Community Hostility Research Articles

Learners' perspectives on the prevention and management of pregnancy school dropout: a Namibian case.

Namibia has had a problem with the high rate of learner pregnancy and school dropout for many years, despite implementing education sector policy on preventing and managing learner pregnancy. This study aimed to explore the perspectives of school-going learners in Namibia regarding the factors contributing to learner pregnancy and school dropout and propose interventions to address them. This qualitative research employed interpretative phenomenological data analysis, with seventeen individual and ten focus group interviews involving 63 school-going learners: adolescents, pregnant learners, and learner parents. Emerging factors driving learner pregnancy and school dropout in rural Namibian schools include older men and cattle herders preying on young girls, long school holidays, the proximity of alcohol sites near school premises, and age restrictions after maternity leave. The learners proposed interventions include prohibiting learners' access to alcohol establishments, strengthening collaborations between stakeholders, sensitizing girls and cattle herders, and ongoing advocacy efforts. Findings indicate community hostility, lack of infrastructure and resources, and learner unawareness. It is essential to mitigate community hostility and raise awareness. Incorporating the perspectives of learners in policy interventions remains crucial for effectively addressing the high rates of learner pregnancy and school dropout in rural Namibian schools.

‘Mormon reactions to The Book of Mormon’

The sustained success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon posed a major dilemma for the Mormon Church 1 and for many individual Mormons who revere the scripture from which the musical comedy takes its name. As a minority religion in the USA, the Mormon Church has endured over 190 years of persecution, public ridicule and marginalisation, much of which has been prompted by media and religious opposition to the Church’s distinctive doctrines and scripture. Naturally, Mormon sensitivity to criticism – including humour which targets its core doctrines – remains high, given this historical legacy of wider community hostility. Nevertheless, the Mormon Church responded with what commentators saw as a unique and good-natured official public relations/proselyting campaign, capitalising on the musical’s success. It signalled what can be referred to as a mature and creative policy/culture of tolerance, and this policy probably encouraged some members to attend the musical. This paper investigates the Church’s official response to the musical, looks briefly at Mormon humour, and presents the results of a survey amongst Mormons who watched the show, to see if Mormons can laugh at The Book of Mormon.

Being a Blue Blood: A Phenomenological Study on the Lived Experiences of Police Officers’ Children

There has been speculation by researchers regarding the potential fears, concerns, and difficulties experienced by children of police officers, such as fears about their parent being injured or killed while on duty, ridicule and bullying, or being personally assaulted. More disheartening are the increased potential stressors facing police officers’ children due to increased community hostility across the country over the last few years, particularly among the African American community, stemming from a series of police involved shootings of unarmed African American males. Yet, there remains scant research that has examined the lived experiences of police officers’ children. To address this gap in the policing literature, this study used semi-structured interviews of police officers children in a southern state using a phenomenological methodology to explore the lived experiences of being a child of a police officer. Findings and policy recommendations are discussed.

Labor rights are civil rights: inter-racial unionism and the struggle to unionize Nissan in Canton, Mississippi

On 4 August 2017, workers at Nissan’s plant in Canton, Mississippi, voted 2244 to 1307 against being represented by the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). The organizing campaign in Canton – which began shortly after the plant opened in 2003 – was one of the most important in recent labor history, and it attracted national and international media coverage. It also mobilized some high-profile supporters, including actor Danny Glover, musician Common, Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez, and presidential contender Bernie Sanders. This article uses interviews with Nissan workers and UAW staffers, together with the records of the long organizing drive, to provide the first detailed examination of this landmark campaign, revealing problems that press accounts did not cover. While the UAW and its supporters blamed Nissan’s fierce opposition for the outcome, this article reveals that the reasons for the loss were more complex. Apart from corporate opposition, community hostility, the increasing number of temporary workers – who were unable to vote in the election – and racial divisions were all important factors. Most of the UAW’s supporters were African-American, and they were mobilized by a campaign that declared that, ‘Labor Rights are Civil Rights.’ This slogan alienated many whites, however, weakening the union. While the UAW pledged to fight on, the defeat was another blow to its long campaign to organize foreign-owned automakers in the U.S., an increasingly important sector.

Systematic review of literature concerning lesbian and gay work-life balance

Systematic review of literature concerning lesbian and gay work-life balance

Police militarization in the USA: the state of the field

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the state of research of police militarization in the USA to explore the claim that the police are becoming more like the military, or “militarized” in order to identify gaps in the research on this topic that require further investigation. Design/methodology/approach To explore the state of police militarization, this paper draws on a scan of scholarly papers published on militarization in the American context as well as a select array of gray literature on the topic. Findings While the nature of militarization has received substantial scholarly attention, debate on the phenomenon remains and there is little consensus on the definition of what makes a department militarized. The impact of militarization is similarly unclear: some scholars suggest that it has a negative impact on policing because it creates community hostility and encourages police to see force as a central problem-solving tool. However, other scholars suggest militarization is a positive development, as it could promote professionalism and accountability. To date, there has been little empirical work on the impact of militarization on policing that could inform this debate. Originality/value This paper suggests that empirical assessments of how militarization affects use of force and legitimacy will be valuable for informing the militarization debate. As scholars on both sides of the debate have suggested that militarization affect policing outcomes in these areas, empirical tests here offer a way to explore both sides’ claims. Such tests could offer new evidence on how militarization is affecting the character and operations of American police.

