The State of Indian Exorcism: Violence and Racial Formation in Eastern Brazil

As in various parts of the Western Hemisphere, the indigenous population of eastern Brazil has increased rapidly in recent decades. Based on over fifty in-depth interviews that I conducted with eastern Indians and the twelve months I spent living in their households and communities between 1994 and 1997, I discovered that much of this demographic phenomenon has been fueled by increasing numbers of individuals self-identifying as Indian who had not always identified as such or their parents had not identified as Indian. A number of lay people and scholars have argued that this shift in the direction of racial formation has been driven by state induced material incentives. Yet my ethnographic data, which I detail in great depth in this article, suggests that in terms of the material factors responsible for Indian resurgence that the state's sticks have been a much more significant variable than the state's racializing carrots. In other words, I found that the fundamental change in state practices in eastern Brazil has been in the drastic reduction of the costs of being Indian. Thus I posit and demonstrate how one of the primary variables behind this demographic shift has been the reduction of state led and sanctioned anti-Indian violence in eastern Brazil.     

Diversity,Poverty, and Resources: The Role of Incentives and Capacity in the Presence of Highly Resourced Neighborhood Associations

Highly resourced neighborhood associations are not spread evenly across U.S. urban neighborhoods. It is not the neediest or the wealthiest neighborhoods that have these associations but those that have needs-based incentives and the capacity to act upon them, leaving those that most lack capacity without these valuable resources. The incentives and capacities needed for highly resourced neighborhood associations are rooted in the composition of the neighborhood. Diverse and impoverished neighborhoods have the requisite incentives to organize, but only neighborhoods with individual and organizational resources have the capacity to act on these incentives. It is the interaction between incentives and capacities that enable large neighborhood associations to locate in a neighborhood. This argument finds support in statistical analyses of census-tract-level variation in the presence of highly-resourced neighborhood associations in the 100 most populated metropolitan statistical areas in 2009.     

Freedom to veto

Several sets of axioms have been proposed to characterize rankings of opportunity sets in terms of freedom of choice. In these models it has been assumed that being in a position to choose from more options is preferred to having fewer options. We tested the empirical validity of that assumption experimentally. Combining a dictator game (a no-choice situation for the receiver) and an ultimatum game (the receiver can choose between two options) we investigated whether receivers prefer to have some freedom of choice (in the ultimatum game) over having no freedom of choice (in the dictator game) even in the presence of monetary incentives to choose otherwise. The experimental results show that a strong majority of players is not willing to give up the option to veto without monetary incentives to do so. However, players are often willing to trade their freedom to veto even for a small bonus. The higher the monetary incentives the more players give up their veto power.     

EBRI 2008 recent retirees survey: report of findings

Understanding how to achieve longer work lives: The 2008 Recent Retirees Survey was undertaken to better understand the tools and practices that might encourage workers to postpone their retirement and remain longer with their company. Why do people retire when they do? Respondents typically retired from employers for one of four reasons: retirement becomes affordable, lack of job satisfaction, a desire for more personal or family time, and/or their own health status. Narrow window for asking people to work longer: One of the major findings from the survey is that employers have a narrow window of up to two years in which they may be able to intervene to change retiring workers' decisions by offering them incentives to remain with the company. Employers may just need to ask: Many retirees report they would have been open to an approach from their employer asking them to stay longer with the company. Sixty-one percent say they would have viewed the experience positively. Just 10 percent indicate they would have reacted negatively to an approach asking them to delay their retirement. Work incentives vary in appeal: The survey tested a total of 19 possible incentives that might encourage retiring workers to postpone retirement. Four of these appear especially likely to be successful: Half of retirees (48 percent) indicate that feeling truly needed for an assignment would have been extremely or very effective in encouraging them to delay their retirement. Moreover, of those ranking this as one of the top two most effective incentives, 72 percent say it might have prompted them to stay at least two more years with the company. Half of retirees with a defined benefit pension state receiving a full pension while working part time would have been effective in delaying their retirement (50 percent), and almost as many feel this way about receiving a partial pension while working part time (44 percent). Seven in 10 of those rating each among the top two most effective incentives report they would likely have stayed at least two more years if it had been offered to them (72 percent for full pension, 71 percent for partial pension). However, this would necessitate a change in federal law and several other compensation-related incentives may be almost as compelling. Thirty-eight percent report that being able to work seasonally or on a contract basis would have been effective in encouraging them to delay retirement. Among those rating this as one of the top two incentives, more than three-quarters (77 percent) say it might have prompted them to stay two years or more with the company.     

Exploitation aversion: When financial incentives fail to motivate agents

Studies of the principal-agent relationship find that monetary incentives work in many instances but that they can also backfire. Various mechanisms for this failure have been examined (e.g., intrinsic motivation, image concerns). We posit that an aversion to being exploited, i.e., being used instrumentally for another’s benefit, can also cause incentives to fail. Using an experiment we find that compliance is lower for exploitative principals compared to neutral ones despite using the same contracts. To corroborate our results we show that surveyed “exploitation aversion” mediates this effect. Our results have implications for the design and implementation of incentives within organizations.     

