Mobilising the Periphery: Brazil's My House My Life Programme and the Homeless Workers' Movement

Brazil's Movimento de Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST, Homeless Workers' Movement) has grown dramatically in recent years. This growth was partly provided for by the use of a large government housing programme, Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV, My House My Life), which allowed the MTST to construct housing for its members and swell its ranks with thousands of new members. Yet some have argued that the MCMV programme used by the MTST may compromise the autonomy of civil society organisations. This article, by contrast, argues that while the MCMV programme encouraged bureaucratic practices, it also helped to promote the cultural politics of the MTST.     

The politics of mortgage credit expansion in the small coordinated market economies

Abstract

Recent contributions to the comparative political economy literature claim that liberal market economies are vulnerable to asset booms and busts because of financial deregulation, shrinking welfare states and a political ideology emphasising financial self-sufficiency. This article examines the rapid expansion of mortgage lending in three coordinated market economies (CMEs): Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. This expansion is puzzling given that all three countries are CMEs with generous welfare states. Yet the pattern of mortgage lending resembles the Anglo-Saxon or liberal market economies (LMEs) more than other CMEs. The article argues that mortgage bubbles in the small CMEs emerged as the unintended outcome of pairing neoliberal programmes to expand home ownership with collectivist housing institutions. This resulted in supply restrictions and rising property values which saddled households with extraordinarily high mortgage debts. In short, mortgage credit bubbles are not unique to Anglo-liberal welfare states and may have different origins.     

1株抗须癣毛癣菌枯草芽孢菌的鉴定

为了探讨抗须癣毛癣菌感染新的治疗途径,从患须癣毛癣菌病兔自然恢复皮肤分离了1株细菌,经16S rDNA基因比对,并结合菌落形态进行了鉴定,通过体内外试验测定其对须癣毛癣菌的拮抗作用。结果显示,分离株能在营养琼脂培养基生长,菌落为皱褶圆形,菌体呈杆状,革兰染色阳性,基因序列分析与GenBank中的枯草芽孢杆菌相似率为99.8%,该分离株被鉴定为枯草芽孢杆菌。抗菌谱分析显示,分离株对须癣毛癣菌能形成抑菌圈,对白色念珠菌、平滑念珠菌、热带念珠菌、烟曲霉菌、黄曲霉菌没有抑制作用。该分离株与须癣毛癣菌混合培养,能明显抑制须癣毛癣菌生长。在皮肤涂抹试验中,该分离株能逆转由须癣毛癣菌引起的皮肤病变。本试验证实了分离的枯草芽孢杆菌对须癣毛癣菌有明显的拮抗作用。     

Women Sustaining Community: The Politics of Agro-Ecology in Quilombo Tourism in Southern Brazil

This article analyses how a gendered perspective on community-based tourism (CBT) contributes to the realisation of identity and sovereignty of quilombos. It examines the potential sustainability of CBT coupled with agro-ecological practices within the context of gendered identity politics. Drawing from in-depth ethnographic and archival research conducted between February and July 2015 at Campinho da Independência (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the article discusses how female leaders integrate sustainable agro-ecological practices and CBT with environmental education in what they call ‘ethno-ecological tourism’. This approach to CBT strengthens a proudly defiant version of Afro-Brazilian ethnic identity vis-à-vis the state.     

Directors’ duties under the 2019 Companies Act of Ghana

The scope of directors’ duties forms perhaps the most important part of corporate governance. This paper considers the trajectory of the regulation of directors’ duties under Ghanaian company law from the Companies Act, 1963 (Act 179) to the Companies Act, 2019 (Act 992). Using the 2017 to 2019 financial institutions’ insolvencies in Ghana as a backdrop, it considers whether the scope, formulation and structure of directors’ duties within the new legislation is capable of promoting corporately-beneficial director behaviour. It also discusses whether the framework is apt to deal with similar lapses in corporate governance marked by reckless and opportunistic director behaviour. It discovers that Act 992 places a greater reliance on specific rules while retaining the largely principles-based regulatory technique adopted for regulating director conduct under Act 179. The overall tenor of the framework of directors’ duties under the new Act points to a firmer legislative view of the serious consequences of reckless director conduct. The paper concludes that the language of the framework regulating director conduct is capable of promoting corporately beneficially director behaviour and is also apt to deal with the kind of lapses in corporate governance which led to mass financial sector insolvencies in Ghana.     

Bringing the Falklands/Malvinas Home: Young People's Everyday Engagements with Geopolitics in Domestic Space

This paper draws on recent research examining feminist and everyday geopolitics to focus on the relatively neglected domestic sphere as a space where geopolitical events like the Falklands/Malvinas war are learnt, (re)produced, remembered and contested by young people. It presents qualitative data drawn from interviews with young people from Argentina (Río Gallegos) and the Falkland Islands (Stanley), locations with intimate connections to the 1982 war. It argues that research in domestic environments that engages the familial relations, objects and practices that embody geopolitical pasts can help make sense of how young people (are able to) express geopolitical agency.