Inclusion, social networks and resilience: strategies, practices and outcomes for disabled children and their families

This paper explores the strategies of service providers and the benefits reported by disabled children and their parents/carers in three Children's Fund programmes in England. Based on National Evaluation of the Children's Fund research, we discuss how different understandings of ‘inclusion’ informed the diverse strategies and approaches service providers adopted. While disabled children and families perceived the benefits of services predominantly in terms of building individual children's resilience and social networks, the paper highlights the need for holistic approaches which have a broad view of inclusion, support children's networks and tackle disabling barriers within all the spheres of children's lives.

Embodied social capital and geographic perspectives: performing the habitus

This paper reopens debates of geographic theorizations and conceptualizations of social capital. I argue that human geographers have tended to underplay the analytic value of social capital, by equating the concept with dominant policy interpretations. It is contended that geographers could more explicitly contribute to pervasive critical social science accounts. With this in mind, an embodied perspective of social capital is constructed. This synthesizes Bourdieu's capitals and performative theorizations of identity, to progress the concept of social capital in four key ways. First, this theorization more fully reconnects embodied differences to broader socioeconomic processes. Second, an exploration of how embodied social differences can emerge directly from the political-economy and/or via broader operations of power is facilitated. Third, a path is charted through the endurance of embodied inequalities and the potential for social transformation. Finally, embodied social capital can advance social science conceptualizations of the spatiality of social capital, by illuminating the importance of broader sociospatial contexts and relations to the embodiment of social capital within individuals.

"Ever-growing Amman", Jordan: Urban expansion, social polarisation and contemporary urban planning issues

Amman the primate capital city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan currently has a population in excess of 2 million, but in 1924 it consisted of little more than a collection of dwellings and some 2000-3000 inhabitants. The present paper sets out to document and explain the phenomenal expansion of "ever-growing Amman". The physical geography of the urban region and the early growth of the city are considered at the outset and this leads directly to consideration of the highly polarised social structuring that characterises contemporary Amman. In doing this, original data derived from the recent Greater Amman Municipality's Geographical Information System are presented. In this respect, the essential modernity of the city is exemplified. The employment and industrial bases of the city and a range of pressing contemporary issues are then considered, including transport and congestion, the provision of urban water under conditions of water stress and privatisation, and urban and regional development planning for the city. The paper concludes by emphasizing the growing regional and international geopolitical salience of the city of Amman at the start of the 21st century. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evidence for an apartheid-like social structure in early Anglo-Saxon England

The role of migration in the Anglo-Saxon transition in England remains controversial. Archaeological and historical evidence is inconclusive, but current estimates of the contribution of migrants to the English population range from less than 10 000 to as many as 200 000. In contrast, recent studies based on Y-chromosome variation posit a considerably higher contribution to the modern English gene pool (50-100%). Historical evidence suggests that following the Anglo-Saxon transition, people of indigenous ethnicity were at an economic and legal disadvantage compared to those having Anglo-Saxon ethnicity. It is likely that such a disadvantage would lead to differential reproductive success. We examine the effect of differential reproductive success, coupled with limited intermarriage between distinct ethnic groups, on the spread of genetic variants. Computer simulations indicate that a social structure limiting intermarriage between indigenous Britons and an initially small Anglo-Saxon immigrant population provide a plausible explanation of the high degree of Continental male-line ancestry in England.