1,720,969 research outputs found
Localizing children’s play spaces through the child friendly city lens : Reframing tools for children’s inclusivity in Mzuzu City, Malawi
No full textThis paper draws on a review of childhood discourses on child focused literature and content analysis of some of Malawi’s planning instruments to argue that Mzuzu City is not a child-friendly city. Specifically, the planning instruments which include the planning law, national urban policy, planning guide book and Mzuzu city structure plan which dictate public space apportioned for various activities are noted to fulfill the needs and aspirations of adults at the expense of children’s play needs. Furthermore, despite the fact that a malleable definition of childhood is likely to accommodate the lived experiences of children living in the City, child agency is conspicuously absent. This paper suggests that there is need to reframe these planning instruments as a way of reimaging the built environment to capture the needs and aspirations of children as it does for adults.
 
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Understanding the context of informality: urban planning under different land tenure systems in Mzuzu city, Malawi
Get PDFA key feature of urbanisation in African and many other Global South cities is the prevalence and persistence of urban informal settlements. Despite planning attempts and claims to directly address and contain informal settlements, informality nonetheless continues to be the dominant form of shelter. However, there is insufficient understanding of how and why informality persists in the African urban context and why urban planning seems unable to engage with this aspect of urban growth and change. This situation also prevails in Malawian cities. This study sought to explore and understand the role of state-society engagements in the production and proliferation of housing informality in Mzuzu City. The thesis is informed by a recognition that planning theory has predominantly relied on Global North (Western) ideologies such as Habermesian inspired collaborative and communicative planning approaches which argue that consensus can realise planning goals and visions. The appeal, and hence adoption and application of these approaches in the Global South have largely failed to deliver the kind of planning outcomes seen in the Global North for many reasons, including the different political power dynamics and colonial historical contexts within which planning operates. The state-society engagements in the Global South contexts show that the state, rather than regulating development, is implicated in the production of informality in ways similar to those of inhabitants. These contexts point to the need to develop planning concepts which have a better relevance in rapidly growing and under-resourced urban settlements in the Global South. The thesis contributes to an emerging body of knowledge that has come to be called the Global South Planning Theory Project. The scholars promoting this project argue for the importance of context in planning theory development and in this case the need to consider the contribution of the Global South to planning and understanding of the urbanisation processes. In this regard, the thesis draws on various Global South concepts such as informality as a mode of urbanisation (Roy, 2009), gray spaces (Yiftachel, 2009), conflicting rationalities (Watson 2003), quiet encroachment (Bayat, 2010), insurgency (Holston, 2008) and hidden transcripts (Scott,1990) to frame the analysis of housing informality in Mzuzu City. The case study method (Yin 2014) was used to collect and analyse data from three informal settlements of Luwinga, Salisburyline and Geisha each having developed on land of a specific tenure: customary, public and private, respectively. Interviews and discussions were held with state officials, chiefs, block leaders, clan leaders, and senior citizens as well as groups of inhabitants in form of focus group discussions. Observations, literature review and archival data supplemented the information from the interviews and discussions. The analysis of the results indicates that state-society engagement in the informal settlements is about the application of the various strategies by each side in seeking to either achieve planned orderly urban growth or the right to land and life in the city. The study also shows that these strategies manifest, from the perspective of the state, through several laws, policies, regulations, and an assortment of practices that the planning system uses as a tool of the state. Among the state strategies are threats of evictions, demolitions and organising citizens to participate in development committees. However, when the state utilises these strategies, it is not always for the achievement of planned orderly urban growth as professed, but on many occasions for revenue generation through property taxation, for land control, for vote-gaining or for personal gain. On the other hand, inhabitants use threats of court action, violence, collaboration with state actors, hidden transcripts (Scott, 1990), spatial protests ( Yakobi, 2004) and quiet encroachment (Bayat, 2010) to achieve their objectives to retain their land rights, to provide their basic need of shelter and to stay in the city. The inhabitants seeking survival strategies were also found not immune to the clientelist ambitions of local politicians. The study noted the shifting state discourses of informal settlements from a view of them as utter illegality to gradual political acceptance or regularisation of their existence. Finally, the study found many aspects of rationality conflicts, which either occurred between the state and society directly, among state actors, among citizen actors and across the two spheres. Within the state, ethical conflicts in which state officials deliberately frustrated the visioning of planned orderly urban growth were found to be rampant. State-society engagements therefore can be said to be a contributor to housing informality. In the case of Mzuzu, these engagements occur in multiple settlements regardless of land tenure situation. These engagements suggest that rationality conflicts occur within multi-layered settings, across state-society spheres as well as beyond specific project interventions implemented within single settlements
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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