Urban ecosystem Services in Latin America: mismatch between global concepts and regional realities?

Urban Ecosystems - Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is one of the most urbanized and biologically diverse regions in the world but is often characterized by weak environmental governance and...     

Authoritarian neoliberalism: trajectories of knowledge production and praxis

ABSTRACT

This introduction to the special issue takes as its point of departure three centres of gravity that have shaped the study of neoliberalism but have also established barriers to further progress in these debates. By promoting an intersectional materialist research agenda which challenges extant ideational, modernist and empiricist tendencies in scholarship on neoliberalism, the essay contextualizes the special issue articles by outlining and clarifying key aspects of our understanding of authoritarian neoliberalism. In particular, we reflect on themes related to conceptualization and periodization, which are of importance for both this special issue but also for broader questions of knowledge production and praxis. Through doing so, we argue that there are two distinct yet connected trajectories within the research agenda on authoritarian neoliberalism: one which focuses on the intertwinement of authoritarian statisms and neoliberal reforms; and another which traces various lineages of transformation of key societal sites in capitalism (e.g. states, households, workplaces, urban spaces). Recognition of this spectrum of authoritarian neoliberal practices is important as it helps us uncover how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and pushes us to consider more fully how other worlds can be made possible. Nevertheless, it is affirmed that we must remain open to what an emancipatory society might look like, and what struggles would be most appropriate, in and across various socio-spatial contexts.     

Bodies of Knowledge: Beyond Cartesian Views of Persons, Selves and Mind

In this piece, I argue against the Cartesian trend of seeing persons, selves and mind as something distinct from the body. It is claimed that Descartes realized the importance of the link between body and mind, but never pursued this connection, and this then becomes the aim of the paper. Another effect of Cartesian modes of thinking is to divorce human knowledge from its material contexts, driving a wedge between mind and matter. Some forms of social constructionism appear to fall into this latter trap and instead I argue for a view of persons as embodied beings whose selves are intimately connected to the body. Using the work of Bourdieu, Elias, Merleau-Ponty, and Ilyenkov, I also suggest that thought cannot be disengaged from a human body active in its world and that knowledge not only partly separates us from the materiality of existence, but connects us to it in deeper ways, as another dimension of human existence. Human beings can then be regarded as bodies of knowledge – active thinkers and persons engaged with the multi-dimensional world around them and capable of producing change.     

Should we expect commitment?

And I, who felt my head surrounded by horrors, Said: Master, what then is it that I am hearing? And what people are these, so crushed by pain?     

Nonparametric Engel Curves and Revealed Preference

This paper applies revealed preference theory to the nonparametric statistical analysis of consumer demand. Knowledge of expansion paths is shown to improve the power of nonparametric tests of revealed preference. The tightest bounds on indifference surfaces and welfare measures are derived using an algorithm for which revealed preference conditions are shown to guarantee convergence. Nonparametric Engel curves are used to estimate expansion paths and provide a stochastic structure within which to examine the consistency of household level data and revealed preference theory. An application is made to a long time series of repeated cross–sections from the Family Expenditure Survey for Britain. The consistency of these data with revealed preference theory is examined. For periods of consistency with revealed preference, tight bounds are placed on true cost of living indices.     

Integrating Individual Differences in Career Assessment: The Atlas Model of Individual Differences and the Strong Ring

Career assessment methods often include measures of individual differences constructs, such as interests, personality, abilities, and values. Although many researchers have recently called for the development of integrated models, career counseling professionals have long faced the challenge of integrating this information into their practice. The authors examine the use of integrated models to enhance the career counseling process, including Armstrong, Day, McVay, and Rounds's (2008) RIASEC‐based Atlas Model of Individual Differences (using Holland's 1997, typology of 6 interest types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional [RIASEC]) and Armstrong, Smith, Donnay, and Rounds's (2004) basic interests‐based Strong Ring. These models provide a structured framework for presenting clients with assessment feedback that emphasizes connections between interests, personality, and abilities.     

Using expected values to simplify decision making under uncertainty

A simulation study examines the impact of a simplification strategy that replaces distributional attribute evaluations with their expected values and uses those expectations in an additive value model. Several alternate simplified forms and approximation approaches are investigated, with results showing that in general the simplified models are able to provide acceptable performance that is fairly robust to a variety of internal and external environmental changes, including changes to the distributional forms of the attribute evaluations, errors in the assessment of the expected values, and problem size. Certain of the simplified models are shown to be highly sensitive to the form of the underlying preference functions, and in particular to extreme non-linearity in these preferences.     

Best Nonparametric Bounds on Demand Responses

This paper uses revealed preference inequalities to provide the tightest possible (best) nonparametric bounds on predicted consumer responses to price changes using consumer‐level data over a finite set of relative price changes. These responses are allowed to vary nonparametrically across the income distribution. This is achieved by combining the theory of revealed preference with the semiparametric estimation of consumer expansion paths (Engel curves). We label these expansion path based bounds on demand responses as E‐bounds. Deviations from revealed preference restrictions are measured by preference perturbations which are shown to usefully characterize taste change and to provide a stochastic environment within which violations of revealed preference inequalities can be assessed.