Dissent, its Persecutors, and the New Russia

2021 ◽  
pp. 2336825X2110664
Author(s):  
Maria Lipman
Keyword(s):  
Russian Government ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Investigative Reporting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Education Environment ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
Arts And Culture ◽  
Data Journalism ◽  
Soviet Dissidents

The post-Soviet decades have brought about significant changes of the Russian social landscape. A countless number of civic initiatives engaged in charitable operation, legal assistance, education, environment, arts and culture, etc. have emerged across Russia. Self-help communities and effective crowd-funding for all kinds of purposes are evidence of public solidarity inconceivable in the Soviet state. The second half of the 2010s were marked by a rise in investigative reporting based on state-of-the-art data journalism and the rapid progress in social media. Apparently, the impressive rise in civil society has become a matter of growing concern for the Russian government, and in the past year, the Kremlin has stepped up persecutions of political activists and investigative media. This repressive surge is reminiscent of the events some four decades ago when the Soviet government undertook to radically eliminate the dissident movement. The activists of today may be different from the Soviet dissidents, but for now, they are just as defenseless vis-à-vis the state as the dissidents were.

scholarly journals A softer kind of hard news? Data journalism and the digital renewal of public service news in Sweden

2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482097541
Author(s):  
Andreas Widholm ◽  
Ester Appelgren
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
News Production ◽  
Investigative Reporting ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Service Organizations ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Data Journalism ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
New Research

Over the past decade, data journalism has received considerable attention among scholars, pointing to novel forms of investigative reporting as well as new daily practices of news production. This study contributes to existing scholarship by conceptualizing data journalism through distinctions between hard and soft news in relation to service journalism. We analyze news produced by specialized data desks in Swedish public service organizations over a 5-year period (2015–2019) and propose a model for how service journalism attributes can be used as a bridge between the binary categories of hard and soft in data journalism. With this model, we point to how data journalism in public service organizations challenges established notions of soft and hard news and how hybrid production practices open up new research trajectories concerning the societal significance of news in the digital age.

The Political Economy of Local Governance in Yemen

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Benoit Challand ◽  
Joshua Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Local Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Local Initiatives ◽  
Self Rule

This paper provides an historical exploration of local governance in Yemen across the past sixty years. It highlights the presence of a strong tradition of local self-rule, self-help, and participation “from below” as well as the presence of a rival, official, political culture upheld by central elites that celebrates centralization and the strong state. Shifts in the predominance of one or the other tendency have coincided with shifts in the political economy of the Yemeni state(s). When it favored the local, central rulers were compelled to give space to local initiatives and Yemen experienced moments of political participation and local development.

The ‘D-Books’ of Daryaganj Sunday Book Market

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 309-326
Author(s):  
Kanupriya Dhingra
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Book Market ◽  
Apparent Lack ◽  
Informal Market ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Help ◽  
A Site

Daryaganj Sunday Book Market, popularly known as Daryaganj Sunday Patri Kitab Bazaar, is a weekly informal market for used, rare, and pirated books that has been operating on the streets of Old Delhi for the past fifty years. In this essay, I focus on one of the circuits that has been flourishing in this market, that of pirated or ‘duplicate’ or D-books. In order to examine the forms in which piracy thrives in the present-day Patri Kitab Bazaar, and the reasons behind it, I compare two types of pirated books found here: a low-price self-help manual in Hindi and a ‘D’ copy of an English novel by popular Indian author Chetan Bhagat. As I examine the essential role that ‘randomness’ plays in the constitution of pirated texts, I suggest that there is organization to this apparent lack of pattern or unpredictability. Such permutation of order and chaos resonates with the location of the bazaar – a site that thrives on the serendipity of the streets.

Social Software for Bottom-Up Knowledge Networking and Community Building

2010 ◽  
pp. 1325-1335
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Chatti ◽  
Matthias Jarke
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Social Software ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Landscape ◽  
Collaborative Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Creation And Sharing

Recognizing that knowledge is a key asset for better performance and that knowledge is a human and social activity, building ecologies that foster knowledge networking and community building becomes crucial. Over the past few years, social software has become an important medium to connect people, bridge communities, and leverage collaborative knowledge creation and sharing. In this chapter we explore how social software can support the building and maintaining of knowledge ecologies and discuss the social landscape within different social software mediated communities and networks.

Cross-Cutting Themes

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-269
Author(s):  
Melvin Delgado
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Gun Violence ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Helping Professions ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Gun Carrying ◽  
Caring Adults ◽  
Youth Attitudes

This chapter provides a pause and the opportunity to integrate case illustration insights with the vast literature on urban gun violence. Bringing together these two worlds—practice and theory—allows the ability to garner lessons for moving forward in crafting urban interventions addressing this key issue. Those who are practice oriented can take these lessons and craft interventions that take into account local circumstances, which is a key element in best practices. Academics can take marching orders for furthering scholarship on this violence. Readers can see cross-cutting themes that emerged with implications for how academic disciplines and helping professions can collaborate with urban self-help organizations in helping them, and readers, carry out their respective missions. Opportunities for youth to connect with caring adults is also important in efforts to interrupt gun-carrying behavior, and they must also be part of the equation within self-help organizations, as seen in these case illustrations and throughout the book. Changing youth attitudes and behaviors influences future gun use by these individuals as they survive youth-hood and emerge as adults. The focus must be on the present with an eye toward the future and respect for the past.

