Trade unions, civil society organisations and health reforms

This article provides an analysis of resistance to neoliberalism and commodification in the public healthcare sector as seen from a trade union perspective. It uses recent research on social-movement unionism and new labour internationalism to structure a series of case studies examining resistance to different dimensions of healthcare commodification in four countries. The range of alliances trade unions are making do not fit tidily into one model, but give insights into the movement elements of trade unionism. This dimension must be strengthened, but can also be in tension with collective bargaining and other institutional processes. How to constantly reconcile these different positions is the future challenge facing trade unions.

To fit in or stand out? The interaction between mortality salience, dissent and self esteem on social projection

Social projection (SP) refers to our tendency to assume that others think the same as we do, but the effect can also be used to detect the extent to which participants want to see themselves as similar to others. Simon et al (1997) found that participants informed that they were deviant increased their SP but those told that they were conformist reduced theirs. This compensatory function supports Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness which states that a balance must be struck between competing desires to feel similar and unique. In line with terror management theory, the effect was particularly apparent under conditions of mortality salience (MS). So far SP has only been examined on measures that target personal identity so this experiment developed a measure to target social identity as well. Participants were provided with either minority or majority dissent feedback, in MS or control conditions, and their SP on items relevant to personal and social identity were recorded. Results showed that group feedback only impacted upon participants SP on social identity measures and interacted with MS and self-esteem; those with high self-esteem had higher SP scores following minority dissent under conditions of mortality salience, indicating an attempt to assert their individuality. On SP measures targeting personal identity, MS and self-esteem interacted; the death prime increased SP scores for those with low self-esteem but decreased it for those with high self-esteem. Findings are interpreted in terms of TMT and optimal distinctiveness theory and their applications.

The Olympic Games and urban displacement: the case of Beijing

Urban spectacles such as the Olympic Games have been long perceived as being able to impose desired effects in the city that act as host. This kind of urban boost may include the creation of new jobs and revenue for local community, growth in tourism and convention business, improvements to city infrastructure and environment, and the stimulation of broad reform in the social, political and institutional realm. Nevertheless at the other end of the debate, the potentially detrimental impacts of Olympic urban development, particularly on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, have also been increasingly noticed in recent years and subsequently cited by a number of high profile anti-Olympic groups to campaign against Olympic bids and awards. The common areas of concern over Olympic-related projects include the cost and debts risk, environmental threat, the occurrence of social imbalance, and disruption and disturbance of existing community life. Among these issues, displacement of low income households and squatter communities resulting from Olympic-inspired urban renewal are comparatively under-explored and have emerged as an imperative area for research inquiry. This is particularly the case where many other problems have become less prominent. Changing a city’s demographic landscape, particularly displacing lower income people from the area proposed for a profitable development is a highly contentious matter in its own right. Some see it as a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the process of urban evolution, without which cities cannot move towards a more attractive location for consumption-based business. Others believe it reflects urban crises and conflicts, highlighting the market failures, polarization and injustice. Regardless of perception,these phenomena are visible everywhere in post-industrial cities and particularly cannot be ignored when planning for the Olympic Games and other mega-events. The aim of this paper is to start the process of placing the displacement issue in the context of Olympic preparation and to seek a better understanding of their interrelations. In order to develop a better understanding of this issue in terms of cause, process, influential factors and its implication on planning policy, this paper studies the topic from both theoretic and empirical angles. It portrays various situations where the Olympics may trigger or facilitate displacement in host cities during the preparation of the Games, identifies several major variables that may affect the process and the overall outcome, and explores what could be learnt in generic terms for planning Olympic oriented infrastructure so that ill-effects to the local community can be effectively controlled. The paper concludes that the selection of development sites, the integration of Olympic facilities with the city’s fabric, the diversity of housing type produced for local residents and the dynamics of the new socioeconomic structure.