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This paper aims to ground Harvey’s (2003) top-down theory of “accumulation by dispossession” in the everyday lives of people and places with specific focus on the role of law. It does this by drawing upon the lived experiences of residents on a public housing estate in England (UK) undergoing regeneration and gentrification through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

Members of the residents association on the Myatts Field North estate, London, were engaged as action research partners, working with the researchers to collect empirical data through surveys of their neighbours, organising community events and being formally interviewed themselves. Their experiential knowledge was supplemented with an extensive review of all associated policy, planning, legal and contractual documentation, some of which was disclosed in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Three specific forms of place-based dispossession were identified: the loss of consumer rights, the forcible acquisition of homes and the erasure of place identity through the estate’s rebranding. Layard’s (2010) concept of the “law of place” was shown to be broadly applicable in capturing how legal frameworks assist in enacting accumulation by dispossession in people’s lives. Equally important is the ideological power of law as a discursive practice that ultimately undermines resistance to apparent injustices.

This paper develops Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession in conversation with legal geography scholarship. It shows – via the Myatts Field North estate case study – how PFI, as a mechanism of accumulation by dispossession in the abstract, enacts dispossession in the concrete, assisted by the place-making and ideological power of law.

School networks are of increasing importance in Germany. Despite not being formally anchored in the structure of the school system, school networks are promoted via a wide variety of programmes. These initiatives have varying aims such as the systemic promotion of school development and the identification of key factors for success. Some programmes even provide for accompanying research into the impact of networks on their success. Following the classification of the German school system according to the cohesion/regulation matrix by Chapman, and suggesting an emphasis on ‘egalitarian culture’, this chapter then focuses on the topic of school-to-school collaboration. Doing so, we shall define our understanding of school networks, present a typology of commonly found networks in Germany and provide systemic examples of some of the larger school networks. The review of the national state of research in this field including experience from two of our research and development projects shows desiderata especially concerning processes of school-to-school collaboration. The role of school leadership, which will be expanded upon further, has proven to be a driver of success in school networks.

Human capital theory suggests that any increase in skills translates into greater productivity of the workforce. Non-cognitive skills, in particular, play a critical role in many domains in life. The aim of this study is to gain a greater understanding of one such skill, discipline. Viewing discipline as a tool for enhancing learning, personal development and increasing overall achievement, this study offers an alternative way to measure discipline in higher education.

This paper presents the results of an online survey of 537 current students and recent graduates from the United States, South Korea and China. Principal component analysis was used to test the overarching assumption that student discipline is composed of five dimensions. Multiple analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post hoc analyses and t-tests were applied to test for country and gender-related differences between the three country groups. Cluster analysis was used to profile the respondent groups based on similarities across the samples.

The results confirm that student discipline is a construct comprising five discipline dimensions – focus, intention, responsibility, structure and time (F.I.R.S.T). In addition, the identification of low, medium and high discipline levels among the respondents provides support for the recently introduced concept of a layered “threshold of Discipline”.

A F.I.R.S.T. discipline measurement questionnaire for capturing student discipline – underpinned by a conceptual model encompassing self-determination, goal setting, self-efficacy, self-regulation and time management principles – was developed and tested. Suggestions for enhancing graduate work readiness through increasing levels of the skill of discipline are outlined.

As may be evident from its sub‐title, Text Retrieval 86, the fourth text retrieval seminar organised by the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS), was targeted at an application area which is becoming topical in many organisational environments — the linking of office automation (OA) techniques, word processing, e‐mail, database management, etc. with full text software packages capable of storing massive amounts of data. The hardware and software to do this are available and several commercial systems claim to provide complete integration. Yet as the seminar programme stated, little consideration has so far been given to, ‘… the organisation, storage and retrieval of the mass of information which will be fed into them.’

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

Today Croydon, tomorrow the world Chris Batt, Borough Libraries and Museum Officer for the London Borough of Croydon, believes that public libraries can use the Internet to become the most important players in the future development of their communities. Physically and virtually, the public library is the enabling institution for everyone. The Internet, and community computing, mean that new networks of interaction and new paradigms of service can be created. At February's Computers in Libraries conference, Mr Batt described Croydon's plans, and how they are being put into practice.