The Role of Foreign Banks in Poland

The paper examines the process of the Polish banking sector's internationalisation, with a particular intention of describing incentives and the impact of foreign banks entry. In order to carry out an assessment of changes in the banking market structure and banks' performance, the study introduces arguments and motivations of foreign capital inflow into local financial systems with implications for the stability and the development of the banking sector. The role of foreign capital in the Polish economy derives from an analysis of the effects of foreign banks penetration, in terms of changes in competitiveness, efficiency, and stability of the banking sector. An assessment of concentration level and development prospects have also been included.     

The Anthropology of Empty Spaces

We would like to tell an anthropologic story about how we see reality and how we feel about it, with no intention to generalize our reflections. Our version of anthropology is intentionally self-reflexive and self-reflective. This text is a narrative study of the feelings of anthropologists out in the field. The anthropologic frame of mind is a certain openness of the mind of the researcher/observer of social reality (Czarniawska-Joerges 1992). On the one hand, it means the openness to new realities and meanings, and on the other, a constant need to problematize, a refusal to take anything for granted, to treat things as obvious and familiar. The researcher makes use of her or his curiosity, the ability to be surprised by what she or he observes, even if it is just the everyday world. Our explorations concern an experience of space. It aims at investigating the space not belonging to anyone. While anthropologically moving around different organizations, we suddenly realized that we were part of stories of the space we were moving in. Areas of poetic emptiness can be experienced, often in the physical sense, on the boundaries and inside of organizations.     

Boundary Spaces

While shows like The X-Files and 24 have merged conspiracy theories with popular science (fictions), some video games have been pushing the narrative even further. Electronic Art's Majestic game was released in July 2001 and quickly generated media buzz with its unusual multi-modal gameplay. Mixing phone calls, faxes, instant messaging, real and "fake' websites, and email, the game provides a fascinating case of an attempt at new directions for gaming communities. Through story, mode of playing, and use of technology, Majestic highlights the uncertain status of knowledge, community and self in a digital age; at the same time, it allows examination of alternative ways of understanding games' role and purpose in the larger culture. Drawing on intricate storylines involving government conspiracies, techno-bio warfare, murder and global terror, players were asked to solve mysteries in the hopes of preventing a devastating future of domination. Because the game drew in both actual and Majestic-owned/-designed websites, it constantly pushed those playing the game right to borders where simulation collides with " factuality'. Given the wide variety of "legitimate' conspiracy theory, alien encounters and alternative science web pages, users often could not distinguish when they were leaving the game's pages and venturing into " real' World Wide Web sites. Its further use of AOL's instant messenger system, in which gamers spoke not only to bots but to other players, pushed users to evaluate constantly both the status of those they were talking to and the information being provided. Additionally, the game required players to occupy unfamiliar subject positions, ones where agency was attenuated, and which subsequently generated a multi-layered sense of unease among players. This mix of authentic and staged information in conjunction with technologically mediated roles highlights what are often seen as phenomenon endemic to the Internet itself; that is, the destabilization of categories of knowing, relating, and being.     

The Ipsative Process to Reduce Response Set Bias

Researchers who gather data from several different groups arefrequently faced with the problem of response set bias. Thispaper discusses the ipsative process, a technique which canreduce systematic response bias which exists between groupsin a study. The usefulness of the ipsative process is illustratedon cross-cultural research findings gathered in four countries     

Old and New Spaces

Abstract

Traditionally, the Mexican domestic interior has been characterized by a propensity to accumulative decoration and solemnity in the public areas of the house. The present study of residents of a central area of Mexico City shows that this situation has changed as forms of urban lifestyles, environmental attitudes and house ownership have developed that affect the use and decoration of the house. Here, I will focus on those changes that affect the public rooms of the house (living room, dining room, kitchen) with the aim of describing new forms of domesticity in the lifestyles, consumption practices, leisure and home life that no longer respond to the model of the traditional bourgeois home, but to life patterns in which the symbolic experience of home suits a particular spatial and economic reality.     

Public Spaces of Dissent

This article looks at some recent developments in the relationship between public space and dissent. The article does this by firstly distinguishing between dissent and resistance. Dissent is based broadly around disagreements between individuals in particular groups and contexts against a perceived grievance of some sort. As a result dissent can arise in a variety of contexts, especially within everyday life, popular culture, and with small acts of defiance against frustrations one experiences. These acts can also assume more overtly political modes in the form of resistance as when people demonstrate in the streets. The distinction is therefore useful because it helps us understand how the state and other governance mechanisms adopt policies and strategies to pre-empt dissent and thereby prevent dissent from spilling over into resistance located in particular places. The article will examine how the state and governance have changed the way in which they pre-empt the formation of spaces of dissent in order to effectively regulate them in the pre- and post-9/11 climate. Taking examples from the USA and the UK, the paper explores these points through global social movements, law and dissent, planning and designing dissent, and the surveillance of dissent.     

