Climate Of Distrust Research Articles

Place Identity, Participation, and Emotional Climate in a Rural Community From the Northern Coast of Peru

Currently, in rural communities from the Peruvian northern coast, it is common to find a climate of distrust and pessimism that accompanies the lack of coordinated social action and community participation among residents. This study analyzes the relationships that people develop with regard to the place where they live in, how it associates to the ways they participate in their community and the relationship that these two variables have with the perceived emotional climate, in a rural community from the northern coast of Peru (n = 81). Results indicate that place identity is significantly associated with a high community participation and a climate of trust in the community. Finally, a Path Analysis is performed to analyze comprehensively the relationship between these variables. The results suggest that place identity does have an influence on perceived positive climate in the community, being mediated by the dimensions of community participation.

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

Urban regeneration in the context of post-Soviet transformation: Lithuanian experience

Abstract Our research concentrates on the countries, which had emerged after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the possible distinctive influence of the social and institutional environment of these countries on the process and outcomes of city center regeneration. The theoretical section includes the definition of the main concepts used in our research. First of all the countries undergoing the post-Soviet transformation were defined and then the concept of “urban regeneration” was explained. Here we also distinguished the main features of societies and institutional environment of the post-Soviet countries including the collision of different sets of values and lack of conscious value orientations and value systems, lack of individual initiative and personal responsibility, low level of participation in public domain, tendency towards non-transparent decision making, culture of complaint, climate of mistrust, increasing uncertainty and pessimism. In the section of results we had elaborated and discussed the hypothesis that these features affect the image and treatment of the historic built environment and especially of historic urban centers. Further we distinguish three dimensions – features of urban space, governance structures, and social milieu – and, based on literature and Lithuanian experience, distinguish what features of these dimensions and how make it easier or inhibit the urban regeneration. In the concluding sections we outline the basic findings and further research proposals and present the summary matrix of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of urban regeneration in the context of post-Soviet transformation. The matrix could be useful both for the future research and for the decision making in practice of city center regeneration. From the preset outcomes of our research, we conclude that social and institutional context is crucial in the city center regeneration and in heritage preservation in general and the ideas and principles widespread in Western Europe and the United States cannot be directly and straightforwardly imported into the context of post-Soviet transformation.

The politics of educational transfer and policymaking in Egypt

For the past two centuries, western modern education has informed education policies and practices in Egypt. However, few researchers have analyzed the historical or current politics of educational transfer in this country. This article investigates the ways in which foreign transfer has influenced Egyptian education, both historically and currently. It concludes that current Egyptian education is a product of inappropriately adapted foreign transfers coupled with domestic interest in spreading education with little attention to its quality. Egypt has recently received considerable support from the international community and has been influenced by global educational discourses. Yet, its educational reforms have met little, if any, success as they have been introduced into a system with characteristics that are historically ingrained and resistant to change, and into a contested context of competing interest groups and a climate of mistrust. The result is a disoriented education system full of problems.

Verbesserung der Leistung: vom Antidoping zur Doping Regulation

Despite the increased global effort in the fight against doping, competitive sports is still affected by performance-enhancing drugs. Paradoxically, the increasing search for fraud has led to an increased climate of mistrust. At the same time, more and more people generally question the authenticity of competition winners’ performances, as common laboratory tests are not able to detect all prohibited doping methods. Furthermore, criminalizing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in competitive sports has led to similar problems as the prohibition of psychotropic drugs, such as black markets or the availability of products of questionable quality. Therefore, a regulation of doping (enhancement of certain human abilities) similar to risk and harm reduction strategies in drug policies is suggested.

LEARNING TO ACT LIKE A LAW STUDENT: A RESPONSE TO THE MODEL CODE OF PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR LAW STUDENTS

This paper is a response to recent academic trends proposing Codes of Conduct for law students. I argue against the notion that such Code(s) treat law students ‘as if’ they were lawyers. In particular, any proposed Code of Conduct should never have extra‐territorial effect and govern actions in a law student's private life. Nor should there be a duty to report alleged instances of misconduct for fear of creating a climate of distrust and secrecy. These problems, as a whole, would defeat the development of professionalism or ethical behaviour among law students.

