Andreja Siliunas, Mario L. Small and Joseph Wallerstein
Today, low-income people seeking resources from the federal government must often work through non-profit organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the constraints…
Abstract
Purpose
Today, low-income people seeking resources from the federal government must often work through non-profit organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the constraints that the poor must face today to secure resources through non-profit organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper. The authors review cases of non-profit organizations providing federally supported resources to the poor across multiple sectors.
Findings
The authors find that to accept government contracts serving the poor, nonprofit organizations must often engage in one or several practices: reject clients normally consistent with their mission, select clients based on likely outcomes, ignore problems in clients’ lives relevant to their predicament, or undermine client progress to manage funding requirements. To secure government-supported resources from nonprofits, the poor must often acquiesce to intrusions into one or more of the following: their privacy (disclosing sensitive information), their self-protection (renouncing legal rights), their identity (avowing a particular self-understanding) or their self-mastery (relinquishing authority over daily routines).
Originality/value
The authors show that the nonprofits’ dual role as brokers, both liaisons transferring resources and representatives of the state, can complicate their relation to their clients and the predicament of the poor themselves; the authors suggest that two larger trends, toward increasing administrative accountability and demonstrating deservingness, are having both intended and unintended consequences for the ability of low-income individuals to gain access to publicly funded resources.
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Past predictions of convergence between American capitalism and the Soviet planned economy optimistically assumed that advanced industrial society must also become democratic and…
Abstract
Past predictions of convergence between American capitalism and the Soviet planned economy optimistically assumed that advanced industrial society must also become democratic and pragmatic in its choice of economic policies. The Soviets had to become more capitalist. All such predictions proved only partially correct. Russia did become capitalist after a hugely destructive collapse, which obliterated the democratic demands of the 1960s in deindustrialization and enormous inequalities. Only ideological prejudices, reinforced in 1989, prevent most observers from seeing that America and Russia did in fact converge in a similar pattern of socioeconomic crisis. The outcomes of their crisis sequences could seem different in 2012, but these might not be the final outcomes.
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Charlotte Ryan and Gregory Squires
We argue that by conducting systematic research with communities rather than on communities, community-based research (CBR) methods can both advance the study of human interaction…
Abstract
We argue that by conducting systematic research with communities rather than on communities, community-based research (CBR) methods can both advance the study of human interaction and strengthen public understanding and appreciation of social sciences. CBR, among other methods, can also address social scientists’ ethical and social commitments. We recap the history of calls by leading sociologists for rigorous, empirical, community-engaged research. We introduce CBR methods as empirically grounded methods for conducting social research with social actors. We define terms and describe the range of methods that we include in the umbrella term, “community-based research.” After providing exemplars of community-based research, we review CBR’s advantages and challenges. We, next, summarize an intervention that we undertook as members of the Publication Committee of the URBAN Research Network’s Sociology section in which the committee developed and disseminated guidelines for peer review of community-based research. We also share initial responses from journal editors. In the conclusion, we revisit the potential of community-based research and note the consequences of neglecting community-based research traditions.
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Lillian Mwanri, Kiros Hiruy and Joseph Masika
The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of empowerment and the role that it plays in fostering community participation, community integration and in enabling a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe the application of empowerment and the role that it plays in fostering community participation, community integration and in enabling a healthy re‐settlement of culturally and linguistically diverse migrants who have recently arrived in Australia from Sub Saharan Africa.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper's approach is a discussion expressing the views of authors supported by the relevant literature drawn from a wide range of sources on migration, settlement, health, social, environment, cultural and public health issues. The African community and its peak organisation, the African Communities Council of South Australia is presented and various empowerment strategies used by the council are discussed as a healthy model for empowering new settlers in the new environment.
