Neighborhood Conflicts Research Articles

The conflict in the coastal area of Sines (Portugal): Elements for settlement through dialogue

Conflicts frequently emerge in border areas between population and industry, often located in coastal regions. The munici- pality of Sines, in Portugal, with cultural traditions connected to the sea and fishing activities, is a paradigmatic case where this problem has existed for decades. Knowing that dialogue has provided good results in settling neighbourhood conflicts, a study was conducted to characterise its environmental and social aspects and thus contribute to the knowledge of the factors that in- fluence individual attitudes towards the environment, aiming to establish dialogue platforms and environment integration be- tween the population and industry in Sines. A holistic study was carried out, together with a survey of two convenience samples composed of key social players from the local population and industry. Although the obtained results do not confirm any clear situation of pollution in Sines area, it was however found that there exists a conflict between the local population and neighbouring industry, associated with the pres- ence of the port and the industrial site and the resulting hazards for the environment and public health. In this context, it is noted that social space has a modelling effect on individual behaviour, and physical proximity is the main factor in the perception of the risk by local key players from Sines population. It was also noted that the surveyed companies have been integrating principles of social responsibility in their management policies, mainly due to media pressure on the in- dustrial activity, but also due to the environmental accidents which had previously occurred within the area. This study, although exploratory, shows the willingness of the social players in Sines to cooperate in protecting the envi- ronment and public health, with benefits resulting from that cooperation. This allows to anticipate success in settling the con- flict in Sines through dialogue. There were identified the following fundamental elements to the implementation of dialogue platforms: i) Dissemination of environmental information promotes public participation, ii) Risk perception is influenced by the physical proximity of the sources of environmental and public health degrada- tion, and iii) People exclusion from the decision-making processes causes a breach of trust towards those responsible for envi- ronmental management.

Neighborhood conflicts in urban China: from consciousness of property rights to contentious actions

Although urban neighborhood conflicts have drawn widespread attention, their possible link with neighborhood perception has not been quantified in the existing literature. Based on a recent neighborhood-based survey of urban residents in Guangzhou, China, this study investigates the structure, determinants, and consequences of neighborhood conflicts. In particular, it finds that there is inherently a subjective dimension embedded in neighborhood conflicts such that these conflicts should be conceptualized and measured as an individual-level perception of neighborhoods. Evidence from both empirical analyses and field research revealed that consciousness of property rights had significant effects on perceived neighborhood conflicts, while both consciousness of property rights and perceived neighborhood conflicts, especially those with local and grass-roots government agencies, further contribute to the occurrence of residents’ contentious actions. By situating neighborhood conflicts in the context of rules consciousness, this study brings attention to neighborhood perception shaping contentious politics in China’s urban transformation.

Social Disorganization and Neighborhood Crime in Argentine Shantytowns

This study analyzes the effects of conflictive social networks on a particular form of neighborhood crime called ‘street harassment’ in Argentine shantytowns. The data for the study is provided by a victimization survey applied in six Argentine cities, comparing the association between crime and neighborhood cohesion in different social strata. The study is based on social disorganization theory, but it adds two new insights to this perspective by exploring the role of political leadership and culture. Its main conclusion is that while conflictive social networks are strongly associated with neighborhood crime, these are concentrated in small numbers of shantytown dwellers. In addition, results also reveal that ambivalent attitudes towards conventional social principles and lack of trust in local political leadership are associated with neighborhood conflicts and crime.

Friars’ Tales: Thirteenth-century exempla from the British Isles by David Jones (review)

