The historical roots of multicultural unity along the Upper Guinea Coast and in Guinea-Bissau

Lusofonia or lusophony is often defined as an identity shared by people in areas that were once colonised by Portugal, which in Africa include Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. Lusofonia assumes that in these places people share something – a language, certainly, but also a history and culture rooted in the Iberian Peninsula. In some ways it is a re-articulation of Gilberto Freyre’s lusotropicalismo, the idea that Portuguese were more adaptable than other Europeans to tropical climates and cultures and created more multicultural colonial communities. Those who espouse lusofonia often have a political agenda – the strengthening of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries. In this article, we argue that, like lusotropicalismo, lusofonia is a dream; it is not rooted in a historical reality. It is luso-centric in that it ignores the power and persistence of local cultures and gives undue weight to Portuguese influence. With regard to Africa, lusofonia’s agenda is elite driven and assumes the inevitability of modernity and globalisation. And we demonstrate that it was through Upper Guinean institutions and languages, and not colonial ones, that community and fellowship were most commonly fostered in the past, as they are fostered today. Those seeking the roots of lusofonia cannot, then, look to this period of Portuguese–African engagement in Upper Guinea. There Portuguese embraced “black ways.” They operated in a peculiar multicultural space in which people possessed fluid and flexible identities. Portugal did not create that space. Lusofonia has not been the foundation for cultural unity. Rather, unity has been found in localised institutions and in Crioulo. In Guinea-Bissau, lusofonia is not an indigenous movement. If it is anything, it is the stuff of elites and foreigners and is not rooted in any historical reality.     

Communication and representation of risk in health crises: the influence of framing and group identity / Comunicación en crisis sanitarias y representación del riesgo. La influencia del framing y la identidad grupal

Based on the Social Representations Theory (SRT) applied to the social construction of risk and the role played by group identities, this study examines the construction of risk created by the mass media in health epidemics. An experimental design with split-ballot questionnaire and 319 participants was used in which message framing (human interest vs. attribution of responsibility) and proximity (high vs. low) were manipulated for a high invulnerability identity (youth) vs. a low invulnerability identity (elderly) population. Results showed that the human interest framing increased the perception of risk, especially when the proximity of the epidemic was high; this effect was explained by people’s emotional response. Furthermore, youth projected the risk towards ‘the other’ in order to protect their invulnerability identity. Finally, we stress the importance of the SRT on a theoretical and applied level for risk communication in health crises.     

The Structured Interview of Family Assessment Risk: Convergent Validity,Inter-rater Reliability and Structural Relations

The quality of parenting, composition and socio-economic status are family risk or protective factors on juvenile delinquency, however, there is not an instrument to help psychologists and social workers to specifically assess the adolescent offender’s family. This study set out to accomplish an additional validation study of the structured interview of family assessment risk (SIFAR), a structured professional judgment tool for the assessment of family risk and protective factors of juvenile delinquents. The statistical analyses included inter-rater reliability, convergent validity with YLS/CMI, the Partial Least Squares approach to structural equation modeling and receiving operator characteristics (ROC) analysis. A sample of 130 male adolescent delinquents detained in Portuguese forensic facilities and their parents, were paired analyzed. The YLS/CMI was used to analyze the convergent validity with SIFAR. SIFAR shows a strong correlation with the YLS/CMI family context, moderate to high values of inter-rater reliability; SIFAR factors show that they are predictive determinants of the Moderate Four risk factors. ROC analysis shows adequate accuracy power. The findings show that SIFAR it is useful as an additional assessment tool for structured risk assessment instruments since it allows understanding the vulnerabilities and strengths of the delinquent’s family.     

The Relation Between Popularity and Aggressive,Destructive, and Norm‐Breaking Behaviors: Moderating Effects of Athletic Abilities,Physical Attractiveness,and Prosociality

The aim of this study was to examine the relations between popularity and different types of aggressive, destructive, and norm‐breaking behaviors in a large cross‐sectional sample of adolescents (N=3,312, M age=13.60). We were interested in the extent to which the relations of these behaviors with popularity were moderated by positive features (i.e., athletic abilities, physical attractiveness, and prosociality). From a goal‐framing perspective, it was argued that positive features evoke positive affect, which in turn enhances the positive impact of aggressive, destructive, and norm‐breaking behaviors on popularity. The results supported our notion that these latter behaviors are especially related to popularity in adolescents who also exhibit positive features.     

