scholarly journals INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL ISSUE 1 : 2017

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Mohammed Osman ◽  
Faris Abdullah

Sustainable Well-Being is broadly defined as the exploration of lasting happiness. It highlights the importance of a sustainable lifestyle that is environmentally friendly and socially advantageous. It requires us to pursue well-being in a much more holistic way and within the planetary boundaries.Towards the end of the last millennium, the word ‘sustainability’ was, and still is, the most used phrase with regards to all aspects of our livelihood, and even more so in the built environment field. This was when we understood that progress and environmental conservation are symbiotic – one is supposedly benefiting the other. Wellbeing, on the other hand, carries the notion of happiness, healthy and comfortable. Wellbeing has long been a much researched areas, although mainly in the sociological and psychological domains. Of late, it has increasingly becoming an important agenda in the built environment field as well.Acknowledging the importance of built environment in the pursuit of long lasting happiness, this issue of the Planning Malaysia Journal carries the theme of ‘Sustainable Well-Being in Architecture and Environmental Sciences’. This issue focuses on the design and building of living place which are harmonious and in sync with the environment needs and conservation.The contributions to the study of environmental sciences have come from diverse fields including architecture, town planning, transportation, engineering, legal matters, community development and psychology, and housing. Despite the diversity, each of the fields cannot be viewed as separate entities since they interweave in the broad framework of sustainable well-being. A broader yet explicit understanding of sustainable well-being from diverse research contexts would lead to better decisions, especially in the built environment designs and solutions.Finally, we believe that this issue of Planning Malaysia, can become the platform for experts and researchers to discuss on how sustainable well-being in the built environment can be realized. It is also hoped that the articles in this issue would be useful references for future studies related to the built environment and sustainable well-being.

1987 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 269-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Hunter ◽  
Marvin K. Mayers

This article is the Editors’ introduction to the second Journal of Psychology and Theology special issue on Psychology and Missions. It proposes some reasons for the uneasy acceptance by conservatives of an adjunctive or supportive role in missions by psychology and the other behavioral sciences. The extant literature on Psychology and Missions is unified by an underlying assumption that mission endeavor and its personnel are important issues for psychology and other behavioral sciences. The contributions to the literature from the Journal of Psychology and Theology's first two special issues on Psychology and Missions suggest that the area is still very broad in its approach and focus. A concerted and coordinated direction of research is required in future studies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 64-69
Author(s):  
Ashish Verma ◽  
Sanan Verma

Globally, at the end of July 2020, 16,301,735 positive cases of COVID-19, with 650,068 deaths, as shown by WHO. Such huge numbers are an indication of large scale devastation. Although there are numerous traditions of designing built environments in the world, the origins of all contemporary cities can be outlined to community scuffles in contradiction of the consequences of the industrialist city such as Fire, Pandemics, Disasters and Environmental Squalor etc. Inclusive city development with a healthy urban built environment emerged as a way to minimize these failures. Dense urban areas made population exposed to pandemic and disaster, but cities have also learned with time how to minimize threats. This could be in the arrangement of health and sanitary codes while designing, safety regulations, health sensitive public place planning, and environmental conservation. Cities are susceptible as we have deteriorated their capability to anticipate, prepare and respond to disasters and pandemics. They are susceptible, not because they are having high collective densities, but because they are extremely unfit for living settings, facilities, income and admittance. For designing the post-COVID-19 built environments, we need to evaluate the existing practices. The traditional land use and infrastructure expansion must produce a place for a more comprehensive design that prioritizes health, equity, employment and environment. Urban areas will have to be planned and designed to survive the effects of pandemics and calamities. Architects will have to reform existing structures to provide for more ventilation and natural light and reduce the use of air conditioners. Planners in practice and the state need to think about the integration of the health sector on a priority basis in upcoming city plans and development schemes. Builders will have to reconsider raising huge skyscrapers with respect to physical wellbeing. Any city plan will have to be inclusive with healthy accommodation for the poor, the weak and the migrant strata who are exposed to extreme stress during crisis time.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofie Dencker-Larsen

