BackgroundIndividuals with early phase cognitive impairment are frequently affected by existential distress, social avoidance and associated health issues. The demand for efficient psychological support is crucial from both an individual and a societal perspective. We have developed a novel psychological intervention manual for providing a non-medical path to enhanced psychological health in the cognitively impaired population. The current article provides specific information on the randomized controlled trial -design and methods. The main hypothesis is that participants receiving PIPCI will increase their (...) psychological flexibility compared to participants in the active control group and the waiting list control group. The secondary hypotheses are that participants receiving PIPCI will improve psychological health compared to participants in the active control group and the waiting list control group.Materials and MethodsThis three-arm RCT will recruit participants from the cognitive centers at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and randomize approximately 120 individuals in the early phase of cognitive impairment to either an experimental group, an active control group or a waiting list control group. Intervention outcome will be evaluated with self-report questionnaires on physical and psychological aspects of health, cognitive assessment, biological markers and health care costs. Assessments will be performed at pre- and post-intervention, as well as at a 6-month follow-up.DiscussionThe development of a potentially feasible and effective psychological intervention tailored for early phase cognitive impairment has the potential to advance the non-pharmacological intervention field. This is especially important given the extensive burden for many affected individuals and their families and the current lack of effective treatments. If the psychological intervention discussed here shows feasibility and efficacy, there is potential for far-reaching healthcare implications for patients with early cognitive impairment at risk of developing dementia.Clinical Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04356924. Date of registration: April 22, 2020. URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04356924. (shrink)

How can one freely act contrary to one’s better judgement about what is right? Since antiquity, this question has attracted attention of many ethicists and theorists of action as the “problem of akrasia”. On a traditional and still influential view akrasia happens when some irrational tendencies, emotions and desires override the rational part of one’s soul and cause them to act in a way which contradicts their rational beliefs about what is good and desirable. In this paper, we aim to (...) show that the view of akrasia as a matter of practical irrationality doesn’t provide an adequate tool for understanding the complex nature of akrasia, since it obstructs an insight into the rational and social dimension of akrasia. We will argue that akrasia, far from being only an individual phenomenon, concerns also the action of broader social and political entities. We will introduce the notion of socio-political akrasia and demonstrate the seriousness of this phenomenon by analysing the case of (in)action of contemporary governments in the context of the climate crisis. Finally, we will conclude by offering a perspective on how to prevent socio-political akrasia. (shrink)

Influencers belong to the daily media diet of many adolescents. As role models, they have the potential to play a crucial role in the identity construction of their viewers. In the age of social media, such role models may now be found more local – from the same city – and perhaps with more diverse backgrounds. This may be particularly valuable to adolescents growing up in super-diverse cities, as they are surrounded by a multitude of groups and identities during a (...) life phase in which they have to make sense of who they are and where they belong. Despite the heterogeneity of these identities, there is one thing all have in common: the city they live in. With the city as a common framework, local influencers may be important role models for these adolescents, particularly in negotiating their urban identity. This paper aims toward mapping the ways in which social media can play a role in the negotiation of urban identity among youngsters by investigating how YouTube influencers from a super-diverse city are related to each other online, and how their content relates to the (super-diverse) city of Rotterdam. Findings show that in their videos and on their channel pages, influencers mainly affiliate themselves with the city through having the city as the background and context of the videos, through their involvement with cultural trends (e.g. soccer, hip-hop) that link to the city, and through their affiliation with other local influencers. We argue that influencers may therefore provide their viewers with content that may potentially help their local viewers strengthen their urban identity. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the research is to define certain interaction features between a human and the urban environment in the global world. Theoretical basis. The study in based on the investigations of contemporary researchers in social philosophy and urban science, as well as social scientists of Chicago School. Originality. The originality of the research is to analyze the "human-urban space" system in terms of the influence of local space of the global world on the human identity (...) formation and preservation. Conclusions. Modern information technologies have significantly contributed into changes in the culture, society, individual consciousness and perception. They have given them absolutely global character and reorganized the value and standard system of the individual. As a result, it caused the identity crisis, so typical of the postindustrial society. Thus, one of the possible ways to overcome the crisis is to harmonize the interaction in the "human-urban space" system as an area of individual space of human social and cultural identity. (shrink)

