Bookchin Research Articles

The relationship between shyness and cyberbullying victimization: A moderated mediation model

Recently, cyberbullying studies have attracted attention given the consequences of victims’ personal and social domains. The present research investigated the risk and protectors of cyberbullying victimization (CV) among adolescents. Based on the Social Fitness Model, the current study examined the relationship between shyness and CV. To explore this influencing mechanism further, fatalism was tested as a mediator. Moreover, according to the Social Ecological Theory, supportive power was examined as a moderator in the direct and indirect relationship between shyness and CV. A total of 831 adolescents (M = 13.13; SD = 1.15; 51.14 % girls) volunteered to complete the multiple questionnaires, namely, Shyness Scale, Revised Cyber Bullying Inventory, Fatalism Scale, and the Supportive Power sub-questionnaire. Correlation analysis indicated that shyness, fatalism, and CV were significantly related to each other positively, and supportive power was negatively correlated with shyness, fatalism, and CV. Moderated mediation analysis showed that fatalism played a mediating role between shyness and CV. Specifically, shy adolescents were more likely to have stronger fatalism, which further triggered CV. Additionally, supportive power moderated the direct and indirect relationship between shyness and CV through fatalism. Specifically, a high level of supportive power buffered the associations of shyness with CV and fatalism, and the association of fatalism with CV, supporting the moderated mediation model. This study contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between shyness and CV, and revealed the moderated mediation mechanism. The results implicate the preventative interventions to reduce the risk of cyberbullying victimization in shy adolescents.

Disaster Resilience Versus Ecological Resilience and the Proposed Second Causeway to South Padre Island

The barrier island of South Padre is located off the coast of Texas’s southern tip in Cameron County and is a popular tourist destination with over 4 million annual visits. The only road access to and from the island is a four-lane causeway, 2.3 miles in length, that routinely experiences heavy traffic. Twenty years ago, a barge crashed into the Queen Isabella Causeway, destroying a portion of the bridge. It quickly became apparent how reliant South Padre Island (SPI) is on the causeway and raised questions regarding its lack of disaster resilience. Local boosters and government responded by proposing and planning for the construction of a second causeway that would provide an additional emergency response route and facilitate economic development. However, the planned location for the new bridge crosses through sensitive seagrass beds that this construction would permanently fragment. The habitats for numerous threatened and endangered species would be destroyed, thereby reducing the ecological resilience of the area. Social–ecological theory focuses on the interconnectedness between humans and ecosystems and their symbiotic nature. Yet in the case of SPI, these two dimensions of social–ecological resiliency are in competition with one another. The proposed causeway would ostensibly enhance disaster preparedness and foster economic development but at the expense of the degradation of crucial ecological habitats. This case study provides insight into the contradictions between ecological resilience and disaster resilience from the standpoint of various stakeholders.

Murray Bookchin; Dari Bolshevik ke Marxis Otonomis

This study discusses a brief biography of Murray Bookchin's revolutionary journey by tracing his activism and intellectual movements. This study uses a literary or library research approach, namely a comparative study to explore and trace the life journey of Bookchin. Boochin's long history of involvement in the revolutionary movement was inherited directly by his grandmother Zeitel Carlat who was a combatant in the war against the dictatorship of the Tsarist Empire. Zeitel who grew up with a liberal and secular education from the Haskalah tradition then passed his ideas on to his children, one of whom was Bookchin's mother, Rose. Rose is very different from her mother Zeitel. The difference was clearly illustrated when Rose chose to join the Russian Anarchist Workers' Union rather than join the American Communist Party. Over time Rose later married Nathan, a fellow Jewish immigrant. However, because Zeitel's hatred for Nathan was so strong, Rose and Nathan's relationship had to end. It was at this moment that Bookchin was first educated directly by his grandmother. From a young age, Bookchin was introduced to Russian revolutionary traditions, such as Stenka Razin, the leader of the Cossack rebellion and the large-scale peasantry in southeastern Russia. This search process is an attempt to elaborate and trace the background of Murray Bookchin's life so that he can find his own concept of thinking, namely dialectical naturalism and the concept of social ecology which has an important contribution to the dimensions of social science, especially sociology.

Barriers and facilitators to antiretroviral adherence and retention in HIV care among people living with HIV in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, Panama.

