The international literature links mining booms with social disruption. The rapid economic and population growth that mining brings increases urban crime and social problems. But insufficient ...attention has been paid to the reverse situation: the social disruption that can accompany the closure of a mine. We compare crime statistics for four categories of small city, known in South Africa as “intermediate city municipalities,” from 2009 to 2018. Contrary to the findings of international studies, we find that those where mining was in decline had some of the highest crime rates, particularly in the category of sexual offences, whereas those where mining was growing had the lowest. Our research shows that mine decline and closure can contribute to social disruption. We argue that South African government policy has exacerbated this problem in the context of mine decline and that several dependencies created by mining further contribute to the problem. We challenge the assumption that fast population growth and an increase in the male population are prerequisites for social disruption. Our paper suggests the need for modifications to social disruption theory.
Contrary to the findings of international studies, we found that whose where mining was in decline had some of the highest crime rates, Our research shows that mine decline and closure can contribute to social disruption.
The inhabitants of Vilnius, the present-day capital of Lithuania, have spoken various languages and professed different religions while living together in relative harmony over the years. The city ...has played a significant role in the history and development of at least three separate cultures—Polish, Lithuanian, and Jewish—and until very recently, no single cultural-linguistic group composed the clear majority of its population. Vilnius between Nations, 1795–2000 is the first study to undertake a balanced assessment of this particularly diverse city. Theodore Weeks examines Vilnius as a physical entity where people lived, worked, and died; as the object of rhetorical struggles between disparate cultures; and as a space where the state attempted to legitimize a specific version of cultural politics through street names, monuments, and urban planning. In investigating these aspects, Weeks avoids promoting any one national narrative of the history of the city, while acknowledging the importance of national cultures and their opposing myths of the city's identity. The story of Vilnius as a multicultural city and the negotiations that allowed several national groups to inhabit a single urban space can provide lessons that are easily applied to other diverse cities. This study will appeal to scholars of Eastern Europe, urban studies, and multiculturalism, as well as general readers interested in the region.
Despite global awareness about the importance and health benefits of physical activity (PA) during pregnancy, several studies have reported a low prevalence of PA participation among pregnant women ...in both developed and developing countries. This means that most pregnant women do not meet the current PA recommended guideline of 150 min of moderate intensity PA per week. The global call to prioritise PA participation levels in the general population necessitates evaluating the factors affecting PA practice. Seemingly, pregnant women mostly from low-to-middle income countries like South Africa are often predisposed to adverse pregnancy outcomes, possibly because of limited access to, and knowledge of, improved pregnancy and health outcomes as a result of PA participation. Physical activity has been sparsely studied among pregnant South African women, and specifically, there is no known study that assesses the PA levels, patterns, beliefs, sources of information, perceived benefits, barriers, attitudes of pregnant women concerning PA and exercise participation; nor one that explores the perspectives of healthcare providers regarding prenatal PA in the Eastern Cape Province. In addition, no PA intervention strategy exists to promote PA participation in the region. This study, in attempting to fill these gaps in knowledge, adopts two phases. In Phase I, a concurrent mixed-method (quantitative and qualitative) approach assesses the following factors related to PA participation in pregnant women: participation levels, beliefs, attitudes, perceived benefits, barriers to uptake and sources of information. It further ascertains if healthcare professionals are sufficiently informed about PA and if they are advising pregnant women about the need for PA participation during pregnancy. Data will be collected through a structured questionnaire, interviews and focus group discussions. Information on socio-demographic and maternal characteristics will be obtained, and the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ) will assess PA during pregnancy. A sample size of 384 pregnant women is the required minimum sample for an infinite population at a confidence level of 95%, a precision level of ± 5% and at a prevalence of PA or exercise during pregnancy of 50% (
< 0.05); however, a sample size larger than the minimum number necessary will be recruited to account for possible attrition and to protect against possible data loss. Data will be analysed using a multiple logistic regression to determine the factors that predict sedentary or moderate PA levels and chi-squared analysis to determine the associations between the PA levels of the participants and socio-demographic and clinical variables. The study will assess the data collected on the above-mentioned variables and draw conclusions based on patterns and themes that emerge during analysis. Phase II of the study focuses on strategy development and validation to facilitate the promotion of PA during pregnancy. The developed strategy will be validated through the application of the Delphi technique and the administration of a checklist to selected key stakeholders through organised workshops. Understanding the level and correlates of PA participation among this special population is fundamental to designing intervention strategies to enhance their understanding of, and participation in, PA and exercise. Furthermore, this study's findings will inform facility-based healthcare providers about the need to integrate health education on PA and pregnancy into antenatal and postnatal care visits in the setting.
