Local space for local people? Trends in the provision and management of urban outdoor recreation in the UK

This paper examines the growing trend in the UK towards the effective privatisation of formerly public open space and the relationship of this trend to the recent shifts in public sector management. A case study of Reading, England, illustrates the growing cultural and spatial dysfunction, particularly in terms of the declining knowledge and use of the town's urban gardens by the local population. Where once the gardens were a focus of social activity, therefore, they are now a largely irrelevant site of urban decline. In contrast to central urban space, it is clear that other types of open space in other areas can still assume a significance in peoples' lives. In many cases the use of these areas illustrates a counter cultural position in which the consumerism of the city management is actively being resisted. The paper concludes that while there appear to be ways in which local space could be reclaimed for local people, the power to achieve this lies predominantly in the same hands as those responsible for appropriating central space to the imperative of the market in the first instance

Toward a view of complementarity trust and policy influence effects of corporate social responsibility and corporate political activity

The extant literature argues that nonmarket strategies can establish, sustain, or enhance a firm’s competitive advantage. Less clear is how and why effective nonmarket strategies influence a firm’s competitiveness. Moreover, the extant literature tends to examine the two building blocks of nonmarket strategy—corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA)—separately. In this article, we extend trust to the nonmarket environment. We analyze how CSR and CPA complement each other to create strong trust between firms and the polity, and how they consequently influence government policy. We show the mediating role of trust in policy influence, and argue that CSR and CPA should be aligned for the successful influence of salient government policy.

Regional response differences across the human amygdaloid complex during social conditioning

The amygdala is consistently implicated in biologically relevant learning tasks such as Pavlovian conditioning. In humans, the ability to identify individual faces based on the social outcomes they have predicted in the past constitutes a critical form of associative learning that can be likened to “social conditioning.” To capture such learning in a laboratory setting, participants learned about faces that predicted negative, positive, or neutral social outcomes. Participants reported liking or disliking the faces in accordance with their learned social value. During acquisition, we observed differential functional magnetic resonance imaging activation across the human amygdaloid complex consistent with previous lesion, electrophysiological, and functional neuroimaging data. A region of the medial ventral amygdala and a region of the dorsal amygdala/substantia innominata showed signal increases to both Negative and Positive faces, whereas a lateral ventral region displayed a linear representation of the valence of faces such that Negative > Positive > Neutral. This lateral ventral locus also differed from the dorsal and medial loci in that the magnitude of these responses was more resistant to habituation. These findings document a role for the human amygdala in social learning and reveal coarse regional dissociations in amygdala activity that are consistent with previous human and nonhuman animal data.

Prefrontal social cognition network dysfunction underlying face encoding and social anxiety in fragile X syndrome

Individuals with fragile X syndrome (FXS) commonly display characteristics of social anxiety, including gaze aversion, increased time to initiate social interaction, and difficulty forming meaningful peer relationships. While neural correlates of face processing, an important component of social interaction, are altered in FXS, studies have not examined whether social anxiety in this population is related to higher cognitive processes, such as memory. This study aimed to determine whether the neural circuitry involved in face encoding was disrupted in individuals with FXS, and whether brain activity during face encoding was related to levels of social anxiety. A group of 11 individuals with FXS (5 M) and 11 age-and gender-matched control participants underwent fMRI scanning while performing a face encoding task with onlineeye-tracking. Results indicate that compared to the control group, individuals with FXS exhibited decreased activation of prefrontal regions associated with complex social cognition, including the medial and superior frontal cortex, during successful face encoding. Further, the FXS and control groups showed significantly different relationships between measures of social anxiety (including gaze-fixation) and brain activity during face encoding. These data indicate that social anxiety in FXS may be related to the inability to successfully recruit higher level social cognition regions during the initial phases of memory formation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Studying the effect of systemisation on design activity

It is considered that systemisation, the use of standard systems of components and design solutions, has an effect on the activities of the designer. This paper draws on many areas of knowledge; design movements, economic theory, quality evaluation and organisation theory to substantiate the view that systemisation will reduce the designer's discretion at the point of design. A methodology to test this hypothesis is described which will be of use to other researchers studying the social processes of construction organisations.