Increasingly, we live in an environment of our own making: a ‘world as design’ over the natural world. For more than half of the global population, this environment is also thoroughly urban. But what does a global urban condition mean for the human condition? How does the design of the city and the urban process, in response to the issues and challenges of the Anthropocene, produce new ethical categories, shape new moral identities and relations, and bring about (...) consequences that are also morally significant? In other words, how does the urban shape the ethical—and in what ways? Conversely, how can ethics reveal relations and realities of the urban that often go unnoticed? This book marks the first systematic study of the city through the ethical perspective in the context of the Anthropocene. Six emergent urban conditions are examined, namely, precarity, propinquity, conflict, serendipity, fear and the urban commons. (shrink)

Much of the developing world, including Kenya, is rapidly urbanizing. Rising food and fuel prices in recent years have put the food security of the urban poor in a precarious position. In cities worldwide, urban agriculture helps some poor people gain access to food, but urban agriculture is less common in densely populated slums that lack space. In the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya, households have recently begun a new form of urban agriculture called sack gardening (...) in which vegetables such as kale and Swiss chard are planted into large sacks filled with topsoil. This paper examines relationships among sack gardening, social capital, and food security in Kibera. We used a mixed methods approach, combining qualitative interviews with a household survey, as well as focus group discussions with both farmers and non-farmers. We present evidence that sack gardening increases social capital, especially for those households that undertake sack gardening in groups. We also find that sack gardening in the Kibera slums has a positive impact on household food security by improving household dietary diversity and by reducing the need to resort to painful coping mechanisms that are used during food shortages. (shrink)

Proactive policing strategies produce a range of harms to African Americans in poor urban communities. We know little, however, about how aggressive policing is experienced across gender by adolescents in these neighborhoods. The authors argue that important insights can be gained by examining the perspectives of African American youths and draw from in-depth interviews with youths in St. Louis, Missouri, to investigate how gender shapes interactions with the police. The comparative analysis reveals important gendered facets of African American adolescents' (...) experiences with and expectations of law enforcement. Young men described being treated routinely as suspects regardless of their involvement in delinquency and also reported police violence. Young women typically described being stopped for curfew violations but also expressed concerns about police sexual misconduct. This study highlights the differential harms of urban policing for African American young women and men and highlights the need for systematic attention to the intersections of race and gender in research on criminal justice practices. (shrink)

This paper interrogates the routine and unproblematic use of terms such as in biomedical and anthropological discourse. A typical depiction of the social factors that explain the practice of in India is to put together the supply side factors (such as protection offered by the government for the production of generic drugs, especially in the small scale sector, and expansion of the number of drug store outlets), with the increasing demand for allopathic drugs. The paper provides an ethnographic account of (...) the intricate connections between households and biomedical practitioners in urban neighbourhoods in Delhi. It breaks away from the conventional opposition drawn between the practices of physicians and the beliefs of their patients, and suggests that what constitutes the medical environments of these neighbourhoods is the product of medical practices, household economies and concepts of disease. Thus pharmaceutical use is determined as much by practices of dispensation and by how practitioners understand what constitutes therapy as by household understanding of the normal and the pathological. This paper uses both quantitative data and narrative interviews to provide an in-depth understanding of the circulation of pharmaceuticals within the life worlds of the urban poor. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the role of new urban agriculture models to increase local food production capacity in cities of the Global North. Urban rooftop greenhouses and hydroponics are examples of such models receiving increasing attention as a technological approach to year-round local food production in cities. Yet, little research has addressed the unintended consequences of new modes of urban farming and food distribution, such as increased competition with existing peri-urban and rural farmers. We examine (...) how small-scale farmers perceive and have responded to a recently established rooftop greenhouse and online marketplace enterprise in Montréal, Canada. Drawing on interviews with key informants and small-scale farmers, we find that peri-urban and rural producers have been affected in three key ways that represent tensions, adaptations, and synergies arising from this new urban agriculture and food distribution enterprise. First, many farmers are concerned about increased competition and value conflation with the ideals of community supported agriculture and organic farming. Second, some farmers have adapted by developing novel marketing strategies and working with local bridge organizations to collectively market their produce to urban consumers. Third, a few farmers have decided to wholesale their produce to this new enterprise, allowing them to specialize production and avoid marketing their produce directly to urban consumers. Our study suggests that the emergence of a new form of alternative food network in Montréal has created both positive and negative disruptions for existing small-scale producers. Advocates for the expansion of new urban food production and distribution models should therefore give greater consideration to the effects on other actors in the local food system. (shrink)

