Putting the S-word back into Sustainability: Can we be more social?

In an era dominated by climate change debate and environmentalism there is a real danger that the important ‘social’ pillar of sustainability drops out of our vocabulary. This can happen at a variety of scales from business level through to building and neighbourhood level regeneration and development. Social sustainability should be at the heart of all housing and mixed-use development but for a variety of reasons tends to be frequently underplayed. The recent English city riots have brought this point back sharply into focus. The relationships between people, places and the local economy all matter and this is as true today as it was in the late 19th century when Patrick Geddes, the great pioneering town planner and ecologist, wrote of ‘place-work-folk’. This paper, commissioned from Tim Dixon, explains what is meant by social sustainability (and how it is linked to concepts such as social capital and social cohesion); why the debate matters during a period when ‘localism’ is dominating political debate; and what is inhibiting its growth and its measurement. The paper reviews best practice in post-occupancy social sustainability metric systems, based on recent research undertaken by the author on Dockside Green in Vancouver, and identifi es some of the key operational issues in mainstreaming the concept within major mixed-use projects. The paper concludes by offering a framework for the key challenges faced in setting strategic corporate goals and objectives; prioritising and selecting the most appropriate investments; and measuring social sustainability performance by identifying the required data sources

In the shadow of Grexit: the Greek election of 17 June 2012

This article provides an overview and analysis of the Greek June 2012 elections. Placing the elections within the broader framework of the Greek socio-political and economic context, it discusses the electoral campaign and results, juxtaposing them to the 6 May electoral round. The election results confirmed many of the trends of the previous round, including electoral volatility, the fragmentation of the party system and the rise of anti-establishment forces. The main difference was the entrenchment of the pro- versus anti- bailout division and the prominence of the question of Greece’s continued Eurozone membership.

On the F-word: a corpus-based analysis of the media representation of Feminism in British and German press discourse,1990-2009

Research in social psychology has shown that public attitudes towards feminism are mostly based on stereotypical views linking feminism with leftist politics and lesbian orientation. It is claimed that such attitudes are due to the negative and sexualised media construction of feminism. Studies concerned with the media representation of feminism seem to confirm this tendency. While most of this research provides significant insights into the representation of feminism, the findings are often based on a small sample of texts. Also, most of the research was conducted in an Anglo-American setting. This study attempts to address some of the shortcomings of previous work by examining the discourse of feminism in a large corpus of German and British newspaper data. It does so by employing the tools of Corpus Linguistics. By investigating the collocation profiles of the search term feminism, we provide evidence of salient discourse patterns surrounding feminism in two different cultural contexts.

Haircut undone? The Greek drama and prospects for investment arbitration

As a result of the sovereign debt crisis that engulfed Europe in 2010, investors are much more likely to pursue dispute resolution options when faced with losses. This paper seeks to examine the position of investors who suffered losses in the Greek haircut of 2012 in the context of investment treaty arbitration. The paper evaluates arguments that investments in Greek sovereign bonds have been expropriated by the introduction of retrofit CACs and that compensation is payable as a result of the protections offered by BITs. The paper investigates whether sovereign bonds come within the definition of protected investment in BITs, assesses the degree to which CACs act as a jurisdictional bar to investor-state claims and attempts an evaluation of whether claims could be successful. The analysis uses as an illustration recent cases brought against Greece at ICSID. The paper concludes by considering whether the Greek haircut was expropriatory and reflects on the possible outcome of current arbitrations.

The Greek pilot project: Lefka Ori National Park, Crete

This chapter presents the range of activities undertaken for the Lefka Ori National Park in Crete, Creece within the frame of INNOVA project which aimed at achieving the following outcomes: -Evaluation of protected area management effectiveness -Introduction to the concept of sustainability in protected area management -Developing of a sustainability monitoring strategy for Lefka Ori -Increase of stakeholder and public awareness, regarding the protected areas threats and values -Enable stakeholder and local community engagement in protected area management

Let's kill the 'C' word: notions of authentic and synthetic in the teaching of journalism

One of the less desirable aftermaths of the so-called "Media Wars" - the intellectual debate over the role of cultural studies in the study of journalism - was reinforcement for some of the notion of fortress journalism: a Windschuttlian purist version of the Empire. This paper uses the alleged confrontation between the forces of that Empire (that is, proponents of pure journalism) and the forces of the Dark (that is, critics from a cultural studies tradition) as a means of examining the teaching of journalism in universities. The paper questions how the discipline of journalism should interface with others within the academy and asks what notion of journalism underpins our pedagogy and our epistemology. It is argued that it is time to discard an outdated craft model with its associations of authenticity and replace it with a model of synthetic professionalism.