Social Decline Research Articles

Challenges for large housing estates in light of population decline and ageing: Results of a long-term survey in East Germany

Large housing estates are an important part of the built environment worldwide. They provide residence for millions of people. Within Europe, the debate surrounding such estates is largely concerned with social decline. During the last two decades, many large estates in Germany have experienced striking changes related to a declining and ageing population as well as housing conditions. Trends towards urban shrinkage have caused new challenges for urban and neighbourhood development. Induced by the post-socialist transition after 1990, former East German estates, in particular, had to face far reaching changes related to outmigration, decreased demand for housing and infrastructure as well as an overall ageing of the population. Set against this background, questions about the future potentials of these estates go beyond social decline. Instead, the impact of demographic change and questions of long-term demand gain importance. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on how a declining and aging population impacts upon the composition of the population within a particular estate. Additionally, we are interested in how the residential satisfaction in the estate has changed over time and which target groups are attracted to the estates. This paper discusses these questions by using results from a unique sociological long-term survey carried out over 30 years in a large housing estate in Leipzig, eastern Germany. We show that rapid social decline has not yet been an issue in the estate, and residential satisfaction has grown and reached high levels among remaining residents. However, demographic characteristics have changed tremendously. This study found that social and demographic shifts are interwoven, so that the extent to which this stability can be maintained in the future is presently unclear.

Social service decline and convergence: How does healthcare fare?

In this paper the hypotheses on differences among welfare state sectors with regard to decline and convergence are subject to comparative empirical tests focusing on healthcare. A diachronical cross-national analysis of healthcare services is performed, comparing developments with that of cash benefits. Contrary to previous claims we find that European healthcare systems are not particularly hit by retrenchment and that convergence is absent in key healthcare dimensions, namely coverage and provision. Convergence appears mainly in terms of the increased reliance on private healthcare financing. Our examination is based on Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Health Data and institutional data on entitlement levels of major cash benefit programmes, providing both a descriptive analysis and multi-level regressions.

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Quality of life of patients with head and neck cancer

Patients with head and neck cancer have to deal with the impact of treatment on its functional and aesthetic aspects, and its self-report enables improvements in clinical and social support. ObjectiveTo evaluate the quality of life of patients dealing with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. MethodA prospective analytical study. Twenty nine patients with mean age of 57 years answered at three stages: onset, middle and end of treatment, the questionnaires: Quality of Life Core Questionnaire - Cancer 30 and the Quality of Life Questionnaire - Head and Neck, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer. We used the Friedman test at: 0.05. ResultsThere were high mean values concerning physical, cognitive, social functions; improvements in general health and social function decline during treatment; and a significant difference in taste and smell (p = 0.020), swallowing (p = 0.040), cough (p = 0.013) and weight loss (p = 0.011). ConclusionThere was a significant reduction in the quality of life for some common symptoms resulting from cancer treatment, which was not seen in the evaluation of the aspects related to physical, cognitive and social functions, and general health.

Failed states: causes and consequences

This article provides a scholarly evaluation of structural competency gaps that cause state failure and impact the international community. Failed states suffer from overlapping characteristics of structural competency failure including healthcare, education, food, a legitimate police force and economic sustainability; economic inequalities; loss of legitimacy and corruption, lack of social cohesion; failure in rule of law, loss of security and territorial control and systemic political instability. The emergence of a concept of sovereignty requires review of the post-modern state. The new social human security compact, globalisation and state decline has redefined a new global order. It may be in the best for failed states to have the international community operate in shared sovereignty or trusteeship. This article argues that international actors attempting to ‘fix’ failed states must address the issues affecting structural competency that have caused state failure.

The Protestant working class in Belfast: education and civic erosion – an alternative analysis

This paper explores and reassesses the issues of social decline, educational underachievement and civic erosion in relation to the Protestant working class in Belfast. Prior to the ‘Troubles’ the Protestant working class in Belfast had at its heart a civic-mindedness which was in tune with working-class communities across the UK at the time. This civic-mindedness encouraged the growth of extended communities and placed an importance on church attendance and educational achievement; something which has been conveniently ignored in most analyses. Owing to population movements in Greater Belfast which followed the violence that followed the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971 Protestant church congregations dwindled and school attendances dropped significantly. The paper ultimately seeks to provide a ‘long view’ of the Protestant working-class experience in order to assist those who are concerned with the problems facing it in the current era.

