Tight-knit Communities Research Articles

Financial network communities and methodological insights: a case study for Borsa Istanbul Sustainability Index

This study investigates the influence of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores on the clustering and community formation of companies within various network models. Using daily closing prices of 78 companies operating in the Borsa Istanbul Sustainability Index, we constructed correlation, mutual information (both continuous and discrete), and causality (both linear and nonlinear) networks to analyse intercompany relationships. We performed community detection using the Leading Eigenvector and Girvan–Newman methods, which revealed that companies within the same sector, particularly in the financial and manufacturing sectors, tend to form tight-knit communities. These intra-sectoral clusters reflect strong market behaviour correlations driven by sector-specific factors. Additionally, mixed-sector communities highlighted the presence of significant inter-sector dependencies. To assess the impact of ESG scores on these communities, nonparametric tests such as the Kruskal–Wallis, Conover, and log-rank were applied. Results showed that specific ESG factors, including emission, CSR strategy, innovation, and human rights, significantly influenced community formation. For instance, companies with strong performance in emission reduction and CSR strategies were found to form more cohesive communities, emphasizing the role of sustainability in shaping financial networks. Study findings underscore the critical role of ESG factors in financial market dynamics, promoting sustainable investment practices by highlighting the importance of integrating ESG considerations into investment decisions. These results suggest that sustainability metrics not only affect individual company performance but also contribute to the formation of interconnected communities with shared sustainability practices.

A career in numbers: A citation network analysis of the work of RP Millar and his contribution to GnRH research.

Here, we reflect on the long career in neuroendocrinology of a single, highly productive scientist ('Bob' Millar), by analysing his oeuvre of published papers through the lens of citation metrics. We use citation network analysis in a novel manner to identify the specific topics to which his papers have made a particular contribution, allowing us to compare the citations of his papers with those of contemporary papers on the same topic, rather than on the same broad field as generally used to normalise citations. It appears that citation rates are highest for topics on which Bob has published a relatively large number of papers that have become core to a tightly-knit community of authors that cite each other. This analysis shows that an author's impact depends on the existence of a receptive community that is alert to the potential utility of papers from that author, and which uses, amplifies, extends and qualifies the contents of their papers-activities that entail reciprocal citation between authors. The obvious conclusion is that a scientist's impact depends on the use that his or her contemporaries make of his or her contributions, rather than on the contributions in themselves.

The importance of 'place' and its influence on rural and remote health and well-being in Australia.

This article explores the crucial role of 'place' as an ecological, social and cultural determinant of health and well-being, with a focus on the benefits and challenges of living rurally and remotely in Australia. The health system, including health promotion, can contribute actively to creating supportive environments and places that foster health and well-being among individuals residing in rural and remote locations. For First Nations peoples, living on Country, and caring for Country and its people, are core to Indigenous worldviews, and the promotion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and well-being. Their forced removal from ancestral lands has been catastrophic. For all people, living in rural and remote areas can deliver an abundance of the elements that contribute to a 'liveable' community, including access to fresh air, green and blue space, agricultural employment, tight-knit communities, a sense of belonging and identity, and social capital. However, living remotely also can limit access to employment opportunities, clean water, affordable food, reliable transport, social infrastructure, social networks and preventive health services. 'Place' is a critical enabler of maintaining a healthy life. However, current trends have led to a reduction in local services and resources, and increased exposure to the impacts of climate change. This commentary suggests ideas and strategies through which people in rural and remote locations can strengthen the liveability, resilience and identity of their communities, and regain access to essential health care and health promotion services and resources. Recommended strategies include online access to education, employment and telehealth; flexible provision of social infrastructure; and meaningful and responsive university-health service partnerships.