Banks and the Value Chain in the Securities Industry: The Italian Case

The provision of investment services (and the correlated ancillary services) and collective investment services forms part of the main functions carried out by the securities industry. From an industrial point of view, all the activities defining the securities industry represent subsequent stages of the production process of the industry. The financial exchange sensu stricto uses the orders originating from the investment decisions produced in the asset allocation stages as input for the production process and, in turn, is divided into the order capture, order execution and order processing stages. The presence of banking intermediaries characterizes all the stages of the production process of the securities industry. This, of course, has implications in terms of profitability of the banking groups and affects their competitive strategies.     

Realistic Fatal Material Spaces in Falling Man

唐·德里罗(DonDeLillo,1936—)是当代美国四大文豪之一,并且是后现代小说中的领军人物,而且他是叙事风格独特的多产作家。《坠落的人》在2007年一出版就在美国获得了好评。作品以震惊世界的"9·11"恐怖袭击事件为题材,历史背景恢弘,语言张力巨大,时空变化频繁。本文分析《坠落的人》中对艺术空间的使用,分析了小说描述的在双子塔倒塌后的现实的、毁灭性的物质空间。     

Mobile Spaces of Mesolithic Britain

ABSTRACT

This article examines how spaces were being made during the Mesolithic of Britain. Rather than focus upon material culture and landscape as separate analytical constructs, it demonstrates instead how they intersect and in so doing give rise to an understanding of space that is mobile and rendered through force. In investigating this the author asks whether objects not carried around by the occupants of Mesolithic Britain should be regarded as discarded (as has traditionally been the case), or should be seen as an ongoing and active component of how people make themselves at home. She goes on to suggest that people left things behind in the Mesolithic in order to create the possibility for future connections, making these objects anything but ‘homeless’.     

Texts and Other Symbolic Spaces

This article examines the cultural fabric of national identity in light of recent debates in the human sciences on the nature of texts and "textual realities." In discussing various political and historical examples, it argues that conceiving of national identity as a "textual reality" is to understand it (a) as a symbolic construction, (b) as a process of continuous cultural interpretation and reinterpretation, (c) as semiotic mediation, and (d) as a heterogeneous composition of different, often contradictory, layers of meaning. Although these issues have been discussed in different disciplines and theoretical contexts, they are viewed here as aspects of the same phenomenon, reflecting, each in its way, the conceptual scope of the textual approach. In further developing this argument, the article outlines a concept of text that covers not only linguistic phenomena in the traditional sense but also meaningful structures in a larger, cultural sense: symbolic spaces that embrace several semiotic media. Based on the idea of text as a symbolic space, a concept of national identity is suggested that, although it implies viewing identity as a discursive and narrative construction, is not limited to the mode of linguistic storytelling but also includes narrative media such as architecture, landscape design, cultural traditions such as commemorative rituals, and other symbolic and material practices.     

煤气管线周边隐蔽空间的安全防护

本文介绍了煤气管线周边隐蔽空间已成为引发煤气泄漏爆炸事故的隐患以及依据法规、整改处理、重点设防、加强巡线等防范措施。     

Privacy and Gendered Spaces in Arab Gulf Homes

ABSTRACT

We report the findings of a qualitative study of Qatari homes in the Arab Gulf. We identify the significance of privacy and gender segregation as anchors for identity, both national and religious. Maintaining these anchors seems to help Qataris resolve cultural tensions and conflicts to which they feel subjected. We show that the emphasis on these identity projects counters pressures toward a reverse acculturation in which hosts are numerically overwhelmed by guests.     

Banks winners in tournaments are difficult to recognize

Given a tournament T, a Banks winner of T is the top vertex of any maximal (with respect to inclusion) transitive subtournament of T. In this technical note, we show that the problem of deciding whether some fixed vertex v is a Banks winner for T is NP-complete. Received: 22 February 2002/Accepted: 20 June 2002 Supported by the START program Y43-MAT of the Austrian Ministry of Science. I would like to thank two thank the referees for a careful reading of the paper, for helpful remarks, and for many suggestions how to improve the presentation.     

The Relationship Between Food Banks and Food Insecurity: Insights from Canada

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Food banks have become the first line of response to problems of hunger and food insecurity in affluent nations. Although...     

名牌大学生从送快餐做起

求职处处碰壁的时候,就该及时调整就业方向.在了解自己的能力和兴趣的情况下,做个有心人,善于无中生有,渐渐就柳暗花明.