Findings
The first part of the paper describes the migration of African migrants in South Australia and sets the scenario describing the current state of these migrants including opportunities and challenges they face in the new environment. The second part describes theories and contexts of community empowerment, relationship between community empowerment and a healthy settlement; and the relevance and implications of community empowerment. The third part draws the above context and the empowerment strategy is specifically related to the African Community in South Australia. The empowerment strategy in this case represents a wide range of interventions aimed to equip new African migrants to a successful and a healthy resettlement and integration in South Australia. By addressing a wide range of settlement challenges and issues, the strategy employs concepts of empowerment that have been used in public health in general, health promotion, health education, communications, community engagement and community development.
Originality/value
The paper highlights challenges and opportunities for new migrants in the new environment and argues that community empowerment is an important enabling tool for a healthy settlement, particularly for people with refugee backgrounds. The paper also acknowledges that the community development approach has assisted the target group and has improved their ability to overcome challenges associated with settlement through capacity building, social capital and community connectivity.
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Diversified trading networks have recently drawn a great deal of attention. In the process, the importance of diversity has perhaps been overemphasized. Using the trade in port…
Abstract
Diversified trading networks have recently drawn a great deal of attention. In the process, the importance of diversity has perhaps been overemphasized. Using the trade in port wine from Portugal to Britain as an example, this essay attempts to show how a market once dominated by general, diversified traders was taken over by dedicated specialists whose success might almost be measured by the degree to which they rejected diversification to form a dedicated “commodity chain.” The essay suggests that this strategy was better able to handle matters of quality and the specialized knowledge that port wine required. The essay also highlights the question of power in such a chain. Endemic commodity-chain struggles are clearest in the vertical brand war that broke out in the nineteenth century, which, by concentrating power, marked the final stage in the transformation of the trade from network to vertical integration.
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This chapter critically examines the dialectical relationship between colonial capitalism, racism, state terrorism, and racial/ethnonational domination from the sixteenth to the…
Abstract
This chapter critically examines the dialectical relationship between colonial capitalism, racism, state terrorism, and racial/ethnonational domination from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. It demonstrates the deficiencies of theories of global studies. In reformulating and improving critical international studies, this study advances the idea that excluding indigenous wisdom and knowledge from this area has allowed the hegemonic Euro-American-centric scholarship and ideology to limit our understanding of the racist sickness and its continuous evolution in the modern world system. Since this sickness has been hidden under the rhetoric of democracy, human rights, and social justice, even progressive intellectuals have failed to thoroughly comprehend the devastating consequences of racism and terrorism in global studies.
First, the chapter critically establishes the dialectical relationship between colonial capitalism, racial terrorism, and the continuous destruction of indigenous peoples in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. It explains how the dominant racial/ethnonational groups have continued to maintain their privileges at the cost of marginalized societies. Second, using indigenous wisdom and knowledge, the piece exposes the intellectual deficiencies of Euro-American scholarship and ideology from the right and left in global studies. Third, the chapter demonstrates that the claims of democracy, human rights, and social justice do not adequately apply to the conditions of the indigenous peoples in the world. Fourth, it proposes ways of developing a comprehensive critical global studies by critically including the wisdom and knowledge of indigenous peoples.
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The purpose of this article is to ascertain how the forces of globalization affect current organizational designs, particularly the relationship between rapid technological…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to ascertain how the forces of globalization affect current organizational designs, particularly the relationship between rapid technological change, global uncertainty, and careless organizational decision‐making.
Design/methodology/approach
This article examines the historical development of globalization, within the context of several pivotal interpretative perspectives including national security and the costs it entails for participants. The research design was predicated upon a comprehensive review of the literature that dealt with environmental uncertainty, technological change, and recent corporate criminal investigations.
Findings
The article points out that a careful analysis of the nexus between fast paced technologically driven globalization and dysfunctional organizations reveal that the uncertainties created by globalization produce societal conspiracy thinking and opaque organizational structures that facilitated the emergence of criminal and dissonant behavior.
Practical implications
Provides a foundation for more organizational specific empirical research and a practical admonishment to corporate executives to revisit the rationale and assumptions underlying their organizational structures and policies.
Originality/value
This is an original conceptual article based upon strong evidentiary findings that will prove useful to corporate managements.