Biodistricts as a tool to revitalize rural territories and communities: insights from the biodistrict Cilento

The necessity and urgency of the food systems transformation is no longer questionable, and the transformation pathways are inevitably reappearing as a subject of academic and public debate. In search of sustainable food production strategies as part of a broader transformation, organic food systems are called for as one of the solutions to achieve environmentally friendly and just food systems. In this context, the role of biodistricts has been recently emphasized at the EU level. The authors of the manuscript argue that biodistricts, aside from acting as a tool to help achieve the EU target of increasing the share of organically farmed land, are also capable of revitalizing rural territories and communities, which are currently threatened with rural exodus. Semi-structured interviews and the focus group with key actors of the biodistrict Cilento revealed a multitude of territory- and community related outcomes, which demonstrate that organic districts are capable of rendering rural territories to attractive multifunctional spaces with a tight-knit community.

Exploring the Feasibility of Integrating Mental Health into a Family Planning Program in low-resource settings

Introduction: Mental health challenges remain a pressing issue, underscored by the glaring gap between the elevated demand and the scarce resources. Research has highlighted the effectiveness of integrating mental health services with primary care services, particularly in low-resource settings. Purpose: The objective of this research was to evaluate the perceived implications and feasibility of integrating basic mental health services into an existing community-based family planning initiative in Pakistan. By adopting a community-driven and co-produced methodology, our study not only ensured a deeper resonance with local needs but also paved the way for a sustainable and transformative uptake of mental health services in low-resource settings. This co-produced strategy, anchored in mutual collaboration and shared expertise with the community, promises a more holistic, enduring, and adaptive integration of essential health services within community frameworks.Methodology: This study utilized a qualitative research approach to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the program's feasibility and potential for expansion. Interview tools and guides, tailored to the regional language, were developed by the Research Associate to gather insights from the lady health workers involved in delivering the intervention, as well as from the clients. Overall, our team conducted 24 interviews, of which 9 were with the lady health workers and 15 with clients. The interviews were facilitated by the Research Associate and a Psychologist.Results: Utilizing the socio-ecological model, we thematically analyzed factors at individual, interpersonal, and community levels that support or hinder the integration of mental health services with existing community-based programmes. We also examined the intervention's impact on its users and the healthcare providers.Our analysis underscores the significant potential of integrating mental health services into existing community-based health programmes, such as family planning, in low-resource settings. Predominant themes highlighted women's willingness to use these services, influenced by strong relationships and trust in the lady health workers, ease of access to services, and community support. Identified barriers to integration included prevailing poverty, a preference for direct financial incentives in addition to counseling, confidentiality concerns in tight-knit communities, and the lingering stigma surrounding mental health.Conclusion: Our findings highlight the value of community collaboration in healthcare, particularly in low-resource settings. The co-production approach blends professional guidance with local insights, fostering community ownership and enhancing program sustainability. As the first to merge mental health with family planning in Pakistan, our research suggests that future health initiatives can greatly benefit from community-driven methods, leading to more sustainable and transformative health outcomes.

A Parochial Approach: Colonial Entomology on the Plantations of Nineteenth-Century Sri Lanka

AbstractThe coffee plantations of late nineteenth-century Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) were rocked by a series of crises, including the appearance of numerous insect pests. Scholars have demonstrated that nineteenth-century plantations were both ecologically vulnerable and reliant on exploited labour, with entomology deployed in their defence across the British Empire. Yet this paper argues that, despite its global reach, colonial entomology was sometimes conducted by individuals in pursuit of such parochial concerns as their local reputation and social standing. This case study examines the beetles of Ceylon through the eyes of Scottish plantation owner and amateur naturalist Robert Camperdown Haldane. His 1881 tract All About Grub erroneously identified the island's beetles as relatives of the European cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha). Although Haldane was a well-travelled individual who adopted a global science, he was also a product of Ceylon's plantation society: touchy about his social status and dismissive of his Indian labourers. The insular priorities of individuals or tight-knit communities could direct an enterprise with superficially global characteristics.