Cortisol levels in response to starting school in children at increased risk for social phobia

Background: Research on depression has identified hyperactivity of the HPA axis as a potential contributory factor to the intergenerational transmission of affective symptoms. However, this has not yet been examined in the context of social phobia. The current study compared HPA axis activity in response to a universal social stressor (starting school) in children of 2 groups of women: one with social phobia and one with no history of anxiety (comparison group). To determine specificity of effects of maternal social phobia, a third group of children were also examined whose mothers had generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). Method: Children provided salivary cortisol samples in the morning, afternoon and at bedtime across 3 time-blocks surrounding the school start: a month before starting school (baseline), the first week at school (stress response), and the end of the first school term (stress recovery). Child behavioural inhibition at 14 months was also assessed to explore the influence of early temperament on later stress responses. Results: All children displayed an elevation in morning and afternoon cortisol from baseline during the first week at school, which remained elevated until the end of the first term. Children in the social phobia group, however, also displayed an equivalent elevation in bedtime cortisol, which was not observed for comparison children or for children of mothers with GAD. Children in the social phobia group who were classified as 'inhibited' at 14 months displayed significantly higher afternoon cortisol levels overall. Summary: A persistent stress response to school in the morning and afternoon is typical for all children, but children of mothers with social phobia also display atypical elevations in evening cortisol levels when at school - signalling long-term disruption of the circadian rhythm in HPA axis activity. This is the first study to report HPA axis disruption in children at risk of developing social phobia, and future research should aim to determine whether this represents a pathway for symptom development, taking early temperament into account.

Theorizing Literacy, Politics and Social Process: revisiting Maktab literacy in Rian in search of a paradigm

Literacy as a social practice is integrally linked with social, economic and political institutions and processes. As such, it has a material base which is fundamentally constituted in power relations. Literacy is therefore interwoven with the text and context of everyday living in which multi-levelled meanings are organically produced at both individual and societal level. This paper argues that if language thus mediates social reality, then it follows that literacy defined as a social practice cannot really be addressed as a reified, neutral activity but that it should take account of the social, cultural and political processes in which literacy practices are embedded. Drawing on the work of key writers within the field, the paper foregrounds the primary role of the state in defining the forms and levels of literacy required and made available at particular moments within society. In a case-study of the social construction of literacy meanings in pre-revolutionary Iran, it explores the view that the discourse about societal literacy levels has historically constituted a key terrain in which the struggle for control over meaning has taken place. This struggle, it is argued, sets the interests of the state to maintain ideological and political control over the production of knowledge within the culture and society over and against the needs identified by the individual for personal development, empowerment and liberation. In an overall sense, the paper examines existing theoretical perspectives on societal literacy programmes in terms of the scope that they provide for analyses that encompass the multi-levelled power relations that shape and influence dominant discourses on the relative value of literacy for both the individual and society

Rhythmic behavior of social insects from single to multibody

Revealing the evolution of well-organized social behavior requires understanding a mechanism by which collective behavior is produced. A well-organized group may be produced by two possible mechanisms, namely, a central control and a distributed control. In the second case, local interactions between interchangeable components function at the bottom of the collective behavior. We focused on a simple behavior of an individual ant and analyzed the interactions between a pair of ants. In an experimental set-up, we placed the workers in a hemisphere without a nest, food, and a queen, and recorded their trajectories. The temporal pattern of velocity of each ant was obtained. From this bottom-up approach, we found the characteristic behavior of a single worker and a pair of workers as follows: (1) Activity of each individual has a rhythmic component. (2) Interactions between a pair of individuals result in two types of coupling, namely the anti-phase and the in-phase coupling. The direct physical contacts between the pair of workers might cause a phase shift of the rhythmic components in individual ants. We also build up a simple model based on the coupled oscillators toward the understanding of the whole colony behavior.

The arbitrariness and normativity of social conventions

This paper investigates a puzzling feature of social conventions: the fact that they are both arbitrary and normative. We examine how this tension is addressed in sociological accounts of conventional phenomena. Traditional approaches tend to generate either synchronic accounts that fail to consider the arbitrariness of conventions, or diachronic accounts that miss central aspects of their normativity. As a remedy, we propose a processual conception that considers conventions as both the outcome and material cause of much human activity. This conceptualization, which borrows from the économie des conventions as well as critical realism, provides a novel perspective on how conventions are nested and defined, and on how they are established, maintained and challenged.

A framework for the forensic analysis of user interaction with social media

The increasing use of social media, applications or platforms that allow users to interact online, ensures that this environment will provide a useful source of evidence for the forensics examiner. Current tools for the examination of digital evidence find this data problematic as they are not designed for the collection and analysis of online data. Therefore, this paper presents a framework for the forensic analysis of user interaction with social media. In particular, it presents an inter-disciplinary approach for the quantitative analysis of user engagement to identify relational and temporal dimensions of evidence relevant to an investigation. This framework enables the analysis of large data sets from which a (much smaller) group of individuals of interest can be identified. In this way, it may be used to support the identification of individuals who might be ‘instigators’ of a criminal event orchestrated via social media, or a means of potentially identifying those who might be involved in the ‘peaks’ of activity. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the framework, this paper applies it to a case study of actors posting to a social media Web site.

