Neighbour Disputes Research Articles

Association of home and community-based services and cognitive function of Chinese older adults: social participation as a mediator

BackgroundThis study makes an effort to examine the impact of home and community-based services on maintaining cognitive function and understand the mediating effect of social participation on the relationship of community services and older adults’ cognitive function in China.MethodThe empirical data comes from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS). A total of 38,582 (person-time) respondents were gathered for this study. The two-way fixed effects regression model is used to estimate the associations between independent variables, mediating variables and cognitive ability after controlling for socio-demographic, family responsibility, and time variables.ResultThis study has confirmed that participating in daily and social activities is associated with the cognitive functions of Chinese older adults. Social participation can stimulate cognition. Active participation in outdoor activities, doing housework or taking care of kids, daily playing cards or mah-jong, reading books and newspapers, watching TV, and listening to the radio can significantly promote the cognitive ability of older adults. In addition, the findings have indicated the importance of community services for older adults. This study shows personal daily care services, legal aid services, health education services, as well as dealing with family and neighborhood disputes have a positive effect on maintaining older adults’ cognitive functions. Meanwhile, the provision of door-to-door medical services hurts their cognitive functions. This study also illustrates that community-based services can increase the level of older adults’ social participation, and then enhance their level of cognitive function.ConclusionThis study can inform service provision agencies to develop targeted programs to support older adults’ continued engagement.

Being One of Us: The Role of Mutual Recognition and Emotion in Shaping Legal Consciousness in a Taiwanese Neighbourhood Dispute

AbstractLiterature on neighbourhood disputes has explored legal consciousness by focusing on identity, personal relationships, and community norms. However, it still remains unclear how affective factors and one’s sense of identity can influence the social practice of law and how the recursive relationship between law, emotion, and identity can influence life in particular communities. This study explores the dynamics of identity/alterity construction, and the role of emotion in shaping these dynamics during a neighbourhood conflict in Taipei, Taiwan. This dispute highlights how ordinary Taiwanese people’s legal consciousness is constituted through a culturally embedded sense of emotion (qíng) and belonging (zìjǐrén). Analysis of “The Noodle Shop Case” advances our understanding of the social presence and authority of law and the ways in which the role of law changes according to how individuals feel as they seek both mutual recognition and justice.

Strengthening Mediation in Neighbourhood Dispute: An Islamic input

Mediation (sulh) is a method of dispute resolution that has just been revived and gaining traction currently. In Malaysia, the implementation of sulh is limited to the resolution of matrimonial disputes. This solution has proven to be effective as it confirms the understanding of the parties. This paper explores the role of sulh in resolving neighbourhood disputes in the built environment from an Islamic perspective. This qualitative study uses the content analysis method of Kitab Al-Ghayah Wa Nihayah. It was found that integrating sulh helps reduce legal disputes and strive for the social welfare of society. Keywords: built environment; mediation; neighbourhood disputes; sulh eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6iSI5.2924

Administrative mediation data as naturally-occurring records of disputes with neighbours and the unmaking of home

The dwelling as home is imbued with specific meanings for its inhabitants, even while they remain embedded within a broader network of social and spatial relations. One such set of relations are those with neighbours who can enhance sense of home, but also potentially undermine it. This article explores how problematic relations with neighbours can lead to a form of ‘home unmaking’ through the erosion of home as haven, autonomy and status. Drawing on 3930 cases of neighbour disputes in south-east Queensland, Australia, the article illustrates the opportunities afforded by administrative records as naturally-occurring data on everyday experiences of home and its unmaking, as well as the challenges that arise from using datasets never intended for research purposes.

Forensic examination of a decapitated rabbit: interdisciplinary investigations on perpetrator’s traces

A pet rabbit was found dead outside its enclosure; the head was missing. The investigation of cruelty to animals was commissioned, as decapitation might result from human mutilation, for example,...

How residents in multifamily housing cope with neighbour noise: The role of attitude towards the neighbours

Residents in multifamily housing are considerably exposed to neighbour noise, which can lead to neighbour disputes and even criminal violence. This study investigated how residents' attitudes towards noisy neighbours develop and the role of such attitudes in their reactions to neighbour noise. In-depth interviews were carried out with 57 South Korean residents. The data were collected and analyzed using grounded theory methods. Concepts and categories were identified through open coding and axial coding, respectively. Residents' attitudes towards the neighbours (i.e., noise source) were grouped into friends, enemies, and strangers/acquaintances. Each attitude formation was influenced by the individual's past experience/history, the attitude shown by the neighbours, and the predictability/certainty of noise exposure. Different attitudes towards the neighbours resulted in different cognitive and behavioural copings. Given thatthe neighbour noise issue involves the interpersonal relationship between neighbours, the findings extend the scope of existing understanding. The paper suggests that further investigation into coping strategies would have practical implementations for reducing conflict arising from neighbour disputes.