“You Don’t Want to Be One of Those stories” Gossip and Shame as Instruments of Social Control in Small Communities

ABSTRACT Small, tight-knit communities often have the image of being places that are full of gossip and where everybody knows each other’s business. This closeness can be claustrophobic for individuals who might not want to live by the accepted social norms of the community. Gossip and rumours can be used to keep such individuals in their place by enforcing social norms through social control. Shaming is crucial to this form of social control, where certain behaviour is punished and shamed through the spread of gossip. Shaming is gendered and is used more harshly against women than against men, particularly in regard to women’s behaviour in public and their sexual activity. This paper examines how gossip and shame are a part of gendered social control in small villages/towns in Iceland, and how it affects young women’s lives. The discussion here is based on interviews about gossip with young Icelandic women who either live in or come from small fishing villages. The main themes that were constructed from the analysis were the social control of women through shaming, reputation, and slut-shaming. The analysis shows that slut-shaming and the fear of shame control women’s behaviour and sexual activities.

Interpellating children as imperial subjects: a content analysis of government-produced moral education textbooks (1903–1942)

ABSTRACT The Meiji Restoration (1868) ended the Tokugawa Shogunate regime (1603–1867) and proclaimed the emperor as the supreme power of Japan. The Meiji emperor’s reign began abruptly, requiring restoration leaders to construct an emperor-centred ideology of whole cloth. This ideology posited an eternal imperial Japan: a unique, tight-knit community of loyal subjects. To disseminate this ideology, the Meiji government introduced shūshin (moral teaching) into the elementary school curriculum, aiming to transform all Japanese children into imperial subjects. Drawing upon Louis Althusser’s theory of interpellation via Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs), this study reads textbook stories as an interpellation practice and shows how the government portrayed characters in the stories as “Unique and Absolute Subjects” of the ideology to persuade children to willingly subjugate themselves to national ideals. This study conducts direct textual and contextual analyses of kokutei shūshin-sho (government-produced moral training textbooks) produced between 1903 and 1942, with a special focus on the teaching unit of the kokka (state). Two themes – loyalty and the imperial family – dominate this unit. The analysis reveals that the stories created “targeted truth” by pruning away details of characters’ real lives, putting a beautiful mask on them, and sometimes even re-inventing or mythologising them.

Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

CrossFit during lockdown. The promises and pitfalls of digitally mediated training for leisure-time physical activity

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic led to nationwide lockdowns and rigid measures of social distancing in Denmark. Such a situation provides the unique opportunity to study interruptions in training routines and scrutinise the significance of physical attendance, face-to-face interactions and collective engagement for sport and leisure-time physical activity. Drawing on Randall Collins’ micro-sociological theory of ‘Interaction Ritual Chains’, this article focuses on CrossFit – an activity, which is not only known for members’ high-intensity workouts but also for a tight-knit community. Specifically, we explored how CrossFitters in Denmark made sense of and experienced the changes of their leisure practices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews with 20 CrossFitters recruited from different CrossFit boxes showed that not only activity levels but also emotional energy and group solidarity dropped considerably during COVID-19 as members lacked interactions within the CrossFit boxes which had been crucial for their participation before the pandemic. Notably, new training situations, specifically online workouts, could not replace the highly successful interaction rituals in the CrossFit box, which stresses the significance of face-to-face interactions for continuous leisure-time physical activity. In so doing, this article contributes to discussions about whether online workouts and digitally mediated communities can complement or replace physical training.

A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

Dear Readers,
 2014 proved to be an instrumental year for the growth and total revitalization of the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal. Our associate editors, CEO and myself looked forward to recruiting a new editorial board made up of underclassmen and building strong relationships with these editors through weekly workshops and event planning meetings. I am especially proud of our board’s commitment to building strong relationships; what was once a journal that lacked mentorship opportunities has now blossomed into a tight-knit community of aspiring researchers who value the power of quality writing.
 A highlight of our events this past year was our Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium, which was held on April 20th, 2014. 22 research posters were presented by students from colleges across the Northeast Region. It was delightful to feel the passion from each of these students as they talked about their research, and we look forward to hosting the symposium again on April 26th, as we have expanded the event to include 30 posters.
 
