scholarly journals Community Infrastructuring as Necessary Ingenuity in the COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 518-523
Author(s):  
Day Greenberg ◽  
Angela Calabrese Barton ◽  
Carmen Turner ◽  
Kelly Hardy ◽  
Akeya Roper ◽  
...  

We report on how one community builds capacity for disrupting injustice and supporting each other during the COVID-19 crisis. We engaged long-term community partners (parents, their youth, and local community center leaders) in on-going conversation on their experiences with the pandemic. We learned with and from community partners about how and what people in communities most vulnerable in this crisis learn about and respond to COVID-19 in highly contextualized ways, individually and through extended family groups and trusted social networks. We report on how they put understandings towards educated, organized, urgent community infrastructuring actions within informal coalition networks. We explore these actions as necessary localized responses to systemic neglect from dominant institutional infrastructures during a global pandemic.

Author(s):  
Ben Yuk Fai Fong ◽  
Vincent T. Law

Aging is a function of time and is a natural and integral part of the life cycle. Aging process differs among individuals and brings all kinds of changes, affecting not just the physical body and its functions, but also to the social, psychological and financial situations to individuals. Aging in place (AIP) is a common preference among older people for remaining in their local community and maintaining their social networks throughout the aging process. Issues about appropriateness of aging in place, long-term care, and residential homes are discussed. Some models and recommendations are discussed, completed with thoughts on future studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Nicola Antoniou ◽  
Jill Marshall ◽  
Alexander Gilder ◽  
Rabia Nasimi

<p>In January 2020, Royal Holloway, University of London set up a new Legal Advice Centre offering free legal advice to the local community, including building upon key partnerships to address unmet legal needs. This practice-paper discusses Royal Holloway’s Legal Advice Centre (LAC) and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association’s (ACCA) collaborative approach and response to the global pandemic since March 2020. It will highlight the unprecedented challenges that they have faced, and their efforts to overcome them. In addition, the paper will discuss their research project, which provides Royal Holloway’s student volunteers with the opportunity to gain unique multidisciplinary understandings of the effect of the pandemic in Afghanistan, and a chance to put their legal skills into practice by producing legal information to support local users of both Royal Holloway’s LAC and the Law Clinic at the ACAA.</p><p><br />This practice-paper includes a road map to Royal Holloway’s long-term goal, namely, to work with ACAA to research the legal vulnerabilities of women in Afghanistan, with the aid of a research grant supporting international collaboration. Recent reports highlight that lockdown and quarantine measures will have a long-term impact on the basic rights and freedoms of Afghan women, who already face hardship.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 155-178
Author(s):  
Nicola Antoniou ◽  
Jill Marshall ◽  
Alexander Gilder ◽  
Rabia Nasimi

In January 2020, Royal Holloway, University of London set up a new Legal Advice Centre offering free legal advice to the local community, including building upon key partnerships to address unmet legal needs. This practice-paper discusses Royal Holloway’s Legal Advice Centre (LAC) and the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association’s (ACCA) collaborative approach and response to the global pandemic since March 2020. It will highlight the unprecedented challenges that they have faced, and their efforts to overcome them. In addition, the paper will discuss their research project, which provides Royal Holloway’s student volunteers with the opportunity to gain unique multidisciplinary understandings of the effect of the pandemic in Afghanistan, and a chance to put their legal skills into practice by producing legal information to support local users of both Royal Holloway’s LAC and the Law Clinic at the ACAA.This practice-paper includes a road map to Royal Holloway’s long-term goal, namely, to work with ACAA to research the legal vulnerabilities of women in Afghanistan, with the aid of a research grant supporting international collaboration. Recent reports highlight that lockdown and quarantine measures will have a long-term impact on the basic rights and freedoms of Afghan women, who already face hardship.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian C. Evans ◽  
Anna K. Lindholm ◽  
Barbara König

AbstractWhether females breed in their natal group is an important factor in the evolution of extended families in animal sociality. Breeding in natal groups comes with clear costs and benefits, depending on size of the group and presence of older relatives, including mothers. Studying individual decisions about whether to stay or leave can provide insight into the mechanisms and trade-offs governing the formation and structure of family groups. We investigated the family dynamics of a large population of free-ranging commensal house mice. Using dynamic community detection on long term datasets, we determined which females first bred in their natal group. We then looked at how this influenced breeding success. We found most females (77%) exhibited strong philopatry, breeding in their natal groups. Whether a female bred elsewhere was only predictable when natal groups were extremely small and related or large and unrelated. Despite this preference, breeding elsewhere made no difference in how quickly and successfully a female bred. However, presence of their mother did lead females to breed sooner when born during high breeding activity, when competition over reproduction is high. Based on these results, potential loss of fitness does not seem to be the main driver of philopatry in female house mice. The effect of the presence of mothers may indicate retaining prior social connections is an important benefit of breeding in the natal group. Mothers providing benefits also suggests lack of conflict between generations, which is likely an important attribute in the development of extended family groups.Lay summaryWhether animals breed in the group they are born in influences how they form extended family groups. Whether females stay will depend on properties such as presence of older relatives, including mothers. Using long-term wild mouse data, we track groups and which group females bred in. Most stayed, but leaving didn’t reduce breeding success. Presence of mother, who generally stayed, did lead to earlier breeding. This might be a key advantage to remaining to breed.


