It has been taken for granted that a very unique Macao identity has been evolving after more than 450 years of Portuguese rule and cultural influence. Quantitative research, however, shows that in fact the majority of the Macao people are identifying themselves as Chinese. This paper analyzes the evolution of Macao’s identity along the lines of the ethno-cultural versus civic identity theoretic...

In this paper we examine the information sharing practices of people living in cities amid armed conflict. We describe the volume and frequency of microblogging activity on Twitter from four cities afflicted by the Mexican Drug War, showing how citizens use social media to alert one another and to comment on the violence that plagues their communities. We then investigate the emergence of civic...

6.2.1 The traditional role of municipal bodies had been one of providing basic amenities of civic life. Services such as water supply and sanitation, roads and drains, street-lights, collection and disposal of solid waste, maintenance of public places, burial grounds and crematoria, cattle pounds, registration of births and deaths, maintenance of markets have long been seen as the function of m...

The times, they are a changing in long established European and North American democracies. Alarming numbers of young citizens seem to have turned their backs on government and conventional politics. It appears that contemporary politics in most societies increasingly fail to capture the interest and attention of young citizens, who are generally skeptical of politicians and party affiliation, ...

J ustin is not alone. In a recent study of high school seniors from California, for example, only 28% agreed that “I think people in government care about what people like me and my family need” ~Kahne and Middaugh 2005!. Related findings are common. A survey by the National Association of Secretaries of State, for example, revealed that twothirds of all young people agreed that “our generation...

Civic community theory has emerged in the last 10 years as a middle range theory to explain community variation in rates of crime. It has proven to be particularly powerful for explaining variations in violent crime across rural communities in the U.S. This essay provides a review of the available published literature testing components of the theory. The three main conceptual dimensions of the...

The relationship between the civic nature of a community and effective political governance by regional health boards in Canada is explored. A model is proposed that identifies components of social capital such as trust, commitment and identity, associationalism, civic participation and collaborative problem-solving. These concepts are then theoretically linked to effective governance, in parti...

The current article presents the results of a study which developed an Italian adaptation of Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Moorman, and Fetter’s (1990) questionnaire, measuring organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by referring to the following dimensions: Altruism, Conscientiousness, Sportsmanship, Courtesy, and Civic Virtue. The original questionnaire was translated into Italian and modified in o...