Tackling Social Exclusion: The Role of Social Capital in Urban Regeneration on Merseyside — From Mistrust to Trust?

In recent years community involvement and increasingly social capital have become central themes in debates and policies surrounding urban regeneration. This paper attempts to contribute to these debates by reviewing the role of social capital in the context of a major regeneration initiative, namely the European Union-sponsored Objective One Programme, currently underway on Merseyside. The paper argues that it is important to show how social capital is formed through the 'scaling-up' of local associational relationships, networks and institutions, to wider power structures and relations. Trust amongst participants is central to this process. Two areas on Merseyside are used as case studies to illustrate the argument. The paper concludes that the active development of trust and the social relationships surrounding it needs to be central to the process of urban regeneration.     

A LINEAR PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO SOLVING INFEASIBLE RAS PROBLEMS

ABSTRACT The RAS procedure is widely used to update national and regional input-output tables and international trade tables and to construct regional tables from national ones. Special problems, however, have been encountered when the procedure is used to adjust interregional trade tables. In this paper, the special properties of interregional trade tables that increase the likelihood of nonconvergence of the RAS procedure are discussed, and two linear programming methods of solving infeasible RAS problems are provided. First, a closed linear programming approach, which enables exogenous information to override the purely mechanical solution of infeasible RAS problems, is presented. Finally, the open linear programming approach is applied successfully to adjust U.S. interregional trade data that had previously failed to converge using the RAS procedure.     

THE FORGOTTEN WOMEN: A HISTORY OF MIGRANT LABOUR AND GENDER RELATIONS IN VANUATU

Writing on the labour trade focuses on the question of whether Melanesian labourers recruited to work in Australia and Fiji were kidnapped slaves, or willing volunteers. This debate about victims versus actors tends however to be constructed from the viewpoint of the male recruit. The small minority of Melanesian women who were recruited are typically seen as motivated to go because of love or sexual relations with men, and are sometimes portrayed as ‘prostitutes‘. Through an examination of some primary sources, secondary interpretative histories and the oral history of one region of Vanuatu, this paper queries this image of women in the labour trade. It suggests moreover, that the labour trade must be seen as having dramatic effects on relations between women and men in Vanuatu's villages.     

Policy options for full employment: Which way forward for Australia

This paper seeks to review the long‐term policy choices Australia faces if full employment is to be restored. Using cross‐national data for the period 1972–88, it identifies the variety of routes taken to mass unemployment and full employment It then discusses the diverse policy strategies underlying routes to full employment and examines the possibility and desirability of their adoption in Australia.     

MUNICIPAL WASTE RECYCLING IN BRANDON, MANITOBA: DETERMINANTS OF PARTICIPATORY BEHAVIOUR

The municipal waste disposal crisis has received considerable public attention in recent years, particularly as it has become increasingly difficult, both financially and politically, to dispose of the steadily growing volume of waste. With municipalities under pressure to find acceptable alternatives to the traditional forms of refuse disposal - landfilling and incineration - the recycling of household waste has been advocated by policy makers and some environmentalists as a possible solution. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors influencing the collection and disposal of household recyclables, as well as the effectiveness of institutional strategies to induce residents' participation in such a program. The study area is the city of Brandon, Manitoba, a settlement of some 40 000 people, 210 kilometres west of Winnipeg. To obtain a representative overview of the recycling behaviour of the population, three groups totalling a sample of 490 respondents, were investigated. Two of these groups were made up of people who actively recycle, and the third constituted a control group made up of those who do not engage in recycling activities. An overview of the municipal initiatives in Brandon, and an analysis of the data collected in the study, as well as statistics available on recycling programs from other sources, indicate that the recently introduced services and facilities have contributed to make significant qualitative changes but with limited success in dealing with the real magnitude of the solid waste problem. It is suggested that the goals of the various strategies have been established, but there is currently little incentive -apart from personal satisfaction - for residents to participate. This would seem to explain the limited success, in quantitative terms, of the programs to date     

Institutionalizing Participatory,Client-Driven Research and Technology Development in Agriculture

This article identifies key characteristics of participatory research and development(R&D) in the agricultural sector: it is client-driven, requires decentralized technology development, devolves to farmers the major responsibility for adaptive testing, and requires institutions and individuals to become accountable for the relevance and quality of technology on offer. Through case study material drawn from Latin America, Asia and Africa, the article then reviews ways by which institutions have responded to these characteristics and raises issues for further elaboration. Steps need to be taken, in particular, to safeguard equity, both between the more and less vocal groups of farmers, and between the requirements of present and future generations (the latter referring particularly to environmental concerns). It is argued that participatory R&D alone is insufficient to deliver innovations relevant to diverse client groups: policy mechanisms are required to define which clients are to participate, whose agendas are to drive the process, and what organizational innovations are needed to move agricultural R&D in these directions.