If Skilling Can't Get a Change of Venue, Who Can? Salvaging Common Law Implied Bias Principles from the Wreckage of the Constitutional Pretrial Publicity Standard

Fifty years ago the United States Supreme Court issued three landmark decisions recognizing local pretrial publicity and community hostility in a charging venue as extraneous forces that can impact jurors’ ability to be constitutionally impartial. It later held that local prejudice can be so incompatible with a defendant’s impartial jury rights that a trial in that community violates due process and may require a change in venue. Paradoxically, successful venue challenges under this federal constitutional pretrial publicity standard have become increasingly rare even as the volume, sensationalism, and pervasiveness of media coverage of criminal trials have increased with near-universal television and internet access in the United States. This article tracks the Supreme Court’s effort and ultimate failure to develop a coherent jurisprudence addressing the effects of pretrial publicity on juror impartiality in a media-saturated society; an effort that has culminated in a systematic dismantling of the pretrial publicity standard and resulted in a fragmented and highly malleable change of venue jurisprudence under a “totality of the circumstances” test that rarely results in a change of venue, even in the most notorious and highly-publicized of contemporary cases like the prosecution of Jeffrey Skilling for his Enron-related offenses. A few courts and commentators have argued that the extent of the harm caused by a crime in a venue should be an additional factor (along with pretrial publicity) that informs a federal trial court’s change of venue analysis under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 21 and/or the constitutional totality of the circumstances inquiry. This article agrees that the pretrial publicity standard does not adequately address the effect of widespread community harm on juror bias. However, it disagrees with the assumption that the Rule 21 inquiry is co-extensive with the constitutional inquiry and that grafting one more normative factor onto an already highly subjective multi-factor test will provide any more protection to the impartial jury rights of high-profile defendants or result in a more coherent change of venue jurisprudence. Rather, this article argues that a deeper problem with the current change of venue standard is that it has displaced common law principles of jury bias that should lead to a different analysis in cases involving contemporary crimes that bear little resemblance to the cases that gave rise to the constitutional change of venue standard. Specifically, crimes that cause or threaten catastrophic harm in the charging venue and create a large victim class in the community of people with a direct interest – pecuniary, emotional, or otherwise – in the outcome of the case. In those cases, this article argues, a natural extension of the common law doctrine of implied juror bias to the community requires a conclusive presumption of community-wide bias warranting a change of venue. Part I of this article discusses common law principles of jury bias. Part II tracks the evolution of the Court’s pretrial publicity standard, with a particular focus on the impartial jury/free press concerns that initially drove this jurisprudence, up to its most recent consideration of this area of law in United States v. Skilling. Part III explains why common law principles of implied bias warrant recognizing a conclusive presumption of community-wide bias in a discrete class of modern high-impact cases to fully protect the Sixth Amendment constitutional impartial jury guarantee.

Community pressure for green behavior

The desire to avoid rousing community hostility may encourage firms to behave in an environmentally responsible manner. Firms may engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) to maintain community support and/or to regain the support of a community where it has been lost. It has been conjectured that such ‘informal regulation’ could effectively replace formal intervention in some settings, and usefully complement it in others. We explore these conjectures with mixed results. Informal regulation is necessarily less efficient than a well-designed formal alternative and the pattern of green behavior induced by the threat of community hostility may increase or decrease welfare. The existence of community pressure may increase or decrease the optimal calibration of a formal intervention (in this case an environmental tax) and may complement or detract from the incentives generated by an optimally calibrated tax.

A Fractured Pochgui: Local Factionalism in Eighteenth-Century Papantla

In August 1787 in Papantla, New Spain, native Totonacs rose in riot. While the captain of militia of a neighboring community described this as a case of natives rising up against Spaniards and justice generally, a close examination of the event reveals multiple divisions within the community. This study explores how factional interests in Papantla divided the community across racial lines. It particularly considers how one group of native leaders who opposed a corrupt alcalde mayor (Spanish magistrate) were able to foster his removal from office and how corresponding actions by the alcalde mayor's native supporters forced the removal of his successor. This uprising further demonstrates how native leaders were able to tap into community hostility over the Bourbon reforms and deploy that anger in the interests of their own political gain.

Action Research, Case Study, and Community Practice

Although a substantial body of research on community hostility towards the establishment of human services facilities now exists, researchers as well as community practitioners have identified a ne ...

Neighborhood Reactions Toward Facilities for Residential Care

Although a substantial body of research on community hostility towards the establishment of human services facilities now exists, researchers as well as community practitioners have identified a need for a more naturalistic and systematic approach to the issue. As a step in that direction, this paper focuses on a nationally representative sample of facilities for residential care in Sweden, with the objective of identifying patterns of hostile NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) reactions and institutional as well as community predictive factors. Approximately 16 percent of these facilities studied experienced NIMBY reactions. In contradiction to many previous studies, which try to explain the neighborhood reactions in terms of attitudes towards special client groups, the findings of this study indicate that the characteristics of the facility itself and of the community in which it is placed seem to be the most significant factors. The study suggests that there is also significant community support for the facilities and that interaction with the community can provide the facilities with positive resources.

Community policing against guns: Public opinion of the kansas city gun experiment

Sherman and Rogan report that proactive patrols focused on firearm recovery reduced gun crimes significantly in Kansas City. Regardless of the strategy's potential for reducing crime, however, its value will be limited if the price of success is community hostility to the police. Using a pre/post quasi-experimental design, this research examines the community reaction to police efforts in Kansas City. The findings show that the community was aware of the enhanced policing, that proactive police methods, generally, received strong support, and that residents perceived an improvement in the quality of life in the experimental neighborhood. Although the findings do not address the views of persons stopped by police patrolling hot spots of gun crime, they suggest that residents of communities suffering high rates of gun crime welcome intensive police efforts against guns.

Community Hostility and the Right to an Impartial Jury

Community Hostility and the Right to an Impartial Jury