Suchergebnisse

One of the skills of graduate education that is most central to the evaluation of students is their ability to read and report on complex disciplinary texts. The display of comprehension is central to the judgment of competence, creating a status hierarchy. Demonstrating reading prowess is taken as a transparent indication of intelligence. Based on thirty-six ethnographic interviews with graduate students in sociology, history, and economics, we examine how informants think about the establishment of their scholarly reputations through self-presentational skills in discussing reading in seminars, articles, and eventually in the dissertation itself. The ability to read disciplinary texts and to situate those texts within disciplinary contexts is crucial for a validated selfhood.

Contents: Foreword -- Introduction -- 1. Accumulating human capital for sustainable development -- 2. Education bubble and widening inequality -- 3. Making education diversification reform happen -- 4. Turning around failing vocational high schools -- 5. Deteriorating skills and weak life-long learning -- 6. Fostering project-based learning and performance assessment -- 7. Stimulating high-risk high-payoff research -- 8. Nuts and bolts of the aid for TVET -- Reference -- Index.

This paper analyzes the impact of economic performance on voter turnout. We estimate an economic turnout model in which local economic variables are included in quadratic form, so that non-linear effects can be taken into account. We use panel datasets covering municipalities, from 1979 to 2005, and cross-sections of parishes (freguesias) to analyze the determinants of turnout at Portuguese municipal and legislative elections. The empirical results indicate that the performance of the national economy is important only in legislative elections and that the regional and local unemployment rates tend to have non-linear relationships to turnout. The results obtained for Flemish municipalities also provide evidence in favor of a non-linear effect of unemployment on turnout.

This study presents an investigation of the communicative behaviors and strategies employed in the stimulation and management of productive and destructive conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups. Using communication accommodation theory (CAT), we argue that the type and course of conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups is impacted by the communicative behaviors and strategies employed by group members during interactions. Analysis of data from participant observations, non‐participant observations, semi‐structured interviews, and self‐report questionnaires support CAT‐based predictions and provide fresh insights into the triggers and management strategies associated with conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups. In particular, results indicated that the more groups used discourse management strategies, the more they experienced productive conflict. In addition, the use of explanation and checking of own and others' understanding was a major feature of productive conflict, while speech interruptions emerged as a strategy leading to potential destructive conflict. Groups where leaders emerged and assisted in reversing communication breakdowns were better able to manage their discourse, and achieved consensus on task processes. Contributions to the understanding of the triggers and the management of productive conflict in culturally heterogeneous workgroups are discussed.

Much of the prior scholarly research on global gender and marketing tends to focus on development. The post-socialist space does not fit neatly into this paradigm, given the diversity of its legacy of ideology, industrialization, feminist thought, and the post-socialist experience of privatization, democratization, European Union expansion, and, in some cases, war. This chapter uses the history of feminist thought in Yugoslavia and Croatia to highlight the contribution the post-socialist space brings to global gender and marketing research: questioning the role of the state in securing rights and questioning assumptions about individualism in a neoliberal era. I argue for an extension of the current perspective on researching global gender and marketing that continues its social justice focus and includes a transnational approach, which allows for future research that attends to the differences among women in global regions, acknowledges the diversity of experiences of oppression, and gives voice to local feminist thought and activism.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- 1 Introduction -- 2 From Democracy Promotion to Cooperation -- 3 Regional Patterns of Cooperation -- 4 Variation in Cooperation -- 5 Authoritarian Survival Strategies and Cooperation -- 6 The Arab Spring and Euro-Mediterranean Cooperation -- 7 Conclusions -- Bibliography -- Index

In those authoritarian regimes that remained resilient throughout the Arab uprisings, the ruling elites have maintained their power through protest management strategies designed to include or, more frequently, exclude certain societal groups. This paper compares the strategies and their respective target groups in Algeria and Jordan, two cases of limited protests despite which authoritarianism has remained resilient. In both countries, inclusionary strategies towards protesters were pursued only half‐heartedly. When they failed, they were subsequently replaced by exclusionary mechanisms. More successful inclusionary strategies were aimed at another target, the regime's support base. The decreasing extent of political protests can thus hardly be attributed to responsive elite behaviour. The limited use but credible threat of repression together with discourses of deterrence prevented greater mobilisation, partly by invoking negative examples of the past or neighbouring countries. However, the massive reliance on exclusionary mechanisms calls the future stability of the Arab world into question.

Capitalism and Inequality rejects the popular view that attributes the recent surge in inequality to a failure of market institutions. Bringing together new and original research from established scholars, it analyzes the inequality inherent in a free market from an economic and historical perspective. In the process, the question of whether the recent increase in inequality is the result of crony capitalism and government intervention is explored in depth. The book features sections on theoretical perspectives on inequality, the political economy of inequality, and the measurement of inequality. Chapters explore several key questions such as the difference between the effects of market-driven inequality and the inequality caused by government intervention; how the inequality created by regulation affects those who are less well-off; and whether the economic growth that accompanies market-driven inequality always benefits an elite minority while leaving the vast majority behind. The main policy conclusions that emerge from this analysis depart from those that are currently popular. The authors in this book argue that increasing the role of markets and reducing the extent of regulation is the best way to lower inequality while ensuring greater material well-being for all sections of society. This key text makes an invaluable contribution to the literature on inequality and markets and is essential reading for students, scholars, and policymakers.

