Gendering Resistance: Multiple Faces of the Kurdish Women's Struggle

The article explores the Kurdish women's movement in Turkey by bridging two forms of resistance: those of guerrilla women fighters and of activist women. Based on my extensive ethnographic and archival research, I ask how women under conditions of war engage in different modes of resistance. In what ways does the “heroic resistance” of guerrilla women resonate with and/or contradict the everyday, “ordinary” struggles of activist women? The potent image of the Kurdish guerrilla woman that emerged in the early 1990s is constitutive of many other modes of political subjectivities, even among women who do not or cannot become guerrillas. One of those subjectivities is that of the activist woman. My analysis suggests that women's activism opens up a middle ground of action between “heroic” and “ordinary” resistance by reconciling revolutionary politics with everyday activism around gender‐based violence, democracy, and human rights. Although both revolutionary movement participants and scholars of revolutionary resistance often contrast the “ordinary” with the realm of armed resistance, this article challenges this dichotomy. I take the two realms of resistance—the ordinary and the heroic—as the core constituents of revolutionary resistance, and I reconsider the gendered interplay between them.     

Why perceived organizational and supervisory family support is important for organizations? Evidence from the field

Review of Managerial Science - The relationship between perceived organizational support and its work-outcomes were usually based on social exchange theories. By keeping the social exchange...     

Physical abuse in early childhood and transition to first sexual intercourse among youth in Cape Town, South Africa

This study examined the relationship of physical abuse in early childhood and timing of first sexual intercourse among young South Africans aged 14 to 22 in Cape Town. Using the Cape area panel survey and applying log-normal models, time ratios were estimated to show how rapidly or slowly youth experience first sexual intercourse. Results indicated that boys who experienced physical abuse in early childhood had faster timing to first sex. Boys and girls with violent school environments had faster timing to first sex. Race moderated the effects of physical abuse. Compared to Blacks, Coloreds who experienced higher levels of physical abuse in early childhood had faster timing to first sex. Youth with greater knowledge about HIV/AIDS and those with greater risk perception of contracting HIV/AIDS delayed first sex. On the basis of these findings, policy makers are encouraged to consider the early childhood experiences of youth when designing policies toward HIV/AIDS prevention in South Africa.     

Central exit examinations increase performance... but take the fun out of mathematics

We study the causal effect of state-mandated (central) exit examinations (CEEs) on student performance in Germany and find a small positive effect. We also investigate what actually drives this effect. We find that the teachers’ main reaction to CEEs is to increase the amount of homework and to check and discuss homework more often. Students report increased learning pressure, which has sizeable negative effects on student attitudes toward learning. Students who take central exit exams in mathematics like mathematics less, think it is less easy, and are more likely to find it boring.     

Children’s Resilience-Related Beliefs as a Predictor of Positive Child Development in the Face of Adversities: Implications for Interventions to Enhance Children’s Quality of Life

This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal childhood resilience study which investigated the relationship between resilience-related beliefs and positive child development. Three waves of data collection (T1, T2, and T3) were completed in January 2005, July 2005, and January 2006 with a sample of 843 grade 4 pupils, drawn from six primary schools in Hong Kong, and their parents or guardians. At T1, parents/guardians responded to a 24-item inventory of life adversities affecting their children since birth; at T1 and T3, they completed a 25-item Parental Assessment of Child’s Habit, which provided parental evaluation of children’s performance at home and in school. At T1, T2, and T3, children responded to a 58-item Child and Youth Resilience Measure, a 9-item scale on Chinese cultural beliefs about adversity, and an 11-item Chinese Resilience Measure for Children and Adolescents in Hong Kong. Regression analyses, based on linear mixed models, controlling for gender, T1 and T2 scores, personal variables, and random effects of schools, were conducted to test and validate the hypothesis that children’s resilience beliefs are predictive of positive child development, and that this predictive relationship is stronger with increasing adversity in children’s lives. Implications of these findings for the development of resilience-based interventions to enhance the quality of life of children facing adversities are examined.     

Wood, management and dust: analysis of the Context of Production of Goods and Services (CPGS) of an academic woodwork

The CGPS of the woodwork of a public university was observed and analyzed. Apart from what is usual in the field of Ergonomics' studies, it is an academic context, where there is not a direct implication of profit, productivity and clientele. The group tried to sever negative and broadcasted opinions about the place by analyzing it from a different point of view. This work was considered relevant, since it is related to neglect of education and citizenship. For this case study, it was used the Ergonomics Analysis of Work with all workers at the woodwork. The instruments were documental analysis, free observation with photographic register, semi-structured interview with the workers and survey Pontos de Verica??o Ergon?mica. The results are presented by the perspective of work conditions, work organization and social-professional work relationship. The present study brought several contributions, such as the complementation of the theory and a new perspective of the analyzed context, o bserved now by the worker's point of view. As a result of the analysis, it was questioned about citizenship and the neglect with the public good, even though the relevant social role that this academic institution plays. In conclusion, the group suggests some proposals that modify positively the CGPS of this academic woodwork.     

