Clueless in the city: conceptualizations of the city in German environmentalism

"Um erfolgreich zu sein, brauchen soziale Bewegungen ein Credo, das Eigenschaften, Ursachen und mögliche Lösungen eines sozialen Problems so popularisiert, dass potentielle Anhänger und Unterstützer motiviert sind, sich in vielfältigen Formen zu engagieren. In dem Vortrag werden die Verfasser argumentieren, dass es den deutschen Umweltschutzbewegungen in den verschiedenen Zeitepochen bisher nicht gelungen ist ein anziehendes Gesellschaftsmodell zu entwickeln, in dem die 'Stadt' bzw. urbane Lebensformen einen positiven Beitrag zur Qualität der Umwelt leisten können. Dies ist immer ein Kernmangel der Bewegung gewesen und bleibt es vermutlich auch in Zukunft. Dieses Manko ist tief verwurzelt in der Geschichte der deutschen Umweltbewegungen. Der Vortrag wird Grundzüge dieser spezifischen Vorkriegsgeschichte der Stadtfeindlichkeit darstellen. Desgleichen werden die neue Umweltbewegung der 70er und 80er Jahren analysiert. Erst jetzt wurde hier die Stadt in eine umfassende gegenkulturelle Theorie von Umweltproblemen und -lösungen einbezogen. Die Stadt und ihre Industrien allerdings wurden auch in diesen Konzepten lediglich als Verursacher der Probleme betrachtet. Einige der von der Umweltbewegung geförderten Maßnahmen konnten durchgesetzt werden, aber die Hiobsbotschaften auf das eigene Auto und das eigene Haus im Grünen zu verzichten, wie auf den Konsum, waren nicht umzusetzen. Obwohl die Umweltorganisationen heute auch weiterhin viele Unterstützer haben und sich eines gewissen Wachstums erfreuen können, haben sie ihre Strategien insofern geändert, dass jetzt der Naturschutz in Deutschland und in den Entwicklungsländern in den Vordergrund gestellt wird. Im Kampf gegen den Stadtverkehr und Landschaftszersiedlung werden nur noch Rückzugsgefechte betrieben und eine grundsätzliche Kritik der städtischen Konsumgesellschaft wird nicht mehr propagiert. Gleichwohl könnten diese neuen Konzepte zur nachhaltigen Stadtentwicklung ironischerweise die Eckpfeiler eines positiven Konzepts von Stadt und Umwelt begründen, dies allerdings, angesichts des wirtschaftspolitischen Klimas, mit bisher wenig Resonanz in Politik und in der Bevölkerung." (Autorenreferat

Bureaucratic Kind: Early Freshman Encounters with a Campus Bureaucracy

Abstract: A study examined the early encounters of traditional-age freshmen with a campus bureaucracy. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with traditional-age freshmen at a state university and with staff in the offices that dealt with them. The results revealed that although students did sometimes experience their encounters with the campus bureaucracy as annoying, frustrating, and confusing, their actions were mediated by their relative powerlessness and their interpretations of their experiences and options; that students' comments about their problems with the bureaucracy related to lines and waiting, impersonality, rules, the fact that specialized offices were scattered across various buildings, and paperwork; that students generally chose to be nonconfrontational when dealing with the bureaucracy; and that staff members experienced difficulties in trying to make the system work and managing their sometimes conflictual relationships with students. Administration | Bureaucracy | Colleges and Universities | Students | First yea

First Encounters of the Bureaucratic Kind: Early Freshman Experiences with a Campus Bureaucracy

A study examined the early encounters of traditional-age freshmen with a campus bureaucracy. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with traditional-age freshmen at a state university and with staff in the offices that dealt with them. The results revealed that although students did sometimes experience their encounters with the campus bureaucracy as annoying, frustrating, and confusing, their actions were mediated by their relative powerlessness and their interpretations of their experiences and options; that students' comments about their problems with the bureaucracy related to lines and waiting, impersonality, rules, the fact that specialized offices were scattered across various buildings, and paperwork; that students generally chose to be nonconfrontational when dealing with the bureaucracy; and that staff members experienced difficulties in trying to make the system work and managing their sometimes conflictual relationships with students