Juno and the Paycock , and: The Veil (review)

Reviewed by: Juno and the Paycock, and: The Veil Andrea Grunert Juno and the Paycock. By Sean O’Casey. Directed by Howard Davies. Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 29 September 2011. The Veil. By Conor McPherson. Directed by Conor McPherson. Royal National Theatre, London. 25 October 2011. Two productions, in Dublin and London respectively, recently revealed the richness of contemporary Irish theatre production and added a new episode to the close and complex relationship between Irish dramatists and British theatre. The O’Casey play that opened Dublin’s Ulster Bank Theatre Festival in 2011 was the first cooperation between the Abbey Theatre and the National Theatre of Great Britain. Directed by Howard Davies, one of the most prolific directors at the National, the play included renowned actors in the leading roles: Sinéad Cusack played Juno Boyle, and Ciarán Hinds played her husband Jack. Conor McPherson’s play had its world premiere at the Lyttelton, one of the three theatres that make up the Royal National Theatre. As with his previous plays, he directed the first production of The Veil himself. His play is set in a manor in the Irish countryside, a hundred years before the events of Juno and the Paycock. Irish literature has not mapped the 1820s very well, but it was a crucial period with regard to the history of sectarian violence in the country. Anglo-Irish Protestant landlords are the protagonists, which is a rare choice in Irish literature. The two plays share many themes and figures: strong female characters, the troubled Irish past, the supernatural and superstition, individual and collective action, and human and political failure. Jack Boyle’s peacock-masculinity prefigures the crisis of masculinity, a topic much cherished by contemporary Irish playwrights, including McPherson, who obsessively explores it in his plays and films and in The Veil contrasts strong-minded women with weak [End Page 427] men who are only braggarts. Moreover, and significantly for the present period of recession haunting Irish and British society, the two productions dealt with poverty. Juno and the Paycock emphasized an overall sense of poverty and deprivation, and although the poor were invisible in McPherson’s play, poverty and misery cast their shadow. The ghostly appearances of starving people were mentioned on several occasions, as well as hatred of the ruling class and the Irishmen who work for it. McPherson’s historical play links very clearly the traumatic effects on the Irish psyche of economic decline after the Napoleonic Wars with the crisis in post–Celtic Tiger Ireland. Click for larger view View full resolution Sinéad Cusack (Juno Boyle) in Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey. (Photo: Mark Douet.) O’Casey and McPherson address historical events and their respective social problems—social decline and impoverishment—through the representation of individual fate and inner conflict. Although deeply rooted in Irish culture, these two works have a transcultural humanist significance. While O’Casey’s concerns went far beyond Irish nationalism, McPherson’s interest in existential questions, the place of the human being in the universe, is clearly situated in its own Irish cultural context. Although the historical and social settings contrast, the two plays correspond both in content (the decline of a family, even if the consequences are different for McPherson’s upper-class protagonists and for the Boyles) and tone (the blend of tragic and comic elements). McPherson’s work fits perfectly into the tradition of an Irish theatre fascinated by storytelling and attentive to the subtleties of language, accent, and idiom. One might ask what there was to interest the contemporary viewer in narrative and directorial choices so obviously inspired by realism. Why did these productions reconstruct the atmosphere of the past in order to address burning contemporary issues like poverty? Realism, as the two productions demonstrated, is not a homogeneous block, but a complex system of conventions and illusions, and both productions explored and transcended this system. Bob Crawley’s set design for Juno and the Paycock immediately revealed the directorial strategy to merge historical veracity and a metaphorical approach. The curtain rose to reveal a huge stage with a table and chairs, an armchair in the foreground, an oven, a small closet...

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Housing, Urban Renewal and Socio-Spatial Integration. A Study on Rehabilitating the Former Socialistic Public Housing Areas in Beijing

Shifting contours of migration

In the call for articles for this issue of CJRES, we asked for articles that would address the phenomena of the increase of intraand international migration of people, whether as economic migrants, refugees or asylum seekers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As well as growing numbers of migrants and their increasing diversity, the nature of movement itself had changed in many cases from a permanent movement to settle in a new location to more transitory migrations within and between several nation states. This special issue examines critically the changing nature of contemporary migration, its relationship to different spatial scales (from the local through the regional to the international), its connections to economic and social growth and decline, the effects of different forms of regulation, the ways in which different institutions structure migration flows and the social and economic consequences for both sending and receiving locations.