Author(s):  
Rebecca Forgash

This chapter looks into strategies that military-Okinawan couples employ to navigate life across the fencelines and achieve acceptance for themselves and their children. It describes active-duty couples living in central Okinawa, especially young Okinawan women, who make use of military family services and successfully integrate into the U.S. military community. The stories in the chapter illustrate how couples struggle to balance commitments to the military, extended family, and local community that conform to American and Okinawan cultural expectations and contend with challenges to their relationship from both sides of the fences. It talks about factors that affect long-term chances for intimate relationships and popular attitudes toward military dating and marriage, biracial children, and broader formulations of Okinawan and U.S. military community. It also investigates several stories that demonstrate people engaging in intimate relationships across military fencelines that have the capacity to influence U.S. military–host community relationships and politics in even the most contentious locales.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Andrea Goettler

Ageing well has been associated with the responsibility to age actively, successfully, or healthily in public and research discourses. This connection of individual responsibility with ageing has been criticised in Social Gerontology for neglecting the access to social, economic, and health resources. This paper investigates (individual) responsibility, informal support, and public initiatives in discourses on older immigrants in Germany. The research framework employs a sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, which guided the discourse analysis of German policy reports, guidelines and handbooks on ageing and migration from 2000 to 2019 (43 documents in total). The results reveal that besides public initiatives concerning long-term care, health promotion, and social services, informal solutions through social networks are frequently emphasised in the data. The focus, thereby, is on long-term care, which is presented as a responsibility of the extended family. Thus, resources are situated in the family, social networks, and ethnic group, which should be opened and connected with public services; however, the focus is shifting from older immigrants towards local municipalities. This study provides a discourse perspective on the construction of resources and challenges for older immigrants concerning health, care, and social services and offers an assessment of the cultural and integrating/excluding qualities in active ageing discourses.


2014 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Barrie J. Wills

A warm welcome to our "World of Difference" to all delegates attending this conference - we hope your stay is enjoyable and that you will leave Central Otago with an enhanced appreciation of the diversity of land use and the resilient and growing economic potential that this region has to offer. Without regional wellbeing the national economy will struggle to grow, something Central Government finally seems to be realising, and the Central Otago District Council Long Term Plan 2012-2022 (LTP) signals the importance of establishing a productive economy for the local community which will aid in the economic growth of the district and seeks to create a thriving economy that will be attractive to business and residents alike. Two key principles that underpin the LTP are sustainability and affordability, with the definition of sustainability being "… development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."


Shore & Beach ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 34-43
Author(s):  
Nicole Elko ◽  
Tiffany Roberts Briggs

In partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program (USGS CMHRP) and the U.S. Coastal Research Program (USCRP), the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA) has identified coastal stakeholders’ top coastal management challenges. Informed by two annual surveys, a multiple-choice online poll was conducted in 2019 to evaluate stakeholders’ most pressing problems and needs, including those they felt most ill-equipped to deal with in their day-to-day duties and which tools they most need to address these challenges. The survey also explored where users find technical information and what is missing. From these results, USGS CMHRP, USCRP, ASBPA, and other partners aim to identify research needs that will inform appropriate investments in useful science, tools, and resources to address today’s most pressing coastal challenges. The 15-question survey yielded 134 complete responses with an 80% completion rate from coastal stakeholders such as local community representatives and their industry consultants, state and federal agency representatives, and academics. Respondents from the East, Gulf, West, and Great Lakes coasts, as well as Alaska and Hawaii, were represented. Overall, the prioritized coastal management challenges identified by the survey were: Deteriorating ecosystems leading to reduced (environmental, recreational, economic, storm buffer) functionality, Increasing storminess due to climate change (i.e. more frequent and intense impacts), Coastal flooding, both Sea level rise and associated flooding (e.g. nuisance flooding, king tides), and Combined effects of rainfall and surge on urban flooding (i.e. episodic, short-term), Chronic beach erosion (i.e. high/increasing long-term erosion rates), and Coastal water quality, including harmful algal blooms (e.g. red tide, sargassum). A careful, systematic, and interdisciplinary approach should direct efforts to identify specific research needed to tackle these challenges. A notable shift in priorities from erosion to water-related challenges was recorded from respondents with organizations initially formed for beachfront management. In addition, affiliation-specific and regional responses varied, such as Floridians concern more with harmful algal blooms than any other human and ecosystem health related challenge. The most common need for additional coastal management tools and strategies related to adaptive coastal management to maintain community resilience and continuous storm barriers (dunes, structures), as the top long-term and extreme event needs, respectively. In response to questions about missing information that agencies can provide, respondents frequently mentioned up-to-date data on coastal systems and solutions to challenges as more important than additional tools.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002076402110175
Author(s):  
Roberto Rusca ◽  
Ike-Foster Onwuchekwa ◽  
Catherine Kinane ◽  
Douglas MacInnes

Background: Relationships are vital to recovery however, there is uncertainty whether users have different types of social networks in different mental health settings and how these networks may impact on users’ wellbeing. Aims: To compare the social networks of people with long-term mental illness in the community with those of people in a general adult in-patient unit. Method: A sample of general adult in-patients with enduring mental health problems, aged between 18 and 65, was compared with a similar sample attending a general adult psychiatric clinic. A cross-sectional survey collected demographic data and information about participants’ social networks. Participants also completed the Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale to examine well-being and the Significant Others Scale to explore their social network support. Results: The study recruited 53 participants (25 living in the community and 28 current in-patients) with 339 named as important members of their social networks. Both groups recorded low numbers in their social networks though the community sample had a significantly greater number of social contacts (7.4 vs. 5.4), more monthly contacts with members of their network and significantly higher levels of social media use. The in-patient group reported greater levels of emotional and practical support from their network. Conclusions: People with serious and enduring mental health problems living in the community had a significantly greater number of people in their social network than those who were in-patients while the in-patient group reported greater levels of emotional and practical support from their network. Recommendations for future work have been made.


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