Mining against the State? Gold Mining and Emerging Notions of Territoriality in Southeastern Venezuela

The current economic crisis in Venezuela has drawn members of Pemón communities to the practice of informal (illegal) gold mining, as mining, undertaken alongside other ‘traditional’ economic activities, is a more effective source of income than waged jobs. The increased involvement of Pemón people in informal mining has encouraged their partial retreat from the state's frontiers, and it reveals transformations in the ways in which local people imagine and relate to the Venezuelan state. These transformations are embodied in both a reorganisation of the space, and in burgeoning notions of land ownership.     

Agricultural Commercialisation and Food Security in Rural Economies: Malawian Experience

This paper contributes to the debate on the nutrition-related outcomes of cash crop adoption by using a model with essential heterogeneity and a semi-parametric estimation technique. The model explicitly frames non-separability between production and consumption decisions of farming households providing an original test of separability. The empirical application is run using Malawian data. The results imply rational anticipations and decision process of agrarian households relative to the crop portfolio choice, disparate strength of market barriers faced by the farmers, non-separability between production and consumption decisions and a weak transmission from agricultural incomes to higher food expenditures and better diet.     

A Case of Toxic Shock due to Clandestine Abortion by Misoprostol self‐administration

Maternal mortality and morbidity are the leading causes of death and illness, respectively, among women of reproductive age in many countries throughout the world. Of all maternal deaths, those related to unsafe abortions are the most widely underestimated, but they are also the most largely preventable. Medical abortion is a safe and reliable method for termination of a pregnancy in early gestation, although it is important to be aware of signs and symptoms of severe infection and toxic shock syndrome after the medical termination of pregnancy; case studies in literature are rarely fatal events. We report the first case of septic shock syndrome following a clandestine pregnancy termination with a misoprostol‐only regimen (12 tablets 200 μg each). Autopsy findings and histopathological examination proved that the woman died from septic shock. This case suggests to improve the forensic investigations in case of unsafe, often clandestine, abortion is suspected.     

DO GROUP DYNAMICS INFLUENCE SOCIAL CAPITAL GAINS AMONG MICROFINANCE CLIENTS? EVIDENCE FROM A RANDOMIZED EXPERIMENT IN URBAN INDIA

As an intrinsic part of the classic microfinance model, group meetings are intended to employ social capital to ensure timely repayment. Recent research suggests that more frequent meetings can increase social capital among first‐time clients. Using randomized variation in group meeting frequency for 174 microfinance groups in India, we demonstrate that social capital gains associated with more frequent meetings continue to accrue across multiple lending cycles. However, these effects are reduced when group members differ in their borrowing history. In addition, clients who start with low levels of empowerment report higher social capital gains when matched with similar clients. We discuss how current microfinance policy debates overlook the creation of social capital, including through repayment meeting frequency, and we encourage regulators to undertake a holistic understanding of microfinance's impacts.     

Journalism as “Prostitution”: Understanding Russia's Reactions to Anna Politkovskaya's Murder

When the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in her apartment building in Moscow in October 2006, heads of Western governments and nongovernmental organizations hurried to make strong statements condemning the murder, and public rallies in Politkovskaya's honor were held in front of Russian embassies across the world. In contrast to this swift and unequivocal response, the reaction of Russian officials, journalists, and the public at large was delayed, lukewarm, or nonexistent, much to the incomprehension of Western observers. To understand why the majority of Russian citizens were unmoved by Politkovskaya's murder, this article will contend, we need to understand the specific history of media-political transformation in Russia over the past decade and a half. This includes (a) approaching Soviet journalism as a unique nexus of ethics and politics, (b) studying the centrifugal forces unleashed during Russia's media privatization in the 1990s, and (c) understanding how those forces (in tension with the centering pull under Putin) have been shaping the practices and meaning of journalism in post-Soviet Russia over the past decade and a half. Such context-sensitive and historically contingent exploration will, in turn, suggest new theoretical tools for thinking about journalistic action, or agency, in political contexts short of classical liberalism more broadly.     

A systematic literature review on accelerators

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Over the past 15 years, accelerators emerged as a popular and distinct new form of intermediary organization, playing a key role in supporting...