Open Cosmopolitanism and the World Social Forum: Global Resistance,Emancipation, and the Activists’ Vision of a Better World

The World Social Forum (WSF) is the world’s largest activist network to date. Its global, regional, national, and thematic events have gathered since 2001 millions of participants and thousands of civil society and social movement organisations. Its cosmopolitan vision is built on resistance to the planetary domination by neo-liberal globalisation. This paper unpacks WSF’s cosmopolitan project and reflects on its vision of emancipated individuals, convivial communities, and a just planetary society in harmony with the environment. In its open organisational space, WSF’s cosmopolitan project develops while in the process of political action rather than prior to that. At the same time, power dynamics, ideological cleavages, and pragmatic concerns about organisation and strategy challenge WSF’s ability to pursue its goals. However, it is these internal tensions that make WSF’s cosmopolitan project both more difficult to achieve and more realistic than claims of universal unity among all its participants.     

“I Know That You Know How I Feel”: Behavioral and Physiological Signals Demonstrate Emotional Attunement While Interacting with a Computer Simulating Emotional Intelligence

Human–human communication studies have suggested that within communicative interactions, individuals acknowledge each other as intentional agents and adjust their emotion nonverbal behavior according to the other. This process has been defined as emotional attunement. In this study, we examine the emotional attunement process in the context of affective human–computer interactions. To this purpose, participants were exposed to one of two conditions. In one case, they played with a computer that simulated understanding of their emotional reactions while guiding them across four different game-like activities; in the other, the computer guided participants across the activities without mentioning any ability to understand emotional responses. Face movements, gaze direction, posture, vocal behavior, electrocardiogram and electrodermal activity were simultaneously recorded during the experimental sessions. Results showed that if participants were aware of interacting with an agent able to recognize their emotions, they reported that the computer was able to “understand” them and showed a higher number of nonverbal behaviors during the most interactive activity. The implications are discussed.     

A measure of interrater absolute agreement for ordinal categorical data

Statistical Methods & Applications - A measure of interrater absolute agreement for ordinal scales is proposed capitalizing on the dispersion index for ordinal variables proposed by Giuseppe...     

Residential care: an effective response to out‐of‐home children and young people?

The ever‐growing number of out‐of‐home children in Italy over the last decade has urged an assessment of the available care services. Although foster care is spreading rapidly, many young people are still housed in residential facilities. Reflection on residential care quality has intensified at both a national and an international level. This paper presents the results of a study on residential care facilities for children and young people in the region of Northern Italy (Lombardy). Four dimensions of ‘quality’ are considered: efficiency, effectiveness, participation in planning and intervention, and empowerment of children and their family relationships. The combined effects of these dimensions are defined as ‘relational quality’. The results show that residential care facilities are generally good, while Social Services resources often appear inadequate for interventions aimed at birth families (efficiency). The well‐being of children in residential care facilities is high, even if they tend to move from one facility to another, rarely returning to their birth family (effectiveness). The involvement of children and their families at different stages of the care path is limited (participative approach). Finally, the most critical element is the failure to properly involve birth families (empowerment).     

Intensity of preference and related uncertainty in non-compensatory aggregation rules

Non-compensatory aggregation rules are applied in a variety of problems such as voting theory, multi-criteria analysis, composite indicators, web ranking algorithms and so on. A major open problem is the fact that non-compensability implies the analytical cost of loosing all available information about intensity of preference, i.e. if some variables are measured on interval or ratio scales, they have to be treated as measured on an ordinal scale. Here this problem has been tackled in its most general formulation, that is when mixed measurement scales (interval, ratio and ordinal) are used and both stochastic and fuzzy uncertainties are present. Objectives of this article are first to present a comprehensive review of useful solutions already proposed in the literature and second to advance the state of the art mainly in the theoretical guarantee that weights have the meaning of importance coefficients and they can be summarized in a voting matrix. This is a key result for using non-compensatory Condorcet consistent rules. A proof on the probability of existence of ties in the voting matrix is also developed.     

Micro‐provision of Social Care Support for Marginalized Communities – Filling the Gap or Building Bridges to the Mainstream?

As English social care services reconstruct themselves in response to the personalization agenda, there is increased interest in the contribution of micro‐providers – very small community‐based organizations, which can work directly with individuals. These micro‐providers are assumed to be able to cater for the ‘seldom heard’ groups which have been marginalized within mainstream social care services. This article reviews recent literature from the UK published in peer‐reviewed journals from 2000 to 2013 on support provision for people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. It considers the marginalising dynamics in mainstream, statutory social care support provision, and how far local community, specialist or small‐scale services are responding to unmet need for support and advice among marginalized groups. The review found that there is a tradition of compensatory self‐organization, use of informal networks and a mobilization of social capital for all these groups in response to marginalization from mainstream, statutory services. This requires recognition and nurturing in ways that do not stifle its unique nature. Specialist and community‐based micro‐providers can contribute to a wider range of choices for people who feel larger, mainstream services are not suitable or accessible. However, the types of compensatory activity identified in the research need recognition and investment, and its existence does not imply that the mainstream should not address marginalization.     

Changing the method of working with homeless people: a photovoice project in Italy

In Italy, many organizations are experimenting with the Housing First (HF) model to promote a change in how they work with homeless people. This change creates some difficulties, especially in promoting freedom of choice in people involved in the HF programs. This study explored the definition of “home” in homeless people’s points of view. The study participants were 5 homeless men involved in a HF program called “The Road Home” implemented in the city of Padua. Data were collected using Photovoice, a photographic method based on participatory action research. During the project, the participants took photographs to illustrate their definitions of “home” and then engaged in a critical dialogue about the images represented in the photographs. The results of the study showed that occupants identified the home as being related to family, friendship, cohabitation, and hope for the future. The Photovoice project provided an opportunity to promote discussions that revealed the true needs of the people involved, and in the meantime, it brought a change to the program and to the community, in addition to promoting the HF model in the community.     

Profiles of adult survivors of severe sexual,physical and emotional institutional abuse in Ireland

Adult survivors of institutional abuse were interviewed with a comprehensive assessment protocol which included the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, the Institutional Child Abuse Processes and Coping Inventory, the Structured Clinical Interviews for Disorders of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV axis I disorders and personality disorders, the Trauma Symptoms Inventory, a Life Problems Checklist, the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory and the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. Profiles were identified for subgroups that described severe sexual (N = 60), physical (N = 102), or emotional (N = 85) abuse as their worst forms of maltreatment. Survivors of severe sexual abuse had the most abnormal profile, which was characterised by higher rates of all forms of child maltreatment and higher rates of post‐traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and substance abuse, antisocial personality disorder, trauma symptoms and life problems. Survivors of severe emotional abuse were better adjusted than the other two groups. The profile of survivors of severe physical abuse occupied an intermediate position between the other two groups. A thorough assessment of abuse history and current functioning should be conducted when providing services to adult survivors of institutional abuse, since this may have important implications for the intensity of services required. Survivors of severe sexual abuse may require more intensive services. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.