scholarly journals ‘I can’t just go up to a person to ask what’s going on.’ How Dutch urbanites’ accounts of non-engagement enhance our understanding of urban care

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802199701
Author(s):  
Laurine Blonk ◽  
Margo Trappenburg ◽  
Femmianne Bredewold

In the context of increasing appeals to informal care in Western welfare state policies, questions concerning urban sociality acquire new significance. This paper aims to contribute to the emergent thinking on ‘urban care’ by situating it in policy debates concerning care responsibilities between citizens. We used small-scale focus groups among urban residents in The Hague (the Netherlands) to inquire into the accounts urbanites give of engaging or not engaging with perceived care needs of a stranger. Informed by Goffman’s ‘civil inattention’, we found that accounts of non-engagement highlight urbanites’ orientation towards maintaining friendly social interactions in the face of strange or worrisome situations. Urbanites feel that they should respect people’s choices even if these might hurt them. They fear that interference might be humiliating and they attribute to themselves the task of sticking to normality, while family members, friends or professionals might take on the task to intervene. This careful non-engagement, contrasted with long-standing accounts of urban indifference, enhances our understanding of urban care.

BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. e042623
Author(s):  
Lieke Agathe Dieleman ◽  
Petra G van Peet ◽  
Hedwig M M Vos

ObjectivesThis research aimed to provide a deeper insight into the gender-specific barriers to smoking cessation and gender-specific preferences for interventions in primary care, in order to contribute to better aligned cessation care for women.DesignQualitative study using focus groups.SettingRegularly smoking female and male adults were recruited from four different general practices in The Hague (The Netherlands).ParticipantsA total of 11 women and nine men participated. Participants included were regular smokers with a minimum age of 18 and sufficient command of the Dutch language, who were willing to talk about smoking cessation. Inclusion ended when saturation was reached for both women and men. Participants were selected by means of purposeful sampling, whereby looking at age, educational level and experience with quitting.ResultsThe main barriers to smoking cessation in women were psychological factors, such as emotion and stress, compared with environmental factors in men. Women indicated they were in need of support and positivity, and both women and men expressed the desire for assistance without judgement. Contrary to men, women were not drawn to restrictions and (dis)incentives.ConclusionWhen counselling smokers, in women the focus should be on perceived internal problems, as opposed to more external obstacles in men. Contrary to men, female smokers seem to prefer non-coercive interventions, such as a group intervention offering support and positivity. Future research should focus on these gender differences, and how they could improve treatment in primary care.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 160940692098132
Author(s):  
Ann (Ann) Trevenen-Jones ◽  
Min J. Cho ◽  
Jyothi Thrivikraman ◽  
Daniela Vicherat Mattar

Rich understandings of the phenomenon, urban household food waste (HFW), are critical to realizing the vision of sustainable, inclusive human settlement. In 2018/19, an exploratory study of HFW perceptions and practices of a diversity of urban residents, was conducted in the Bezuidenhout neighborhood, The Hague (Netherlands). Nineteen participants, communicating in one of three languages, as per their preference, participated through-out this visually enhanced study. The sequential “Snap-Send-Share-Story” qualitative, participatory action research (PAR) inspired methodology, employed in the study, is introduced in this paper. Focus groups (“Story”) which resourced and followed photovoice individual interviews (“Snap-Send-Share”) are principally emphasized. Three focus groups were conducted viz. Dutch (n = 7), English (n = 7) and Arabic (n = 5), within a narrative, photo elicitation style. Explicit and tacit, sensitive, private and seemingly evident yet hard to succinctly verbalize interpretations of HFW—shared and contested—were expressed through group stories. Participants accessed a stream of creativity, from photographing HFW in the privacy of their homes to co-constructing stories in the social research space of focus groups. Stories went beyond the content of the photographs to imagine zero HFW. This approach encouraged critical interaction, awareness of HFW, reflexive synthesis of meaning and deliberations regard social and ecological action.


1912 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-889 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamilton Wright

This conference, — the latest of the Hague Conferences to which the United States was a party, — was proposed by the United States on September 1, 1909, and convoked by the Netherlands Government on December 1, 1911. It dealt in a judicial manner with the varied and conflicting interests, diplomatic, moral, humanitarian and economic, of those governments represented and with the known similar interests of those not represented. Several of the governments in making pledges for the obliteration of the opium evil did so in the face of an eventual large financial sacrifice, but this was done thoughtfully and generously.The conference determined upon and on January 23rd last signed a convention for the suppression of the obnoxious features of their national and of the international opium, morphine and cocaine traffics, and for the regulation of that part of the production of and trade in the drugs which may be said to be legitimate. To China was confirmed much that she had contended for for a hundred years or more as to the vexatious export of Indian opium to her shores. This act, however, was but a broader recognition of what the British Government had, as between India and China, already yielded to China by virtue of the so-called Ten Year Agreement of 1907, and by the modification of that agreement signed at Peking on the 8th of May, 1911.