 Looking at this year’s journal, I am also proud to see the various authors and research that we have been blessed to exhibit. For the first time, our editors have been given the opportunity to publish in the journal through our editorials section. We are thrilled to provide these fresh perspectives on scientific research to our audience and hope to continue this practice in future journals. In addition, the multi-page papers in this journal showcase the breadth of scientific research that our organization promotes. I sincerely hope that you enjoy the articles.
 All in all, the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal has made major progress over the past year. “Stability leads to legitimacy” has been our mantra this academic year, and our e-board has provided the stability needed to give meaningful experiences for our editorial board and a quality publication for our readers. Thank you for your continued support. It has been an honor to serve as the Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal for this past year.
 – Ritish Patnaik

New speakers and Language Making: conscious creation of a colloquial Basque register in the city of Bilbao

Abstract This article examines the processes of Language and Speaker Making in the revitalization context of the Basque Country. The focus is on a group of new Basque speakers who, as active agents, engage in grassroots Language Making by literally making their own variety of colloquial Basque for their intragroup use. Due to a tradition of speaking the minority language in tight-knit communities, the Basque community places a high value on local solidarity. The Basque standard Batua and new speakers of Basque are not considered as authentic as the traditional speakers and their local vernaculars. The new Basque speakers described in the article are language activists who, conscious of the perceived formality of Batua, construct their group register mixing and matching resources from Spanish, Basque dialects and the Basque standard. They flaunt their verbal dexterity in performative language play, yet at the same time pay respect to the Basque tradition of local linguistic practice. In this process, they combine old and new values of being euskaldun, and claim their identity as new and urban, yet full speakers of Basque.

District health network policy in Iran: the role of ideas, interests, and institutions (3i framework) in a nutshell

BackgroundDistrict Health Network (DHN), one of Iran’s most successful health reforms, was launched in 1985 to provide primary health care (PHC), in response to health inequities in Iran. The present study aims to use interrelated elements of the 3i framework: ideas (e.g., beliefs and values, culture, knowledge, research evidence and solutions), interests (e.g., civil servants, pressure groups, elected parties, academians and researchers, and policy entrepreneurs), and institutions (e.g., rules, precedents, and organizational, government structures, policy network, and policy legacies) to explain retrospectively how (DHN) policy in Iran, as a developing country, was initiated and formed.MethodsA historical narrative approach with a case study perspective was employed to focus on the formation and framing process of DHN. For this purpose, the 3i framework was used as a guideline for data analysis. This study mainly searched and extracted secondary sources, including online news, reports, books, dissertations, and published articles in the scientific databases. Primary interviews as a supplementary source were also carried out to meet cross-validation of the data. Data were analyzed using a deductive and inductive approach.ResultsAccording to the 3i framework, the following factors contributed to the formation of DHN policy in Iran: previous national efforts (for instance Rezaieh plan) and international events aiming to provide public health services for peripheral regions; dominant social discourses and values at the beginning of the Iranian revolution such as addressing the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups, which were embedded in the goals of DHN policy aiming to provide basic health services for deprived people especially living in rural and remote areas. Besides, the remarkable social cohesion and solidarity among people reinforced by the Iran-Iraq war were among other factors which contributed to the formation of participatory plans such as DHN (ideas). Main policy entrepreneurs including Minister of Health, his public health deputy and two planners of DHN with similar and rich background in the public health field and sharing the same beliefs (interests) which subsequently led to creation of tight-knit policy community network between them (institutions) also accelerated the creation of DHN in Iran to great extent. Political support of parliamentary representatives (interests), and formal laws such as principles of Iran Constitution (institutions) were also influential in passing the DHN in Iran.ConclusionsThe 3i framework constituents would be insightful in explaining the creation of public health policies. This framework showed that the alignment of laws, structures, and interests of the main actors of the policy with the dominant ideas and beliefs in the society, opened the opportunity to form DHN in Iran.

