Deciding How to Decide: Cultural Theory and Rule Making in Collaborative Watershed Organizations

The growing field of collaborative governance has long sought to explain processes of collective decision making. Insights from institutional analysis highlight the influence of rules in shaping collective decisions. Yet, less is known about how such rules are created; in other words, how collaborative organizations decide how to decide. By drawing on concepts from Cultural Theory, we examine the connections between worldviews and decision rules across four collaborative watershed organizations in Ohio, United States. Results from this comparative case analysis indicate correlations between the group dimension of worldview and decision rules about choice, as well as between the grid dimension of worldview and two different types of decision rules, choice and aggregation. These results highlight the explanatory value of integrating aspects of Cultural Theory with the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Results also suggest how governments might more effectively engage with collaborative organizations.     

The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.     

Red Brick in the Land of Steady Habits: Creating the Univeristy of Connecticut, 1881-2006

At first blush, the opportunity to read the history of a universityfrom which you did not graduate, for which you do not work,or near which you do not live, may not sound all that appealing.However, to dismiss Bruce M. Stave's Red Brick in the Land ofSteady Habits: Creating the University of Connecticut, 1881–2006would be a mistake of considerable proportions, for not onlyis the volume enlightening with regard to higher education inthe United States over the course of the twentieth century,it is also the proverbial "good read." Stave,     

Territorial Appeals in Post‐Wall German Filmmaking: The Case of Good Bye,Lenin!

Abstract: How do institutions, markets, and stakeholders influence what stories are feasible and profitable for filmmakers to tell? This article discusses appeals to territorial interest and identity in filmmaking in post‐wall Germany and the conditions that shape them. By tracing the emergence of the film Good Bye, Lenin! (2003), we see how the project accumulated support from some territories and not others; how filmmakers persuaded colleagues and critics of their interpretation's legitimacy; and how individuals and institutions shape how the film would be used and remembered. My objective is to draw attention to the messiness and uncertainty as multiple stakeholders align, contest, or subsume competing appeals that would be otherwise invisible in a “finished” film. Addressing those interested in the geopolitics of cultural production, the article argues for more attention to the behind‐the‐scenes negotiations in funding, production, and distribution processes in order to keep issues of power and dependence visible.