Western Autobiography and Colonial Discourse: The Case of Rousseau's 'Orientalism'

This essay argues that Autobiographical Studies has failed to appreciate sufficiently the importance of ethnicity in the construction of the western autobiographical subject. Taking a canonical figure of the genre, Rousseau-often, indeed, considered to be the inaugurator of modern western autobiography-it is argued that issues of ethnicity are crucial to this key writer's ways of imagining and narrating himself. It will be shown more particularly that Rousseau's engagements with non-western subjects are critical to Rousseau's narrativisation of the process of the formation of his gender and sexual identities. The emergence of autobiography is often considered to be one symptom of the advent of Modernity. To this extent, Modernity itself can be shown to be constituted by an engagement with issues of ethnicity at the micrological level of individuals' accounts of their own lives, as well as at the macrological level of allegedly objective new sciences such as ethnology and anthropology, which emerged during the Enlightenment.     

The Social Construction of Deviant Behavior in Homeless and Runaway Youth: Implications for Practice

This study examined the social construction of deviance in a sample of homeless and/or runaway youth in metropolitan Phoenix. In depth semi-structured interviews with 14 youth were conducted, and the data were transcribed and analyzed using a qualitative research computer program. The findings from the study point to an emerging theory, which suggests that ambiguous local policies relevant to homeless youth (e.g., trespassing, loitering) resulted in their selective enforcement by local security and police. Respondents described the ways that they adapted their behaviors to the environmental stressors resulting from these policies. Implications for practice are discussed.

Decision time: Cost estimations and policy implications to advance Universal Health Coverage in Cambodia

Cambodia aims to expand social health protection to move toward Universal Health Coverage. We developed a modeling tool to facilitate the simple, interactive estimation of cost and coverage for three policy alternatives, enabling decision-makers to simultaneously adjust for scenario options currently under consideration. Assuming the adoption of all scenario options, the projected cost of expanding social health protection to all is US$42 million, to vulnerable individuals is US$32.1 million, and to uncovered 1st–3rd wealth quintile people is US$30.4 million. These policy alternatives are projected to increase population coverage to 100%, 89.1%, and 92.5% by 2025, respectively. The results have multiple policy implications. First, given the similar costs and coverage estimates for the targeted approaches, and other considerations, expansion to the 1st–3rd wealth quintiles is recommended. Second, the model quantifies the potential impacts for policy changes relating to each scenario option. The inclusion of dependents under the contributory schemes significantly shifts costs; reversing the policy of non-payment for priority public health services increases public health facility revenue; and, alignment of reimbursement rates leverages demand-side financing which can increase value for money. Finally, the cost estimates provide a basis for economic planning. Revenue raising options include increasing the contribution ceiling for the private employees’ scheme and the progressive adoption of strategic purchasing.     

Participation in Decision-making at the Plant Level: Reflections on the German Experience

Plant level participation because of its location offers larger opportunities to influence decisions than participation on the job but falls short of providing access to company decision arenas. Legal institutional regulations become important because of the specific characteristics of this kind of involvement in decision-making of dependent labor. Therefore the German Framework is described and discussed with democratic conceptual, social science and new institutional economics perspectives in mind. The findings show the restrictions of plant level participation but—at least for the German case—indicate that differences in interest tend to be expressed and modify decisions. An evaluation of effects on business activities nevertheless does not indicate systematic disadvantageous economic consequences, there might even be positive results in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.     

Alone,together: On the benefits of Bayesian borrowing in a meta-analytic setting

It is common practice to use hierarchical Bayesian model for the informing of a pediatric randomized controlled trial (RCT) by adult data, using a prespecified borrowing fraction parameter (BFP). This implicitly assumes that the BFP is intuitive and corresponds to the degree of similarity between the populations. Generalizing this model to any $K\ge 1$ historical studies, naturally leads to empirical Bayes meta-analysis. In this paper we calculate the Bayesian BFPs and study the factors that drive them. We prove that simultaneous mean squared error reduction relative to an uninformed model is always achievable through application of this model. Power and sample size calculations for a future RCT, designed to be informed by multiple external RCTs, are also provided. Potential applications include inference on treatment efficacy from independent trials involving either heterogeneous patient populations or different therapies from a common class.     

Parallel-machine scheduling of jobs with mixed job-, machine- and position-dependent processing times

Journal of Combinatorial Optimization - We consider a number of parallel-machine scheduling problems in which jobs have variable processing times. The actual processing time of each job is...