forms of pollution (both air and otherwise), but also buildings and infrastructure are vulnerable to disrepair. Residents’ assessments of infrastructural and building quality move beyond any categorisation of them being a clear ‘resistance’ to deteriorating infrastructural conditions. Instead, an ethnographic lens that positions the viewpoint of the city through these residential experiences reveals a reconceptualisation of the city that challenges infrastructurally determined normative assumptions.


1938 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 152-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick H. Wilson

The first of these Studies was concerned chiefly with the history of Ostia during the period when the city was still growing and its prosperity increasing. Even so, during the period already considered, the prosperity of Ostia, though real, was to this extent artificial, in that it depended upon factors over which the citizens themselves had no control. Ostia was the port of Rome, and nothing else, and in consequence any lowering of the standard of living in, or reduction of imports into the capital city must have had immediate and marked repercussions upon her prosperity. She even lacked to a great extent those reserves of wealth which in other cities might be drawn upon to tide over bad times. The typical citizen of Ostia came to the city in the hope of making his fortune there; but when he had made it, he usually preferred to retire to some more pleasant town, such as Tibur, Tusculum, Velitrae, or Rome itself, where he could enjoy his leisure. Few families seem to have remained in the city for more than two, or, at the most, three generations. Whilst therefore fortunes were made in Ostia, wealth was not accumulated there.


10.1068/d310 ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
G Alex Bremner ◽  
David P Y Lung

In this paper we discuss the role and significance of European cultural identity in the formation of the urban environment in 19th-century and early-20th-century British Hong Kong. Our purpose is to offer an alternative reading of the social history of Hong Kong-the orthodox accounts of which remain largely predominant in the general historical understanding of that society-by examining the machinations that surrounded attempts by the European colonial elite to control the production of urban form and space in the capital city of Hong Kong, Victoria. Here the European Residential District ordinance of 1888 (along with other related ordinances) is considered in detail. An examination of European cultural self-perception and the construction of colonial identity is made by considering not only the actual ways in which urban form and space were manipulated through these ordinances but also the visual representation of the city in art. Here the intersection between ideas and images concerning civil society, cultural identity, architecture, and the official practices of colonial urban planning is demonstrated. It is argued that this coalescing of ideas, images, and practices in the colonial environment of British Hong Kong not only led to the racialisation of urban form and space there but also contributed to the apparent anxiety exhibited by the European population over the preservation of their own identity through the immediacy of the built environment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 2031-2041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theofilos Toulkeridis ◽  
Fabián Rodríguez ◽  
Nelson Arias Jiménez ◽  
Débora Simón Baile ◽  
Rodolfo Salazar Martínez ◽  
...  

Abstract. The so-called El Trébol is a critical road interchange in Quito connecting the north and south regions of the city. In addition, it connects Quito with the highly populated Los Chillos Valley, one of the most traveled zones in the Ecuadorian capital. El Trébol was constructed in the late 1960s in order to resolve the traffic jams of the capital city and for that purpose the Machángara River was rerouted through an underground concrete box tunnel. In March 2008, the tunnel contained a high amount of discarded furniture that had been impacting the top portion of the tunnel, compromising the structural integrity. On 31 March 2008 after a heavy rainfall a sinkhole of great proportions formed in the Trébol traffic hub. In the first few minutes, the sinkhole reached an initial diameter of 30 m. The collapse continued to grow in the following days until the final dimensions of 120 m in diameter and some 40 m of depth, revealing the Machángara River at the base of the sinkhole.A state of emergency was declared. The cause of the sinkhole was a result of the lack of monitoring of the older subterranean infrastructure where trash had accumulated and damaged the concrete tunnel that channelized the Machángara River until it was worn away for a length of some 20 m, leaving behind the sinkhole and the fear of recurrence in populated areas.With the intent to understand the causes and consequences of this sinkhole event, rainfall data are shown together with hydrogeological characteristics and a view back to the recent history of sinkhole lineation or arrangement of the city of Quito. The economic impact is also emphasized, where the direct costs of the damage and the reconstruction are presented and compared to indirect costs associated with this socio-natural disaster. These analyses suggest that the costs of indirect financial damage, like time loss or delay, and subsequent higher expenses for different types of vehicles, are equivalent to many times the costs of the reconstruction of El Trébol.


Author(s):  
Mary T. Boatwright

This book explores the constraints and opportunities of the women in the Roman emperor’s family from 35 BCE, when Octavia and Livia received unprecedented privileges from the state, to 235 CE, when Julia Mamaea was assassinated with her son Severus Alexander. Historical vignettes feature Agrippina the Younger, Domitia Longina, and some others as the book analyzes the history of Rome’s most eminent women in legal, religious, military, and other key settings of the principate. It also examines the women’s exemplarity through imaging as well as their presence in the city of Rome and in the empire. Evidence comes from coins, inscriptions, papyri, sculpture, and law codes as well as ancient authors. Numerous illustrations, maps, genealogical trees, and detailed tables and appendices complement the text. The whole reveals imperial women’s fluctuating but persistent marginalization and lack of agency despite their potential, even as it elucidates Rome’s imperial power, legal system, family ideology, religion and imperial cult, court, capital city, and military customs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Victor Kimpouni ◽  
Jean De Dieu Nzila ◽  
Noël Watha-Ndoudy ◽  
Elodie Charleine Kokolo Bilongo ◽  
Salisou Yallo Mouhamed ◽  
...  

