Connecting the dots: Neighbourhood House and institutional accessibility

Accessibility to public resources has been a major challenge to many service users. The fragmentation among different organizational stakeholders in social service generates a ‘wicked problem’ that creates an institutional barrier for service users in the community to navigate the maze of service networks. However, this institutional barrier has not been fully discussed and articulated in the social service literature. Based on the findings of a study on Neighbourhood House in Metro Vancouver, Canada, we argue that as a place-based community service organization it has successfully generated an institutional accessibility for service providers and service users to reach each other.

Are All Forms Of Scholarship Considered Equal?

Boyer’s four forms of scholarship were detailed in his 1990 book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. In the 18 years since publication of that book, universities struggle with changing the promotion and tenure criteria to include all four forms of scholarship. Faculty members often focus on publications as they prepare for promotion and tenure. They are not comfortable immersing themselves in other forms of scholarship, like engagement, for fear it may be viewed unfavorably by the university and/or the review committee. This paper focuses on the scholarship of engagement as it struggles to break through the institutional barrier and become an accepted form of scholarship.

The Rise and Fall of A Theoretical Model: The Manorial System

Douglass North and Robert Thomas recently proposed a model of the rise and fall of the manorial system. There is much to be admired in this work, which explores an unusually broad historical vision with great analytical acumen; but my purpose here is to examine some of its less compelling features. In section II, I consider the nature of feudalism, and develop empirical arguments against the wholly voluntaristic and non-exploitative interpretation proposed by North and Thomas. Section III examines their analysis of the “classic” manor, which I believe errs both in limiting the feasible contracts to forms of direct barter and in attributing the lowest transaction costs to labor dues even within that restricted set. Section IV reviews the proposed explanation of the later evolution of the manorial system, disputing both the continued use of the transaction costs model and the extensions of it that consider custom as an institutional barrier to efficiency, and population growth and inflation as the exogenous motors of change. Section V provides a brief concluding summary and evaluation.