Search results

This book facilitates the existing dialogue between community sociologists and environmental sociologists on the ecological and social significance of place, the challenges of local sustainability, and local environmental politics. Even after many years into this general intellectual discussion, much remains to be clarified, defined, explained, and understood if we are to provide other concerned actors with meaningful social scientific insights. As such, we conclude this chapter by briefly identifying seven fruitful avenues for future research that follow directly from the contributions to this book.

This chapter examines how residents of vulnerable communities frame environmental change. Specifically, this study reveals how residents from Louisiana's coastal communities understand coastal land loss. Respondents convey the meanings they give to land loss through constructing a narrative of place. We use a phenomenological approach that focuses on how stories are told and the subjective interpretations of societal members. We suggest that the slow onset disaster of coastal land loss leaves residents feeling vulnerable, forcing a constant and heightened awareness of place attachment. Prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in late summer 2005, residents expressed a sense of separation and alienation from the restoration process. As major restoration plans are considered, residents’ place attachment can shed light on the role the communities can play in policy and restoration projects.

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.– Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac (1949/1989, p. 203)

Our concern in this article is with the feeding back of sociological descriptions to those whom these descriptions purport to be about. This in particular is what we mean in our title by the ‘retrieval of sociological description’. We would like to consider here some of the issues surrounding any attempt on the part of the sociologist to offer his account for inspection by his research respondents, why one may attempt such an exercise and, tentatively, what any such exercise might look like. In particular, we wish to link such ‘feeding back’ of the sociologist's descriptions to the related issue of the validation of social research. Conventionally, validation of sociological research is thought to consist in internal methodological procedures, e.g. triangulation, random allocation, etc., but validation by respondents may represent a feasible alternative to such procedures. By respondent validation is meant here any attempt on the part of the researcher to establish a

The paper argues that some conventional tools guiding innovation processes inadequately analyse problems arising from blending telematics with public service integration in areas of complex service provision. Also uses Molina’s diamond of alignment, and Nicoll’s contextual usability conceptual approaches to analyse a case study on the introduction of smart housing in West Lothian, Scotland.

A primary role of libraries is to organize, manage, and store collections of information and data resources. Librarians and information professionals, serving as facilitators in information seeking, access, and use, are primary gateways to such resources within libraries and information centers. Based on a solid philosophy of and commitment to cooperative information sharing and resource exchange, these professionals have the expertise to locate and access resources from diverse sources.

Fatigue, occurring in an average healthy individual, under ordinary conditions of life, and while foodstuffs of a very usual character are being ingested, is an indication of an inability on the part of the organism to meet, with sufficient rapidity, the demands of the body created by wear and tear. It is an association of defective oxidation and the undue accumulation of waste products in the tissues and blood, and is in a very large percentage of cases caused solely by a deficiency in the average dietary of to‐day of one or more of those mineral elements which are essential to life. That mineral substances are indispensable to life has been fully demonstrated, for it has been shown that animals fed upon proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, which have been rendered as ash‐free as possible, perish even more rapidly than if they are deprived of food altogether.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Congratulations cards, gifts, and announcements in newspapers are some features of the social rituals surrounding the birth of a child, normally a happy occasion. A subtle mixture of public and private activity intermingle in reactions to this unique yet universal event. In this article I intend to explore the rituals and processes involved in hearing and spreading the news of a birth, with particular reference to grandparents. Such a discussion of the announceable features of becoming a grandparent can form the beginning of an assessment of the meaning and significance of grnadparenthood, something which has received little attention in sociological work. In providing an account of the essential features of ‘telling the news’, I hope to generate an understanding both of the procedures used to ‘make sense’ of grandparenthood, and of the structural assumptions and processes underlying the way in which events are announced.