Digital thombos: A new source for 18th century Sri Lankan family history. Research note

The Sri Lanka National Archives (SLNA) in Colombo preserve under the names of head thombo and land thombo several hundreds of eighteenth-century registers on family composition and landownership. At the time of their compilation by the Dutch East India Company or VOC the thombos suited a general administrative purpose; currently they are used only in genealogical research and in court cases concerning land disputes. Demographic, family and colonial history, however, can profit considerably from this neglected source. In the following we describe a project to digitize the registers of the Colombo province, and we discuss and evaluate the variables in the database by focusing on the family groups of a relatively small district.     

西方霸权的竞争者:过去与现在——作为一种全球治理视角

近年来，人们常常听到对于中国何时能超过美国成为世界头号经济体的各种预测。高盛首席经济学家吉姆·奥尼尔在最近的一次评估中认为，就目前的增长率而言，中国将在2027年超过美国。就在同一年，金砖四国GDP总和将超过目前的七国集团。     

Reactions to Perceived Fairness: The Impact of Mortality Salience and Self-Esteem on Ratings of Negative Affect

In correspondence with terror management theory, the findings of two experiments show that reminders of death lead to stronger effects of perceived fairness on ratings of negative affect. Furthermore, in line with the theory's self-esteem mechanism, results of Experiment 1 suggest that state self-esteem may mediate this relationship between mortality salience and fairness. In further correspondence with the self-esteem mechanism, findings of Experiment 2 reveal that introducing an activity (after reminders of death and before the fairness manipulation) with which people can reaffirm positive conceptions of themselves leads people to react less strongly to variations in fairness than not introducing such a self-affirmation activity. These findings suggest that people react especially strongly to perceived fairness when they are in need for a boost in their self-esteem. Implications for the psychology of fairness are discussed.     

Predictors of Group Performance in a Police Criminal Investigation Department: the Role of Gender Homogeneity,Leadership and Team Characteristics

The Netherlands’ Ministry of Security and Justice has agreed on performance targets with the country’s police departments. Introducing the targets created a shift to controlling performance in team management focus. This empirical study of police teams in Utrecht in the Netherlands (N = 134) focuses on the influence of leadership style, gender and psychosocial team factors when teams are required to achieve agreed performance objectives. We address calls in the literature for more research into (objective) measures relating to effective police leadership and existing (police) management practices. Gender homogeneity, a combination of charismatic, empowering and transactional leadership styles, and team members’ awareness of team achievements were found to be relevant. The practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Effects of Uncertainty and Mortality Salience on Worldview Defense Reactions in Turkey

This research explores effects of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations or bolstering of cultural norms and values. Some recent studies have suggested that worldview defense reactions are better accounted for by reminders of personal uncertainty than mortality. These findings have been disputed, however, as they have not been found outside the Netherlands. The current research was conducted in Turkey, a culture distinguished by high uncertainty avoidance values compared to both the USA and the Netherlands. Results reveal that both uncertainty and mortality salience influence reactions of Turkish participants to essays negative about basic rights of Turkish women, but that uncertainty salience had larger effects than mortality salience. We argue that mortality salience may be an indirect manipulation of uncertainty concerns, which explains why a direct manipulation of uncertainty salience may have a bigger impact on reactions to violations of important cultural norms and values.     

Biofuel, dairy production and beef in Brazil: competing claims on land use in São Paulo state

This paper examines the competing claims on land use resulting from the expansion of biofuel production. Sugarcane for biofuel drives agrarian change in So Paulo state, which has become the major ethanol-producing region in Brazil. We analyse how the expansion of sugarcane-based ethanol in So Paulo state has impacted dairy and beef production. Historical changes in land use, production technologies, and product and land prices are described, as well as how these are linked to changing policies in Brazil. We argue that sugarcane/biofuel expansion should be understood in the context of the dynamics of other agricultural sectors and the long-term national political economy rather than as solely due to recent global demand for biofuel. This argument is based on a meticulous analysis of changes in three important sectors - sugarcane, dairy farming, and beef production - and the mutual interactions between these sectors.     

Territorial changes and changing identities: how spatial identities are used in the up-scaling of local government in the Netherlands

This article analyses the use of local identities by local communities in two Dutch municipalities. This research was commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior to better understand the role of local identities in municipal amalgamations. This article develops a conceptual framework based on the distinction between a primary identity based on the widely recognised dominant characteristics of the local community, and a secondary identity based on how communities within a municipality have learned over time to deal with these different primary local identities. During an amalgamation, this secondary identity disappears with the old municipality. The disappearance of the protective shield of a secondary identity exposes the underlying primary local identities, and can bring local identities into the centre of the local political debate. They can become more ***inward-oriented and focus more on their historical roots and their differences with others; they ‘thicken’ into resistance identities. In other cases, the secondary identity of a municipality is too weak and indistinct to support the primary local identities. Municipal amalgamation can then help to promote a new more attractive secondary, ‘thin’ regional identity based on a selection of characteristics of established primary local identities.