Governing through accountability: Gendered moral selves and the (im)possibilities of resistance in the neoliberal university

Drawing on Judith Butler's early work on gender as performance and her later work on the ethically accountable subject, this study examines the production of gendered moral subjects under neoliberal governance in contemporary academia. The analysis of 40 semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with postdoc researchers and assistant, associate and full professors in a Belgian university reveals how in academics’ narratives of their ethical relations of (non‐)accountability towards multiple stakeholders, gendered subjects are performed along the heterosexual matrix reproducing the gender binary. The conjunction of gendered and ethical demands imposed through relations of accountability further opens up distinctively gendered possibilities of consent and resistance under neoliberal governance. We advance the extant literature on gender in academia which largely focuses on women's symbolic struggle to (dis)identify with a masculine professional norm. By locating power in the gendered relations of accountability towards multiple others, it re‐conceptualizes gender as an ontological struggle in the constitution of the self as moral along gendered norms. The study rejoins recent scholarship that calls for the recognition and elaboration of a relational ethics by showing how such ethics enables the emergence of open and responsive subjectivities in relations of accountability.     

New Light on the Remittances‐Poverty‐Health Nexus in Macedonia

Macedonia receives about 10 per cent of GDP as cash remittances per year while a third of the population faces poverty. The study aims to investigate whether remittances improve the poverty and health of individual remittance‐receivers in Macedonia. To that end, we rely on the 2008 Remittances’ Survey and a sequential structural model linking remittances to social indicators. We find that remittances have a significant effect oto consumption, in particular health consumption, hence contribute to reducing poverty. In turn, improved health consumption significantly reduces the incidence of bad health among receivers. This finding lends support to the claim that remittances serve an informal social protection in Macedonia.     

Remittances as a Shield to Vulnerable Households in Macedonia: The Case When the Instrument is Not Strictly Exogenous

The objective of this article is to investigate whether remittances sent to Macedonia have a role to play for shielding vulnerable households, by highlighting the importance of a strictly exogenous instrument in an IV context. Results suggest that remittance‐receiving households have, on average, a 20.1 per cent lower vulnerability than non‐receiving ones. However, if one has a reasonable belief that vulnerability and the instrument are determined simultaneously, or are directly correlated due to the existence of a third unobservable factor, then the shielding effect of remittances for vulnerable households remains up to the ninth percentage of direct influence and with a reducing magnitude, and then disappears.     

Estimating time to steady state using the effective rate of drug accumulation

Unless all of a drug is eliminated during each dosing interval, the plasma concentrations within a dosing interval will increase until the time course of change in plasma concentrations becomes invariant from one dosing interval to the next, resulting in steady state. A simple method for estimating drug concentration time to steady state based on multiple dose area under the plasma concentration–time curve and effective rate of drug accumulation is presented. Several point estimates and confidence intervals for time to 90% of steady state are compared, and a recommendation is made on how to summarize and present the results. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimation in Truncated GLG Model for Ordered Categorical Spatial Data Using the SAEM Algorithm

In this article, we utilize a scale mixture of Gaussian random field as a tool for modeling spatial ordered categorical data with non-Gaussian latent variables. In fact, we assume a categorical random field is created by truncating a Gaussian Log-Gaussian latent variable model to accommodate heavy tails. Since the traditional likelihood approach for the considered model involves high-dimensional integrations which are computationally intensive, the maximum likelihood estimates are obtained using a stochastic approximation expectation–maximization algorithm. For this purpose, Markov chain Monte Carlo methods are employed to draw from the posterior distribution of latent variables. A numerical example illustrates the methodology.     

