Voices on Paper: Multimodal Texts and Indigenous Literacy in Brazil

This paper focuses on the recent production of multimodal writing in an indigenous community in Brazil, resulting from the equally recent introduction of literacy. Seeing this form of writing as part of the process of intercultural semiosis and cultural translation, the paper discusses how concepts of local indigenous oral culture and received wisdom interact with the Western concept of writing as the ‘record’ or ‘representation’ of speech, bringing to writing the indigenous notion of cultural ‘enactment’ or ‘performativity’. In an effort to overcome a view of alphabetic writing as semantically only propositional, mimetic and decontextualized, the Kashinawa´ community, by adding visual components to alphabetic texts, appear to transform writing into contextualized performative ‘poiesis’, which simul taneously inaugurates a complex process of semiosis inseparable and only comprehensible from their local cultural perspective.     

Shaping Psychological Contracts in the Public and Private Sectors: A Human Resources Management Perspective

ABSTRACT

Organizational choices shape the way in which individuals experience their employment relationship. Given the multiple differences between the public and the private sectors, this study seeks to identify variations in employee perceptions of their psychological contract depending upon the sector in which they work. The psychological contract is seen as lying at the heart of the employer-employee exchange relationship. The study took place in Greece, and involved 398 employees from the public sector and 747 from the private sector. Participants were asked to evaluate 41 organizational obligations, on the basis of how important they believed them to be in terms of a desirable employment relationship. Factor analyses revealed 10 contract dimensions, while multiple analyses of variance suggested that the sector of employment and organizational tenure had a significant impact—both separately and in combination—on employees' view of their contract. The practical implications for effective human resources management and the limitations of the research are discussed at the end of the article.     

The effect of logistic services on the watermelon value chain in Tanzania

This article reports on a study that aimed to understand the effects for poverty reduction of the link between logistic services and cost of the watermelon value chain in Rufiji and Mkuranga districts in Tanzania. Structured questionnaires and FGDs were used to collect data from 251 respondents. Findings revealed that transport cost, storage cost, purchase cost, and logistics service have strong significant effect on the watermelon value chain cost. Based on the findings, the study recommended the use of affordable methods of storage, opening agro-input shops in villages, and the development of a favourable environment for watermelon businesses, to help reduce chain cost.     

Pathways to aggression and violence among African American adolescent males: the influence of normative beliefs, neighborhood, and depressive symptomatology

Youth violence continues to present a serious public health challenge in the United States, particularly so for African American adolescent males. The present study utilized a multilevel approach to predict aggression within a community sample of low-income, urban African American adolescent males (n?=?80). Participants' self-report data on normative beliefs about aggression, exposure to community violence, and depressive symptoms were used in multiple regression equations to predict (a) self-reported interpersonal aggression and (b) self-reported aggressive response style when angered. Results of this study indicate that all three of the independent variables contributed significantly to the prediction of interpersonal aggression and aggressive response style when angered. The findings are important for increasing our understanding of pathways to various types of youth aggression and guiding the development of evidence-based approaches to violence prevention among African American adolescent males.     

The Political Costs of Crisis Bargaining: Presidential Rhetoric and the Role of Party

We analyze the first large‐scale, randomized experiment to measure presidential approval levels at all outcomes of a canonical international crisis‐bargaining model, thereby avoiding problems of strategic selection in evaluating presidential incentives. We find support for several assumptions made in the crisis‐bargaining literature, including that a concession from a foreign state leads to higher approval levels than other outcomes, that the magnitudes of audience costs are under presidential control prior to the initiation of hostilities, and that these costs can be made so large that presidents have incentive to fight wars they will not win. Thus, the credibility of democratic threats can be made extremely high. We also find, however, that partisan cues strongly condition presidential incentives. Party elites have incentives to behave according to type in Congress and contrary to type in the Oval Office, and Democratic presidents sometimes have incentives to fight wars they will not win.