Time Banks as Transient Civic Organizations? Exploring the Dynamics of Decline

Time banks have become a popular type of civic organization constructed to facilitate egalitarian economic exchange through a community-bounded currency. Especially after the recent economic crises in Europe, the rise in the number of time banks has been accompanied by relative transience and sometimes short lifespans. We adopt a relational perspective to explore the dynamics of decline in the civic engagement of a time bank in southern Germany. Using methods of longitudinal social network analysis, we analyze the relational processes and individual trajectories of members within the emerging transaction network over a period of eight years. Rather than explaining why, we have found how relational trajectories of members through a structure of core and periphery have led to creeping decline in activity and membership. Given the repeated observation that time banks and other types of alternative economic practices are often characterized by considerable volatility and potential collapse, relational thinking and network analysis are especially suited to unpacking the underlying relational mechanisms that shape these outcomes of volatility and demise.

Citizens' knowledge and educational needs in the omics sciences field: results from an Italian survey

Background Progress in genomics has crucial implications for public health. Therefore, a strategic line to define the promotion and governance of omics related innovation is necessary. In this context, citizens education is essential to allow appropriate decisions about their own health. Objectives As part of a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health, we carried out in collaboration with an Italian civic organization (Cittadinanzattiva) a survey on citizens' attitude, knowledge, and educational needs in omics sciences field. On the basis of the results of two our literature reviews and of a survey with experts of the Italian Network of Genomics in Public Health (GENISAP), we developed an ad hoc questionnaire for citizens. It was developed in order to assess the current state of information on omics field in the Italian population. The survey was launched, through the Cittadinanzattiva channels, on October 29, 2020 and it was closed on April 15, 2021. Results As of April 2021, 359 responses have been collected. The average age of the participants was 46.04 ± 15.77 years. 73.5% of the participants had no knowledge of omics sciences and 66.6% of DTC-GTs. As regards the citizens' attitudes, 88.6% would change their lifestyle on the basis of the genetic tests results. 89.2% expressed doubts about the reliability of the information received through the media. Almost all believe that citizens are not adequately informed about omics sciences and DTC-GTs and that more training initiatives are necessary on these topics (omics sciences: 95.5%, DTC-GTs: 95%). Conclusions The omics sciences progress is linked to the need to develop a solid literacy of citizens. For this reason, effective tools of knowledge on the omics sciences field will have to be identified and implemented to improve citizens' literacy and engagement in this rapidly changing field. Key messages The progress of the omics sciences is related to the need to develop a solid literacy of citizens in order to enable them to make appropriate decisions about their own health. The current challenge is to identify effective methods of improving citizens' literacy and implementing them.

Violence, Governance, and Uncertainty

The majority of today’s authoritarian regimes are characterized by a paradox in which democratic institutions exist alongside the ruler’s exercise of arbitrary power. The continued existence of civic spaces and democratic institutions can create opportunities for citizens to organize and make claims on the regime. How do rulers maintain control under such circumstances? To contribute to this ongoing debate, this book identifies ‘institutionalized arbitrariness’ as a new form of authoritarianism. Regimes characterized by institutionalized arbitrariness do not try to eliminate civic organization or democratic space, but instead use unpredictable and violent intervention to make those spaces fragile. They are more concerned with weakening competition than with maximizing control. To elaborate these dynamics, this chapter links everyday experiences of local insecurity in Uganda to contemporary debates about authoritarian rule. After positioning Uganda under President Museveni as a key case of modern authoritarianism, the chapter outlines the study and previews the book’s main findings.

Urban Anthropology

Urban anthropologists study cities and spaces. They analyze urban lives, cultures, communities, place-making, and transformations and explore urban inequalities that are the result of uneven class, race, ethnic or gender dynamics, im/migration, labor conflicts, or political oppression. They investigate urban segregation, displacement, disenfranchisement, discrimination, poverty, exclusion, gentrification, environmental justice, neoliberal economies, labor relations, markets, street-vending, housing, civic organization and participation, minority/immigrant cultures, crime, or violence. Using anthropology’s central method of participant observation (mostly in combination with other methods), urban anthropologists are well placed to analyze and theorize the minutiae of diverse urban dwellers’ everyday lives, work, dwelling situations, struggles, cultural and social experiences, and creative culture-producing activities. At the dawn of the 21st century, urban anthropologists examine the devastating impact of neoliberal policies and economies that caused the influx of millions of displaced peasants, and environmental and war refugees into cities in the Global South and North where these newcomers, often in competition with other poor urbanites, struggle to find accommodations and make a living. Urban anthropologists investigate the lives and struggles of disenfranchised individuals, groups, and residential communities, which for example provide their own housing, maneuver aspects of exclusion or structural violence, try to make a better future for their children, and work hard to make a living often in vast “informal” markets that characterize many cities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Urban ethnographies describe how the poor, migrants, or refugees to the city create meaningful lives for themselves, their families, and their communities in the face of discrimination or exclusion. In recent years, debates in the field have turned to questions of urban structural injustice, infrastructural issues, and manifestations of environmental injustice. Studies examine topics like the provision of water (or the absence thereof), other amenities and services, or the presence, absence, or quality of public transportation, the presence of toxic industries or waste, and the latter’s effects on poorer urban dwellers especially. To conduct their research, urban anthropologists often live in the communities they study in order to experience the daily struggles of their interlocutors. Some also work in the jobs their research participants hold. Being present in their field sites/communities at all times of the day and night, all days of the week, and throughout the seasons of the year, anthropologists produce nuanced description and informed analyses of urban citizens’ everyday lives, work, and struggles. Ethnographic accounts of the minutiae of urban dwellers’ lives provide analytical insights into how individual and communal lives articulate at the complex intersection of urban social, cultural, economic, and spatial dynamics. They theorize multilayered interactions between individual actors, communal frameworks, local social and municipal institutions, national and international politics, and urban, national, and global economies.