IntroductionPanama’s HIV epidemic is far from under control. One of the populations with the fastest-growing epidemic among the Indigenous peoples of the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé (CNB). The CNB is an administratively autonomous Indigenous region in Western Panama that is home to over 200,000 individuals of Ngäbe and Buglé ethnicities. This population is unique and, in several ways, represents the early stages of the AIDS epidemics in high-income countries. The CNB is the most impoverished region in Panama and is relatively isolated from outside influences, with limited roads, electricity, and an internet connection, including medical assistance. Around 1.5% of all rapid HIV tests are positive, compared to a national prevalence of 0.9%; in CNB, diagnosis tends to be late. In CNB, 56.3% of individuals had an initial CD4 count of <350 cells/mm3. Antiretroviral treatment (ART) dropout in this region is five times higher than the national average; there is high early mortality due to opportunistic infections. Using the Social-Ecological Theory for Health as a framework, this study aims to describe the facilitators and barriers associated with ART adherence and retention in HIV care among people living with HIV (PLHIV) in the CNB. A better understanding of factors that obstruct adherence could lead to more effective HIV care and prevention in CNB.MethodsWe conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with PLHIV who reside across all three regions of the CNB and have attended an antiretroviral (ART) clinic at least once. Deductive thematic analysis was used to uncover themes related ART adherence and retention in HIV care at the individual, social and structural levels.DiscussionThis unique, isolated population of rural Indigenous peoples has high infection rates, late diagnosis, poor ART adherence, and high AIDS-related death rates. The CNB is an important region to examen ART adherence and retention in care. We determined that psychological health, social support, and discrimination acted as individual-level facilitators and barriers to adherence and retention. Notably, structural barriers included difficult access to ART care due to travel costs, ART shortages, and uncooperative Western/Traditional medical systems. Recommended interventions used in other Low- and Middle-Income settings include increasing peer and family-level support and community knowledge and understanding of HIV infection. Additionally, our study suggests structural interventions, including decreasing the cost and distance of traveling to the ART clinic, by decentralizing services, decreasing food scarcity, and increasing collaboration between Western and Traditional providers.

Management of Cyberbullying: A Qualitative Exploratory Case Study of a Nigerian University

Cyberbullying problem has become a global concern in universities. In Nigerian universities, the concern appears to be blamed on the lack of cyberbullying prevention and management strategies. The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to explore the policy decision makers’ recommendations for the development of cyberbullying management strategies for the staff and students of a Nigerian university. The three theories used to guide the study were Glasser’s (1998) choice theory, Bandura’s (1986) theory of moral disengagement, and Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) social ecological theory. Data for the study were obtained from three sources: interviews, documents, and archival records of the university. Seven participants, all members of the Committee of Provosts, Deans, and Directors (COPD), were used for the study. The constant comparative method was used to analyze the data. Three major themes emerged as findings in the study: cyberbullying awareness, cyberbullying situation in the university, and the university cyberbullying management policy. These findings may help to make university policy makers aware of the significance of cyberbullying policy in Nigerian universities. The findings may also help to make the university management leadership consider the development of research-based cyberbullying awareness raising training programs and cyberbullying management policy for the staff and students.

What influences news learning and sharing on mobile platforms? An analysis of multi-level informational factors

PurposeThe purpose of the study is threefold: first, to identify what factors influence mobile users' willingness of news learning and sharing, second, to find out whether users' learning in the news platforms will affect their sharing behavior and third, to access the impact of sharing intention on actual sharing behavior on the mobile platform.Design/methodology/approachThis study proposes an influence mechanism model for examining the relationship among the factors, news learning and news sharing. The proposed mechanism includes factors at three levels: personal, interpersonal and social level. To achieve this, researchers collected data from 474 mobile news users in China to test the hypotheses. The tools SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 23.0 were used to analysis the reliability, validity, model fits and structural equation modeling (SEM), respectively.FindingsThe findings indicate that news learning on the mobile platforms is affected by self-efficacy and self-enhancement. And news sharing intention is influenced by self-efficacy, interpersonal trust, interpersonal reciprocity, online community identity and social norms positively. News sharing intention has a significant effect on news sharing behavior, but news learning has an insignificant relationship with new sharing.Originality/valueThis study provides practical guidelines for mobile platform operators and news media managers by explicating the various factors of users' engagement on the news platforms. This paper also enriches the literature of news learning and news sharing on mobile by the integration of two theories: the social ecology theory and the interpersonal behavior theory.