In Search of a Better Future: Nepali Rural Out-migration from Assam

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-324
Author(s):  
Pinku Muktiar ◽  
Chandan Kumar Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
Immigrant Community ◽  
Indian States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unskilled Labour ◽  
Social Landscape

The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rural out-migration from northeast Indian states, especially Assam, to other parts of India. Thousands of poor rural youths from the region have migrated to the more prosperous parts of India in search of livelihood, mostly as unskilled labour in the informal sector. While rural out-migration has not been a new phenomenon in Assam, such out-migration in the past was mostly confined to the state. Although the immigrant groups in Assam pioneered this new trend of out-migration, subsequently, the indigenous communities also followed suit. This paper explicates the interplay of historical forces that have contributed to this phenomenon and its impact on Assam’s rural social landscape through an empirical study conducted among the Nepali community, an erstwhile immigrant community in Assam.

Research in Occupational Therapy: Luxury or Necessity?

1989 ◽  
Vol 52 (9) ◽  
pp. 349-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rita E A Goble
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Therapy ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Large Patient ◽  
Personal Approach ◽  
University Department ◽  
Many Sources

Occupational therapists know that practical problems demand practical solutions which are a combination of the intuitive personal approach and planned observation. Observation must be systematic, consistent and deliberate if it is to be accurate and effective. This article recommends that all occupational therapists should have ready access to a university department or local occupational therapy school and that they should concentrate upon concise, appropriate and consistent measures of outcome. The author suggests that therapists start by looking at their own patients, and that, although researchers have traditionally sought large patient samples in the past, this approach may no longer be the most suitable, since newer and innovative approaches to research are now increasingly using single case analysis as an alternative method. Funding has always been difficult and one solution developed by St Loye's School of Occupational Therapy is put forward, that is, the establishment of a Foundation in order to promote research. With a little self-help, occupational therapists can become involved in planned observation and development of new methods. The Health Service review entitled ‘Working for Patients’ highlights the fact that the professional must withstand critical analysis from many sources, and that occupational therapists must clearly identify their product and define their focus. Occupational therapists now have the opportunity to present their observations and prove that they are not merely ‘a dying institution’ but ‘a living and influential force’.

Disaster Citizenship

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob A. C. Remes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
Social Landscape

A century ago, governments buoyed by Progressive Era beliefs began to assume greater responsibility for protecting and rescuing citizens. Yet the aftermath of two disasters in the United States–Canada borderlands—the Salem fire of 1914 and the Halifax explosion of 1917—saw working-class survivors instead turn to friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family members for succor and aid. This book draws on histories of the Salem and Halifax events to explore the institutions—both formal and informal—that ordinary people relied upon in times of crisis. It explores patterns and traditions of self-help, informal order, and solidarity and details how people adapted these traditions when necessary. Yet, as the book shows, these methods—though often quick and effective—remained illegible to reformers. Indeed, soldiers, social workers, and reformers wielding extraordinary emergency powers challenged these grassroots practices to impose progressive “solutions” on what they wrongly imagined to be a fractured social landscape.

Personal Needs and Social Goals: Issues in Professional Involvement with Victims' Self-Help Groups

1990 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea M. Kowaz ◽  
Ronald Roesch ◽  
Walter J. Friessen
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Psychological Benefits ◽  
Social Advocacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Treatment Models ◽  
Self Help Groups ◽  
Benefits And Costs

The past decade has seen an upsurge in the development of self-help groups encompassing mutual assistance and/or social advocacy dimensions. Although considerable analyses of the sociological functions of such groups have been conducted, the literature concerning psychological benefits and costs of membership, particularly in victim support groups which commonly combine these two dimensions, is sparse. The present article reports on a group therapy experience, where group participants were all active members of a self-help organization and had all lost family members in accidents involving drunk drivers. This experience highlighted the importance of a number of issues located at the intersection of social goals and individual needs, a grey area the authors believe will become a matter of increasing concern and challenge. Rising costs of health care and the search for alternate treatment models make these issues of special interest to those involved in community mental health. This article is addressed to clinicians and researchers, both of whom will be needed to bring greater understanding to issues emerging from the growth of victims' support groups.

The Union Republics and Soviet Diplomacy: Concepts, Institutions, and Practices

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vernon V. Aspaturian
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Foreign Policy ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Precise Role

Ever since the constitutional improvisations of February 1, 1944, one of the enigmatic and obscure aspects of Soviet diplomacy has been the precise role of the Union Republics in its execution, administration and procedures. Aside from the participation of the Ukraine and Byelorussia in the work of the United Nations and its affiliated bodies and conferences, little attention has been paid to the role or potential of the Union Republics in Soviet foreign policy. Their apparent diplomatic inertia, however, is misleading, for in marked contrast to their meager formal participation in external affairs is their increasing implication in the quasi-diplomatic maneuvers of the Soviet Government. Furthermore, the juridical capacity of the Republics to embark on diplomatic adventures meets the formal canons of internal and international law, and remains intact in spite of the past dormancy of their diplomatic organs. At opportune moments it may be transmuted into concrete diplomatic benefits.

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