Estimation and Inference for Linear Panel Data Models Under Misspecification When Both n and T are Large

This article considers fixed effects (FE) estimation for linear panel data models under possible model misspecification when both the number of individuals, n, and the number of time periods, T, are large. We first clarify the probability limit of the FE estimator and argue that this probability limit can be regarded as a pseudo-true parameter. We then establish the asymptotic distributional properties of the FE estimator around the pseudo-true parameter when n and T jointly go to infinity. Notably, we show that the FE estimator suffers from the incidental parameters bias of which the top order is O(T^{? 1}), and even after the incidental parameters bias is completely removed, the rate of convergence of the FE estimator depends on the degree of model misspecification and is either (nT)^{? 1/2} or n^{? 1/2}. Second, we establish asymptotically valid inference on the (pseudo-true) parameter. Specifically, we derive the asymptotic properties of the clustered covariance matrix (CCM) estimator and the cross-section bootstrap, and show that they are robust to model misspecification. This establishes a rigorous theoretical ground for the use of the CCM estimator and the cross-section bootstrap when model misspecification and the incidental parameters bias (in the coefficient estimate) are present. We conduct Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the finite sample performance of the estimators and inference methods, together with a simple application to the unemployment dynamics in the U.S.     

The Impact of Public Services Expenditure on the Spanish Income Distribution

This paper performs an assessment and imputation of the benefits produced to the individuals and households well-being by the public services provision. This analysis is very relevant in the current framework of economic crisis of the European economies. Although most of the papers in the literature compare countries, decentralization processes are included in this paper by accounting the effect of public expenditure on regional health care and education upon the levels of inequality and rates of poverty in each Spanish region. This case is relevant because of the high decentralization degree of the Spanish political structure and the persistent regional disparities. The results show a clear downward tendency in both phenomena following imputation, although education shows a greater impact. Furthermore, a decomposition, used in this context for the first time, of the effects shows the very relevant redistributive effect of this public expenditure.     

The generalized two-sided power distribution

The generalized standard two-sided power (GTSP) distribution was mentioned only in passing by Kotz and van Dorp Beyond Beta, Other Continuous Families of Distributions with Bounded Support and Applications, World Scientific Press, Singapore, 2004. In this paper, we shall further investigate this three-parameter distribution by presenting some novel properties and use its more general form to contrast the chronology of developments of various authors on the two-parameter TSP distribution since its initial introduction. GTSP distributions allow for J-shaped forms of its pdf, whereas TSP distributions are limited to U-shaped and unimodal forms. Hence, GTSP distributions possess the same three distributional shapes as the classical beta distributions. A novel method and algorithm for the indirect elicitation of the two-power parameters of the GTSP distribution is developed. We present a Project Evaluation Review Technique example that utilizes this algorithm and demonstrates the benefit of separate powers for the two branches of activity GTSP distributions for project completion time uncertainty estimation.     

Más allá de la sociología. Sobre catástrofes,expertos y comunidades

We could state that a catastrophic discourse is one that refers to a catastrophe which is avoided by the same discourse. This kind of discourse stimulates cautious behaviours. It is necessary that the actors do not know that the catastrophe exists and that they are avoiding it so that this situation can work. Nevertheless, the analyst knows everything. The catastrophic discourse takes part in a stable situation in which the analyst's knowledge is directly proportional to the actor alienation. The economist knows that unstable situations like panic produce an opposite phenomenon: the analyst does not know very well what is going on but the actor knows how to manage. If the market, as well as stable operation, permits instability, the prevention of catastrophes could admit an unstable one, similar to panic and together with the catastrophic solution. This paper suggests some concepts to think about this unstable and anticatastrophic situation. They are notions which give prominence to ‘emergentism’, autopoiesis and uncertainty. The reinterpretation of the Hobbesian natural state developed by Foucault, the analysis of the mobilization power of fear by Bataille and the unpolitical reflections of the community which have been proposed by Esposito, Nancy and Agamben will be reinterpreted in order to achieve this goal.