New institutions and the politics of the interstices. Experimenting with a face-to-face democracy in Naples

This article analyses the politics of new municipalism in Naples in relation to the constellation of ‘new institutions’ that has arisen from this politics. These ‘new institutions’ are illustrative of a politics of the interstices as a distinctive trait of the convergence between city government and social movements in Naples, as the latter have opted for staying neither outside nor inside official institutions and the city government has adapted its conduct to this strategy. To illustrate this point, the article explores the emerging constellation of ‘new institutions’ in Naples, which is understood as an embryonic form of radical ‘face-to-face democracy’ (in Murray Bookchin’s terms) at the municipal level, that departs from mainstream conceptions of participatory democracy and commons-based democracy. Through this analysis, the article argues that the experience of new municipalism in Naples offers evidence of a kind of participatory urban democracy understood not in a procedural sense but in a genuinely political vein, where civic participation and political conflict productively coexist with institutional creativity.

Rebooting the end of the world: Teaching ecosophy through cinema

The global pandemic has pushed many of us to online streaming services. A particular genre in these services is the ‘end of the world’ science fiction film, in and through which the speculated results of processes such as climate change are depicted. CGI technology is frequently deployed to create images of the end of the world, which is a backdrop to the narrative of, ‘saving ourselves amidst the ruins’. This philosophy of education essay will critically examine ten films in order to: Explain how ‘the end of the world’ images connected to processes such as climate change, obscures and displaces attention from the real, scientifically proven processes that are not so entertaining, but are still deadly. The images are created by capital and its machines for audience attention and have little to do with real social change. Science sits in an ambiguous position in this paper in that the real processes of climate change proven by science may be funded by capitalist mechanisms that can also be their cause. Introduce a reformulated notion of ecosophy from the work of Félix Guattari, Murray Bookchin, Arne Næss and Andre Gorz. This essay will suggest that ecosophy has the potential to teach the underlying split between depictions of the end of the world through the capitalist machine and the real social change necessary under climate change. Ecosophy is in the context of this essay a specific conceptual construction designed for teaching about climate change through cinema.

NON-HUMAN SUBALTERNS IN HELON HABILA’S OIL ON WATER AND LAWRENCE AMAESHI’S SWEET CRUDE ODYSSEY

This study explores the environmental challenges of the Niger Delta area of Nigeria especially as it affects non-humans as a subaltern group. The environmental challenges and devastation of the region is consequent upon the unregulated and unprofessional exploitation of petroleum product. Over the years, the environmental devastation by multinational oil firms in the Niger Delta region has gained prominent attention from Nigeria literary writers and critics. However, it is worthy of note that most of these writers and critics are majorly interested in the negative or positive effects of oil exploration and exploitation on humans. They either highlight the benefits of the venture or lament its negative effects on human’s means of subsisting in the region. This study will therefore shift attention to the representation of non-humans in Nigerian literary production, and analyse how the exploration and exploitation of petroleum products in the Niger Delta affects non-humans in the region as depicted in the Nigerian novels that serves as primary texts for this study. To do this effectively, we shall examine the relationship that exists between humans and non-humans as portrayed in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2012) and Lawrence Amaeshi’s Sweet Crude Odyssey (2017) as well as advocate for environmental justice for the subalterns. The analysis shall be anchored on the subaltern theory which we shall draw upon to include non-humans in the class of subalterns and we shall also draw instances from the novels to justify the classification of non-humans as ecological subalterns. Above all, we propose Murray Bookchin’s social ecological theory as a base to advocate for justice for the subalterns. The study found that imminent danger abounds if urgent measures are not taken to care for and protect non-human members of the ecology.

Re-imagining the measurement of femicide: From ‘thin’ counts to ‘thick’ counts

The term femicide, while contested, focuses attention on women killed by men’s violence. This focus has generated work on its nature and extent much of which examines the lethal act and the lethal actor in which the death is counted. These counts are themselves incomplete. Despite their shortcomings, these ‘thin’ counts have contributed to the increasing impetus for a wide range of global and local prevention and response initiatives designed to draw attention to femicide. ‘Thin’ counts, measuring as they do, who does what to whom, while justified and justifiable, are a surface manifestation of the deeper embrace of social ecological theory within this field of work. This theory, originating in the work of Brofenbrenner, has functionalist tendencies which fail to assign explanatory power or salience to any one variable. This approach provides a narrow vision of what counts as femicide: a ‘thin’ count. However, if femicide was viewed through a wide-angled lens and incorporated all those lives curtailed and shortened as a result of living with men’s violence(s), that which Walklate et al. have called ‘slow femicide’, femicide counts might look somewhat different. Here, we explore why these might be called ‘thick’ counts. These counts would focus attention on not only who does what to whom but also on with what implement, in what place and at what point in time. Thus, ‘thick’ counts would broaden our understanding of the nature, extent and impact of femicide.