Housing activism in urban China: the quest for autonomy in neighbourhood governance

The creation of a neoliberal housing regime triggered extensive housing activism during the last decade by middle class homeowners who were protecting their rights to their neighbourhood. Yet such actions also signify the quest for autonomy from the ubiquitous control of the local state as the vanguard of political power hegemony at the grassroots level. Yet there is evidence of an escalation in “non-peaceful” actions in the richest cities in China despite the tight control of the authoritarian state. With data taken from official documents and interviews as well as from news reports about neighbourhood disputes in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, this article gives an analytic account of the disputes and actions of homeowners in residential neighbourhoods while making their claims as well as on the strategies used by the local state in controlling the homeowners' associations. The article is able to enrich our understanding of housing activism in a non-democratic regime.

Conflict resolution in community development: Are the benefits worth the costs?

In the UK, conflict resolution strategies have become increasingly popular within community development practice. Conflict resolution has been used to prevent homelessness, tackle neighbourhood disputes, address family conflict, facilitate community involvement, address discrimination and reduce anti-social behaviour. The promise of conflict resolution is that confidential and informal processes of ‘justice from below’ might better reconcile community interests, improve relationships and promote social change. Within the field of community development, these promises have been widely vaunted. However, outside community development, conflict resolution has been subject to extensive criticism. This article draws upon debates in legal scholarship to discuss four criticisms in particular: that conflict resolution disadvantages vulnerable groups, undermines social justice, suppresses legitimate grievances and mistreats public issues as private problems. It then considers these criticisms in relation to community development practice and explores potential solutions.

Formulating solutions in mediation

This paper examines the work done by formulations in the service of pursuing solutions to disputes between neighbours in a community mediation setting. In particular, it shows how mediators formulate the talk of mediation clients – the parties in dispute – in a particular sequence of activities. Parties’ complaints are formulated by the mediator, often proposing common ground between them. Mediators ask ‘solution-focused questions’ (SFQs), which are treated in mediation training as a key method for effecting client-generated solutions to neighbour disputes. Drawing on a collection of 30 recorded mediation sessions between mediators and their clients, conversation analysis shows how formulations do more than (or do not necessarily) ‘summarize’ what clients have said. Rather, they do institutional work of various kinds, including reconstructing clients’ versions of events and initiating sequences in which decisions about change are accomplished. In other words, formulations are at the heart of the mediation process, in which mediators attempt to scaffold clients to come to an agreement about ways to move forward, without giving direct instruction or advice.

Anti-social or intensively sociable? The local context of neighbour disputes and complaints among social housing tenants

The prevalence of neighbour disputes among social housing tenants is often seen as the outcome of social residualisation and the physical characteristics of social housing. While such explanations have usefully drawn attention to the structural sources of problem neighbours in the social housing sector, rather than reduce them to the anti-sociality of tenants, this work has been disconnected from a consideration of the social and interactive contexts of neighbouring more broadly and its influence on how neighbour problems emerge and are managed in specific situations. In response, this paper examines the conditions that lead to the formation of a distinct style of neighbouring among social housing tenants, one that is prone to conflict and tension because of its intensively sociable, as opposed to anti-social, nature. Drawing on mediation data from Dispute Resolution Centres in Queensland, Australia, this paper illustrates how intensive modes of neighbouring combine with disadvantage and close physical proximity to create the conditions for neighbour problems to arise.

European Neighbourhood Policy in the Function of International Dispute Settlement

This study aims to analyze the role of the European Union in international dispute settlement, focusing on the European Neighbourhood Policy. The study includes an analysis of the Article 8 of the Treaty on European Union, the position and placement of this provision in the European Union Treaties after the Lisbon Treat as well as the comparison of this new settlement’s previous position of Article 8 of the TEU and its new reflections. The legal framework provides a broad perspective on the relationship of the Common Foreign and Security Policy with the European Neighbourhood Policy. This study will focus on: the reasons for the inclusion or not of this policy in the Common Foreign and Security Policy; the analysis whether the European Neighbourhood Policy has a common goal with the Common Foreign and Security Policy for resolving international conflicts; and it will also investigate the main aim of this policy, if it is the international or neighborhood disputes settlement, or conflict resolution is simply a random placement of this Policy. Furthermore, an important issue to be addressed is whether or not representing the European Neighbourhood Policy is an effective mechanism for resolving disputes, if there was an effective instrument in concrete conflict resolution presented to recent years. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2015.v4n2p53