The Advent of Media Modernity out of Wild Bill's Ashes

AbstractThis article positions David Milch's Deadwood (2004–6) as a narrative universe that merits serious theoretical scrutiny on account of its far-reaching account of the dawn of American technocapitalism. While Kittlerian media-archaeological wisdom situates media modernity's primal scene at the turn of the century (with the emergence of the Edisonian gramophone, film, and typewriter), Deadwood figures the multimedia Big Bang as having taken place a few decades prior, with the advent of telegraphy, photography, and railroads. In the world of Deadwood, this “Discourse Network 1876” condenses in the spectral figure of George Hearst, a tyrannical mining and media magnate who descends on Deadwood to seize and consolidate the area's gold mining rights. When community leaders Al Swearengen and Seth Bullock rise up to resist Hearst, he wields the cybernetic grid of Discourse Network 1876 to run roughshod over the town's fragile social compact. Although this vision of the American Leviathan is a bleak one (and therein resides much of Deadwood's tragic mythos), Milch's Deadwood: The Movie (2019) revisits the town a decade later and rehabilitates the notion that a tightknit community of concerned citizens can, under the right conditions, serve as a viable, but precarious, bulwark against the Hearstian electrical storm.

Vaccine Hesitancy Narratives

Vaccine Hesitancy Narratives

“Shovel-Ready”

“Shovel-Ready”

Sources of anxiety in young rural physicians working alone on remote islands: A qualitative study.

BackgroundWe aimed to examine the sources of anxiety for young rural physicians working alone on remote islands.MethodsSemistructured interviews were conducted on six physicians who worked on remote islands. The Steps for Coding and Theorization method was used to analyze the content of the interviews.ResultsTwelve concepts were generated and categorized into four themes: solo practice, the tight‐knit community, limited human and medical resources, and future career.ConclusionYoung rural physicians' anxieties in solo practice on a remote island are complicated and include multiple dilemmas. Recognizing these anxieties helps with metacognition and professional development in these individuals.

Recruitment and disengagement: two sides of the same coin or different phenomena?

We investigate the disengagement of four former activists of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra—MST) in Brazil. The MST is the largest Brazilian social movement and has mobilized activists for over 30 years. The trajectories of recruitment, participation and disengagement of its activists serve as emblematic cases for the study of disengagement in social movements in general. This research contributes to the understanding of the activists’ disengagement from a social movement, a phenomenon that has been little studied. It sheds new light on the study of disengagement in two ways. First, some characteristics of the MST, in particular that many activists live in tight-knit communities, children participation and the activists’ long-lasting participation, open up new possibilities for the analysis of factors that influence disengagement pointed out in previous studies. In addition, the analysis of former activists’ whole trajectories of recruitment-participation-disengagement allows us show that considering disengagement as the analogous process as recruitment cannot explain all of its aspects. Given that the reasons that make someone leave a movement are, not always, the same that made someone join it. A multiple-case study design was used. The semi-structured interviews encompassing the engagement trajectories of the former activists served very well to the purpose of evidencing the multi-level character of the disengagement decision-making. Our analysis reveals how the social context, the movement and the activists’ personal characteristics in conjunction play a pivotal role.