Reviewed by: Friars’ Tales: Thirteenth-century exempla from the British Isles by David Jones Annette Kehnel Friars’ Tales: Thirteenth-century exempla from the British Isles. Selected sources translated and annotated with an introduction by David Jones. [Manchester Medieval Sources Series] (New York: Manchester University Press. 2011. Pp. xvi, 201. $95.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-0-7190-8424-9; $34.95 paperback, ISBN 978-0-7190-8425-6.) With his translation of the earliest mendicant exempla collections from the British Isles dating from around the year 1275, David Jones offers an extremely useful tool for university teaching. His work will enrich seminars on the history of the medieval Church and of medieval thought as well as classes in historical anthropology in a broader sense. At first sight, the translations allow easy access to the practice of medieval preaching: 213 stories from two sermon books, the Franciscan Liber Exemplorum (preserved in Durham Cathedral Library MS B.IV.19, ed. A. G. Little, Liber Exemplorum ad usum praedicantium [Aberdeen 1908], here translated on pp. 27–153) and fifty-two stories from the so-called Cambridge Dominican Collection (preserved in London BL Royal MS 7 D.i., not published so far, here translated on pp. 155–88). At second glance, the translations facilitate reading and thus help us to understand both the “otherness” and the “likeness” of the Middle Ages. Three aspects are illustrative, although many more could be added. First, the stories testify to a tremendous circulation of knowledge (both in time and space) at the time. The compiler often speaks as a first-person narrator explaining from where he draws his knowledge. Apart from ancient stories from the Saints’ Lives, the vitae patrum, and so forth, he frequently refers to firsthand sources such as “what I heard from Brother Jordan, a good and truthful friar”; “a clerk named John […] told me this himself”; “a story related to me and Brother Roger Bacon in Paris”; and “I found this in a sermon by Brother Richard Fishacre”—thus witnessing to the lively streams of communication within the mendicant communities. Second, the tales feature an “international” perspective as a matter of course to the minds of late-thirteenth-century storytellers. The topographical horizon of the [End Page 131] stories reaches from local knowledge in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland to German and Italian sources of information. Brethren from Paris and Oxford, testimonials from Spain, Castile, Seville, Cilicia, the Holy Land are regularly cited, thus documenting a surprising “international” mobility of knowledge, people, and stories at the time. Third, a radical concern for the fundamentals of the conditio humana is clear: the uncertainty of human life, the agonies of death, the fears and hopes of those left behind, dreams and visions, the promises of magic, the dangers of sexuality and incest, fears of impurity, depression, guilt, possession, neighborhood conflicts, generational conflicts, and many other issues. No doubt this perspective owes a good deal to the friars’ activities as confessors. From this, we might also understand another peculiarity: an almost naive trust in the power of the spoken word. This is most charmingly expressed in the famous story of the clerk named John who, on the way to his concubine one night, managed to defeat the devil in disguise by merely speaking out loudly, “You lie, by the death of Christ.” In short, this is a wonderful book and is a must-have for those teaching history with a focus on the history of humanity. Annette Kehnel Universität Mannheim Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Contested Boundaries: Explaining Where Ethno-Racial Diversity Provokes Neighborhood Conflict

Contested Boundaries: Explaining Where Ethno-Racial Diversity Provokes Neighborhood Conflict

EU, Conflict Transformation and Civil Society: Promoting Peace from the Bottom Up?

The European Union established in order to bring about peace on the continent has instinctively considered conflict resolution a cardinal objective of its fledging foreign policy. Specifically, it has aimed at reconciling societies and transforming conflict, above simply managing crises and inducing settlements. In view of this, the EU has considered civil society as a key actor in conflict settings. This article seeks to unpack how the EU can engage with civil society actors in conflict areas as well as to provide an analytical framework to understand the EU’s impact on conflict through its engagement with civil society. To do so, the article posits three hypotheses: the liberal peace, the disembedded civil society and the Gramscian hypotheses. Rather than addressing which and to what extent these hypotheses apply in the abstract, this article presents a number of empirical examples drawn from the EU’s engagement with civil society organizations in several neighbourhood conflicts in order to illustrate their relevance for analysis.

Neighborhood conflicts: the role of social categorization

Purpose – In a multicultural context, this study aims to investigate the effect of ingroup versus outgroup categorization and stereotypes on residents' emotional and behavioral reactions in neighbor-to-neighbor conflicts. Based on the literature on the “black sheep effect”, the authors predicted that residents would actually be more irritated by ingroup than outgroup antagonists. Secondly, they predicted that reactions to deviant behavior by an outgroup antagonist would be shaped by the valence of stereotypes about the respective groups. Design/methodology/approach – Residents with either a native-Dutch or a Turkish background (n=529) completed a questionnaire on outgroup stereotypes, and responded to a conflict situation in which the ethnicity of an antagonist was manipulated between subjects. Findings – Supporting the black sheep effect, results reveal that both native-Dutch and Turkish residents reported more negative emotions towards an ingroup than an outgroup antagonist. In addition, when confronting an outgroup antagonist, stereotype negativity was related to more negative emotions and intentions for destructive conflict behavior. Social implications – The current study demonstrates that residents may actually get irritated more easily by ingroup than outgroup antagonists. Reactions to outgroup antagonists are further moderated by stereotype valence; negative outgroup stereotypes may lead to less tolerance towards outgroup antagonists and higher chances for conflict escalation. Originality/value – This is the first paper in which evidence for the black sheep effect is obtained in a field study and simultaneously for majority and minority members. In addition, evidence is presented that emotions may mediate the influence of the antagonist's group membership on conflict behavior.