EFFECT OF CAREGIVING OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER ON THE CAREGIVERS’ SOCIAL WELLBEING IN SELECTED INTEGRATED PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN NAIROBI COUNTY, KENYA

Social wellbeing is an essential part of general wellbeing of human beings because it shields individuals from social isolation by promoting positive relations. However, social challenges associated with the caregiving of children with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are likely to impede the caregivers’ of children with ASD from achieving their social well-being. ASD is a neurodevelopmental childhood disorder that has no physical marker. It is characterized by peculiar behaviors that are socially intolerable. The purpose of this study was to examine how caregiving of children with ASD affect the caregivers’ social wellbeing. Social Ecological System Theory (SEST) and Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT) guided the study. The study used a qualitative phenomenological approach and purposive sampling method to select 24 informal caregivers and four formal caregivers from selected integrated primary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya. The study used in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) to collect data from the caregivers of children with ASD. Data was captured using tape recording and field notes. Verbatim transcription was employed. QSRN N’vivo 10 data software was used to simplify and analyze the data. The findings revealed that caregiving of children with ASD affect the caregivers’ social wellbeing in the selected integrated primary schools in Nairobi County. The study recommends creation of public awareness about ASD, training for the caregivers to equip them with skills to manage the difficult behaviors exhibited by the children with ASD, availability of affordable therapies and mental health support to the caregivers.

EFFECTS OF CAREGIVING OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER ON THE CAREGIVERS’ PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING IN SELECTED INTEGRATED PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN NAIROBI COUNTY, KENYA

The psychological well-being of an individual is important for them to flourish in life. However, the demands associated with taking care of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may derange the caregivers from achieving their psychological well-being. ASD is a neurodevelopmental childhood disorder that persists into adulthood. It impairs an individual’s social, cognitive, and behavioural domains, causing most of the children to be dependent on caregivers throughout their lives. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of caregiving of children with ASD on the caregivers’ psychological wellbeing. The study’s objective explored how caregiving of children with ASD affects the caregivers’ psychological wellbeing. The study employed the Social Ecological System Theory to explain the importance of a supportive environment in facilitating the caregivers to achieve their psychological well-being. The Cognitive Behavioural Theory was used to discuss the interventions to mitigate the effects of caregiving on caregivers’ psychological well-being. The study used a qualitative descriptive phenomenological approach and purposive sampling method.to select 24 informal caregivers and four formal caregivers from selected integrated primary schools in Nairobi. The study used in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) to collect data from the caregivers. Data was captured using video tape recordings and field notes. Verbatim transcription was employed. QSRN N’vivo 10 data software was used to simplify and analyse data. The result revealed that caregiving of children with ASD affect the caregivers’ psychological wellbeing in the selected integrated primary schools in Nairobi County. The study recommends creation of public awareness about ASD, availing authentic information about ASD symptoms to help the caregivers to seek early interventions for their children with ASD, making therapies accessible and affordable, equal distribution of the available resources among children with ASD and availing psychological support to the caregivers as measures of mitigating the effects of caregiving of children with ASD.

The Sanders-Bookchin Debate

ABSTRACT Throughout the 1980s, the politics of Burlington, Vermont, were dominated by two of the American Left's most prominent figures: Bernie Sanders and Murray Bookchin. While there was considerable overlap between the two in terms of their general critique of capitalist exploitation, Sanders and Bookchin were often at odds with each other regarding renewable energy, economic development, and direct democracy. Bookchin accused Sanders of promoting an out-of-date “bread-and-butter” form of socialism that neglected quality-of-life concerns, specifically the need for greater democracy. In turn, Sanders thought Bookchin had a “back-to-the-woods mentality” that failed to consider that significant economic growth was necessary to end poverty. This article will examine the differences between Sanders's and Bookchin's approach to socialism within the context of Burlington's politics. It will explore the implications for these approaches in building a broad-based and highly democratic left-wing movement.