Micro-credit, misappropriation and morality: British responses to Irish distress, 1822–1831

This article charts the vicissitudes of an economic experiment that aimed to eradicate distress in early-nineteenth-century Ireland. The London Committee for Irish Relief was formed in 1822 and was the first large-scale, charitable response in Britain to famine conditions in Ireland. The Committee believed that poverty was the cause rather than the effect of ‘the Irish problem’ and tried to initiate change by providing the poor with financial resources. Despite some initial successes, allegations over misappropriation of funds created a climate of distrust about the Committee's policies. These allegations mounted over the decade, and when Ireland once again faced extreme distress, in 1831, they caused a rift in London's charitable circles, producing two organizations: the Irish Distress Committee, which argued that poverty was the causal factor, and the Western Committee for Irish Relief, which identified Catholicism as the source of Ireland's problems. This division reflected a more general loss of confidence in plans to solve Ireland's endemic poverty through the promotion of economic activity. These events coincided with hardening attitudes towards Catholics and the poor throughout the British Isles and played an important role in the development of policies on Irish relief in the nineteenth century.

Climate of distrust

Climate of distrust

The Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD) and Governance in the Australian Drug Policy Arena

The Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD) was introduced into the Australian drug policy community in 1997 by the Howard conservative government as part of its “Tough on Drugs” policy initiative. Support in 1997 by the states and territories through the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy (MCDS) for a trial of prescribed heroin prompted the prime minister to attempt to directly control drug policy by changing national drug-policy-making processes. It has been suggested that the ANCD was introduced to short-circuit the power of the states and territories to structure national drug strategy, signaling a shift from consensus decision making through a policy community approach to centralized executive decision making through the prime minister's office. Interviews with key policy makers during 1999–2000 and findings from recent evaluations point to a climate of distrust, over-bureaucratization, slow decision making, and overt paranoia about the presence of new players in the drug policy arena, resulting not from inadequacies in governance but as a resistant response from policy makers to the introduction of the ANCD. This shift in the model of decision making may lead to an obsolete national drug strategy (NDS) and undermine a unified approach to national drug policy.

Nehru and civil liberties in India

This article locates the origins of the human rights movement in India with the establishment of the Indian Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) in 1936, and examines the role of its founder, Jawarharlal Nehru, independent India's first prime minister. It charts the organisation's brief career in a colonial political climate of mistrust, coupled with compulsions of governance. It argues that the ICLU was a replication of the model that already existed in the sovereign and liberal democratic societies of the West, and in turn became a model for similar organisations formed in post-independent India. It asserts that the idea of civil liberties as enunciated by Nehru, and the experience of the ICLU experiment, continues to be relevant even today as organisations mature and expand their agendas.

Invisible hazards: a social health analysis of endocrine disruptors

Humankind's innate fixation on technology has resulted in an infringement on one's right to live in a healthy environment. From this technology have emerged invisible contaminants - those contaminates whose presence is impossible for human beings to detect with any of their senses. They are covert and ambiguous and have potentially drastic chronic effects that can cause an indeterminate number of fatalities over an undisclosed period of time. This holds true for the endocrine disruptor issue in Canada. Hormones, chemical messengers that are produced by the endocrine system to perform physiological communication in the human body, act at very low levels. Because of its potency, any slight change to the concentration of a hormone can drastically affect physiological functions in the body. In the past decade, it has come to the public's attention that synthetic chemicals released in the environment can alter the function of the endocrine system by mimicking or blocking hormones. Furthermore, by directly acting on hormone production, they drastically affect human reproduction and developmental functions. This deterioration of human health has adverse health and social effects. From a sociological perspective, the impacts on communities include increased stress and paranoia, and the development of a climate of distrust and hostility between professionals and the public in the aftermath of a hazard. In the case of endocrine disruptors, these effects are perpetuated by a culture that holds economic and market trends above issues of environmental health. An important step to addressing these invisible contaminants is the popularizing of the issue by increasing public awareness of their affects and existence. Factors that affect the formation and popularization of endocrine disruptors as a major environmental issue will also be addressed. This summarization of my graduate work is an effort to address the diverse factors that make up the endocrine disruptor issue, and consequently make it a significant concern for environmental health.

Climate of distrust

By the year 2020 Indonesia will be the world's fifth largest economy, according to the latest World Bank forecast. But an upsurge in religious and ethnic violence is threatening to undermine the stability which is essential for future prosperity

Climate of mistrust

Climate of mistrust