Placing dryports. Port regionalization as a planning challenge – The case of Hamburg, Germany, and the Süderelbe

This paper emphasizes dryports in the context of port regionalization. It specifically deals with dryports as a challenge for planning, policy and metropolitan governance in the vicinity of seaports. The starting point is the ongoing spatial shift of terminals, distribution centres and port related developments towards the hinterland of mainports and the associated planning conflicts, raising negative impacts such as congestion, land consumption, land use conflicts and neighbourhood conflicts. The paper discusses these challenges against the empirical case of the Süderelbe-region in the Southern hinterland of the port of Hamburg, Germany. It focuses on the often neglected yet highly controversial issue of land use and related traffic flows. Further it reveals how these conflicts are being managed at the regional level. The main contention of the paper is that port regionalization triggers substantial planning conflicts different from those that are known from core port areas, due to the associated demand for land and infrastructure and also as a result of the often poorly developed institutional framework to solve these problems.

特集「紛争・訴訟問題からみたまちづくり手法の有効性と限界」にあたって

特集「紛争・訴訟問題からみたまちづくり手法の有効性と限界」にあたって

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

The claims about rights made by aggrieved workers and farmers to define rules consciousness is examined and existing definitions of rights consciousness in light of Chinese political practice is refined. Survey data is used to illustrate the four types of claims by members of one social group, related to trust in central and township leaders, to distinguish rules consciousness from rights consciousness.

The EU, Civil Society and Conflict Transformation in Western Sahara: The Failure of Disengagement

The protracted Western Sahara dispute, which has for over three decades pitted Morocco against the Sahrawi independentistas of the Polisario Front, epitomises the impotence of state-led conflict resolution efforts. The European Union (EU) has voluntarily remained withdrawn from the processes of transformation of this southern neighbourhood conflict, unable to surpass the politics of its inherent inter-governmentalism. This paper examines the alternative role played by local civil society organisations (CSO) in the transformation of the Western Sahara conflict. It analyses the input of a methodologically-informed selection of Moroccan and Sahrawi CSOs with a view to identifying the potential of more effectual EU involvement in the dispute, notably through cooperation with the relevant CSOs. The findings of this study point to the overwhelmingly fuelling role played by local CSOs in this particular conflict, but identify ways in which more peace-building civil actors could be empowered by the EU. These CSOs are often of grass-root origins with little or no links to the establishments on both sides of the conflict.

The European Neighbourhood Policy and Conflict Management: A Comparison of Moldova and the Caucasus

Conflict management is an area in which the EU has only recently begun to develop a profile, in particular through its involvement in the Western Balkans. The development of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has added a momentum to the management or resolution of the unresolved conflicts in the Former Soviet Union. This is a potentially risky undertaking. The ENP was not designed to address these conflicts; it remains politically, institutionally and financially under-equipped to do so, and it faces obvious external constraints, such as the role of Russia in the region. Through the ENP, the EU has assumed greater visibility in conflict management. By giving rise to local and international expectations, the EU runs the risk of becoming entangled in conflicts that it lacks the capacity to address, and of exposing its weaknesses as a foreign policy actor. The comparison of Moldova and Georgia spells out the scope and limitations of the ENP in the area of conflict management. In the case of Moldova, domestic support for closer relations with the EU and a willingness to discuss the status of Transnistria have allowed the ENP and other EU instruments to shape the process of conflict management. By contrast, the case of Georgia illustrates the scope for instrumentalization and unintended consequences resulting from a loose policy framework.

Extreme American Neighborhood Law

This Article explores narratives of extreme American neighbors acting badly - to other neighbors, to the police and to themselves. Starting with a philosophical-religious-psychological assessment of the neighbor as tragic construct, the Article quantifies and analyzes American neighbor jurisprudence in the opening years of the twenty-first century. The cautionary tales reveal ongoing, serious, and destructive meltdowns involving neighbors throughout the United States. The Article notes that while state and federal judges have done a fair job in resolving these vexing disputes under traditional criminal law, tort and property principles, it is high time for some new approaches. In formulating an epistemic theory of extreme neighborhood conflict, the Article closes with an overarching gestalt, suggests a mapping of American neighborhood law, and concludes with a few ideas for potential pragmatic policy responses.

