3659 research outputs found
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Implementation of Design for Safety (DfS) in Construction in Developing Countries: A Study of Designers in Malaysia
Get PDFDesign for Safety (DfS) is a concept that emphasises eliminating health and safety hazards to construction workers in the design phase. However, despite the importance of DfS implementation, there are limited studies on DfS in developing countries, including Malaysia. This research, therefore, investigates DfS implementation among design professionals in the Malaysian construction industry through a questionnaire survey. The response was analysed by conducting descriptive analyses and inferential statistical tests. The findings revealed a high implementation of DfS practices among designers parallel with having high awareness of DfS concept and a positive attitude towards DfS implementation. However, the engagement in DfS professional training is low, despite the fact that the designers showed a high interest in DfS professional training. While the findings revealed limited association between the implementation of DfS practices and designers’ professional body membership, designers’ professional role, and the size of designers’ organisation, the findings also showed that DfS awareness and DfS training were associated with greater implementation of DfS practices. Furthermore, the design professionals perceive DfS education, client’s influence and DfS legislation as being the most important factors that affect DfS implementation in Malaysia. This study adds to the current DfS body of knowledge by providing deeper insights into the current state of designer awareness, education training, influencing factors, and DfS engagement, especially when DfS legislative framework is in place. Such findings could serve as a guide for other countries in the event of future developments related to DfS implementation
Youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of Lephalale: The struggle for employment and climate justice in a coal-rich region of South Africa
Get PDFSouthern Africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected. The region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. Despite the fact that young people in the region are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from policy and decision- making spaces – especially those living in global and urban peripheries. In this article, I speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics. I do so by unpacking the everyday concerns and negotiations of youth activists in the urban periphery of Lephalale in Limpopo, South Africa – not typically seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. Lephalale is viewed as a future hub of power generation in South Africa, the rapid growth of the town being based on the expansion of coal extractivism. The complexities and paradoxes around how youth are navigating their futures in this site of mega coal projects are explored through two case studies: the Lephalale Unemployment Forum and the Waterberg Environmental Justice Forum. With climate and environmental catastrophe producing both shrinking futures and horizons of possibility, I argue that youth contestation and negotiation of their futures hold out possibilities, even with their contradictions, for collective reimagining of urban space and development.
Through the methodology I employed to explore these negotiations and contestations, I aimed to be cognisant of how research is embedded in context-specific power-laden social relations. While it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationship-building before, during and after the research, which would be the basis for a collaborative research project years later. This way of conducting slow research is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as for research that traverses the boundary between academia and social movements in this time of crisis
Decentralisation and local governance in Nigeria: issues, challenges and prospects
Get PDFNigeria is a decentralised federation with a three-tier system of federal, state and local governments. Arising from this decentralisation, local governments are empowered to exercise certain powers and responsibilities in areas relating to grassroots development, local democracy and service delivery. Hence, local government plays a pivotal role in local governance. This paper synthesises studies on local government in Nigeria within the broader context of decentralisation and local governance. It takes a careful look at the emergence of local government in Nigeria as well as the debate on local government autonomy. The paper reveals that Nigeria’s decentralisation policy has largely failed to deliver autonomy to local governments, whose funds, functions and activities are controlled by state governments. Key challenges to the effective performance of local government include inadequate funding, constitutional ambivalence, abuse of state control, political instability and corruption. The paper ends with recommendations for improving the functioning of local government to enhance local governance
Religion and Cosmopolitan Society: Religious Conflict Settlement based on Legal Culture
Get PDFConflicts occur when people believe that they are different from others and conflict in religion is no different. Religious conflicts in Poso and conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites in East Java have the effects of conflict, including protracted social friction, which prevents the development of a cohesive community. This research uses a socio-legal approach, where the study of law combines the approach of legal and social sciences. Establishing a way to settle religious conflicts is done by drawing up a legal basis for a settlement that accommodates human rights and democracy, emphasizing horizontal relations between religious communities. The existence of a legal culture becomes a meeting point for religious views, namely, prioritizing human rights. So, in the future, resolving conflicts based on legal culture in a cosmopolitan society is recommended
Drone Readiness in the Indonesian Construction Industry