Votando na prateleira: a politização do consumo na América Latina

Há pelo menos uma década que a utilização do poder de compra pelo consumidor para perseguir finalidades políticas ou éticas é um fenômeno debatido pelas Ciências Sociais internacionais. Diante do aparente desengajamento público com a política, o fenômeno do consumo politizado passou a ser reconhecido como uma das formas mais inovadoras e crescentes de participação política não convencional para os indivíduos, quebrando a tradicional divisão entre cidadania, a esfera dos bens públicos e os agentes políticos, de um lado, e o consumo, a esfera dos bens privados e os agentes de mercado, de outro lado. Entretanto, esse debate mal foi iniciado na América Latina, menos ainda sua discussão empírica. Este artigo aborda as evidências sobre a cidadanização das relações com as corporações que estimulam o uso do poder de compra como forma de influenciá-las a seguir valores e políticas favoráveis à sociedade e ao meio ambiente. A discussão se baseia em dados de pesquisas quantitativas com amostras representativas da população adulta da Argentina, Brasil e México e revela que o consumo político é um fenômeno já estabilizado e que tende a complementar outros modos de engajamento político na América Latina.

Unrecognized Changes in the Self Contribute to Exaggerated Judgments of External Decline

People commonly perceive social conditions as declining. We propose that perceptions of social decline are often a consequence of a bias whereby people mistake change in themselves for change in the world. The present research demonstrates that common personal changes such as the parenthood transition (Studies 1–2) and physical aging (Study 3) may increase a person's sensitivity to dangers and thereby contribute to an illusory perception that external dangers are increasing. We use experimental models of the hypothesized change processes to test whether these common personal changes may contribute to judgments of social decline.

A Case of Prolonged Duration of Untreated Psychosis: Barriers to Treatment and Strategies to Improve the Outcome

Several factors may contribute to increase in duration of untreated psychosis (DUP). In most cases, early intervention, namely psychopharmacological or psychosocial intervention, is done after first-episode psychosis. It is important to know what factors can contribute to duration of untreated psychosis. During this phase, patients often display unspecific symptoms such as anxiety and depression, personality disorders, and abuse of alcohol or drugs. These symptoms could go unrecognized and, hence, cause a delay in seeking treatment. In addition, functional and social decline frequently occurs in the prodromal phase or in the early course of schizophrenia. The purpose of this paper is to highlight barriers that cause delay in treatment and to review early detection and specific treatment strategies that may help to improve outcomes leading to psychosocial recovery.

Social, psychological and existential well-being in patients with glioma and their caregivers: a qualitative study

Cerebral glioma has a devastating impact on cognitive, physical, social, psychological and spiritual well-being. We sought to understand the multidimensional experience of patients with this form of cancer as they progressed from receiving a diagnosis to the terminal phase of the disease. We recruited patients with a suspected brain tumour from a tertiary referral centre in the United Kingdom. We interviewed patients and their caregivers at key stages of the illness: before receiving a formal diagnosis, at the start of initial treatment, after initial treatment was completed and at six months' follow-up; caregivers were also interviewed postbereavement. We interviewed the patients' general practitioners once, after treatment had been completed. We transcribed the interviews and analyzed them thematically using the constant comparative method of a grounded theory approach. We conducted in-depth interviews with 26 patients, 23 of their relatives and 19 general practitioners. We saw evidence of physical, social, psychological and existential distress even before a diagnosis was confirmed. Social decline followed a similar trajectory to that of physical decline, whereas psychological and existential distress were typically acute around diagnosis and again after initial treatment. Each patient's individual course varied according to other factors including the availability of support and individual and family resources (e.g., personal resilience and emotional support). There are practical ways that clinicians can care for patients with glioma and their caregivers, starting from before a diagnosis is confirmed. Understanding the trajectories of physical, social, psychological and existential well-being for these patients allows health care professionals to predict their patients' likely needs so they can provide appropriate support and sensitive and effective communication.

