scholarly journals Framing Environmental Health Decision-Making: The Struggle over Cumulative Impacts Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 3947
Author(s):  
Devon C. Payne-Sturges ◽  
Thurka Sangaramoorthy ◽  
Helen Mittmann
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Health ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Cumulative Impacts ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Decision ◽  
Cumulative Risks ◽  
Analytical Tools

Little progress has been made to advance U.S. federal policy responses to growing scientific findings about cumulative environmental health impacts and risks, which also show that many low income and racial and ethnic minority populations bear a disproportionate share of multiple environmental burdens. Recent scholarship points to a “standard narrative” by which policy makers rationalize their slow efforts on environmental justice because of perceived lack of data and analytical tools. Using a social constructivist approach, ethnographic research methods, and content analysis, we examined the social context of policy challenges related to cumulative risks and impacts in the state of Maryland between 2014 and 2016. We identified three frames about cumulative impacts as a health issue through which conflicts over such policy reforms materialize and are sustained: (a) perceptions of evidence, (b) interpretations of social justice, and (c) expectations of authoritative bodies. Our findings illustrate that policy impasse over cumulative impacts is highly dependent on how policy-relevant actors come to frame issues around legislating cumulative impacts, rather than the “standard narrative” of external constraints. Frame analysis may provide us with more robust understandings of policy processes to address cumulative risks and impacts and the social forces that create health policy change.

Sentencing Policy as a Force for Social Cohesion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Henham
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sentencing Policy

This chapter sets out the case for adopting a normative approach to conceptualizing the social reality of sentencing. It argues that policy-makers need to comprehend how sentencing is implicated in realizing state values and take greater account of the social forces that diminish the moral credibility of state sponsored punishment. The chapter reflects on the problems of relating social values to legal processes such as sentencing and argues that crude notions of ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approaches to policy-making should be replaced by a process of contextualized policy-making. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for sentencing policy to reflect those moral attachments that bind citizens together in a relational or communitarian sense. It concludes by exploring these assertions in the light of the sentencing approach taken by the courts following the English riots of 2011.

Preparing Adolescents Attending Progressive and No-Excuses Urban Charter Schools to Analyze, Navigate, and Challenge Race and Class Inequality

2016 ◽  
Vol 118 (12) ◽  
pp. 1-54
Author(s):  
Scott Seider ◽  
Daren Graves ◽  
Aaliyah El-Amin ◽  
Shelby Clark ◽  
Madora Soutter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Sociopolitical Development ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Class Inequality ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
The Social

Background/Context Sociopolitical development (SPD) refers to the processes by which an individual acquires the knowledge, skills, emotional faculties, and commitment to recognize and resist oppressive social forces. A growing body of scholarship has found that such sociopolitical capabilities are predictive in marginalized adolescents of a number of key outcomes, including resilience, academic achievement, and civic engagement. Many scholars have long argued that schools and educators have a central role to play in fostering the sociopolitical development of marginalized adolescents around issues of race and class inequality. Other scholars have investigated school-based practices for highlighting race and class inequality that include youth participatory-action research, critical literacy, and critical service-learning. Objective of Study The present study sought to add to the existing scholarship on schools as opportunity structures for sociopolitical development. Specifically, this study considered the role of two different schooling models in fostering adolescents’ ability to analyze, navigate, and challenge the social forces and institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Setting The six high schools participating in the present study were all urban charter public high schools located in five northeastern cities. All six schools served primarily low-income youth of color and articulated explicit goals around fostering students’ sociopolitical development. Three of these high schools were guided by progressive pedagogy and principles, and three were guided by no-excuses pedagogy and principles. Research Design The present study compared the sociopolitical development of adolescents attending progressive and no-excuses charter high schools through a mixed methods research design involving pre-post surveys, qualitative interviews with participating adolescents and teachers, and ethnographic field notes collected during observations at participating schools. Results On average, adolescents attending progressive high schools demonstrated more sig-nificant shifts in their ability to analyze the causes of racial inequality, but adolescents attending no-excuses high schools demonstrated more significant shifts in their sense of efficacy around navigating settings in which race and class inequality are prominent. Neither set of adolescents demonstrated significant shifts in their commitment to challenging the social forces or institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Conclusions Both progressive and no-excuses schools sought to foster adolescents’ commitment to challenging race and class inequality, but focused on different building blocks to do so. Further research is necessary to understand the pedagogy and practices that show promise in catalyzing adolescents’ analytic and navigational abilities into a powerful commitment to collective social action—the ultimate goal of sociopolitical development.