This study examines urban agriculture (UA) in Sacramento, California (USA), the nation's self-branded “Farm-to-Fork Capital,” in order to highlight UA’s distinct yet entangled roots. The study is based on 24 interviews with a diverse array of UA leaders, conducted as part of a five-year transdisciplinary study of UA in Sacramento. In it, we unearth three primary “taproots” of UA projects, each with its own historical legacies, normative visions, and racial dynamics. In particular, we examine UA projects with “justice taproots,” (...) “health taproots,” and “market taproots.” We use this analysis to understand how different kinds of UA projects are embedded in racial capitalism in ways that transform relationships between people, the city, and food systems. Unearthing these entangled roots helps illuminate UA’s underlying politics, showing how these roots grow in both competitive and symbiotic ways within the soil matrix of racial capitalism. We argue that these roots interact differently with racial capitalism, creating disparities in their growth trajectories. In particular, UA projects associated with the justice taproot are historically underrepresented and undervalued. However, we argue that there are some prospects for building alliances between the UA movement’s three roots, and that these are both promising and problematic. (shrink)

This article seeks to refine understandings of the governmental logics that comprise and shape urban governance. Drawing on research using ethnographic methods that explore the business improvement district and the condominium corporation it is argued that exclusive focus on urban neo-liberalism neglects an urban ”police.” This latter logic is most famously remarked upon in Michel Foucault’s writings as targeting “little things” in urban spaces. Both “police” and the ”free rider problem” it confronts predate and are irreducible (...) to neo-liberalism. Ethnography helps discern this “police” as well as how neo-liberalism relates to it in private urban realms typically hidden from view. Examining BIDs and condos in this way shows that neo-liberalism and “police” co-exist and combine in the governance of urban residential and commercial life. This matters because it reveals a more complex picture of urban governance than is sometimes assumed when neo-liberalism is exclusively invoked and one that is necessarily considered when conceiving of alternative governing arrangements. (shrink)

Women who participate in outdoor recreational activities reap many physical and emotional benefits from their experiences. However, gender-related feelings of objectification, vulnerability, and fear in this space limit women’s participation. In this study, the authors investigate how women pursue their enjoyment of urban outdoor recreation at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona, despite their perceptions and experiences related to fear of violence. Through surveys and interviews with women who recreate at South Mountain, the authors look at the ways the (...) women cope with their fear using various strategies. This study reveals the gender-related conflicts that persist for participants, who grapple with their appreciation of uncompromised nature and their need to feel safe in this environment. Ultimately, they illustrate how an ongoing negotiation exists for the women as the authors balance choices and concerns related to their outdoor recreation and what aspects of surveillance and control they consider, reject, or accept. (shrink)

Promoting civic engagement could be a way of strengthening the social solidarity of China's urban population. The drastic socio-economic changes resulting from recent economic reform are likely to have a deleterious effect on social solidarity. Based on a survey conducted in 2010 in the Southern China city of Xiamen, this paper examines a specific form of civic engagement – citizen cooperation – to resolve community problems, and assesses its relationship with social capital. The study reveals that discrepancies in the (...) level of civic engagement exist among urban residents and that inequality of social capital plays a significant role in these discrepancies. The findings suggest that such gaps could be addressed by increasing social capital, especially by expanding residents' personal community networks. (shrink)

Unpublished counts of larceny arrests and census data for five of the largest cities in the United States are used to examine the contribution of white and nonwhite men and women in specific age groups to increases in larceny arrests from 1960 to 1980. The results suggest that nonwhite women and white men now have similar larceny arrest rates and that 77 percent of the total increase in the arrest of women for larceny from 1960 to 1980 was the result (...) of increased arrests of nonwhite women. Although 18 percent of this increase can be explained by increased numbers of nonwhite women in specific age groups in the population, the worsening economic situation of young black women in older U.S. central cities is suggested as the most plausible explanation for these trends. Implications of the findings for other theories of women's criminality are examined. (shrink)

Children who live on the margins of society are disadvantaged in achieving their developmental potential because of the lack of a necessary stable environment and nurturing care. Many early prevention programs aim at mitigating such effects, but often the evaluation of their long-term effect is missing. The aim of the study presented here was to evaluate such long-term effects in two prevention programs for children-at-risk growing up in deprived social environments focusing on child attachment representation as the primary outcome as (...) well as on self-reflective capacities of teachers taking care of these children. The latter was a key component for promoting resilient behavior in children. Five hundred and twenty-six children aged 36 to 60 months at risk due to immigration status, low family socio-economic status and child behavior were examined in a cluster-randomized study comparing two preventions, the psychodynamic, attachment-based holistic approach EARLY STEPS (ES) with the classroom based FAUSTLOS (FA) for their efficacy. Primary outcome was the child attachment representation measured by the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST). Secondary outcomes were derived from (a) the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF: problem behaviors, including anxiety/depressive symptoms, emotional-reactive and somatic problems, social withdrawal, aggressive behavior, and attention deficit), from (b) the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ, parent version: resilience and wellbeing) and (c) Self-Reflective Scales for teachers (SRS: self-reflective capacities of teachers). Compared to baseline, attachment and behavioral problems improved in both programs. ES led to more secure and more organized attachment representations (medium effect sizes). Aggressive behavior and externalizing problems were reduced in the FA group compared with ES, particularly in boys (medium effect sizes). Self-reflective capacities of the teachers increased only in the ES group. High correlation between children’s attachment type with the number of social risk factors and the increase of problematic social behavior strongly indicate that an increase in teachers’ self-reflective capacities helps to change children’s attachment patterns which thus strengthens the resilience of these children-at-risk [An ethical vote from LPPKJP 2009-02-25 was obtained and the trial registered; Clinical trial registration information: The trial was registered 14.02.2012 (DRKS00003500;https://www.drks.de)]. (shrink)