An ecological–economic model on the effects of interactions between escaped farmed and wild salmon (Salmo salar)

AbstractThis study explores the ecological and economic impacts of interactions between escaped farmed and wild Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar, Salmonidae) over generations. An age‐ and stage‐structured bioeconomic model is developed. The biological part of the model includes age‐specific life‐history traits such as survival rates, fecundity and spawning successes for wild and escaped farmed salmon, as well as their hybrids, while the economic part takes account of use and non‐use values of fish stock. The model is simulated under three scenarios using data from the Atlantic salmon fishery and salmon farming in Norway. The social welfare is derived from harvest and wild salmon while the economic benefits of fishing comprise both sea and river fisheries. The results reveal that the wild salmon stock is gradually replaced by salmon with farmed origin, while the total social welfare and economic benefit decline, although not at the same rate as the wild salmon stock.

Subjective social status and functional decline in older adults.

It is unknown whether subjective assessment of social status predicts health outcomes in older adults. To describe the relationship between subjective social status and functional decline in older adults. Longitudinal cohort study. The Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey of community-dwelling older adults (2004-2008). Two thousand five hundred and twenty-three community-dwelling older adults. Self-report of social status (SSS), categorized into three groups, reported by participants who marked a 10-rung ladder to represent where they stand in society. Four-year functional decline (new difficulty in any of five activities of daily living, mobility decline and/or death) Mean age was 64; 46% were male, 85% were white. At baseline, lower SSS was associated with being younger, unmarried, of nonwhite race/ethnicity, higher rates of chronic medical conditions and ADL impairment (P < 0.01). Over 4years, 50% in the lowest SSS group declined in function, compared to the middle and highest groups (28% and 26%), P-trend <0.001. Those in the lowest rungs of SSS were at increased risk of 4-year functional decline (unadjusted RR = 1.91, CI 1.-9-2.46). The relationship between a subjective belief that one is worse off than others and functional decline persisted after serial adjustment for demographics, objective SES measures, and baseline health and functional status (RR 1.36, CI 1.08-1.73). In older adults, the belief that one is in the lowest rungs of social status is a measure of socioeconomic distress and of significant risk for functional decline. These findings suggest that self-report of low subjective social status may give clinicians additional information about which older adults are at high risk for future functional decline.

Aging brains and social behavior in an invertebrate model: neuromodulation and neuroanatomy of task attendance across the worker lifespan of the ant Pheidole dentata

Aging brains and social behavior in an invertebrate model: neuromodulation and neuroanatomy of task attendance across the worker lifespan of the ant Pheidole dentata

Simple schizophrenia revisited: Its schizophrenic body image deviation

Simple schizophrenia has not yet been recognized as a well-established diagnostic category as one of the subtypes of schizophrenia, however, its inclusion to the official diagnostic system is regarded as urgent for early intervention. Here, we report our new observation that body image distortion uniquely found in typical schizophrenia, as reflected in the perception of mass of flesh of living objects in the whole or part of the Rorschach stimuli (Koide et al., 2002), was shown in the patients conforming to the original description of simple schizophrenia, to revisit its relatedness to schizophrenia from a cognitive and perceptual point of view. The Rorschach test was administered to four inpatients of a local mental hospital, showing social and occupational decline, negative symptoms and absence of positive symptoms. The presence or absence of Rorschach flesh mass body image percepts was examined. All of four patients revealed Rorschach mass of flesh responses. The fact that simple schizophrenia exhibited the same body image distortion in the flesh mass passive global perception with typical schizophrenia suggests the adequacy of reconsidering simple schizophrenia as a form of schizophrenia.

“Inhospitable Splendour”: Spectacles of Consumer Culture and Race in Wharton’s Summer

Research Article| March 01 2012 “Inhospitable Splendour”: Spectacles of Consumer Culture and Race in Wharton’s Summer Gary Totten Gary Totten Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Twentieth-Century Literature (2012) 58 (1): 60–89. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2012-2010 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Gary Totten; “Inhospitable Splendour”: Spectacles of Consumer Culture and Race in Wharton’s Summer. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 March 2012; 58 (1): 60–89. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2012-2010 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsTwentieth-Century Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © Hofstra University2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Essays You do not currently have access to this content.