Get PDFDespite being perceived as a traditional industry, the construction industry is slowly being ushered into the Construction 4.0 era. Drone technology is seen as a disruptive, game-changing technology that has the potential to improve performance across all construction phases. However, despite the size of the country and its rapidly growing construction industry, research on drone technology in the Indonesian construction industry is limited. This research, therefore, aims to assess the drone readiness of construction practitioners in Indonesia and use the findings to recommend ways to promote its use. Readiness in this research is reflected by levels of understanding, utilisation, and interest in drone technology, as well as barriers to using drones at work. Data collected using a questionnaire survey from Surabaya, the second largest city in the country, reveal that, despite the relatively high level of interest, levels of understanding and utilisation are low. Furthermore, the lack of skilled human resources, risks associated with using drones, high costs, and limited information about drone suppliers are barriers that hinder the adoption of this technology in the Indonesian construction industry. This study fills the gap in the current research on the use of drone technology in the construction industry and provides a basis for practitioners or researchers to promote the application of the technology
Religious Advertising in Ukraine: Political and Social Contexts
Get PDFReligious advertising is a new phenomenon in the Ukrainian media space. Starting from 2019 to the time of writing, it has been right in the middle of political battles as a public platform that represents the idea of the Independent Ukrainian Church. Religious advertising with a strong political component has become part of the conflict discourse and is qualified by experts as manipulation. In religious advertising with its social convergence, the creative impulse is mainly formed with verbal means that shape a new cognitive style of gaining religious experience. The new features are represented in God\u27s speech behavior, speech style, communicative situations with His participation, role distribution, genre preferences and the emotional background of communicative interactions. Ukrainian religious advertising strives to balance short-term political interests and long-term social interests along with eternal values.
 
Channelling a Haunting: Deconstructing Settler Memory and Forgetting about New Zealand History at National Institutions
Get PDFThe Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories curriculum will be compulsory in 2023; what and how New Zealand history will be taught is currently up for debate. An innovative approach to engaging key curriculum understandings like colonisation, settlement and power would recognise that settler sensibilities frame national histories, to make visible the ongoing structuring force of colonisation. To this end, we present a model for teaching students how to consider a relationship between national identity, collective memory, and colonial history; to read settler cultural bias embedded in national institutions. Channelling a haunting is a process whereby students are encouraged to think and feel as though absent and silenced histories of colonial violence are not resolved, and to critique how settler memory and forgetting about New Zealand history permeates exhibitions at national institutions. Findings from a small group of student teachers who were channelling a haunting at two museums housing documents of national significance show how lovely and difficult knowledge about colonial history can create a sense of embodied racial comfort that legitimises the status quo. Rather than perceive national institutions as culturally neutral, students of all ages may be taught to critically analyse how they are biased to settler perspectives
Decentralisation, revenue and the capital city: the case of Kampala, Uganda
Get PDFThis commentary examines the demise in 2010 of the Kampala City Council, and the factors that led to its replacement by the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA). It outlines some of the different institutional arrangements associated with the establishment of KCCA and resulting changes in the overall management of the city, the outcomes of those changes, and the implications for Uganda’s decentralisation processes, as analysed through the specific lens of the city’s revenues. Finally, it discusses how many of these reforms may be, perhaps necessarily, short-lived as a result of the tensions they created
Fact Sheets on decentralisation in Africa
Get PDFFact Sheets on Decentralisation in Africa provide clear and accessible materials to assist policymakers, practitioners, students and the public at large to better understand the various concepts and mechanisms associated with decentralisation. They focus primarily on local government and unpack the ‘toolbox’ of instruments and concepts that make up the broader framework for decentralisation. These concepts are often difficult, multifaceted and located in complex theory. The aim of the Fact Sheets is to present them in such a way that they can be understood by a wide range of audiences, and which identifies, explains and distinguishes key concepts relevant to the African context
Visualising the invisible: collaborative approaches to local-level resilient development in the Pacific Islands region
Get PDFThe Pacific Islands region has made strong progress on the integration of climate change, disaster management and development frameworks, particularly via the Pacific Urban Agenda and the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific. These frameworks highlight the need for local- level collaboration in achieving ambitious pathways for climate- and disaster-resilient development. However, to date little research has investigated the role that local-level collaboration plays in implementation. Additionally, there is a lack of guidance on how to design and implement local-level collaboration that is informed by in-country practitioner experiences. This study addresses those gaps. Its findings indicate that in the Pacific collaborative attributes span individuals, institutions, collaborative arrangements, and broader governance systems. They also suggest that the skills needed to undertake collaboration well at the local level are, in part, already manifest in Pacific cultures as invisible skill sets. More can be done to make the invisible visible by documenting and developing the ‘soft skills’ that are necessary to achieve climate- and disaster-resilient development. This action could contribute to bridging the gap between ambition and reality
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