Monetary incentives in support of academic achievement: results of a randomized field trial involving high-achieving, low-resource, ethnically diverse urban adolescents

Significant resources have been directed at understanding and alleviating the achievement gap in education. Most programs focused on this aim rely on a top-down approach, including funding for infrastructure improvement, curriculum development, class size, and teacher salaries. This article presents findings from a randomized field trial that evaluates a bottom-up approach in which high-achieving students of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds from poor families are given monetary incentives to maintain their academic standing. The evaluation was designed to explore the role of monetary incentives as a mechanism for promoting resiliency in the face of poverty-related challenge. Discussion of what motivates students to learn is framed as a function of normal cognitive and socioemotional development in challenging environments. Evaluation findings indicate that monetary incentives are effective in promoting academic success to different degrees and for different reasons depending on students' perception of the meaning of the incentive in relation to their emergent identity.     

The role of financial incentives in utility-sponsored residential conservation programs: A review of customer surveys

A number of utility programs are encouraging residential customers to invest in energy-efficient equipment by providing financial incentives for these actions. Subsidized loans are the most common type of incentive offered by utility programs, although discounts, rebates, lower rates, and free materials or labor also have been provided.Given the large sums involved in utility loan programs, an understanding of the impact of these financial incentives on retrofit investment decisions has a high potential policy value. The purpose of this paper is to review the available evidence on this issue and to suggest ways that additional evidence can be obtained.     

Work Incentive and Labor Force Participation after the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000

A larger share of individuals 65 and older have been staying in or returning to the labor force since the late 1980s. Because Social Security was changed from providing incentives for earlier withdrawal from the labor force to providing incentives to remain in the labor market longer, we can expect to find a relationship between the Retirement Earnings Test removal and labor force participation. The findings have implications for welfare policy such that they can increase the portion of older adults who work.     

Donating-selling tradeoffs and the influence of leaders in the environmental goods game

Contributions to environmental goods are motivated by both pecuniary incentives and environmental consciousness. Public policy often uses financial incentives to encourage contributions. However, individuals often donate their time or money to the environmental cause without such incentives. The purpose of this paper is: (a) to examine the relationship between “donating” (without monetary incentives) and “selling” behavior (motivated by monetary incentives) of individuals in the context of environmental protection and (b) to analyze the influence of a leader on individual contributions to the environmental good. The major results are: (1) there is a tradeoff/substitution between donating and selling for a given level of incentives; (2) donating is much less sensitive to changes in monetary incentives and, furthermore, there is no evidence that the increase in financial incentives to sell will crowd out donations; (3) the changes in contributions by leaders have a significant impact on followers’ behavior.     

Incentives for Increasing Return Rates: Magnitude Levels, Response Bias, amd Format

The use of monetary incentives has been shown to significantlyincrease response rate. However, previous investigations haverarely investigated the effects of incentives greater than $1,compared different magnitudes of incentives, or investigatedresponse bias due to incentives. The current study also investigatedthe utility of an Answer Check. Results suggest that monetaryincentives increase response rate, larger incentives do notnecessarily further increase survey response, incentives donot appear to bias responses, and the Answer Check does notfacilitate response rate.     

Infancy and Childhood in India: A Critical Review

Empirical studies of childhood in India have been rare. Guided by universalistic theories of child development, developmental psychologists have seldom examined cultural variations in child-rearing patterns with Indian samples. Psychoanalytic studies of Hindu childhood have been influenced by therapeutic observations with segmented middle-class populations that are generally Westernized and educated, inviting a lively debate about the transferability of psychoanalytic individualism to non-Western contexts. Anthropological studies, invariably focused on cultural variation, have not searched for consistent cultural patterns in ethnographic materials on Hindu socialization. Based on fieldwork conducted in a village near Delhi, this article presents one of the first systematic quantitative and ethnographic studies of patterns of child care in Hindu extended families during the preschool years. The findings are discussed in terms of achieving a consensus between developmental, psychoanalytic, and anthropological observations of Indian childhood.     

Indian Family Exception Doctrine: still losing children despite the Indian Child Welfare Act

Since 1982, the Indian Family Exception Doctrine has been circumventing the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. Although not clearly defined, the doctrine has been pivotal in several American Indian child welfare cases in the United States. Over time, the doctrine continues to evolve and self-define. Several phrases have become part of the definition, such as Indian family and culture. This doctrine presents major concerns and implications in the field of child welfare.     

IM Special Section Introduction: Rethinking International Migration in China and India

China and India have the world’s two largest populations and have long been major sources of migrants to other countries. In recent years, movements of Chinese and Indians for study and work overseas have been affected by developments in policies at their chosen destinations as well as at home. The flows of Chinese and Indian students and skilled migrants in the second decade of the 21st century are occurring within quite different political and economic contexts from those that prevailed even as recently as a decade ago. In the first part of this brief editorial introduction, we introduce some features of contemporary Chinese and Indian migration. The four substantive papers in the special section are then introduced, the first two with reference to the changing Asian migration patterns, and the remaining two addressing the changing dynamics of migration.     

