Midst

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences


Selected Abstracts


Guerrillas in the Midst

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 6 2005
María D. Álvarez
First page of article [source]


In the Midst of Events: The Foreign Office Diaries and Papers of Kenneth Younger, February 1950-October 1951 Edited by Geoffrey Warner

HISTORY, Issue 303 2006
ANDREW THORPE
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Merit in the Midst of Grace: The Covenant with Adam Reconsidered in View of the Two Powers of God

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 2 2008
JOHN HALSEY WOOD JR
However, the difficulty of seeing the harmony between these principles is real. This article reconsiders the covenant with Adam in light of the medieval concept of the two powers of God, or as we shall argue here, the two perspectives on God's power. These two perspectives, part of the original intellectual milieu in which covenant theology arose, demonstrate that the divine covenant with humanity may include aspects of both God's grace and human merit simultaneously. God's grace is apparent de potentia absoluta, from the perspective of God's absolute power, and God's justice and the possibility of Adam's merit are apparent de potentia ordinata, from the perspective of God's ordained power. Both perspectives, what God could do and what he has in fact chosen to do, are valid and necessary perspectives for understanding God's covenant dealings. [source]


Promoting Mental Health in Schools in the Midst of School Reform

JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH, Issue 5 2000
Howard S. Adelman
ABSTRACT: Efforts to promote mental health in schools have encountered a variety of systemic problems. Of particular concern is that planning and implementing programs and services often occurs in an unsystematic and ad hoc fashion resulting in fragmented and piecemeal activities and an inefficient use of limited resources. Even more fundamental is the degree to which schools marginalize all efforts to address barriers to student learning. With a view to enhancing understanding and resolution of these problems, this paper explores the policy deficiencies that perpetuate the status quo and presents a framework for moving forward. [source]


Global Public Health Implications of a Mass Gathering in Mecca, Saudi Arabia During the Midst of an Influenza Pandemic

JOURNAL OF TRAVEL MEDICINE, Issue 2 2010
Kamran Khan MD
Background. Every year millions of pilgrims from around the world gather under extremely crowded conditions in Mecca, Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj. In 2009, the Hajj coincided with influenza season during the midst of an influenza A (H1N1) pandemic. After the Hajj, resource-limited countries with large numbers of traveling pilgrims could be vulnerable, given their limited ability to purchase H1N1 vaccine and capacity to respond to a possible wave of H1N1 introduced via returning pilgrims. Methods. We studied the worldwide migration of pilgrims traveling to Mecca to perform the Hajj in 2008 using data from the Saudi Ministry of Health and international air traffic departing Saudi Arabia after the 2008 Hajj using worldwide airline ticket sales data. We used gross national income (GNI) per capita as a surrogate marker of a country's ability to mobilize an effective response to H1N1. Results. In 2008, 2.5 million pilgrims from 140 countries performed the Hajj. Pilgrims (1.7 million) were of international (non-Saudi) origin, of which 91.0% traveled to Saudi Arabia via commercial flights. International pilgrims (11.3%) originated from low-income countries, with the greatest numbers traveling from Bangladesh (50,419), Afghanistan (32,621), and Yemen (28,018). Conclusions. Nearly 200,000 pilgrims that performed the Hajj in 2008 originated from the world's most resource-limited countries, where access to H1N1 vaccine and capacity to detect and respond to H1N1 in returning pilgrims are extremely limited. International efforts may be needed to assist resource-limited countries that are vulnerable to the impact of H1N1 during the 2009 to 2010 influenza season. [source]


And the Beat Goes On: Further Evidence on Voting on the Form of County Governance in the Midst of Public Corruption

KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 1 2009
Gökhan R. Karahan
SUMMARY ,Operation Pretense,' an FBI sting operation conducted in Mississippi during the 1980s, uncovered widespread corruption among the state's county supervisors. The revelations prompted the Mississippi legislature to authorize including on the November 1988 ballot a measure asking voters whether they favored switching to a more centralized ,unit system' of county governance or instead retaining the decentralized ,beat system' then in place in all but two of the state's 82 counties. We examine voters' decisions to participate in that election, in which 47 counties returned majorities for the unit system and 35 counties opted for the status quo. Controlling for participation in the 1988 presidential race and other relevant factors, we find that turnout rates for the beat-unit choice were positively correlated with supervisor corruption. We also find that the corrupt counties' higher voter turnouts were driven mainly by supporters of the corruption-prone beat system. [source]


