Reading the rubbish dump as a heterotopia in Neill Blomkamp’s district 9

ABSTRACT

I read the rubbish dumps of Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 film District 9 in order to think about how peripheral places and communities can reframe the South African city. In the film, dumps are sites of abandonment and transformation. This doubleness exemplifies Michel Foucault’s privileged site, the heterotopia. I focus on two scenes that take up little of the film’s running time but speak to the possibilities of the dump as more than simply a space of immiseration. The scenes unsettle orthodoxies of space that define the postapartheid city and reposition the heterotopic dump at the urban centre rather than the margins.     

The Dynamics of Evolving Beliefs,Concerns Emotions,and Behavioral Avoidance Following 9/11: A Longitudinal Analysis of Representative Archival Samples

September 11 created a natural experiment that enables us to track the psychological effects of a large‐scale terror event over time. The archival data came from 8,070 participants of 10 ABC and CBS News polls collected from September 2001 until September 2006. Six questions investigated emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses to the events of September 11 over a five‐year period. We found that heightened responses after September 11 dissipated and reached a plateau at various points in time over a five‐year period. We also found that emotional, cognitive, and behavioral reactions were moderated by age, sex, political affiliation, and proximity to the attack. Both emotional and behavioral responses returned to a normal state after one year, whereas cognitively‐based perceptions of risk were still diminishing as late as September 2006. These results provide insight into how individuals will perceive and respond to future similar attacks.     

China: Towards the introduction of dependency/long‐term care insurance

The Chinese social security system has been the subject of numerous publications, which have made policy developments more accessible to researchers and administrators from all countries. However, the steps introduced in response to growing demands for intervention by the authorities in favour of dependent persons have remained poorly documented in the international literature. The purpose of this article is to take stock of pilot experiments in this field since the beginning of the 13th Five‐Year Plan (2016–2020) with regard to their policy objective, operating mode and financing modalities.     

Négociation et performance: une analyse exhaustive et précise de l'effet de différents systèmes de négociation sur la productivité des entreprises

S'appuyant sur des données représentatives au niveau des entreprises, disponibles pour l'ensemble de l'UE, les auteurs analysent la relation entre les processus et structures institutionnelles de négociation collective et l'évolution de la productivité du travail. Ils montrent que la nature du système de négociation a une influence marquée: certaines caractéristiques sont associées à une baisse de performance (notamment la présence d'un système de négociation sectorielle non coordonné), d'autres à une amélioration (systèmes sectoriels coordonnés). Plus que le caractère individuel ou collectif de la négociation, c'est donc bien la nature des processus et structures dans lesquels elle s'inscrit qui importe en la matière.     

Relations sociales et ajustements à la crise: une analyse microstatistique comparative franco‐britannique

Dans cette étude comparative sur la France et la Grande‐Bretagne, les auteurs analysent les liens entre relations professionnelles et ajustements (des effectifs et des salaires) face à la crise de 2007–2008, en s'appuyant sur deux enquêtes au niveau des établissements, fortement comparables, l'une britannique (WERS), l'autre française (REPONSE), collectées en 2010–2012. Malgré des contextes différents (composition du tissu productif, temporalité et impact de la crise), les liens entre relations sociales et stratégies d'ajustement semblent proches (la présence syndicale ne suffisant pas à empêcher les ajustements). La différenciation des systèmes de relations professionnelles ne permet donc pas d'expliquer les divergences de modes d'ajustement constatées au niveau macroéconomique.     

Estimands in practice: Bridging the gap between study objectives and statistical analysis

The International Council for Harmonisation (ICH) guideline E9 Statistical Principles for Clinical Trials (1) was issued in 1998. In October 2014, an addendum to ICH E9 was proposed on statistical principles relating to estimands and sensitivity analyses. The final version of the addendum to ICH E9 (R1) (2) was issued in November 2019. This virtual edition of Pharmaceutical Statistics takes a closer look at some of the progress that has been made since 2018 when implementing the estimand framework within clinical research. The articles discussed in this virtual issue are not new, but a compilation from previous issues. This specific article will act as a refresher for those not familiar with the topic and discuss the ABCs of estimands and their proposed deployment for improving the quality of clinical research. An overview of the more recent Pharmaceutical Statistics articles on estimands will be provided, signifying areas where progress have been made. The articles should be considered as contributions to the ongoing discussions rather than the final word. Finally, a personal perspective on the estimand success story and remaining challenges with proposed solutions will be discussed.     