Bivariate pointing movements on large touch screens: investigating the validity of a refined Fitts' Law

On the basis of three empirical studies Fitts' Law was refined for bivariate pointing tasks on large touch screens. In the first study different target width parameters were investigated. The second study considered the effect of the motion angle. Based on the results of the two studies a refined model for movement time in human-computer interaction was formulated. A third study, which is described here in detail, concerns the validation of the refined model. For the validation study 20 subjects had to execute a bivariate pointing task on a large touch screen. In the experimental task 250 rectangular target objects were displayed at a randomly chosen position on the screen covering a broad range of ID values (ID= [1.01; 4.88]). Compared to existing refinements of Fitts' Law, the new model shows highest predictive validity. A promising field of application of the model is the ergonomic design and evaluation of project management software. By using the refined model, software designers can calculate a priori the appropriate angular position and the size of buttons, menus or icons.     

Participatory ergonomics for psychological factors evaluation in work system design

It is a well recognized understanding that workers whose voice needs to be heard should be actively encouraged as full participants and involved in the early design stages of new ergonomic work system which encompass the development and implementation of new tools, workplaces, technologies or organizations. This paper presents a novel participatory strategy to evaluate three key psychological factors which are respectively mental fatigue, spiritual stress, and emotional satisfaction in work system design based on a modified version of Participatory Ergonomics (PE). In specific, it integrates a PE technique with a formulation view by combining the parallel development of PE strategies, frameworks and functions throughout the coverage of the entire work system design process, so as to bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis of psychological factors which can cause adverse or advantageous effects on worker's physiological and behavioral performance.     

Potential impacts of emerald ash borer invasion on biogeochemical and water cycling in residential landscapes across a metropolitan region

Trees provide important ecological services in cities, yet the vulnerability of the urban forest to massive tree losses from pest outbreaks could threaten those services, with unknown environmental consequences. The outbreak of emerald ash borer is an imminent threat to the ash population in North America. In the Minneapolis?CSaint Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area, ash trees are present in 50?% of residential landscapes in Ramsey and Anoka Counties. We used a large survey of household activities, a tree inventory, a Household Flux Calculator accounting tool, and a set of annual evapotranspiration measurements, to quantify the current carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus storage in ash trees, the cycling of these elements, and the total evapotranspiration from ash trees in residential areas in the metropolitan region. Ash represented 6?% of the trees in residential areas and the removal of the entire ash population would correspondingly reduce net primary production and carbon sequestration by only a few percent and would have negligible effects on losses of nitrogen and phosphorus from residential landscapes. Similarly, the effects of ash loss on the hydrologic cycle would be minimal and would depend largely on management choices for the ground currently underneath ash tree canopies. Overall, the percentage change in biogeochemical and hydrological fluxes corresponded closely with the percent of the total urban tree population that was represented by ash, suggesting that areas with higher densities of ash would experience correspondingly larger effects. A hypothetical tree replacement scenario with similar broadleaf species was determined to be likely to re-establish the original biogeochemical and hydrological conditions once the replacement trees reach maturity.     

Evil Tidings: Are Reorganizations more Successful if Employees are Informed Early?

Organizations represent deliberately designed social contexts that are characterized by multi-level hierarchies. Interests and opportunity structures at each level usually do not overlap. We suggest that one of the reasons why intentional change efforts often fail to reach their objectives is because they are likely to trigger competing social mechanisms at different levels of the hierarchy. In order to illustrate this argument, we analyze the consequences of timely communication of planned organizational changes on perceived success of reorganizations. Two competing mechanisms are derived and tested with data from a telephone survey (carried out in 2003), among a sample of n = 412 Dutch business organizations that performed a reorganization. The commitment perspective predicts that early announcement of reorganization plans to middle management increases the likelihood of reorganization success, since it increases commitment and empowers middle management. The influence mechanism predicts that early information of non-managerial employees decreases the likelihood of reorganization success, because it enables employees to use the information to their own advantage, anticipate on the strategies of management, and organize opposition against the plans. We found that timely communication with middle management indeed increases chances for success, whereas timely communication with employees correlates with reorganization failure. However, not communicating with employees has an even stronger negative effect on reorganization success. No evidence could be found for our argument that the severity of the reorganization’s expected negative effects on the workforce moderates both mechanisms.