Replication: Cheating,loss aversion,and moral attitudes in Vietnam

We use the coin-flip paradigm and a short survey about moral attitudes under three conditions to answer three questions: (i) Do people cheat more when financial incentives are present in comparison with no incentives? (ii) Do they find it more difficult to maintain their ethical standards when they have been given a small amount of money? and (iii) Do moral attitudes predict cheating behavior? Using a sample of Vietnamese college students, we discover that a financial incentive does not matter until people feel that they are facing a loss. In addition, we do not find any evidence that moral attitudes could predict the unethical behavior in our sample. Our findings shed further light on cheating behaviors and loss aversion through an experimental investigation.     

Working with Leroy

Abstract

With the recent transnational turn in the humanities and social sciences, questions of translocalism have come to dominate the academic agenda. Where southern African studies has engaged with transnationalism, this has generally been pursued through the framework of the black Atlantic. This article argues that we need to supplement this perspective with a systematic engagement with the Indian Ocean. The article outlines various major historiographical traditions associated with the Indian Ocean and then seeks to draw out how these themes challenge assumptions which have been theorised on the basis of black Atlantic patterns. The paper concludes with a discussion of how a consideration of the Indian Ocean would enlarge the maps of South African literary and cultural studies.     

“Being Indian,” “Being American”

Summary

This is a cross-cultural study that seeks to understand an aspect of Asian Indian women's realities by exploring concepts such as: attitudes toward gender roles, level of stress in their lives, and their ethnic identity. It compares Asian Indian women raised in the U.S. (n = 45), with women born and raised in India (n = 50) and with European American women in the U.S. (n = 50). Additionally, excerpts from in-depth interviews with Asian Indian women in the U.S. are included. Most Asian Indian women in this study feel that they are both Indian and American and feel the two can be very well combined. However, they have problems with their families for not being Indian enough, especially on issues regarding marriage, career choice, and dating. The study found that “being Indian” might be different for the first generation Indian immigrants and the Asian Indian women who were born and raised in the U.S. These Asian Indian women are striving to claim a new identity for themselves, one which is both Indian and American.     

Slavery: Current bibliographical supplement (1986)

Despite the considerable distance and danger in transporting slaves from the southwestern Indian Ocean region to the Americas, ships carried nearly 550,000 slaves to the Americas between 1624 and 1860. Prior attempts to understand the place of the Indian Ocean in the transatlantic slave trade have been limited in scope, but the transatlantic slave trade database provides us with access to unprecedented statistics and estimates that shed new light on this forced migration. The study of this slave trade also offers insights into the much larger movement of slaves across the Indian Ocean as a whole.     

Determinants of Profitability of Banking Sector in India

India currently is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. One sector of Indian economy that has played a critical role in transforming the Indian economy has been its banking sector. But this sector of Indian economy has also gone through a major transition that is still in progress. Many events and policies have contributed in this transition. One pivotal variable has been the growing profitability of this sector in the recent years. But profitability in banking sector is affected by numerous factors. These factors can be internal or external. In this research we shall try to examine the most important factors that may stem from both internal and external factors, which affect profitability of Indian banking sector. For this study a balanced panel data set is used that is drawn from Indian banking industry. The data is compiled for the purpose of investigating the nature of the relationship between the profitability and the factors that determine profitability of banks in India. The results of the study clearly demonstrate a close correlation between both internal and external factors and the level of profitability of banks in India.     

Kakar's Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Indian Childhood: The Need to Emphasize the Father and Multiple Caregivers in The Socialization Equation

Kakar's psychoanalytic analysis of the role of the father in the East Indian child's socioemotional development during the early childhood period is examined. Furthermore, maternal employment and multiple caregiving are considered in broad terms. Using findings from observational studies of parent-infant interactions and care in diverse cultures around the world as a barometer, it is argued that fathers are more centrally involved in the Indian child's life than has been previously acknowledged. It is proposed that the Indian mother remains the primary caregiver with other socialization agents assuming complementary but nonequivalent roles in the Indian child's social development. Future discussions of Indian childhood development could further delineate the role of the father and multiple caregivers in the socialization process.     

Diaspora and cultural heritage: the case of Indians in Canada

The present paper examines the historical and contemporary context of Indian communities in Canada from a cultural heritage perspective and analyses the processes of migration, settlement and cultural identity. It also examines the challenges of developing museum exhibits which depict the Indian diaspora in Canada. Despite its colourful history and its growing size and prominence in Canadian society, the Indian diaspora has not been the subject of much interest by Canadian museums. While recognising the necessity of working with local communities and thereby reflecting local concerns, it is submitted that any museum exhibit attempting to portray the complex set of experiences of the Indian diaspora in Canada should include some portrayal of the highly marginalised position which the Indian community faced when it first established themselves in the early 1900s. In addition to this historical focus, any attempt to portray the contemporary Indian diaspora needs to portray its growing diversity and its efforts to maintain, and in many cases modify and ‘hybridise’, cultural practices. Such a display would also have to reflect the influence of transnational forces on the contemporary Indian diaspora. Ultimately, efforts by museums to develop exhibits reflecting the Indian presence in Canada will only further the aims of its widely praised state policy of multiculturalism.