The Other in Our Midst: After the London Bombing

NEW PERSPECTIVES QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2005
TARIQ RAMADAN
First page of article [source]


Hope and Purification in the Writings of Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo

ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2010
Clayton G. MacKenzie
Taban Lo Liyong sees the task of the African writer as one of "reconstructing Africa from the imperial wreck of the last two thousand seasons" (Liyong 1990, 171). The erosion of the African culture by modernization and colonialism has deprived indigenous peoples of their religions, their traditions, their mores, and in some cases their languages. It is not clear, though, what form Liyong's "reconstruction" is to take. Other commentators, like the Nigerian poet Tanure Ojaide, seem more specific in demanding that the African artist should take a moral, political line in asserting that his/her active role is to "remedy a bad situation" (Ojaide 1994, 17). The object would be to purify an African way of life that has been tainted by invasive, self-gratifying, materialistic attitudes. But, again, what is that "remedy" to be? While recognition of Africa's postcolonial malaise is widespread, and its cause axiomatically and correctly assigned to the experience of colonialism, African writers have been somewhat tentative in suggesting what exactly it is that should be done. It is one thing to identify a problem, and to express it in the most forthright or damning terms, but quite another to locate and postulate the possible means for its resolution. The two Ghanaian artists whose work this paper addresses, Ayi Kwei Armah and Ama Ata Aidoo, have been all too frequently accused of the pessimistic recitation of African ills. Molly Mahood has spoken of the "almost total disillusionment" (Fraser 1980, 15) of Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born; and Liyong has described the work as one of those "tearing down exercises" (Liyong 1990, 176). Adeola James has identified a "certain somberness" (James 1990, 17) and Arlene Elder a "pessimism" (Elder 1987, 117) in Aidoo's short stories; and Femi Ojo-Ade has styled the Ghana of No Sweetness Here as "hell" (Oje-Ade 1987, 174). The optimistic dimensions of their work have often gone unnoticed. Even contemporary readings that have attempted to soften the gloom of the two texts have sought in some way to qualify their observations. Tsegaye Wodajo's excellent study of five Armah novels, Hope in the Midst of Despair: A Novelist's Cures for Africa (2005), perceives The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born as a literature of protest that finds a hopeful riposte in the later novels. And while Nanna Jane Opoku-Agyemang's fine 1999 essay brings a valuable comparative dimension to No Sweetness Here, her insights fail to lift the pall of despair that is customarily judged to hang over this collection of eleven stories. This paper will argue that Aidoo's No Sweetness Here and Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born offer greater scope for optimism than many critics have hitherto suggested; and that both articulate a process of purification that actively opposes the dystopian settings of their respective narratives. [source]


The Battle in Seattle: A Response from Local Geographers in the Midst of the WTO Ministeral Meetings

ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2000
Maria Fannin
[source]


The Difficult Client-Acceptance Decision in Canadian Audit Firms: A Field Investigation,

CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 2 2001
Yves Gendron
Abstract Auditing is often depicted in scientific and professional literature as being subject to conflicting forces, such as mechanization versus flexibility, and professionalism versus commercialism. This paper examines how auditors actually make the client-acceptance decision in the midst of these forces. The investigation was conducted via a field study at three Big 6 firms located in Canada. The results show that in all firms the client-acceptance decision process in action is largely flexible, being characterized by a high degree of informal communication and the adaptation of the client-acceptance written policies and decision aids to circumstances. Furthermore, while commercialism in one firm (A) has a significant influence on the decision process, in the two other firms (B and C) the decision process is mostly consistent with professionalism. This result conflicts with the concerns that North American regulators have recently expressed about auditors' professionalism. [source]


