Museums and Feminist Matters: Considerations of a Feminist Museology

This article speaks to a post-human feminist museology. It argues that considerations of a feminist museology would benefit from engaging with post-human feminist dialogues currently unfolding within academia. Dynamic political landscapes and global circumstances challenge dualist paradigms. Theorizations of museums are not exempt from these challenges. Critiques of androcentricity indicate that feminist theorizations have never fully centred on “the human”, but always already contextualized how we affect the world, and how the world affects us. Discussions in this article follow Barad’s agential-realist theorization of the material-discursive practices that shape our understandings in and of the world, and Haraway’s notion of diffraction that engages the material and re-tools recordings of object histories as entangled human and non-human processes that can be taken apart and reassembled, making different possibilities possible. The article demonstrates that museological alternatives that emerge from conversations about entanglements not only aim to move beyond the paradigms they have been circling within for so long, but towards a re-thinking of museology and cultural heritage museums. Thus, considerations of a feminist post-human museology re-imagine museums as entangled becomings that make different possibilities possible.     

Risk Factors and Drivers of Financial Sustainability in Local Government: An Empirical Study

The current international crisis in public finances has made financial sustainability a key issue for governments. Although the European Union (EU) and other international organisations have recommended governments to monitor demographic and economic variables, few studies have considered the influence of these variables on financial sustainability. This paper seeks to identify and analyse the drivers and risk factors that influence the financial sustainability of local government. The findings identify both risk factors (unemployment and population aged under 16 years) and drivers (budgetary outcome) of financial sustainability, which may constitute a useful basis for decision-taking by managers and policy-makers.     

The International Harmonization Process of Public Sector Accounting in Portugal: The Perspective of Different Stakeholders

This paper investigates the reform of public accounting in Portugal through the IPSAS adoption highlighting the perception of different stakeholders. Two competing theories (NPM and the institutional theory) are used to understand public accounting changes within the Portuguese context. In general, different stakeholders agree with the favorable moment and the context of the reform. The context of financial crises and the great external pressures to cut public deficits and to improve the quality of financial information seem to be the most important factors to stimulate changes in public accounting. In addition, stakeholders recommend the use of different strategies to ensure success.     

Violence and visibility in oil palm and sugarcane conflicts: the case of Polochic Valley,Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Over the last two decades, the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane plantations in the Polochic Valley (Guatemala) has exacerbated the historical struggle of Maya-Q’eqchi’ peoples for land rights. Based on a mixed-methods approach, I examine the dynamics of the conflict between 1998 and 2014, focusing on the visibility, manifestation and intensity of violence and the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and peasant organizations in opposition to oil palm and sugarcane plantations. I show that the evolution of the conflict can be explained by changes in the strength of organizations' alliances due to tensions and lack of coordination, as well as the fear of state repression and the funding context of these organizations. These results allow me to discuss how violence, the role of these organizations and the dynamics of related events have influenced the visibility of the conflict associated with the expansion of oil palm and sugarcane plantations in the Polochic.     

Rural democratisation in Mexico's deep south: grassroots right-to-know campaigns in Guerrero

In Mexico's southern state of Guerrero, rural social and civic movements are increasingly claiming their right to information as a tool to hold the state publicly accountable, as part of their ongoing issue-specific social, economic, and civic struggles. This study reviews the historical, social and political landscape that grounds campaigns for rural democratisation in Guerrero, including Mexico's recent information access reforms and then compares two different regional social movements that have claimed the ‘right to know’. For some movements, the demand for information rights is part of a sustained strategy, for others it is a tactic, but the claim bridges both more resistance-oriented and more negotiation-oriented social and civic movements.     

Referendum design, quorum rules and turnout

In this article, we focus on the consequences of quorum requirements for turnout in referendums. We use a rational choice, decision theoretic voting model to demonstrate that participation quorums change the incentives some electors face, inducing those who oppose changes in the status quo and expect to be in the minority to abstain. As a result, paradoxically, participation quorums decrease electoral participation. We test our model’s predictions using data for all referendums held in current European Union countries from 1970 until 2007, and show that the existence of a participation quorums increases abstention by more than ten percentage points.     

Filling in the Gaps: The Transnational Administration of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Peru

Diverse sources have constructed a common narrative of individual and isolated responses by countries and their leaders to the global coronavirus pandemic, akin to sálvese quien pueda (every man for himself). This article suggests that this is a simplification of the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Peru's governance story is one of domestic public and private action closely interwoven with crucial elements of transnational administration out of sheer necessity. The struggle against the pandemic has generated a domestic and transnational administrative symbiosis, involving authorities at multiple levels in efforts to fill a series of interconnected domestic, regional, and global governance gaps.     

When is Parental Monitoring Effective? A Person-centered Analysis of the Role of Autonomy-supportive and Psychologically Controlling Parenting in Referred and Non-referred Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Over the last few years, the protective role of parental monitoring on adolescent adjustment (i.e., active parental efforts aimed at setting limits and tracking...     

Fatal and Nonfatal Rip Saw Injuries

This paper deals with a fatal stab wound suffered by a 29-year-old man and nonfatal injuries of 35-year-old and 67-year-old saw operators. Rip saw is a machine that is specially designed for making a rip cut, a cut made parallel to the direction of the wood grain. Rip-saw-related injuries mostly occur when a person is struck by the cutting material, which usually involves splinters of irregular shape and diameter. When the splinter strikes the body diagonally, the injuries may include abrasions, lacerations, and cut wounds; in situations where the victim is struck directly, the most common injuries are oval- or star-shaped stab wounds with a varying width of abrasions around the wounds. Therefore, such injuries may come across as injuries produced by a knife-like instrument, which is an added difficulty in the interpretation of such injuries.