Pour de nouveaux indicateurs des droits au travail: méthode de construction et tendances 2000–2015

Les auteurs proposent une nouvelle méthode pour mesurer l'état de la liberté syndicale et de la négociation collective, qui repose sur un codage des atteintes repérées dans neuf sources documentaires, dont six rapports du BIT et des textes du droit national. Leurs indicateurs, disponibles pour 185 États Membres de l'OIT, ont été publiés en 2015 par le Center for Global Workers’ Rights de l'Université Penn State, en association avec l'Université ouvrière mondiale. Dans une résolution d'octobre 2018, la Conférence internationale des statisticiens du travail recommande l'adoption de cette méthode pour mesurer l'indicateur sur les droits des travailleurs (8.8.2) associé aux objectifs de développement durable.     

The digital economy and the future of European welfare states

As a consequence of new technology, labour markets are changing. This article’s central aim is to discuss variations among welfare states in Europe to adjust to changing labour markets. These variations in adjustment suggest that some welfare states are more prepared than others, including their capacity to ensure their sustainable financing. In the years to come, the predicted impact of technological development on labour markets will be huge. Impacts will include stronger “dualization” and new cleavages between “insiders” and “outsiders”. Fewer industrial jobs are to be expected, and service‐sector employment faces a risk of decline due to automation. While the creation of new jobs is likely, it remains to be seen whether these will replace the number of jobs destroyed, leaving the risk that many people whose skills become obsolete will become unemployed in the short as well as the longer term. Furthermore, even if the same number of jobs are eventually created, there will be a period of transition. In the light of this, welfare states will be challenged, not only in how they can finance their activities but also in terms of the threat posed to social cohesion by emerging labour market “winners” and “losers”, with an accompanying higher risk of increasing inequality. The article offers suggestions as to how welfare states may cope with the changes related to the financing of welfare states, and how active labour market policy can be part of the response to help alleviate the expected dramatic changes. Also required is a discussion on the annual average number of hours people will work and how this might be a factor in lower future levels of unemployment.     

Microinsurance: A short history

Twenty years ago, the International Social Security Review published an article that introduced a new term to the vocabulary of development and social protection: Microinsurance. Now, twenty years later, it is suitable to take stock of the contribution of microinsurance towards promoting coverage and social security. The article reviews the main insights gained from 20 years of implementation, including a clear expression of the value proposition of health microinsurance, understanding the demand for microinsurance, the business process for successful implementation, and conditions that must be satisfied for scaling and sustainable operations. It also explains the context that led to a considerable divergence in the microinsurance space. The article offers a discussion of unresolved issues and thoughts about the future of microinsurance. The conclusion of this article is that microinsurance can flourish when the necessary four pillars for its implementation exist, namely mainstreaming through political support, enhanced insurance literacy of the customers, technical assistance to self‐administer the schemes, and availability of seed capital. The sufficient additional condition is that customers perceive microinsurance as offering welfare gains that cannot be obtained by other means.     

Risk Finance for Catastrophe Losses with Pareto‐Calibrated Lévy‐Stable Severities

For catastrophe losses, the conventional risk finance paradigm of enterprise risk management identifies transfer, as opposed to pooling or avoidance, as the preferred solution. However, this analysis does not necessarily account for differences between light‐ and heavy‐tailed characteristics of loss portfolios. Of particular concern are the decreasing benefits of diversification (through pooling) as the tails of severity distributions become heavier. In the present article, we study a loss portfolio characterized by nonstochastic frequency and a class of Lévy‐stable severity distributions calibrated to match the parameters of the Pareto II distribution. We then propose a conservative risk finance paradigm that can be used to prepare the firm for worst‐case scenarios with regard to both (1) the firm's intrinsic sensitivity to risk and (2) the heaviness of the severity's tail.