Environmental Risk Communication for the Clinician

PEDIATRICS ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 112 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 211-217
Author(s):  
Mark Miller ◽  
Gina Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Risk Communication ◽  
Environmental Health ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Environmental Risk ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Team Approach ◽  
Environmental Health Risks ◽  
Qualitative Risk Assessment ◽  
The Social

Although they are accustomed to discussing risks in the medical arena through the process of informed consent, primary care clinicians may have difficulty communicating with their patients and communities about environmental health risks. Clinicians are generally trusted and can play important roles as educators, alert practitioners, or even advocates talking about environmental health risks with individuals and groups. Communication of risk requires an understanding of how scientists and clinicians assess risk—the process of quantitative or qualitative risk assessment. Risk is never a purely scientific issue; risk is perceived differently depending on some well-understood characteristics of the hazard, the individual perceiving the risk, and the social context. Many low-income communities of color have faced and continue to face disproportionate environmental exposures and disease burdens. The issue of environmental justice can significantly affect the context of a discussion about a specific environmental risk. The essence of risk communication has been well described and requires careful evaluation of the science and the social context, honesty, listening to and partnering with the community, and a clear, compassionate team approach.

scholarly journals Families ‘At Risk’ and the Family Nurse Partnership: The Intrusion of Risk into Social Exclusion Policy

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNELIESE DODDS
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Family Health ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Family Nurse Partnership

AbstractThis article considers why the family nurse partnership (FNP) has been promoted as a means of tackling social exclusion in the UK. The FNP consists in a programme of visits by nurses to low-income first-time mothers, both while the mothers are pregnant and for the first two years following birth. The FNP is focused on both teaching parenthood and encouraging mothers back into education and/or into employment. Although the FNP marks a considerable discontinuity with previous approaches to family health, it is congruent with an emerging new approach to social exclusion. This new approach maintains that the most important task of social policy is to identify quickly the most ‘at-risk’ households, individuals and children so that interventions can be targeted more effectively at those ‘at risk’, either to themselves or to others. The article illustrates this new approach by analysing a succession of reports by the Social Exclusion Unit. It indicates that there is a considerable amount of ambiguity about the relationship between specific risk-factors and being ‘at risk of social exclusion’. Nonetheless, this new approach helps to explain why British policy-makers may have chosen to promote the new FNP now.

Reagan and the Pax Afrikaana

1985 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Cokorinos ◽  
James H. Mittelman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Control State

A Frequent error in foreign policy analysis is to allow government to set the agenda of inquiry. Officials invariably define the terrain too narrowly. Their concerns are short term, not only because of the immediacy of problems stalking policy-makers, but also because averting fundamental questions about the social forces that shape the day-to-day agenda of government redounds to the advantage of those who control state power. Consequently, the task of the analyst is to overcome the inhibiting parameters of public discourse. Without trivialising matters of practical politics, the analyst must transpose prefabricated questions into more productive lines of inquiry.

scholarly journals Neighbourhood Impacts on Wellbeing: The Role of Housing among Low-Income Tenants

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 102-112
Author(s):  
Steve Rolfe ◽  
Lisa Garnham
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Neighbourhood Environment ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Market Factors

The existing literature on neighbourhood effects suggests that a number of factors within local areas can have an impact on health, including environmental hazards, social networks and the socio-economic status of the area. However, there is minimal evidence regarding the role of housing organisations in shaping these effects. This article sets out the findings from a three-year longitudinal, mixed methods study of tenants of three housing organisations operating in the social and private rented sectors, examining different aspects of neighbourhood experience and their relationship to health and wellbeing outcomes. The findings demonstrate impacts of the immediate environment in terms of close neighbours, the wider neighbourhood environment, and social support networks, which are heavily influenced by tenant characteristics, previous experience and expectations. The services provided by housing organisations, themselves shaped by regulation and market factors, are also important. The findings will have relevance for tenants, housing providers, public health professionals and policy makers.

PAR Method

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Billies
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Context Analysis ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

The work of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (WWRC), a participatory action research (PAR) project that looks at how low income lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming (LG-BTGNC) people survive and resist violence and discrimination in New York City, raises the question of what it means to make conscientization, or critical consciousness, a core feature of PAR. Guishard's (2009) reconceptualization of conscientization as “moments of consciousness” provides a new way of looking at what seemed to be missing from WWRC's process and analysis. According to Guishard, rather than a singular awakening, critical consciousness emerges continually through interactions with others and the social context. Analysis of the WWRC's process demonstrates that PAR researchers doing “PAR deep” (Fine, 2008)—research in which community members share in all aspects of design, method, analysis and product development—should have an agenda for developing critical consciousness, just as they would have agendas for participation, for action, and for research.

Conceptual foundations for the development of J.G.Turner’s general sociological theory: Metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and analytical scheme

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Reznik
Keyword(s):  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Analytical Scheme ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Social ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

The article discusses the conceptual foundations of the development of the general sociological theory of J.G.Turner. These foundations are metatheoretical ideas, basic concepts and an analytical scheme. Turner began to develop a general sociological theory with a synthesis of metatheoretical ideas of social forces and social selection. He formulated a synthetic metatheoretical statement: social forces cause selection pressures on individuals and force them to change the patterns of their social organization and create new types of sociocultural formations to survive under these pressures. Turner systematized the basic concepts of his theorizing with the allocation of micro-, meso- and macro-levels of social reality. On this basis, he substantiated a simple conceptual scheme of social dynamics. According to this scheme, the forces of macrosocial dynamics of the population, production, distribution, regulation and reproduction cause social evolution. These forces force individual and corporate actors to structurally adapt their communities in altered circumstances. Such adaptation helps to overcome or avoid the disintegration consequences of these forces. The initial stage of Turner's general theorizing is a kind of audit, modification, modernization and systematization of the conceptual apparatus of sociology. The initial results obtained became the basis for the development of his conception of the dynamics of functional selection in the social world.

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