Schools, Neighborhoods, and Adolescent Conflicts: A Situational Examination of Reciprocal Dynamics

Youths' exposure to school violence is ecologically patterned, occurring disproportionately in public schools located in urban disadvantaged communities. We know less, however, about how situational processes and environmental contexts shape school violence. In addition, limited research has examined the reciprocal nature of school and neighborhood conflicts. Here we draw from a qualitative study of violence in the lives of African American youths from a disadvantaged inner‐city community to examine young men's experiences with school‐based violence. Specifically, we investigate two questions: (1) how conflicts are shaped by the school setting, and (2) how and when such conflicts unfold and spill over between neighborhoods and schools. Our findings highlight the importance of examining the situational and ecological contexts of youth violence to further illuminate its causes and consequences.

Les enjeux agricoles et sociétaux de l'eau sur les monts Bamboutos (Cameroun)

For more than two decades, water on the mountains of western Cameroon has become an increasingly high stakes agricultural and societal resource. This situation is due to the development of speculative crops with high economic value by rural and neo-rural populations along with diversification aimed at responding to the reinforcement of inter- and intraseasonal climatic variation. In spite of the efforts of market gardeners and livestock grazers to adapt their production systems to water shortage, neighbourhood conflicts have multiplied between these consumers. It is especially in the dry season (from December to February), a period of low water level in rivers and worsened by specific dryness that the conflicts for the access and the use of water intensify. This situation appears paradoxical since this zone not only has enormous hydrological and hydric potential but equally has the most drained and watered slopes of the region with more than 2 000 mm of rainfall per year on the Bamboutos mountain slopes. These conflicts lead to the destruction by Fulani grazers of goods belonging to market gardeners. As a solution to these recurrent conflicts, the local authorities have developed ruling strategies according to the nature of the conflicts and the rights claimed.

Private property and public culture : a forgotten chapter of East European Communist life

It is generally assumed that private property was forever banished under communism during the early days of the Russian Revolution. Yet it continued to play a strange and quite powerful role in everyday communist culture from the 1930s on, despite official ideology to the contrary. This essay first considers the political place of private property – rechristened as “personal property” – in communist life over the decades, with special attention toward the East Bloc after 1945. It then uses the German Democratic Republic’s neighborhood-based citizen courts – the so-called Schiedskommissionen, or “dispute commissions” – as a case study of how notions of personal property shaped neighborhood conflict at the local level. At issue is to explore how citizens ably exploited the constitutional guarantees of personal property to advance private claims of social justice and modest material compensation before their peers in these informal social courts. As a consequence, these court records cast a new light on the relationship between the public and private spheres under East Bloc socialism.

Hating the Neighbors: The Role of Hate Crime in the Perpetuation of Black Residential Segregation

Grounded in group conflict theory and the defended neighborhoods thesis, this nationwide empirical study of cities and their residential segregation levels examines the occurrence of hate crime using data for all U.S. cities with populations over 95,000 and Uniform Crime Reporting data for hate crime, in conjunction with 2000 census data. Hate crime is any illegal act motivated by pre-formed bias against, in this case, a person’s real or perceived race. This research asks: Do hate crime levels predict white/black segregation levels? How does hate crime predict different measures of white/black segregation? I use the dissimilarity index measure of segregation operationalized as a continuous, binary, and ordinal variable, to explore whether hate crime predicts segrega- tion of blacks from whites. In cities with higher rates of hate crime there was higher dissimilarity between whites and blacks, controlling for other factors. The segregation level was more likely to be “high” in a city where hate crime occurred. Blacks are continually multiply disadvantaged and distinctly affected by hate crime and residential segregation. Prior studies of residential segregation have focused almost exclusively on individual choice, residents’ lack of finances, or discriminatory actions that prevent racial minorities from moving, to explore the correlates of segregation. Notably absent from these studies are measures reflecting the level of hate crime occurring in cities. This study demonstrates the importance of considering hate crime and neighborhood conflict when contemplating the causes of residential segregation.