A holistic health determinants model for public health nursing education and practice.

Baccalaureate nursing graduates (BSNs) in the 21st century need to be prepared to manage the population health needs of diverse populations across the lifespan and take actions to improve health equity. A need for a Holistic Health Determinants Model that included the Social Determinants of Health was identified. A model incorporating the Healthy People 2020 Health Determinants Model and the Healthy People 2030 Social Determinants of Health Model was developed. Two theoretical approaches provided a foundation for the model. Social ecological theory stresses the lived experience in an ever-changing environment from the micro to the macro biological, behavioral, social and physical environmental levels. Public health intersectionality added the construct of constant interactions among the health determinants that resulted in different levels of health status among individuals and groups. This Holistic Health Determinants Model is a tool to use in teaching nursing students how to address the needs of individuals/families, diverse populations, and communities. It also facilitates integration of the new AACN Population Health Competencies across the curriculum. The model facilitates the preparation of BSN graduates to address the factors that shape health status and to take actions to improve health equity.

Longitudinal associations of social-cognitive and moral correlates with defending in bullying

Defending in bullying is a complex, yet important behavior that is likely associated with individual characteristics and group factors that operate simultaneously in the classroom microsystem. However, little research has longitudinally analyzed the role of multiple promoting factors at both the individual and classroom level. Drawing on the social-ecological theory and social-cognitive theory, the present study examined the prospective associations between Fall defending self-efficacy, moral disengagement, moral identity, and moral distress and Spring defending behavior. Participants were 1163 adolescents (48.7% females; Mage = 13.6, SD = 1.1) attending 67 classrooms in Italian public schools. Defending showed moderate stability over one school year. At the individual level, multilevel analyses showed that T1 self-efficacy for all students, and moral distress for male students, positively predicted T2 defending. Moreover, high moral disengagement negatively predicted T2 defending only when students also reported high levels of moral identity. At the class-level, T1 class defending and class moral identity explained between-class variability in T2 defending. The findings have multiple implications for interventions that aim to increase defending behavior.

A Social-Ecological Approach to Studying Variation in Urban Trees and Ecosystem Services in the National Municipal District of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Maintaining a diverse urban forest that provides ecosystem services can promote urban sustainability and resilience to environmental change. Around the world, cities have taken to inventorying their urban trees and quantifying their ecosystem services but more so in industrialized counties than in Latin America. Here we describe the results of an i-Tree inventory that established 206 survey plots in the National Municipal District of Santo Domingo (NMDSD). We used social-ecological theory to evaluate potential factors that may influence urban forest structure, composition, and ecosystem services diversity across three wards with distinct social and urban characteristics. Rarefaction curves showed a diverse urban forest dominated by non-native trees that have ornamental and medicinal uses. Wards differed in species composition with palms being particularly dominant in Wards 1 and 2 where the proportion of low-income houses is smaller. Ward 1 supports high-income residential areas and Ward 3 is the area with higher population and housing densities and lower income residents. On average, we found no significant differences among wards in tree species richness, average dbh, leaf area, and percent tree cover per plot. Trees in Ward 2 were taller, on average, than those in Ward 1 but were comparable to those in Ward 3. Likewise, tree density per plot was highest in Ward 2, followed by Ward 1 and Ward 3. Despite these significant differences in stem densities, average values in four ecosystem services involving measures of carbon, rainfall, and contaminants (C-sequestration, C-storage, avoided runoff, and removal of air pollutants) were non-significant across wards. We found disproportionately more street trees in Ward 1 relative to Wards 2 and 3 and more trees in public spaces in Wards 1 and 2 relative to Ward 3. Evidence for the luxury effect on tree distribution in the NMDSD was subtle and manifested mostly through differences in species composition and tree distribution across public and private domains as well as the amount of planting space. Overall results point to inequalities in the potential of reforestation among NMDS wards and an overabundance of non-native species, which should guide urban forest management with ecosystem services and conservation goals.