WE WERE DANCING IN THE CLUB, NOT ON THE BERLIN WALL: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 4 2008
DAMANI JAMES PARTRIDGE
ABSTRACT In this essay, I explore the micropolitics of citizenship and sovereignty via the emerging street bureaucratic status of "white" German women in relationships with "black" men in Germany and Berlin. In the midst of the fallen Berlin Wall and increasing Europe-wide restrictions on immigration and asylum, it examines further the extent to which a consistent "black" male hypersexual performance is necessary for legal recognition via "white" German women who, taking on an informal bureaucratic status, ultimately decide which "black" subjects to marry. A history of desiring "black" bodies, the essay argues, coincides with several important moments of sexual liberation (incl. post,World War II African American military occupation, 1970s West German feminism, and the fall of the Berlin Wall), which make these relationships both possible and public; however, the hypersexualized conditions under which "black" subjects get incorporated into contemporary German life are also ultimately exclusionary. [source]


Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2005
Peter Redfield
The politics of life and death is explored from the perspective of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières [MSF]), an activist nongovernmental organization explicitly founded to respond to health crises on a global scale. Following the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, I underline key intersections between MSF's operations that express concern for human life in the midst of humanitarian disaster and the group's self-proclaimed ethic of engaged refusal. Adopting the analytic frame of biopolitics, I suggest that the actual practice of medical humanitarian organizations in crisis settings presents a fragmentary and uncertain form of such power, extended beyond stable sovereignty and deployed within a restricted temporal horizon. [source]


Preaching a Risen Christ of Resistance among "Captive" Americans

DIALOG, Issue 4 2003
Karen L. Bloomquist
Abstract: In the midst of the current captivity of Americans to governmental policies which most of the rest of the world finds objectionable, what are the challenges facing those who preach? How can these be addressed biblically and theologically, grounded in what it means to be part of a global communion, and empowered by faith in the Resurrected Christ? How can preaching form faith communities through conversion, confession and conversation so that they might confront and change what is occurring, for the sake of the whole world? [source]


"Going to War in Buses": The Anglo-American Clash over Leyland Sales to Cuba, 1963,1964

DIPLOMATIC HISTORY, Issue 5 2010
Christopher Hull
The sale of buses by the Leyland Motor Company to Cuba proved contentious, not only in the realm of Anglo-American relations, but also in the domestic sphere of a behind the scenes inter-departmental disagreement within the British government. This is because the bus exports pitted political against economic interests at the height of the Cold War and in the midst of a British export drive. As Her Majesty's Government readily recognized, Washington was particularly sensitive over any issue related to Cuba, which by 1963 was firmly in the communist orbit of the Soviet bloc and which the United States was determined to isolate economically through the application of a trade blockade. The decision to approve the sales came at the end of the Macmillan and Kennedy administrations, and clouded the short-lived partnership of Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The bus exports became an election issue in the campaigns of both leaders in 1964, assuming a political significance that belied the buses' seemingly innocuous function and outward appearance. [source]


Validity Issues in Computer-Based Testing

EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT: ISSUES AND PRACTICE, Issue 3 2001
Kristen L. Huff
Advances in technology are stimulating the development of complex, computerized assessments. The prevailing rationales for developing computer-based assessments are improved measurement and increased efficiency. In the midst of this measurement revolution, test developers and evaluators must revisit the notion of validity. In this article, we discuss the potential positive and negative effects computer-based testing could have on validity, review the literature regarding validation perspectives in computer-based testing, and provide suggestions regarding how to evaluate the contributions of computer-based testing to more valid measurement practices. We conclude that computer-based testing shows great promise for enhancing validity, but at this juncture, it remains equivocal whether technological innovations in assessment have led to more valid measurement. [source]


Starvation in the midst of plenty

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL INVESTIGATION, Issue 5 2000
Rennie
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


Children's Housing Environments: Welfare Families in Iowa

FAMILY & CONSUMER SCIENCES RESEARCH JOURNAL, Issue 2 2006
Seongyeon Auh
This study uses qualitative data to examine how rural low-income women confront the housing needs of their young children in the midst of changes in public policy. The focus is on the strategies employed and the difficulties faced in the provision of safe, affordable and stable homes. The data are drawn from in-home interviews conducted every 6 months with 13 mothers who were welfare-dependent at the start of the research. The investigation depicts several dimensions of the circumstances of poor children that have not had much previous attention in the literature: serial housing inadequacy and chronic mobility. Several families with children with disabilities reported severe housing deficiencies. This research provides initial evidence of the important role of housing in promoting the goals of family stability and economic self-sufficiency as well as the need to improve health and developmental outcomes for children living in poverty. [source]


TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY PINK OR BLUE: HOW SEX SELECTION TECHNOLOGY FACILITATES GENDERCIDE AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Monica Sharma
In the midst of a genetic revolution in medicine, Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) has become a well-established technique to help infertile women achieve pregnancy. But many women are now turning to ART not just to circumvent infertility, but consciously to shape their families by determining the sex of their children. Many patriarchal cultures have a gender preference for males and to date have used technological advances in reproductive medicine to predetermine the sex of the child being born. Women have sought sex-selective abortions, where the pregnancy was being terminated solely on the basis of the sex of the unborn fetus. The combination of ART advances and gender preference has led to the disappearance of at least 100 million girls from the world's population leading to a mass gendercide. This article examines the societal impact of unbalanced gender ratios and the need to regulate sex selection to avoid nations of bachelors. [source]


Beyond the center: Intel gives employees more choices through family child care

GLOBAL BUSINESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE, Issue 4 2005
Adam Sorensen
Flexibility and cost effectiveness became priorities for semiconductor giant Intel when it sought employee child care options in the midst of its worst business downturn. An innovative solution leverages community resources at Intel sites around the country to offer locally managed home-based programs as an alternative to center-based child care. In the process, the new program has improved the quality of at-home child care, created more child care spaces, and given providers access to more clients and resources, to the benefit of the community as a whole. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


The Northern Ireland Peace Process and the War against Terrorism: Conflicting Conceptions?

GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2007
Adrian Guelke
Preserving Northern Ireland's peace process in the midst of a war against international terrorism has presented the British government with a series of dilemmas at the level of political rhetoric, policy-making and legislation. The peace process demands adherence to human rights standards to provide a foundation for the new political dispensation, while an implication of the necessity for a war against terrorism is that restrictions on liberty are justifiable in the name of security against the backdrop of the existence of an emergency. These conflicting conceptions for addressing political violence at the national and international level are addressed. [source]


Times, Measures and the Man: the Future of British Higher Education Treated Historically and Comparatively

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2006
Guy Neave
This article is a tribute to the life work of Maurice Kogan. Very little of higher education's landscape in the United Kingdom has remained unchanged over the past four decades and this article sets out to analyze the way the perception of the role of universities in society has changed in the intervening period. This it does through three perspectives: continuity and change, continuity in change and continuity in the midst of change. Each yields very different visions of the university. Against this ,inside' view, the second part of the article examines current British higher education policy from an ,outsider' standpoint and very particularly the current strategies towards the European Higher Education and Research Areas. It concludes by arguing that Britain's higher education policy vis a vis Europe re-states a dilemma which these Islands have had to tackle for the best part of the past 250 Years. This dilemma is whether to lay priority on higher education as a global instrument or to endorse a more limited, less ambitious agenda of ,European' integration. [source]


SEEING AND SAYING: A RESPONSE TO "INCONGRUOUS IMAGES",

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 4 2009
GEOFFREY BATCHEN
ABSTRACT In responding to an essay by Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer about photographs taken in the streets of Chernivitsi (Czernowitz) in the 1940s, and thus in the midst of the Holocaust, this paper seeks to link their concerns to a broader consideration of photography as a modern phenomenon. In the process, the paper provides a brief history of street photography, a genre virtually ignored in standard histories of the photographic medium. The author suggests that Hirsch and Spitzer's paper bravely reminds us that our fascination with photographs is based not on truth, but on a combination of desire (our own desire to transcend death) and faith (in photography's ability to deliver this end, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary). Their account of street photography in Czernowitz thereby amounts to an interpretation of photographs as dynamic modes of apprehension rather than as static objects from the past that veridically represent it. It is precisely this aspect of photographs that makes them such unusually complicated, ambiguous, and incongruous historical objects. [source]


