Suchergebnisse

The appearance of effective security making—demonstrated through surveillance, visibility, and ongoing performance—is significant to contemporary sovereign authority in urban spaces characterized by quotidian violence and crime. This article examines La Cancha, Cochabamba, Bolivia's enormous outdoor market, which is policed not by the state but by private security firms that operate as nonstate sovereign actors in the space of the market. The article provides an ethnographic account of one of these firms (the Men in Black), and documents the work of both municipal and national police—all of them distinguished by differently colored uniforms—in the management of crime, administration of justice, and establishment of public order in the market. Sovereignty here is derived through public performance, both violent and nonviolent, through which the Men in Black demonstrate and maintain their sovereign power.

The objective of this study was to compare the speed and accuracy of wire sorting with color and numbered coded wires. Twelve inexperienced female subjects performed a wire sorting task six times—three times with color coded wire and three times with number coded wire. The task was similar to that performed in the makeup of wire harnesses for electronic equipment. Wire sorting with color coded wire was found to be twice as fast as sorting with number coded wire. There were no statistically significant differences between the two conditions in sorting accuracy or in rate of learning the sorting task.

Visual search time on color-coded information displays has previously been shown to depend upon the number of items displayed (density), the number of colors used (code size), and the number of items in the same color category as the target. The present paper employed regression analysis techniques to develop models of search time which explain the mode of operation of these factors. The initial model, based upon number of items per category as the effective parameter, was successful in explaining 58% of the variation in search time means. An improved model, which introduced the concept, "operative number of colors," accounted for 84% of the variation. This model was able to postdict 82% of the actually obtained search time values within 0.76 s, with no postdiction in error by more than 2 s. The elevation in search times with larger display densities and code sizes observed in the data, and described by the improved model, was interpreted in terms of disruption of subjects' scan behavior on the more crowded displays.

Considering first various categories of political risk in which to pigeonhole the recent political mayhem in Thailand, this article explores the impact of these political events on the flow of foreign direct investment into the country. It posits that, contrary to the commonly-held view, the main threat to transnational capital inflow is the Map Ta Phut legal entanglement over environmental issues, not the political standoff. The Supreme Administrative Court's controversial halt, while good news for the environment climate could be bad news for the investment climate; all the more as with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Economic Community looming on the horizon and a new regional architecture taking shape, Thailand also faces increasing competition for FDI within its own economic block.