Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th–20th Century

Book Review: Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th-20th century Edited by Janice Helland, Beverley Lemire and Alena Buis Ashgate, February 2014; 245pp. 46 b&w illustrations; hardback £60.00 ISBN: 978-1-4094-6207-

Loosen Control Without Losing Control. Formalisation and Decentralisation within Commons-Based Peer Production

This study considers commons-based peer production (CBPP) by examining the organizational processes of the free/libre open-source software community, Drupal. It does so by exploring the sociotechnical systems that have emerged around both Drupal's development and its face-to-face communitarian events. There has been criticism of the simplistic nature of previous research into free software; this study addresses this by linking studies of CBPP with a qualitative study of Drupal's organizational processes. It focuses on the evolution of organizational structures, identifying the intertwined dynamics of formalization and decentralization, resulting in coexisting sociotechnical systems that vary in their degrees of organicity

Postsocialist disability matrix

This paper explores injustices experienced by disabled people in the postsocialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theory of social justice, the analysis proposes a ‘matrix’ that reveals the negative impact of two factors – state socialist legacy and postsocialist neoliberalization – on disabled people’s parity of participation in three dimensions of justice – economic redistribution, cultural recognition, and political representation. The legacy of state socialism has underpinned: segregated service provision; medical-productivist understanding of disability for assessment purposes; denial of disability on everyday level; and weak disability organizing. Neoliberal restructuring has resulted in: retrenchment of disability support through decentralization, austerity, and workfare; stigmatization of ‘dependency’ through the discourse of ‘welfare dependency’; responsibilization of disabled people; and depoliticization of disability organizations by restricting their activities to service provision and incorporating them in structures of tokenistic participation. The analysis is informed by reports and academic studies of disability in the postsocialist region

Fighting for a (wide enough) seat at the table: weight stigma in law and policy

Few jurisdictions provide legal protection against discrimination on the basis of weight despite evidence of pervasive inequalities faced by fat individuals in employment, healthcare, education, and other domains. Yet, in the last two decades, advocacy efforts in several countries aimed to remedy this situation have been largely unsuccessful. We present a cross-national conceptual analysis of three significant anti-discrimination developments regarding weight in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Iceland, respectively, to highlight how the creation, implementation, and enforcement of legal and policy mechanisms that prohibit weight discrimination ironically suffer under the very burden of deeply rooted structural stigmas against fatness and fat bodies that such efforts seek to counter. However, drawing on research around policy change in response to other social movements, we conclude that we may be at a time where broad-ranging policy change could become a reality

Common characteristics of open source software development and applicability for drug discovery: a systematic review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Innovation through an open source model has proven to be successful for software development. This success has led many to speculate if open source can be applied to other industries with similar success. We attempt to provide an understanding of open source software development characteristics for researchers, business leaders and government officials who may be interested in utilizing open source innovation in other contexts and with an emphasis on drug discovery.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A systematic review was performed by searching relevant, multidisciplinary databases to extract empirical research regarding the common characteristics and barriers of initiating and maintaining an open source software development project.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Common characteristics to open source software development pertinent to open source drug discovery were extracted. The characteristics were then grouped into the areas of participant attraction, management of volunteers, control mechanisms, legal framework and physical constraints. Lastly, their applicability to drug discovery was examined.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We believe that the open source model is viable for drug discovery, although it is unlikely that it will exactly follow the form used in software development. Hybrids will likely develop that suit the unique characteristics of drug discovery. We suggest potential motivations for organizations to join an open source drug discovery project. We also examine specific differences between software and medicines, specifically how the need for laboratories and physical goods will impact the model as well as the effect of patents.</p

Forest fragmentation and regrowth in an institutional mosaic of community, government and private ownership in Nepal

This study analyzes forest change in an area of Nepal that signifies a delicate balance between sustaining the needs and livelihood of a sizable human population dependent on forest products, and an effort to protect important wildlife and other natural resources. The study area, a portion of the Chitwan valley district of Nepal, represents what may be becoming a common institutional mosaic in many countries of the world who have a population reliant on forest products for their livelihood: (1) a national park; (2) a designated park buffer involving participatory forest management programs; (3) scattered patches of designated community forest; and (4) large areas of adjacent landscape made up of mostly private landholdings under agricultural practices. Utilizing Landsat images from 1989 and 2000, we analyze land cover change in each of these management zones using landscape ecology metrics and quantifying proportional distributions of land cover categories. Our results show significant differences in terms of land cover dynamics and landscape spatial pattern between these land ownership classes. These findings indicate that community-based institutions (participatory management programs in the park buffer and the designated community forests) are capable of halting or even reversing trends in deforestation and forest fragmentation