Disadvantaged unemployed Danes do not easily become re-employed. Previous literature has focused on unemployment versus employment. Expanding on this, the present article is a proposal to assess disadvantaged unemployed people’s employability. On the basis of the literature, I investigate whether variables measuring health, well-being, self-efficacy, alcohol use, and drug use can be included into this measure of employability measured as subsequent re-employment. Data are on disadvantaged unemployment cash benefit recipients from the Copenhagen Unemployment and Well-Being Panel Survey (2013, 2014, N = 2400, analytical sample N = 956) and detailed register data on employment status measured weekly. The results from the analysis reveal that only parts of the proposed indicator are linked with subsequent re-employment, and comprehensive robustness checks reveal that the indicator lacks stability. However, the findings from the study can inform future studies aiming at developing an indicator of employability for disadvantaged unemployed people in Denmark and the other Nordic countries.


Author(s):  
Chung-Ying Lin ◽  
Hector W. H. Tsang

In order to understand the phenomenon of stigma in different populations (e.g., different ethnicities, different diseases, and different conditions), this Special Issue collects papers from around the world to illustrate the stigma phenomenon. After a rigorous process of peer review, a total of 24 papers were published and included in the Special Issue. These papers were contributed from different continents and countries, including the Americas (e.g., United States), Europe (e.g., Finland), and Asia (e.g., Saudi Arabia). Therefore, the diversity of ethnicity was ensured in the Special Issue. Moreover, these papers address different stigmatized populations/conditions (e.g., mental illness, obesity, public housing, homosexuality, and transgender). The most discussed populations were those with mental illness and those with obesity/overweight. However, additional evidence on the stigma topic is still needed. Specifically, future studies could consider the following directions to explore in depth the issues of stigma in different populations: (1) using longitudinal designs to understand the temporal or causal relationship between stigma and other related psychosocial factors; (2) designing treatment programs to fight stigma—this could be carried out in healthcare providers, healthcare trainees, the public, caregivers, and the stigmatized populations.


Author(s):  
Eva Elliott ◽  
Sue Cohen ◽  
David Frayne

This chapter considers the role of community anchor organisations in the ‘flagship’ regeneration programme of the National Assembly for Wales, ‘Communities First’, launched in 2001 and later terminated in March 2018. It unpicks the story of the programme's evolution and demise from the perspectives of community development advisors and community development practitioners, the latter based in two community organisations in South Wales: South Riverside Community Development Centre (SRCDC) in Cardiff and 3Gs Community Development Trust in Merthyr Tydfil. Both organisations were involved in the Productive Margins programme and in the design and analysis of this research. Both pre-existed the Communities First programme and were charged with its delivery to local people. The chapter thus looks at the regulatory context in which these organisations found themselves and how they negotiated the demands of the state-funded programme, on the one hand, and their accountabilities to the communities that they believed they represented, on the other. A key question remains as to whether the involvement of community organisations in state-funded programmes can facilitate regulation for engagement for social change or whether their power to improve the well-being of the communities they represent might better be served in providing alternative modes of living.


Author(s):  
Melanie K. T. Takarangi ◽  
Deryn Strange

When people are told that their negative memories are worse than other people’s, do they later remember those events differently? We asked participants to recall a recent negative memory then, 24 h later, we gave some participants feedback about the emotional impact of their event – stating it was more or less negative compared to other people’s experiences. One week later, participants recalled the event again. We predicted that if feedback affected how participants remembered their negative experiences, their ratings of the memory’s characteristics should change over time. That is, when participants are told that their negative event is extremely negative, their memories should be more vivid, recollected strongly, and remembered from a personal perspective, compared to participants in the other conditions. Our results provide support for this hypothesis. We suggest that external feedback might be a potential mechanism in the relationship between negative memories and psychological well-being.


MediaTropes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. i-xvi
Author(s):  
Jordan Kinder ◽  
Lucie Stepanik

In this introduction to the special issue of MediaTropes on “Oil and Media, Oil as Media,” Jordan B. Kinder and Lucie Stepanik provide an account of the stakes and consequences of approaching oil as media as they situate it within the “material turn” of media studies and the broader project energy humanities. They argue that by critically approaching oil and its infrastructures as media, the contributions that comprise this issue puts forward one way to develop an account of oil that further refines the larger tasks and stakes implicit in the energy humanities. Together, these address the myriad ways in which oil mediates social, cultural, and ecological relations, on the one hand, and the ways in which it is mediated, on the other, while thinking through how such mediations might offer glimpses of a future beyond oil.


GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 170-182
Author(s):  
Dr. R. Sundari ◽  
Ms. Sangeetha Manoj

Community Development is a process of collective action taken by the members of a community to generate solutions for common problems.  The aspects of community well being namely Economic, Social, Environmental and Cultural well being evolves from this type of collective action taken at multiple societal levels. (Weaver, 1971) defines community development as a process of “A public-group approach dedicated to achieving the goals of the total body politic.” Therefore, it is evident that a community can be developed through the effective participation of citizens. It is universally acceptable that community service is a vehicle for safeguarding the environment that is initiated from the participants of the community. In order to imbibe the community consciousness among the citizens, every country should “Catch them Young”. The purpose of the paper is to integrate Participative Model (Active Citizenship, Citizen Networks and Co-production) with Self-service Model (Social Governance, Societal Discipline and Accountability). National and international reviews show that the perception about the community and realisation has to be ingrained at the grass root level; this can be achieved through the participation of academic institutions. This paper is an attempt to highlight. The initiatives taken by educational institutions to imbibe social consciousness, The perceptions of students about their role in community development, and, To identify the effective Private Public Partnership areas for community building Factor analysis has been applied to identify the role of educational institutions and individual citizen’s( Students) in building community consciousness. Linear Regression had been applied in the study to measure the influence of Educational Institutions on the role of Students in building the community.  A weighted average score is awarded by the students for the potential areas of public private partnership for community development is highlighted. The results of the study provide an impact created by the institution over the students. The Study also, consolidates some of the successful community bonding and building activities carried out Academic Institutions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 147-170

The article provides a comparison of the concept of homo œconomicus with the core theses of René Descartes’ moral philosophy. The first section draws on the work of the contemporary Western philosopher Anselm Jappe in which Descartes’ philosophy is held to be the cornerstone of the established view and current scientific definitions of homo œconomicus as the fundamental and indispensable agent of capitalistic relations. As opposed to this “common sense” position in the modern social sciences, the second section of the article builds upon Pierre Bourdieu’s Anthropologie économique (2017) to demystify the notion of homo œconomicus. The article then examines some aspects of modern philosophical anthropology that show odd traces of Descartes’ thinking and that are regularly applied in economic science as well as in the critique of economic thinking as such. These are the concepts of mutuality, giving, exchange and generosity, and they are regarded as central to the philosopher’s moral doctrine.The author concludes that the philosophical doctrine of generosity has very little in common with the bourgeois ideology of utility which implies an instrumental relationship between subjects: in Caretesian moral philosophy the Other is neither an object of influence nor a means to achieve someone’s personal goals nor a windowless monad. Generosity certainly has its economic aspects, but these do not include accumulating wealth in the bourgeois sense. It is more in the realm of the aristocratic practice of making dispensations. All throughout his life Decartes may be viewed as exhibiting a peculiar kind of nobility in which the desire to give, endow and sacrifice outweighs any selfish interest. The vigorous pursuit of well-being gives way to a quest for the leisure required to pursue intellectual activity, and care for oneself does not preclude attending to and loving the Other, whatever form it may take.


Quaternary ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentí Rull

In the coming years, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) will submit its proposal on the ‘Anthropocene’ to the Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) and the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) for approval. If approved, the proposal will be sent to the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) for ratification. If the proposal is approved and ratified, then the ‘Anthropocene’ will be formalized. Currently, the ‘Anthropocene’ is a broadly used term and concept in a wide range of scientific and non-scientific situations, and, for many, the official acceptance of this term is only a matter of time. However, the AWG proposal, in its present state, seems to not fully meet the requirements for a new chronostratigraphic unit. This essay asks what could happen if the current ‘Anthropocene’ proposal is not formalized by the ICS/IUGS. The possible stratigraphic alternatives are evaluated on the basis of the more recent literature and the personal opinions of distinguished AWG, SQS, and ICS members. The eventual impact on environmental sciences and on non-scientific sectors, where the ‘Anthropocene’ seems already firmly rooted and de facto accepted as a new geological epoch, are also discussed. This essay is intended as the editorial introduction to a Quaternary special issue on the topic.


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