Bayesian analysis of longitudinal ordered data with flexible random effects using McMC: application to diabetic macular Edema data

In the analysis of correlated ordered data, mixed-effect models are frequently used to control the subject heterogeneity effects. A common assumption in fitting these models is the normality of random effects. In many cases, this is unrealistic, making the estimation results unreliable. This paper considers several flexible models for random effects and investigates their properties in the model fitting. We adopt a proportional odds logistic regression model and incorporate the skewed version of the normal, Student's t and slash distributions for the effects. Stochastic representations for various flexible distributions are proposed afterwards based on the mixing strategy approach. This reduces the computational burden being performed by the McMC technique. Furthermore, this paper addresses the identifiability restrictions and suggests a procedure to handle this issue. We analyze a real data set taken from an ophthalmic clinical trial. Model selection is performed by suitable Bayesian model selection criteria.     

Are People Emotionally Predisposed to Experience Lower Quality of Life? The Impact of Negative Affectivity on Quality of Life in Patients Recovering from Cardiac Surgery

Negative affectivity has been defined as a predisposition to experience intense states of negative emotions. As a trait concept it is a dimension that reflects stable and pervasive differences in negative mood and self-concept. There has been systematic evidence linking negative affectivity to anxiety, depression, psychosomatic complaints, pain symptoms, and adherence to life style changes. Several studies have demonstrated a link between negative affectivity and quality of life. However, as the majority of these studies have been cross-sectional, it has been difficult to establish causal relations between quality of life and negative affect. The present study is a longitudinal investigation of negative affectivity and quality of life in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (N = 157). Negative affectivity and quality of life were assessed with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and with the MacNew Quality of Life after Myocardial Infarction Questionnaire (MacNew QLMI) on admission day, one, and six months after the operation. Causal and reciprocal relationships were tested using a cross-lagged designs analysis via structural equation modeling. Results indicated that the causal model represented the best fit to the data. Results of the study are discussed in terms of the clinical importance of identifying patients at risk of experiencing severe restrictions in their quality of life.     

Beyond demand and control: The contribution of organizational risk factors in assessing the psychological well-being of health care employees

Abstract

The job demand–control(–support) model is frequently used as a theoretical framework in studies on determinants of psychological well-being. Consequently, these studies are confined to the impact of job characteristics on worker outcomes. In the present study the relation between work conditions and outcomes (job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, psychological distress, and somatic complaints) is examined from a broader organizational perspective. This paper reports on an analysis that examines both the unique and the additional contribution of organizational characteristics to well-being indicators, beyond those attributed to job characteristics. A total of 706 care staff from three public residential institutions for people with mental or physical disabilities in the Netherlands took part in this research. To assess organizational risk factors a measurement instrument was developed, the organizational Risk Factors Questionnaire (ORFQ), based on the safety-critical factors of the Tripod accident causation model. Factor analyses and reliability testing resulted in a 52-item scale consisting of six reliable sub-scales: staffing resources, communication, social hindrance, training opportunities, job skills, and material resources. These organizational risk factors explained important parts of the variance in each of the outcome measures, beyond that accounted for by demographic variables and job demand–control–support (JDCS) measures. Communication and training opportunities were of central importance to carers’ job satisfaction. Social hindrance, job skills, and material resources explained a substantial amount of unique variance on the negative outcomes investigated.     

Cross-Consortial Collaboration: Expanding Capacity for Law Libraries

ABSTRACT

In our digital information era, libraries have increasingly joined forces to act cooperatively through library consortia. Through membership in a consortium, a library can capitalize on programs like advocacy, joint purchasing, e-resource licensing, shared discovery platforms, etc. Resources saved through such efforts, including staff time and money, can then be deployed back into the library for other, mission-critical activities. Following the economic collapse of 2008, libraries needed more than ever to maximize exceedingly scarce budgets. In response, consortia began to push the envelope, exploring even deeper collaborations in an effort to minimize redundancies and maximize efficiencies. This article will look at some examples of cross-consortial collaboration and focus specifically on the ongoing efforts among the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA), the Mid-America Law Library Consortium (MALLCO), and the NELLCO Law Library Consortium (NELLCO) to achieve more robust cooperation across the three organizations. The authors are the three executive directors of the named organizations.