BJGP Open ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. bjgpopen18X101610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Vissenberg ◽  
Ozgul Uysal ◽  
Miriam Goudsmit ◽  
Jos van Campen ◽  
Bianca Buurman-van Es

BackgroundDementia rates are growing rapidly in all regions of the world. In the Netherlands, the incidence of dementia among older immigrants will increase twice as fast compared with the native older population. It, therefore, needs special attention.AimTo describe the barriers for providing primary care to immigrant patients (Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese) with dementia from the perspectives of GPs.Design & settingA mixed-method study, consisting of an online survey and focus groups.MethodAn online survey was performed among 76 GPs working in the four biggest cities of the Netherlands. The barriers to providing primary care for immigrants with dementia were identified. Subsequently, three focus groups were carried out among 17 primary care physicians to discuss this topic further, and identify possible solutions and recommendations to improve dementia care.ResultsGPs experience many obstacles in the care for the immigrant patient with dementia, namely in the diagnostic process, early detection, and assessment of care needs. Strong collaboration between primary care, community care organisations, specialised memory clinics, and municipalities is needed to optimise healthcare information provision, the availability of culturally sensitive facilities, and the enhancement of healthcare professionals' training and education.ConclusionImportant barriers were identified and recommendations were formulated for future healthcare policy. To be prepared and guarantee optimal care for the rising number of immigrant patients with dementia, recommendations should be implemented and effectiveness should be evaluated as soon as possible.


Author(s):  
Thomas C. Guiney

The chapter explores the ever more complex policy debates that surrounded the efforts to extend a system of early release to short sentence prisoners. It begins with an overview of the main candidates for reform and the strengths and weaknesses of these policy options. It explores the Home Office Review of Parole in England and Wales and considers why these recommendations were so quickly abandoned in the face of political and judicial pressure. It then goes on to examine the passage of the Criminal Justice Act 1982, a significant piece of legislation which resulted in wide-ranging reform of parole in England and Wales. The chapter concludes with a number of reflections upon the policy inertia of the early 1980s and what that reveals about the changing aims and techniques of criminal justice at this time.


Author(s):  
William A. Schabas

As the war ends, Kaiser Wilhelm leaves Berlin for German military headquarters in Spa, Belgium, where his generals tell him that the troops will not follow him and that his life may even be threatened. He flees to the Netherlands in his private train, possibly after receiving an ‘all clear’ from Queen Wilhelmina. The Dutch Government persuades a local aristocrat, Count Bentinck, to take him in for a few days to his castle in Amerongen, but the visit ends up lasting nearly eighteen months. Britain’s Ambassador to The Hague sends his wife to spy on the Kaiser’s arrival, but attempts without success to conceal her identity from the Foreign Office.


2008 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren B. Landau ◽  
Tamlyn Monson

AbstractAcademic writing often portrays migrants as either passive victims of violence and aid recipients or as courageous heroes facing horrific indifference and hazards. This article recodes them and their activities as potent forces for reshaping practices of state power. In this depiction, displacement also becomes a lens for re-evaluating the nature of sovereignty in urban Africa. Through its focus on Johannesburg this article explores how migrant communities intentionally and inadvertently evade, erode and exploit state policies, practices and shortcomings. Rather than being bound by their ambiguous status, they exploit their exclusion to exercise forms of autonomy and freedom in their engagement with the state and its street-level manifestations. Through these interactions, displacement and the continued mobility of urban residents is generating new forms of non-state-centric urban sovereignties and new patterns of transnational governance shaped, but not controlled, by state institutions. To recognize these evolving configurations we must look beyond Manichaean perspectives to see the full nature and degree of territorial control.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne M. Finucane ◽  
Connie Swenson ◽  
John I. MacArtney ◽  
Rachel Perry ◽  
Hazel Lamberton ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Specialist palliative care (SPC) providers tend to use the term ‘complex’ to refer to the needs of patients who require SPC. However, little is known about complex needs on first referral to a SPC service. We examined which needs are present and sought the perspectives of healthcare professionals on the complexity of need on referral to a hospice service. Methods Multi-site sequential explanatory mixed method study consisting of a case-note review and focus groups with healthcare professionals in four UK hospices. Results Documentation relating to 239 new patient referrals to hospice was reviewed; and focus groups involving 22 healthcare professionals conducted. Most patients had two or more needs documented on referral (96%); and needs were recorded across two or more domains for 62%. Physical needs were recorded for 91% of patients; psychological needs were recorded for 59%. Spiritual needs were rarely documented. Referral forms were considered limited for capturing complex needs. Referrals were perceived to be influenced by the experience and confidence of the referrer and the local resource available to meet palliative care needs directly. Conclusions Complexity was hard to detail or to objectively define on referral documentation alone. It appeared to be a term used to describe patients whom primary or secondary care providers felt needed SPC knowledge or support to meet their needs. Hospices need to provide greater clarity regarding who should be referred, when and for what purpose. Education and training in palliative care for primary care nurses and doctors and hospital clinicians could reduce the need for referral and help ensure that hospices are available to those most in need of SPC input.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110249
Author(s):  
Peer Smets ◽  
Younes Younes ◽  
Marinka Dohmen ◽  
Kees Boersma ◽  
Lenie Brouwer

During the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, temporary refugee shelters arose in the Netherlands to shelter the large influx of asylum seekers. The largest shelter was located in the eastern part of the country. This shelter, where tents housed nearly 3,000 asylum seekers, was managed with a firm top-down approach. However, many residents of the shelter—mainly Syrians and Eritreans—developed horizontal relations with the local receiving society, using social media to establish contact and exchange services and goods. This case study shows how various types of crisis communication played a role and how the different worlds came together. Connectivity is discussed in relation to inclusion, based on resilient (non-)humanitarian approaches that link society with social media. Moreover, we argue that the refugee crisis can be better understood by looking through the lens of connectivity, practices, and migration infrastructure instead of focusing only on state policies.


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