Social Conflicts and Modes of Action in China

(ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Chinese society today is characterized by the coexistence of numerous social conflicts and social stability. This coexistence reveals the resilience of the Chinese political system.1 A resilient political system allows its citizens to use conflict-resolution mechanisms while preventing what Frederick Barghoorn has called "flabby flexibility" or "lack of principles".2 By this he means that citizens resort to non-institutionalized or illegal modes of action to pursue their interests. Undisciplined actions are likely to threaten political stability. In China, citizens have access to a number of channels of political participation,3 but state power prevents regime-threatening actions and allows the Party-state to maintain the social order amid a legion of social conflicts.4 However, the Party-state faces serious pressures because of the magnitude of conflicts and the recurrence of noninstitutionalized or illegal modes of action.5 These illegal modes of action reveal the limitations of the regular or permitted channels. Hence, an analysis of the factors that affect citizens' choice of the modes of action illuminates the degree of institutionalization of conflict resolution in China. The permitted channels of conflict resolution in China include both the use of the law and non-legal modes, such as petitions or mediation. These non-legal modes are, however, still "in the shadow of the law" in the sense that existing laws or government regulations are referred to when these modes are used to address social disputes.6 Research on Chinese citizens' use of permitted modes, especially the law, suggests a mixed picture. On the one hand, as Diamond et al. argue, "in today's China law matters more than it ever has" because it plays an unprecedented role in helping address social conflicts and citizens' grievances.7 Chinese citizens increasingly make use of the law in pressing their interests despite the widely known flaws of legal institutions.8 On the other hand, these flaws make successful action difficult. Effective lawsuits often require the use of tactics or political resources such as political connections. These tactics or resources require citizens to obtain support from the media or from sympathetic state agents, or to gain access to important institutions.9 Failure, especially when suing state agencies, is not rare.10 Such difficulties are also faced by those citizens who use non-legal modes of action. For example, research on the use of petitions has shown that petitioners often encounter serious or insurmountable hurdles in making state authorities pay serious attention to their grievances.11 The limited effectiveness of permitted channels has not driven the disgruntled to silence. In recent years, there have been numerous incidents of disruptive or illegal modes of action, including protests, demonstrations, violent confrontations, and even attacks on state agencies.12 It is these non-institutionalized modes of action that have led the central Party-state to set "the building of a harmonious society" as a top priority.13 If the use of the law and those non-legal modes of action that are "in the shadow of the law" can be an indicator of the degree of conflict resolution's institutionalization in a society, the recurrence of social protests in China suggests that this institutionalization is rather limited. The relationship between citizens' use of permitted modes and illegal modes of action has not been adequately addressed. The many existing studies on the permitted modes of action commonly point out their limitations, but they stop short of demonstrating the implications of these limitations. There is no systematic research on the likelihood of citizens' legal action escalating into illegal modes. Analysis of this likelihood illuminates the degree of pressure faced by the Party-state in maintaining social order. Previous research has not generated the data necessary to undertake such an analysis. …

Conflits et tensions autour des usages de l'espace dans les territoires ruraux et périurbains. Le cas de six zones géographiques françaises

Afin de mieux connaître, comprendre et analyser les conflits qui traversent les espaces ruraux et périurbains nous avons élaboré, depuis quatre ans, un programme de recherche sur les conflits d’usage et de voisinage, mené conjointement, dans le cadre français, par différentes équipes pluridisciplinaires appartenant à des organismes de recherche publique. Notre recherche consiste à prendre les conflits au sérieux et à les étudier de près, sans les diaboliser. Elle est délibérément construite sur des fondements empirico-déductifs et se donne pour objectif d’analyser les modalités d’émergence, le déroulement et les tentatives de résolution des conflits au sein de l’espace français. Le travail est fondé sur une série d’études empiriques, menées sur différentes zones, jugées représentatives du territoire national. Cet article présente tout d’abord notre approche, la définition des conflits, les hypothèses de la recherche et la méthode de travail (1). Nous procédons, ensuite, à une présentation des résultats obtenus dans le cadre des études menées dans six zones géographiques particulières (2). Nous en tirons, enfin, un certain nombre de réflexions générales, concernant les caractères génériques des conflits d’usage et de voisinage des espaces ruraux et périurbains (3).

建築紛争と土地利用規制の制度設計

建築紛争と土地利用規制の制度設計