RADICALISING THE TRADITIONALISTS

The post-New Order Indonesian politics has provided a political opportunity structure for the state towards democratization. It has a double-edged sword whatsoever: on the one hand democratization could lead to the civic engagement, but on the other hand, it provides a hot bed for the flourishing of anti-civic organization. As for the latter, following the fall of authoritarian regime of new Order in 1998, Indonesians have also witnessed the birth of transnational Islamist and radical organizations threatening the state’s integrity and peaceful coexistence of the citizens. Amid the public appearance of these radical organization, an issue of ideological infiltration and sabotage of radical organization upon mainstreaming moderate Muslim organizations, such as Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah do exist. This article tries to reveal the impacts of a such infiltration practices and the extent that radical narratives win the minds and hearts of important Muslim leaders. Taking a closer a look to Muslim leaders in Sampang district in the island of Madura, the centrum of traditionalist Muslim in Indonesian Islamo-landscape, finds out that intolerant and radical ideologies do resonate clearly among the leaders. This finding resort as an alarm and counter-narrative to the long-admired Islamic traditionalism as an important backbone for moderate Islam in Indonesia.

Civic Organization beyond the ‘Open Society’ Battle: Cases from Hungary

Our paper aims to contribute to the understanding of civil society in Hungary by looking beyond the struggles around open society and international NGOs, a topic that has dominated public debates on civil organizations in Hungary for the last decade. Our starting point follows the literature that has broadened the understanding of NGOs in the post-socialist space with the perspective of their insertion in global hierarchies in terms of unequal knowledge and resource transfer, material dependencies and the effects in local social settings. More attention recently has been given to the social positions of domestic civil organizations and the political and material dependencies they operate within. The analysis of organizations which represent and defend different interests within different social strata is crucial to understanding civil society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Following this thread of discussions, we look at three segments of civil society which were previously understudied, to expand on how social relations structure civil society in contemporary CEE: 1) nationalist but anti-governmental organizations, for example in the field of housing; 2) urban and rural informal self-organization in order to cope with material hardships collectively has been significantly growing in the recent years; 3) rural civil organizations aligned with local elites, embedded in material dependencies, which have been present since 1990, but occupy a more and more significant role after the illiberal turn. We think that adding these segments to the study of civil society in CEE can help to broaden the analysis beyond the discursively and ideologically thematized struggles around NGOs, and contribute to a better understanding of illiberal regimes and the counter-movements they produce.

Articulation Rate in American English in a Corpus of YouTube Videos

Previous studies of the temporal organization of speech in American English have found differences in speaking or articulation rate according to speaker dialect or location, but small sample sizes and incomplete geographic coverage have limited the generalizability of the findings. In this study, articulation rates in American English are calculated from the automatic speech-to-text transcripts of more than 29,000 hours of video from local government and civic organization channels on YouTube from the 48 contiguous US states, containing more than 230 million individual word timings. Two questions are considered: are there regional differences in articulation rate? And do urban speakers articulate faster than rural speakers? The study presents several methodological innovations: first, it identifies a genre of regional speech suitable for interregional comparisons (meetings of local governments or civic organizations). Second, it introduces a new method for the calculation of articulation rate using cue and word timestamps from caption files. Third, it leverages US Census data to correlate the articulation rate with population for a large number of localities. The study shows that, in line with previous studies, Southerners articulate slower, and Americans from the Upper Midwest more quickly. In addition, there is a small but positive correlation between population size and articulation rate. Articulation rates are mapped using a measure of local autocorrelation.

The “Copyright” Regime of Chessboard Street

This chapter traces how the Chinese booksellers in the Chessboard Street neighborhood utilized the tradition of merchant guilds and the Qing government's reform initiative to create their quasi-legal institution in order to regulate and protect what they believed to be banquan/copyright. It illustrates in particular how the Shanghai shuye gongsuo (SBG), a civic organization with no legal jurisdiction or official authorization, enforced its banquan/copyright regulation and punished pirates according to their ideas of morality, norms, and customs. It illustrates how the SBG's rich records not only reveal the daily operation and conflicts in the modern Chinese cultural economy, but also the booksellers' conceptions of property ownership, civility, and trust that were articulated and contested in routine transactions. The chapter also focuses on how the SBG interacted and negotiated with the state's formal legal system after the promulgation of China's first copyright law in 1911. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, although new legislation regarding the protection of copyright appeared, it was rarely enforced in reality because consistent political upheavals had prevented the Chinese central state from establishing sufficient legal control over its territory.

Smallholder Farmers’ Decision to Participate in Vegetable Marketing and the Volume of Sales in West Shewa Zone of Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia

This study examines vegetable producers’ market participation and sales volume using cross-sectional data obtained from 385 randomly and proportionately sampled households from West Shewa zone, Oromia region of Ethiopia. Heckman two-step procedure was used to analyse the determinants of participation in vegetables markets and volume of sales during the study period. Probit model shows that education level, distance to nearest market, access to irrigation, use of pesticide and participation in any civic organization significantly affect market participation decision. Further, results from ordinary least squares regression show that sex of household head, land size, distance to farmer training centre, access to irrigation, use of pesticide and participation in civic organization significantly affect the level of market participation of the farm households in vegetable markets. The findings imply that support for female households, improving adult based education, participation in civic organization, infrastructure, access to irrigation and improved inputs are a means to increase vegetable production market participation and sales volume in West Shewa, Ethiopia.