The study was conducted in Brazzaville, and data collection covers the period from May to June 2017. The methodology is based on literature review and floristic and equipment inventory. Nine green spaces spread over two out of nine townships in the capital city. Four are located in Bacongo and five in Poto-Poto. According to the classification standards, 5 squares and 4 gardens were studied. Except for one square, all the others, including the gardens, are planted with trees. The equipment inventory lists 183 benches, including 63.83% permanently and/or partially in the sun, 4 playgrounds, no games for children, and 3 cultural monuments. The flora and health of the trees stands shows 186 trees and 279 shrubs, all corresponding to 26 species. An examination of the health status reveals that 57% of trees show anthropogenic injuries. Floral analysis shows that exotic plants (76.92%) predominate over local plants (23.07%). The average basal area of trees in all green spaces is 1.95 m2·ha−1. The diametric structure is erratic within all green spaces, with a dominance of large diameter subjects. This leads to poor natural regeneration of woody plants. The green spaces in Brazzaville, which are very unevenly distributed within the urban fabric, do not meet the international standards disseminated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and do not fully play their biodiversity conservation and recreational and ecological functions. History of green spaces in Brazzaville states that no creation was born after independence. The existing land has been reduced in size, and the new land has been used for other purposes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Ravindranath Abtahian

This paper examines a scenario of possible language shift in the multilingual village of Hopkins, where the two most commonly used languages are both ‘minority’ languages: Garifuna, now endangered in many of the communities where it was once spoken, and Belizean Creole (Kriol), an unofficial national lingua franca in Belize. It offers a qualitative examination of beliefs about the three primary languages spoken in the community (Garifuna, Kriol, and English) with data gathered from sociolinguistic interviews and surveys in four rural Garifuna communities in Belize. It situates these findings on the social evaluation of Garifuna and Kriol socio-historically by examining them alongside the recent history of language planning for Garifuna and Kriol in Belize.


1980 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 71-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selma K. Sonntag

Abstract The paper is an historical account of language planning and policy in Nepal, from the period of the first unification of Nepal in the 1700's up until the present day, with comments on possible future trends. Emphasis is placed on the period after 1951, when the Rana regime was first replaced by democratic experimentation and later by monarchal rule. The language policy of this post-1951 period is illustrated in the paper by co-ordinating government reports on the education system and development projects, newspaper articles, et cetera to the contemporary history of changes in government, of political party stands, and of Nepal's foreign policies. The author analyzes and comments on this co-ordination, demonstrating how language planning and policy formation is dependent on other political policies and events of the time. The two language policy controversies used as main examples in the paper are the Nepali-Hindi controversy, and to a lesser extent, the Nepali-Newari controversy. Explanations for the dominant role of these two controversies in an underdeveloped country with over forty languages are given.


Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Newman

Paris is the capital city of France and center of the Île-de-France region, Europe’s second-largest urban agglomeration. Paris is a globally important hub for finance, education, culture, and the arts, and by some measures it is the world’s most visited international tourist destination. The city’s importance for the field of urban studies is due primarily to (a) its present significance as a global city, and, to a greater extent, (b) its historical importance as a place where a particular version of modernity emerged that, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, would heavily influence the design and cultural landscapes of cities around the world. For this reason, the urban history of Paris exerts a broad influence in the fields of planning, geography, and architectural history, as well as in public health, the history of science and technology, art history, and literature. Indeed, research on Paris stands out among other cities for the degree to which scholars in the humanities have sought to engage with urban issues. This is due to the fact that a large proportion of the artistic and cultural output associated with Paris ruminates about the nature of urban life itself. This bibliography has been written for a broad Anglophone readership; it therefore privileges scholarship in English. English translations of important French works have been supplied wherever possible. However, in an effort to balance accessibility with rigor, some French-language scholarship is included as well. In several cases, English-language publications by prominent French scholars have been supplied that may not be the best representation of these scholars’ work, but such citations will nevertheless serve to introduce these important figures to an Anglophone audience. Readers should be warned that the small number of French-language citations included here are far from comprehensive, and are primarily intended to round out the bibliography for those Anglophone scholars who read French. The bibliography is organized under the three broad headings: Historicizing Modernity, Linking Past and Present, and Contemporary Paris. The logic for this structure is based on that notion that distinguishing between urban history and contemporary urban studies will be convenient for many readers. However, some of the best work on Paris combines past and present, and a great deal of contemporary work is most engaging when placed in dialogue with the city’s history, and vice versa.


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