Mundane morality

The paper introduces the concept of ‘mundane morality’, which refers to the practices of everyday life in which people mix moral evaluations, a sense of right and wrong, blame and culpability, etc., with ordinary accounts and descriptions of persons, actions, and events. Challenging traditional psychological work on moral development, including Gilligan’s work on the gendered nature of moral reasoning, we argue that ‘morality’ is best understood as a communicative practice. Rather than focus on identifying gendered styles of moral reasoning, we show how gender is invoked to do moral work in an episode of recorded neighbour dispute mediation. We analyse the way in which parties make complaints on the basis of gendered category memberships, and show how ‘the accountability of social conduct brings directly into focus moral dimensions of language use’ (Drew 1998: 295). Overall, we aim to show how to analyse ‘moral reasoning’ as it happens; as it is imbricated in the daily practices of everyday life.

Multi-disciplinary practice in a community law environment: new models for clinical legal education

<p>The Monash-Oakleigh Legal Service (MOLS) is a community legal service auspiced by Monash University, Melbourne Australia, and partly funded by Victoria Legal Aid. MOLS was principally established to provide practical legal education to Monash law students over 30 years ago, but has since evolved to focus also on serving community legal needs. Incorporated within MOLS is the Family Law Assistance Program (FLAP) which, as the name suggests, deals exclusively with family law matters. FLAP students attend the Family Court each week with lawyers who provide assistance to clients in a duty lawyer capacity, as well as operating four clinical sessions each week within MOLS.</p><p>Like many community legal services, most MOLS clients experience a form of disadvantage and resultant financial difficulty. Consequently, MOLS deals with a range of legal matters including: criminal law, family law, tenancy and neighbourhood disputes, and a number of credit, debt, and<br />bankruptcy issues.</p><p>In July 2010, the Multi-Disciplinary Clinic (MDC) was established at MOLS to provide a holistic service to clients by involving students from three academic disciplines to deal with client issues. Later, in December 2010 (the commencement of the university’s summer semester), students from one other discipline were included in FLAP and a third discipline was also adopted in the following semester.</p>

Primetime Dispute Resolution: Reality TV Mediation Shows in China's “Harmonious Society”

Through a case study of reality TV mediation shows, this article joins the debate about the recent promotion of formal and informal mediation by the Chinese government, what some scholars have called a “turn against law” (Minzner 2011). We identify three converging reasons for the sudden popularity of mediation shows on Chinese primetime television: (1) the desire of TV producers to commercially exploit interpersonal conflicts without fanning the flames of social instability; (2) the demands of official censors for TV programming promoting a “harmonious society”; and (3) the requirement for courts and other government institutions to publicly demonstrate their support for mediation as the most “appropriate” method for resolving interpersonal and neighborhood disputes. Cases drawn from two top-rated mediation shows demonstrate how they privilege morality and “human feeling” (ganqing) over narrow application of the law. Such shows could be viewed merely as a form of propaganda, what Nader has called a “harmony ideology”—an attempt by the government to suppress the legitimate expression of social conflict. Yet while recognizing that further political, social, and legal reforms are necessary to address the root causes of social conflict in China, we conclude that TV mediation shows can help to educate viewers about the benefits and drawbacks of mediation for resolving certain narrow kinds of domestic and neighborhood disputes.

A dominialidade privada dos recursos hídricos em face do desenvolvimento sustentável

This article presents a brief reflection on the history of the field of water resources in Brazil. The evolution of the legal protection of water resources shows that the effect of the Water Code, the legal protection of waters was limited to neighborhood disputes and power generation, without concern for its preservation. However, the rapid industrialization process has required a greater intake of water resources and to promote the rational use and ensure multiple uses, it required a more effective legal protection and consistent with the new panorama, paper absorbed by the Constitution of the Republic of 1988. Subsequently, the Water Law in 1997, which established the National Water Resources Policy, implemented the constitutional principles, highlighting water as a public good with economic value, whose use planning and management must occur in a sustainable manner. When you assign an economic value to water, asks if the rational has been actually achieved, or through a discourse of scarcity, was being privatized, or even if the instruments of grant and collection of use ensure the sustainable use water resources. It is noted that water is a fundamental right of all and that is what your domain should be oriented. However, there is a tortuous path to tread to ban the private dominion of water resources and promote ethical consumption of water, essential for the implementation of a sustainable water management.