The manner in which limited vaccines are distributed during a pandemic is an ethical issue. The utility principle has been used to argue priority be given to certain individuals based on factors such as the epidemiology of the spread of disease and maintaining the functioning of society. The equity principle has been used to encourage fair practices that account for the economic and social costs of all decisions made. We argue that both principles are met through priority vaccination of homeless (...) individuals, as this strategy protects a medically vulnerable population while reducing the chances of transmission to others as they move through populated urban spaces. We begin by reviewing debates around ethical vaccine distribution. We then argue the homeless are a medically high-risk population who may contribute to the spread of disease through their mobility. As immunization rates are generally lower among the homeless and many do not access mainstream health care, we argue that community vaccine clinics must be used to reach these individuals. We provide support by analyzing Toronto Public Health’s operation of vaccine clinics in shelters and drop-in centres during pH1N1 and conclude that this strategy is effective for immunizing homeless individuals, bringing together the equity and utility principles. (shrink)

Context: Sustainability is among major societal goals in our days. Education is acknowledged as an essential strategy for attaining sustainability by activating the creative potential within young people to understand sustainability, bring forth changes in their everyday life, and collectively envision a more sustainable future. Problem: However, teaching and learning about sustainability and sustainability-related issues is not an easy task due to the inherent complexity, ambiguity, and context-specificity of the concept. We are in need of innovative pedagogical approaches and tools (...) that will allow us to design learning activities in which learners will be empowered to develop new, alternative interpretations of sustainability in personally and collectively meaningful ways. Method: We argue that a constructionist perspective involving the use of expressive media for digital storytelling offers an appropriate frame for designing learning activities fostering collaborative creativity in thinking and learning about urban sustainability. Our study is based on the design of a learning activity following this rationale. We adopted a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of different sources of data with the aim to explore collaborative creativity as a learning process based on the students’ collective processes and resulting in the co-construction of new ideas and insights about sustainability, and new tangible artefacts encompassing them. Results: Our analysis of the collaborative creativity exemplified in the three digital stories produced identified important creative elements with regards to the three components of a digital story and how they were embodied in each digital story produced as a result of the students’ joint constructionist activity. Implications: Our study provides some preliminary evidence that collaborative creativity from a constructionist perspective can stand as an appropriate framework for designing learning activities addressing the difficult concept of sustainability. There are several implications for both theory and educational practice in environmental education and education for sustainable development, constructionism, and digital storytelling in education. Moreover, our study opens up new fields for research and theory in creativity. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Learning about Urban Sustainability with Digital Stories: Promoting Collaborative Creativity from a Constructionist Perspective” by Maria Daskolia, Chronis Kynigos & Katerina Makri. Upshot: Daskolia, Kynigos and Makri’s article offers us a view into potential applications of constructionist learning theory to help students conceive of and collaborate on solutions to today’s complex problems. This work in many ways parallels the efforts of those investigating systems thinking and highlights the importance of digital production in that (...) process. While many efforts rely on simulations and models, the authors place centrally the role of digital production in understanding complexity. This, in turn, calls our attention to the affordances and limitations of our current tools for facilitating learning and collaboration, and ultimately to the need for new tools. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Definitions of medical futility, offered by healthcare professionals, bioethicists and other experts, have been rigorously debated by many investigators, but the perceptions of patients of futility have been explored only by a few. Patients were allowed to discuss their concerns about end-of-life care, so that their ideas about treatment futility or utility could be extrapolated by us.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with 30 elderly people who were receiving outpatient care in a large, (...) urban Veterans Affairs medical centre in the US. Each of their healthcare providers was also interviewed. Participants were asked to consider four terms commonly used in advance directive forms and to discuss what these terms meant to them. Audiotapes of the open-ended interviews were transcribed and responses were coded and categorised by constant comparison, a commonly used qualitative method.Results: The following four factors were taken into account by the participants when discussing end-of-life interventions and outcomes: expected quality of life; emotional and financial costs of treatment; likelihood of treatment success; and expected effect on longevity.Conclusions: Although the terms “utility” or “futility” were not generally used by the participants, segments of speech indicating their perceptions of these terms were identified. Treatment was not always discussed in the same way by patients and providers, but seemed to reflect the same four concerns. Therefore, it may be fruitful for providers to focus on these concerns when discussing end-of-life treatment options with their patients. (shrink)

