Protest camps: an emerging field of social movement research

Recently protest camps have emerged around the world as a highly visible form of protest. Part and parcel of new social movement activism for over 40 years, they are important sites and catalysts for identity creation, expression, political contention and incubators for social change. While research has punctually addressed individual camps, there is lack of comparative and comprehensive research that links historic and contemporary protest camps as a unique area of interdisciplinary study. Research on the phenomenon to date has remained punctual and case based. This paper proposes to study protest camps as a distinct new field of research in social movement studies. Existing literature is critically reviewed and framed in three thematic clusters of spatiality, affect and autonomy. On the basis of this review the paper develops a research approach based on the analysis of infrastructures used to make protest camps. We contest that an infrastructural analysis highlights protest camps as a unique organizational form and transcends the limits of case‐based research while respecting the varying contexts and trajectories of protest camps.     

Significant harm: making professional judgements

Judging whether a child is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm has become a critical task for professionals working with children and their families in England and Wales. Yet little guidance is available about what the phrase means in its entirety and how it should be applied in practice. This study set out to examine how the phrase was used in practice by a selected sample of experienced health and social work staff. The evidence collected suggests flaws in the general approach adopted by professionals to identification and assessment in child protection cases. The data indicate a heavy concentration of attention on the weaknesses of families being assessed rather than their strengths and on parents rather than children. Problems are identified in responding effectively to long-term, chronic abuse such as emotional abuse and neglect. The study recommends changes in practice based on these findings which have been implemented by a wide range of practice agencies within the study area. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Commodity Price Volatility,Vulnerability and Development

This article examines the meaning and consequences of the developing countries’ vulnerability to the volatility of commodity prices. It first considers how to define and measure a country’s shocks and exposure arising from commodity price volatility in order to identify structural as distinct from policy vulnerability. The main channels through which price vulnerability influences economic growth are then presented. Finally, the policy implications for development aid, its allocation and design, are outlined. It is found that, while structural vulnerability is bad for growth, a policy of openness contributes to resilience. With the right rules, aid could play an important growth‐enhancing and poverty‐reducing role if allocated at least partly on the basis of vulnerability.     

电影制作和发行过程中的安全漏洞分析

电影产业主要关心的一个问题是非法的（即未经授权的）电影复制行为。尽管非法的电影拷贝已经借助便携式物理媒介而得到传播,但低成本的高速宽带连接和P2P文件共享网络则能提供极其高效的传播媒介。本文对电影的制作和发行过程进行了简要分析,并指出了一些潜在的安全漏洞,这些漏洞使得非法电影拷贝能够被那些试图再次传播之的人所获取。     

Convergence Behavior of the em algorithm for the multivariate t -distribution

Iterative reweighting (IR) is a popular method for computing M-estimates of location and scatter in multivariate robust estimation. When the objective function comes from a scale mixture of normal distributions the iterative reweighting algorithm can be identified as an EM algorithm. The purpose of this paper is to show that in the special case of the multivariate t-distribution, substantial improvements to the convergence rate can be obtained by modifying the EM algorithm.