The ?ayei Adam, an abridged code of Jewish law, was written by Rabbi Avraham Danzig (1748-1820) and was first published in 1810. This code spread quickly throughout Europe, and the demand for it ...required a second publishing which the author printed in 1818. Beyond a Code of Jewish Law attempts to understand the implicit message of its author and discuss various approaches of its writer to both Judaism and Jewish law. While the ?ayei Adam without any doubt unveils Rabbi Danzig to be a brilliant rabbinic scholar, with a comprehensive knowledge of Jewish law as well as a coherent and concise system of presentation, it also expresses his great concern for the Jewish community and each individual Jew. Aspects of this concern such as Hasidism, musar, kabbalah, are explored.
In the mid-seventeenth century, Wilno (Vilnius), the second capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was home to Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews, and Tatars, who worshiped in ...Catholic, Uniate, Orthodox, Calvinist, and Lutheran churches, one synagogue, and one mosque. Visitors regularly commented on the relatively peaceful coexistence of this bewildering array of peoples, languages, and faiths. InKith, Kin, and Neighbors, David Frick shows how Wilno's inhabitants navigated and negotiated these differences in their public and private lives.
This remarkable book opens with a walk through the streets of Wilno, offering a look over the royal quartermaster's shoulder as he made his survey of the city's intramural houses in preparation for King Wladyslaw IV's visit in 1636. These surveys (Lustrations) provide concise descriptions of each house within the city walls that, in concert with court and church records, enable Frick to accurately discern Wilno's neighborhoods and human networks, ascertain the extent to which such networks were bounded confessionally and culturally, determine when citizens crossed these boundaries, and conclude which kinds of cross-confessional constellations were more likely than others. These maps provide the backdrops against which the dramas of Wilno lives played out: birth, baptism, education, marriage, separation or divorce, guild membership, poor relief, and death and funeral practices. Perhaps the most complete reconstruction ever written of life in an early modern European city,Kith, Kin, and Neighborssets a new standard for urban history and for work on the religious and communal life of Eastern Europe.
Elijah ben Solomon, the "Genius of Vilna," was perhaps the best-known and most understudied figure in modern Jewish history. This book offers a new narrative of Jewish modernity based on Elijah's ...life and influence.
While the experience of Jews in modernity has often been described as a process of Western European secularization-with Jews becoming citizens of Western nation-states, congregants of reformed synagogues, and assimilated members of society-Stern uses Elijah's story to highlight a different theory of modernization for European life. Religious movements such as Hasidism and anti-secular institutions such as the yeshiva emerged from the same democratization of knowledge and privatization of religion that gave rise to secular and universal movements and institutions. Claimed by traditionalists, enlighteners, Zionists, and the Orthodox, Elijah's genius and its afterlife capture an all-embracing interpretation of the modern Jewish experience. Through the story of the "Vilna Gaon," Stern presents a new model for understanding modern Jewish history and more generally the place of traditionalism and religious radicalism in modern Western life and thought.
The librarian walks the streets of her beloved Paris. An old lady with a limp and an accent, she is invisible to most. Certainly no one recognizes her as the warrior and revolutionary she was, when ...again and again she slipped into the Jewish ghetto of German-occupied Vilnius to carry food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents to its prisoners. Often she left with letters to deliver, manuscripts to hide, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured for twelve days, and deported to Dachau.
ThroughEpistolophilia, Julija Šukys follows the letters and journals-the "life-writing"-of this woman, Ona Šimaitė (1894-1970). A treasurer of words, Šimaitė carefully collected, preserved, and archived the written record of her life, including thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings. Journeying through these words, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine-a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem's honored "Righteous Among the Nations") and yet so little known. The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them-and us-to life.
About sixty thousand Jews from Wilno (Vilnius, Jewish Vilna) and surrounding townships in present-day Lithuania were murdered by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators in huge pits on the ...outskirts of Ponary. Over a period of several years, Kazimierz Sakowicz, a Polish journalist who lived in the village of Ponary, was an eyewitness to the murder of these Jews as well as to the murders of thousands of non-Jews on an almost daily basis. He chronicled these events in a diary that he kept at great personal risk.
Written as a simple account of what Sakowicz witnessed, the diary is devoid of personal involvement or identification with the victims. It is thus a unique document: testimony from a bystander, an "objective" observer without an emotional or a political agenda, to the extermination of the Jews of the city known as "the Jerusalem of Lithuania."
Sakowicz did not survive the war, but much of his diary did. Painstakingly pieced together by Rahel Margolis from scraps of paper hidden in various locations, the diary was published in Polish in 1999. It is here published in English for the first time, extensively annotated by Yitzhak Arad to guide readers through the events at Ponary.
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