‘Cursed’ communities? Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), company towns and the mining industry in Namibia

This article examines Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and mining community development, sustainability and viability. These issues are considered focussing on current and former company-owned mining towns in Namibia. Historically company towns have been a feature of mining activity in Namibia. However, the fate of such towns upon mine closure has been and remains controversial. Declining former mining communities and even ghost mining towns can be found across the country. This article draws upon research undertaken in Namibia and considers these issues with reference to three case study communities. This article examines the complexities which surround decision-making about these communities, and the challenges faced in efforts to encourage their sustainability after mining. In this article, mine company engagements through CSR with the development, sustainability and viability of such communities are also critically discussed. The role, responsibilities, and actions of the state in relation to these communities are furthermore reflected upon. Finally, ways forward for these communities are considered.

Mapping the trickle out benefits of social and environmental enterprises: a pilot study of an East African eco business

• Objectives The objective of this paper is to propose a framework for mapping the sustainable development and poverty alleviation impacts of social and environmental enterprises in Africa. This framework is then piloted with reference to an East African Ecobusiness. • Prior Work This paper is based on data collected as part of a wider research project examining social and environmental enterprises across the 19 countries of Southern and Eastern Africa. In total, the sustainable development and poverty alleviation impacts of 20 in-depth case studies in 4 countries are being examined. • Approach Data was collected using in-depth interviews with multiple stakeholders associated with the case study business. Secondary materials were also analysed and a quantitative survey of customers undertaken. • Results In addition to their impacts on the environment, African eco businesses can also have substantial social, economic and wider poverty alleviation impacts. This paper maps the impacts of a case study East African ecobusiness, as part of developing a social and environmental enterprise impact framework for Africa and the wider developing world. In our case study, positive and negative impacts are identified, while questions are raised in relation to tradeoffs between social and environmental objectives and temporal dimensions of impact. The usefulness of existing frameworks for understanding the social, environmental and development impacts of these kinds of organisations are also considered. • Implications This paper outlines the necessity of building an African-centric impact map to capture the multi-level poverty alleviation and sustainable development impacts of social and environmental enterprise activity in developing world environments. The framework proposed also offers guidance to businesses operating in Africa about the factors that might be considered as part of their wider social and environmental responsibilities. • Value Assessing the impact of social and environmental enterprises, especially as a route to development within low income countries, is receiving increasing attention in academia and beyond. This paper presents a useful contribution to the scarce literature on social and environmental enterprises in Africa.

Beyond arousal and valence: the importance of the biological versus social relevance of emotional stimuli

The present study addressed the hypothesis that emotional stimuli relevant to survival or reproduction (biologically emotional stimuli) automatically affect cognitive processing (e.g., attention, memory), while those relevant to social life (socially emotional stimuli) require elaborative processing to modulate attention and memory. Results of our behavioral studies showed that (1) biologically emotional images hold attention more strongly than do socially emotional images, (2) memory for biologically emotional images was enhanced even with limited cognitive resources, but (3) memory for socially emotional images was enhanced only when people had sufficient cognitive resources at encoding. Neither images’ subjective arousal nor their valence modulated these patterns. A subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging study revealed that biologically emotional images induced stronger activity in the visual cortex and greater functional connectivity between the amygdala and visual cortex than did socially emotional images. These results suggest that the interconnection between the amygdala and visual cortex supports enhanced attention allocation to biological stimuli. In contrast, socially emotional images evoked greater activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and yielded stronger functional connectivity between the amygdala and MPFC than did biological images. Thus, it appears that emotional processing of social stimuli involves elaborative processing requiring frontal lobe activity.

Analysing the factors that influence tag choice based on semiotic analysis and activity theory

Social tagging has become very popular around the Internet as well as in research. The main idea behind tagging is to allow users to provide metadata to the web content from their perspective to facilitate categorization and retrieval. There are many factors that influence users' tag choice. Many studies have been conducted to reveal these factors by analysing tagging data. This paper uses two theories to identify these factors, namely the semiotics theory and activity theory. The former treats tags as signs and the latter treats tagging as an activity. The paper uses both theories to analyse tagging behaviour by explaining all aspects of a tagging system, including tags, tagging system components and the tagging activity. The theoretical analysis produced a framework that was used to identify a number of factors. These factors can be considered as categories that can be consulted to redirect user tagging choice in order to support particular tagging behaviour, such as cross-lingual tagging.