Lessons From Rojava for the Paradigm of Social Ecology

This essay addresses two related questions raised by the editors of the research topic for “Beyond the Frontiers of Political Science: Is Good Governance Possible in Cataclysmic Times?” In particular, it explores: 1) how we can identify new tools and perspectives from which to address the multiple and mutually reinforcing problems accumulating around climate change; and 2) what institutional alternatives to the nation-state need to be created and empowered to tackle such complex problems. It does so through an in-depth treatment of the paradigm of “social ecology” and the associated political project of “democratic confederalism.” It begins with an overview of the argument, first advanced by Murray Bookchin and subsequently adopted and adapted by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, that building an ecological society requires an assault on hierarchy in all its forms, and the construction of alternative, direct-democratic institutions capable of transcending the system of the capitalist nation-state. It sketches the institutional architecture of popular assemblies central to this project, both emphasizing their potential to contest capitalist social-property relations and hierarchies intrinsic to the nation-state and pointing out some sources of resilience of the existing system. It hones in on the experience of the revolutionary forces in control of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES), who have been directly inspired by Öcalan’s ideas. It highlights both the AANES’s achievements as well as the significant obstacles it has encountered in the attempt to bring into being a radically-egalitarian, ecological society. It concludes by drawing lessons from these difficulties.

Social service providers navigating the rapid transition to telehealth with Latinx immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic radically altered social service provision with significant public health implications as social services often target society's most vulnerable with preventative health services addressing social determinants of health. Social service providers serve as crucial linkages to services for low-income Latinx immigrants who face substantial barriers to health and social care. However, little is known regarding how social service providers working with Latinx immigrants navigated service delivery and the rapid transition to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. This mixed-methods (QUAL-quant; capitalization denotes primacy) study used survey data collected from April 2020 to October 2020 with Latinx immigrant serving as social service providers in the Maryland-Washington, DC, region. Social ecological theory guided the analysis of narrative data and the integration of quantitative data with qualitative themes. Participants (N = 41) were majority women (85.4%), identified as Latinx (48.6%) and elucidated themes related to their transition to telehealth, including adjusting from in-person to telehealth, barriers to telehealth implementation, impact on quality of services, working to prevent clients' disconnection to social services, and work-related stress and satisfaction. Through the firsthand experiences of frontline social service providers, results reveal conditions of scarcity endemic in social services for Latinx immigrants that preexisted the pandemic and became further constrained during a time of heightened health and social need. Further, critical insights regarding the use of remote modalities with vulnerable populations (language minorities and immigrants) can be instructive in the development of improved and accessible telehealth and remote programming and services for Latinx immigrants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Assessing sources of resilience in orphans and vulnerable children in Amajuba District schools

The main aim of the study was to assess the sources of resilience in orphans and vulnerable children in district schools in the local communities of Amajuba. The study has drawn insight from the social ecological theory of Bronfenbrenner. Being a mixed-method research approach, its design is grounded within the post-positivism paradigm. A self-administered questionnaire and individual interviews were used to collect data from 303 orphans and vulnerable children purposively sampled from schools within the Amajuba district KwaZulu-Natal for the quantitative phase, while eight orphans and vulnerable children were interviewed for the qualitative phase. Frequency distributions and a thematic analysis were employed to analyse the data. The findings establish that apart from HIV/Aids related deaths of parents, poverty, disabilities, abandonment or neglect, and COVID-19 are found to be other causes of vulnerability among the participants. Conversely, future expectations, religion or spirituality, and an extraverted personality type were found to be the sources of resilience in the participants. The inclusion of resilience in the education/school curriculum across all levels as well as resilience booster interventions are recommended for African children.

An Outcome-Oriented, Social-Ecological Framework for Assessing Protected Area Effectiveness.

Both the number and the extent of protected areas have grown considerably in recent years, but evaluations of their effectiveness remain partial and are hard to compare across cases. To overcome this situation, first, we suggest reserving the term effectiveness solely for assessing protected area outcomes, to clearly distinguish this from management assessments (e.g., sound planning). Second, we propose a multidimensional conceptual framework, rooted in social–ecological theory, to assess effectiveness along three complementary dimensions: ecological outcomes (e.g., biodiversity), social outcomes (e.g., well-being), and social–ecological interactions (e.g., reduced human pressures). Effectiveness indicators can subsequently be evaluated against contextual and management elements (e.g., design and planning) to shed light on management performance (e.g., cost-effectiveness). We summarize steps to operationalize our framework to foster more holistic effectiveness assessments while improving comparability across protected areas. All of this can ensure that protected areas make real contributions toward conservation and sustainability goals.