Invertebrate immune systems , not homogeneous, not simple, not well understood

IMMUNOLOGICAL REVIEWS, Issue 1 2004
Eric S Loker
Summary:, The approximate 30 extant invertebrate phyla have diversified along separate evolutionary trajectories for hundreds of millions of years. Although recent work understandably has emphasized the commonalities of innate defenses, there is also ample evidence, as from completed genome studies, to suggest that even members of the same invertebrate order have taken significantly different approaches to internal defense. These data suggest that novel immune capabilities will be found among the different phyla. Many invertebrates have intimate associations with symbionts that may play more of a role in internal defense than generally appreciated. Some invertebrates that are either long lived or have colonial body plans may diversify components of their defense systems via somatic mutation. Somatic diversification following pathogen exposure, as seen in plants, has been investigated little in invertebrates. Recent molecular studies of sponges, cnidarians, shrimp, mollusks, sea urchins, tunicates, and lancelets have found surprisingly diversified immune molecules, and a model is presented that supports the adaptive value of diversified non-self recognition molecules in invertebrates. Interactions between invertebrates and viruses also remain poorly understood. As we are in the midst of alarming losses of coral reefs, increased pathogen challenge to invertebrate aquaculture, and rampant invertebrate-transmitted parasites of humans and domestic animals, we need a better understanding of invertebrate immunology. [source]


Feminism in the Grips of a Pincer Attack,Traditionalism, liberalism, and globalism

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2005
Yumiko Ehara
Abstract:, The dichotomy of individualism versus collectivism is one of the pivots around which political ideologies in postwar Japanese society can be broken down. Many people had thought that what postwar Japan needed was the development of modern individuals who represented a departure from feudalistic thinking. Against the backdrop of uncertainties related to employment and life in general engendered by a prolonged economic stagnation and globalism, Japanese society in the twenty-first century is being pounded by a tempest of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In the midst of this storm, ideas advocating social policies that promote gender equality are being dismantled by both of these forces. This is because the power of traditionalism as a force for asserting a revisionist ideology in modern Japanese society primarily constitutes the power of neoconservatism, which embraces neoliberalism with a view to revitalizing the free economy through the elimination of social welfare and the intensification of free competition. In order to establish formidable economic competitiveness, neoliberalism and neoconservatism (neoliberalism = neoconservatism) reject domestic systems geared towards labor protection (deregulation) and extol familism and nationalism as means to bringing social unrest under control through the mobilization of the labor force (traditionalism). However, the habitual way of thinking that places traditionalism and liberalism in a dichotomous pivot remains ingrained within us even now. Because globalization reinforces social mobility, these two positions will continue to gain strength even as they conflict with each other. With feminism in the grips of a pincer attack, the movement will struggle to maintain its breath. [source]


International Labour Migrants' Return to Meiji-era Yamaguchi and Hiroshima: Economic and Social Effects

