Barriers to Sustainability in Poor Marginalized Communities in the United States: The Criminal Justice, the Prison-Industrial Complex and Foster Care Systems

Toward Sustainable Communities: A Case Study of the Eastern Market in Detroit

Community development tends to focus on large-scale, government-funded transformations or on small-scale, grassroot initiatives. In the US, the financial resources, available infrastructure, and broad-based civic support to implement large-scale community transformations are frequently lacking. In contrast, niche interventions, while often locally successful, tend to be unscalable. Accordingly, many community development programs either do not go beyond an ideational stage, or they are unscalable or unsustainable in the long run. In this qualitative case study, we analyze the Eastern Market in Detroit, Michigan, a local institution that contributes considerably and in several ways to the sustainability of multiple communities. Using Content Configuration Analysis (CCA), we conduct a bottom-up exploratory analysis of fieldwork notes, nonparticipant observations, as well as audio, visual, and written materials including policy and strategy documents from the City of Detroit, Wayne County, and the State of Michigan, academic publications, strategy and annual reports, websites, blogs, vlogs, social media outlets, newspapers, podcasts, and interviews along two lines of inquiry: first, to examine how the market contributes to sustainable community development and, second, to explore the systemic underpinnings that facilitate such development. Specifically, we focus on the Eastern Market to identify system-relevant actors, interests, relations, interventions, and outcomes that illustrate an institution which operates well beyond the ideational confines of a conventional farmers market. In the process of exploring the adaptive nature of the Eastern Market within its financial and infrastructural constraints, we also exemplify with this case that a well-established institution, a farmers market, can reinvent itself to serve multiple needs of larger, heterogeneous communities, and that the successful adaptations associated with this reinvention reimagine the community in which it is embedded.

A feminist ethos for caring knowledge production in transdisciplinary sustainability science

Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science has emerged as a viable answer to current sustainability crises with the aim to strengthen collaborative knowledge production. To expand its transformative potential, we argue that Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science needs to thoroughly engage with questions of unequal power relations and hierarchical scientific constructs. Drawing on the work of the feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine a feminist ethos of care which might provide useful guidance for sustainability researchers who are interested in generating critical-emancipatory knowledge. A feminist ethos of care is constituted by three interrelated modes of knowledge production: (1) thinking-with, (2) dissenting-within and (3) thinking-for. These modes of thinking and knowing enrich knowledge co-production in Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science by (i) embracing relational ontologies, (ii) relating to the 'other than human', (iii) cultivating caring academic cultures, (iv) taking care of non-academic research partners, (v) engaging with conflict and difference, (vi) interrogating positionalities and power relations through reflexivity, (vii) building upon marginalised knowledges via feminist standpoints and (viii) countering epistemic violence within and beyond academia. With our paper, we aim to make a specific feminist contribution to the field of Transdisciplinary Sustainability Science and emphasise its potentials to advance this field.

Sustainable Policy Measures Based on Implementation of Digital Technologies in Corrections: Exploratory Study from Slovakia and Beyond

Across the world, millions of people are incarcerated every year, while hundreds of thousands of them are released back into their home communities. Despite several alternatives within the criminal justice system, incarceration is still considered as the most natural method of correction. This can lead to different types of unsustainable pathways within a society. Despite the growing importance and increasing use of digital technologies, there are relatively few scientific studies related to the implementation of digital technologies in corrections. Therefore, the present paper aims to assess the sustainable policy measures based on the implementation of digital technologies in corrections, namely electronic monitoring (EM). The originality of our paper is supported by unique primary data gathered during the first national survey on the assessment of sustainability measures of EM in Slovakia. Our research reveals that EM implementation contributes to individual and institutional resilience in a socio-economic context; the requirements for a conditional release of serious offenders with mandatory EM seem to have created sustainable conditions for the use of this form of the EM “back door” scheme. EM programs are aimed at suppressing crime through increased accountability and monitoring, which leads to their sustainability. Maintaining social and family ties, reducing risk of imprisonment and undesirable new ties, and keeping working habits are the main sustainable policy measures of EM that support better social inclusion of offenders. Assessment of the sustainable policy measures based on the implementation of digital technologies in corrections, namely electronic monitoring (EM) uncovered in the present paper, creates space for further research and policy implications. Data protection, automated data processing and artificial intelligence in the implementation of digital technologies in corrections are important topics that deserve much more attention in research.