‘I’m not in it for the money’: Constructing and mediating ethical reconnections in UK social banking

Over the last decade a range of social banks and Community Development Finance Initiatives (CDFIs) have developed a social investment sector in the UK. Some of these organisations emphasise their belief in partnership, association, reconnecting and re-humanising the relationship between investors with borrowers in order to reap social returns. ‘Ethical’ investors are encouraged to take sub-market returns on their investments in order for surpluses to be distributed to the organisations’ beneficiaries. Some key theoretical and political questions include: how are investors enrolled in these initiatives? What discourses of ethics are constructed and how do investors relate to them? How do these discourses relate to debates in geography revolving around ‘caring at a distance’? Drawing on work on the Charity Bank and the Industrial Common Ownership Fund (ICOF), this paper analyses how these discourses are constructed and mediates the relationship between investors and borrowers. It explores stakeholders both investors’ and borrowers’ perceptions of these activities as well as the way investors construct their own reasons for investing.     

Is being in work good for wellbeing? Work Integration Social Enterprises in regional Australia

ABSTRACT

Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISE) offer supported work environments for people experiencing disadvantage, including people with disability. This paper reflects on a research project that is mapping the ways in which social enterprises in regional Australian cities produce wellbeing for their employees. Through supported employment programs, these organisations are transforming individual lives, helping to build a sense of self-worth and purpose, and increase individuals’ social skills and capacities. Many of the perceived benefits are associated with a belief in the innate good of paid work. Based upon interviews with employees in the social enterprises, it is apparent that the hopes attached to providing ‘meaningful work’ are considerable. At the same time social enterprises are taking on social responsibilities that were once provided by the state, while also selling their services as employers of disabled and disadvantaged members of society and maintaining commercial viability of the enterprise. Using feminist political economy alongside discussion of the distributive economy, this paper explores how contemporary policy conditions, productivist biases and normative discourses about the value of wage work inflect the forms of wellbeing that can be experienced by WISE workers.     

基于潜能模型的医疗设施空间可达性评价方法

空间可达性是评价医疗设施布局合理与否的重要指标,传统的医疗设施空间可达性评价,或者从医疗服务供需状况着手,或者从供需双方之间距离因素着手,均无法全面评价居民实际所能获取的医疗资源。本文采用基于潜能模型的评价方法对江苏省如东县医疗设施空间可达性进行分析研究,该方法综合考虑了医疗设施服务能力、居民点人口数量、医疗设施与居民点之间的出行阻抗。研究表明,通过选取合适的出行摩擦系数,该方法能够较为全面准确地测度较小研究单元的医疗设施空间可达性,辅以GIS技术,可以很直观地揭示研究区域内医疗设施空间可达性差异,结合公共卫生管理部门制定的医疗资源配置标准,还可较为准确判定缺医地区,为政府相关部门规划决策提供依据。     

Positionality and Praxis: Fieldwork Experiences in Rural India

This paper provides a reflexive account of conducting fieldwork as a graduate student in the Sunderban area of West Bengal state, India, in the mid‐1990s. Reflecting on my personal experiences of research in a setting that was simultaneously familiar and foreign, I use frames of positionality to understand the impact of explicit and implied power structures on the research process, the relationships between the researcher and those researched, and the transfer of knowledge. This paper argues that the multiple subject positions and identities of both scholar and subjects as presented in the field vary with setting, and that these positionalities affect access to informants, the tenor and outcomes of encounters, and knowledge production. While self‐reflexivity is endorsed as a strategy for critically informed research, active measures such as openness about the agenda and activities undertaken, self‐disclosure, making conscious accommodations for the research subject's work schedule and time constraints, mutual sharing of information, and explicit recognition of the research subjects' expertise through lived experiences are proposed as strategies for equalising the power balance between scholar and subject.     

SARS in Singapore—challenges of a global health threat to local institutions

SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has been declared by WHO (World Health Organisation) as a global health threat. Within a period of four to five months in 2003, the disease infected some 8,000 people in more than 25 countries and left 774 dead. The many studies that have been done on the spread of SARS in Asia as well as countries as far flung as Germany and Canada have focused on the global dimension of the infectious disease as well as the speed of its spread upon emergence in southern China and then Hong Kong. Less attention has been paid to its spatial distribution at the national and local scales. This discussion focuses on the spread of SARS at the national and local spatial scales. In the process, the study presents the management of a hazard, in this case, an emerging infectious disease by national health care institutions such as the hospitals that ultimately proved to have been wholly unprepared for coping with at least the health aspects of the outcome of a globalised national agenda for growth and economic progress.     