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2008
Jonathan Dresner
International labour migration from Meiji era (1868,1912) Japan was intensely concentrated: over 60 per cent of the 29,000 participants in the government-managed Hawai'i emigration programme (kan'yaku imin, 1885,1894) came from seven coastal counties around the Hiroshima-Yamaguchi prefectural border in southwest Japan. Almost half of the emigrants became long-term settlers instead of returning to their hometowns, but this paper examines what happened to returning emigrants and to their home communities. Since the migration was primarily economic in nature, the effect of migrant earnings was carefully monitored and is frequently cited by scholars. Surveys showed high rates of debt repayment and savings, and improved living conditions, but investment and entrepreneurship were limited. High-emigration regions rarely became economic centers of any importance. Less carefully studied are non-economic effects, partially because the labour programme was structured to minimize contact with Hawaiian or Caucasian culture, and thus returnees had little cultural experience to transfer to their hometowns. Local officials in Yamaguchi seemed proud of the lack of social change. Even long-term sojourners, who returned due to family needs after a decade or more overseas, exhibited no readjustment difficulties. Returnees, particularly in Yamaguchi, sometimes moved on to Japanese colonial territories, creating multilateral and complex relationships with overseas communities. This sojourning migration, like contemporary analogs, was a powerful form of poverty relief in the midst of dislocating globalization, but did not produce a rise in entrepreneurship or a Westernization of local culture. Because this sojourning migration was structurally similar to our modern-day patterns, it provides evidence of the longevity of those patterns and the possible long-term effects, and raises questions about our expectations for migration policy. Retour des travailleurs migrants internationaux de l'ère Meiji à Yamaguchi et Hiroshima: effets économiques et sociaux Au Japon, la migration internationale de main-d',uvre de l'ère Meiji (1868,1912) a été très concentrée: plus de soixante pour cent des 29 000 participants au programme gouvernemental d'émigration à destination d'Hawaï (kan'yaku imin, 1885-1894) venaient de sept régions côtières proches de la limite entre les préfectures d'Hiroshima et de Yamaguchi dans le Sud-Ouest du Japon. Sachant que la moitié des émigrants sont devenus des résidents de longue durée et ne sont pas rentrés dans leur communauté d'origine, le présent document s'intéresse à ceux qui ont fait le choix inverse. Etant donné que cette migration était principalement de nature économique, les effets des gains des migrants ont étéétudiés avec attention et sont souvent cités par les chercheurs. Si des enquêtes ont révélé des taux importants de remboursement de dettes et d'épargne, ainsi qu'un niveau de vie en hausse, les investissements et la création d'entreprises, en revanche, sont restés limités. On a rarement vu des régions à fort taux d'émigration devenir des centres économiques d'importance. Les effets non économiques ont été moins étudiés, en partie parce que ce programme de main-d',uvre était structuré de façon à réduire le plus possible les contacts avec la culture hawaïenne ou caucasienne, ce qui fait que les rapatriés n'avaient guère d'acquis culturels exogènes à transmettre. Les responsables locaux de Yamaguchi semblaient d'ailleurs se réjouir de l'absence de changements sociaux. Même les résidents de longue durée, qui étaient rentrés pour raisons familiales au bout d'au moins une décennie à l'étranger, ne montraient aucune difficultéà se réadapter. Les rapatriés, en particulier à Yamaguchi, ont parfois déménagé vers les territoires coloniaux japonais, créant des relations multilatérales complexes avec les communautés de l'outre-mer. Cette migration temporaire, comme les mouvements analogues à la même époque, était une formidable façon de réduire la pauvreté dans un contexte de bouleversement mondial, mais elle n'a pas renforcé l'esprit d'entreprise ni conduit à une occidentalisation de la culture locale. Comme cette migration temporaire était structurellement semblable à nos modèles contemporains, elle témoigne de la longue durée de vie de ces modèles et de leurs effets possibles à long terme, et soulève des questions quant à nos attentes en matière de politique migratoire. Retorno a los trabajadores migrantes internacionales a la era Meiji en Yamaguchi e Hiroshima: Efectos socioeconómicos La migración laboral internacional en la era Meiji del Japón (1868,1912) era sumamente concentrada: más del 60 por ciento de los 29.000 participantes en el programa de emigración Hawai'i (kan'yaku imin, 1885-1894) administrado por el Gobierno, provenía de varios condados costeros en torno a la frontera prefectural entre Hiroshima-Yamaguchi en el sudeste del Japón. Casi la mitad de los emigrantes residía en albergues semipermanentes y no retornaban a sus lugares de origen. Ahora bien, en este artículo se examina lo ocurrido con los migrantes que retornaron y con las comunidades de retorno. Habida cuenta que la migración era mayormente de carácter económico, el efecto de los ingresos de los migrantes se siguió de cerca y, frecuentemente, ha sido citado por los estudiosos en la materia. Las encuestas demuestran elevadas tasas de reembolso de deudas y de ahorro, así como un mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida, pero también apuntan a limitadas inversiones o empresas. Las regiones de alta emigración rara vez se convirtieron en centros de importancia económica. No se ha estudiado en detalle los efectos extra económicos, en parte porque el programa de migración laboral estaba estructurado para minimizar el contacto con la cultura hawaiana o caucasiana, por lo cual las personas que retornaban tenían poca experiencia cultural que aportar a sus lugares de origen. Los funcionarios locales en Yamaguchi se enorgullecían de la falta de intercambio social. Incluso aquéllos residentes de larga duración que retornaron debido a cuestiones familiares tras una década o más en ultramar, no presentaron ninguna dificultad en readaptarse. Las personas que retornaron, particularmente a Yamaguchi, se desplazaron a veces a territorios coloniales japoneses, estableciendo complejas relaciones multilaterales con comunidades en ultramar. La migración de carácter permanente, al igual que sus análogos contemporáneos, era un sólido medio de aliviar la pobreza en medio de una globalización perturbadora, pero no dio lugar a un incremento empresarial o a una occidentalización de la cultura local. La similitud estructural de la migración de larga duración con nuestros patrones de hoy en día, aporta pruebas de la longevidad de los mismos, de los posibles efectos a largo plazo de dichos patrones y plantea una serie de preguntas sobre las expectativas en cuanto a las políticas migratorias. [source]


