旅行家的召唤——徐霞客及其西南边陲之旅

徐霞客生前通过史无前例的、系统性与大规模的艰苦旅行,对中国八方所有的名山景观进行了考察,并因其对边陲地貌的细致考察而享有盛名。当时他选择追求自己的志趣,而没有陷入腐败政治和官僚体制的俗世纠缠,由此就像许多同时代的优秀文人一样被誉为奇人。现代知识分子反将他视为一个早期科学家的模型。通过对徐霞客西南边陲之旅的系统性考察,与明末文人"奇"和"癖"的话语相关联,由此提出,只有考虑到中国游记写作的历代仪式伦理功能,才能够更深刻地理解,为何徐霞客游记行为与思想方面的启发,远远超越了东西、古今之别,并提供了跨文化的社会更新潜力。     

The food insecurity―obesity paradox as a vicious cycle for women: inequalities and health

Poverty and income inequality undermine women's health in a myriad of ways. This article discusses findings from the Full Plate Project, which addressed women's experience of food security, obesity, and chronic disease in Atlantic Canada. Through first-hand accounts, it identifies a vicious cycle surrounding the food insecurity–obesity paradox. The cycle's core elements included experiences of poverty, food insecurity and nutritional deprivation, weight gain leading to obesity, stress, and experiences of chronic illness. These mainly qualitative findings provide a vivid and multi-layered analysis of the effects of inequalities on health. A majority of Full Plate participants were lone mothers and unattached women, and existing outside of a two-adult member household framework. The vicious cycles experienced are intertwined and cannot be addressed by compartmentalising elements of health or social services. Evidence indicates that policies must respond fully to the social determinants of health and multiple inequalities related to poverty, gender, age, mobility, disability, location, culture, coping skills, and other dynamics.     

Parents Beyond Borders: A Social Group Work Curriculum for Supporting Immigrant Parents and Building Solidarity

Parents Beyond Borders, a curriculum first implemented in 2008 as part of The Center for Family Life's ParentShip Program, encourages group members to create a shared narrative about their traumatic immigration experiences. The result is twofold. First, immigrant parents gain a more assertive and poignant voice to communicate with family and others in their lives when sharing their family's acculturation experience. Second, because social group work promotes recognition of collective trauma due to the community's experience of marginalization, it improves members' group self-concept and empowers them to take action and advocate for themselves.     

The Impact of Abuse History and Trauma Symptoms on Successful Completion of a Prostitution-exiting Program

This study examines the trauma symptoms and life experiences of 49 women in a residential prostitution-exiting program and identifies differences among women who complete 90 days of the program and women who drop out of the program prior to completing 90 days. The majority of the women reported childhood abuse, adult abusive relationships, and victimization. Women who completed 90 days of treatment were found to be older than the non-completers. Non-completers were more likely to report clinically significant trauma symptoms including dissociation, poor coping behaviors, sex-related issues, and dysfunctional sexual behavior than completers. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating trauma-focused intervention early in the services provided in the exiting programs as well as the need to address the traumatic symptoms related to childhood and adult trauma histories. Findings also indicate the importance of clinically addressing trauma-related sexual issues, concerns, and behavior.     

Youth emancipation and perceived job insecurity of parents and children

We test whether job insecurity of parents and children affect children’s moving-out decisions. Macroeconomic estimates for 13 European countries over 1983–2004 show that coresidence increases by 1.7 percentage points (PP) following a 10 PP rise in the share of youths perceiving their job to be insecure and declines by 1.1 PP following the same increment in insecurity for older workers. Microeconometric evidence for Italy in the mid-1990s shows that the probability of moving out increases by about half a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation increase in paternal insecurity and by one-third of a percentage point for a one-standard-deviation decrease in children’s insecurity.     

The turnaround at Italtel

Italtel is Italy's leading manufacturer in the telecommunications industry. At the end of 1981, when the turnaround programme started, losses were about 200 billion lire, the corporate structure was overgrown and ineffective but the will and the know-how to steer toward profit and market leadership were there within the company. Break-even was accomplished in 1983 and confirmed in 1984. A new corporate structure as a group, a team of 2000 research and development specialists, up-to-date products, a new management team and a reduction of personnel by one-third in comparison to 1980, are among the main factors in the achievement. Today the company is meeting new challenges, to keep pace with technological innovation and worldwide competition: the alliance with the other three leading telecommunications manufacturers in the EEC (Cit Alcatel of France, Plessey of U.K., Siemens of Germany) is part of the corporate strategy.     

Effective transfer entropy to measure information flows in credit markets

Statistical Methods & Applications - In this paper we propose to study the dynamics of financial contagion between the credit default swap (CDS) and the sovereign bond markets through effective...     

Urban environment, spatial fragmentation and social segration in Latin America: Where does innovation lie?

To “review the urban question” in terms of sustainable development, the premise is formulated that improving infrastructures, equipment and services to preserve the natural and built urban environment is costly and generates expenses of all kinds—at economic and social levels. Without the introduction of equalisation mechanisms, these expenses will increase inequalities between different parts of the urban population.As confirmed by 2 Latin American case studies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and La Paz Bolivia, the quality of urban environment depends directly on improving living conditions for the resident population. The aim is to assist the poor in developing a rubbish disposal service for the families living in the informal settlements of La Paz, or to extend water supply to the poorer areas on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The collective benefits of these “innovations” are self-evident. However, understanding the environmental issues involved, and evaluating the social impact of these innovations, means examining what motivates their implementation.The first difficulty was in finding financial and economic information on the global cost of the new technologies, due to the lack of managerial culture and the discretional attitude of private enterprises and public administration.A second observation is that the social dimension of the environmental upgrading process in Latin America cities has been neglected by the main urban decision-makers. In all the contexts, the evolution of the projects’ implementation clearly demonstrates that social issues cannot be dissociated from political ones. Although the players themselves often find it difficult to estimate economic costs, these are nonetheless real and represent burdens that should be distributed equitably among the beneficiaries of services; but which are, in practice, often viewed in terms of profit. This leads to conflicts between different population groups, the political authorities and private intermediaries.Rather than viewing technological action as an unique “source” of innovation, we must consider its global dimension via the social practices it generates. On the other hand, we should reposition every specific event in its immediate environment and see how it reflects contemporary macro-social processes, in a world of “globalisation”.