Environmental ethics and regional sustainable development

The scientific environmental ethics plays a key role in the recognition of the human- environment interactions. Modern environmental ethics is the philosophical re-thinking of modern human race environmental behavior. The development of environmental ethics theory, as well as its application in reality, determines the viewpoints of environmental ethics. Sustainable development implies harmony on human-environment interactions and inter- generation responsibility, with emphasis on a harmonious relationship among population, resources, environment and development, so as to lay a sustainable and healthy foundation of resources and environment for future generations. The harmonious society construction in China that is raised by the Chinese central government should be covered by environmental ethics. The connotation of open environmental ethics includes a respect for nature, care for the individual human race, and respect for the development of future generations, which means giving consideration to natural values, individual and human race benefits and welfare across generations. The role of environmental ethics in regional development consists of cognition, criticism, education, inspiration, adjusting, legislation and promoting environmental regulations. The major problems in regional development are extensive resource exploration, fast population growth, irrational industrial structure, unfair welfare distribution and the twofold effects of science and technology development. The formulation of environmental ethics that aims at regional sustainable development, can not only harmonize the relationship of population, resource, environment and economic development, but also guide behavior selection, push social and political system transformation, strengthen the legal system, and raise environmental awareness of the public.     

EUROPE AND AMERICA: THE REORIENTATION IN GEOGRAPHICAL COMMUNICATION IN THE POST-WAR PERIOD∗

The effects of intra-farm distance on farm income have not been previously tested in North America. European studies are inconclusive as they use data taken from bookkeeping accounts for the farm as a whole. This paper calls for field-to-field farm analyses that combine internal movement costs with costs of production, yields, and farm-gate prices. In a study applying this method to Manitoba grain farms, it was found that adjustments in the organization and intensity of farming offset the effects of distance on net income.     

“Placing” Interviews: Location and Scales of Power in Qualitative Research

For qualitative researchers, selecting appropriate sites in which to conduct interviews may seem to be a relatively simple research design issue. In fact it is a complicated decision with wide‐reaching implications. In this paper, we argue that the interview site itself embodies and constitutes multiple scales of spatial relations and meaning, which construct the power and positionality of participants in relation to the people, places, and interactions discussed in the interview. We illustrate how observation and analysis of interview sites can offer new insights with respect to research questions, help researchers understand and interpret interview material, and highlight particular ethical considerations that researchers need to address.     

区域可持续发展中的环境伦理案例分析:不同社会群体责任

环境伦理是对人与自然之间道德关系的认知,在区域发展中构建可持续发展的环境伦理观是实现人与环境协调的核心内容。从区域发展的案例入手,从哲学层面分析区域发展中人与环境产生冲突的原因,构建区域可持续发展环境伦理观,明确不同利益主体应承担的环境伦理责任与义务,是实现可持续发展的必要内容。本文对云南省林浆纸一体化工程进行环境伦理探讨,分析了桉树种植的土地资源、生态效应、纸浆生产的环境影响、经济效益、利益流向等一系列问题;从环境伦理角度对林浆纸工程进行分析,提出了可持续发展环境伦理观建立和环境伦理规范,认为在利益冲突的形势下,应该遵循"非人类中心"的环境伦理准则,贯彻人地和谐的自然观,综合考虑生态安全原则、综合效益原则、公平原则、共赢竞争原则,采取综合思维方法,构建可持续发展的环境伦理观;分析不同社会团体在区域可持续发展建设中的环境伦理责任,提出了决策者群体、企业家群体、媒介群体、科学家群体、公众群体等在环境伦理意识、环境伦理责任、环境伦理义务等方面所应起到的作用。     

Effect of Mothers' Exposure to Electronic Mass Media on Knowledge and Use of Prenatal Care Services: A Comparative Analysis of Indian States*

The Government of India considers prenatal care programs as a priority activity for promoting safe motherhood and child survival. It relies heavily on electronic mass media, including radio, television, and cinema to educate mothers—two‐thirds of whom are illiterate—about prenatal check‐ups and timing, iron prophylaxis, and tetanus toxoid injections. This study evaluated the effect of mothers' exposure to electronic mass media on knowledge and use of prenatal care services, using data from India's 1998–1999 National Family Health Survey. Multivariate logistic regressions were used to estimate the effects of media exposure by calculating odds ratios of each of the four response variables (complete prenatal care services, prenatal check‐ups, tetanus toxoid injections, and iron prophylaxes) for exposure to mass media. The results indicated that exposure to mass media is related to the use of prenatal care services even when other likely causes of the relationships are statistically controlled at their mean. The effect also showed a north‐south divide among the Indian States, being stronger in northern states as compared with southern states.