Rents,knowledge and neo-structuralism: transforming the productive matrix in Ecuador

This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s neo-structuralist, state-led project to transform the productive matrix. Based upon insights from the Marxian approach to the critique of political economy, we interrogate how neo-structuralism has conceptualised the relationship between ‘natural resource income’ and ‘knowledge-based’ economic development. The paper argues that a rent-theoretical perspective, which takes seriously the regional unfolding of uneven geographical development in Latin America, can highlight the limits of a national development plan conceived according to the logic of Schumpeterian efficiency. In doing so, the paper identifies the contradictory relationship between natural resource exports, state-led ‘knowledge’-based development and capital accumulation. On this basis the paper offers a historically and empirically informed critical analysis of selective import substitution industrialisation and vanguard science and technology strategies designed to transition Ecuador away from primary resource dependence.     

Ten years after: revisiting the determinants of the adoption of municipal corporations for local service delivery

Research on the use of municipal corporations to deliver local and regional public services has evolved significantly in the past decade. Most of this work addresses the performance of this service-delivery mode in relation to local bureaucracies. However, much less is known about the drivers for the adoption of municipal corporations in the first place. This article reviews the main determinants of adoption – service characteristics, institutional and regulatory settings, political constraints and financial conditions – and highlights the need for comparative research across countries.     

Territories of peace: alter-territorialities in Colombia’s San José de Apartadó Peace Community

ABSTRACT

Scholars are increasingly re-theorizing territory beyond the nation-state given Indigenous and Afro-descendant groups’ demands for ‘territory’ as they confront land grabbing in Latin America. Yet alternative territorialities are not limited to such ethnic groups. Based on 16 months of ethnographic research between 2011 and 2016, I explore the relational territoriality produced by a peasant ‘peace community’ in San José de Apartadó, Colombia. By tracing the collective political subject produced by the Peace Community’s active production of peace through a set of spatial practices, places and values, which include massacre commemorations, food sovereignty initiatives and Indigenous–peasant solidarity networks, this contribution presents a conceptual framework for analyzing diverse territorial formations.     

Individual and Contextual Factors Associated with Patterns of Aggression and Peer Victimization During Middle School

Peer victimization is a common problem among adolescents that has been linked to a variety of adjustment problems. Youth involved in peer victimization represent a heterogeneous group who may differ not only in their levels of victimization and perpetration, but also in the factors that influence their behavior. The current study used latent class analysis (LCA) to identify subgroups of aggressive and victimized youth, and to examine social-cognitive and environmental factors that differ across these subgroups. Participants were a predominantly African-American (i.e., 68 %) sample of 502 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders (45 % male, Mean age = 12.6 years) attending three urban public middle schools, who completed self-report measures of aggression, victimization, and associated individual and contextual factors. LCA identified four classes of adolescents representing non-victimized aggressors, aggressive-victims, predominantly victimized youth, and well-adjusted youth. Class differences were found on measures of beliefs supporting fighting, beliefs against fighting, perceived effectiveness of inept nonviolent responses to conflict, behavioral intentions to engage in aggressive and nonviolent behavior, self-efficacy for nonviolent behavior, and peer and parental support for aggression and nonviolence. For example, within the two classes of victimized youth, aggressive-victims reported greater intentions to engage in physical aggression and inept nonviolent behavior, and were more likely to agree with beliefs supporting the use of instrumental and reactive aggression, and beliefs that fighting is sometimes necessary compared to predominantly victimized youth. These findings emphasize the importance of developing preventive interventions that target the specific needs of distinct subgroups of adolescents.     

Not Worth the Fuss After All? Cross-sectional and Prospective Data on Violent Video Game Influences on Aggression, Visuospatial Cognition and Mathematics Ability in a Sample of Youth

The United States Supreme Court’s recent decision relating to violent video games revealed divisions within the scientific community about the potential for negative effects of such games as well as the need for more, higher quality research. Scholars also have debated the potential for violent games to have positive effects such as on visuospatial cognition or math ability. The current study sought to extend previous literature by using well-validated clinical outcome measures for relevant constructs, which have generally been lacking in past research. Cross-section data on aggression, visuospatial cognition, and math achievement were available for a sample of 333 (51.7 % female) mostly Hispanic youth (mean age = 12.76). Prospective 1-year data on aggression and school GPA were available for 143 (46.2 % female) of those youth. Results from both sets of analysis revealed that exposure to violent game had neither short-term nor long-term predictive influences on either positive or negative outcomes. A developmental analysis of the cross-sectional data revealed that results did not differ across age categories of older children, preadolescents or adolescents. Analysis of effect sizes largely ruled out Type II error as a possible explanation for null results. Suggestions for new directions in the field of video game research are proffered.     

“Use words. Not your body”: The hunger that has no name

This essay examines the competing readings of food refusal that emerged from a student hunger strike held at Columbia University in fall 2007. The invisibility of the act of food refusal forces hunger strikers to adopt performance strategies that make their (non)action visible as protest. To make the politics of their food refusal legible, advocates for the hunger strike promoted their actions as part of a 40 year tradition of student protest. However, that same invisibility allowed the protest's detractors to deride the hunger strikers as anorexic. At the center of the protest and the commentary about it was a wasting female body that confused for spectators the line between the political and the pathological. Attention to this body raises questions of how community is created and disciplined through performative acts, how easily female protest is evacuated of political meaning and the uneasy role of whiteness in popular attention to anorexia.     

Housing Management and the Comprehensive Housing Model in Hong Kong: A case study of colonial influence

This article contains an examination of the way in which the largely British model of professional comprehensive housing management became important in Hong Kong. It shows how a comparatively small number of pioneers, mainly women who were followers of the principles of Octavia Hill, a philanthropic social reformer who developed her ideas in 19th century London, had a considerable influence in the very different environment of Hong Kong. An examination of the comparatively small amount of literature on the housing management profession is followed by a detailed analysis of the way in which the housing management profession has developed in Hong Kong. A review of the origin of public housing programmes in Hong Kong highlights the influence which housing professionals had when the housing administration was radically restructured at the time of the formation of the Hong Kong Housing Authority in the early 1970s.     

Fatal motorcycle accidents and alcohol

A series of fatal motorcycle accidents from a 7-year period (1977-1983) has been analyzed. Of the fatalities 30 were operators of the motorcycle, 11 pillion passengers and 8 counterparts. Of 41 operators 37% were sober at the time of accident, 66% had measurable blood alcohol concentration (BAC); 59% above 0.08%. In all cases where a pillion passenger was killed, the operator of the motorcycle had a BAC greater than 0.08%. Of the killed counterparts 2 were non-intoxicated, 2 had a BAC greater than 0.08%, and 4 were not tested. The results advocate that the law should restrict alcohol consumption by pillion passengers as well as by the motorcycle operator. Suggestions made to extend the data base needed for developing appropriate alcohol countermeasures by collecting sociodemographic data on drivers killed or seriously injured should be supported.     

A simplified procedure for simultaneous detection of salivary proteins and its application in paternity testing

An alternative simplified procedure for the genetic analysis of salivary protein complex (SPC) which eliminates the need for a specific concentrated parotid sample is proposed. After the technique is applied isoelectric focusing and protein detection is carried out by silver staining. The chance of exclusion of non-fathers for these systems in our population is 0.161711 for Pr, 0.07948 for Db, 0.07836 for Pa and 0.00995 for PIF. The total exclusion rate for these systems is 0.30042.