Abstract
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Colombia Broadcasting System (CBS), a major US television network, cancelled all of its popular rural programming (e.g. The Beverly Hillbillies [Paul Henning, CBS, 1962–71], Green Acres [Jay Sommers, CBS, 1965–71]). Known as the 'rural purge', the cancellations made way for more urbanthemed shows and strove to cater to higher 'quality' (presumably urban) viewers. At the same time, US Vogue Magazine featured the peasant look: a decidedly rural style, but one co-opted from 'other' places and times. In this article, we analyse contradictory and ambivalent representations of 'rurality', which we describe as the construction and appropriation of non-urban life as a kind of cultural authenticity that is alternately disparaged and celebrated. Using Fred Davis's (1992) concept of identity ambivalences and Henri Lefebvre's (1991 [1974]) theories on the production of space, we explore cultural discourse in the late 1960s and early 1970s to interpret the complex rural-urban dynamics in fashion and television.

Network models for analysing public policy have become widely used in recent years. This symposium assesses the network idea by applying a common perspective on network analysis to the constellations involved in water policy formation and implementation in several countries and the European Union. Water policy is an important and increasingly salient subject, and the networks involved in the sector have altered recently in important fashions. Thus the topic is suitable for investigations of network dynamics and their impacts. In this article, some of the most significant lines of contribution to network research are reviewed, and the network concept is clarified. Preliminary assessments of the utility and limitations of network analysis are presented. In particular, it is argued that the network emphasis offers some analytical advantages in understanding policy processes. Network characteristics and some dimensions of network variability are sketched. Particular attention is paid to the dimension for which policy communities and issue networks constitute polar cases. A rationale for the comparative analysis of water policy networks across different settings is presented.

The report assesses the macro-financial situation in Georgia. This study explores the private sector financing environment, in particular for the SMEs segment. It examines the needs and obstacles of SMEs in accessing finance as well as the institutional and legal environment they operate in. We employ the most recent wave of the EIB's Bank Lending Survey. The survey is a unique instrument developed to monitor the determinant factors influencing credit growth. It provides valuable insights into lending activity, availability of financial instruments, composition of loan portfolios and perception of credit conditions/market expectations, directly from several financial institutions present in Georgia.

THE RELATIVE MERITS OF THE VARIOUS METHODS OF PRIVATIZATION HAVE ATTRACTED WIDESPREAD SCHOLARLY ATTENTION. THE ONGOING TRANSITIONS OF THE FORMER SOCIALIST COUNTRIES TO MARKET-STYLE ECONOMIC SYSTEMS OFFER AN OPPORTUNITY TO REASSESS THE THEORY OF PRIVATIZATION IN VIEW OF THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCES OF THESE COUNTRIES. IN THIS ESSAY, THE AUTHOR LOOKS AT THEIR EXPERIENCES, FOCUSING ON THE SPEED OF PRIVATIZATION, OWNERSHIP CHANGE, FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT, AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE.

HOW, IN KEEPING WITH THE OVERALL LOGIC OF ITS AID POLICY, CANADA'S PARTICIAPTION IN INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS HAS RESULTED FROM A MANY-SIDED CONFIGUARATION OF POLITICAL, DEVELOPMENTAL, AND ECONOMIC INTERESTS IS SHOWN IN THIS PAPER. THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE FINDS ITS JUSTIFICATION IN THE FACT THAT BY FOCUSING MAINLY ON BILATERAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, THE LITERATURE ON CANADAIN AID HAS LARGLEY NEGLECTED THE STUDY OF THE MANY CHANNELS FOR DISTRIBUTING MULTILATERAL ASSISTANCE.

After briefly reviewing the existing literature relevant to the influence of technology inflows particularly through foreign direct investment on local research and developments (R & D), the author investigates the influence of technology imports on levels of company financed or in-house R & D spending in 43 Indian manufacturing industries. The determinants of the levels of in-house R & D expenditure to separate the influence of technology imports are empirically analysed. (DÜI-Sen)

This paper explores the capacity of alternative theoretical perspectives to explain the self‐reported criminality of black and white young adult females. When criminal involvement is regressed on the theory operation‐alizations separately by race, a key difference emerges: For white women, significant effects are clustered in the social‐psychological theory groups (bonding, attitudes, and maturation), but for the black women the social‐psychological variables have only scattered and inconsistent eflects. Instead, for black women structural indicators emerge as the important predictors of criminal involvement.