A dominialidade privada dos recursos hídricos em face do desenvolvimento sustentável

This article presents a brief reflection on the history of the field of water resources in Brazil. The evolution of the legal protection of water resources shows that the effect of the Water Code, the legal protection of waters was limited to neighborhood disputes and power generation, without concern for its preservation. However, the rapid industrialization process has required a greater intake of water resources and to promote the rational use and ensure multiple uses, it required a more effective legal protection and consistent with the new panorama, paper absorbed by the Constitution of the Republic of 1988. Subsequently, the Water Law in 1997, which established the National Water Resources Policy, implemented the constitutional principles, highlighting water as a public good with economic value, whose use planning and management must occur in a sustainable manner. When you assign an economic value to water, asks if the rational has been actually achieved, or through a discourse of scarcity, was being privatized, or even if the instruments of grant and collection of use ensure the sustainable use water resources. It is noted that water is a fundamental right of all and that is what your domain should be oriented. However, there is a tortuous path to tread to ban the private dominion of water resources and promote ethical consumption of water, essential for the implementation of a sustainable water management.

A Case Study of How Stakeholder Management Influenced Project Uncertainty Regarding Project Benefits

The influence of stakeholders and stakeholder management on project uncertainty is examined, and particularly uncertainty regarding functionality delivered by projects. The case studies, two projects in the Norwegian Rail Authority (Jernbaneverket), included interviews with representatives of internal and external stakeholders and also examination of project documentation. In addition, conflicts and use of power between stakeholders in the projects were studied. The projects actively managed relations with external stakeholders, thereby reducing the risks of negative media attention and neighbour disputes, and also cost and time overruns that such disputes may cause. Both of the projects focused on risk reductions regarding costs and time schedules, and less on the functionality delivered by the project. While mastering potential conflicts with external stakeholders well, the largest project appears to have handled internal disputes less convincingly. The smaller project handled internal disputes well, but experienced problems concerning both costs and time schedules.

Brisbane: Urban Construction, Suburban Dreaming

Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, has catapulted from a small, provincial town to a larger metropolis within two decades from the inception of urban renewal in 1992. Once a low-density suburban city, its inner-city and some suburban areas are now medium to high density, with the rise in apartment buildings creating new and denser modes of living. This article suggests that urbanism demands different habits of living from suburbanism and examines the relationship between the material and representational city to explore the ways in which promotions of the “new” Brisbane during its early urban renewal period reproduces the ethos of suburban living.

Problematizing National Dimensions: Community Members' Views of Conflict Management in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies

The current exploratory study addresses cultural issues implicated in community members' views of conflict on the island of Trinidad in the nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Respondents who were interviewed described family, organizational, and neighborhood disputes, and their views of conflict and preferences for conflict management differed across these types. The results suggest the utility of examining dialectic tensions rather than bipolar cultural dimensions and show the need for further development of contextually negotiated and culturally relevant models of conflict resolution in the West Indies.

Achieving Quality Outcomes in Community Titles Disputes: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Approach

Community title schemes are an increasingly popular form of housing in Queensland and throughout Australia in general. Community title housing (typically apartment buildings and townhouses) involve medium to high-density living, which in turn tend to produce a higher incidence of neighbourhood disputes than lower density living options. However, a second reason for the prevalence of the disputes is the varied nature of interests in a community title scheme. Within the single scheme, there may be owner occupiers (either residential or commercial or both), tenants (again, residential, commercial or both), members of the body corporate committee, and property managers. Each of these types of stakeholders has different interests and perceptions of how a scheme ought to operate, with the potential for serious disputes to result.Recognising the potentially harmful effects of community title disputes and the need for accessible dispute resolution options, the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management (OBCCM) was established to provide specialist dispute resolution procedures. The OBCCM offers conciliation and adjudication, with avenues of appeal available to the newly-established Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The OBCCM’s self-identified objective in relation to this service is to offer “a quality dispute resolution service which is timely and responsive.” In practice, the dispute resolution services are a hybrid of inquisitorial and adversarial approaches, focussing on the legal aspects of the dispute. This paper combines academic and practitioner perspectives to explore the possibility of a therapeutic approach to body corporate and community title disputes. The paper firstly provides an overview of the dispute resolution context of community title disputes and the role of the OBCCM. It then considers the effect of current OBCCM practices on participant wellbeing, and questions whether the introduction of a therapeutic approach might not only improve outcomes in discrete cases, but in fact have the potential to enhance or restore community living within troubled schemes. Finally, the paper comments on the type of legal and dispute system changes that might be required to facilitate such an approach.