Promoting sustainable development through civil society: A case study of the EU’s NSA/LA thematic programme in Kyrgyzstan

The article focuses on the contribution of the European Union (EU) in promoting sustainable development through the involvement of civil society in partner countries. More specifically, it analyses the main features and outcomes of the projects implemented by civil society organizations (CSOs) in Kyrgyzstan under the EU thematic programme Non‐State Actors and Local Authorities in Development (NSA/LA). Despite its importance—this is the only EU programme providing direct support to non‐state actors and local authorities engaged in poverty reduction—to date, there has been very little research on the functioning of this instrument on the ground. This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature by examining the EU’s contribution to sustainable development through a case study on Kyrgyzstan. The study is based on primary data: 10 semi‐structured interviews conducted with the EU‐funded organizations implementing the NSA/LA programme. The NSA/LA projects were analysed by considering two major fields of engagement of non‐state actors in the development process: as service providers and as advocates (Banks & Hulme, 2012). Overall, the organizations awarded EU support were not only focused on fulfilling short‐term needs but also sought to introduce new ways of dealing with poverty and inequality, positioning themselves between the “Big‐D” and the “little‐d” approaches to development (Bebbington, Hickey, & Mitlin, 2008). Nonetheless, the EU‐funded projects were too limited and fragmented to be able to sustain long‐term structural change. Therefore, the EU should place new emphasis on creating synergies between new and old structures at the grassroots level and establishing mechanisms and bodies that could merge and co‐ordinate their efforts. In addition, the calls for proposals could highlight the need to share the lessons learnt by “obliging” the beneficiaries to act as multipliers and to pass on their positive experience to neighbouring communities. Finally, the EU could stimulate the funded organizations to experiment with innovative mechanisms of involvement in the policy‐making process, by making this aspect a mandatory requirement of the projects implemented with its support.     

关于“草原文化与草原丝绸之路研究”专题的几点思考

“草原文化与草原丝绸之路研究”专题,重点以“草原文化研究”“草原丝绸之路研究”“蒙古与北方民族医药历史文化研究”为主要内容,旨在开展综合研究与理论研究的基础上,既有宏观基础理论研究,也有微观个案研究,有所侧重、有的放矢。     

Dimension reduction via local rank regression

Outer product of gradients (OPG) achieves dimension reduction via estimating the gradients of the regression function. In this paper, we propose two novel OPG estimators via local rank regression: the rank OPG estimator and the Walsh-average OPG estimator. Both proposals guard against a wide range of error distributions, and are safe alternatives to existing OPG estimators based on local linear regression or local L1 regression. The effectiveness of the new proposals are demonstrated via extensive numerical studies.     

Social Work Studies at a Haredi Women's College: Difficulties and Dilemmas

This paper examines the challenges faced by female Ultra-Orthodox students in a social work program designed for the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel. Findings were obtained from four focus groups with a total of 32 students. The participants reported being exposed to contents that were inconsistent with the perspectives of their community, fieldwork expectations and requirements that violated strict rules of gender separation, and inconvenient scheduling of exams and field trips that did not take their religious observances into consideration. Despite the considerable distress that these matters caused, most of the students made determined efforts to cope, to learn the course material, to carry out their fieldwork assignments, and to reconcile the discrepancies between some of the contents they learned and behaviors that were expected of them and their deeply held values and ways. Implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations made.     

基于符号吸引理论的广南地母文化旅游开发

地母文化是遍布于世界各地由原始崇拜演化而来的文化现象。笔者在对我国地母文化旅游资源的调查研究过程中，将符号吸引理论运用于广南地母文化旅游区的旅游规划设计，为广南地母文化符号的旅游产品开发提供科学依据。     

Graphical and Numerical Methods for Detecting Influential Observations in Complex Bingham Data

We describe methods to detect influential observations in a sample of pre-shapes when the underlying distribution is assumed to be complex Bingham. One of these methods is based on Cook's distance, which is derived from the likelihood of the complex Bingham distribution. Other method is related to the tangent space, which is based on the local influence for the multivariate normal distribution. A method to detect outliers is also explained. The application of the methods is illustrated in both a real dataset and a simulated sample.     

局部均衡函数及其构造

研究了局部均衡函数,定义了改进的局部变权向量,提出了与之对应的状态局部变权向量和局部均衡函数,证明了两类函数是局部均衡函数;利用局部变权向量建立了企业信用评估模型,并通过实例说明了该理论是有效的和合理的.     

Analysis of Deviance for Hypothesis Testing in Generalized Partially Linear Models

In this study, we develop nonparametric analysis of deviance tools for generalized partially linear models based on local polynomial fitting. Assuming a canonical link, we propose expressions for both local and global analysis of deviance, which admit an additivity property that reduces to analysis of variance decompositions in the Gaussian case. Chi-square tests based on integrated likelihood functions are proposed to formally test whether the nonparametric term is significant. Simulation results are shown to illustrate the proposed chi-square tests and to compare them with an existing procedure based on penalized splines. The methodology is applied to German Bundesbank Federal Reserve data.     

War and peace on the land: An analysis of the symbolism of organic farming

This paper examines the role of the theatre metaphor in both resolving and aggravating the tensions inherent in managing the modern zoo. As the mission of zoos has evolved from the point of view of management, from a “stamp collection” approach, through habitat design and education, to the breeding and preservation of endangered species, perceptions of the general public and more importantly, the municipal departments to which zoo directors report, have not kept up. This has resulted in a tension between inner mission and self-presentation, between marketing/fundraising activities and the animal management activities which shape the day to day work and future plans of zoo workers. This paper examines one case in particular . . . that of the Northern City Zoo, in Canada. It explores the significance of using organizational metaphor to explicitly manage diversity and transition. In particular it discusses the role of theatre metaphors as simultaneously signalling conflict within the organization and providing a “liminal” period for transformation.