A New Model of Public Safety

A New Model of Public Safety Elizabeth Glazer (bio) and Patrick Sharkey (bio) For five days last December, the police withdrew from the streets in Brownsville, one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. The move was part of an agreement with the community to shift the primary power for keeping the peace to residents. Neighbors looked out for one another and relied on individuals trained to defuse disputes before they could escalate to violence. Local nonprofits and city agencies showed up with support, from job opportunities to help with homework. In a neighborhood that has led the city in shootings for decades, only one 911 call was reported—from a bus driver who mistakenly activated a distress signal. What happened in Brownsville is important, even if it lasted just five days and covered just a few blocks of Brooklyn. After a chaotic, tumultuous, and tragic year, the role and function of law enforcement in the United States is unsettled. Americans watched George Floyd slowly killed by a Minneapolis police officer last May. In June, police responded with brute force to widespread protests against racial injustice. Later that month, Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, an ad hoc space of demonstration with no cops and no leadership, became the site of multiple shootings before it was shut down with little resistance. And as all of this was unfolding, a surge of gun violence took hold across U.S. cities, leading to the sharpest singleyear increase in history. As the violence rose, city leaders began to turn back to the police in response. Those five days in Brooklyn, however, provide an alternative way forward. What happened in Brownsville may seem radical, but it rests on an old principle: tight-knit communities where residents have access to basic resources and strong local institutions are safer places to live. The idea that local organizations generate safe communities is not just folk wisdom. We have seen it happen, and rigorous research has documented its impact. In New York City, where an extensive network of community groups trained in defusing disputes is at work, shootings declined 28 percent, a rate three times as steep as comparable neighborhoods [End Page 91] without this strategy. Other social structures, including the city's NeighborhoodStat program, bring together residents, city agencies, and community organizations to identify and address the underlying drivers of crime, from unemployment, untreated mental illness, and substance abuse to crumbling parks and playgrounds and rubbish-strewn vacant lots. And they work: a study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found that New York City public housing complexes implementing the Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety saw major declines in crime. We need more of these initiatives and on a larger scale. We also need to deepen existing efforts to shrink the criminal justice system, which research shows has its own criminogenic effects, spurring cycles of recidivism that pull people further into the system. These failures further erode trust between residents and the state in disadvantaged communities. In 2014, following Bill de Blasio's election, New York City began to rely more heavily on investments in community institutions to build stronger neighborhoods. Violence fell to historical lows, and intentional strategies were deployed to curtail and lighten the reach of the justice system into the lives of New Yorkers. The two major metrics of justice system activity were cut in half in the seven years between 2013 and 2020: arrests fell by 56 percent, and the number of people in jail fell by 49 percent. Prosecutor and probation caseloads also diminished, easing the stress on the entire apparatus of the criminal justice system. Despite this massive shrinkage in operations, however, budgets rose by 17 percent in real dollars. Per person costs also increased. From 2013 to 2020, the cost of jailing an individual rose from $93,000 to $224,000, without any significant improvement in the conditions of confinement. The cost of processing a single arrest rose 188 percent, from $12,000 to $34,000. When the costs of benefits and pension contributions are factored in, the total agency budgets rise steeply. The Department of Correction's budget, for instance, grows from $1 billion to...

“I’m not an antivaxxer, but…”: Spurious and authentic diversity among vaccine critical activists

The most common explanation for the current surge of Vaccine Hesitancy is that the Internet helps vaccine science deniers reach a wide audience. This explanation is challenged by the growing success of critics who present themselves as different from antivaccinationists, using phrases such as “I’m not antivaccine but…” and promoting so-called “alternative vaccination schedules”. This could mean that antivaccinationists strive to appear more moderate than they are. But it could also mean that vaccines are being taken on by less radical activists. We compare these two explanations using the contents of a large sample of French-speaking websites. We qualitatively coded the contents of these websites, analysed their citation patterns and assessed their presence in mainstream media. We found that this milieu is fragmented. The most prominent activists only criticize some vaccines and disassociate themselves from the tightly-knit community of radical antivaccinationists. We also found that some appear as moderate while being deeply embedded in the community of radicals, indicating that their “moderate” stance is a communication strategy. These results suggest both explanations are simultaneously true. They apply to different activists, highlighting the importance of exploring the diversity of contemporary vaccine criticism to understand vaccine hesitancy.