A distinction between basic archetypes of urban form was made by Bruno Fortier: the accumulation city as opposed to the creation city. These archetypes derive from archaeology - being based on the Roman and the Egyptian city - but are interpreted as morphological paradigms, as a set of assumptions and underpinnings determining spatial planning and design. The creation city is described as expression of modernity - the paradigmatic origins of which can be traced back to Descartes’ ideas on the (...) city - analysed as an ontology of destruction, among other things. A conceptual framework connecting the creation city to modernity is presented by interpreting Fortier’s archetypes through the anthropological work of W.T. Jones. Influenced by postmodern cultural analysis and architectural discourse, the paradigmatic importance of the accumulation city seems to increase. It is argued that interest in the accumulation city is related to a discord which is characteristic of modernity but which seems to be denied by the urbanistic modernism of the 20th century. Methodologically, we argue that modernism should be seen as part of a post-paradigmatic phase of modernity rather than as an expression of modernity at its zenith. It is argued that the discord of modernism should not lead to a discussion of modernism and postmodernism as contrary paradigms, but that the understanding of the city oscillates dialectically between these two paradigms. (shrink)

_In _Challenging the One Best System_, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the “portfolio management model.”_ They investigate the degree to which this model—a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy—challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as “the one best system.” The authors examine the design and enactment of the (...) portfolio management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, _Challenging the One Best System_ represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education. (shrink)

Many older people need external support for their daily living. A large minority of older adults with low or modest pension incomes face financial strains from the high cost of illness, and many older people in urban areas live in social isolation. Indeed, population aging has become a policy topic of concern. The policy debate since the end of the twentieth century about the future of public pensions and health and long‐term care programs has increasingly framed the growing numbers (...) of older people in alarmist terms. Unfounded claims about the unaffordability and unsustainability of social policies supporting older people have become common currency, often disguised as concerns about intergenerational justice. Such claims and concerns hinder clear thinking about proper social and fiscal policies, housing, health care, and labor markets to safeguard the well‐being of older people in aging societies. (shrink)

Various human groups, from food foragers to inner-city urban Americans, have used widespread sharing of resources through kin networks as a means of buffering themselves against fluctuations in resource availability in their environments. This paper addresses the effects of progressive incorporation into a wage-labor economy on the benefits of traditional kin networks for two social classes in urban South India. Predictions regarding the effects of kin network wealth, education, and size on child and spouse characteristics and methods of (...) financing marriages are tested using various regression techniques. Despite the rapid growth of participation in a wage-labor economy, it is found that kin network characteristics still have an important impact on investment behavior among families in Bangalore in both social classes. Network wealth is found to have a positive effect on child and spouse characteristics, and large networks are found to act as significant drains on family resources. However, the results for education are broadly consistent with an interpretation of increasing family autonomy as parents’ education has a far stronger influence on child and spouse characteristics across categories than network education does. Finally, professional-class parents are found to prefer financing marriages using formal mechanisms such as savings and bank loans while working-class parents preferentially finance marriages using credit from relatives and friends. (shrink)

Religious Evolution and the Axial Age describes and explains the evolution of religion over the past ten millennia. It shows that an overall evolutionary sequence can be observed, running from the spirit and shaman dominated religions of small-scale societies, to the archaic religions of the ancient civilizations, and then to the salvation religions of the Axial Age. Stephen K. Sanderson draws on ideas from new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, history, and sociology. He argues (...) that religion is a biological adaptation that evolved in order to solve a number of human problems, especially those concerned with existential anxiety and ontological insecurity. Much of the focus of the book is on the Axial Age, the period in the second half of the first millennium BCE that marked the greatest religious transformation in world history. The book demonstrates that, as a result of massive increases in the scale and scope of war and large-scale urbanization, the problems of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity became particularly acute. These changes evoked new religious needs, especially for salvation and release from suffering. As a result entirely new religions-Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism-arose to help people cope with the demands of the new historical era. (shrink)