Assessing the impacts of a peer-to-peer training programme for women in Peru

This article reports on research that aimed to assess the economic and social impacts of a peer-to-peer training programme targeted to women in Peru, looking at overall and differentiated impacts according to design features, on a sample of 300 women in participant and non-participant communities. The study found significant positive impacts on women’s time devoted to work outside the house and in their saving propensity, although no significant change on time allocated to domestic activities. It also detected some effects on an index of family cohesion and on home improvements. Finally, there was evidence that some design features influence the magnitude and significance of these impacts.     

Rodney Hilton and the Peasant Road to 'Capitalism' in England

Arguing that Rodney was an original thinker among British Marxists, this article examines his historiographical approach to the English medieval peasantry, and in particular his contribution to the transition debate. As a consequence of their focus either on landlord enclosure or on the role of merchant capital, Marxists such as Dobb and Tawney maintained that the prosperous peasants who emerged towards the end of the fifteenth century bacame the capitalist farmers of the sixteenth. Opposed to both class and market determinism, however, Hilton insisted that the distinctiveness of the medieval peasantry lay in the possession of its own means of subsistence and access to community property. From the latter stemmed peasant resistant against feudal lords, based on peasants' self-perception as free producers with ancient rights, because of which landlords had to use military and political power to extract surplus labour. For Hilton, the agrarian conflict that culminated in the 1381 rebellion was a struggle between seigneurial power and peasant market power.     

Imports of Intermediate Inputs and Spillover Effects: Evidence from Chilean Plants

This paper uses plant-level data from Chile to examine the determinants of importing intermediate inputs paying special attention to the role of importing spillovers. The results show that plants that pay higher wages and plants with previous experience importing intermediate inputs are more likely to import inputs. This study also finds a positive correlation between the number of importers in the same region, regardless of their industry affiliation, and the probability of importing intermediate inputs. This suggests that importing spillovers may be important, at least in the case of Chilean manufacturing.     

Minors,gender, and family: The discourses in the court system of traditional Buenos Aires

The article deals with public attitudes toward family responsibility in early-nineteenth-century Bienos Aires, particularly as revealed in lawsuits occasioned by disputes over the custody of minors. The care and education of minors was ordinarily entrusted to parents, but death, incapacity, licentious conduct, poverty or abandonment often resulted in the minor being removed from parents and taken by others into custody of guardians or institutions of public welfare. The majority of the analyzed lawsuits resulted from an attempt by parents to recover their authority over their children. The lawsuits indicate that the racial, gender, social, and generational “disadvantages” of plaintiffs did not a priori determine the judgement, but rather that arguments for family stability frequently were decisive when heard by sympathetic judges. Disadvantages persons thus frequently argued sucessfully about the meaning of the family, as protagonists in the legal system that otherwise often marginalized them.     

Revenue Diversification in Public Higher Education: Comparing the University and Polytechnic Sectors

Financial stringency has been an increasing concern in the higher education sector, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis. As a result, public higher education institutions have been under increasing pressure to diversify their funding sources through tuition fees and other nonpublic revenues. This article reflects on the institutional impact of those changes by analyzing a panel of 30 higher education institutions from the Portuguese public university and polytechnic sectors for the period between 2003 and 2009. The authors explore the relevance of institutional characteristics such as enrollments in undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the qualifications of academic staff, and the regional environment where institutions are located. Results suggest that certain institutional characteristics related to mission differentiation and the path of development of binary systems are important determinants of higher education institutions’ ability to earn income from tuition fees and other nonpublic sources.     

Near Infrared Spectroscopy Detection and Quantification of Herbal Medicines Adulterated with Sibutramine

There is an increasing demand for herbal medicines in weight loss treatment. Some synthetic chemicals, such as sibutramine (SB), have been detected as adulterants in herbal formulations. In this study, two strategies using near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy have been developed to evaluate potential adulteration of herbal medicines with SB: a qualitative screening approach and a quantitative methodology based on multivariate calibration. Samples were composed by products commercialized as herbal medicines, as well as by laboratory adulterated samples. Spectra were obtained in the range of 14,000–4000 per cm. Using PLS‐DA, a correct classification of 100% was achieved for the external validation set. In the quantitative approach, the root mean squares error of prediction (RMSEP), for both PLS and MLR models, was 0.2%w/w. The results prove the potential of NIR spectroscopy and multivariate calibration in quantifying sibutramine in adulterated herbal medicines samples.     

Calling the cops: Police telephone operators and citizen calls for service

Citizen calls for police service represent direct demands on government. It is the job of police phone operators to translate these demands into official, bureaucratically recognized inputs. As “street-level” bureaucrats, police phone operators enjoy considerable discretion in how they recieve, process, and transmit information. Operators screen all calls, categorize the citizen's problem, and by that process they determine much of the initial police response to that call. This article analyzes data on citizen requests and operator responses coded from a sample of over 26,000 phone calls to police in 21 jurisdictions in three metropolitan areas. The data indicate that most citizen calls to police involve the provision of information or assistance, nuisance abatement, traffic problems, or the regulation of interpersonal disputes. Citizen calls cover a wide range of topics, but only about 20 percent involve predatory crime of any type. The typical operator response to the problems described by most citizens was to promise the dispatch of a patrol unit, although this varied by problem type and by the apparent seriousness of the call. Complaint operators seem to follow a decision rule that a patrol unit will always be sent to the scene except in those situations where it is clear that none is needed. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible impact of operator demeanor on policy-community relations.     

Practical developments in law science and policy: efforts to protect the traditional group knowledge and practices of the Shuar, an indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon

The purpose of this article is to broadly outline a problem in the context of relatively recent activity in the Amazon Basin. My colleagues and I found the Policy Sciences framework to be a useful blueprint for comprehensive issue analysis. The five intellectual tasks of the policy-oriented approach to solving problems helped us to clarify the apparent goals of the primary actors involved; identify certain trends associated with the problem, including estimations of their magnitude and implications; understand several conditioning factors which could impact (or have already had an impact on) the achievement of the goals identified; recognize several projections anticipated from a normative standpoint in light of the trends examined; and make some observations, including possible strategies and their alternatives, which might enable the Shuar to maximize benefits and minimize costs.     

Antonio Garcia: A Mexican peasant,poet and revolutionary

In this article, a letter and poems written by Antonio Garcia Gonzáles, a Mexican peasant from Ixtlán, Mexico, are translated. The letter was written in October, 1971, a few weeks after his arrest for involvement in certain revolutionary activities, and the poems during the early years of his imprisonment (1971–73). They are introduced by some biographical remarks about Antonio and accompanied by a commentary.     

The rise and fall and rise of populism in Venezuela

The article seeks to outline the main elements through which a populist political order was built in Venezuela. It will be done, first by looking at the golden years a of Venezuelan populism (1945–1948). It will be argued that the constitution of populist politics meant: an appeal to the people, the articulation of new social relations and constitution of new political identities. Then it will turn to the latter Pérez and Caldera showing the basic schemes of their governments. They sought to reconstitute politics and reshape political identities in a new populist way. The arrival of Chávez at power and the first months of his government are also analysed.