Ethnic Violence,Local Security and Return Migration: Enclave communities in Kosovo

Forced migration has become commonplace in the international political landscape. In 2015, 60 million people were displaced by violence, more than ever before recorded (UNHCR, 2015). While we know that violence leads to displacement, we know little about return migration after conflict – who comes back and where they settle. This article seeks to engage and supplement the literature on return migration after conflict, advocating for a broader understanding of the security choices made by displaced people. Emphasized here is the importance of a local understanding of safety and the role played by enclave communities in providing a secure context in which people can enjoy the society of their co‐ethnics.     

A Collaborative Approach to Infant Research: Promoting Reproducibility,Best Practices,and Theory‐Building

The ideal of scientific progress is that we accumulate measurements and integrate these into theory, but recent discussion of replicability issues has cast doubt on whether psychological research conforms to this model. Developmental research—especially with infant participants—also has discipline‐specific replicability challenges, including small samples and limited measurement methods. Inspired by collaborative replication efforts in cognitive and social psychology, we describe a proposal for assessing and promoting replicability in infancy research: large‐scale, multi‐laboratory replication efforts aiming for a more precise understanding of key developmental phenomena. The ManyBabies project, our instantiation of this proposal, will not only help us estimate how robust and replicable these phenomena are, but also gain new theoretical insights into how they vary across ages, linguistic communities, and measurement methods. This project has the potential for a variety of positive outcomes, including less‐biased estimates of theoretically important effects, estimates of variability that can be used for later study planning, and a series of best‐practices blueprints for future infancy research.     

Mending the Levee: How Supernaturally Anchored Conceptions of the Person Impact on Trauma Perception and Healing among Children (Cases from Madagascar and Nepal)

When dealing with children and youth who experience distressing events, psychosocial diagnostics and healing programmes principally resort to biomedical models. Children are often viewed as individualised ‘victims’ suffering from trauma and ‘in need’ of outside help. Highlighting case studies from Madagascar and Nepal, this article argues that the biomedical approach to trauma would be strengthened by a concomitant analysis of social networks, including the perceived relations with the supernatural. The various tandems of family and kin relationships, the living and the dead, constitute not only a social ‘levee’ breached by distressing events, but also the locus around which social relations are rebuilt.     

THE DECLINE OF THE MONDRAGON COOPERATIVES

The Mondragon producers cooperatives in Basque Spain represent the classic case of alternative industrial organisation. While the cooperatives received a great deal of scholarly attention during the 1970s and 1980s, relatively little has been published on recent developments at Mondragon. It is time to update the Mondragon story. In 1991, 100 cooperatives joined to become the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. This super-structure has permitted an important degree of centralised control over member cooperatives. Yet, it has also been the source of substantial challenges, both structural and ideological, to this alternative form of industrial organisation. We appear to be witnessing the cooperatives' decline, the end of a great experiment in favour of just another capitalist enterprise. This story is important both for cooperativism in Mondragon itself and for scholars and practitioners worldwide who find in Mondragon proof than an alternative, less exploitative approach to industrial organisation is possible.     

Plasma level of catecholamines and lipids when speaking before an audience

Abstract

The movement of some women into self employment is considered in this paper. It is argued that if this movement is to be successful, and thus have any influence on the equality of employment opportunities, then it is necessary for the business ventures involved to be run strategically rather than operationally. It is also argued that there must be greater scope and encouragement for innovation in this area, otherwise there is a danger of mirroring, in new business formation, the structure of inequality that applies to the formal, and declining, structure of current employment. Finally, the paper examines the need for women's entrepreneurial ventures to be better accepted by and integrated into the wider social fabric. The potential sources of stress and of satisfaction in women's self employment are noted.     

Adapting Zara’s ‘Pronto Moda’ to a value brand retailer

The clothing sector is currently characterised by frequent assortment rotation in stores, a quick response product development and a focus on minimising end-of-campaign stock levels. This paper is based on a case study carried out at a value brand retailer, with a purpose to show how the company increased competitiveness in a market requiring more responsiveness. The case presented shows that the establishment of an adequate supply strategy for differentiated product segments, the introduction of mini-collections, the redesign of business processes (especially the new product development and the order fulfilment processes) and the redesign of the supply chain, lead to a sales increase and purchasing savings. Moreover, the study treats how a value brand retailer, facing different supply chain challenges compared with the leading brands, balance global and local production, lean and agile manufacturing and how it is possible to abandon the traditional two-campaign paradigm in favour of more rapid replenishment.     

Evaluating the Senior Companion Program: a mixed-method approach

This article reports on a mixed-method assessment of the Senior Companion Program (SCP), a federal program which provides volunteer opportunities with small stipends to low-income older adults, 60 years of age and older, who provide companionship and offer assistance to frail community elders. Through four standardized scales and open-ended questions regarding the impact of the SCP in their lives, 34 Senior Companion volunteers and 32 of their clients were interviewed. Informants reported relatively large social networks and low levels of depression and loneliness. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed the benefits of the program for both volunteers and their clients. Themes emerging from the rich narratives included: companionship, independence, reduced anxiety, giving, and rewards. The article concludes with a suggested brief evaluation instrument that directors of SCP programs, and other similar programs, can use to collect data on the impact of their program--something that is required, but often difficult to do.     

Preliminary experiences of the states in implementing the National Family Caregiver Support Program: a 50-state study

Despite increased attention to policy choices to support family and informal caregivers, relatively little is known about states' experiences in providing caregiver support services. This article reports on the first nationwide survey of all 50 states and the District of Columbia in providing caregiver services since the passage of the National Family Caregiver Support Program. State program administrators reported that their program differs from other home and community-based services because of the explicit focus on the family or informal caregiver. Results suggest that despite an increasing availability of caregiver supports in all 50 states, there is also a great unevenness in services and service options for family caregivers across the states and within states.     

Inflammatory effects and immune system correlates of rape

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of measuring stress hormones and immunity following rape. The long-term goal is to evaluate the predictive value of stress-immune-inflammatory responses to later health outcomes. Fifteen women reporting rape were compared with 16 control participants. Serum stress hormones, proinflammatory cytokines, acute phase proteins, functional assays, and lymphocyte subsets were measured in blood samples. Women reporting rape had higher cytotoxic cells, lower B lymphocyte counts, higher proinflammatory biomarkers, and decreased lymphocyte proliferation compared to the control group. This finding suggests that rape produces activation of the innate immunity and suppression of some aspects of adaptive immunity. If these immune changes persist, they may contribute to the pathophysiology of long-term health sequelae by provoking chronic inflammation and decreased cellular immunocompetence.