Zoekresultaten

Sociaal schaduwwerk

Sociaal schaduwwerk heeft betrekking op een variant van informeel sociaal werk. Het gaat om het werk van actoren die geen deel uitmaken van het formele sociale landschap, maar die in de praktijk wel degelijk activiteiten ontwikkelen die overeenkomen met sociaal werk zoals dat internationaal is gedefinieerd. De toevoeging van de term ‘schaduw’ maakt dat het hier niet gaat om informele praktijken in brede zin. Het gaat specifiek om informeel sociaal werk dat buiten beeld van veel professionele instanties en de lokale overheid plaatsvindt. In het professionele– en overheidsdomein bestaat vaak onbekendheid met deze vorm van informeel sociaal werk. Dat komt omdat sociaal schaduwwerk wordt verricht door spelers waarvan de buitenwereld dit niet direct verwacht, omdat zij primair bekend staan om andere foci en functies. Spelers in het sociaal schaduwwerk zijn bijvoorbeeld burgerinitiatieven, etnisch/culturele zelforganisaties, levensbeschouwelijke organisaties of sociaal sportieve praktijken. In het formele domein is vaak sprake van wantrouwen en vooroordelen over de ondersteuning die in dit soort particuliere of informele settings wordt verleend. Vooral levensbeschouwelijke organisaties worden vanuit het formele domein en de bredere samenleving nogal eens door een integratielens beoordeeld. De vrees voor zogenaamde ‘parallelle samenlevingen’ of ‘gesloten bolwerken’ voedt het wantrouwen. Empirisch onderzoek – zowel in Nederland als daarbuiten- toont aan dat die vrees veelal ongegrond is.

The new global nomads

Increasing youth travel has led to young people being labelled as ‘nomads’. This paper examines the phenomenon of youth nomadism in the tourism literature as well as examining recent empirical evidence. A review of the literature around youth nomadism identifies two major themes: analyses of the growth and development of youth travel niches, such as backpacking, volunteer tourism and educational exchange, and broader approaches linked to the rise of the mobilities paradigm. A major global survey of youth travel (34,000 respondents) indicates three major travel styles related to different forms of ‘nomadism’: the backpacker, the flashpacker and the global nomad. The traditional backpacker can be seen as a form of ‘neotribe’, gathering in self-sufficient enclaves. In contrast, the flashpacker, or ‘digital nomad’, utilizes existing digital and logistic infrastructure to maintain a fluid, individualized lifestyle. The global nomad, or ‘location independent traveller’, tries to integrate with the local community, while trying to avoid the strictures of ‘system’.

Are We Satisfying the Right Conditions for the Mobility Transition?

Global climate agreements call for action and an integrated perspective on mobility, energy and overall consumption. Municipalities in dense, urban areas are challenged with facilitating this transition with limited space and energy resources, and with future uncertainties. One important aspect of the transition is the adoption of electric vehicles, which includes the adequate design of charging infrastructure. Another important goal is a modal shift in transportation. This study investigated over 80 urban mobility policy measures that are in the policy roadmap of two of the largest municipalities of the Netherlands. This analysis consists of an inventory of policy measures, an evaluation of their environmental effects and conceptualizations of the policy objectives and conditions within the mobility transitions. The findings reveal that the two municipalities have similarities in means, there is still little anticipation of future technology and policy conditions could be further satisfied by introducing tailored measures for specific user groups.

Urban tourism studies : a transversal research agenda.

The debate on tourism in cities, both academically and in practice, has for a long time taken place in relative isolation from urban studies. Tourism is mostly addressed as an external agent and economic force that puts pressure on cities rather than as an interdependent part of city systems. The recent debate on city touristification and excessive dependence on the visitor economy, as well as the associated processes of exclusion, and displacement of local city users, serves to highlight how tourism is an integral part of urban developments. A wider urban perspective is needed to understand the processes underlying the tourism phenomena and more transdisciplinary perspectives are required to analyze the urban (tourism) practices. The current article seeks to contribute to such a perspective through a discussion of the literature on urban and tourism studies, and related fields such as gentrification, mobilities, and touristification. Based on this, theoretical reflections are provided regarding a more integral perspective to tourism and urban development in order to engage with a transversal urban tourism research agenda.