Sex stereotyping in children's toy advertisements

Forty-eight categories of toys were rated in terms of sex appropriateness by 48 students. A sample of 392 pictures of children with toys in 12 toy catalogs and 538 pictures of children with toys on toy packages in four retail stores was coded according to toy type and sex(es) of children shown. The rated sex stereotype of the toy category proved to be very strongly related to the sex(es) of the children shown with the toy in catalogs (r=.89) and on toy packages (r=.87). Toys rated as moderately sex typed by raters were just as strongly stereotyped in toy advertisements as those rated as strongly sex typed

Anti-Chinese Politics in California in the 1870s: An Inter-County Analysis

This article uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative historical data from all California counties to assess the efficacy of variables derived from the split labor market, cultural division of labor, and ethnic competitive models, as well as variables related to the organizational capacity of majority group workers, to predict efforts in late-nineteenth-century California to institutionalize discrimination against the Chinese through the political system. The results suggest that anti-Chinese voting and support for anti-Chinese legislation are best predicted by presence of large numbers of urbanized majority group workers and the level of organization they achieved and that this was especially true during the period of greatest conflict at the end of the 1870s

Working at Home: Experiences of Skilled White Collar Workers

Based on a comprehensive literature review and detailed semistructured interviews with skilled workers who work at home, this article explores six research areas: reasons for working at home, the creation and maintenance of home/work boundaries, problems of isolation, distractions and temptations facing at-home workers, workaholism, and gender differences. The results indicate that white collar workers usually choose to work at home to reduce work/family conflicts or because of factors in the external labor market. Problems of creating and maintaining home/work boundaries, isolation, distractions and temptations at home, and workaholism do exist, but there was evidence that they may have been exaggerated in previous writing about at-home work. A combination of gender and life course stage better predicts differences in the experiences of the interviewees than does gender alone

Nonprofit Decision Making and Resource Allocation: The Importance of Membership Preferences, Community Needs, and Interorganizational Ties

Data on 12 local chapters of a high status women’s community service organization and their communities are used to assess the relative impact of community needs, members’ perceptions and preferences, and interorganizational ties on decisions about how to allocate volunteers and funds among 17 community problem areas. Quantitative analysis indicates that the distribution of volunteer time and funds was unrelated to community needs as measured by objective indicators. Instead, members’ and leaders’ perceptions of the severity of community problems and their willingness to work in some problem areas more than others were the most important determinants of resource allocation. Qualitative evidence also suggests that members’ ties to other organizations played a role in the chapters’ decisions about project selection

Leadership in Voluntary Associations: The Case of the “International Association of Women

Three models of leadership in voluntary associations have been proposed in the literature: democratic leadership, oligarchy, and leadership by default. Through an intensive case study of leadership structure, differences in the attitudes of members and leaders at three hierarchical levels, and differences between the attitudes and behaviors of aspirants and nonaspirants to leadership in a women's service association, this article examines the degree of fit between these models and a specific organization. Data is drawn from questionnaires, annual reports, and interviews. The results fail to conform to any of the existing models, suggesting instead a fourth model, leadership for self-development—in which leaders are motivated primarily by a desire to develop administrative and interpersonal skills

Networking local environmental groups in Germany: The rise and fall of the federal alliance of citizens' initiatives for environmental protection (BBU)

From the mid-1970s well into the 1980s, the Federal Alliance of Citizens' Initiatives for Environmental Protection (BBU) was one of Germany's most visible and influential environmental organisations, an unusual achievement for a network of local organisations. Lacking strong competitors, it was able to become a central movement organisation for Germany's rapidly growing anti-nuclear power and environmental movements. However, after institutionalisation of environmental concerns robbed the movement of some of its impetus, competing social movement organisations appeared, and government subsidies ended, familiar problems of grass-roots networks, which had plagued the BBU from the beginning, intensified. The resulting downward spiral cost the BBU most of its members and its prominence