Introduction: federalism in an era of globalisation

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 167 2001
Ronald Watts
Under the pressure of globalization we appear to be in the midst of a paradigm shift from a world of nation-states to one in which federalism provides the closest political approximation to the complex diversity of the contemporaryworld. In this context the Forum of Federations, as its first major activity, held an international conference at Mont Tremblant, Quebec, 5-8 October 1999, on ,Federalism in an Era of Globalization'. The articles in this issue of the International Social Science Journal are drawn from among the many presentations and back-ground papers at that conference, and provide an insight into a range of salient issues within contemporary federations. [source]


The MST and the EZLN Struggle for Land: New Forms of Peasant Rebellions

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 3 2009
LEANDRO VERGARA-CAMUS
In this article, the author reviews some of the conclusions of the literature on peasant rebellions in the light of current land struggles of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico. The author argues that conventional explanations of peasant rebellions are inappropriate for the analysis of current land struggles in Latin America in the midst of the process of neoliberal globalization. Neither struggle can be characterized as ,quasi-feudal', nor as conservative reactions, but instead should be interpreted as attempts to create a basis for self-subsistence and autonomy. Consequently, the author proposes Marx's concept of alienated labour as an alternative explanatory concept, because it highlights one of the main objectives of the members of the MST and the EZLN, which is the control over their livelihood through a struggle for their re-peasantization. [source]


Livelihood diversification and implications on dryland resources of central Tanzania

AFRICAN JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY, Issue 2009
Emma T. Liwenga
Abstract The concern over sustainable livelihoods in African drylands is an issue that has received considerable attention from researchers and policy makers alike. Over the past two decades African rural areas have undergone rapid changes, whereby, rural income diversification has become the most salient feature. With a particular focus on dryland ecosystems, among the major challenges facing communities in these areas is recurrent drought leading to conditions of food insecurity. This paper draws on experience on coping mechanisms for food insecurity from an agro-pastoral community in Mvumi, located in the semiarid areas of central Tanzania. An understanding of livelihoods of people in this area has involved examining how communities have managed to adjust their livelihood in the midst of challenges resulting not only from drought but also from various forces such as socio,economic, political and ecological factors. It has been found out that, despite profound food crisis in this area, people are not always desperate and that there are possibilities for realizing some hidden potentials of dryland resources for livelihood diversification. The issue of sustainable natural resource management in such areas is, however, questionable because of some adverse environmental effects associated with some of the coping mechanisms. [source]


Controlling Corruption in Hong Kong: From Colony to Special Administrative Region

JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2001
Jack M. K. Lo
Corruption has been a perennial problem in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong of the post-war years represented what appeared to have become an intractable case of a society in which corruption was entrenched as part of political, economic and social life. This paper seeks to delineate the experience of Hong Kong's fight against corruption in the midst of a rapidly changing political and social environment. After describing the context in which the Hong Kong anti-corruption programme is set, this paper identifies the critical policy decisions that account for the programme's success and the lessons Hong Kong has learned from the campaign. It ends by highlighting some of the current issues and problems that arise from the changing circumstances of Hong Kong's development. [source]


Is China turning Latin?

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 6 2010
China's balancing act between power, dependence in the lead up to global crisis
Abstract China's apparent escape from the external constraints of peripheral late industrialisation in the build up to the global economic crisis of 2007,2009 has been recent and remains tenuous. Before its spectacular trade surpluses of the 2000s, China's external accounts reflected many of these constraints. Even in the midst of the surplus surge, external vulnerabilities of a peripheral nature have persisted. Besides the issue of export dependence, which is the conventional focus of most crisis-related studies on China, vulnerabilities have been more profoundly related to the dominance of foreign ownership in China's export sector and to the relatively subordinate position of this export sector within the massive rerouting of international production networks via China that followed the East Asian crisis, in large part led by Northern transnational corporations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]