Alpine pearls: tourist destinations' response to a need for more sustainable tourism mobilities

New governance models for behaviour change in tourism mobilities: a research agenda

There is a groundswell of opinion in tourism, transport and cognate academic fields, that the travel and tourism industry is profoundly environmentally flawed (Gössling et al., 2010; Wheeller, 2012). Deeply embedded in neoliberal consumer society and entrenched in the structures of late-capitalism (Harvey, 2011), efforts to address the environmental failures of global tourism have, for the time being, rested largely with the consumer. This edited book has interrogated the behavioural and psychological dimensions of (tourist) mobility consumption, highlighted the complexity of consumer decision-making and drawn into question the efficacy of a consumer-led industry response to the climate crisis. The chapters in the first part of the book explored psychological understandings of climate change and tourism mobilities. These chapters unpack some of the key barriers to behaviour change in sustainable mobility, focusing on the attitude-behaviour gap as a significant hurdle to actualising behavioural change, the importance of identity and emotions to consumer decision-making in tourism and transport contexts, and how the hedonic and affective representations surrounding tourism spaces make them particular tricky settings for enacting sustained positive behaviour change. The chapters show that the barriers to unlocking behavioural change amongst consumers are considerable, and that the travelling public is unlikely to change “spontaneously” on the basis of environmental awareness alone. The socio-psychological insights in this part instead point towards increased governance as paramount in developing more sustainable mobility practices, if these changes are to be significant and in line with global climate policy. Part II of the book turned to behavioural aspects of climate change and tourism mobilities, and dealt with issues such as how carbon offsetting can ironically induce more travel rather than deter it, and the multiple ways in which time and distance are implicated in mobility decisions, including how changing information technologies can redefine these concepts. Longer-term planning horizons, and the impacts of individual lifestyles on demand modelling are explored, as well as how public transport can be promoted to visitors in urban destinations. The chapters in this part span a range of behavioural issues as they relate to (un)sustainable mobility, from localised ground transport and real-time travel information, to mega-events and the perceived cultural value of longdistance travel. The final part of the book focused on governance and policies based upon psychological, behavioural and social mechanisms. It commences with a comprehensive review of the cognitive, experiential and normative approaches to climate change communication before proposing an integrative conceptual framework for enhanced communication interventions. This aims to narrow the gap between awareness and attitudes on one hand, and behaviour on the other, that is evidenced in many of the other chapters. The part concludes with a challenge to move beyond socio/psychological approaches that attempt to foster sustainable mobility behaviour, such as nudging and social marketing, and question more seriously the systems of provision that perpetuate these practices. Significant structural change will require more radical approaches to governance, but the wheels of change turn slowly and in the case of anthropogenic climate change time is in limited supply. Overall, the chapters support earlier insights that increasing climate awareness and environmental concern has little bearing upon tourism consumption (Cohen et al., 2011; Eijgelaar et al., 2010; Hares et al., 2010; Higham and Cohen, 2011; McKercher et al., 2010), but they provide new perspectives as to why this might be the case. Travel decisions, the book shows, are deeply embedded socially and culturally, and intimately related to emotions, identity, time, happiness, performances of self or the attainment (or avoidance) of “possible selves”, all of which represent subconscious and little investigated psychological factors that bear upon travel decisions. The wide disparities that are apparent in domestic (“home”) and tourism (“away”) decision-making and behavioural contexts (Barr et al., 2010) cement the conclusion that the autonomy of individual pro-environmental response, when set within the systems of provision in latecapitalist consumer society, is fraught with challenge.