Suchergebnisse

This A-Z reference provides detailed descriptions and definitions of key CIA terms, players, equipment, operations and parallel organizations. It also discusses perceptions of the agency in popular culture, including its portrayal in film, television and fiction

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new rule on regional haze regulations. GAO noted that: (1) the rule calls for states to establish goals and emission reduction strategies for improving visibility in all 156 mandatory Class I national parks and wilderness areas; (2) specific provisions are included in the rule allowing nine western states to implement the recommendations of the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission within the framework of the national regional haze program; and (3) EPA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

Abstract.  Through the analysis of Hungarian politics, this article demonstrates how parties become embedded in the social, cognitive and emotive structures of societies. The role of agency in cleavage formation is addressed, with a special emphasis on the mechanism through which political parties structure their environments. Next to the popularization of conflict perceptions and the consolidation of camp identities, the development of a more elaborate and segmented organizational structure is identified as an integral part of the process of cleavage formation. Such a structure enables parties to forge coalitions among previously separate social groupings and combine group interests into packages large enough to overcome institutional thresholds of power. The findings indicate that parties are potentially able to cross cleavage lines, re‐structure relations within the party system and create new associations between party preferences, socio‐structural categories and attitudes. Furthermore, parties seem to be able to alter the relationships between psychologically rooted attitudes and social categories. The study also shows, however, that deep‐seated socio‐cultural divides limit the power of agency even in new democracies.

AbstractWe extend an influential contribution to the literature on agency theory and then use this extension, along with other theoretical contributions, to shed light on agency problems affecting funds management and financial planning in Australia. The case for pure fee‐for‐service in actively managed funds and plans turns out to be weak. The amount of money exposed to risk by an active manager should be less than the entire investible wealth of the client, especially in the case of investors on the cusp of retirement. Asset‐based fees on actively managed funds should include a fulcrum component.

Mainstream conceptions of autonomy have been surreptitiously gender‐specific and masculinist. Feminist philosophers have reclaimed autonomy as a feminist value, while retaining its core ideal as self‐government, by reconceptualizing it as "relational autonomy." This article examines whether feminist theories of relational autonomy can adequately illuminate the agency of Islamist women who defend their nonliberal religious values and practices and assiduously attempt to enact them in their daily lives. I focus on two notable feminist theories of relational autonomy advanced by Marina Oshana and Andrea Westlund and apply them to the case of Women's Mosque Movement participants in Egypt. I argue that feminist conceptions of relational autonomy, centered around the ideal of self‐government, cannot elucidate the agency of Women's Mosque Movement participants whose normative ideal involves perfecting their moral capacity.

Scholars of childhood typically view children as agentic; poverty researchers, aware that poverty reduces children's life-chances, may be tempted to consider them as victims. Adults experiencing poverty report feelings of powerlessness, and, by analogy, poverty may reduce children's agency. However, comparatively little is known about the impact of poverty on child agency or the extent to which children use their agency to mediate the effects of poverty. Therefore, 55 low-income children from two Chinese schools were invited to participate in group discussions and qualitative interviews spread over several hours. Considering poverty to be multidimensional, children identified that their agency was restricted both by poverty and their status as children but argued that they were not without agency. This was confirmed in interviews with parents and teachers. Six strategies were identified that children use to ameliorate poverty's effects. The strategies group into three pairs, the first strategy in each pair reflecting a child's decision to accommodate to their circumstances with the second being an attempt to alter them. The first pair (norm adaptation and active communication) comprised coping strategies addressing the present; the second pair (self-improvement and self-sacrifice) were expressions of constructive agency; and the third pair (lowered expectations and rebellion) were partially acts of despair. Giving greater recognition to children's attempts to improve the lives of their families and themselves may lead to more effective modes of policy intervention.

Evaluation programs to document agency service effectiveness are increasingly necessary in an era of government cutbacks. This article identifies the barriers to implementing such a program, reviews a hierarchy of client problem categories, and describes the steps that ensured the success of the program.

While it is used as an instrument of Communist party policy, Rumania's agency has technical facilities and incoming foreign news services which put it on a par with Western press associations. Dr. Kruglak was in Bucharest this spring while studying in Europe under a Fulbright research grant.

Abstract
The Victorian artistic community that grew up on the Isle of Wight around Tennyson and Julia Margaret Cameron has been reimagined in Virginia Woolf's play, Freshwater (1923, 1935), and more recently in Lynn Truss's novel, Tennyson's Gift (1996). Whereas Freshwater should be read as modernist or post- Victorian, Tennyson's Gift is neo-Victorian and postmodern in its form and attitude. Integral to both are the discontent of women and the disruption of gender norms. Therefore, this essay looks particularly at the question of female agency in a Victorian world envisioned in 1923-35 and one of 1996. In Freshwater, one sees a serious exploration of generational change and the desire for artistic freedom, especially through the character of Ellen Terry. Freshwater is a dress rehearsal for To the Lighthouse. Truss reimagines Freshwater by adding to Woolf's cast the unstable Charles Dodgson, whose Alice in Wonderland becomes the familiarizing scaffolding for readers in a Victorian world that seems as strange as Wonderland did to Alice. Here, female agency is elusive - too-knowing little girls hold sway and adult women use their power, rather pathetically, to win and hold the undeserving men they love.

The following summary of a literature review on children and young people's participation in the welfare sector was written in response to a need to understand this concept within the context of human services work in New South Wales. This need became apparent through work being done at UnitingCare Burnside around children and young people's participation. Examination of the literature on participation revealed an increase in discussion around the issues. While this has included exploration of definitions, history, practice, models and factors enhancing effective participative practice, there has been a dearth of writing linking these. The literature review attempted to provide a scaffold that could be used to support agency workers as they attempt to build meaningful, effective, strong and reciprocal partnerships with children and young people. This concise summary of the literature review has sought to highlight the major supports found to provide a scaffold for participative agency practice with children and young people.

AbstractIn this article, I argue for the use of the hermeneutics of suspicion in the investigation of the conditions of our actions. I claim that by staying suspicious of immediate answers as well as manifest conditions, and remaining curious of other conditions that may influence us, we can come closer to an understanding of our actions and what structures them. By investigating the broad question of why we do what we do, I critically examine the concept of agency and its role in answering this question. I distinguish between two fundamentally different approaches to the understanding of our actions that relate to the concept of agency: On the one hand, is the agentic view that focuses on reasons and asserts that our agency is the basis of our actions. On the other hand, is the non-agentic view that focuses on causes and asserts that our actions are causally determined. To overcome this sharp distinction, I argue for a reconceptualisation concerning our understandings of why we act and of the human psyche itself. This reconceptualisation is twofold. Firstly, it consists of abandoning a simple causality in favour of the notion of catalysis. Secondly, it consists of viewing the psyche as an open system rather than a closed system. In linking the concept of catalysis with the hermeneutics of suspicion, I bring together the ontological and epistemological dimensions of my thinking. The concept of catalysis underlines the ontological complexity and multiplicity of the conditions of our actions and of the human psyche, while the introduction of the hermeneutics of suspicion tells us how we must face this epistemologically.

Summary
This short provocation argues for a diplomacy studies that is less focused on the rationality of states, with the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) as an imagined black box in which calculation occurs, and more on the idea of 'external' agency as the emergent effect from a range of elements within and without the state. To illustrate this idea, the essay sketches out an example of foreign policy made in the absence of an MFA entirely: Gibraltar's 2019 intervention in the Grace 1 controversy.